Vixen 03 Part 34

Her tone, it seemed to Pitt, was more one of command than of suggestion.

Heidi had been only half right. The view from the rise was not only lovely: it was breathtaking. The moon illuminated the entire valley and the streetlights of the town twinkled like a distant galaxy. Pitt had been standing there only a minute when he became aware of a presence behind him.

"Admiral Ba.s.s?" he inquired casually.

"Please raise your hands and do not turn around," Ba.s.s ordered brusquely.

Pitt did as he was told.

Ba.s.s did not make a full body search but instead slipped out Pitt's wallet and beamed a flashlight on its contents. After a few moments he clicked off the light and returned the wallet to Pitt's pocket.

"You may lower your hands, Mr. Pitt, and turn around if you wish."

"Any reason for the melodramatics?" Pitt tilted his head at the revolver poised in Ba.s.s's left hand.

"It seems you've exhumed an excessive amount of information about a subject that belongs buried. I had to be certain of your ident.i.ty."

"Then you're satisfied that I'm who I say I am?"

"Yes, I called your boss at NUMA. Jim Sandecker served under my command in the Pacific during World War Two. He gave me an impressive list of your credentials. He also wanted to know what you were doing in Virginia when you were supposed to be on a salvage tender off the coast of Georgia."

"I've not made Admiral Sandecker privy to my findings."

"Which, as you claimed earlier, at the pond, were the remains of Vixen 03."

"She exists, Admiral. I've touched her."

Ba.s.s's eyes flashed with hostility. "You're not only bluffing, Mr. Pitt, but you're also lying. I demand to know why."

"My case is not built on lies," said Pitt evenly. "I have two other reputable witnesses and videotaped pictures as proof."

A look of incomprehension shadowed Ba.s.s's face. "Impossible! She disappeared over the ocean. We spent months searching for her and didn't find a trace."

"You looked in the wrong place, Admiral. Vixen 03 lies under a mountain lake in Colorado."

Ba.s.s's tough facade seemed to dissolve, and in the moonlight Pitt suddenly saw him as a tired, worn old man. The admiral lowered the pistol and swayed drunkenly toward a bench at the edge of the overlook. Pitt reached out a hand to steady him.

Ba.s.s nodded thanks and sank onto the bench. "I suppose it had to happen someday. I wasn't fool enough to think the secret could last forever." He looked up and clutched Pitt's arm. "The cargo. What of the cargo?"

"The canisters have broken their moorings, but otherwise they seemed reasonably intact."

"Thank G.o.d for that, at least," sighed Ba.s.s. "Colorado, you say. The Rocky Mountains. So Major Vylander and his crew never made it out of the state."

"The flight originated in Colorado?" asked Pitt.

"Buckley Field was Vixen 03's point of origin." He held his head in his hands. "What went wrong so early? They must have gone down shortly after takeoff."

"It looks as though they had mechanical problems and tried to ditch in the only open s.p.a.ce they could find. It being winter, the lake was frozen over, and they were fooled into thinking they were coming down in a field. The weight of the aircraft then broke through the ice and sank in a deep section of the lake, deep enough so that after the ice melted in the spring, her outline could not be distinguished from the air."

"And all this time we thought..." Ba.s.s's voice trailed off and he sat there in silence. Finally he said softly, "Those canisters must be retrieved." (

"Do they contain nuclear material?" Pitt asked.

"Nuclear material ..." Ba.s.s repeated, his tone vague. "Is that what you think?"

"The date stated in Vixen O3's flight plan could have put her in the South Pacific in time for the Bikini H-bomb tests. I also found a metal tag on one of the crewmen, marked with the symbol for radioactivity."

"You misread the evidence, Mr. Pitt. True, the canisters were originally designed to house nuclear naval sh.e.l.ls. But the night Vylander and his crew disappeared they were used for a far different purpose."

"It's been suggested they're empty."

Ba.s.s sat like a wax statue. "If only it were that simple," he murmured. "Unfortunately, there are other instruments of war besides the nuclear kind. You might say that Vixen 03 and her crew were carriers."

"Carriers?"

"A plague," said Ba.s.s. "The canisters contain the Doomsday organism."

An uneasy silence settled over the two men as Pitt digested the enormity of the admiral's revelation.

"I see by your expression you are shocked," said Ba.s.s.

" 'Doomsday organism,' " Pitt repeated quietly. "It has a terrifying ring of finality about it."

"An apt description, I a.s.sure you," said Ba.s.s. "Technically speaking, it possessed an impressive-sounding biochemical name that was thirty letters long and quite unp.r.o.nounceable. The military designation, though, was short and sweet. We simply called it 'QD,' short for 'quick death.' "

"You refer to this 'QD' in the past tense."

The admiral made a helpless gesture. "Force of habit. Until your discovery of Vixen 03, I thought none still existed."

"What exactly was it?"

"QD was the ultimate in sophisticated military weaponry. Thirty-five years ago a microbiologist by the name of Dr. John Vetterly chemically created an artificial form of life that in turn was capable of producing a disease strain that was and still is quite unknown. As simply as I can put

it, a nondetectable, unidentifiable bacteriological agent able to incapacitate a living human or animal within seconds of exposure and disrupt the vital body functions, causing death three to five minutes later."

"Won't nerve gas accomplish the same thing?"

"Under ideal conditions, yes. But meteorological disturbances such as wind or storm or extreme temperatures can dilute the lethal dosage of a nerve or toxic agent when it's released over a wide area. An outbreak of QD, on the other hand, can ignore the weather and produce a localized plague that is extremely tenacious."

"But this is the twentieth century. Surely epidemics can be controlled?"

"If the microorganisms can be detected and identified, then it's possible. Decontamination procedures, inoculations with serums and antibiotics , will in most cases slow down or halt a raging epidemic. But nothing on this earth could stop QD once it grabbed a toehold on a city."

"Then how did QD come to be loaded in an aircraft in the middle of the United States?" Pitt demanded.