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"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.
