Vixen 03 (Dirk Pitt 5)

Bass's hand inched across the sheets and weakly gripped Pitt's wrist. His eyes fluttered open. "Just needed a minute to catch my breath. . . . Don't go ... that's an order."

Heidi read the tortured look of compassion in Pitt's eyes and she reluctantly backed away. Pitt leaned toward the admiral again.

"What happens next?"

"After the shell passes its zenith and begins the flight to earth, the altimeter's omnidirectional indicator begins signaling the decrease in altitude. . . ."

Bass's voice trailed off and Pitt waited patiently.

"At fifteen hundred feet a parachute is released. Slows the shell's descent and activates a small explosive device."

"Fifteen hundred feet, parachute opens," Pitt repeated.

"At one thousand feet, device detonates and splits head of projectile; releases a cluster mass of bomblets containing the Quick Death organism."

77

Pitt sat back and considered the admiral's description of the projectile's operation. He looked into the waning eyes.

"The time element, Admiral. How much time between the parachute's ejection and the QD dispersal?"

"Too long ago . . . can't remember."

"Please try," Pitt implored.

Bass was clearly sinking. He fought to bring his brain into gear, but its cells responded sluggishly. Then the tension lines in his face relaxed and he whispered, "I think . . . not sure . . . thirty seconds . . . rate of descent about eighteen feet per second . . ."

"Thirty seconds?" Pitt said, seeking verification.

Bass's hand released Pitt's wrist and fell back on the bed. His eyes closed and he drifted into coma.

55

The only damage to the Iowa after she slashed through the Molly Bender was a few scrapes to the paint on her bows. Fawkes had not noticed the slightest bump. He could have averted the tragedy if he had spun the wheel hard to port, but it would have meant swerving the battleship from the deep part of the channel and running her aground.

He needed every inch he could squeeze between the riverbed and the Iowa's hull. The months of gutting thousands of tons of nonessential steel had raised the ship from a wartime operational draft of thirty-eight feet to a few inches less than twenty-two, giving Fawkes a razor-thin margin. Already the great whirling screws were churning up bottom mud that dirtied the Iowa's wake for miles.

Fawkes's countless trips up and down the river in the dark, sounding every foot, marking each channel buoy, each shoal, were paying off. Through the diminishing sleet he made out the lighted mid-channel buoy off St. Clements Island, and a minute or two later his ears picked up its sepulchral tolling bell as if it were an old friend. He wiped his sweating hands one at a time on his sleeves. The trickiest part of the run was coming up.

Ever since slipping the moorings, Fawkes had worried about the danger of Kettle Bottom Shoals, a six-mile section of the river mazed with a network of shallow sandbars that could grip the Iowa's keel and hold her helpless miles from her goal.

He lifted one hand from the helm and picked up a microphone. "I want a continuous depth reading."

"Understood, Captain," a voice scratched back over a speaker.

Three decks below, two of Fawkes's black crewmen took turns calling up the depths as they appeared on the modified Fathometer. They gave their readings in feet instead of the usual fathoms.

"Twenty-six feet . . . twenty-five . . . twenty-four-five."

Kettle Bottom Shoals was beginning to make its presence known and Fawkes's hamlike hands clenched the spokes of the helm as though they were glued to them.

Down in the e

ngine room Emma made a show of helping the pitifully small crew who were somehow running the huge ship. All were bathed in sweat as they struggled to handle duties that normally took five times their number. The removal of two engines had helped, but there was still far too much to do, particularly when they considered their dual role as engineers and, when the time came, gunners.

Not one to become mired in physical labor, Emma made himself useful by passing around gallon jugs of water. In that steaming hell no one seemed to take notice of his unfamiliar face; they were only too grateful to gulp down the liquid that replaced the body fluids running from their pores in streams.

They worked blind, never knowing what was happening on the other side of the hull's steel plates, never remotely aware of where the ship was taking them. All Fawkes had told them when they boarded was that they were going on a short practice run to shake down the old engines and fire a few rounds from the main guns. They assumed they were heading out of the bay and into the Atlantic. That's why they were stunned when the ship suddenly gave a shudder and the hull began creaking in protest beneath their feet.