The Edge of Honor (75 page)

Almost simultaneously, the entire ship shuddered with a cruiser-sized gut punch, the impact of something very big striking the port side, followed by the bellowing roar of an explosion back aft. The few remaining lights in Combat flickered out, on, and then back out, leaving only the battle lanterns to penetrate the clouds of dust hanging in the air. The sound of the ship’s GQ alarm sounded through the initial silence, joined by a shocked chorus of groans and cries of injured men.

Everyone in D and D had been thrown on the deck except Garuda, who had snapped on his seat belt when the ship made its turn to unmask the missile directors.

Brian pulled himself out from under the evaluator’s table and looked around for Austin. He finally saw him lying unconscious by the front door to Combat, his face covered in blood. The FCSC, Chief Hallowell, was standing, bent double over the back of his console chair as if he was trying to throw up. Brian tried to clear his head, but there was too much smoke and noise in Combat as men shouted for help or yelled in pain. He heard the incongruous sound of spraying water, until he remembered that the consoles were water-cooled. Some cooling lines must be severed, he thought, trying to pull himself together. He had a cut on the back of one hand, but otherwise he seemed to be uninjured. He looked over at Garuda, who was spitting shards of glass from a fluorescent bulb out of his mouth while wrestling with his radio headset. Brian heard him trying to get contact with the rest of the intercom stations in Combat.

Several men from surface were over on the port side trying to tend to some of the injured. Chief Hallowell straightened up and discovered Austin. He went over to check out the extent of the Ops officer’s injuries.

“Combat, Bridge!” The frightened-sounding voice of Jack Folsom came over the bitch box. Brian keyed the box. He felt the ship slowing down, her bows beginning to mush into the seas. There was an ominous roaring noise like a firebox coming from the midships area, then a blast of high pressure steam from the after stack.

“Combat, aye, Jack. What the hell happened out there?”

“Our last missile hit something right off the port side.

I think it was a Mig, but we were blind from the booster flash. I think the Mig hit the water and then hit the ship.

What happened in Combat?”

“Something came through the bulkhead. Maybe it’s part of the Mig. I’ll have to go check. We have personnel casualties and no power and the place is full of smoke and dust. I can’t see much from D and D.”

“Do you need a damage-control team in there?”

Hearing the sound of CO2 extinguishers going, Brian shook his head. “No, I think we need the docs in here, unless there’s bigger problems down below. One of ‘em, anyway. I don’t see any fires, just smoke. Hey, is the captain out there?”

“That’s a negative, and I’ll get the baby doc in there.

The XO was out here, but he went down somewhere amidships. He thinks we got hit down there, gonna go check it out.”

“Rug, lemme go see what we got here. Austin is knocked out, in case anyone’s wondering.”

“Bridge, aye.”

Brian moved over to Garuda’s console.

“We got anything left up here?” he asked.

“Shit no. Snipes have cut the power, or else the local panels went out.

The radars are all down, and guys’re all over the place in the Cave. I think I’m outta business here, boss. You need a dressing on that hand.”

“Yeah. Okay, make a quick survey of Combat. Tell me what we got in the way of people hurt and stuff broke.

Have Radio get me a working voice circuit so we can let the staff know we’ve been hit up here.”

“That was a hell of a bang amidships. What the fuck was it?”

“Bridge thinks our last bird winged bogey four but that he kamikazed us.

XO and the damage-control people are working that prob. Go see what we got here.”

Garuda grunted, unhitched himself from his chair, fished in his foul-weather jacket for a flashlight, and headed into the gloom of the Cave, picking his way through the jumble of deck plates and sprawled men.

Brian joined the chief in trying to revive Austin, but he was out cold.

The chief passed Brian a small square bandage, which he taped over his hand. A white-faced young radarman appeared next to them. His uniform was clean and not covered in dust and bits of insulation like those of everyone else in Combat. His eyes were huge and he looked terrified.

“S-sir?”

“Yeah?”

“Sir, I was sent down to get the Old—uh, I mean, to get the captain to call you? Just before we got hit?”

“Oh yes. Did you get him?”

“Sir, the door was locked. I knocked and I waited around, ‘cause you sounded like it was real important, and I guess it was, seein’—”

“Yes. Right. Okay, but you never actually talked to him? The cabin door was locked?”

“Yes, sir, it sure was. Sir, are we—”

“I don’t know what happens next, sailor. I suggest you get back into surface and help the guys who’ve hurt.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The radarman stepped back into the smoky shadow that was the surface module. Brian saw several people being attended to in the gloom. He felt totally isolated in the darkened Combat. The contrast was incredible—one minute the heart and nerve center of the ship and all the air operations for two hundred miles around, and now just a bunch of dazed guys staggering around and picking themselves up in the murk of smoke and dust. The debris began to shift as the ship’s rolling increased. Definitely going DIW, Brian thought. Then Garuda reappeared, his face set in a mask of shock.

“Garuda?” Brian asked.

“You won’t fuckin’ believe what we got back there. I gotta sit down.” He fished for a cigarette, spilling three before he got one lighted and shoved into his mouth. I guess a little more smoke won’t hurt anything, Brian thought. Garuda picked up the evaluator’s chair and turned it right side up.

“First off, we got two, maybe three guys got fucking pulverized. I mean, they’re spread all over the fucking EW module, and nobody can even tell who they are— were. I’m talkin’ Waring blender here, okay?” Garuda swallowed hard before continuing. “Then we got about eight other guys got thrown around when the bulkhead caved in, buncha broken bones, cut heads, bleedin’ ever y-goddamn-where. They’ve got every first-aid kit in Combat opened up back there. Some a those guys need a swab, not a bandage, and we need the fuckin’ corpsman up here right fuckin’ now, so—”

“Okay, okay, I get the picture. I’ve already told the bridge that.

They’re working it, so first aid is the best we can—”

“No, that ain’t it. What’s got me and everybody back there pissin’ our pants is this big black bomb that’s sittin’ on the deck plates next to the ASW module’s door.”

Brian felt his vision veer; an icy wave of fear gripped his stomach. He felt the blood leaving his face.

“A bomb! Is it live?”

“I didn’t go over and ask it, okay, but one a the guys, useta be an aviation bosun, said it’s makin’ a noise inside and it doesn’t have no arming wire hanging on the tail.

No wire usually means it’s armed. We gotta get everybody the fuck outta here right now. That thing goes off—”

“Yeah, got it. Okay. I don’t think anyone in the front part of CIC knows this, so let’s get the wounded moved out, orderly fashion, before there’s a panic, and then—”

Garuda got a grip on himself. “Right. Hey, Chief Hallowell. C’mere. We got us a little leadership situation here.” The chief paled as Garuda explained what they had in the back part of Combat. Garuda instructed the chief to clear the Cave out but to send all the able-bodied men over to the port side through the surface module to help carry out the wounded from EW and ASW modules.

“They may all wanna take a quick hike, but we can’t go leavin’ the wounded, okay? That’s what I meant by leadership. Nobody able-bodied goes outta here without helpin’ the disabled. Got it, Chief?”

The chief could not help giving a wishful glance at the front door to Combat, but he nodded and headed into the Cave. Garuda shook his head in disgust, took a single tremendous drag on his cigarette, and heaved himself out of his chair, dropping the butt onto the deck for the first time in his career. “You better tell the bridge what we got here; this kinda changes things.”

“Right. Then I’ll come in there to help.”

“Bring your barf bag. You ain’t gonna believe what it looks like back there.”

Brian called the bridge on the bitch box and told Folsom to pick up the captain’s bat phone.

“Sir?”

“I want privacy, goddamn it. Do it.”

While he was waiting, both the doc and the baby doc came into Combat.

Brian pointed to the port side of CIC and the two corpsmen rushed through without a word, bags in hand. There was another roar of high-pressure steam from back aft, a long, sustained exhalation from a 1,200-psi boiler. This time, it didn’t quit. A moment later, Brian pressed the handset key. “You there?”

“Yes, sir?” Brian told him what they had. “Oh Jesus,” gasped Folsom.

“Now what the hell do we do?”

“Get word through the damage-control circuits to the XO. Let him know we got a serious problem up here and that we’re clearing people off this level.”

“Jesus Christ,” Folsom groaned. “XO’s up to his ass, Mr. Holcomb. We got us a major fire amidships—Class Bravo jet fuel it looks like—and we got big-time flooding.

That Mig hit us on the waterline, port side, just forward of Mount Thirty-two. XO’s directing one of the repair teams; chief engineer has the other one. Two Firehouse has been shut down; Damage Control Central thinks it’s flooded to the mark. We’ve got the forward plant intact, but power distribution is all rucked up ‘cause the guy hit us amidships.

None of my radios work and I don’t know what the fuck to do about this—”

“All right, Jack, calm down. We’re getting all the people out of here.

You pass the word to evacuate Radio Central and all the spaces beneath Combat, and the signal-bridge people above. Just draw a mental picture of the spaces that encircle CIC and get everybody away.

Assemble them down on the fo’c’sle. That’s probably the best d! h. cc “

“Should I clear the bridge?”

“Yeah, you probably should. You stay for now—you’re the OOD. Keep a phone talker and your JOOD, and tell Main Engineering Control that you’re having to clear out.

And Jack?”

“Yes, sir?” Folsom sounded thoroughly frightened now.

“Keep it orderly. I don’t want a panic. We may need those people for damage control, especially if this thing goes off.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Brian hung up. He tried not to think of the bomb sitting some twenty feet away behind the bulkhead of the EW module and fought off a very strong urge to bolt out of CIC himself. Then Garuda appeared, leading a file of battered sailors through D and D, two able-bodied men on either side of each injured man. Nobody was talking as they concentrated on stepping through all the debris on the deck. It was clear that some of the men were seriously injured. The last three men in the line were being carried between three pairs of the biggest radar men. Rockheart and Chief Hallowell brought up the rear, along with the two corpsmen, who were starting an IV

on a man with a bandaged head as he was being carried through D and D.

All of them seemed to be trying to walk without making any noise.

“Take ‘em all right on down to the fo’c’sle, Chief,” Brian ordered.

“Garuda, you stay with me. I need to get some kind of radio on the air and make a report to Yankee Station.”

‘ ‘Right, boss. May have to go get one of the emergency HF jobs out of Radio.”

“Shit. I just ordered Radio Central evacuated. I think we gotta get all the people away from that bomb in there first, and then we can try to work the Ops problem. Now look, you want to go below, I’ll under—”

“Fuck that noise. Combat’s my space. I ain’t going’ nowhere.”

“Okay, then. See if the chief radioman is still in Central. Have him break out the emergency radios and get one down to the forecastle.

Somebody in the link had to see us go off the air, and the BARCAP are probably wondering what the hell’s happened to their controller, so we’re gonna get help up here, even at this hour of the morning. I’m gonna take a tour, make sure we’ve got everybody.”

Down below in the after officers’ passageway, the two chiefs had collided with each other as they tried to get out the door when the 1MC let go with its scarifying announcement. They caught a glimpse of Bullet as he hightailed it aft, empty-handed from the look of him.

Both chiefs hesitated for about one second, then ran forward to their GQ stations.

Jackson had been on the first step of the ladder going up to the captain’s cabin level when the unmistakable roar of a Terrier lifting off from the forecastle had stopped him for a second. Up to that instant, even as he had sprinted through the passageways, his mind had been filled with bitter disappointment over missing Bullet. The bastard had shown up, just like Rockheart thought he would, had been hi the Lucky Bag, probably with his hands on the goddamn money when whatever the hell was going down had started. Shit!

Then another missile had let go, then another and another. His brain cleared right up. Jesus, this sounded serious. The sounds of other men pounding up the ladders behind him spurred him back into action and he headed for the bridge. Unlike the other chiefs, who were all specialists in Engineering, Weapons, or Operations and who thus had specific GQ stations, the chief master at-arms did not. For peacetime exercises, he would normally lay up to the bridge with the exec, there to be dispatched to do whatever needed doing. But if the ship had already been hit, his principal duty was to make a sweep of the ship to ensure that wounded or unconscious men were not left behind in damaged or smoke-filled compartments. His secondary duty was to pick up any stragglers and herd them to the nearest damage-control party.

Another Terrier let go, followed by its twin—dual launches. This was a no-shitter, as the snipes would say.

He had been Founding the base of the final ladder leading up to the bridge when he had heard another missile launch, followed by a loud booming noise close aboard to port. One second later, he had felt the first impact of the bomb hitting Combat. He was frozen in his tracks when the second, much larger impact had bounced him back off the ladder and up against a bulkhead. He had rolled back out onto the deck of the passageway as the ship heeled first to starboard and then back to port.