“Let us pray you’re right, Admiral. God help us if she crashed on land.”

“If she had, we’d have known by now,” Bass said.

“Yes”-the President hesitated-“I guess we would at that.” Another pause. “Close the file on Vixen 03. Bury it, and bury it deep.”

“I’ll see to it, Mr. President.”

Bass set the receiver in its cradle and sank back in his chair, a defeated man at the end of a long and otherwise distinguished Navy career.

He stared at the map again. “Where? ‘ he said aloud to himself. “Where are you? Where in hell did you go?”

The answer never came. No clue to the disappearance of the illfated Stratocruiser ever turned up. It was as though Major Vylander and his crew had flown into oblivion.

1

Vixen 03

Colorado-September 1988

Dirk Pitt released his hold on sleep, yawned a deep, satisfying yawn, and absorbed his surroundings. It had been dark when he arrived at the mountain cabin and the flames in the great moss-rock fireplace along with the light from the pungent-smelling kerosene lamps had not illuminated the knotty-pine interior to its best advantage.

His vision sharpened on an old Seth Thomas clock clinging to one wall. He had set and wound the clock the previous night; it had seemed the thing to do. Next he focused on the massive cobwebbed head of an elk that stared down at him through dusty glass eyes. Slightly beyond the elk was a picture window that offered a breathtaking vista of the craggy Sawatch mountain range, deep in the Colorado Rockies.

As the last strands of sleep receded, Pitt found himself faced with his first decision of the day: whether to allow his eyes to bask in the majesty °f the scenery or to feast them on the smoothly contoured body of Colorado congresswoman Loren Smith, who sat naked on a quilted rug, engrossed in yoga exercises.

Pitt discerningly opted for Congresswoman Smith.

She was sitting cross-legged, in the lotus position, leaning back and

resting her elbows and head on the rug. The exposed nest between her thighs and the small tautened mounds on her chest, Pitt decided, put the granite summits of the Sawatch to shame.

“What do you call that unladylike contortion?” he asked.

“The Fish,” she replied, without moving. “It’s for firming up the bosom.”

“Speaking as a man,” Pitt said with mock pompousness, “I do not approve of rock-hard boobs.”

“Would you prefer them limp and saggy?” Her violet eyes angled in his direction.

“Well … not exactly. But perhaps a little silicone here and a little silicone there …”

“That’s the trouble with the masculine mind,” she snapped, sitting up and brushing back her long cinnamon hair. “You think all women should have balloon-sized mammaries like those insipid drones on the centerfolds of chauvinist magazines.”

“Wishing will make it so.”