by David Peters
“Four-Zero-Two November Charlie breaking right to heading three-zero-five for eight. Eyes open for traffic at my two o’clock.”
“Thank you, Four-Zero-Two November Charlie.”
“I don’t see how we can do it any other way, chief,” a uniformed man said above the numerous radio calls.
“You want me to run flight ops at the same time we replenish? That’s insane!”
“Every chopper that seats more than one person is flying people out from the front. Those birds have short legs, some of them are coming in with nothing but vapor in their tanks and they are draining us dry. These birds have nowhere to sit idle while we reload. They are either in the air or sitting on the deck on one of the ships. The only other option is the hellhole we are pulling these people out of.”
As the two spoke, a brightly colored blue and red helicopter came in over the wide, flat deck. The call letters from one of the local news stations emblazoned on the side. The instant it touched down, six people followed the directions of the deckhands and quickly made their way across the dangerous open deck and into a hatch leading below.
All of their attack and support aircraft were now doing nothing but providing cover for the cloud of helicopters flying to and from the city and shores. Each one loaded with those trying to escape the cities that were now nothing but fire and chaos.
“Our only option is to refuel while these guys are still rotating in and out,” the uniformed man said more to the captain than to the air traffic control lead. “It’s mostly helo’s so the wind over the deck isn’t as critical. We can maintain our heading, just straight and true.”
Captain Lewis stood behind the radar operators trying to tear the foil seal off his second bottle of antacid tablets. Coffee was the only thing keeping him going now and it was eating a hole through his stomach as it tried to kill him from the inside out.
“Anyone know the fatal limit on coffee?” he called out to no one in general.
One of the radar operators turned with his cup held high, “Seventy-five point three cups for the average weight male, sir.”
“I might be getting close to that,” he shrugged as he took another draw of the black acid in his cup.
“Rescue Three-Four, hold altitude and angels one, heading one-eight-zero.”
“Rescue Three-Four holding angels one heading one-eight-zero.”
“Holy hell that’s a lot of flight ops,” the captain said as he chewed the antacids. He looked across the various screens, each about two-feet wide and a foot and a half high. Flights were listed on some while paths were listed on others. The sheer volume of data was overwhelming.
“USS Comfort says they are out of room,” the air traffic control boss said with a grim tone, “we have sent the overflow to Tarawa but they are so full they have civies sleeping on the deck. We are going to have to face the fact that we are going to have to land more people on our deck.”
“I can’t have a bunch of wounded civilians running around as we conduct flight ops. Someone will get killed,” the captain said as he rubbed his eyes. “How much room does the Rainier have?”
“I have sent a few of the birds there but they aren’t happy about having people running around. Wounded have already filled up their medical bay, they are starting to pile up in the common spaces. I guess they are starting to use the storage lockers that we have depleted. That means civies are sleeping next to bombs and fuel.”
“Fine. See if you can set up a break in the cycle and get some of the helo’s on deck. We can shut down cat one and two and have them land there. I don’t want a bunch of people clogging up my runway. Move them into the forward hangar if they aren’t wounded.”
“Roger that, sir.” The woman turned back toward her control board, “Rescue Three-Four maintain heading.”
“Rescue Three-Four maintaining heading.”
“Rescue Eight-One, squawk one-niner-three-eight and descend to angels one.”
“Rescue Eight-One squawking one-niner-three-niner and descending to angels one.”
“Rescue Eight-One, squawk one-niner-three-eight.
“Rescue Eight-One squawking one-niner-three-eight. Sorry about that.”
“Roger that Eight-One. Rescue Seven-One, squawk...”
Captain Lewis stepped out of the darkened room and looked over the floating airfield below him. It was organized chaos. Planes would depart almost as fast as they could be refueled and rearmed. Two hundred meters off their port side, the Rainier was positioning itself in order to move supplies across a suspended cable. From this distance he could see crew members taking stretchers from a California National Guard Blackhawk while another hovered a short distance away as it waited for the pad to clear.
Down on the deck below, commotion toward the rear of the ship caught his attention. Men were scattering from a recently landed Hornet. He watched as if it were all moving in slow motion. One of the fuel lines had not been connected correctly and was pouring hundreds of gallons of jet fuel onto the deck. The growing pool spread across the painted black landing strip as another jet was touching down.
From behind him he could hear a frantic cry from the deck boss, “Bolter! Bolter! Bolter!”
He could see the deck officer frantically trying to wave the plane off. As the wheels touched the tarmac, the pilot pushed the throttle to the stoppers. The fighter leapt off the deck trailing a twenty foot twin blue flames as the pilot turned his landing into a touch-and-go.
Warning klaxon sounded across the deck as fire crews rushed toward the Hornet trailing long hoses while a squat, yellow colored truck belched smoke as the engine turned over. As the first lines of foam reached out for the expanding pool, Charles finally allowed himself to breathe. He watched for several moments through the deck binoculars then lowered them back down the sling around his neck.
In less than a four minutes, the entire plane was covered with the thick, foaming fire retardant. Firefighters began to turn off the hoses as the danger was contained.
“Do we have a preliminary casualty report yet? Everyone get out of the way in time?” he said to the man standing next to him.
“Looks like the pilot might have messed up his leg when he jumped out of the cockpit onto the deck. They carried him below and he is getting taken care of. Nothing else that can’t be taken care of with a bandage and a quick pep-talk.”
“We can’t keep this up. These guys have been at action stations for nearly seventy-two hours. People are going to drop soon. This is simply too much pressure.”
“Admiral says we do what we have to do, sir. I’m pretty sure he’s pulling the same schedule we are.”
Charles looked out toward the horizon. A large, gray ship followed the Stennis on as they made their three-hundred mile racetrack course. The USS Blue Ridge was the command and control vessel and Admiral Collins was driving the whole show from there. He wondered how many civilians were running around loose on his ship then chastised himself for the thought. The admiral didn’t work that way.
The captain was about to make a disparaging comment on the Admiral and his entourage of runners but thought better of it.
On the deck below, the clean-up continued as they attempted to clear the runway for more landings.
Charles turned away from the railing, “We simply can’t get many more people packed onto these ships. We’re almost to the point of not being able to do our jobs now, we just don’t have the room.”
A head peeked out through the deck door, “Sir, we just lost McChord control. They said there was fighting outside the tower then nothing. All of the base is off the air now and aircraft are asking for guidance.”
Charles sighed, “What does that leave us with for secure ground?”
“Olympia is still on the air but it’s sketchy. Nothing else with a runway longer than twenty-five hundred feet is available to us.”
“We need to change to hostile ground doctrine. All ground should be considered hostile territory. Ditch in the water if you can’t make a ship.
”
“Yes, sir,” the head said before vanishing back into the darkened room.
Charles looked at his watch. The next status meeting wasn’t for another two hours. He thought again about his family. He had been able to get ahold of them almost six hours before and had told them to go to the airport and find someone in military clothing. It was all he could do. It just seemed so damn worthless. More power at his hands than most armies in history yet he couldn’t get three people to his ship or contact them in any way.
~2~
Charles pulled the handset off the cradle after the third ring, “Captain, this is the bridge. I have a priority message incoming from CINCPAC.”
The female voice pronounced it as ‘sink-pack’ and was referring to the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.
Charles rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock. He had only been asleep for an hour and a half.
“Go ahead with the message, I’m awake.”
“Sir, the Rainier reports they have a fire in medical and the main cargo deck. Not sure what is going on over there but all hell is breaking loose. I’m getting mixed reports on fighting. One guy says they aren’t and another says they are. It’s a mess.”
“Are we still attached?”
“Yes, sir. Another hour to go before we have everything. Moving weapons now.”
“What does CINCPAC want?”
“They want to know what’s going on, sir. The Rainier isn’t answering their radio calls.”
“Report what you see out the window, best we can do for now. Plan for separation. I’ll be there in two minutes.”
He slammed the wall phone back into the cradle and slid his feet into his boots. He was in the CIC in just over a minute.
“Report!”
“Rainier is not responding to radio calls and they have visible fire at two points on the ship. Multiple reports of fighting, some deck crew have reported the sound of automatic weapons fire from the ship.”
“Have we separated from them yet?”
“Negative, sir. Central relay cable has not been released from their side so the fore and aft guy lines are still in place.”
“Cut the lines and get us clear. Put some steam on it.”
Charles watched as the ship began to heal hard over as the carrier slowly turned away from the stricken ship. Two, eighteen foot long steel rudders bit into the water as they struggled to alter the course of one-hundred and four-thousand tons of steel.
The Rainier began to fall behind. Her engines had stopped and the added speed of the Stennis was leaving her in the distance. Thick black smoke was pouring from the portholes on the front of the ship while at the rear, open flames could be seen crawling across the deck gear and consuming everything in its path. Slowly but surely the Stennis was putting distance between the two.
Near the waterline toward the rear of the ship he could see a large patch of the hull glowing orange and red. The gray paint blackened and flaked away from the hull while the water would boil away in huge torrents of steam. The constant tempering of the steel meant it would be only minutes before the hull gave way and water rushed through the opening.
“What the hell is going on over there?” Charles said to the sailor standing next to him.
“Looks like complete chaos, sir.”
He scanned the deck with his binoculars. He could see armed men running from the front toward the rear of the ship. At the rear they were running toward the front. Several were trying to get the lifeboats down but the smoke was making it difficult to see the details. Black and gray clouds rolled around the ship as it sat nearly motionless on the water.
“What was that?”
“It was too quick for me to make out. Was it someone in a black uniform?”
The smoke made it hard to see what it was. Something black had jumped from an upper deck onto one of the armed soldiers. They fell below the deck wall and did not come back up. The black thing stood up several moments later and sprinted down the deck toward the three men working the lifeboat rigging.
One of the men tried to fire but was too late. The thing crashed into him and he too fell out of sight. A second black thing jumped from the deck above and the other two men fell out of site.
“I want more speed. Get us away from that ship. All ahead flank! Put ‘em to the wall!”
The Stennis vibrated with power as the engines were brought up to flank speed. Four, thirty-ton propellers churned the water to froth as they pushed the ship past fifteen knots. They could do more than thirty but it would take time to get there.
At the rear of the Rainier something on the deck exploded sending a large, rolling mushroom cloud skyward and thick, flaming liquid across the decks. The sound hit them a second later. Two more followed in quick succession. Ragged steel belched rolling black smoke and flames as the ship began to list to the starboard side.
“Hang on, people, I think we are out of time.”
They were less than a mile away when the magazine storage far below the decks of the Rainier finally reached critical. Thousands of tons of heavy explosives, bombs, missiles and fuel exploded outward, consuming and growing as the steel walls folded away and exposed more explosives and fuel. The ship broke in two just behind the main stack, a shockwave of energy powering out from the sinking ship. He could see the shock wave race toward them but it happened so fast there was little he could do.
Several windows blew out in the command center and alarms rang across the board as the ship shook violently. There were several screams of pain as pieces of the Rainier bounced across those still in the open on the deck of the ship.
The pressure wave underwater was worse. It pounded the back of the carrier, rupturing two of her four screw shafts sending torrents of water into the turbine rooms. The metal hull bent like cardboard under the intense wave of energy. Water flooded into the engineering spaces and exploded into steam when the hot machinery was doused by the fifty-degree sea water.
Across the open deck, at least twenty sailors were downed by shrapnel from the detonation. Bits of the ship were still falling from the sky on and around the carrier.
“Report!”
“We have flooding in engine room one. Turbines one and two are offline. Reactor room one is offline. Steerage is out and the two screws are going to push us around in a big circle.”
“Cut the engines and let her drift. What about people?”
“Multiple casualty reports from all over the ship. Radio board is a mess, sir. Everyone is screaming at once.”
The fire alarms began to sound as crews rushed to put out spot fires started by the falling debris.
“Medical reports gunshots, sir.”
“What?”
“Medical is offline and no longer responding. I could hear yelling and several gunshots in the background. We have an unknown hostile situation in the medical lab, sir.”
More than ten miles away on the horizon, one of the guided missile frigates detonated in a massive fireball. Gray trails from stored missiles twisted and spun into the sky as the second magazine detonated. Twenty-five seconds later the rolling rumble passed over the ship.
“Who was that?”
“The Milius just went off the air, sir!”
“That answers that. What the hell is going on around here? Get Marines down to medical. I want everyone that was in that room put in the brig. If they are dead, lock them in the morgue. Got it? Treat this as if we have been boarded by hostile forces. Lock it all down!”
The sailor looked at him confused but relayed the order.
“How is this possible? Shut flight ops down completely. Anyone heading this way needs to go somewhere else. Anywhere but here. I want control of my damn ship!”
“Already done, sir.”
On the horizon he could see several of the gray hulks in the distance burning. A black, rolling cloud of smoke and fire was rising from the rear deck of the Blue Ridge.
“Get the admiral on the horn and ask him what the hell is going on!”
“They have been off the network for some time now, sir. We haven’t had a situation update since,” she paused as she looked at a small clipboard, “fourteen-hundred hours.”
“What was the last report?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, sir. Standard ‘keep doing what you are doing, rah, rah, go team,’ stuff.”
Smoke began to pour from the stacks of the command vessel. Two small explosions climbed silently into the sky as the ship began to heavily list to one side. A third explosion rolled skyward from the front of the ship and it rolled upside down and began to sink from the rear.
“You see anyone getting off the Blue Ridge?”
“Not that I can see, sir. I don’t see anyone in the water and no lifeboats. Not seeing any emergency transponders from the water.”
“Sir, the Burke reports they are abandoning ship. Fire is out of control at the rear of the ship and they will lose the magazine room shortly. They don’t have anyone else nearby.”
He could only shake his head in frustration. The fleet was falling apart around him. Whatever this thing was, it had found its way onto the ships.
He pointed at one of the deckhands, “Get whatever rescue assets we have in the air. Start pulling in survivors. Everyone you bring on board goes to medical or the brig. They are to be considered enemy combatants until you hear otherwise.” He pointed to another young sailor, “You. I want eyes on the Blue Ridge until the last bubble comes up. If you see anyone bobbing out there, I want a chopper sent right to ‘em. We all clear?”
“Clear, sir!”
“I’m going below deck. You,” he said pointing at the armed Marine in the corner of the room, “with me. I need to understand what the hell is happening on my ship.”
They sprinted down the passageways until they came to a bulkhead where two Marines were pointing their assault rifles down the other side of the darkened corridor.
“What’s the situation?”
