Another investigator was also checking the decks immediately above and below, although Repair 8 would have primary responsibility for any damage on the flight deck. Still, it never hurt to double-check. Fire had a way of doing that aboard a ship, creeping along through empty spaces and between decks, getting out of hand before a fire party really knew what was happening.
Twenty minutes later, the investigator was satisfied that the damage was limited to the 03 level of the carrier in a small square centered around the admiral’s stateroom.
0330 Local
Medical Department
“Admiral do you know where you are?” The voice was kind, yet insistent. “I need for you to wake up now, Admiral. Come on, I know you can hear me.”
Tombstone felt like he was underwater. The voice was barely audible, as though someone were talking a long way away. It sounded muffled, dampened by the sea. He tried to move, and felt the same sluggish restraint he always noticed when skin diving.
“Admiral talk to me.” The voice again, closer now, and louder.
Tombstone felt a groan shudder up from his gut. He twisted, and that small movement brought pain flooding into him from all over. The groan deepened, forcing its way out from between his lips against his wishes.
“GoodI knew you were awake. Open your eyes now, please.”
Tombstone tried to obey, and felt the light slowly creeping up under his eyelids. It was lighter now, but the shapes around him were oddly fuzzy and indistinct. “Where am I?” he managed to croak. His throat felt as though it were on fire.
“You’re in Medical, Admiral. There was an explosion and a fire in your quarters. You were injurednot seriously. You’re going to be fine.”
Tombstone squinted, trying to resolve the blurs into faces. Finally, one familiar to his eyes swam into view. “Batman.”
Batman laid a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Take it easy there, Stoney. I didn’t believe it possible, but that bulkhead was harder than your head. You just lay back for a while, let the doc finish checking you out.”
Batman shot the doctor a concerned look. “He says you’re going to be fine.”
“Help me stand up.” Tombstone’s voice was weak but insistent.
The doctor shook his head. “Not a chance, Admiral. You check out all right, you stay with us for another thirty minutes, then we’ll see about letting you move around. I’m not risking it at this point, not until I get the X-rays back and I’m sure you don’t have a concussion. Tell me, how’s your eyesight? Having any problem seeing me?”
The doctor snapped a flashlight on, flicked it across Tombstone’s pupils.
“No problems. I can see you fine,” Tombstone lied. “Just let me-“
Batman increased the pressure on his friend’s shoulder. “You lie your ass back down in that bed, Stoney, or I’m going to authorize the doc to put you in restraints. You got that?”
“Dammit, Batman, I-“
“It’s my ship, Tombstone.” Batman’s voice carried with it a quiet dignity. “Quit being an asshole and let me go take care of it. The doc only called me down here because you kept trying to roll out of the bed.”
“Okay.”
The efforts of the last few minutes had exhausted him, he was alarmed to find out. Tombstone lay back on the narrow mattress and stifled another groan. At least everything was moving, or seemed to be. He’d know for sure if they’d let him stand up. But there was no point in keeping Batman from his duties with a truculent childlike reaction from a senior officer. What he’d said was trueit was Batman’s ship. At this point in time, there was absolutely nothing Tombstone could do except stay out of the way.
“That’s better. Stoney, I’m going to leave, but I’ll be back later to check on you.”
“He’ll be fine, Admiral Wayne,” the doctor assured him. “Now that we’ve got him under control.”
The explosion. Tombstone tried to summon up the exact details from his battered brain, but remembered nothing more than hitting the wall.
He’d been headed back to his cabin, that much he remembered. There’d been a sharp flash, thenwhat?
Nothing.
What on the ship could possibly explode that way?
Nothing Tombstone knew about, not in that area of the ship.
A cold, clear dread settled in his stomach. It hadn’t been the ship, he knew with compelling certainty. Not the ship at all. Someone elsesomething elsehad caused the explosion.
Sabotage.
0400 Local
Admiral’s Conference Room
“I demand to be briefed. Immediately.” Bradley Tiltfelt’s voice was cold, full of self-righteous rage. “It’s imperative that I be kept fully aware of what’s going on on this ship.”
“How bad is it?” Batman asked the damage-control officer. The Captain of the carrier was standing immediately behind the grimy and sweating damage-control officer.
“Bad enough, Admiral.” The engineer shook his head. “The damage below-decks is relatively minor. In relative terms, that is. A few staterooms, some personal belongingsnothing structural is damaged.”
“And the flight deck?” Batman demanded.
“You’ve lost the waist catapult. There’s no way around it, Admiral.
The flight deck is slightly warped, and I can’t be sure the shuttle run is even straight, much less that it retains sufficient structural integrity for launches. If we absolutely had to, like if we were in the middle of the warwell, you might chance it. But it would be just thata chance. It might break loose the first launch and blast shrapnel into your flight deck crew and your aircraft, or it might actually work for a while. That’s even assuming it’s straight and it doesn’t tear itself apart under the steam pressure. Or that it holds pressure at all.”
The engineer shrugged helplessly. “Without a lot more facilities than I’ve got on the ship, I just can’t tell. For now, my recommendation is no flight operations whatsoever off the waist catapult.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Batman’s voice was cold and determined. “But at least we have the two forward catapults still working, right? No problem with them?”
The engineer nodded, the Captain of the aircraft carrier also nodding thoughtfully behind him. “As far as I can tell, there should be no problem with the forward catapults. There’s enough separation that maybe there was a little stress on the deck there, but not enough to throw it out of true. There are no signs of damage, at any rateI’d like to have the shipyard look it over next time we’re in, but I think it’s safe.”
Think it’s safe. Batman nodded. That would have to do for now.
“Admiral?” Tiltfelt’s voice was sharp, demanding. “Did you hear me? What does all of this mean?”
Batman whirled to face the civilian. “It means that we’ve lost a part of our fighting capability. Sir.”
Batman let the last word drip venom. “Not so much that we’re sitting ducks, but we can’t launch as rapidly as we’d like to be able to. Is there any part of that you don’t understand?”
“What do you mean by speaking to me in that tone of voice?” Tiltfelt’s face was flushed.
“I mean that I have a job to do and you’re getting in my way. Sir, I’ll tell you everything you need to knowwhen I can. But I’m not going to let what amounts to a courtesy back-briefing to a civilian interfere with my ability to conduct operations off this carrier. Is that absolutely clear to you?”
“Why you-“
Batman cut him off. “Because if it’s not, then it would make me happier than shit to strap your soft little civilian butt into a COD, throw it off the pointy end from one of my two remaining catapults, and send your ass back to the States. At least that way I won’t have to put up with having a convention of saboteurs aboard my ship.”
Bradley Tiltfelt stood and drew himself up to his full height. At six feet, three inches, he was an imposing figure. Even rousted from his stateroom in the middle of the night by the explosio
n and General Quarters alarm, he managed somehow to look as though he’d spent hours getting dressed. The clean, crisp white shirt, the old school tie so carefully knottedin spite of himself, Batman was grudgingly impressed. Almost as much as he was dismayed by the State Department representative’s inability to understand the situation in which Batman now found himself.
“If you are implying that any of our allies are responsible for this unfortunate occurrence, then I certainly hope you have the facts to back you up,” Tiltfelt said coldly. “Otherwise, I’d suggest you keep your paranoid ravings to yourself.”
“Just who on this ship do you think would want to set a bomb off, mister?” Batman exploded. “Some seaman pissed because he didn’t get a letter from home? Or because the chief yelled at him? I don’t think so. We’re the ones who live here. We depend on this ship. And don’t you think it’s just terribly odd that the explosion occurred in Admiral Magruder’s cabin?”
“The only logical cause of this explosion is one of two things,” Tiltfelt continued as though Batman hadn’t spoken. “First, one of your subordinates has failed to supervise some sort of system properly and it exploded.”
Tiltfelt waved one languid hand in the air as though filling in the details. “I’m sure if you look hard enough, you’ll find that’s certainly a possibility. The second, of course, is exactly as you’ve outlinedsome disgruntled sailor under your command, no doubt alienated by your lack of concern for his physical well-being and morale, has become sufficiently disgruntled to make this sort of statement.”
“That wasn’t a statement, that was a fucking bomb. Just how many sailors do you think have access to that sort of material?”
“Probably all of them, judging from the degree of leadership and organization I see on board this vessel,” Tiltfelt shot back. “And until you have hard evidence to back it up, you’d best refrain from idle and malicious speculation. Clearly, there is no reason for our guests to wish to disrupt the very peace process that they’ve initiated.”
“The State Department-” Batman roared. He was cut off by the appearance of a tall, shaken figure in the hatch leading to the passageway.
“Gets people killed.”
Tombstone stepped over the knee-knocker and entered the conference room. He looked at Batman, quelling his friend’s rage with a supportive look, then turned his gaze to Tiltfelt. “That’s how it always is, isn’t it? State starts yelling about diplomatic solutions and the second it goes wrong, they blame the military. Well, mister, maybe Sixth Fleet draws a little more water than you think it does. You’re excused, Mr. Tiltfelt. Please remain in your cabin until I call you.”
“Just where do you people get off with this?” Tiltfelt sputtered. He turned and looked at his aides behind him as though for support. “First you provoke an attack, and then you try to blame the logical consequences for your actions on the same parties. Just who do you people think you are?”
Tombstone smiled. “I think I know exactly who I am. I’m the commander of Sixth Fleet. And you’re here solely at my sufferance, Mr. Tiltfelt. Solely at my sufferance.”
Tombstone turned to Batman and said formally, “Admiral, may I have the use of your communications officer for a few minutes?”
“Of course, sir,” Batman replied in just as formal tones. “My ship is at your disposal.”
Tombstone nodded. “Have someone call in for me, please. Tell them I need a secure circuit to the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, D.C. He should be in his office at this hour, but if not, have someone hunt him down. It’s imperative that I speak with my uncle immediately.”
Tombstone turned back to Bradley Tiltfelt. “As you reminded me right after you arrived on board, my uncle is Chief of Naval Operations.”
Tiltfelt was almost apoplectic now. His color had deepened from red into a shade of purple that looked downright dangerous. “I don’t care if the president is your mother. You’re damned well not getting away with this.”
“Oh, I think I am. You’ll think that too after I talk to him.” Tombstone’s voice was almost mild, even more dangerous by the sound of it.
“Please remain in your stateroom,” he repeated. “I’ll call you if I need youif that ever happens.”
Five minutes later, the communicator buzzed Tombstone on the intercom.
“I have the CNO’s office, Admiral,” the communications officer announced. “His people are standing by for you.”
Again, the delicate dance of elephants. The staff at the CNO’s office was not about to leave their four-star boss waiting on the line for a three-star fleet commander. Staff and assistants took the ranks of their bosses almost as seriously as the officers themselves did. More so in some cases. Tombstone sighed and picked up the receiver. “This is Admiral Magruder,” he announced.
“Admiral, good morning. Please stand bythe CNO will be on the line shortly.”
An annoying popular tune started playing softly on the line.
His uncle’s voice interrupted it seconds later.
“Tombstone. What the hell happened?”
“An explosion on board, sir.” Tombstone quickly sketched the outline of what had happened and the damage to the carrier. He concluded with: “State seems to think they carry a pretty big stick around here, Admiral. I need to ask you nowhow much leeway do I have?”
He knows what I really mean, Tombstone thought. No matter how I phrase it, he’s going to read between the lines. I don’t have to tell him how much the whole idea of this conference pissed me off, that I know he sent me out of Washington before I could learn about it simply because of that. He knows what I would have said, how much I would have objected to itand right now, sitting back there in D.C., he knows I would have been right. There were more advantages than his uncle had suspected to having a relative on the front lines, but this time the advantage was Tombstone’s.
“Tell me what you need, Stoney.” His uncle’s voice was taut, white anger lurking underneath. It was a characteristic the Magruder males shared, the icy cold exterior that masked a hot, volatile temper few of their shipmates suspected. “Tell me what you need.”
“A free hand,” Tombstone replied promptly. “Sir, the political battles and diplomacy need to be run from D.C.not from my carrier. I suspect we’ll have evidence in the next several hours to prove that this incident was the work of someone outside of my crew or air wing. You know it was. Admiral, I’ve got twenty-eight foreign nationals on board my ship right now, half of them from a nation that already wiped out my flagship. In spite of what State says, this is not a diplomatic problem. It’s a military one. And I’m the man on the front line. I need to know now, sirdo I have your support or not?”
“Stoney, calm down.” His uncle’s voice was quiet and reasonable now, although Tombstone could still hear the anger simmering just below the surface. “I sent you out there for a reason. And no, although you didn’t say so, I didn’t tell you everything. The final details weren’t arranged when you left, but I suspected exactly this sort of ploy by the State Department, some sort of planning conference held on board your ship. I couldn’t put someone else out there, StoneyI just couldn’t. The only one I can trust to give me a solid reaction, to do what I would have done if I were there, is you.”
“So where does that leave us, Uncle?” Tombstone asked, his own anger deflated by the anguish he heard in his uncle’s voice. “Where does that leave us?”
“With one slightly damaged but damned dangerous aircraft carrier,” his uncle replied immediately. “And it leaves me with some ammunition. If you need any scientific or forensic assistance, just say so. Otherwise, I’ve got what I needproof that State Department’s ploy isn’t going to work. In the end, we’re going to save lives because of this, lives that would have been wasted on some NATO peacekeeping plan or cockeyed idea of a presence mission. We tried it their waynow it’s our ball game.”
Tombstone’s load suddenly slipped off his shoulders. That he’d been in conflict with his
uncle had made him acutely uncomfortable. During the years that he’d followed his uncle up the career ladder within the Navy, he’d felt a growing closeness to the man, a new appreciation of the hurdles his uncle had cleared so handily as a junior admiral himself. Now, as the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Thomas Magruder held ultimate responsibility for the performance of the Navy. Tombstone knew that, no matter how hard he tried, he could never appreciate fully the pressure his uncle operated under. Sure, now that he’d had his own tours as a flag officer, he might begin to understand itbut never really understand, not unless he ended up sitting in that seat himself someday.
“Admiral, this is what I’d like to do.”
Briefly, Tombstone outlined his plan.
“Make it happen,” his uncle said instantly. “Here are your steaming ordersthe formal Rules of Engagement amendments will follow, but for now I want you to know this. First, you will take all precautions necessary to prevent another attack on the carrier. I’m not there, and you’re on scene. I’ll let you make the call as to what that exactly entails. The tactical situation changes too rapidly for us to micromanage it from here. You make the call, StoneyI’ll back you up. Second, try to stabilize the situation there.”
Tombstone started to protest, and his uncle cut him off.
“I know that’s a broad order, but againI’m not here to micromanage. You need to start with finding out exactly what happened in the attack on La Salle and go from there. You can’t do that if you take any more damage. Those are your priorities, Admiral. Do you have any questions?”
“No, Admiral.” Tombstone’s voice was grim. “We won’t take the first hitnot ever. You can be sure of that. And I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of the rest of this tactical situation. As soon as I know anything, you’ll hear about it.”
“I expect no less.” His uncle’s voice took on a note of vicious glee. “And now I’m going to go cram your damaged catapult up somebody’s ass.”
0500 Local
Yuri walked back to the stateroom that he shared with the other senior Ukrainian representative. They followed a circuitous route, following behind a young seaman designated to guide them around the areas damaged by the bomb. Down two ladders, aft forty frames, then back up to the main 03 level. The acrid smell of smoke had already infiltrated the lower decks, although it was markedly less overpowering than it was on his own level.
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