Deep Six Page 6

"Hello, Oscar. How's the golf game?"

  "Sad shape," answered Lucas. "I haven't played in almost two weeks."

  As Lucas spoke he looked into the piercing dark eyes of George Blackowl, the acting supervisor and advance agent for the President's movement. Blackowl was about Lucas' height, five years younger and carried about ten pounds of excess weight. A habitual gum chewer-his jaws worked constantly-he was half Sioux and was constantly kidded about his ancestors' role at the Little Big Horn.

  "Safe to board?" asked Lucas.

  "The boat has been swept for explosives and listening devices.

  The frogmen finished checking the hull about ten minutes ago, and the outboard chase boat is manned and ready to follow."

  Lucas nodded. "A hundred-and-ten-foot Coast Guard cutter will be standing by when you’ reach Mount Vernon."

  "Then I guess we're ready for the Boss."

  Lucas paused for nearly a minute while he scanned the surrounding dock area. Detecting nothing suspicious, he opened the door for the President. Then the agents formed a security diamond around him.

  Blackowl walked ahead of the point man, which was directly in front of the President. Lucas, because he was left-handed and required ease of movement in case he had to draw his gun, walked the left point and slightly to the rear. Fawcett tailed several yards behind and out of the way.

  At the boarding ramp Lucas and Blackowl stood aside to let the others pass.

  "Okay, George, he's all yours."

  "Lucky you," Blackowl said, smiling. "You get the weekend off."

  "First time this month."

  "Heading home from here?"

  "Not yet. I have to run by the office and clear my desk first.

  There were a few hitches during the last trip to Los Angeles. I want to review the planning."

  They turned in unison as another government limousine pulled up to the dock. Senator Marcus Larimer climbed out and strode toward the presidential yacht followed by an aid that dutifully carried an overnight bag.

  Larimer wore a brown suit with a vest; he always wore a brown suit with a vest. It had been suggested by one of his fellow legislators that he was born in one. His hair was sandy colored and styled in the dry look. He was big and rough-cut, with the look of a carrier trying to crash a celebrity benefit.

  He simply nodded to Blackowl and threw Lucas the standard politician's greeting: "Nice to see you, Oscar."

  "You're looking healthy, Senator."

  "Nothing a bottle of scotch won't cure," Larimer replied with a booming laugh. Then he swept up the ramp and disappeared into the main salon.

  "Have fun," Lucas said sarcastically to Blackowl. "I don't envy you this trip."

  A few minutes later, while driving through the naval-yard gate onto M Street, Lucas passed a compact Chevrolet carrying Congressman Alan Moran going in the opposite direction. Lucas didn't like the Speaker of the House. Not nearly as flamboyant as his predecessor, Moran was a Horatio Alger type who had succeeded not so much from intelligence or perception as from stowing away in the congressional power circles and supplying more favors than he begged. Once accused of masterminding an oil-leasing scheme on government lands, he had greased his way out of the impending scandal by calling in his political IOU's.

  He looked neither right nor left as he drove by. His mind, Lucas deduced, was grinding on ways to pick the President's influential pocket.

  Not quite an hour later, as the crew of the presidential yacht were preparing to cast off, Vice President Margolin came aboard with a garment bag draped over one shoulder. He hesitated a moment and then spied the President, seated alone in a deck chair near the stern, watching the sun begin to set over the city. A steward appeared and relieved Margolin of the garment bag.

  The President looked up and stared as though not fully recognizing him.

  "Vince?"

  "Sorry I'm late," Margolin apologized. "But one of my aides misplaced your invitation and I only discovered it an hour ago."

  "I wasn't sure you could make it," the President murmured obscurely.

  'Perfect timing. Beth is visiting our son at Stanford and won't be home until Tuesday, and I had nothing on my schedule that couldn't be shoved ahead."

  The President stood up, forcing a friendly smile. "Senator Larimer and Congressman Moran are on board too. They're in the dining salon." He tilted his head in their direction. "Why don't you say hello and rustle up a drink."

  "A drink I could use."

  Margolin bumped into Fawcett in the doorway and they exchanged a few words.

  The President's face was a study in anger. As much as he and Margolin differed in style and appearance-the Vice President's was tall and nicely proportioned, not a bit of fat on his body, with a handsome face, bright blue eyes and a warm, outgoing personality-they differed even more in their politics.

  The President maintained a high level of personal popularity by his inspirational speeches. An inealist and a visionary, he was almost totally occupied with creating programs that would be of global benefit ten to fifty years in the future. Unfortunately, for the most part they were programs that did not fit in with the selfish realities of domestic politics.

  Margolin, on the other hand, kept a low profile with the public and news media, aiming his energies more toward domestic issues.

  His stand on the President's Communist bloc aid program was that the money would be better spent at home.

  The Vice President was a born politician. He had the Constitution in his blood. He had come up the hard way-through the ranks, beginning with his state legislature, then governor and later the Senate. Once entrenched in his office in the Russell Building, he surrounded himself with a powerhouse staff of advisers who possessed a flair for strategic compromise and innovative political concepts. While it was the President who proposed legislation, it was Margolin who orchestrated its passage through the maze of committees into law and policy, all too often making the White House staff appear like fumbling amateurs, a situation that did not sit well with the President and caused considerable internal backstabbing.

  Margolin might have been the people's choice for the Presidency, but he was not the party's. Here his integrity and image as a "shaker and doer" worked against him. He too often refused to fall in line on partisan issues if he believed in a better path; he was a maverick who followed his own conscience.

  The President watched Margolin disappear into the main salon, irritation and jealousy burning within him.

  "What is Vince doing here?" Fawcett asked him nervously.

  "Damned if I know," snapped the President. "He said he was invited."

  Fawcett looked stricken. "Christ, somebody on the staff must have screwed up."

  "Too late now. I can't tell him he's not wanted and to please leave."

  Fawcett was still confused. "I don't understand."

  "Neither do I, but we're stuck with him."

  "He could blow it."

  "I don't think so. Regardless of what we think about Vince, he's never made a statement that tarnished my image. That's more than a lot of Presidents could say about their VP'S."

  Fawcett resigned himself to the situation. "There aren't enough staterooms to go around. I'll give up mine and stay on shore."

  "I appreciate that, Dan."

  "I can stay on the boat until tonight and then bunk at a nearby motel."

  "Perhaps, under the circumstances," the President said slowly, "it would be best if you'remained behind. With Vince along, I don't want our guests to think we're ganging up on them."

  "I'll leave the documents supporting your position in your stateroom, Mr. President."

  "Thank you. I'll study them before dinner." Then the President paused. "By the way, any word on the Alaskan situation?"

  "Only that the search for the nerve agent is under way."

  The President's eyes reflected a disturbed look. He nodded and shook Fawcett's hand. "See you tomorrow."

  Later Fawcett stood on the dock among the irritated Secret
Service agents of the Vice President's detail. As he watched the aging white yacht cut into the Anacostia River before turning south toward the Potomac, a knot began to tighten in the pit of his stomach.

  There had been no written invitations!

  None of it made any sense.

  Lucas was putting on his coat, about to leave his office, when the phone linked to the command post buzzed.

  'Lucas."

  "This is 'Love Boat,"' replied George Blackowl, giving the code name of the movement in progress.

  The call was unexpected and like a father with a daughter on a date Lucas immediately feared the worst. "Go ahead," he said tersely.

  "We have a situation. This is no emergency, I repeat, no emergency. But something's come up that isn't in the movement."

  Lucas expelled a sigh of relief. "I'm listening."

  "'Shakespeare' is on the boat," said Blackowl, giving the code name for the Vice President.

  "He's where?" Lucas gasped.

  "Margolin showed up out of nowhere and came onboard as we were casting off. Dan Fawcett gave him his stateroom and went ashore. When I queried the President about the last-minute switch in passengers, he told me to let it ride. But I smell a screw-up."

  "Where's Rhinemann?"

  "Right here with me on the yacht."

  "Put him on."

  There was a pause and then Hank Rhinemann, the supervisor in charge of the Vice President's security detail, came on. "Oscar, we've got an unscheduled movement."

  "Understood. How did you lose him?"

  "He came charging out of his office and said he had to attend an urgent meeting with the President on the yacht. He didn't tell me it was an overnight affair."

  "He kept it from you?"

  "'Shakespeare' is tight-mouthed as hell. I should have known when I saw the garment bag. I'm sorry as hell, Oscar."

  A wave of frustration swept Lucas. God, he thought, the leaders of the world's leading superpowers were like kids when it came to their own security.

  "It's happened," said Lucas sharply. "So we'll make the best of it. Where is your detail?"

  "Standing on the dock," answered Rhinemann.

  "Send them down to Mount VerDon and back up Blackowl's people. I want that yacht cordoned off tighter than a bass drum."

  "Will do."

  "At the slightest hint of trouble, call me. I'm spending the night at the command post."

  "You got a line on something?" Rhinemann asked.

  "Nothing tangible," Lucas replied, his voice so hollow it seemed to come from a distant source. "But knowing that the President and the next three men in line for his office are all in the same place at the same time scares the hell out of me."

  "WE'VE TURNED AGAINST THE CURRENT." Pitts voice was quiet, almost casual, as he stared at the color video screen on the Klein hydro scan sonar that read the seafloor. "Increase speed about two knots."

  Dressed in bleached Levi's, Irish knit turtleneck sweater and brown tennis shoes, his brushed hair lain back under a NUMA baseball cap, he looked cool and comfortable with a bored, indifferent air about him.

  The wheel moved slowly under the helmsman's hands and the Catawba lazily shoved aside the three-foot swells as she swept back and forth over the sea like a lawn mower. Trailing behind the stern like a tin can tied to the tail of a dog, the side scan sonar's sensor pinged the depths, sending a signal to the video display, which translated it into a detailed image of the bottom.

  They took up the search for the nerve agent source in the southern end of Cook Inlet and discovered that the residual traces rose as they worked westward into Kamishak Bay. Water samples were taken every half-hour and ferried by helicopter to the chemical lab on Augustine Island. Amos Dover philosophically compared the project to a children's game of finding hidden candy with an unseen voice giving "warmer" or "colder" clues.

  As the day wore on, the nervous tension that had been building up on the Catawba grew unbearable. The crew was unable to go on deck for a breath of air. Only the EPA chemists were allowed outside the exterior bulkheads, and airtight encapsulating suits protected them.

  "Anything yet?" Dover asked, peering over Pitts shoulder at the high-resolution screen.

  "Nothing man-made," Pitt answered. "Bottom terrain is rugged, broken, mostly lava rock."

  "Good clear picture."

  Pitt nodded. "Yes, the detail is quite sharp."

  "What's that dark smudge?"

  "A school of fish. Maybe a pack of seals."

  Dover turned and stared through the bridge windows at the volcanic peak on Augustine Island, now only a few miles away. "Better make a strike soon. We're coming close to shore."

  "Lab to ship," Mendoza's feminine voice broke over the bridge speaker.

  Dover picked up the communications phone. "Go ahead, lab."

  "Steer zero-seven-zero degrees. Trace elements appear to be in higher concentrations in that direction."

  Dover gave the nearby island an apprehensive eye. "If we hold that course for twenty minutes we'll park on your doorstep for supper."

  "Come in as far as you can and take samples," Mendoza answered.

  "My indications are that you're practically on top of it."

  Dover hung up without further discussion and called out, "What's the depth?"

  The watch officer tapped a dial on the instrument console. "One hundred forty feet and rising."

  "How far can you see on that thing?" Dover asked Pitt.

  "We read the seabed six hundred meters on either side of our hug."

  "Then we're cutting a swath nearly two thirds of a mile wine."

  "Close enough," Pitt admitted.

  "We should have detected the ship by now," Dover said irritably.

  "Maybe we missed it."

  "No need to get uptight," Pitt said. He paused, leaned over the computer keyboard and fine-tuned the image. "Nothing in this world is more elusive than a shipwreck that isn't ready to be found.

  Deducing the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel is kindergarten stuff compared to finding a lost derelict under hundreds of square miles of water. Sometimes you get lucky early. Most of the time you don't."

  "Very poetic," Dover said dryly

  Pitt stared at the overhead bulkhead for a long and considering moment. "What's the visibility under the water surface?"

  "The water turns crystal fifty yards from shore. On the flood tine I've seen a hundred feet or better."

  "I'd like to borrow your copter and take aerial photos of this area."

  "Why bother?" Dover said curtly. "Semper Paratus, Always Ready, is not the Coast Guard's motto for laughs." He motioned through a doorway. "We have charts showing three thousand miles of Alaskan coastline in color and incredible detail, courtesy of satellite reconnaissance."

  Pitt nodded for Giordino to take his place in front of the hydro scan as he rose and followed the Catawba's skipper into a small compartment stacked with cabinets containing nautical charts.

  Dover checked the label inserts, pulled open a drawer and rummaged inside. Finally he extracted a large chart marked "Satellite Survey Number 2430A, South Shore of Augustine Island." Then he lain it on a table and spread it out.

  "Is this what you have in mind?"

  Pitt leaned over and studied the bird's-eye view of the sea off the volcanic island's coast. "Perfect. Got a magnifying glass?"

  "In the shelf under the table."

  Pitt found the thick, square lens and peered through it at the tiny shadows on the photo survey. Dover left and returned shortly with two mugs of coffee.

  "Your chances are nil of spotting an anomaly in that geological nightmare on the seafloor. A ship could stay lost forever in there."

  "I'm not looking at the seafloor."

  Dover heard Pitts words an right, but the meaning didn't register.

  Vague curiosity reflected in his eyes, but before he could ask the obvious question the speaker above the doorway crackled.

  "Skipper, we've got breakers ahead." The
watch officer's voice was tense. "The Fathometer reads thirty feet of water under the hull-and rising damned fast."

  "All stop!" Dover ordered. A pause, then: "No, reverse engines until speed is zero."

  "Tell him to have the sonar sensor pulled in before it drags bottom," Pitt said offhandedly. "Then I suggest we drop anchor."

  Dover gave Pitt a strange look, but issued the command. The deck trembled beneath their feet as the twin screws reversed direction.