Vixen 03 by Clive Cussler Read Free Book Online Page B

quit smoking.”
    “louche,” Steiger said.
    Just then two teenagers, a boy and a girl, wearing down vests and standing on a makeshift raft, rounded a bend in the stream and drifted past. They were laughing with adolescent abandon, totally oblivious of the men on the bank. Pitt and Steiger watched them in silence until they disappeared downstream.
    “Now, there is the life,” said Steiger. “I used to go rafting down the Sacramento River when I was a kid. Did you ever try it?”
    Pitt did not hear the question. He stood gazing intently at the spot where the boy and the girl became lost to view. His facial expression transformed from deep thoughtfulness to sudden enlightenment.
    “What’s with you?” Steiger asked. “You look as though you’ve seen God.”
    “It was socking me in the face all this time and I ignored it,” Pitt murmured.
    “Ignored what?”
    “It just goes to prove the toughest problems fall by the simplest solutions.”
    “You haven’t answered my question.”
    “The oxygen tank and the nose gear,” Pitt said. “I know where they came from.”
    Steiger only looked at Pitt, his eyes clouded with skepticism.
    “What I’m getting at,” Pitt continued, “is that we’ve been overlooking the one quality they share.”
    “I fail to see the connection,” said Steiger. “When installed in the aircraft, they work under two entirely different flow systems, one gas and the other hydraulic.”
    “Yes, but take them off the aircraft and they both have one characteristic in common.”
    “Which is?”
    Pitt gazed at Steiger and smiled and smiled. Then he spoke the magic words.
    “They float.”

8
    Alongside most sleek executive jets, the Catlin M-200 came off like a flying toad. Also slower in flight, it had one redeeming quality that was unmatched by any other airplane its size: the Catlin was designed to land and take off in impossible places with cargo loads twice its own weight.
    The sun gleamed on the aquamarine color scheme adorning the plane’s fuselage as the pilot expertly banked the craft and settled it onto the narrow asphalt strip of the Lake County airport outside Leadville. It came to an abrupt halt with nearly two thousand feet to spare and then turned and taxied toward the area where Pitt and Steiger waited. As it neared, the letters NUMA could be clearly distinguished on the side. The Catlin rolled to a stop, the engines were shut down, and a minute later the pilot climbed down and approached the two men.
    “Thanks a lot, buddy,” he said, and grimaced at Pitt.
    “For what, a carefree all-expenses-paid vacation in the Rockies?”
    “No, for prodding me out of the sack with a madcap redhead in the middle of the night to assemble a cargo and fly it out here from Washington.”
    Pitt turned to Steiger. “Colonel Abe Steiger, may I present Al Giordino, my sometimes able assistant and always chief bellyacher, of the National Underwater and Marine Agency.”
    Giordino and Steiger sized each other up like two professional fighters. Except for Steiger’s cleanly shaved head and Semitic features, and Giordino’s mischievous Italian grin and curly mop of black hair, they
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    could have passed for brothers. They were built exactly alike: same height, same weight, even the muscles that fought to escape their clothing seemed poured from the same mold. Giordino extended his hand.
    “Colonel, I hope you and I never get mad at each other.”
    “The feeling is mutual,” Steiger said, smiling warmly.
    “Did you bring the equipment I specified?” asked Pitt.
    Giordino nodded. “It took some conniving. If the admiral finds out about your little back-door project, he’ll throw one of his renowned temper tantrums.”
    “Admiral?” Steiger queried. “I don’t see how the Navy enters into this.”
    “They don’t,” Pitt answered. “Admiral James Sandecker, retired, happens to be Chief Director of NUMA. He has this Scrooge hangup: he frowns on clandestine expenditures