The door was heavy and was held shut with six dogs. He moved in front of the door and very carefully raised his head toward the window. Slowly, ever so slowly, careful not to let the rifle barrel touch the metal of the bulkhead or door. More and more of the room came into view, until he was looking directly in the window. Two sailors were visible sitting on the deck with their backs against the forward bulkhead, their arms crossed on their knees and their heads down on their arms. Someone had obviously ordered them into this position and was guarding them. He looked left, trying to see the sentry. No way.
There was a little passageway in from this door and window, about four feet in length, and he couldn't see around that corner. And the sentry couldn't see this door.
He could, however, see the navigator's chair and the chart table and the usual compass repeater and ship's clock and, between the windows, telephone headsets mounted in clips. He looked for reflections in the bridge windows. The windows here were all slanted outward at the top so the view down toward the water and the flight deck would be unimpaired.
So no reflections.
He lowered his head away from the window and applied pressure to the lower right dog. It moved. Without sound, thank God.
he technician who maintained these fittings apparently didn't ant to risk the captain's ire. Garcia turned the dog until it was in he open position.
He peered in the window again, taking his time, inching his ead up in case someone was there. Nobody. He opened the two ogs on the upper part of the door. This time the door made a oise as the pressure was relieved. Garcia huddled in the corner, 5 far out of sight of the window as he could get. Time passed.
He watched the dogs, waiting for a lever to betray he touch of a human hand by a movement, no matter how slight. othing.
Where in the fuck was Slagle? That was one hell of a phone call he was making to the lieutenant.
Finally he eased back to the window and ever so carefully raised is head until he could see inside with his right eye. There was a an there. A man with a submachine gun in his hands, the strap over his right shoulder and a gym bag over the other. The man as looking out the windows on the starboard side, searching.
Garcia lowered his head and held his breath.
If he saw the open ogs, the game was up. The gunman would be waiting for the oor to open. Garcia begin breathing again and counted seconds.
hen a half minute had passed he decided to risk the window gain.
A loud screech behind him. Garcia spun, ready for anything. od, it was the loudspeaker.
"You there in the catwalk, down on the flight deck. This is olonel Qazi on the bridge.
Leave the flight deck or I will shoot a an here on the bridge. Go below. Now! Or this man dies.
Gunny Garcia glanced in the window. The gunman was gone. He opened the remaining three dogs and pulled the heavy door pen.
"Now, Admiral," Colonel Qazi said as he hung up the I-MC ike. "I want you gentlemen to understand me. You and I are going upstairs to Pried-Fly. We won't be gone long. My two helpers here will ensure no one on the bridge moves a muscle or opens is mouth.
They will cheerfully shoot anyone who is so foolish.
Come, Admiral." Cowboy Parker looked from face to face.
Laird James and Jake Grafton had their eyes on him. They were standing with him on the left wing of the bridge, near the captain's chair. The bridge watch team were all seated on the floor in a row across the bridge, facing aft, their heads down on their knees, one of the gunmen watching them while the other pointed his weapon at the three senior officers. "What are you after, Colonel?" "No." Qazi's voice was flat and hard.
"We're not going to do it that way, Admiral. No conversations." The muzzle of the pistol twitched in the direction of the door.
Admiral Parker moved and felt the blunt nose of the silencer dig into the back of his neck.
There was no one in the passageway, no one except the dead marine who lay on his side upon the deck by the bridge door. Parker paused and Qazi dug the pistol into his neck. "Step over him." Parker did so, looking down and feeling very much responsible for the death of that young man. What had gone wrong?
As they climbed the ladder Parker said bitterly, "You're a bastard." "True. And my father was an Englishman. So you're in big trouble and your next cute little remark will be your last. Believe it. I don't need an admiral." Nothing in his thirty years in the navy had prepared Earl Parker for this... this feeling of despair, frustration, and utter helplessness. He was living a terrible nightmare from which he would never awaken. His men were dying all around him and he was powerless to lift a finger. He was being robbed of everything he had worked a lifetime for, of everything that made life worth living. He was being murdered an inch at a time. Hatred and rage flooded him.
But since he was Earl Parker, none of it showed.
He flexed his fists as he topped the ladder, his stride even and confident, his shoulders relaxed, then forced himself to unball his fists. His face remained a mask, an arrangement of flesh under the absolute control of its owner.
Don't let the bastard know he's getting to you, he told himself, wishing he hadn't made that last remark. My chance will come. God, please, let it come.
Parker undogged the door to Pried-Fly and pulled it open. Qazi stood just far enough behind him to make any attempt at going for the pistol impossible.
Inside the Pried-Fly compartment, the air boss and assistant boss, both commanders, stood silently and watched Parker and Qazi nter. The three sailors in the compartment kept their eyes on azi's pistol. Without a word, Qazi examined the panel that controlled the ship's masthead and flight-deck floodlights. Then he lanced at the air boss.
"Where is that helicopter that was searchg for the man in the water?" "We sent it to Naples," the boss said. He named the airfield. all Parker was looking at the column of black smoke rising from levator Four and being carried aft by the wind. Smaller columns of smoke were coming from Elevators One and Two, forward on the starboard side, and were waffling around the island.
On the flight deck below, the planes stood wet and glistening in rows nder the red floodlights. Even here, in this sealed compartment, Parker could smell the smoke. "And the liberty boat?" "We sent it back to the beach too." "Y." Qazi pointed the pistol at the senior enlisted man, a econd-class petty officer.
"Come here." The man looked at the admiral and then at the air boss. "Do as he says," the boss said. The sailor moved slowly, his eyes on the gun. "Turn off the flight. deck floodlights, wait five seconds, then urn them back on." The sailor's hands danced across the witches. The flight deck below seemed to disappear into the night, then reappear. "Again." The sailor obeyed.
"Now once ore.
With the lights back on, Qazi seized the admiral's arm and backed him up.
"All you people leave. Go below. If anyone comes back to this compartment, I will kill them and the hostages on the ridge." After the sailors and officers filed out, Qazi fired his istol into the radio transmitter that sat on a shoulder-high shelf ear the door. He stepped around the room putting bullets into very piece of radio gear he could identify. Then he followed the dmiral out of the compartment and down the ladder one level oward the navigation bridge.
Gunny Garcia crouched on the signal bridge and stared at the avy-gray aluminum door that covered the entrance to the ridge, now that he had the watertight door open. His first hought was, That's why the gunman didn't notice the two open ogs.
The watertight door was hidden by this aluminum door.
A mild piece of luck, in a business where you need every ounce of luck you can get.
His second thought came when he put his hand on the doorknob and started to turn it. There were, he knew, a lot of American sailors on that bridge. The whole watch team, since the ship was at general quarters.
And not a one of them armed. How many gunmen there were he didn't know.
So he was going to go charging into a firefight where he was outnumbered and some innoc
ent Americans were going to be shot, some of them fatally.
Casualties would be unavoidable.
Gunny Garcia took his hand off the doorknob and crouched, thinking about it. The fumes from the hangar fire were in his nostrils and the low moan of the wind in the masthead wires was in his ears. What to do?
Where in the name of God was that asshole Slagle?
What would the lieutenant want him to do? What would the captain, if he were aboard, tell him to do? If he was going to do anything at all, he was going to have to get to it pretty quickly, before that bunch with the Uzis decided to look out this window again.
When he had been in combat before he had been only twenty, just another rifleman in Vietnam. The sergeants and the officers made the decisions and he laid his ass on the line carrying them out. It was still his ass, but now it was his decision too. That's what you get, Tony, he told himself, for working your butt off for all these chevrons and rockers. Now you gotta earn "em.
Yet instinctively he waited. You stayed alive in combat by listening to your instincts. The people who didn't have the right instincts died.
Combat was natural selection with a vengeance.
What light there was disappeared. Then it came back on. Garcia looked around. And once more.
Someone was flashing the big floods on the island.
A signal? To whom?
A minute went by, then another. He risked another glance in the window.
Still just the two sailors sitting on the deck.
Damnation! What was going on?
What was that noise? That buzzing? A helicopter! Gradually the noise grew louder. More than one, Garcia decided. He knew where they were without looking. They were coming in with the wind on their nose, across the stern of the ship.
He took the pistol from his trousers and thumbed the hammer ck. One more glance in the window, then he pushed the door men and crept onto the bridge.
He eased the door shut behind more.
The sailors didn't look up. Good for them.
So far so good. He would try the silenced pistol first. If he could drop a man zthout the others hearing the shot, he might get a second or two vantage.
He could hear the choppers even here on the bridge. Now if they guarding these sailors is just looking at the choppers. He crept to the corner, keeping low, and peered around with the stol ready.
The gunman was ten feet away walking toward him and looking raight at him! He snapped off a shot. And another. The man was t! Garcia stuffed the pistol in his pants and stepped out with the com16 up.
Before he could pull the trigger the bullets from an Uzi tore to his side and he was off balance and falling and the MI 6 was mmering and he was desperately pushing himself backward, ward cover.
He was on the floor and he didn't have the rifle. A sailor ran still him for the door where he had entered. A stuttering hail of lead cut down another sailor charging toard him. The game was up.
Surprise was lost; to stay was to die. He scrambled on all fours crab-like for the door, now open. 'nother sailor careened past and then Garcia was through the or.
He would never make it. The gunmen would come to the door and cut him down. The watertight door was impervious to bullets. He pushed it shut and used the dogs to pull himself to his feet. He thanked the dogs shut with all his strength. There! The bridge indows were thick.
Bulletproof. It would take them about fifteen seconds to get this thing open.
He turned and hobbled toward the signalmen's shack as fast as could go, his side on fire and his back ready to receive the llets from the Uzis.
But the bullets never came.
When the ear-popping roar of the MI 6 filled the bridge, Hadad, the gunman on the port wing of the bridge who had been ividing his attention between the captain and the approaching helicopters, dropped to his knees and spun for cover. The jacketed slugs from Garcia's weapon ricocheted off the steel and smashed into the portside bridge windows, crazing them with a thousand tiny cracks.
Admiral Parker grabbed Qazi's gun hand.
"Run, Jake!" Grafton was the closest to the door. He launched himself through it.
From behind the helm installation, Haddad fired a burst toward Garcia and another over the body of his downed comrade at a sailor trying to make the door on the starboard wing. The sailor crumpled like a rag doll.
Parker twisted Qazi's wrist with maniacal fury. Qazi drew back his left hand and chopped at the admiral-once, twice-but he was off balance and couldn't get his weight behind the blows. He went to his knees to keep his bones from snapping. The veins in Parker's forehead stood out like red cords.
The pistol fell. Qazi flailed desperately at Parker's testicles.
The admiral was a man possessed. They struggled in silence. Qazi went to the floor to deny Parker leverage. His desperation gave way to panic; he had come so far, risked so much, and now this one man was defeating him!
Then suddenly it was over. Haddad struck the admiral on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol and he fell like a tree.
Qazi retrieved his weapon and slowly got to his feet. His right wrist was already yellow and purple. As he massaged it and opened and closed his hand experimentally he glanced at Captain James, still behind the captain's chair, leaning against the wall and looking at him. For the first time in a very long time a smile creased Laird James's leathery face.
Then he slid down the wall and rolled face down.
A blood stain was spreading across the back of his shirt. One of the ricocheting MI 6 slugs, probably. The helicopters settled into the glow of the island floodlights. Qazi checked his man who lay in a twisted heap in the middle of the bridge.
It was Jamail, the man who liked to kill.
The other gunman, Haddad, stood facing the Americans still seated against the wall. Three of them wore khaki. He was swearing at them in Arabic, his Uzi ready.
"No," Qazi told him and walked to where he could see down through the impact-crazed windows onto the angle of the flight deck. The helicopters were just touching down.
There was much to be done. He picked up the microphone for the IMC and pushed the button. "American sailors! This is Colonel Qazi.
Three of my helicopters have just landed on the flight deck. If you interfere, more men will die.
Someone just ied to gain entry to the bridge. As a lesson to you, the body of one of your sailors will be thrown to the flight deck. If there is any ore resistance, any more shooting, if another of my men dies, I ill kill your admiral." He put the microphone back in its bracket.
"Watch them," he Id Haddad.
He walked-over to the dead American and dragged is body to the door to the signal bridge. He looked through the window, then eased the door open.
Keeping low, he dragged the ody through, then wrestled it up over the rail. It fell away toward he deck below, leaving the rail smeared with blood. He went back nto the bridge and dogged the watertight door shut. He ropped the interior door open so the dogs were plainly visible. hen he walked the width of the bridge to where the captain and dmiral lay on the deck.
James still had a pulse; he was no doubt hemorrhaging internally. He would probably die soon. But the Americans didn't now that.
On the flight deck, sentries had exited the helicopters and spread out to guard them. He could see Noora helpingJarvis out. Qazi picked up his gym bag and turned to Admiral Parker, who as sitting up nursing his head. He kicked his arm out and rolled im on his back. Then he sat on him and extracted a pair of handcuffs from his gym bag.
He snapped them on the admiral's rists, then rolled him over and placed a piece of tape across his outh. Finally he helped the man to his feet.
"Nice try, Admiral, but not nice enough." He pushed the admiral toward the door.
'Stay here," he told Haddad. "And don't let anyone else onto the ridge.
Use grenades if you have to. Don't let them take you live." CALLIE GRAFTON stood on the balcony of her hotel room and shivered in the chilly wind.
She ignored the spattering raindrops and peered into the darkness, across the lights of the city, out to sea.
On clear nights she could see the lights of the United States, but not tonight. Too much rain, she thought. Too much cloud. She went back inside and closed the sliding glass door. A piece of the drapery got trapped in the door. She freed it and closed the door again.
It was two A.m. She had been lying on the bed still fully dressed, too tense to sleep. She had last seen Jake three and a half hours ago, when he bid her good-bye and followed that sailor into the alley. He must have decided to spend the night aboard ship. The officer at fleet landing had called and said that Jake was going out on the liberty boat, and that he had asked the officer to call and tell her he might be unable to get back ashore tonight. That was so like Jake. The heavens could be falling and Jake would have someone call and say that none of the pieces had fallen on him.
Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 2 - Final Flight Page 33
