Deep Six (13 page)

“I’m not sure I like coming in second to an icebreaker.” The President laughed good-naturedly. “Remind me in the morning to put in a word to Commandant Collins for a transfer. We’re old friends.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Seaman Tong mumbled excitedly. “I’ll get your brandies right away.”

Just before Tong turned away he flashed a wide smile that revealed a large gap in the middle of his upper teeth.

12

A
HEAVY FOG CREPT OVER
the
Eagle,
smothering her hull in damp, eerie stillness. Gradually the red warning lights of a radio antenna on the opposite shore blurred and disappeared. Somewhere overhead a gull shrieked, but it was a muted, ghostly sound; impossible to tell where it came from. The teak decks soon bled moisture and took on a dull sheen under the mist-veiled floodlights standing above the pilings of the old creaking pier anchored to the bank.

A small army of Secret Service agents, stationed at strategic posts around the landscaped slope that gently rose toward George Washington’s elegant colonial home, guarded the nearly invisible yacht. Voice contact was kept by shortwave miniature radios. So that both hands could be free at all times, the agents wore earpiece receivers, battery units on their belts and tiny microphones on their wrists.

Every hour the agents changed posts, moving on to the next prescheduled security area while their shift leader wandered the grounds checking the efficiency of the surveillance network.

In a motor home parked in the drive beside the old manor house, agent Blackowl sat scanning a row of television monitors. Another agent manned the communications equipment, while a third eye-balled a series of warning lights wired to an intricate system of alarms spaced around the yacht.

“You’d think the National Weather Service could give an accurate report ten miles from its forecast office,” Blackowl groused as he sipped his fourth coffee of the night. “They said ‘light mist.’ If this is light mist, I’d like to know what in hell they call fog so thick you can dish it with a spoon?”

The agent in charge of radio communications turned and lifted the earphones on his headset. “The chase boat says they can’t see beyond their bow. They request permission to come ashore and tie up.”

“Can’t say I blame them,” said Blackowl. “Tell them affirmative.” He stood and massaged the back of his neck. Then he patted the communications agent on the shoulder. “I’ll take over the radio. You get some sleep.”

“As advance agent, you should be bedded down yourself.”

“I’m not tired. Besides, I can’t see crap on the monitors anyway.”

The agent looked up at a large digital clock on the wall. “Zero one fifty hours. Ten minutes till the next post change.”

Blackowl nodded and slid into the vacated chair. He had no sooner settled the earphones on his head than a call came from the Coast Guard cutter anchored near the yacht.

“Control, this is River Watch.”

“This is Control,” Blackowl replied, recognizing the voice of the cutter’s commander.

“We’re experiencing a problem with our scanning equipment.”

“What kind of problem?”

“A high-energy signal on the same frequency as our radar is fouling reception.”

A look of concern crossed Blackowl’s face. “Could someone be jamming you?”

“I don’t think so. It looks like cross traffic. The signal comes and goes as if messages are being transmitted. I suspect that some neighborhood radio freak has plugged onto our frequency by accident.”

“Do you read any contacts?”

“Boat traffic this time of night is nil,” answered the commander. “The only blip we’ve seen on the oscilloscope in the last two hours was from a city sanitation tug pushing trash barges out to sea.”

“What time did it go by?”

“Didn’t. The blip merged with the riverbank a few hundred yards upstream. The tug’s skipper probably tied up to wait out the fog.”

“Okay, River Watch, keep me assessed of your radar problem.”

“Will do, Control. River Watch out.”

Blackowl sat back and mentally calculated the potential hazards. With river traffic at a standstill, there was little danger of another ship colliding with the
Eagle.
The Coast Guard cutter’s radar, though operating intermittently,
was
operating. And any assault from the river side was ruled out because the absence of visibility made it next to impossible to home in on the yacht. The fog, it seemed, was a blessing in disguise.

Blackowl glanced up at the clock. It read one minute before the post change. He quickly reread the security plan that listed the names of the agents, the areas they were scheduled to patrol and the times. He noted that agent Lyle Brock was due to stand post number seven, the yacht itself, while agent Karl Polaski was slated for post number six, which was the pier.

He pressed the transmit button and spoke into the tiny microphone attached to his headset. “Attention all stations. Time zero two hundred hours. Move to your next post. Repeat, move to the next post on your schedule.” Then he changed frequencies and uttered the code name of the shift leader. “Cutty Sark, this is Control.”

A veteran of fifteen years in the service, agent Ed McGrath answered almost immediately. “Cutty Sark here.”

“Tell posts numbers six and seven to keep a sharp watch on the river.”

“They won’t see much in this slop.”

“How bad is it around the dock area?”

“Let’s just say you should have issued us white canes with red tips.”

“Do the best you can,” Blackowl said.

A light blinked and Blackowl cut transmission to McGrath and answered the incoming call.

“Control.”

“This is River Watch, Control. Whoever is screwing up our radar signals seems to be transmitting continuously now.”

“You read nothing?” asked Blackowl.

“The geographic display on the oscilloscope is forty percent blanked out. Instead of blips we receive a large wedge shape.”

“Okay, River Watch, let me pass the word to the special agent in charge. Maybe he can track the interference and stop any further transmission.”

Before he apprised Oscar Lucas at the White House of the radar problem, Blackowl turned and gazed curiously at the television monitors. They reflected no discernible image, only vague shadows wavering in wraithlike undulation.

Agent Karl Polaski refixed the molded earplug of his Motorola HT-220 radio receiver and wiped the dampness from his Bismarck mustache. Forty minutes into his watch on the pier, he felt damp and downright miserable. He wiped the moisture from his face and thought it odd that it felt oily.

His eyes wandered to the overhead floodlights. They gave out a dim yellowish halo, but the edges had a prismatic effect and displayed the colors of the rainbow. From where he stood, about midpoint on the thirty-foot dock, the
Eagle
was completely hidden by the oppressive mist. Not even her deck or mast lights were visible.

Polaski walked over the weatherworn boards, occasionally stopping and listening. But all he heard was the gentle lapping of the water around the pilings and the soft hum of the yacht’s generators. He was only a few steps from the end of the pier when the
Eagle
finally materialized from the gray tentacles of the fog.

He called softly to agent Lyle Brock, who was manning post seven on board the boat. “Hey, Lyle. Can you hear me?”

A voice replied slightly above a whisper. “What do you want?”

“How about a cup of coffee from the galley?”

“The next post change is in twenty minutes. You can get a cup when you come on board and take my place.”

“I can’t wait twenty minutes,” Polaski protested mildly. “I’m already soaked to the bones.”

“Tough. You’ll have to suffer.”

Polaski knew that Brock couldn’t leave the deck under any circumstances, but he goaded the other agent good-naturedly. “Wait till you want a favor from me.”

“Speaking of favors, I forgot where I go from here.”

Polaski gave a quizzical look at the figure in the shadows on the
Eagle’s
deck. “Look at your diagram, numb brain.”

“It got soggy and I can’t read it.”

“Post eight is fifty yards down the bank.”

“Thanks.”

“If you want to know where post nine is it’ll cost you a cup of coffee,” Polaski said, grinning.

“Screw you. I remember that one.”

Later, during the next post change, the agents merely waved as they passed each other, two indistinct forms in the mist.

Ed McGrath could not recall having seen fog this thick. He sniffed the air, trying to identify the strange aroma that hung everywhere, and finally wrote it off as a common oily smell. Somewhere in the mist he heard a dog bark. He paused, cocking one ear. It was not the baying of a hound in chase or the frightened yelps of a mutt, but the sharp yap of a dog alert to an unfamiliar presence. Not too far away, judging by the volume. Seventy-five, maybe a hundred, yards beyond the security perimeter, McGrath estimated.

A potential assassin would have to be sick or brain damaged or both, he thought, to stumble blindly around a strange countryside in weather such as this. Already, McGrath had tripped and fallen down, walked into an unseen tree branch and scratched his cheek, found himself lost three times, and almost got himself shot when he accidentally walked onto a guard post before he could radio his approach.

The barking stopped abruptly, and McGrath figured a cat or some wild animal had set the dog off. He reached a familiar bench beside a fork in a graveled path and made his way toward the riverbank below the yacht. He spoke into his lapel microphone.

“Post eight, coming up on you.”

There was no reply.

McGrath stopped in his tracks. “Brock, this is McGrath, coming up on you.”

Still nothing.

“Brock, do you read me?”

Post number eight was oddly quiet and McGrath began to feel uneasy. Moving very slowly, one step at a time, he cautiously closed on the guard area. He called faintly through the mist, his voice weirdly magnified by the heavy dampness. Silence was his only reply.

“Control, this is Cutty Sark.”

“Go ahead, Cutty Sark,” came back Blackowl’s tired voice.

“We’re missing a man on post eight.”

Blackowl’s tone sharpened considerably. “No sign of him?”

“None.”

“Check the boat,” Blackowl said without hesitation. “I’ll meet you there after I inform headquarters.”

McGrath signed off and hurried along the bank to the dock. “Post six, coming up on you.”

“Aiken, post six. Come ahead.”

McGrath groped his way onto the dock and found agent John Aiken’s hulking figure under a floodlight. “Have you seen Brock?”

“You kidding?” answered Aiken. “I haven’t seen shit since the fog hit.”

McGrath dogtrotted along the dock, repeating the call-warning process. By the time he reached the
Eagle,
Polaski had come around from the opposite deck to meet him.

“I’m missing Brock,” he said tersely.

Polaski shrugged. “Last I saw of him was about a half-hour ago when we changed posts.”

“Okay, stand here by the dockside. I’m going to take a look below decks. And keep an eye peeled for Blackowl. He’s on his way down from Control.”

When Blackowl lurched out into the damp morning, the fog was thinning and he could see the faint glimmer of stars through the fading overcast above. He steered his way from post to post, breaking into a run along the pathway to the pier as the visibility improved. Fear smoldered in his stomach, a dread that something was terribly wrong. Agents did not desert their posts without warning, without reason.

When at last he leaped aboard the yacht, the fog had disappeared as if by magic. The ruby lights of the radio antenna across the river sparkled in the newly cleared air. He brushed by Polaski and found McGrath sitting alone in the deckhouse, staring trancelike into nothingness.

Blackowl froze.

McGrath’s face was as pale as a white plaster death mask. He stared with such horror in his eyes that Blackowl immediately feared the worst.

“The President?” he demanded.

McGrath looked at him dully, his mouth moving but no words coming out.

“For Christ’s sake, is the President safe?”

“Gone,” McGrath finally muttered.

“What are you talking about?”

“The President, the Vice President, the crew, everybody, they’re all gone.”

“You’re talking crazy!” Blackowl snapped.

“True . . . it’s true,” McGrath said lifelessly. “See for yourself.”

Blackowl tore down the steps of the nearest companionway and ran to the President’s stateroom. He threw open the door without knocking. It was deserted. The bed was still neatly made and there were no clothes in the closet, no toilet articles in the bathroom. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed between two blocks of ice.

As though in a nightmare, he rushed from stateroom to stateroom. Everywhere it was the same; even the crew’s quarters lay in undisturbed emptiness.

The horror was real.

Everyone on the yacht had vanished as though they had never been born.