I’m Sixth Fleet now. Sixth Fleet. This entire body of water and everything that surrounds it belongs to methe carrier too, only because it’s within my sphere of responsibility. The carrier from the outside.
Everything inside and everything that leaves its deck is his.
Tombstone pulled his hand back, satisfied that he’d managed to restore Batman’s perspective, at least for the moment. There were no long-term answers, and it was entirely possible that his own presence on board simply ratcheted up the pressure on Batman one notch higher.
But where else was he to go?
His own flagship was an electronically gutted hulk, still underway to Gaeta for extensive repairs. A year, maybe twohis uncle had made it clear that he wouldn’t be there that long.
Nevertheless, he hoped that his relief at Sixth Fleet got a better deal than this was shaping up to be.
“All right,” Batman said finally. “Look, peopleyou know your jobs.”
He shook his head wearily. Then his expression softened. “A diesel submarine close to Shiloh, that’s a tough target. I know you’re doing everything you can, as are the aircrews we have out there now.”
He jerked his thumb in Tombstone’s direction. “The admiral and I are going to go grab a cup of coffee.”
He glanced over at Tombstone, and saw the confirming nod. “If you see any indication of hostile intent or hostile acts, shoot the bastard. If you have a question, shoot first and call me later. If he’s outside torpedo range when you regain contact, put everything you’ve got right on top of him. The second he ventures within torpedo range or makes any other threatening movehell, if its captain farts too loud, you kill him. Got that?”
Gator nodded. “Aye, aye, Admiral. We’ll get him.”
Batman led the way out of TFCC with Tombstone close behind. He paused outside in the empty conference room, sagging against one chair, holding onto the back of it for support. “I almost blew it, Stoney,” he said softly. He shook his head ruefully. “As many times as I’ve been on the receiving end of it, you’d think I’d know better than to lose my temper like that. Hell, they’re doing all they canthey’ve got tricks up their sleeve that weren’t even dreamed of when you and I were in their spots. They’re running ragged, and I let off steam at’em, just because I’m short a little sleep.”
“Get a hold of yourself, Admiral.” Tombstone’s voice was cold and sharp. “You did the right thing in therebut only after you fucked things up.”
Batman recoiled as if Tombstone had taken a swing at him. “I suppose you never lost your cool when you were in command?” Batman demanded, his voice rising again. “Dammit, Stoney-“
“For the foreseeable future, I’m your reporting senior,” Tombstone continued as though Batman hadn’t spoken. “Here are your rudder orders. First, you will reexamine your priorities. You have left standing orders that you will be rousted out of your rack over matters that do not necessarily warrant your personal attention. Admiral, we don’t know what the hell is going on out here. I understand your concern, and I applaud your diligence in trying to make every effort to ensure that another tragedy such as that which struck La Salle does not occur again.”
For the first time, Tombstone’s voice softened slightly. “But there are limits to what you can do. One of the worst parts of this job is that you have to pace yourselfwhen the balloon goes up, you’ve got to be well rested, alert, or at least able to manage a reasonable facsimile thereof. You can’t be there for every call. There’s no way.”
“That’s what your predecessor thought too,” Batman snapped back. “And as a result, he got his ship shot out from under him. That’s not happening on my watch, Admiral. No way.” He turned and started to walk away.
“And that’s the trick,” Tombstone said. “Deciding which ones are criticaland which ones can be handled without your intervention. Take this situation tonight, for example,” he continued, nodding toward the TFCC hatch. “You just did exactly what you’re paid to dogave your people the information they needed about your intentions and wishes, clarified the tactical choices for them, and then left them to do their jobs. Batmanyou don’t need coffee, not right now.” Tombstone pointed toward the admiral’s stateroom. “You need sleep.”
A long moment of silence stretched out between the two, broken when Batman finally shook his head. “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”
Tombstone almost smiled. “Some. But not the same one twice in a row. I learned something while I was out here. You will too.”
Batman shot him a suspicious look. “Is that an order to hit the rack, Admiral?”
“Merely a suggestion.”
Batman straightened. “Then may I assume that the admiral will be following his own advice? Because I’ll be damned if I can recall a time when I was called to TFCC when you weren’t right on my ass.”
Tombstone shrugged. “Point well taken.”
He turned to leave the room. “If you need me, I’ll be in my cabin. Other than that, you’re on your own.”
As the two admirals headed off at right angles to each other, each to his own stateroom, Tombstone paused at the hatch leading out of the conference room just as Batman reached his own entrance.
“Stoney?”
“Yeah?”
“We were never that young. And even if we were, we were a helluva lot hotter. Weren’t we?”
Finally, Tombstone did smile. “We thought we were. And right now, that’s all that matters.”
“Night, Stoney.”
“Night, Batman.”
It was sixty-four steps back to his stateroom. Sixty-four steps and eight knee-knockers, each one threatening to gash open a giant bruise on his shinbone as he lifted his tired legs to clear the ten-inch obstacles.
He turned left, then right along the starboard passageway, heading back toward the visiting flag spaces.
Two frames from his own compartment, Tombstone paused. He heard voices, one muttering angrily. At this hour of the morning, it caught his attention in a way that it wouldn’t have during the day.
He paused outside the hatch, read the squadron insignia, and felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him. VF-95his old squadron. How many times had he been up at this hour, going over some mistake he’d made in the air, swearing at himself for some trivial error. Feeling a little guilty, he tried to decipher the voices inside. There was only one, he realizeda man, talking to himself. A pilot, based on the phrases he caught. Mounted on the door frame was a small nameplate. It was Skeeter Harmon’s room.
Tombstone stepped closer to the door, then paused. Should he?
No, he decided. He tried to remember what it was like to be a junior officer, tried to imagine the horror and chagrin he would have felt had an admiral knocked on his door atit was almost three o’clock in the morning.
Every pilot has his or her own particular nightmares. For some it’s a soft cat, for others it’s the fear of ejecting. Each one finds his own ways to deal with it, and there is little that an admiral can do to speed the process along.
Tombstone dropped his hand down by his side and turned back toward his compartment.
0259 Local
Teletype Repair Shop
Inside the radio housing, delicate circuits clicked over microseconds, recording the passage of time far more accurately than was needed for the bomb’s purposes. Twenty seconds before the scheduled detonation time, two activating relays kicked over to their ready position. Poised just a millimeter over the metallic hard points that would complete the electrical circuit, they surged invisibly with the current poised over their tips.
As the timing circuit clicked over to 0300, both contacts closed the last millimeter of distance.
0300 Local
Starboard Passageway, 03 Deck
Tombstone took another step over another knee-knocker. The digital watch on his wrist chimed gently on the hour.
His world exploded.
Tombstone slammed hard into the bulkhead on his r
ight. His shoulder hit first, followed a split second later by his head. His foot, still poised over the knee-knocker, caught the metal ledge on his heel, spinning him back into the angle formed by the knee-knocker hatch and the bulkhead.
His chin slammed into the steel and he felt something crumple in his mouth.
He slid down to the deck, barely conscious. In the passageway, rolling down fore and aft on a wave of sound and smoke and flames. Tombstone felt the heat, searing and instant. Then it subsided slightly as damaged nerve endings shut down. Instinctively, he buried his head in his hands, shielding his face and eyes. It was a natural movement for a pilotthe eyes, his most critical personal asset aside from testosterone.
As his consciousness faded out, he noted how oddly quiet it was.
He slid to the deck, his cheek still scraping down the gray-painted metal bulkhead, and collapsed into an ungainly sprawl on the deck.
0301 Local
The explosion threw Shaughnessy down the passageway, slamming her into a fire hose coiled and mounted on the bulkhead. The impact stunned her for a few moments. She lay on the deck, heard the gonging sound of General Quarters begin, and feet pounding down the passageway, without entirely understanding what was happening.
“Shaughnessy!” A young man crouched next to her, shook her gently by the shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Full consciousness returned slowly. Shaughnessy stirred, and groaned as the numbness in her back seeped away. “I think so.”
Every second, her mind cleared more and more. “Help me get up.”
The other sailor shot an anxious glance down the corridor, then held out his hand. “Come on. General Quartersare you sure you’re okay?” he asked, a frown on his face. “You don’t look so hot.”
Shaughnessy shook her head, took a deep breath, and shoved his helping hand away. “I’m all right. Let’s get up to the flight deck.”
The other sailor, Airman Mike Moyers, led the way. They darted down the passageway, keeping with the flow of sailors scrambling for General Quarters stations, then went up one ladder to the flight deck. Both were assigned to Repair 8 as their General Quarters station, the damage-control team that was responsible for the flight deck.
As they stepped over the knee-knocker and onto the tarmac, Mike grabbed Shaughnessy by the shoulder again. He pointed aft to a cluster of people. “There it isthank God, no fire.”
Shaughnessy nodded. Of all the disasters they could face on board the carrier, a flight deck fire was one of the worst, second only to a fire in main Engineering. Uncontrolled, the flames could quickly engulf parked aircraft, weapons waiting to be uploaded onto wings, as well as the fuel outlets. In a matter of moments, a conflagration could destroy the entire fighting capability of an aircraft carrier. It had happened before.
“Let’s get suited up.” Shaughnessy took the lead as they darted toward their damage-control compartment. They joined a crowd of sailors thronging around it, struggling into asbestos-proofed fire-fighting ensembles, manning sound-powered phones, and generally gearing up for battle. It was the standard precaution. Even though there was no sign of fire now on the flight deck, there was no telling what damage the explosion had done belowand how it would spread.
Shaughnessy slipped the ensemble hood over her head, and the clear-tempered glass face mask immediately started fogging up. That was one of the worst parts about being suited up. While the gear provided excellent protection against most of the conditions a fire-fighting team would expect to encounter, the heat inside it quickly rose to a stifling temperature.
“Not yet,” the damage-control-party leader said, motioning to Shaughnessy. “Stand by, thoughso far it looks like all we’ve got is structural damage.”
Shaughnessy gratefully took off the hood and took a deep breath of the fresh air. “What happened?”
Mike turned to her. “You were right down the passageway from it, weren’t you?”
“Are you hurt?” the damage-control-party leader asked. He assessed her carefully. “Big raw gash on your foreheadwhat else?”
“I’m fine.” Shaughnessy shook her head, aware of the ache that was already spreading down her back. “Knocked me around a little bit, but that’s all.”
“Well.” The damage-control-party leader dropped the matter, relying on her assessment of her own condition.
“But what happened?” Mike demanded again.
“I don’t know. I’d just passed an admiral in the passagewaySixth Fleet, actuallyand I was headed for the line shack. Then there was this big noise, and a flash. I must have hit the damage-control gear mounted on the bulkhead.”
She shook her head, remembering just how fast it had gone.
There hadn’t been time to react, not even time to be afraid. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. “The admiralwhat happened to him?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone else in the passageway, but it was dark too.” Mike shrugged, and touched her gently on the back of the head. “Repair 2 will be on it. If he’s there, they’ll find him.”
Shaughnessy nodded slowly. It wasn’t her problem, not right now.
Still, Admiral Magruder had been in command of her carrier battle group during her last cruise. He seemed like a good guy, as admirals went. Be a shame if something happened to him.
“What was the explosion?” she asked. “There’s nothing in that part of the ship that could detonate like that.”
Mike shrugged. “You’re right about that.”
An uneasy feeling wormed its way into Shaughnessy’s gut. Disaster was possible in any part of the carriershe knew that. The entire structure was honeycombed with electrical lines, fuel lines, and myriad other conduits. There was nowhere that was entirely safe, not even the flag passageway.
But a fire in that area of the ship would more likely be electrical in nature, not explosive. Smoldering circuits, the stench of burning insulationthat was what she would have expected to find if she had been dispatched as primary investigator during a disaster. Not explosives. It was almost as though-
“You don’t think somebody could have planted a bomb on the ship, do you?” she said, hearing just how very terrifying the words sounded even as she said them. “Not a bomb.”
0308 Local
Starboard Passageway, 03 Deck
“Team Leader, Investigator.” The point man on the fire team crouched down low in the passageway over the crumpled form. “One casualtysend a corpsman up ASAP.”
“Investigator, Team Leader. Interrogative conditions in your area? The corpsmancan he make it up there?”
The investigator assessed the condition of the passageway. The bulkheads were charred and black smoke still boiled and eddied about him.
Still, there were no signs of an actual fire. Not yet. That was his role on the damage-control team, to be the first in, to report back to the team leader, who could then decide how to dispatch his fire parties and desmoking teams.
“Put him in a suit, but I don’t see any flames around. And get the desmoking teams on thisthat looks to be the main problem right now.”
“Roger.”
The investigator knelt down by the body and ran his hands gently over it. There were no obvious signs of damage other than unconsciousnessit could be that the victim had simply been overcome by the smoke. But the position he was lying in indicated that he hadn’t dropped gently to the deck.
The investigator glanced down the passageway, trying to locate the original source of the explosion. It couldn’t be too far, and there was every chance that this casualty had been caught in the immediate vicinity of it. No, better not to move himlet the corpsman take a look at him first. If he had hit the wall, maybe slid down from there, he could have fractured his neck or his back. To move him now would be to risk permanent paralysis.
Leaning over him to look at the other side of the man’s uniform, the investigator checked for a name. It was one of the things he would want to report immediately to the team leader, to
answer questions about why the injured sailor hadn’t shown up at his General Quarters station.
As his eyes lit on the collar, the investigator sucked in a hard breath. Stars. He brought his portable radio back up to his mouth. “Team Leader, I’ve identified the casualty. It’s Admiral Magruder.”
“The admiral? Are you certain?”
“Unless you know somebody else on board who’s got three stars on his collar, that’s who it is.”
“Roger. The corpsman is on the way.”
The investigator stayed with Admiral Magruder until two other team members showed up accompanying the corpsman. He left the admiral in their care, and proceeded on down the passageway to complete his preliminary examination.
Near the admiral’s quarters, the nonstructural bulkheads were twisted and warped. The smoke was thicker, and the scent of it seeped in under his ensemble hood. He pulled it down tighter, breathing out a heavy breath to clear it out.
Around the corner now, easy, don’t be getting in a rush. It looks like this is whereyes. The investigator picked up his radio for a third time. “Team Leader, in Compartment…”
He glanced up at the overhead and reeled off a series of figures from the barely legible brass plaque. “I have a possible Class Alpha fire.”
The investigator could hear the feet, the noises of a fire team moving as quickly as they could in their cumbersome gear. The hose slithered across the deck, clunking as the metal joints between sections scraped over the knee-knockers. A few moments later, he saw the lead hoseman materialize out of the smoke.
The investigator stepped back and let the rest of the damage-control team have complete access to the area.
Not a bad onenot as fires go. From the looks of it, most of the damage was done by the initial explosion. Just some residual fireshould be easy to extinguish.
The investigator left the scene and began circling through the adjoining compartments, checking for where the fire might have spread.
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