Final Flight (36 page)

No time to worry about the door. The die was cast.
The hose teams crowded together and squeezed through.
Already the smoke was going out the aft bay, for the men there
had managed to get that door almost completely open
before it too jammed. The hose teams laid the
AFFF right at the base of the flames as they came
to them and kept moving.

The bays were littered with smashed, blackened
shells of aircraft which the men had to snake around.

The overhead was afire too, and streams of foam
were directed upward. A rack holding a
half-dozen aircraft external fuel tanks that
had been weakened by fire gave way under the
pressure of the stream of foam. The tanks, each
weighing two hundred pounds, came floating down
amid a veritable waterfall of foam. One of them
landed on Ray Reynolds and two sailors near
him carrying battle lanterns. When the tank was
rolled away, Reynolds was dead.

The hose teams continued aft, smothering the fires with
foam. One of the men who bad been hit by the tank was
still alive, so he was carried below to Sick Bay. The
bodies of Commander Ray Reynolds and the
sailor who died with him were laid on Elevator
One with the corpses of fifteen other men who had died
fighting the fires.

Jake Grafton stood in the furnace heat of the
starboard 0-3 level passageway and peered through the
murk. The floor was awash with foamy water. The
florescent lights were off and the only illumination
came from battle lanterns mounted near each
knee-knocker and hatchway. The little islands of dim
white light revealed a smoky haze full of
sweating men wrestling charged hoses. The hoses
full of the water-foam mixture under immense
pressure had the weight and rigidity of steel
pipe. They could only be bent with the combined efforts of
several sailors swearing mightily inside their
0BA’S.

Jake started coughing. “Better get an OBA
on,” someone shouted, his words distorted by the
faceplate on his rubber mask. Jake pulled his
shirttail from his trousers and held it over his face.
His eyes were beginning to smart and itch. He stumbled
aft, ducking under and stepping over hoses and inching by the
busy men until he found a corridor leading
outboard. He followed it. He came to a ladder.
The watertight hatch was down and dogged
into place. In the center of the large hatch was a
smaller, round hatch, just big enough to admit one man.
This fitting was open and a hose went through it. Jake
squirmed through.

The turnarounds were full of men sitting and breathing
through rags held before their faces. These men had been
evacuated from the compartments above Bays One and
Two. Thre was nowhere else for them to go. If 20
percent of the crew were still on the beach, over forty-four
hundred men were aboard.

The central engineering control compartment was still manned
and the DCA was at his desk, consulting charts. The
engineering department head, Commander Ron Trixorn,
was looking over the reactor control panels when
Jake came in, but he strode toward him as soon
as he saw him. “How did you get off the
bridge?”

“Somebody got onto the bridge and started
shooting.”

“The admiral and the captain?”

“Still up there.”

“Ray Reynolds is dead. He was killed a
few minutes ago up in the hangar bay. Something
fell on him and broke his neck. You’re the senior
line officer not on the bridge.” The
senior officer not a hostage, he meant.

“Ray’s dead?” Jake sank into a chair.
Trixorn nodded. “How about the chief of staff?”
He was a captain.

“On the beach.” Junior officers were gathering,
listening and looking at Jake.

Jake looked around the compartment, slightly dazed.
He was now responsible for the ship and every man aboard
her. Legally responsible. Morally
responsible. He was in command.

He rubbed his eyes. They were still smarting from the
smoke in he passageways. Ray Reynolds
dead! Oh, damn it all to hell. And the poor
guy just got his new front teeth! He tried
to think. The terrorists. Helicopters were coming in to and
when the shooting started on the bridge. He glanced
at the elevision monitor. The screen displayed a
black-and-white picture-from camera in the
television booth just under Pried-Fly of the
helicopters on the flight deck. This was a live
picture, real time. He could see people, sentries,
some of them lying on the eck and some walking slowly
near the machines. The choppers were Italian
civilian machines.

“The senior marine officer? Get him
down here.” One of the unior officers trotted toward
a phone. Jake looked up at Trixorn.
“What’s the situation in the plant?”

“No damage. Both reactors on line.
All boilers on the line.”

Trixorn gestured vaguely. “That evaporator
that gave us all that trouble last week is acting
up” Jake cut him off. Evaporators were the least
of his worries right now. “Are the marines guarding the
entrance to the engineering paces?” Yes. “Can we get
underway?” Yes. “How soon?” They discussed it.
Ten minutes warning. Jake thought hard.

‘Get things fixed so you can turn the screws within
a minute of the decision. Tell the first
lieutenant to be ready to slip the anchor hain.”
They would just let the chain go, leaving the anchor on he
ocean floor rather than taking the time to raise it. If
they had to.

“Aye aye, sir.” Trixorn turned to his
junior officers. “You heard him. Do it.”

Jake walked over to the DCA’S desk with
Trixorn right beind. He was on the phone. When
he hung up, the three of them reviewed the damage
control situation. The fire in Bay Two was under
control and would soon be extinguished. Power
was off hroughout the compartments above the bays and on
both sides. bove the bays in the 0-3 level, the
fumes from the fires in the hangar and the communications
spaces still contaminated the air. he DCA was opening
the watertight hatches on those levels and rdering
degassing fans positioned and started to clear the
smoke from the ship. Several hundred tons of the
water-foam mixture ad been used on the 0-3
level and was still slopping around in hose spaces, but
its effect on the trim of the ship was negligible.
Six bodies had been discovered in the communications
spaces and were being removed. At least twenty-six
men had been killed fighting fires in the hangar
bays, most of them when aircraft exploded.

Six marines were dead on the flight deck, shot.
And four marines had been killed by grenades thrown
by the intruders. Four men were believed to be missing
under the rubble in Bays One and Two. Over fifty
men were in sick bay being treated for everything from
gunshot wounds to smoke inhalation. Last but not least,
the DCA reported, all the operations spaces on
the 1 0-3 level had been evacuated and the
communications equipment in those spaces had been
damaged by the heat and smoke and AFFF. It would be a
half hour before he could let the operations
specialists back into those spaces and get power
restored. Meanwhile, the ship was not communicating with
anyone. All the radio gear was either smashed or
severed from the antenna system.

“Where are the gooks?” Grafton asked as
Lieutenant Dykstra joined the group. He was
wearing marine battle dress, with helmet and flak
vest and ammo belt.

“Three choppers have landed on the flight deck,
sir,” Dykstra reported, gesturing at the
television monitor. “The intruders are on the
bridge and in Flight Deck Control and on the
flight deck.”

“Why didn’t you shoot those choppers down before they
landed?” Grafton asked the marine officer.

“Commander Reynolds felt that it would be better
to wait. With the hostages and all.” Hostages. Yes,
that is what the Americans on the bridge and in
Flight Deck Control were-hostages. Jake
Grafton sagged into a chair and ground his knuckles
together helplessly. Do you sacrifice the lives of
defenseless people to foil the intruders, or do you
passively resist and wait for an opening, perhaps
saving innocent lives? What is it the
professional negotiators always say?
“Play for time: time is on our side, not theirs.”
Well, in the usual terrorist incident that is
true.

The terrorist’s goal is publicity. But are
these people terrorists? Is this crime being publicized?
If so, why did they attack the communications
facilities? What is their objective?

Exasperated, he looked from face to face. The
officers were staring at him, waiting for him to make
decisions and issue orders. The military system
in full fucking flower! “Do you people have any ideas or
comments? I’d desperately like comto hear some.”
Blank looks. They were as off balance as he was,
but he was the man esponsible. “What are these
fuckers up to, Dykstra?”

“Maybe they have mines planted below the waterline,
sir. Maybe they’re planting more firebombs. I
think they’re going to try to sink us.”

Jake snorted. If so, they were taking their time
about it, although they were off to a fair start.
“Trixorn?”

“I think it’s political, GAG. I would
bet the ranch they are making announcements to the media
this very minute. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that
we have four TV choppers circling
overhead right now, with Dan Rather in one of them.”

“You think we’re all hostages, is that right?”

“Yes sir. They’re bearding the paper tiger.”
Bearding the muscle-bound tiger would be a more
accurate description, Jake thought. But no.
It’s one thing to hijack an airliner full of
civilians and wave a pistol in the pilot’s
face for the cameras. What we have here is quite another
thing altogether. This is an act of war. “I think we had
better wait and find out what their objective is
before we go off half-cocked,” Jake Grafton
said quietly. “So I’ll wait a while.
Dykstra, get your men around the edge of the flight
deck with enough firepower to drop those choppers in the
water if they try to take off. No shooting unless
and until I say so. Trixorn, get this ship
ready to get underway. That card may be only a
lousy deuce, but I’ll play it if I have to.
DCA, get the fires out. We’ll have no options
at all if we sink.”

If we sink, Jake thought savagely. Mother of
God!

At the same time that Captain Grafton was
learning of his accession to command, Gunnery Sergeant
Tony Garcia was having his T-shirt and
sweater cut off him by two corpsmen in sick bay.
They had him stretched out in a passageway on a
mobile hospital table equipped with stirrups.
They must have got this damned thing from a gynecology
clinic, he mused, trying not to dwell on the fire
in his side.

A doctor wearing a blue smock splotched with
blood stopped and peered at his side. “Nasty.
Get an X-ray after you bandage it. May be some
internal bleeding. Won’t know till we see the
film.” He paced away muttering about bullet and
bone fragments.

The corpsmen rolled the table down the
passageway.

“Hey you guys,” Garcia said. “When we get
done with X-ray, how about putting me in the ward with
Sergeant Vehmeier?”

Sailors sat on the deck with their backs against
the bulkhead. Many of them were coughing and all had little
green oxygen bottles with masks to suck out of.
These are the smoke-inhalation cases, Garcia
surmised.

The corpsman rolled him under a large X-ray
machine and positioned a giant cone above his chest.

Just like fucking Vietnam, Garcia
told himself, only the trip to the hospital was a
whole lot quicker. No ride in a Huey strapped
to a stretcher, absolutely helpless if the damned
thing got shot down or crashed. And the wound ain’t so
bad, either, all things considered.

That machine gun round in the gut had been a real
dilly. At least he was conscious, which was something. In
Vietnam he had hemorrhaged until he passed
out and woke up with needles in his arm and a tube down
his nose all the way to his stomach and a tube up his
dick and ninety-five brand-new stitches. Those
doctors had almost cut him in half. Eleven
months in the fucking hospital. Never again. He
had told himself that about a million times through the
years. Never again. The next time he was just going
to die. Nothing could be worth going through that again.
Jesus, Vehmeier got blasted by that fucking
grenade. That silly shit. Why in hell did he
fall on that bastard? That Vehmeier. it was enough
to make a grown man cry, that a guy like
Vehmeier…

One of the corpsmen rolled him from the X-ray
room and parked the bed along a passageway
bulkhead, then hurried away. “Hey, man,” he
called, wanting to be beside Vehmeier, but
they paid no attention. They were busy, he told
himself, and Vehmeier wouldn’t know he was there anyway.

They probably got six IV needles stuck
in him and have given him enough dope to supply Los
Angeles for a week. Too bad about his hands, but with
artificial hands he can do everything except pick his
nose.

He wondered if he was bleeding internally. He
had seen enough bullet wounds to know that there was no way
to tell just from looking. You observed the patient for
signs that he was losing blood, and if it
wasn’t visibly coming out of holes, it must be
internal bleeding. And shock looked like
hemorrhaging. He wondered if he was in shock.
He felt cold, but they had put a blanket over
him.

Mild shock maybe. He took several deep
breaths, trying to see if his lungs were working
properly. His side felt as if he had a knife
in it. Maybe he shouldn’t do that. Maybe a busted
rib would penetrate his lung.

Wonder if that foray on the bridge did any
good. He had knocked that one gunman down for sure
and maybe the other guy. Those sailors had been
shot, but there was no other way. They would have
approved, he told himself. They would have wanted him
to try.

One of the corpsmen returned, the one with the
glasses. “The doctor says you have two cracked
ribs, but there are no bullet fragments in your
chest. Just an ugly surface wound. You were very
lucky.”