Vixen 03 Read online

  He barely had the strength to reach out and grasp an oar. The combined muscles of Giordino and Steiger then hoisted him into the boat as effortlessly as if he were a small child.

  "Help me get this wet suit off him," Giordino ordered.

  "My God, he's turned blue."

  "Another five minutes down there and he would have entered hypothermia."

  "Hypothermia?" asked Steiger, stripping off Pitt's jacket.

  "Profound body-heat loss," explained Giordino. "I've known divers who died from it."

  "I am not . . . repeat . . . am not ready for a coroner's slab," Pitt managed between shivers.

  The wet suit was peeled off and they rubbed Pitt vigorously with towels and wrapped him in heavy wool blankets. The feeling slowly came back to his limbs and the warm sun added to his sensual comfort by penetrating his skin. He sipped hot coffee from a Thermos jug, knowing its rejuvenating benefits were more psychological than physiological.

  "You were a fool," Giordino said, more out of concern than anger. "You damned near killed yourself by staying down too long.

  The water must be near freezing at that depth."

  "What did you find down there?" Steiger asked anxiously.

  Pitt sat up, pushing the last of the fog from his head. "A folder. I had a folder."

  Giordino held it up. "You still do. It was clutched in your left hand like a vise."

  "And a small metal plate?"

  "I have it," said Steiger. "It fell out of your sleeve."

  Pitt relaxed against the side of the boat and took another swallow of the steaming coffee. "The cargo cabin is filled with large canisters-stainless steel, judging by the negligible degree of corrosion. What they contain is anybody's guess. There were no markings on them."

  "How are they shaped?" asked Giordino.

  "Cylindrical."

  Steiger looked thoughtful. "I can't imagine what kind of military cargo would call for the protection of stainless-steel canisters."

  Then his mind shifted gear and he looked at Pitt piercingly. "What of the crew? Was there any sign of the crew?"

  "What's left of them is still strapped in their seats."

  Giordino gently pried open one end of the vinyl folder. "The papers may be readable. I think I can separate and dry them back at the cabin."

  "Probably the flight plan," said Steiger. "A few of the old die-hard Air Force pilots still prefer that particular type of folder to the newer, plastic ones for holding their paperwork."

  "Maybe it will tell us what the crew was doing that far off course."

  "I for one hope so," said Steiger. "I want all the facts in hand and the mystery neatly gift wrapped before I drop it on a desk at the Pentagon."

  "Ah . . . Steiger."

  The colonel looked at Pitt questioningly.

  "I hate to bear tidings that will screw up your well-laid plans, but there's more than meets the eye concerning the enigma of Air Force 03-much more."

  "We've found the wreck intact, haven't we?" Steiger fought to keep his voice down. He was not to be denied a moment of triumph. "The answers lie only afew yards away. Now it's only a matter of salvaging the remains from the lake. What else is there?"

  "A rather unpleasant dilemma none of us counted on."

  17

  "What dilemma?"

  "I'm afraid," Pitt said quietly, "that we also have a murder on our hands."

  10

  Giordino spread the contents of the folder on the kitchen table. There were six sheets in all. The small aluminum plate Pitt had found in the pocket of the pilot was simmering in a solution Giordino had concocted to bring out the traces of etching in the metal.

  Pitt and Steiger stood before a crackling fire and sipped coffee. The fireplace was built of native rock; its heat warmed the entire room.

  "You realize the enormous consequences of what you're suggesting?" Steiger asked. "You're conjuring up a serious crime out of thin air, without a shred of evidence. . . ."

  "Stick it in your ear," Pitt said. "You act as though I'm accusing the entire United States Air Force of murder. I am accusing no one. Granted, the evidence is circumstantial, but I'll stake my life's savings that a forensic pathologist will bear me out. The skeleton in the cargo hold did not die thirty-four years ago with the original crew."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Several items don't jibe. To begin with, our unaccounted-for passenger still has flesh on his bones. The others were stripped clean decades ago. This indicates, to me at least, that he died long after the crash. Also, he was tied hand and foot to the cargo tie-down rings. With a little imagination you could almost envision the earmarks of an old-fashioned gangland slaying."

  "You're beginning to wax melodramatic."

  "The whole scene reeks of it. One mystery ties illogically to another."

  "Okay, let's take what we know to be true," said Steiger. "The aircraft with serial number 75403 exists not where it is supposed to. But nonethe-less it exists.

  "And I think we can safely assume the original crew sits down there in the wreck," Steiger continued. "As to the extra body, perhaps the report neglected to mention his status. He might have been a last-minute assignment: a backup engineer or even a mechanic'who strapped himself to the cargo rings just before the crash."

  "Then how do you justify a difference in uniform? He was wearing khakis, not Air Force blues."

  "I can't answer that any more than you can say for certain that he was murdered long after the crash."

  "There lies the catch," Pitt said evenly. "I've got a solid idea who our uninvited guest is. And if I'm right, his demise by person or persons unknown becomes a fundamental certainty."

  Steiger's eyebrows raised. "I'm listening," he murmured. "Who do you have in mind?"

  "The man who built this cabin. His name was Charlie Smith, Congresswoman Loren Smith's father."

  Steiger sat there silently for a few moments, digesting the enormity of Pitt's statement. Finally he said, "What proof can you offer?"

  " Quite literally bits and pieces. I have it on good authority that Charlie Smith's obituary says that he was blown to smithereens in an explosion of his own making. All that was ever found were a boot and one thumb. A nice touch, don't you think? Very neat and precise. I must keep it in mind the next time I want to do somebody in. Set off a blast, then as soon as the dust settles throw a recognizable piece of footwear and a slice of the victim's most identifiable anatomy at the edge of the smoking crater. Friends later identify the boot and the sheriff's department can't miss with a positive ID once they pull a print from the thumb. In the meantime I've buried the rest of the body where hopefully it will never be found-My victim's death goes down as an accident and I go merrily on my way."

  "You're telling me the skeleton in the aircraft was missing a boot and a thumb?"

  Pitt merely nodded an affirmative.

  At half past nine Giordino was ready. He started by lecturing Pitt and Steiger as he would a class of high-school chemistry students. "As you can see, after more than three decades of submersion, the vinyl cover, because it's organic, is virtually as good as new, but the paper inside has nearly returned to pulp. Originally the contents were mimeographed-a common process prior to the miracle of Xerox. The ink, I'm sorry to say, has all but disappeared, and no laboratory on earth can bring it back, even under supermagnification. Three of the sheets are hopeless cases. Nothing vaguely legible remains. The fourth looks like it might have contained weather information. A few words here and there refer to winds, altitudes, and atmospheric temperatures. The only sentence I can partially decipher says 'Skies clearing beyond Western slopes.' "

  " 'Western slopes' indicating the Colorado Rockies," said Pitt.

  Steiger's hands gripped the edge of the table. "Christ, do you have any idea what that means?"

  "It means O3's flight didn't originate from California, as stated in the report," said Pitt. "Her departure point must have been east of here if the crew was concerned about weather condition
s over the Continental Divide."

  "So much for data sheet number four," said Giordino. "Now then, compared to the rest, sheet five is a veritable treasure trove of information. Here we can faintly make out several word combinations, including the names of two crew members. Many of the letters are missing, but with a bit of elementary deduction we can figure the meanings. Look here, for instance."

  Giordino pointed to the sheet of paper, and the other two leaned in closer.

  A re ft omm nd r: Ma ay on VI nde

  "Now, we fill in the blanks," Giordino continued, "and we come up with 'Aircraft commander: Major Raymond Vylander.' "

  "And here's the combination," said Pitt, pointing. "This spells out the name and rank of the flight engineer."

  "Joseph Burns," Giordino acknowledged. "In the lines that follow, the missing characters are too numerous to guess their intent.

  Then, this." Giordino pointed farther down on the paper.

  ode n me: ix n 03

  "Classified call sign," injected Pitt. "Every aircraft on a security flight is given one. Usually a noun followed by the last two digits of the aircraft's number."

  Steiger fixed Pitt with a look of genuine respect. "How would you know that?"

  "Picked it up somewhere," Pitt said, shrugging it off.

  18

  Giordino traced over the blank areas. "So now we have 'Code name: something 03.' "

  "What nouns have 'ix' in the middle of them?" Steiger mused.

  "Chances are, the missing letter after* is e or o."

  "How about 'Nixon'?" Giordino suggested.

  "I seriously doubt that a mere transport plane would be named after a vice-president," Pitt said. " 'Vixen 03' seems closer to the mark."

  "Vixen 03," Steiger repeated softly. "That's as good a shot as any."

  "Moving right along," said Giordino. "Our final decipherable scrap on the fifth sheet is 'E-blank-A, Rongelo 060 blank.' "

  " 'Estimated time of arrival, six in the morning at Rongelo,' " Steiger translated, his expression still incredulous. "Where in hell is that? Vixen 03 was scheduled to land in Hawaii."

  "I only calls 'em the way I sees 'em," said Giordino.

  "What about the sixth sheet?" Pitt asked.

  "Pretty slim pickings. All gibberish except for a date and a security classification near the bottom. See for yourself."

  rders d te anu ry 2 , 954 Aut or z d y: r It r B s TO SE R T COD 1A Steiger hovered over the indefinite wording. "First line reads 'Orders dated January, sometime between the twentieth and twenty-ninth, 1954.' "

  Pitt said, "The second line looks like 'Authorized by,' but the officer's name is lost. The rank of general fits, though."

  "Then comes 'Top-secret code one-A,' " said Giordino. "You can't get a classified rating any higher than that."

  "I think it safe to assume," said Pitt, "that someone in the upper echelons of either the Pentagon or the White House, or both, released a misleading accident report on Vixen 03 as a cover-up."

  "In my years with the Air Force I've never heard of such an act. Why instigate a flagrant lie over an ordinary aircraft on a routine flight?"

  "Face facts, Colonel. Vixen 03 was no ordinary aircraft. The report states the flight originated at Travis Air Force Base, near San Francisco and was scheduled to land at Hickam Field, in Hawaii. We now know the crew was heading for a destination named Rongelo."

  Giordino scratched his head. "I can't recall ever hearing of a place ; called Rongelo."

  "Nor I," said Pitt. "But we can settle that mystery as soon as we lay ?our hands on a world atlas."

  "So what have we got?" asked Steiger.

  "Not much," admitted Pitt. "Only that during the latter part of January, 1954, a C-ninety-seven took off from a point either in the eastern or midwestern section of the United States on a top-secret flight. But something went wrong over Colorado. A mechanical malfunction that forced the crew to ditch the plane in the worst terrain imaginable. They got lucky, or so they thought.

  Miraculously avoiding smashing into a mountainside, Vylander found an open clearing and lined up the Stratocruiser for an emergency landing. But what they couldn't see-remember, it was January, and the ground was undoubtedly covered with snow-was in grim reality a lake frozen over with ice."

  "So when the aircraft's momentum slowed and its weight settled," said Steiger vacantly, "the ice parted and she fell through."

  "Exactly. The tidal surge of water into the broken ship and the staggering shock of the cold overwhelmed the crew before they had a chance to react, and they drowned in their seats. No one witnessed the crash, the water refroze over the grave, and all traces of the tragedy were neatly erased. The ensuing search discovered nothing and Vixen 03 was later concealed behind a phony accident report and conveniently forgotten."

  "You've written an interesting plot," said Giordino, "and it plays well. But where does Charlie Smith come into the story?"

  "He must have hooked the oxygen tank while fishing. Possessing an inquisitive mind, he probably dragged the area and wrenched the already broken nose gear loose from the wreckage."

  "The expression on his face must have been priceless when the gear popped to the surface," Giordino said, smiling.

  "Even if I accept Smith's murder," said Steiger, "I fail to see a motive."

  Pitt raised his eyes and looked at Steiger. "There is always a motive for taking a man's life."

  "The cargo," Giordino blurted, incredulous at his own realization. "It was a highly classified flight. It stands to reason that whatever Vixen 03 was transporting was worth a great deal to somebody. Worth enough to kill for."

  Steiger shook his head. "If the cargo is so valuable, why wasn't it salvaged by Smith or his supposed killer? According to Pitt here, it's still down there."

  "And sealed tight," Pitt added. "As near as I could tell, the canisters have never been opened."

  Giordino cleared his throat. "Next question."

  "Shoot."

  "What's inside the canisters?"

  "You had to ask," said Pitt. "Well, one conjecture bears considera-tion. Take an aircraft carrying cylindrical canisters on a secret mission somewhere in the Pacific Ocean in January of 1954-"

  "Of course," interrupted Giordino. "Nuclear-bomb tests were being held at Bikini at that time."

  Steiger rose to his feet and stood motionlessly. "Are you implying that Vixen 03 was transporting nuclear warheads?"

  "I am not implying anything," Pitt said casually. "I am merely offering a possibility, and an intriguing one at that. Why else would the Air Force put the lid on a missing plane and throw up a smoke screen of misleading information to cloud the disappearance? Why else would a flight crew risk almost certain death to ride down a crippled aircraft in the mountains instead of taking to their parachutes and allowing it to crash, perhaps in or near a populated area?"

  "There's one vital point that sinks your theory: the government would have never given up searching for a lost cargo of nuclear warheads."

  "I admit you have me there. It does seem odd that enough destruction to obliterate half the country would be left to litter the environment."

  Suddenly Steiger wrinkled his nose. "What is that godawful stench?"

  Giordino hurriedly rose and moved over to the stove. "I think the metal tag is done."

  "What are you boiling it in?"

  19

  "A combination of vinegar and baking soda. They're all I could find that would do the trick."

  "Are you sure it will bring out the etching?"

  "Couldn't say. I'm not a chemist. Won't hurt it, though."

  Steiger threw up his hands in exasperation and turned to Pitt. "I knew I should have saved this stuff for professional lab technicians."

  Giordino calmly ignored Steiger's remark and delicately lifted the plate out of the boiling water with two forks and patted it dry with a dish towel. Then he held it up to the light, turning it at different angles.

  "What do you see?" Pitt asked.

&n
bsp; Giordino set the small aluminum plate down on the table in front of them. He inhaled deeply, his features taking on a grave expression.

  "A symbol," he said tensely. "The symbol for radioactivity."

  2

  Operation Wild Rose

  11

  Natal, South Africa-October 1988

  To the casual eye the great trunk of the dead baobab tree looked like one of a thousand others spread about the northeast coastal plain of Natal Province, South Africa. There was no way of telling why it had died or how long ago. It stood in a kind of grotesque beauty, its leafless branches clutching at an azure sky with gnarled, woody fingers while its rotting bark crumbled into a medicinal-smelling humus on the ground. There was, however, one startling difference that set this dead baobab tree apart from the others: its trunk was hollowed out and a man crouched inside, intently peering through a small aperture with a pair of binoculars.

  It was an ideal hiding place, blueprinted from some long-forgotten manual on guerrilla warfare. Marcus Somala, section leader of the African Army of Revolution, was proud of his handiwork. Two hours was all it had taken him the previous night to scoop out the spongy core of the tree and stealthily scatter the debris deep within the encircling brush. Once comfortably settled inside, he did not have to wait long for his concealment to pass its first test.

  Shortly after dawn a black field-worker from the farm that Somala was observing wandered by, hesitated, and then relieved himself against the baobab. Somala watched, smiling inwardly. He felt an impulse to slip the blade of his long curved Moroccan knife out the sight hole and slice off the worker's penis. The impulse was to Somala an amusing one, nothing more. He did not indulge himself with stupid actions. He was a professional soldier and a dedicated revolutionist, a seasoned veteran of nearly a hundred raids. He was proud to serve in the front line of the crusade to eradicate the last vestige of the Anglo cancer from the African continent.