There were no markings anywhere, no manufacturer's name, no inspector's stamped date. Wherever there had been a metal in tag it was removed. Wherever there had been letters or numbers stamped into the metal, they were filed away. After probing endless nooks and crannies around the machinery, he got lucky when he felt a small protrusion through his gloved hand. It was a small metal plate partially hidden by grease under one of the boilers.
He rubbed away the grime and aimed the light on the indented surface. It read: PRESSURE 220 ' psi.
TEMPERATURE 4500 F.
HEATING SURFACE 5,017 se. it.
MANUFACTURED BY THE ALHAMBRA MON AND BOMER COMPANY CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA SER. #38874
Pitt memorized the serial number and then made his way back to where he started. He wearily sank to the deck and tried to rest while suffering from the cold.
Dover returned in a little under an hour, carrying an explosive canister under one arm, as indifferently as if it were a jumbo can of peaches. Cursing fluently and often as he slipped on the oily deck, he stopped and sat down heavily next to Pitt.
"There's four more between here and the forepeak," Dover said tiredly.
"I found another one about forty feet aft," Pitt replied.
"Wonder why they didn't go off."
"The timer must have screwed up."
"Timer?"
"The crew had to jump ship before the bottom was blown out.
Trace the wires leading from the canisters and you'll find they all meet at a timing device hidden somewhere on the deck above.
When the crew realized something was wrong, it must have been too late to reboard the ship."
"Or they were too scared it would go up in their faces."
"There's that," Pitt agreed.
"So the old Pilottown began her legendary drift. A deserted ship in an empty sea."
"How is a ship officially identified?"
"What's on your mind?"
"Just curious."
Dover accepted that and stared up at the shadows of the engines.
"Well, in can be found most anywhere. Life jackets, lifeboats, on the bow and stern the name is often bead welded, outlining the painted letters. Then you have the builder's plates, one on the exterior of the superstructure, one in the engine room. And, oh, yeah, the ship's official number is burned into a beam around the outer base of the hatch covers."
"I'll wager a month's pay that if you could dig the ship from under the mountain you'd find the hatch number burned off and the builder's plate gone."
"That leaves one in the engine room."
"Missing too. I checked, along with all the manufacturer's markings."
"Sounds devious," said Dover quietly.
"You're damn right," Pitt replied abruptly. "There's more to the Pilottown than a marine insurance rip-off."
"I'm in no mood to solve mysteries now," Dover said, rising awkwardly to his feet. "I'm freezing, starved and tired as hell. I vote we head back."
Pitt looked and saw Dover was still clutching the canister of explosives. "Bringing that along?"
"evidence."
"Don't drop it," Pitt said with a sarcastic edge in his voice.
They climbed from the engine room and hurried through the ship's storerooms, anxious to escape the damp blackness and reach daylight again. Suddenly Pitt stopped in his tracks. Dover, walking head down, bumped into him.
"Why'd you stop?"
"You feel it?"
Before Dover could answer, the deck beneath their feet trembled and the bulkheads creaked ominously. What sounded like the muffled roar of a distant explosion rumbled closer and closer, quickly followed by a tremendous shock wave. The Pilottown shuddered under the impact and her welded seams screeched as they split under enormous pressure.
The shock flung the two men violently against the steel bulkheads.
Pitt managed to remain on his feet, but Dover, unbalanced by his heavy burden, crashed like a tree to the deck, embracing the canister with his arms and cushioning its fall with his body. A grunt of pain passed his lips as he dislocated his shoulder and wrenched a knee. He dazedly struggled to a sitting position and looked up at Pitt.
"What in God's name was that?" he gasped.
"Augustine Volcano," Pitt said, almost clinically. "It must have erupted."
"Jesus, what next?"
Pitt helped the big man to his feet. He could feel Dover's arm tense through the heavy suit. "You hurt?"
"A little bent, but I don't think anything's broken."
"Can you make a run for it?"
"I'm all right," Dover lied through clenched teeth. "What about the evidence?"
"Forget it," Pitt said urgently. "Let's get the hell out of here."
Without another word they took off through the storerooms and into the narrow alleyway between the freshwater tanks. Pitt slung his arm around Dover's waist and half dragged, half carried him through the darkness.
Pitt thought the alleyway would never end. His breath began to come in gasps and his heart pounded against his ribs. He struggled to stay on his feet as the old Pilottown shook and swayed from the earth's tremors. They reached cargo hold number four and scrambled down the ladder. He lost his grip and Dover fell to the deck.
The precious seconds lost manhandling Dover over to the opposite ladder seemed like years.
Pitt had barely set foot on the scaly rungs when there was a crack like thunder and something fell past him and struck the deck.
He threw the light beam up. At that instant the hatch cover disintegrated and tons of rock and debris cascaded into the hold.
"Climb, damn it, climb!" He yelled at Dover. His chest heaved and the blood roared in his ears. With an inner strength he thrust Dover's 220 pounds up the ladder.
Suddenly a voice shouted. The light showed a figure leaning through the upper hatch, his hands grabbing Dover and pulling him through into the aft hold. Pitt instinctively knew it was Giordino.
The burly little Italian had a keen sense of arriving at the right place at the right moment.
Then Pitt was at the top and crawling into the hold containing the nerve agent. The hatch cover was still intact, because the sloping ground above was not as dense near the stern section. When he reached the bottom of the ladder, willing hands were helping Dover toward the after deckhouse and temporary safety. Giordino gripped Pitts arm.
"We took casualties during the quake," he said grimly.
"How bad?" Asked Pitt.
"Four injured, mostly broken bones, and one dead."
Giordino hesitated and Pitt knew.
"Mendoza?"
"One of the drums crushed her legs," Giordino explained, his voice more solemn than Pitt had ever known it. "She suffered a compound fracture. A bone splinter pierced her suit." His words died.
"The nerve agent leaked onto her skin," Pitt finished, a sense of helplessness and shock flooding through him.
Giordino nodded. "We carried her outside."
Pitt found Julie Mendoza lying on the Pilottown's stern deck.
Overhead a great cloud of volcanic ash rose into a blue sky and fortuitously drifted to the northward and away from the ship.
She lay alone and off to one side. The uninjured people were attending to the living. Only the young officer from the Catawba stood beside her, and his entire body was arching convulsively as he was being violently sick into his air filter.
Someone had removed her helmet. Her hair flared out on the rusty deck and glinted orange under the setting sun. Her eyes were open and staring into nothingness, the jaw jutting and rigid in what must have been indescribable agony. The blood was hardening as it dried in sun-tinted copper rivers that had gushed from her gaping mouth, nose and ears. It had even seeped from around the edges of her eyes. What little facial skin still showed was already turning a bluish black.
Pitt’s only emotion was cold rage. It swelled up inside him as he knelt down beside her and struck the deck repeatedly with his fist.
"It won't
end here," He snarled bitterly. "I won't let it end here."
OSCAR LUCAS STARED MOODILY at his desktop. Everything depressed him: the acid-tasting coffee in a cold cup, his cheaply furnished government office, and the long hours on his job. For the first time since he became special agent in charge of the presidential detail, he found himself longing for retirement, cross-country skiing in Colorado, building a mountain retreat with his own hands.
He shook his head to clear the fantasies, sipped at a diet soft drink and studied the plans of the presidential yacht for perhaps the tenth time.
Built in 1919 for a wealthy Philadelphia businessman, the Eagle was purchased by the Department of Commerce in 1921 for presidential use. Since that time, thirteen Presidents had paced her decks.
Herbert Hoover tossed medicine balls while onboard. Roosevelt mixed martinis and discussed war strategy with Winston Churchill.
Harry Truman played poker and the piano. John Kennedy celebrated his birthdays. Lyndon Johnson entertained the British Royal Family, and Richard Nixon hosted Leonin Brezhnev.
Designed with an old straight-up-and-down bow, the mahogany trimmed yacht displaced a hundred tons and measured 110 feet in length with a beam of twenty feet. Her draft was five feet and she could slice the water at fourteen knots.
The Eagle was originally constructed with five master staterooms, four baths and a large glass-enclosed deckhouse, used as a combination dining and living room. A crew of thirteen Coast Guardsmen manned the yacht during a cruise, their quarters and galley located forward.
Lucas went through the files on the crew, re-checking their personal backgrounds, family histories, personality traits, the results of psychological interviews. He could find nothing that merited any suspicion.
He sat back and yawned. His watch read 9:20 P.m. The Eagle had been tied up at Mount Vernon for three hours. The President was a night owl and a late riser. He would keep up his guests; Lucas was certain, sitting around the deckhouse, thrashing out government affairs, with little thought given to sleep.
He twisted sideways and looked out the window. A falling mist was a welcome sight. The reduced visibility eliminated the chances of a sniper, the greatest danger to a President's life. Lucas persuaded himself that he was chasing ghosts. Every detail that could be covered was covered.
If there was a threat, its source and method eluded him.
The mist had not yet reached Mount Vernon. The summer night still sparkled clear and the lights from nearby streets and farms danced on the water. The river at this stretch widened to slightly over a mile, with trees and shrubs lining its sweeping banks. A hundred yards from the shoreline, a Coast Guard cutter stood at anchor, her bow pointing upriver, radar antenna in constant rotation.
The President was sitting in a lounge chair on the foredeck of the Eagle, earnestly promoting his Eastern European aid program to Marcus Larimer and Alan Moran. Suddenly he came to his feet and stepped to the railing, his head tilted, listening. A small herd of cows were mooing in a nearby pasture. He became momentarily absorbed; the problems of the nation vanished and a country boy surfaced. After several seconds he turned and sat down again.
"Sorry for the interruption," he said with a broad smile. "For a minute there I was tempted to find a bucket and squeeze us some fresh milk for breakfast."
"The news media would have a field day with a picture of you milking a cow in the dead of night." Larimer laughed.
"Better yet," said Moran sarcastically, "you could sell the milk to the Russians for a fat profit."
"Not as farfetched as it sounds," said Margolin, who was sitting off to one side. "Milk and butter have all but disappeared from Moscow state food stores."
"It's a fact, Mr. President," said Larimer seriously. "The average Russian is only two hundred calories a day from a starvation diet.
The Poles and Hungarians are even worse off. Why, hell, our pigs eat better than they do."
"Exactly my point," said the President in a fervent voice. "We cannot turn our backs on starving women and children simply because they live under Communist domination. Their plight makes my aid plan all the more important to echo the humanitarian generosity of the American people. Think of the benefits such a program will bring in good will from the Third World countries.
Think of how such an act could inspire future generations. The potential rewards are incalculable."
"I beg to differ," said Moran coldly. "In my mind what you propose is foolish, a sucker play. The billions of dollars they spend annually propping up their satellite countries have nearly wiped out their financial resources. I'll take bets the money they save by your proposed bailout plan would go directly into their military budget."
"Perhaps, but if their troubles continue unchecked the Soviets will become more dangerous to the U.S" the President argued.
"Historically, nations with deep economic problems have lashed out in foreign adventures."
"Like grabbing control of the Persian Gulf oil?" Said Larimer.
Constantly dangle. But they know damned well the Western nations would intervene with force to keep the lifeblood of their economies flowing. No, Marcus, their sights are set on a far easier target. One that would open up their complete dominance of the Mediterranean."
Larimore’s eyebrows raised. "Turkey?"
"Precisely," the President answered bluntly.
"But Turkey is a member of NATO," Moran protested.
"Yes, but would France go to war over Turkey? Would England or West Germany? Better yet, ask yourselves if we would send American boys to die there, any more than we would in Afghanistan? The truth is Turkey has few natural resources worth fighting over. Soviet armor could sweep across the country to the Bosporus in a few weeks, and the West would only protest with words."
"You're talking remote possibilities," said Moran, "not high probabilities."
"I agree," said Larimer. "In my opinion, further Soviet expansionism on the face of their faltering system is extremely remote."
The President raised a hand to protest. "But this is far different, Marcus. Any internal upheaval in Russia is certain to spill over her borders, particularly into Western Europe."
"I'm not an isolationist, Mr. President. God knows my record in the Senate shows otherwise. But I, for one, am getting damned sick and tired of the United States being constantly twisted in the wind by the whims of the Europeans. We've left more than our share of dead in their soil from two wars. I say if the Russians want to eat the rest of Europe, then let them choke on it, and good riddance."
Larimer sat back, satisfied. He had gotten the words off his chest that he didn't dare utter in public. Though the President fervently disagreed, he couldn't help wondering how many grass roots Americans shared the same thoughts.
" Let's be realistic," he said quietly. "You know and I know we cannot desert our allies."
"Then what about our constitution," Moran jumped back in.
"What do you call it when you take their tax dollars from a budget overburdened with deficit spending and use them to feed and support our enemies?"
"I call it the humane thing to do," the President replied wearily.
He realized he was fighting a no-win war.
"Sorry, Mr. President," Larimer said, rising to his feet. "But I cannot with a clear conscience support your Eastern bloc aid plan.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll hit the sack."
"Me too," Moran said, yawning. "I can hardly keep my eyes open."
"Are you settled in all right?" Asked the President.
"Yes, thank you," replied Moran.
"If I haven't been seasick by now," said Larimer with a half grin, "I should keep my supper till morning."
They bin their good nights and disappeared together down the stairs to their staterooms. As soon as they were out of earshot, the President turned to Margolin.
"What do you think, Vince?"
"To be perfectly honest, sir, I think you're pissing up a rope."
"You're sa
ying it's hopeless?"
"Let's look at another side to this," Margolin began. "Your plan calls for buying surplus grain and other agricultural products to give to the Communist world for prices lower than our farmers could receive on the export market. Yet, thanks to poor weather conditions during the last two years and the inflationary spiral in diesel fuel costs, farms are going bankrupt at the highest rate since 1934. If you persist in handing out aid money, I respectfully suggest you do it here-not in Russia."