Vixen 03 (28 page)

“I’m crushed you don’t trust me to keep your secret.”

Mapes did not reply to Pitt’s sarcasm. He kept his eyes on a narrow asphalt road that passed between semingly endless rows of Quonset huts. After about a mile they came to an open field crammed with heavily armored tanks in various states of rust and disrepair. A small army of mechanics was busily crawling over ten of the massive vehicles that had been parked in formation beside the road.

“How many acres do you have?” Pitt asked.

“Five thousand,” Mapes replied. “You’re looking at the world’s sixth-largest army in terms of equipment. Phalanx Arms also ranks seventh as an air force.”

Mapes turned the car onto a dirt road that paralleled several bunkers set into a hillside, and stopped in front of one marked ARSENAL 6. He slid from behind the wheel and pulled a single key from his pocket, inserted it in a large brass lock, and pulled the catch free. Then he swung open a pair of steel doors and flipped on the light switch.

Inside the cavelike bunker, thousands of ammunition cases and crates containing a vast variety of shell sizes lay stacked in a tunnel that seemed to stretch into infinity. Pitt had never seen so much potential destruction heaped in one place.

Mapes motioned toward a golf cart. “No need to raise blisters walking. This storage area runs underground for nearly two miles.”

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The arsenal was cold and the hum from the electric cart seemed to hang in the damp air. Mapes turned into a side tunnel and slowed down. He held a map up to the light and studied it. “Beginning here and ending about a hundred yards down is the last store of sixteen-inch naval shells in the world. They’re obsolete because only battleships can use them, and there is not a single operational battleship left. The gas shells I bought from Raferty should be stacked in an area near the middle.”

“I see no sign of their canisters,” said Pitt.

Mapes shrugged. “Business is business. Stainless-steel canisters are worth money. I sold them to a chemical company.”

“Your supply seems endless. It might take hours to dig them out.”

“No,” replied Mapes. “The gas shells were assigned to Lot Six.” He stepped from the cart and walked amid the sea of projectiles for about fifty paces and then pointed. “Yes, here they are.” He carefully stepped through a narrow access and stopped.

Pitt remained in the main aisle, but even under the dull glow of the overhead lights he could detect a blank expression on Mapes’s face.

“Problem?”

Mapes paused, shaking his head. “I don’t understand it. I find only four. There should be eight.”

Pitt stiffened. “They must be around somewhere.”

“You start looking from the other end, beginning at Lot Thirty,” Mapes ordered. “I’ll go back to Lot One and begin there.”

After forty minutes they met in the middle. Mapes’s eyes reflected a bewildered look. He held out his hands in a helpless gesture.

“Nothing.”

“Dammit, Mapes!” Pitt shouted, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. “You must have sold them!”

“No!” he protested. “They were a bad buy. I miscalculated. Every government I pitched was afraid to be the first to use gas since Vietnam.”

“Okay, four down, four to go,” Pitt said, pulling his emotions back under control. “Where do we go from here?”

Mapes seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment. “The inventory … we’ll check inventory records against sales.”

Mapes used a call phone at the tunnel entrance to alert his office. When he and Pitt got back, the Phalanx Arms accountant had laid out the records on his desk. Mapes flipped through the ledgered pages swiftly. It took him less than ten minutes to find the answer.

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“I was wrong,” he said quietly.

Pitt remained silent, waiting, his hands clasped.

“The missing gas shells were sold.”

Pitt was still silent, but there was murder in his eyes.

“A mistake,” Mapes said thinly. “The arsenal crew took the shells from the wrong lot number. The original shipping order called for the removal of forty pieces of heavy naval ordnance from Lot Sixteen. I can only assume that the first digit, the one, did not emerge on the shipping crew’s carbon copy, and they simply read it as Lot Six.”

“I think it appropriate to say, Mapes, that you run a sloppy ship.” Pitt’s fingers bit into the flesh of his hands. “What name is on the purchase order?”

“I’m afraid there were three orders filled during the same month.”

God, Pitt thought, why is it nothing ever comes easy? “I’ll take a list of the buyers.”

“I hope you appreciate my position,” said Mapes. The clipped business tone was back. “If my customers got wind of the fact I disclosed their arms sales … I think you understand why this matter must remain confidential.”

“Frankly, Mapes, I’d like to stuff you in one of your own cannon and pull the lanyard. Now give me that list before I yank the Attorney General and Congress down around your ears.”

A faint pallor clouded Mapes’s face. He took up a pen and wrote the names of the buyers on a pad. Then he tore off the paper and handed it to Pitt.

One shell had been ordered by the British Imperial War Museum, in London. Two had gone to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Dayton City Post 9974, Oklahoma. The remaining thirty-seven were purchased by an agent representing the African Army of Revolution. No address was given.

Pitt slipped the paper into his pocket and rose to his feet. “I’ll send a team of men to remove the other gas shells in the tunnel,” he said coldly. He detested Mapes, detested everything the fat little death merchant stood for. Pitt couldn’t bring himself to leave without one final shot.

“Mapes?”

“Yes?”

A thousand insults swirled in Pitt’s mind, but he could not sort out any one in particular. Finally, as Mapes’s expectant expression turned to puzzlement, Pitt spoke.

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“How many men did your merchandise kill and maim last year, and the year before that?”

“I do not concern myself with what others do with my goods,” Mapes said offhandedly.

“If one of those gas shells went off, you’d be responsible for perhaps millions of deaths.”

“Millions, Mr. Pitt?” Mapes’s eyes hardened. “To me the term is merely a statistic.”

Steiger set the Spook F-140 jet fighter down lightly on the airstrip at Sheppard Air Force Base, outside Wichita Falls, Texas. After checking in with the flight-operations officer, he signed out a car from the base motor pool and drove north across the Red River into Oklahoma. He turned onto State Highway Fifty-three and pulled over to the side of the road; he felt a sudden urge to relieve himself. Though it was a few minutes past one in the afternoon, no car, no sign of life, was visible for miles.

Steiger could not remember seeing such flat and desolate farm country. The wind-swept landscape was barren except for a distant shed and an abandoned hay rake. It was a depressing sight. If someone had placed a gun in Steiger’s hand, he’d have been tempted to shoot himself out of sheer melancholy. He zipped up his fly and returned to the car.

Soon a water tower appeared beside the arrow-straight road and grew larger through the windshield. Then a small town with precious few trees materialized and he passed a sign welcoming him to Dayton City, Queen City of the Wheat Belt. He pulled into a dingy old gas station that still sported glass tanks above its pumps.

An elderly man in mechanic’s coveralls emerged from a grease pit and shuffled up to the passenger window. “Can I help ya?”

“I’m looking for VFW Post Ninety-nine seventy-four,” said Steiger.

“If yer speakin’ at the luncheon, yer late,” admonished the old man.

“I’m here on other business,” Steiger said, smiling.

The Oklahoman was unimpressed. He took an oily rag from his pocket and wiped his equally oily hands. “Go to the stop sign in the middle of town and turn left. Ya can’t miss it.”

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Steiger followed the instructions and pulled into the gravel parking lot of a building strikingly modern compared to others in the town. Several cars were leaving the area, trailing clouds of red dust behind their bumpers. The luncheon was over, Steiger surmised. He entered and stood for a moment at the edge of a large room with a hardwood floor. The dishes on several tables still bore the wreckage of fried chicken. A group of three men noticed his presence and waved. A tall, gangly individual about fifty years of age and at least six feet five inches tall separated from the rest and sauntered over to Steiger. He had a ruddy face and short-clipped shiny hair parted down the middle. He offered his hand.

“Good afternoon, Colonel. What brings you to Dayton City?”

“I’m looking for the post commander, a Mr. Billy Lovell.”

“I’m Billy Lovell. What can I do for you?”

“How do you do,” said Steiger politely. “My name is Steiger, Abe Steiger. I’ve come from Washington on a rather urgent matter.”

Lovell stared at Steiger, his eyes friendly but speculative. “You’re putting me on, Colonel. I suppose you’re going to tell me a top-secret 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,

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and he had to sit down on the steps. Lovell stared questioningly at Steiger’s dazed expression.

“Somethin’ 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.”

“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 in the 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,

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“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.”