Clive Cussler - Vixen 03

"Blown circuits," another man said, coughing. "The only air we've got is what's coming up through the magazine tubes."

In the choking haze and gloom Fawkes could barely make out the form of the man who spoke. "Find me something to pry the hatch open. We've got to make a path for cross ventilation."

He made his way around the bodies and over the huge gun mechanism to the hatch that opened to the main deck. Looking at its seven-inch-thick wall of hard steel, Fawkes could well appreciate what he was up against. The only points in his favor were the shattered locking prongs and the inch of daylight showing at the top where the hatch had been blown inward.

Someone tapped his shoulder and he turned. It was Shaba.

"I heard you down in the magazine tube, Captain. I thought you might need this." He handed Fawkes a heavy steel bar four feet long and two inches thick.

Fawkes wasted no words of appreciation. He wedged the bar into the opening to the outside and pulled. His face flushed with the effort and his great arms trembled, but the hatch would not budge.

The obstinacy of the hatch came as no surprise to Fawkes. It was an age-old Scottish adage that nothing fell to a man's lot on the first try. He closed his eyes and sucked in great breaths, hyperventilating. Every cell in his body focused on kindling the strength locked within his immense body. Shaba watched, fascinated. He had never seen such a demonstration of sheer concentration. Fawkes reinserted the bar, paused a few seconds more, and finally began to heave. It looked to Shaba as though the captain had turned to stone: there was no obvious hint of effort, no tenseness of the muscles. The sweat began to pop from Fawkes's forehead and the tendons of his neck bulged and tautened, every muscle turned rock hard with strain; then, slowly, incredibly, the hatch shrieked as steel scraped against steel.

Shaba could not believe that such brute force existed; he could not know of the secret that drove Fawkes far above and beyond his normal energies. Another inch of light appeared between the hatch and the turret armor. Then, three inches… six… and abruptly the mangled steel twisted from its broken hinges and dropped to the deck with a great metallic echo.

Almost immediately, the stench and smoke were driven outside and replaced with cool, damp air from below. Fawkes stood aside and tossed the bar through the hatch, his clothes soaked through with sweat, his torso shuddering as he caught his breath and his pounding heart slowed to normal.

"Clear the breeches and secure the guns," he ordered.

Shaba looked blank. "We've lost hydraulic pressure to the power rammer. It can't be reversed to remove the shells."

"Damn the rammer," Fawkes snorted. "Do it by hand."

Shaba said nothing in reply. He had no time. A gun barrel poked through the open hatch and a hail of bullets ricocheted throughout the armored chamber. The burst whistled past Fawkes's side.

Shaba was not as lucky. Four bullets entered his neck almost simultaneously. He sank to his knees, his eyes staring uncomprehendingly at Fawkes, his mouth moving but expelling no words, only a gush of red that rivered down his chest.

Fawkes stood by helplessly and watched Shaba die. Then a rage swelled inside him and he whirled and grabbed a gun muzzle. The heat from the barrel seared the flesh from his hands but he was far beyond any sensation of pain. Fawkes gave a great pull, and the SEAL outside, stubbornly refusing to let go of his weapon, catapulted past the narrow aperture and landed inside, his index finger still locked on the trigger.

There is no fear in a man who knows with certainty he is about to die. Fawkes did not possess that certainty. His face was white with fear, fear that he would be killed before the Quick Death shell inside one of the three guns could be deactivated.

"You bloody fool!" he grunted as the SEAL kicked him in the stomach. "The guns… inside the guns… a plague…"

The SEAL twisted violently and slashed out with his free hand to Fawkes's jaw. Fighting to keep the muzzle away from his body, Fawkes could do nothing but absorb the blow. His strength was draining away when he lurched backward and fell partially through the hatch opening, trying with one last mighty effort to yank the gun from the SEAL's grasp. Instead, the flesh came away from his palms and fingers and he lost his grip. The SEAL jumped sideways and lowered the gun, aiming it with agonizing deliberation it Fawkes's stomach.

Daniel Obasi, the young boy sitting in the turret officer's firing booth, watched in numbed horror as the SEAL's finger tightened on the trigger. He tried to yell, to distract the killer in the black wet suit, but his throat was dry as sand and a mere whisper rasped through his lips. Out of sheer desperation, in what he prayed was his one hope of saving his captain's life, Obasi pushed the red "fire" button.

There was no way to reverse the process, no way to halt the firing sequence. The powder charges detonated and two projectiles spit out of the center and starboard muzzles, but inside the port barrel the warhead jammed tight at the fracture caused by the Satan missiles, trapped the exploding gases at its base, and blocked them from escaping.

A new gun might have withstood the tremendous blowback and the staggering pressures but the tired, rusty old breech had seen its day, and it shattered and burst. In a microsecond a volcanic eruption of flame compressed within the turret, flashed down the magazine elevator tubes, and set off the powder sacks stored far below.

The Iowa blew her guts out.

Patrick Fawkes, in the fleeting instant he was blasted through the outside hatch, saw the utter waste, the terrible stupidity, of his actions. He reached out to his beloved Myrna to beg her forgiveness as he smashed against the unyielding deck and was crushed to pulp.

The armor-p ercing shell from the starboard barrel reached its zenith and hurtled downward through the limestone dome of the National Archives building. By freakish chance it fell past the twenty-one tiers of books and records, crashed through the granite floor of the exhibition hall less than ten feet from the glass case containing the Declaration of Independence, and came to rest with half its length embedded in the concrete floor of the subbasement.

Shell number two was a dud.

Not so number three.

Activated by its tiny generator, the radar altimeter inside the Quick Death package began beaming signals to the ground and recording its downward trajectory. Lower and lower the warhead dropped until at fifteen hundred feet an electrical impulse popped the parachute release and an umbrella of fluorescent-orange silk blossomed against the blue sky. Amazingly, the thirty-plus-year-old material took the sudden strain without splitting at the seams.

Far below the streets of Washington, the President and his advisers sat motionlessly in their chairs, their eyes blinking as they followed the relentless descent of the projectile. At first, like passengers on the Titanic who refused to believe the huge ocean liner was sinking, they sat entranced, their minds unable to grasp the true scope of the events before them, feebly optimistic that somehow the mechanism inside the warhead would fail, causing it to fall harmlessly onto the grass of the mall.

Then, with a frightening momentum, they all began to feel the tightening pincers of despair.

A light breeze sprang up from the north and nudged the parachute toward the Smithsonian Institution buildings. Soldiers who had blocked off the streets around the Lincoln Memorial and the National Archives building and crowds of government employees caught in the morning traffic gazed sheeplike as a forest of hands pointed skyward.

Around the conference table the air was still with tension, a growing anxiety that reached insufferable proportions. Jarvis could watch no more. He placed his head in his hands. "Finished," he said, his voice hoarse. "We're finished."