Clive Cussler - Vixen 03

"That and more."

She tried to read his thoughts. "More?"

"I want you to get something on her. Something I can use to twist her to our way of thinking."

Felicia stared at him, stunned. "Blackmail Loren? You don't know what you're asking. I can't spy on a good friend. No way."

"Your choice is clear: a girlish school friendship in exchange for the freedom of millions of our brothers and sisters who are enslaved by a tyrannical government."

"And if I can't dig any dirt?" Felicia said, searching for an out. "It's no secret her political career is unblemished."

"Nobody is perfect."

"What would I look for?"

"Loren Smith is an attractive single woman. She must have a sex life."

"What if she does?" Felicia argued. "Every single girl has her share of love affairs. And as long as she has no husband, you can't manufacture a scandal out of adultery."

Daggat smiled. "How astute of you. We shall do exactly that — manufacture a scandal."

"Loren deserves better."

"If she throws her support to our cause, she needn't worry about her secrets going public."

Felicia bit her lip. "No, I will not stab a friend in the back. Besides, Hiram would never pardon such a malignity."

Daggat refused to play her game. "Indeed" You may have slept with the savior of Africa. but I doubt if you ever truly read the man beneath the skin. Look up his past sometime. Hiram Lusana makes AI Capone and Jesse James look like sissies. It gets thrown in my face every time I stand up for him." Then Daggat's eyes narrowed. "Aren't you forgetting how he literally sold you to me?"

"I haven't forgotten."

Felicia turned away and stared out the window.

Daggat squeezed her hand. "Don't worry," he said, smiling. "Nothing will happen that will leave any scars."

She raised his hand and kissed it, but she didn't believe his words, not for an instant.

Unlike her famous parent ship the Monitor, the Chenago was virtually unknown to all but a handful of naval historians. Commissioned during June of 1862 in New York, she was immediately ordered to join the Union fleet blockading the entrance to Savannah. The unfortunate Chenago never had a chance to fire her guns: an hour away from her assigned station she met a heavy sea and foundered, entombing her entire crew of forty-two men ninety feet below the waves.

Pitt sat in the conference room of the NUMA salvage ship Visalia and studied a stack of underwater photos taken by divers of the Chenago's grave. jack Folsom, the brawny salvagemaster, chewed a massive wad of gum and looked on, waiting for the inevitable questions.

Pitt didn't disappoint him.

"Is the hull still intact?"

Folsom shifted the gum. "No noticeable transverse cracks that we can tell. Can't see it all, of course, since seven feet of keel is under the seafloor and the interior is filled with a yard of sand. But I'm guessing that chances of a longitudinal break are slim. I'll lay odds that we can lift her in one piece."

"What method do you propose?"

"Dollinger variable air tanks," answered Folsom. "Sink them in pairs beside the hulk. Then attach and fill with air. Same basic principle that hoisted the old submarine F-four after she sank off Hawaii way back in 1915.11

"You'll have to use suction pumps to remove the sand. The lighter she is — ' the less chance she'll pull apart. The thick iron plate seems to have stood up well, but the heavy oak planking behind has long since rotted away its strength."

"We can also remove the guns." said Folsom. "They're accessible."

Pitt examined a copy of the Chenago's original designs. The Monitor's familiar sh pe contained just one circular gun turret. but the Chenago possessed two, one at each end of her hull. From within both turrets extended twin thirty-centimeter Dahlgren smoothbore cannon, weighing several tons apiece.

"The Dollinger tanks," said Pitt, suddenly thoughtful, "how efficient are they for lifting sunken aircraft?"

Folsom stopped in mid-chew and stared at Pitt. "How big?"

"A hundred and seventy or eighty thousand pounds, including cargo."

"How deep?"

"One hundred forty feet."

Pitt could almost hear the gears whirring in Folsom's brain. Finally the salvagemaster resumed chewing and said, "I'd recommend derricks."

"Derricks?"

"Two of them on stable platforms could easily lift that much weight," said Folsom. "Besides, an aircraft is a fragile piece of hardware. If you used the Dollinger tanks and they got the least bit out of synchronization during the lift, they could tear the plane apart." He paused and looked at Pitt questioningly. "Why all the hypothetical questions?"

Pitt smiled a pondering smile. "You never know when we might have to bring up an airplane."

Folsom shrugged. "So much for fantasy. Now then, getting back to the Chenago…"

Pitt's eyes intently followed the diagrams Folsom began drawing on a blackboard. The diving program, the air tanks, the ships on the surface, and the sunken ironclad all took shape in conjunction with Folsom's running commentary on the planned lift operation. To all appearances, Pitt seemed keenly interested, but nothing he saw was relayed to his memory cells; his mind was two thousand miles away, deep in a Colorado lake.

Just as Folsom was describing the proposed towing procedure once the wreck reached sunlight for the first time in 125 years, a Visalia crewman poked his head through the hatchway and gestured toward Pitt.

"There's a shore-to-ship call for you, sir."

Pitt nodded, reached behind him, and picked up a phone sitting on a bulkhead shelf.

"This is Pitt."

"You're harder to track down than the abominable snowman," said a voice through the background static.

"Who is this?"

"Talk about shabby treatment," said the voice sarcastically, "I slave over a messy desk until three in the morning doing you a favor and you don't even remember my name."

"I'm sorry, Paul," Pitt said, laughing, "but your voice sounds about two octaves higher over the radiophone."

Paul Buckner, a long time pal of Pitt's and an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, lowered his pitch to his belt buckle. "There, is that any better?"

"Much. Got any answers for me?"

"Everything you asked for, and then some."

"I'm listening."

"Well, to start with, the rank of the man you think authorized the flight orders for Vixen 03 obviously was not correct."

"But 'General' was the only title that fit."

"Ain't necessarily so. The title was a seven-letter word. All that was readable was the fifth character, which was an R. Quite naturally, it was assumed that since Vixen 03 was an Air Force plane piloted by an Air Force crew, its flight orders could only be authorized by an Air Force officer."

"So tell me something I don't know."

"Okay, wiseass, I admit it threw me, too, particularly the part where a search through Air Force personnel files failed to find any name that matched up with the known characters of our mystery officer's name. Then it occurred to me: 'admiral' is also a seven letter word, and its fifth character is also an R."

Pitt felt as though the reigning heavyweight champion had suddenly rammed a right hand into his lower gut. "Admiral" the word ricocheted through his mind.

Nobody had thought to consider that an Air Force plane might have been carrying naval hardware. Then a sobering thought brought Pitt back to earth.

"A name?" he asked, almost afraid of the answer. "Were you able to come up with a name?"

"All very elementary for a prying mind like mine. The first name was easy. Six letters with three known, two blanks with LT followed by another blank and then an R. That gave me 'Walter.' Now comes the piece de resistance: the surname. Four letters beginning with B and ending with S. And, since 'Bullshit' didn't fit and I already had the guy's rank and first name, a computer search through Bureau files and Navy records quickly made a match: 'Admiral Walter Horatio Bass.`