“But how?” asked Jumana. “Where?”
“The answers to those questions, my friend, come only with two million Yankee dollars.”
“I still only see this Operation Wild Rose as a swindle.”
“Actually, the scheme smacks of genius,” Lusana continued. “If the strike involved heavy casualties, the nation that was the victim would then be provoked into turning their sympathies away from our cause and voting arms and aid for Koertsmann’s government.”
“The questions are unending,” said Jumana. “What nation is singled out as the target?”
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“The United States is my guess.”
Jumana threw the envelope to the ground. “Ignore this stupid deception, my General. Put the money to better use. Heed my proposal for a series of raids to throw fear into the hearts of the whites.”
Jumana was met with a steely stare. “You know my feelings on butchery.”
Jumana pushed ahead. “A thousand hit-and-run assaults on cities, villages, and farms, from one end of the country to the other, would put us in Pretoria by Christmas.”
“We will continue to conduct a sophisticated war,” Lusana said coldly. “We will not act like primitive rabble.”
“In Africa it is often necessary to drive the people with an iron hand. They seldom know what is best for them.”
“Tell me, Colonel; I’m always willing to learn: who knows what’s best for the African people?”
Jumana’s face purpled with controlled anger. “Africans know what is best for Africans.”
Lusana ignored the slur against his American blood. He could sense the impulses swirling in Jumana: the hatred of all things foreign; the driving ambition and the newly discovered luxury of power mingled with a distrust of modern ways; an almost childlike acceptance of bloodthirsty savagery. Lusana began to wonder if he hadn’t made an enormous error in appointing Jumana to a high level of command.
Before Lusana could focus on the problems that might arise between them, the soft padding sound of feet emanated from beyond the lip of the riverbank.
The security guards tensed and then relaxed as Major Machita dog-trotted down the path into view. He came to a halt in front of Lusana and saluted.
“One of my agents has just arrived from Pretoria with Emma’s report on the Fawkes-farm raid.”
“What did he uncover?”
“Emma says he was unable to find evidence the Defence Forces had a hand in it.”
Lusana looked thoughtful. “So it’s back to the opening play.”
“It seems incredible that a force can murder nearly fifty people and go unidentified,” said Machita.
“Could Emma have lied?”
“Possibly. But he would have no reason for doing so.”
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Lusana did not answer. He turned his attention back to the fish. His line whispered over the running water. Machita looked questioningly at Jumana, but the colonel avoided his gaze. Machita stood there confused for a moment, wondering what had caused the atmosphere of tension that hovered over his two superiors. After a long uneasy silence he nodded at the envelope.
“You’ve reached a decision concerning Operation Wild Rose, General?”
“I have,” Lusana answered as he reeled the line in.
Machita remained silent, waiting.
“I intend to pay Emma his thirty pieces of silver for the rest of the plan,” Lusana finally said.
Jumana raged. “No, it is a fraud! Even you, my General, are not entitled to throw our army’s funds away stupidly.”
Machita caught his breath and tensed. The colonel had overstepped his rank. And yet Lusana kept his back to the shore and nonchalantly went about his fishing. “I’ll remind you,” he said over his shoulder with quiet authority, “the lion’s share of our treasury came from me. What is mine I can take back or I can use as I please.”
Jumana clenched his hands in tight knots and the cords in his neck stood out. He made a move toward the water’s edge, his lips drawn back over his teeth. Then, suddenly, as if a circuit breaker somewhere in his gray matter had overloaded and clicked off, all expression of rage vanished, and he smiled. His words came casually, but with an undercurrent of bitterness.
“I apologize for my remarks. I am overtired.”
Machita decided then and there that the colonel was a danger that bore watching. He could see that Jumana would never fully accept the position of number-two man.
“Forget it,” said Lusana. “The important thing now is to lay our hands on Wild Rose.”
“I will make arrangements for the exchange,” said Machita.
“You will do more than that,” Lusana said, facing the shore again. “You will create a plan to make the payoff. Then you will kill Emma.”
Jumana’s mouth hung open. ” You never intended to give away the two million dollars?” he sputtered.
Lusana grinned. “Of course not. If you had been patient, you could have spared us your juvenile outburst.”
Jumana made no reply. There was nothing he could say. He widened
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his smile and shrugged. It was then Machita caught the imperceptible shift of the eyes. Jumana was not looking directly at Lusana; his vision was aimed at a spot in the river ten feet upstream from the general.
“Guards!” Machita screamed, pointing frantically. “The river! Fire! For God’s sake, fire!”
The security men’s reaction time measured less than two seconds. Their shots exploded in Machita’s ears and the water erupted a few feet from Lusana in a hundred shattered geysers.
Twenty feet of hideous brown scale burst through the surface and rolled over and over, its tail thrashing crazily as the bullets thudded into the thick hide like hail. Then the firing ceased and the great reptile made one more convulsive revolution and sank beneath the surface.
Lusana stood in his wading boots, his eyes wide, his body stunned into immobility. He stared dazedly into the clear water at the hulk of the crocodile, now gracefully tumbling along the riverbed in the current.
On the bank, Machita trembled, not so much at Lusana’s narrow escape as at the satanic expression on Jumana’s Neanderthal-shaped face.
The bastard had known, Machita thought. He had known the instant the crocodile slithered off the far bank and homed in on the general, and yet he had said nothing.
Chesapeake Bay, USA-October 1988
It was two hours before dawn when Patrick Fawkes paid the cabdriver and walked up to the floodlit gate of the Forbes Marine Scrap & Salvage Company. A uniformed guard turned from a portable TV set and yawned as Fawkes passed a small folder through the arched window of the gatehouse. The guard scrutinized the signatures and compared the photograph with the man before him. Then he passed it back.
“Welcome to America, Captain. My employers have been expecting you.”
“Is she here?” Fawkes asked impatiently.
“Tied up to the east dock,” replied the guard, shoving a Xerox copy of a map of the salvage area through the window. “Mind your step. Since
Operation Wild Rose I 101
the energy rationing, the yard’s night lights have been shut off. It’s darker than Hades out there.” As Fawkes passed under the giant derricks toward the dock, a wind swept in off the bay and carried a heavy odor to his nostrils: the pungent perfume of the waterfront. He inhaled the mingled aromas of diesel oil, tar,and salt water. It never failed to revive his spirits.
He came to the dock and glanced about for signs of human activity. The night crew had long since gone home. Only a seagull, perched on a wooden piling, returned Fawkes’s gaze out of one beady eye.
After another hundred yards, Fawkes stopped at a huge spectral shape that loomed in the darkness beside the pier. Then he took the gangplank, stepped onto the seemingly endless deck, and unerringly made his way through the steel labyrinth to the bridge.
Later, as the sun crept over the eastern side of the bay, the mutilated shabbiness of the ship became manifest. But the peeling paint, the acres of rust, and the jagged torch marks of the salvage crew stood unseen in Fawkes’s eyes. Like a father with a hideously disfigured daughter, he saw only her beauty.
“Aye, you’re a bonny ship,” he shouted across the silent decks. “You’re gonna do just fine.”
Salvage
Washington, D.C. -November 1988
Steiger’s superiors at the Pentagon sat on his report of the discovery of Vixen 03 for nearly two months before summoning him to Washington. To Steiger it was like sitting in the audience of a staged nightmare. He felt more like a hostile witness than a key investigator.
Even with the evidence before their eyes, in the form of videotape, General Ernest Burgdorf, chief of Air Force Safety, and General John O’Keefe, aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed doubts over the sunken aircraft’s importance, and argued that nothing was to be gained by bringing it to light except sensationalistic play from the news media. Steiger sat stunned.
“But their families,” he protested. “It would be criminal not to notify the crew’s families that the bodies have been found.”
“Come to your senses, Colonel. What good would dredging up old memories do them? The crew’s parents are probably long since dead. Wives have remarried. Children raised by new fathers. Let all concerned go about their present lives in peace.”
“There’s still the cargo,” Steiger said. “The possibility exists that Vixen O3’s cargo included nuclear warheads.”
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“We’ve been all through that,” snapped O’Keefe. “A thorough computer search through military-storehouse records confirmed that there are no missing warheads. Every piece of atomic hardware beginning with the bomb dropped on Hiroshima can be accounted for.”
“Are you also aware, sir, that nuclear material was, and is still, shipped in stainless-steel canisters?”
“And did it also occur to you, Colonel,” said Burgdorf, “that the canisters you say you found might be empty?”
Steiger sagged in his chair, beaten. He might as well have been debating with the wind. They were treating him like an overimaginative child who claimed he’d seen an elephant in a Minnesota cornfield.
“And if that actually is the same aircraft that was supposed to have vanished over the Pacific,” added Burgdorf, “I think it best to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Sir?”
“The grim reasons behind the aircraft’s tremendous course differential may not be something the Air Force wishes to publicize. Consider the probabilities. To fly a thousand miles in the opposite direction takes either the total malfunction of at least five different instrument systems aided by the blind stupidity of the crew, a navigator who lost his marbles, or a plot by the entire crew to steal the airplane, for what purpose God only knows.”
“But somebody must have authorized the flight orders,” said Steiger, puzzled.
“Somebody did,” said O’Keefe. “The original orders were issued at Travis Air Force Base, in California, by a Colonel Michael Irwin.”
Steiger looked at the general skeptically. “Flight orders are seldom kept on file more than a few months. How is it possible the ones in question were retained for over thirty years?”
O’Keefe shrugged. “Don’t ask me how, Colonel. Take my word for it: Vixen 03’s last flight plan turned up in old files at the Travis administration office.”
“And the orders I found in the wreckage?”
“Accept the inevitable,” said Burgdorf. “The papers you pulled out of that Colorado lake were too far gone to decipher with any degree of accuracy. You simply read something into them that wasn’t there.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” O’Keefe said resolutely, “the explanation for Vixen O3’s course deviation is a dead issue.” He turned to Burgdorf. “You agree, General?”
“I do.”
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O’Keefe stared at Steiger. “Do you have anything else you’d like to put before us, Colonel?”
Steiger’s superiors sat and waited for him to reply. He knew no words worth uttering. He had reached a dead end. The implication dangled over his head like a suspended sword. Either Abe Steiger forgot all about Vixen 03 or his Air Force career would come to a premature halt.
The President stood on the putting green behind the White House and stiffly swatted a dozen balls toward the cup only five feet away. None dropped in, further proving to him that golf was not his game. He could understand the competitive challenge of tennis or handball or even a fast run of pool, but why one would choose to compete against one’s own handicap escaped him.
“Now I can die content, for I have seen everything.”
The President straightened and looked into the grinning face of Timothy March, his Secretary of Defense.
“It all goes to prove how much time I have on my hands now that I’m a lame-duck president.”
March, a short, dumpy man who detested any sort of physical exertion, walked onto the green. “You should be happy with the election. Your party and your man won.”
“Nobody ever really wins an election,” the President grunted. “What’s on your mind, Tim?”
“Thought you might like to know I’ve clamped the lid on that old aircraft found in the Rockies.”
“Probably a wise move.”
“A baffling affair,” said March. “Except for those doctored flight plans in Air Force files, there is no trace-of the crew’s true mission.”
“So be it,” said the President, finally knocking a ball into the cup. “Let’s leave it lie. If Eisenhower buried the answers during his administration, far be it from me to open a can of worms during mine.”
“I suggest we remove the remains of the crew for a military burial. We owe them that.”
“Okay, but absolutely no publicity.”
“I’ll make that clear to the Air Force officer in charge.”
The President tossed the putter to a Secret Service man who lurked nearby and motioned for March to accompany him to the Executive Offices.
“What’s your best educated guess, Tim? What do you really think Ike was trying to cover up back in 1954?”
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“That question has kept me staring at the ceiling the past few nights,” said March. “I don’t have the foggiest idea.”
Steiger shouldered his way past the lunchtime crowd waiting for tables at the Cottonwood Inn and entered the bar. Pitt waved from a rear booth and motioned for the cocktail waitress in almost the same gesture. Steiger slipped into a seat across from Pitt as the waitress, seductively attired in an abbreviated colonial costume, arched her blossoming breasts over the table.