Lovell stared at Steiger, his eyes friendly but speculative. "You're putting me on, Colonel. I suppose you're going to tell me a topsecret Russian spy satellite came down in a field somewhere near town."
Steiger gave a casual tilt of his head. "Nothing that dramatic. I'm looking for a couple of naval shells your post purchased from Phalanx Arms."
"Oh, them two duds?"
"Duds?"
"Yeah, we were going to blow 'em up during the Veterans Day picnic. Set 'em on an old tractor and popped away all afternoon., but they didn't go off. We tried to get Phalanx to replace 'em." Lovell shook his head sadly. "They refused. Claimed all sales was final."
A chilling thought passed through Steiger's mind. "Perhaps they're not the self-detonating type of ordnance."
"Nope." Lovell shook his head. "Phalanx guaranteed they was live battleship shells."
"Do you still have them?"
"Sure. right outside. You passed 'em coming in."
Lovell led Steiger outside. The two shells bordered the entrance to the post. They were painted white, and welded to their sides were chains that stretched along the walkway.
Steiger sucked in his breath. The tips of the shells were rounded. They were two of the missing gas shells. His knees suddenly turned to rubber, and he had to sit down on the steps. Lovell stared questioningly at Steiger's dazed expression.
"S omethin' wrong?"
"You shot at these things?" Steiger asked incredulously.
"Pumped close to a hundred rounds at 'em. Nicked the heads some, but that's all."
"It's a miracle… " Steiger murmured.
"A what?"
"Those are not explosive shells," Steiger explained. "They're gas shells. Their firing mechanisms will not self-activate until the parachutes are released. Your bullets had no effect because unlike ordinary explosive projectiles, they had not been preset to detonate. 55
"Whooee!" gasped Lovell. "You mean them things has poison gas in 'em?"
Steiger merely nodded.
"My Gawd, we might have wiped out half the county."
"And then some," Steiger muttered under his breath. He rose from the steps. "I'd like to borrow your john and a telephone, in that order."
"Sure, you come along. The john is down the hall to your left and there's a phone in my office." Lovell stopped and his eyes turned canny. "If we give you them shells… well, I was wonderin'…"
"I promise you and your post will receive ten sixteen-inch shells in prime explosive condition, enough to give your next Veterans Day picnic a super bang."
Lovell grinned from ear to ear. "You're on, Colonel."
In the rest room Steiger ran cold water over his face. The eyes that stared back inthe mirror were red and tired, but they also radiated hope. He had successfully tracked down two of the Quick Death warheads. He could only pray that Pitt was as fortunate.
Steiger picked up the phone in Lovell's office and asked the operator to put through a collect long-distance call.
Pitt was asleep on a couch in his NUMA office when his secretary, Zerri Pochinsky, leaned over and gently shook him awake. Her long fawn-colored hair hung down, framing a face that was warm and pretty and full of merry admiration.
"You've got a visitor and two calls," she said in a soft Southern drawl.
Pitt pushed aside the cobwebs and sat up. "The calls?" he said.
"Congresswoman Smith," Zerri answered with a trace of acidity, "and Colonel Steiger on long distance."
"And the visitor?"
"Says his name is Sam Jackson. He doesn't have an appointment but he insists that it's important."
Pitt began to pull his sleep-fogged mind to even keel. "I'll take Steiger's call first. Tell Loren I'll call her back, and send in Jackson as soon as I'm off the phone."
Zerri nodded. "The colonel is on line three."
He walked unsteadily to the desk and punched one of the blinking buttons. "Abe?"
"Greetings from sunny Oklahoma."
"How'd it go?"
"Paydirt," said Steiger. "Scratch two warheads."
"Nice work," Pitt said, smiling for the first time in days. "Any problems?"
"None. I'll stand by until a crew arrives to pick them up."
"I've got a NUMA Catlin loaded with a forklift sitting at Dulles. Where can they set down?"
"One second."
Pitt could hear muffled voices as Steiger conversed with someone at the other end of the line.
"Okay," Steiger said. "The post commander says there is a small private airfield about eight hundred yards long a mile south of town."
"Twice what a Catlin requires," Pitt said.
"Any luck at your end?"
"The curator at the British Imperial War Museum said the shell they purchased from Phalanx for a World War Two naval exhibit is definitely armor piercing."
"Leaving the African Army of Revolution holding the other two QD warheads."
"Thereby hangs a tale," Pitt said.
"What earthly purpose are heavy naval shells in the African jungle?"
"Our riddle for the day," said Pitt, rubbing his reddened eyes. "At least we're temporarily blessed with the fact that they're no longer in our backyard."
"Where do we go from here?" asked Steiger. "We can't very well tell a pack of terrorists they've got to give back the most horrendous weapon of all time."
"The first item on the agenda," said Pitt, "is to pinpoint the warheads. On that score Admiral Sandecker has persuaded an old Navy buddy at the National Security Agency to do some digging."
"Sounds touchy. Those guys are no dummies. They might ask some embarrassing questions."
"Not likely," said Pitt confidently. "The admiral came up with a classic cover story. I almost bought it myself."
47
It was a difficult choice. Dale Jarvis wavered between the Dutch apple pie and the calorieladen lemon meringue. Throwing diet to the winds, he took both and set them on his tray along with a cup of tea. Then he paid the girl at the computer register and sat at a table along one wall of the spacious cafeteria in the NSA headquarters complex at Fort Meade, Maryland.
"One of these days you're going to bust your gut."
Jarvis paused and looked up into the solemn face of Jack Ravenfoot, head of the agency's domestic division. Ravenfoot was all muscle and bone, the only full-blooded Cheyenne in Washington who had a Phi Beta Kappa key from Yale and held the retired rank of commodore.
"I'd rather consume fattening, savory goodies than that salted buffalo jerky and boiled prairie gopher you call food."
Ravenfoot stared up at the ceiling. "Come to think of it, I haven't had prairie gopher good prairie gopher, that is — since the victory celebration after Little Big Horn."
"You guys really know how to stick it to a paleface where it hurts," Jarvis said, grinning. "Pull up a chair."
Ravenfoot remained standing. "No thanks. I've got a meeting in five minutes. While I've got you, John Gossard, in the Africa Section, mentioned that you had a handle on some far-out project dealing with battleships."
Jarvis slowly chewed a piece of the apple pie. "Battleship, singular. What's on your mind?"
"An old friend from my Navy days, James Sandecker — "
"The director of NUMA?" Jarvis said, interrupting.
"The same. He asked me to track down a particular load of old sixteen-inch naval shells."
"And you thought of me."
"Battleships mounted sixteen-inch guns," said Ravenfoot. "I should know. I was executive officer aboard the New Jersey during the Vietnam orgy."
"Any idea what Sandecker wants them for?" asked Jarvis.
"He claims a team of his scientists want to drop them on Pacific coral formations."
Jarvis halted between bites. "He what?"
"They're conducting seismological tests. It seems armor-piercing shells dropped from a plane at two thousand feet on coral make a rumble nearly identical to an earthquake!"