Vixen 03

26

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, aid 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 03's cargo included nuclear warheads."

"We've been all through that," snapped O'Keefe. "A thorough computer search through military- s torehou se 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 stainlesssteel 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 looke 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 03's course deviation is a dead issue." He turned to Burgdorf. "You agree, General?"

"I do."

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 of peer 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?"

"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 abbre-' viated colonial costume, arched her blossoming breasts over the table.

"A martini on the rocks," said Steiger, eyeing the mounds. "On second thought, make that a double. It's been one of those mornings."

Pitt held up a nearly empty glass. "Another salty dog."

"Christ," moaned Steiger. "How can you stand those things?"

"I hear they're good for cutting down weight," Pitt answered. "The enzymes from the grapefruit juice cancel out the calories in the vodka."

"Sounds like an old wives' tale. Besides, why bother? You don't have an ounce of fat on you anywhere."

"See?" Pitt laughed. "They really work."

The humor was contagious. For the first time that day Steiger felt like laughing. But soon after the drinks arrived his expression clouded again and he sat there silently, toying with his glass without touching its contents.

"Don't tell me," said Pitt, reading the colonel's dour thoughts, "your friends at the Pentagon shot you down?"

Steiger sodded slowly. "They dissected every sentence of my report and flushed the pieces into the Washington sewer system."

"Are you serious?"

"They wanted none of it."

"What about the canisters and the fifth skeleton?"

"They claim the canisters are empty. As to your theory on Loren Smith's father, I didn't even bring it up. I saw little reason to stoke the fires of their already flaming skepticism.,'

"Then you're off the investigation."

"I am if I wish to retire a general."

"They leaned on you?"

"They didn't have to. It was written in their eyes."

"What happens now?"

Steiger looked at Pitt steadily. "I was hoping you might go it alone."

Their eyes locked.

"You want me to raise the aircraft from Table Lake?"

"Why not? My God, you salvaged the Titanic from thirteen thousand feet in the middle of the Atlantic. A Stratocruiser in a landlocked lake should be child's play for a man of your talents."

"Very flattering. But you forget, I'm not my own boss. Raising Vixen 03 will take a crew of twenty men, several truckloads of equipment, a minimum of two weeks, and a budget of nearly four hundred thousand dollars. I can't swing that on my own, and Admiral Sandecker would never give NUMA's blessing to a project that size without solid assurance of additional government funding."

"Then what about simply bringing up one of the canisters and Smith's remains for positive identification?"

"And find ourselves holding the proverbial bag?"

"It's worth a try," Steiger said, excitement rising in his tone. "You can fly back to Colorado tomorrow. In the meantime I'll authorize a contract to retrieve the crew's bodies. That will get you off the hook with the Pentagon and NUMA."

Pitt shook his head. "Sorry, but you'll have to take a rain check. Sandecker assigned me to oversee the raising of a Union ironclad that sank off the Georgia coast during the Civil War." He paused to check his watch. "I'm scheduled to board a flight for Savannah in six hours."

Steiger sighed and his shoulders sagged. "Perhaps you can give it a go at a later date."

"Wrap up the contract and keep it on ice. I'll sneak off to Colorado the first chance I get. That's a promise."

"Have you told Congresswoman Smith about her father yet?"

"Truthfully, I haven't had the guts."

"A nagging doubt you could be wrong?"

"That's part of it."

A vacant expression clouded Abe Steiger's face. "Jesus, what a mess." He downed the double martini in one throw and then stared at the glass sadly.

The waitress returned with menus and they ordered. Steiger absently watched her backside as she swayed into the kitchen.

"Instead of sitting here, beating out my brains over an old mystery nobody cares about, I should be concentrating going back to California and the wife and kids."

"How many?"

"Kids? Eight, all told. Five boys and three girls."

"You must be Catholic."

Steiger smiled. "With a name like Abraham Levi Steiger? You've got to be kidding."

"By the way, you neglected to mention how the brass explained away Vixen 03's flight plan."

"General O'Keefe found the original. It didn't jibe with our analysis of the one from the wreck."

Pitt pondered a moment and then asked, "Do you have a Xerox copy I might borrow?"

"Of the flight plan?"

"Just the sixth page."

"Outside, locked in the trunk of my car. Why?"

"A shot in the dark." Pitt said. "I have this friend over at FBI who can't resist a good crossword puzzle."

"Must you really leave tonight?" Loren asked Pitt.

"I'm expected at a morning meeting to discuss salvage operations," he said from the bathroom, where he was loading his shaving kit.

"Damn," she said, pouting. "I might as well have an affair with a traveling salesman."

He entered the bedroom. "Come now, to you I'm nothing but a current toy."

"That's not so." She flung her arms around him. "Next to Phil Sawyer, you're my very favorite person."

Pitt looked at her. "Since when have you been seeing the President's press secretary?"

"When the stud is away, Loren will play."

"But good God! Phil Sawyer. He wears white shirts and talks like a thesaurus."

"He asked me to marry him."

"I may vomit."

She held him tightly. "Please, no sarcasm tonight."

"I regret I can't be more of an adoring lover to you, but I'm too damned selfish to commit myself. I'm not capable of giving the one hundred percent a woman like you needs."

"I'll settle for any percentage I can get."

He leaned down and kissed her on the throat. "You'd make Phil Sawyer a rotten wife."