Final Flight (34 page)

A slug had grazed him, but not too bad. The
wound was bleeding some.

Those motherfuckers! He could hear the sound of men
running somewhere in the hip, minute vibrations that could be
heard for hundreds of feet, and the faint clank of
watertight hatches being slammed shut. these were
normal noises mixed in with the hum and whine of
machinery that was present every minute of every day. He
stood istening now for the sound of a door being eased open
or shoes craping on steel or a weapon clinking
ever so faintly against a ulkhead. Of these noises,
there were none. It was coming back to him now, those feelings
of combat. always tense, always listening, always
waiting… waiting to kill and waiting to die. He
had not felt those feelings for twenty years. but now
they were back and it seemed like only yesterday. He was
weating profusely and his mouth was dry. He was
desperately hirsty.

He heard a watertight door being opened somewhere
behind him but near.

He pointed his rifle and waited. Now someone was
oming around the corridor, in from the starboard side of the
sland. It was only Staff Sergeant Slagle and a
lance corporal. hat was his name? Leggett.

Corporal Leggett. The l-MC hissed.
“Men of United States. I am Colonel
Qazi. I ave taken over the ship. We have your
captain and your admiral with us here on the bridge.
Further resistance by you is futile and will result
in the deaths of your officers and the sailors here with me
on the bridge. If another shot is fired at my
men by anyone, I ill execute one of the
Americans here with me and throw his body down onto
the flight deck. Now I want everyone to clear the
flight deck. Clear the flight deck or I will
execute a sailor.”

“What do we do now, Gunny?” Slagle
asked.

Garcia examined the silencer on one of the pistols
he had picked up from the deck. The slide had been
machined to take the silencer by someone who knew his
business. He pushed the button on the grip and the
magazine popped out into his hand. About ten
rounds remained. He reinserted the magazine in the
grip and checked that the weapon had a round in the
chamber and eased the hammer down. Then he stuffed the
pistol in his belt. He gave the other weapons
to Slagle. “Get on a phone to Captain
Mills-was

“He’s on the beach.” Mills was the marine
officer-in-charge. “So call the lieutenant,”
Gunny Garcia rasped. First Lieutenant
Potter Dykstra was the second in command and the only
other marine officer in the detachment. “Tell him the
squad that was on the way to the bridge got wiped out
by grenades. And there is at least one gunman in
Flight Deck Control. Find out what the
lieutenant wants to do. Leggett, you stay right
here. If anybody carrying a weapon comes out of
Flight Deck Control, kill him. These fuckers
are dressed like sailors. I’m going up to the
bridge and see what’s what.”

Slagle turned and trotted away.

“Listen, Leggett. These assholes got
grenades. They’re liable to toss one out here to see
if they can perforate you. Keep your head out of your
ass.

“You bet, Gunny.” Leggett licked
his lips and started to peer around the corner.

“Don’t do that, dummy. If you’ve gotta
take a peek, get down on the deck and peek
around the corner down low. And don’t let ‘em
shoot you. Gunny Varcia turned around went up the
ladder ahead of him with the butt braced against his hip.

The fires on the hangar deck were out of control
almost immediately after the paint lockers exploded. Men
came pouring out of the shops and repair lockers and
attacked the fires with AFFF (aqueous film-forming
foam) from the fire-fighting stations located around the
bay, but the burning paint and chemicals from the
sabotaged lockers had been sprayed everywhere, on
aircraft, in open cockpits, in the drip pans
under the planes, and on aircraft tires. The
tires ignited almost immediately and gave off a heavy,
thick black smoke. When the CONFLAG watches
failed to lose the two interior fire doors, the
hangar deck officer, a lieuenant, ordered the
doors closed manually. And he sent a man up
to the nearest CONFLAG station to light off the hangar
deck prinkler system.

The men fighting the fires were relieved in shifts
to don Oxyen Breathing Apparatus (Oba’s),
which were self-contained reathing systems. Although
the fires were producing immense uantities of
toxic gases and smoke, most of it was being vented out
the open elevator doors.

And the wind was funneling in the doors, feeding the
fires.

A minute after he had been dispatched to the
CONFLAG staion, the messenger was back and informed the
hangar deck officer that the CONFLAG watch-stander was
dead, shot, and the prinkler control system was shot
full of holes. The hangar deck officer called
Damage-Control Central.

The hangar deck sprinkling system was turned on
from DC Central, lmost four minutes after the
paint lockers had exploded. The prinklers had little
visible effect on the fires, so with the concurence of the
Damage Control Assistant (the officer in
actual harge of the ship’s minute-to-minute
damage control efforts) in C Central, the
elevator doors on the sides of the bays were
closed too. In seconds the interior of Bays
Two and Three filled with black smoke and toxic
gases.

The smoke became so thick that the fire fighters
were literally blind inside their flexible rubber masks.
Men worked by feel. They hung onto
hoses with a death grip, and if one tripped and
fell, he dragged men down on both sides of him.
A couple men panicked and hyperventilated inside
the self-contained OBA’S and let go of their hoses.
Lost, blind, and seemingly unable to breathe, they ripped
off their OBA’S and passed out within seconds from the
toxic fumes.

Still, the fire-fighting effort continued. In less
than ten minutes the fires in Bay One, the forward
bay, were out, although the chief in charge there didn’t
realize it for another minute or two. In Bays
Two and Three, amidships and aft, the fires
continued. Since the air was opaque and the heat was
building, the fires were difficult to detect unless
someone actually walked into one, so some fires were not
attacked by hose teams. Then an A-6 that still
contained several thousand pounds of fuel blew up in
Bay Two. The concussion and flying fragments cut
down almost a dozen men and severed two hoses. The
fires spread. Men staggered out of the bay almost
overcome by the intense heat or passed out where they
stood from heat exhaustion.

In Bay Three, Chief Reed made a command
decision. On his own initiative he opened the
doors to both Elevators Three and
Four, on opposite sides of the bay. The wind
rushed in the starboard door, El Three, and pushed
the smoke and fumes out El Four. Reed’s
decision probably saved the ship. Although the fires
burned more intensely in the draft, the overall heat
level was lower and the air cleared. Fire fighters were
now able to directly attack the flames.

In the meantime, Bay Two had become a
hellish inferno.

In DC Central, which was located on the
second deck in the main engineering control room,
immediately below the aft hangar bay, the Damage
Control Assistant had his hands full. On the
wall before him were arranged three-dimensional charts that
showed every compartment in the ship. Other charts showed the
networks of fuel lines, power lines, fire mains,
and telephone circuits. A crew of men wearing
sound-powered phones marked these charts as they received
damage reports from the various fire-fighting
teams.

The DCA was a busy man. He had an
extraordinarily hot fire burning in the comm
spaces and the fumes were spreading to surrounding
spaces, which he had ordered evacuated. Every time
someone opened a watertight door to enter the
fire-fighting zone, the poisoned air spread a little
further. All electrical power to the communications
spaces had already been secured by the load dispatcher
in the central electrical control station. He and the
repair-party leader had already concluded that they were
facing a magnesium fire, probably a flare,
since nothing in the communications spaces would burn with
such intensity or give off such toxic fumes.
Consequently the fire was attacked with Purple
K, a dry, dust-like chemical propelled by gas
that would blanket the burning metal and cut off the
oxygen supply. Water or AFFF would have merely
caused the magnesium to explode, spreading it. The
DCA knew that the electrical equipment in the comm
spaces would all be ruined by the fine grit of
Purple K. It was unavoidable. The fire had
to be extinguished as quickly as possible, before the
magnesium melted the deck and fell through to another
compartment.

Just now the DCA was checking the chart to locate the
compartments that might be beneath the burning flare. He
wanted to get earns in those compartments, ready
to attack the flare if it burned its way through the
steel deck it was lying on. The executive
officer, Ray Reynolds, stood looking
over his shoulder, listening to the reports that flowed in
and the DCA’S responses, and using the telephone
periodically. Since the I-MC nnouncement that the
captain was hostage on the bridge, the CA had
attempted to talk to the captain via the squawk
box and he telephone.

Both times there was no answer to his call. As
far as the DCA was concerned, responsibility for the
ship had now passed to the executive officer.

But the DCA had no time to worry about the
bridge. He had fires to fight.

A large portion of the communications spaces, the
CA learned, protruded over the forward hangar
bay, Bay One. He got onto the squawk box
to repair locker IF, which was esponsible for that
bay, and alerted them to the possible danger from the fire
raging above their heads.

Ray Reynolds stared at the charts of the ship and the
grease-pencil marks that adorned them. The first
priority, he had already decided, was to save the ship.
Second was to capture the intruders or thwart them,
and third was to free the captain and the admiral. He
stood now absorbing the situation that the DCA faced.
Two bad fires were out of control, and the DCA was
marshaling every man he needed to fight them. He
had secured electrical power near the fires. He
had drained the pipes that carried jet fuel to the
flight-deck fueling stations and flooded the pipes with
carbon dioxide. He was monitoring the level of
AFFF in the pumping stations, and he had men relieving
the men fighting the fires at egular intervals.
Fire-main pressures were still good, both reacors
were on the line, and the engineering plant had plenty of
team. The auxiliary generators had been lit off
and were ready to take the load if necessary.

And the DCA had the repair teams not ghting fires
searching the ship for unexploded bombs. Someone handed
Reynolds a telephone. “XO, this is Lieutennt Dykstra.”

“We’re up to our ass in alligators,
Dykstra. Are you getting the wamp drained?”

“The quick-reaction squad that was on the way to the
bridge was wiped out. Grenades. I think most of the
intruders are on the bridge.”

“Keep them there. Don’t let them out.”

“That announcement. That colonel wanted everyone
off the flight deck. We must be getting more company.

Reynolds was aware of that, yet he had had little
time to consider the implications. More armed intruders was
the last thing he wanted. He turned away
from the DCA’S desk and walked to the limit of the
telephone cord. He had no doubt that the
terrorist on the bridge-that’s what he was, a
maniac terrorist-would do exactly what he said.
He would execute people if armed resistance continued.

“Play for time, Dykstra. That’s the only option
we have. Until we know what they’re up to, it’s
senseless to goad these men and have them kill our people for
nothing. What’d their leader call himself?”

“Put your marines in the catwalks forward and aft
so they can control the helo landing area. Have everyone
hold their fire. Unless these people are suicidal, they
are going to want to leave the ship sooner or later,
and we want to be ready when they do. Perhaps then
we’ll have a better handle on this.”

“Maybe they are suicidal, sir. Qazi?
Maybe that’s a play on ‘kamikaze.”

“You have any better ideas, Lieutenant?”

“Shoot them when they get out of the helicopters.”
And the fanatics on the bridge would kill everybody
there. Ray Reynolds was a poker player, and just
now he wanted to see a few more cards. “No.
Post your men.

Time’s on our side, not theirs.”

He broke the connection and called
Operations. No one answered. He tried Combat.
No answer there either. He reached for the squawk box,
then became aware of the DCA’S voice. “Get
everyone out of that area on the 0-3 level.” When the
DCA saw Reynolds looking at him, he said,
“The temperatures are really rising in the spaces
above Bay Two, XO. I’m ordering an
evacuation. I’m going to have the repair crew up there
put AFFF on the deck in all those spaces.
Maybe that’ll keep the temperature down and
prevent flash fires.”

So the people in Ops and Combat had probably already
left their spaces.

With the communications gear in the comm spaces out of
action and Ops and Combat uninhabitable, the ship could
not communicate with the outside world. She was isolated.
“Do it,” Reynolds said. There was no other
choice. Unless the fires were brought under control,
United States was doomed.

Gunnery Sergeant Garcia stood in the
signalmans locker on the after portion of the
0-9 level and peered carefully out the open door.
Behind him three sailors shifted nervously from foot
to foot. They had extinguished all lights in the
compartment, at his request. Garcia looked
left, up the length of the signal bridge, past the
bin full of signal flags and the signal flashing
light mounted high on a post, forward to the closed
hatch to the navigation bridge. The signal bridge
was open to the weather, without roof or walls. A
solid, waist-high rail formed one side of this
porch-like area and the island superstructure formed the
other. Now Gunny Garcia examined the area to his
right. The signal bridge curved around and expanded
into a large portico on top of the after part of the
island. He looked back left, toward the enclosed
navigation bridge.

There were windows beside the entrance hatch to the bridge
in that portion of the bridge structure that jutted
starboard almost to the edge of the flight deck fifty
feet below. The back of a raised, padded chair was
visible in the red light that illuminated the interior.
That was the navigator’s chair, and it was used by the
conning officer when he brought the ship alongside a
tanker or ammunition ship for an underway
replenishment. Garcia wasn’t thinking about unreps
just now, he was thinking about people. And there were none in
sight.

He turned to the sailors behind him, who were staring
at the rifle and the pistol butt sticking out
of the waistline of his khaki trousers, trousers now
heavily stained with Sergeant Vehmeier’s blood.
“What’re you guys doing up here?”

“We’re signalmen. This is our GQ station.”

“Ain’t nobody on the bridge gonna tell you
to run up a signal flag tonight. You guys take a
hike.”

The sailors didn’t have to be told twice.
They shut the door behind them.

Garcia checked the bridge windows again. Still
nobody visible. He looked around the dark
signalmen’s shack. There was just enough light coming through the door to make out a dark sweater lying on the worn
couch. Garcia pulled it on over his white
T-shirt, then buckled the duty belt around his
waist. The belt had been draped over his shoulder.

It contained spare magazines for the M-I6.

Too bad he didn’t have any camouflage
grease, because his face would show like a beacon on the
dark signal bridge. He glanced at the
coffeepot. Coffee grounds wouldn’t help much. The
chief’s desk. He rummaged through the drawers and
came up with a tin of black shoe polish. He
smeared some on his face. A head was visible in the
bridge window. The man wasn’t looking
back this way. The head disappeared.

It was now or never. Garcia swallowed hard,
gripped the rifle firmly, and sprinted toward the
closed watertight entrance-door to the bridge.

He huddled in the corner, out of the wind and rain, and
placed his ear against the door. Nothing. Damn. He
tried again. Only the pounding of his heart. He could
smell smoke, heavy and acrid. It must be coming from
the doors to Elevators One and Two, and being
swirled up here by the wind.

The door was heavy and was held shut with six
dogs. He moved in front of the door and very
carefully raised his head toward the window. Slowly,
ever so slowly, careful not to let the rifle barrel
touch the metal of the bulkhead or door. More and more
of the room came into view, until he was looking
directly in the window. Two sailors were visible
sitting on the deck with their backs against the forward
bulkhead, their arms crossed on their knees and their
heads down on their arms. Someone had obviously
ordered them into this position and was guarding them. He
looked left, trying to see the sentry. No way.

There was a little passageway in from this door and
window, about four feet in length, and he couldn’t see
around that corner. And the sentry couldn’t see
this door.

He could, however, see the navigator’s chair
and the chart table and the usual compass repeater and ship’s
clock and, between the windows, telephone headsets
mounted in clips. He looked for reflections in the
bridge windows. The windows here were all slanted
outward at the top so the view down toward the water
and the flight deck would be unimpaired.

So no reflections.

He lowered his head away from the window and applied
pressure to the lower right dog. It moved. Without
sound, thank God.

The technician who maintained these fittings
apparently didn’t ant to risk the captain’s
ire. Garcia turned the dog until it was in he
open position.

He peered in the window again, taking his time, inching his
ead up in case someone was there. Nobody. He
opened the two dogs on the upper part of the door. This
time the door made a noise as the pressure was
relieved. Garcia huddled in the corner, as far out
of sight of the window as he could get. Time passed.
He watched the dogs, waiting for a lever to betray he
touch of a human hand by a movement, no matter how
slight. othing.

Where in the fuck was Slagle? That was one hell
of a phone call he was making to the lieutenant.

Finally he eased back to the window and ever so
carefully raised is head until he could see
inside with his right eye. There was a man there. A man
with a submachine gun in his hands, the strap over his right
shoulder and a gym bag over the other. The man as
looking out the windows on the starboard side, searching.
Garcia lowered his head and held his breath.

If he saw the open ogs, the game was up. The
gunman would be waiting for the door to open. Garcia
begin breathing again and counted seconds.

When a half minute had passed he decided
to risk the window gain.

A loud screech behind him. Garcia spun, ready
for anything. God, it was the loudspeaker.

“You there in the catwalk, down on the flight
deck. This is Colonel Qazi on the bridge.
Leave the flight deck or I will shoot a man here
on the bridge. Go below. Now! Or this man dies.
Gunny Garcia glanced in the window. The gunman
was gone. He opened the remaining three dogs and
pulled the heavy door pen.

“Now, Admiral,” Colonel Qazi said as he hung up the I-MC mike. “I want you gentlemen to understand me. You and I are going
upstairs to Pried-Fly. We won’t be gone long. My two helpers here will ensure no one on the bridge moves a muscle or opens his mouth. They will cheerfully shoot anyone who is so foolish.
Come, Admiral.”

Cowboy Parker looked from face to face.
Laird James and Jake Grafton had their
eyes on him. They were standing with him on the left wing
of the bridge, near the captain’s chair. The
bridge watch team were all seated on the floor in
a row across the bridge, facing aft, their heads down
on their knees, one of the gunmen watching them while the
other pointed his weapon at the three senior
officers. “What are you after, Colonel?”

“No.” Qazi’s voice was flat and hard.
“We’re not going to do it that way, Admiral. No
conversations.” The muzzle of the pistol twitched in the
direction of the door.

Admiral Parker moved and felt the blunt
nose of the silencer dig into the back of his neck.

There was no one in the passageway, no one
except the dead marine who lay on his side upon the
deck by the bridge door. Parker paused and Qazi
dug the pistol into his neck. “Step over
him.” Parker did so, looking down and feeling very much
responsible for the death of that young man. What had gone
wrong?

As they climbed the ladder Parker said bitterly,
“You’re a bastard.”

“True. And my father was an Englishman. So
you’re in big trouble and your next cute little remark
will be your last. Believe it. I don’t need an
admiral.” Nothing in his thirty years in the navy
had prepared Earl Parker for this… this feeling of
despair, frustration, and utter helplessness. He was
living a terrible nightmare from which he would never
awaken. His men were dying all around him and he was
powerless to lift a finger. He was being robbed of everything
he had worked a lifetime for, of everything that made
life worth living. He was being murdered an inch at
a time. Hatred and rage flooded him.

But since he was Earl Parker, none of it showed.
He flexed his fists as he topped the ladder, his
stride even and confident, his shoulders relaxed, then
forced himself to unball his fists. His face remained a
mask, an arrangement of flesh under the absolute
control of its owner.

Don’t let the bastard know he’s getting to you,
he told himself, wishing he hadn’t made that
last remark. My chance will come. God, please,
let it come.

Parker undogged the door to Pried-Fly and
pulled it open. Qazi stood just far enough behind him
to make any attempt at going for the pistol
impossible.

Inside the Pried-Fly compartment, the air boss
and assistant boss, both commanders, stood silently
and watched Parker and Qazi enter. The three
sailors in the compartment kept their eyes on Qazi’s
pistol. Without a word, Qazi examined the panel that
controlled the ship’s masthead and flight-deck
floodlights. Then he glanced at the air boss.
“Where is that helicopter that was searching for the man in the
water?”

“We sent it to Naples,” the boss said. He
named the airfield. Parker was looking at the
column of black smoke rising from levator Four
and being carried aft by the wind. Smaller columns of
smoke were coming from Elevators One and Two, forward
on the starboard side, and were waffling around the island.
On the flight deck below, the planes stood wet and
glistening in rows nder the red floodlights. Even
here, in this sealed compartment, Parker could smell the
smoke. “And the liberty boat?”

“We sent it back to the beach too.”

“You.” Qazi pointed the pistol at the senior
enlisted man, a econd-class petty officer.
“Come here.” The man looked at the admiral and then
at the air boss. “Do as he says,” the boss
said. The sailor moved slowly, his eyes on the
gun. “Turn off the flight deck floodlights,
wait five seconds, then turn them back on.”
The sailor’s hands danced across the witches. The
flight deck below seemed to disappear into the night, then
reappear. “Again.” The sailor obeyed.

“Now once more.

With the lights back on, Qazi seized the
admiral’s arm and backed him up.

“All you people leave. Go below. If anyone comes
back to this compartment, I will kill them and the hostages
on the bridge.” After the sailors and officers filed
out, Qazi fired his pistol into the radio
transmitter that sat on a shoulder-high shelf ear
the door. He stepped around the room putting
bullets into every piece of radio gear he could
identify. Then he followed the admiral out of the
compartment and down the ladder one level oward the
navigation bridge.

Gunny Garcia crouched on the signal
bridge and stared at the navy-gray aluminum door
that covered the entrance to the ridge, now that he had the
watertight door open. His first hought was, That’s
why the gunman didn’t notice the two open ogs.
The watertight door was hidden by this aluminum door.
A mild piece of luck, in a business where you
need every ounce of luck you can get.