Even two hundred feet away from the fire, Beaman could feel the waves of heat rolling over him. The fire billowed and roared, battered the overhead, and reached out for them with tentacles of sparks.
"Get moving. Be safe," the team leader said. He gave Beaman a swat on the rear as Beaman and his designated messenger broke off from the pack. "We're right behind you."
As they neared the edge of the fire, the hosemen behind Beaman arced a stream of fog into the air, showering it around him from a safe distance away. It wasn't particularly useful for actually extinguishing the fire, but that wasn't the point just yet. The mist cooled the air off to a temperature that his fire-fighting ensemble could withstand.
Never step where you can't see. Beaman edged out just a bit from the fire, out to the edge of the cloaking smoke that roiled like a snake in the air. The banshee scream of the fire was louder now, reducing the voice of the team leader on his communications handset to a harsh whisper.
The rest of the damage control party was out of sight now as Beaman and his messenger moved around the far wall of the inferno. No secondary explosions yet, and it looked like--two more steps--yes, by God, one break. He could see the hangar queen safely out of the way. Safe for now, at least. Another five minutes and the gutted hulk of the queen would simply be more fuel in the fire. And then they would have a problem--once the aircraft's metal ignited, there would be damned little chance of extinguishing the blaze.
Beaman backed off a bit until the noise was at a tolerable level. He toggled the transmit switch and screamed, "Hangar queen's clear. Checking the far side now." He slipped the walkie-talkie into a pocket on his fire fighting suit and motioned to the messenger to follow him. If he lost communications completely, his messenger would be his only link with the team leader.
Back close to it now, as close as he dared. The air inside his ensemble scorched the delicate lining of his nose, rasped against the back of his throat as he sucked down heaving breaths. Sweat cascaded down his face, his neck, his entire body, trickling down to soak his dungarees and seep into his boots. Another few steps, another one step--Beaman struggled against the blackness crowding in on his vision, knowing on some level that he was too close, too damned close, that he had to ... He felt someone jerk him back by his elbows. He stumbled and fell awkwardly onto the deck. Heat from the steel plates blistered through the fire retardant gear. He could feel the skin along his leg where he landed starting to stick to the fabric. Beaman let out a scream, then shoved himself up and away from the deck, drawing on reserves of energy he wouldn't have guessed that he had.
"Too close!" Beaman could make out the words that the investigator mouthed, unable to hear over the noise.
Too close. Too damned close. Beaman shook his head, clearing away the fog that threatened to consume his consciousness, Get himself killed, pass out or something, and he'd put the whole team at risk trying to come after him.
He nodded to let the messenger know he understood, then motioned them forward. They resumed their achingly slow progress around the fire, inching forward in the near-complete darkness.
Another two steps, and Beaman felt the heat start to decrease drastically. Was it possible--yes, by God. Through the veil of partially combusted missile fuel, burning bits of debris, he could see the open hangar bay doors. Outside, the gale raged, the wind blowing parallel to the length of the ship, sucking the smoke outside and creating a draft on the entire hangar bay.
But how could they contain the fire already raging inside? If only there were some way to channel the force of the storm into the hangar bay, let Mother Nature's rain dowse the flames, cool the inferno to a point that the man-made fire fighting systems had a chance to beat it out?
Could they push it overboard? Sure, if they were up on the flight deck with Yellow gear and Tilly, the flight deck crane that was used to hoist burning aircraft over the side. But down here?
Wait. It just might be possible--he stepped back farther from the flames, felt the air inside his suit start to cool slightly. He lifted the walkie-talkie to his masked face and started shouting.
"He wants to what?" Batman roared.
"Turn abeam to the wind, Admiral," Coyote said. "Open the hangar bay doors on both sides. According to DCC, it might just work."
"What idiot is down in Damage Control Central?" Batman snapped. "This is lunacy--the last thing we need is to feed more oxygen in to the fire. All that's going to do is spread it and gut this air craft carrier like a-like a-" Batman spluttered to a stop, and Coyote leaped into the silence.
"I think it will work, Admiral. Frankly, with fires topside and in the hangar bay, it's our only chance. We can fight one, maybe both for a while. But not much longer if we have any chance of ever using the flight deck again. It's going to buckle--and that will be the least of it." He pointed at the damage control schematic of the ship. "Another five minutes, and it's going to get to the catapults. Then you can kiss that flight deck good-bye for good."
Batman was silent for a moment. Then he said, "What about the men on the deck? We've lost internal communications with Repair Eight. The wind shifts and it'll foul their plan of attack completely."
"Messengers," Coyote said. "In the end, it'll help them, too. They're going to have to push that flaming mass of metal over the side one way or another, and right now they're working at cross angles to the wind. We turn, we give them a cross wind."
"Dangerous."
"It always is."
Batman stared down at the flight deck, watching the coordinated chaos that represented one of the finest fire fighting actions he'd ever seen anywhere, in training films, in drills, in actual videotapes of disasters. The missiles that had hit the flight deck had come in at a low angle. One had plowed through four helos parked aft, another had taken out two E-2 Hawkeyes parked next to the island. He shuddered as he studied that particular hit. Another twenty feet and the missile would have snapped the tower right off the ship.
Finally, Batman said, "Do it. But don't kill anyone in the process."
"Okay, stand by," the team leader shouted. "Hosemen, get over to the other side and get the windward hangar door open. It'll take them about two minutes to get us abeam of the wind." The team leader looked over at Beaman. "I hope to hell you're right about this. DCC thinks you are."
Beaman tried to speak, but all he could manage was a hoarse croak. Pain rattled down his throat as scorched tissue protested. The corpsman leaned over him and pressed a canteen of water into his hand. "Drink a little more--you're headed down to sick bay, man."
Beaman struggled to his feet and tried to shove the corpsman away. He took another slug of water in, rolled it around in his mouth and let it seep into the damaged tissue. Finally, he felt the tightness in his throat start to ease up. "Not yet," he whispered. "I have to see if it works."
The corpsman grabbed him by the arm and tried to pull him Over toward a transport litter. "Going down to triage now."
The team leader stepped between the two of them, breaking the corpsman's hold on Beaman's arm. "Not yet. He earned this." A hard, shuddering, grating vibration ran up through the soles of their feet, and all three turned to stare at the hangar bay doors slowly inching back along their tracks. The world outside was solid gray, and sheets of rain were already pelting the remaining gear inside the hangar bay. Water slashed across the vastness of the hangar bay, flashing into steam as it hit the still raging fire. The howl of the fire competed with the hiss of steam and the keening of the wind through the four-foot gap in the beam of the ship.
"More. All the way," the team leader said into his walkie-talkie.
Beaman broke away from the rest of them and walked unsteadily toward the massive, three-story metal doors. He heard a shouted curse, then the corpsman joined him, steadying him by holding one elbow as they moved as quickly as they could across the open bay. They fell in side by side along the line of men and women straining to move the massive bulk of the hangar doors.
Beaman found a handhold and fe
lt a moment of despair at that massive inertia with which the steel doors resisted the best efforts of the team. The doors inched back achingly slow, grinding and squealing inch by inch over the greased tracks upon which they rode.
Then something gave. Almost imperceptibly, the doors picked up speed, increasing the thin slit window open to the weather outside.
The difference was noticeable almost immediately. The wind picked up, battering at the flames, driving them out of the open doors on the opposite side of the hangar. The fire licked hungrily at the edge of the deck above and the low catwalk that surrounded the flight deck. Beaman saw a canister life raft sway unsteadily as the flames reached it. First one support line gave way, then the second. The canister tumbled down into the fire, and as the plastic seal around it gave way, it gouted forth the eerie shape of an automatically inflating life raft. It seemed to float for a moment on top of the burning hot air, tossed upside down by the draft, and then the tough plastic vaporized in the flames. Beaman saw one small fragment spiraling in the updraft before the wind forced it out the other side of the ship.
"It's working," the team leader shouted. "Come on now--put your back into it!" Each person redoubled his efforts, pushing muscle and sinew past the point of pain, welding their flesh with that of the ship they sought to save.
"I see it," Beaman shouted. "Grissom, I see the boundary of it." He dropped his hold on the door, now sliding easily along its track, and raced forward to the fire. He stopped just twenty feet away, the hard pounding rain and wind almost driving him forward into the inferno involuntarily. He turned back to the team leader. "We need some shoring timbers, then some flat sheets of metal. And yellow gear."
"You think it will work?" Grissom asked.
Beaman nodded. "The wind is driving the smoke away from us, the rain's acting like a fogger, and we got fresh air coming in. Come on, we got to get it off the deck now."
Within moments, the damage control team had a makeshift tractor rigged on the front of the yellow gear. "I got it," Beaman said and stepped forward to take the driver's seat.
"No way." This time, the corpsman locked his arm around Beaman's neck and pulled him back. Beaman felt pain flash in his upper arm, then looked up at the corpsman. The man's features were fuzzy--and there was something about a fire, some reason Beaman had to stay awake, had to, had to get to the- With the urgency beating his brain, Beaman slid to the deck, unconscious.
The corpsman held up the empty syringe. "Morphine. It'll do it every time," he said aloud.
But no one was listening.
"That's the last of them," Batman said, his voice heavy with relief. Tilly the crane had just unceremoniously released the last burning aircraft over the open water, her steel cable almost at a forty-five degree angle in the gale force winds. "How the hell they pulled this off, I'll never understand. Get the chief engineer down there. I want to know how bad the deck is."
"He's on his way, Admiral," Coyote answered. "We've lost two Hawkeyes and four helos, along with the Tomcat."
"Then let the small boys know they're going to have to pick up the slack in SAR," Batman said. "The Hawkeyes have enough crews on board to do a hot crew swap."
"If we can launch," Coyote said.
Batman stared at him, cold fire shining in his eyes. "Those people didn't just beat that fire for me not to be able to launch aircraft. You tell the chief engineer it's a question of when and how--not if. One way or another, I want metal in the air in fifteen minutes."
1537 local (-8 GMT) Prison compound
Pushed along by the giant hand of the wind at their backs, Tombstone and Lobo needed only a minute to find the beginning of the runway. It was marked by a circular turning area and a taxiway extending to the south. Without a word, Tombstone turned in that direction. His entire body felt bruised by the wind and rain; he was grateful that the ground was covered in some kind of crushed black rock rather than slick grass or, worse, mud. As it was he had to lean to the left at almost a thirty-degree angle to keep his balance. He tried to keep the AK-47 protected by his body.
An enormous darkness loomed through the rain ahead. Tombstone found some bushes and crept along beside them, hunched over, until he was able to see that the dark shape was a mountain black and craggy. And at its base were several pairs of enormous sliding doors of what looked like galvanized metal. They were inset beneath a stony shelf in the side of the mountain, fronted by a tarmac apron that led to the taxiway. Hangars. Hangars, hidden from aerial surveillance by the mountain and a fringe of desperate-looking trees.
The hangar doors were all closed. How well-guarded were they? What would happen if he crept up for a little peak at-
He started when a hand tugged at his sleeve. He glanced back at Lobo, who pointed to the east. A pair of headlights was brightening the storm.
Lying flat on his belly beside the bushes with Lobo just behind him, Tombstone watched as a big dark sedan--not a military-style vehicle--approached the hangars. Its horn blasted once, and one of the hangar doors slid open. Bright light poured through the aperture, giving Tombstone a view of what lay within. His heart gave a rapid stutter.
CUAVs. Not like the manta. These were smaller, double-arrowhead-shaped. Like the one that had attacked him in Maryland.
And even in the narrow space he could see, there were dozens of them, stored on tall racks like private boats in a fancy dry dock. Dozens of them, waiting to go.
The sedan pulled just inside the hangar and stopped. An armed guard appeared from somewhere, and opened the back door. Another guard moved into view, escorting a third man. The third man was considerably taller than the others, and dressed in civilian attire. The guards bustled him into the backseat of the sedan. For an instant, just before the door slammed closed, Tombstone had a clear view of the man's face.
It was Phillip McIntyre.
1540 local (-8 GMT) Tomcat 306 USS Jefferson
Do your job, Hot Rock thought, over and over again, the words tumbling through his head like a mantra. Two Tone's right. Just do your job and nobody can blame you, no matter how things turn out. Do your job, do your job ...
And of course, in his case, that meant protecting his lead's ass. Any actual shooting would be executed only in conjunction with Neanderthal's efforts, and at his direction; for the most part, Hot Rock was there as defender and nothing more.
The battle was surreal in the gray soup. Attention focused strictly on the video game screen of the HUD, with perhaps an occasional glance at some other instrument. This radar blip was Neanderthal; that one was a Flanker; that other one, an incoming missile. Far more Flanker blips than anything else.
Hot Rock kept his gaze focused on the instruments, and his hearing on Neanderthal's signals radioed from the lead's position ahead and below. Now and then, when so directed, Hot Rock triggered a missile. Like all the Vipers, he was carrying only two Sidewinders, because the heat-seekers became notoriously unreliable in extremely wet conditions. But he believed he might have contributed to the shooting down of a Flanker with one of his Sparrows. "Nice shot," Two Tone said over ICS, "but don't get wild now; remember your job." Hot Rock felt relieved. It was good to have someone experienced tell you what to do.
With another part of his head Hot Rock kept track of other reports flashing over the air. Splash one, splash two, splash three Flankers, Then a Mayday. One American down.
Mayday. Mayday. Unimaginable to bail out in these weather conditions; what hope of surviving the trip down, far less being in the water? Fly, watch, fire. Don't think about that. Do your job. Follow the leader. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Missile blips appearing unexpectedly on the radar screen, other blips disappearing. Vipers disappearing.
"The stealth bogey," Hot Rock blurted over ICS. "Two Tone, that UAV they briefed us about, it's here. It's taking people out left and-"
"Do your job, goddammit!" Two Tone snarled. "Stop trying to figure out-" The blip appeared and vanished from his HUD almost before it registered on his eye. At the same time, Neandert
hal's blip disappeared, too. There was a throbbing glow in the clouds, swiftly consumed by darkness.
"Neanderthal!" Hot Rock shouted. No response.
Then came Two Tone's cry from the backseat "Shit, Hot Rock, get us out of here! That thing's gonna be after us next!"
But Hot Rock had noticed something. A pattern in the vanished Vipers. The UAV was cutting straight across the Americans, from east to west. Nothing fancy. Locating American aircraft and firing at them from very close range.
Hot Rock saw this, and once he did, it was his responsibility. He owned it. He had to do something about it.
"Shut up, Two Tone," he said, and banked hard to the right. Now, instead of staring at his HUD, he gazed through it. Let his eyes take in the radar information peripherally, while he searched for holes and gaps in the clouds.
And he saw it. Briefly, almost hallucinogenically, the UAV was there, swimming like a great sea creature through the sky. And Hot Rock remembered something from the briefing Like American stealth aircraft, the UAVs had their engine exhausts located on top, where they could not be easily spotted by ground-based infrared detectors. But airborne sensors were a different matter. "Fox One!" he cried, and triggered a Sidewinder. The missile hurtled off his left wingtip, unraveling a garland of smoke behind it as it went, and curved toward the bogey. Instantly, the bogey nosed over in a maneuver so abrupt it formed almost a right angle. Hot Rock couldn't conceive of the G-forces involved ... then realized the UAV was indifferent to G-forces. As long as its wings didn't snap off, it was fine.
And it was turning toward him. That was the next thing Hot Rock saw before a raft of fast-moving clouds swept across his sight, and the manta disappeared.
Two Tone was howling from the backseat. Hot Rock felt an unnerving moment of doubt, of fear that once again he was screwing up, but of course it was too late to back out now. The manta was after him.
Carrier 14 - TYPHOON SEASON Page 23
