The temperature had dropped and the rain was becoming an icy sheet. Two large boxlike shadows materialized under the headlights. "The bus and truck," announced Pitt. He parked the car but left the motor running and the lights on.
"No sign of the drivers." said Jarvis.
Pitt took a flashlight from the car's door pocket and got out. Jarvis followed, but Metz hurried off into the night without saying a word. Pitt aimed the beam through the bus windows and into the back of the truck. They were both empty.
Pitt and Jarvis skirted the deserted vehicles and found Metz standing stock still, hands clenched at his sides. His evening jacket was soaked and his hair plastered to his scalp. He looked like a resurrected drowning victim.
"The Iowa?" Jarvis asked.
Metz spastically waved his arms at the dark. "Shagged ass."
"Shagged… what?"
"That damned Scot has sailed her away!"
Jesus, are you sure?"
Metz's face and his voice were alive with a desperate kind of urgency. "I don't misplace battleships. This is where she's been moored during the refit." Suddenly he spotted something and ran over to the edge of the dock. "My God, look at that! The mooring lines are still tied to the dock bollards. The crazy idiots cast off their lines from the ship. It's as though they never intend to moor her again."
Jarvis leaned over and stared down at where the heavy lines disappeared into the inky water. "My fault. Criminal negligence not to have believed the handwriting on the wall."
"We still can't be certain they're actually going through with an attack," Pitt said.
Jarvis shook his head. "They're going to do it; you can count on that." Tiredly, he rested his weight against a piling. "If only they'd given us a date and a target."
"The date was there all the time," said Pitt.
Jarvis looked at him questioningly and waited.
"You said the idea behind the attack was to motivate sympathy for the South African whites and provoke American anger against the black revolutionaries," Pitt continued. "What more perfect day than today?"
"It is now five minutes past twelve on Wednesday morning." Jarvis's voice was tense. "I make nothing eventful out of that."
"The originators of Operation Wild Rose have a superb sense of timing," said Pitt in a dry, ironic tone. "Today is also December the seventh, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor."
52
Pieter De Vaal sat alone and read a book in his office at the Defence Ministry. It was early evening and the summer light filtered through the arched windows. A soft rap came at the door.
De Vaal spoke without looking up from his reading.
"Yes?"
Zeegler entered. "We've been alerted that Fawkes has launched the operation."
De Vaal's face showed no trace of interest as he laid aside the book and handed Zeegler a piece of paper. "See that the communications officer on duty personally sends this message to the American State Department."
It is my duty to warn your government of an impending attack on your shore by African Army of Revolution terrorists under the command of Captain Patrick Fawkes, Royal Navy retired. I deeply regret any inadvertent role my cabinet has played in this grave infamy. ERIC KOERTSMANN Prime Minister
"You have admitted guilt in the name of our Prime Minister, who is totally ignorant of Operation Wild Rose," said an astonished Zeegler. "May I ask why?"
De Vaal clasped his hands in front of him and peered at Zeegler. "I see no reason to discuss the details."
"Then may I ask why you have thrown Fawkes to the wolves?"
The Minister went back to his book with a dismissive gesture. "See to it that the message is sent. Your questions will be answered at the appropriate moment."
"We promised Fawkes to attempt his rescue," Zeegler persisted.
De Vaal sighed with impatience. "Fawkes knew he was a dead man the instant he accepted command of the raid."
"If he survives and talks to the American authorities, his confession would prove disastrous to our government."
"Rest easy, Colonel," De Vaal said with a crooked smile. "Fawkes will not live to talk."
"You seem quite certain, Minister."
"I am," De Vaal said calmly. "I am indeed."
Deep inside the bowels of the Iowa a figure dressed in greasy coveralls and a heavy wool jacket stepped from a passageway into what had been the ship's sick bay. He closed the door behind him and was enveloped in a smothering blackness. He aimed the flashlight and played its beam about the gutted room. Several of the bulkheads had been cut away and it seemed as though he was standing in an immense cavern.
Satisfied he was quite alone, he knelt on the deck and removed a small gun from inside his jacket. Then he attached a silencer to the end of the barrel and inserted a twenty-shot clip into the handgrip.
He pointed the 27.5 Hocker-Rodine automatic into the darkness and squeezed the trigger. An almost indistinguishable piff was followed by two faint thuds as the bullet ricocheted off unseen bulkheads.
Pleased with the results, he taped the gun to his right calf. After a few steps to make sure it was comfortably snug, Emma switched off the flashlight, slipped back into the passageway, and made his way toward the ship's engine room.
53
Carl Swedborg, skipper of the fishing trawler Molly Bender, rapped the barometer with his knuckles, regarded it stoically for a moment, then walked over to the chart table and picked up a cup of coffee. His mind visualizing the river ahead, he sipped at the coffee and gazed at the ice that was building on the deck. He hated miserable wet nights. The dampness seeped into his seventy-year-old bones and tortured his joints. He should have retired a decade past, but with his wife gone and his children scattered around the country, Swedborg could not bear to sit around an empty house. As long as he could find a berth as skipper he would stay on water until they buried him in it.
"At least visibility is a quarter of a mile," he said absently.
"I've seen worse, much worse." This from Brian Donegal, a tall, shaggy-haired Irish immigrant who stood at the helm. "Better we have rotten weather going out than coming in."
"Agreed," said Swedborg dryly. He shivered and buttoned the top button of his mackinaw. "Mind your helm and keep wide aport of the Ragged Point channel buoy."
"Don't you fret, Skipper. Me faithful Belfast nose can sniff channel markers like a bloodhound, it can."
Donegal's blarney seldom failed to raise a smile from Swedborg. The skipper's lips involuntarily curled upward and he spoke in a stern tone that was patently fake. "I prefer you use your eyes."
The Molly Bender swung around Ragged Point and continued her course downriver, passing an occasional lighted channel buoy that came and went like a streetlight beside a rain-soaked boulevard intersection. The shore lights glowed dully through the thickening sleet.
"Somebody coming up the channel," announced Donegal.
Swedborg picked up a pair of binoculars and looked beyond the bows. "The lead ship carries three white lights. That means a tug with her tow astern. Too murky to distinguish her outline. Must be a long tow, though. I make out the two white thirtytwo-point lights on the last vessel in line about three hundred yards astern the tug."
"We're on a collision course, Skipper. Her mast lights are in line with our bow."
"What is the bastard doing on our side of the river?" Swedborg wondered out loud. "Doesn't the damn fool know that two boats approaching each other should keep to their starboard side of the channel? He's hogging our lane."
"We can maneuver easier than he can," said Donegal. "Better we alert him and pass starboard to starboard."