"Come now, gentlemen. Not even Merlin and Houdini together could make a battleship disappear."
Before anyone could comment, a White House aide^ntered the conference room and laid a paper at the President's elbow.
"Just in from the State Department," the President said, scanning the print. "A communique from Prime Minister Koertsmann, of South Af-rica. He urgently warns us of an imminent attack on the United States mainland by the AAR and apologizes for any indirect involvement by his cabinet."
"It doesn't figure that Koertsmann would suggest an involvement with his enemy," March said. "I should think he'd categorically deny any connection."
"Probably hedging his bets," ventured Jarvis. "Koertsmann must suspect Operation Wild Rose has fallen into our hands."
The President kept gazing at the wording on the paper as if unwilling to accept the frightening truth.
"It looks," he said solemnly, "as if all hell is about to break loose."
The bridge had been his only miscalculation. The Iowa's superstructure was too high to pass under the one man-made obstacle that stood between Fawkes and his target. The vertical clearance was three feet lower than he'd reckoned.
He heard, rather than saw, the plywood gun-director housing being torn off the forward gun-control platform as it smashed into the overhead span of the bridge.
Howard McDonald slammed on his brakes and skidded to a sideways stop, toppling stacked crates of milk bottles in his delivery van. To McDonald, who was crossing the Harry W. Nice Memorial Toll Bridge to begin his regular milk route, it appeared that an airplane had crashed through the supporting girders almost on top of his truck. He sat there for a few moments in shock, his headlights illuminating a huge pile of debris blocking the two narrow north-and southbound lanes. Fearfully, he stepped from the van and approached, expecting to find mangled pieces of human anatomy embedded in the wreckage.
Instead, all he discovered were splintered sheets of gray-painted wood. His initial reaction was to stare at a low overcast sky, but all he saw was a red aircraft-obstruction light flashing atop the main span. Then McDonald walked over to the railing and peered down.
Except for what seemed to be the running lights of a string of vessels disappearing around Mathias Point, to the north, the channel was empty.
57
Pitt, Steiger, and Admiral Sandecker stood around a drafting table in Pitt's hangar at the Washington National Airport and examined a large-scale map of the area's waterways. "Fawkes did a radical facelift on the Iowa for a damned good reason," Pitt was saying. "Sixteen feet. That's how much he raised her waterline."
"You certain you have an accurate figure?" Sandecker asked. "That leaves a draft of only twenty-two feet." He shook his head.
"It doesn't seem credible."
"I got it from the man who should know," answered Pitt. "While Dale Jarvis was on the phone to NSA headquarters, I questioned Metz, the shipyard boss. He swore to the measurements."
"But for what purpose?" said Steiger. "By removing all the guns and replacing them with wooden dummies, the ship is totally useless."
79
"Number-two turret and all its fire-control equipment is still in place," Pitt said. "According to Metz, the Iowa can lob a salvo of two-thousand-pound shells twenty miles into a rain barrel."
Sandecker concentrated his attention on lighting a large cigar. Satisfied that it was properly stoked, he blew a cloud of blue smoke at the ceiling and rapped the map with his knuckles. "
Your plan is crazy, Dirk. We're meddling in a conflict way over our heads."
"We can't sit here and piss and moan," said Pitt. "The President will be persuaded by the Pentagon strategists either to blow the Iowa out of the water, more likely than not spreading the QD to the winds, or to send out a boarding party to capture the gas shells, with the idea of incorporating them into the Army's arsenal."
"But what good is a plague organism that can't be controlled?" asked Steiger.
" Ypu can bet every biologist in the country will be funded to search for an antidote," Pitt replied. "If one makes a breakthrough, then someday, somewhere, a general or an admiral may panic and give the order for its dispersal. Me, I don't want to grow old knowing I had an opportunity to save countless lives but failed to act."
"Pretty speech," said Sandecker. "I'm in total agreement, but the three of us are hardly in a position to compete with the Defense Department in a race to recover the two remaining QD warheads."
"If we could sneak a man on board the Iowa first, a man who could disarm the firing mechanism of the projectiles and dump the organism pellets over the side into the water . . ." Pitt let his thought linger.
"And you are that man?" ventured Sandecker.
"Of us three, I'm the best qualified."
"Aren't you forgetting me, mister?" Steiger said acidly.