Clive Cussler - Deep Six

The barking stopped abruptly, and McGrath figured a cat or some wild animal had set the dog off. He reached a familiar bench beside a fork in a graveled path and made his way toward the riverbank below the yacht. He spoke into his lapel microphone.

“Post eight, coming up on you.”

There was no reply.

McGrath stopped in his tracks. “Brock, this is McGrath, coming up on you.”

Still nothing.

“Brock, do you read me?”

Post number eight was oddly quiet and McGrath began to feel uneasy. Moving very slowly, one step at a time, he cautiously closed on the guard area. He called faintly through the mist, his voice weirdly magnified by the heavy dampness. Silence was his only reply.

“Control, this is Cutty Sark.”

“Go ahead, Cutty Sark,” came back Blackowl’s tired voice.

“We’re missing a man on post eight.”

Blackowl’s tone sharpened considerably. “No sign of him?”

“None.”

“Check the boat,” Blackowl said without hesitation. “I’ll meet you there after I inform headquarters.”

McGrath signed off and hurried along the bank to the dock. “Post six, coming up on you.”

“Aiken, post six. Come ahead.”

McGrath groped his way onto the dock and found agent John Aiken’s hulking figure under a floodlight. “Have you seen Brock?”

“You kidding?” answered Aiken. “I haven’t seen shit since the fog hit.”

McGrath dogtrotted along the dock, repeating the call-warning process. By the time he reached the Eagle, Polaski had come around from the opposite deck to meet him.

“I’m missing Brock,” he said tersely.

Polaski shrugged. “Last I saw of him was about a half-hour ago when we changed posts.”

“Okay, stand here by the dockside. I’m going to take a look below decks. And keep an eye peeled for Blackowl. He’s on his way down from Control.”

When Blackowl lurched out into the damp morning, the fog was thinning and he could see the faint glimmer of stars through the fading overcast above. He steered his way from post to post, breaking into a run along the pathway to the pier as the visibility improved. Fear smoldered in his stomach, a dread that something was terribly wrong. Agents did not desert their posts without warning, without reason.

When at last he leaped aboard the yacht, the fog had disappeared as if by magic. The ruby lights of the radio antenna across the river sparkled in the newly cleared air. He brushed by Polaski and found McGrath sitting alone in the deckhouse, staring trancelike into nothingness.

Blackowl froze.

McGrath’s face was as pale as a white plaster death mask. He stared with such horror in his eyes that Blackowl immediately feared the worst.

“The President?” he demanded.

McGrath looked at him dully, his mouth moving but no words coming out.

“For Christ’s sake, is the President safe?”

“Gone,” McGrath finally muttered.

“What are you talking about?”

“The President, the Vice President, the crew, everybody, they’re all gone.”

“You’re talking crazy!” Blackowl snapped.

“True… it’s true,” McGrath said lifelessly. “See for yourself.”

Blackowl tore down the steps of the nearest companionway and ran to the President’s stateroom. He threw open the door without knocking. It was deserted. The bed was still neatly made and there were no clothes in the closet, no toilet articles in the bathroom. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed between two blocks of ice.

As though in a nightmare, he rushed from stateroom to stateroom. Everywhere it was the same; even the crew’s quarters lay in undisturbed emptiness.

The horror was real.

Everyone on the yacht had vanished as though they had never been born.

Unlike actors in motion pictures, who take forever to wake up and answer a ringing telephone in bed, Ben Greenwald, Director of the Secret Service, came instantly alert and snatched the receiver before the second ring.

“Greenwald.”

“Greetings,” said the familiar voice of Oscar Lucas. “Sorry to wake you, but I knew you were anxious to hear the score of the soccer game.”

Greenwald tensed. Any Secret Service communication opening with the word “greetings” meant the beginning of an urgent, top-secret report on a critical or grave situation. The sentence that followed was meaningless; a caution in case the telephone line might not be secure — a real possibility, since the Kissinger State Department had allowed the Russians to build their new embassy on a rise overlooking the city, vastly increasing their telephone eavesdropping capacity.

“Okay,” Greenwald said, trying to sound conversational. “Who won?”

“You lost your bet.”

“Bet” was another key word indicating that the next statement was coming in coded double-talk.

“Jasper College, one,” Lucas continued, “Drinkwater Tech, nothing. Three of the Jasper players were sidelined for injuries.”

The dire news exploded in Greenwald’s ears. Jasper College was the code for a presidential abduction. The reference to the sidelined players meant the next three men in succession were taken too. It was a code that in Greenwald’s wildest dreams he never thought he would hear.

“There’s no mistake?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“None,” replied Lucas, his tone like the thin edge of broken glass.

“Who else in the office pool knows the score?”

“Only Blackowl, McGrath and myself.”

“Keep it that way.”

“To be on the safe side,” said Lucas, “I initiated an immediate assessment of the second-string players and future rookies.”

Greenwald instantly picked up on Lucas’s drift. The wives and children of the missing parties were being located and protected, along with the men next in line for the Presidency.

He took a deep breath and quickly arranged his thoughts. Speed was essential. Even now, if the Soviets were behind the President’s kidnapping to gain an edge for a pre-emptive nuclear strike, it was too late. On the other hand, with the top four men in American government effectively removed, it hinted at a plot to overthrow the government.

There was no time left to be shackled by security. “Amen,” said Greenwald, signaling Lucas that he was dropping the double-talk.

“Understood.”

A sudden terrifying thought swept Greenwald’s mind. “The bag man?” he asked nervously.

“Gone with the rest.”

Oh, dear God, Greenwald agonized to himself silently. Disaster was piling on top of disaster. “Bag man” was the irreverent nickname for the field-grade officer at the President’s side day and night who carried the briefcase containing codes called release messages that could unleash the nation’s 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads on preselected targets inside Soviet Russia. The consequences of the ultrasecret codes falling into alien hands were beyond any conceivable horror.

“Alert the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he ordered. “Then send a detail to pick up the Secretaries of State and Defense, also the National Security Adviser, and rush them to the White House Situation Room.”

“Anyone on the presidential staff?”

“Okay, bring in Dan Fawcett. But for now let’s keep it a closed club. The fewer who know the ‘Man’ is missing until we can sort things out, the better.”

“In that case,” Lucas said, “it might be wise to hold the meeting someplace besides the Situation Room. The press constantly monitor the White House. They’d be on us like locusts if the heads of state suddenly converged there at this time of morning.”