Final Flight jg-2

by Stephen Coonts

  On the vast flight deck, they walked around a row of aircraft to a clear area. Their guide stopped at a giant hinged flap that projected out of the deck at a sixty-degree angle. “This is a jet blast deflector, a JBD. The plane on the catapult sits in front of it,” he gestured forward to the launching area, “and this thing comes up and deflects the exhaust gases up and away from the planes behind. The JBDs are cooled internally by salt water.” He showed them the water pipes on the back of the unit, then strolled forward to the catapult hookup area.

  He pointed out the slot in which the shuttle traveled. The slot ran forward to the bow of the ship. “The catapult is about a hundred yards long and accelerates the planes up to flying speed.”

  “What moves ze shuttle?” a Frenchman asked.

  “It’s driven by steam. See, the catapult is right here under these steel deck plates. It’s like a giant double-barreled shotgun. There is a piston in each tube and they are mated together,” he sneaked a glance at Farrell, “and the shuttle sticks up through this slot. The airplane is hooked to the shuttle. Steam drives the pistons forward and tows the plane along.” He held up a hand and slammed it with his fist. “Pow!”

  “What is that?” Judith Farrell pointed to a glassed-in compartment between the two bow catapults that protruded eighteen inches out of the deck.

  “I’ll show you.” Tarkington led them over and they looked in the windows. “This is the bow catapult control bubble. The cat officer sits at this console facing aft and operates both bow cats. That console facing forward is where the man sits who monitors all the steam and hydraulic pressures and electrical circuits. He’s sort of like a flight engineer on a jetliner.”

  The group proceeded to the bow where they looked back down the length of the ship. The view was spectacular. The island superstructure over two hundred yards aft looked like a goatherder’s cottage. Here, Tarkington suggested, was a good place for photographs. Everyone except Judith Farrell began snapping pictures. She turned and stared forward, out to sea.

  “That’s east,” Tarkington told her. “You can’t see it, but not too far in that direction is the Strait of Gibralter, the entrance to the Med. We’ll be going through there in a few days.”

  “I know my geography.”

  “I’ll bet you do, ma’am. Just where in Paris do you live?”

  “The Left Bank.”

  “Where all those ol’ hippies and crackpots hang out?”

  “Precisely there.”

  “Oh.” He was silent for a moment. “Is this the first carrier you’ve been on, ma’am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what do you think of her?”

  “It’s a waste of billions of dollars when there are people in the world starving.”

  “You may be right, ma’am. I always figured that maybe somebody said something like that to Joshua when he was standing there looking at the walls of Jericho and thinking about tooting his horn. But my suspicion is that the folks in Jericho were thinking they hadn’t spent enough bucks on the walls. I reckon it all depends on your point of view.”

  She glanced at him with her brows knitted, then turned and began walking aft. Tarkington followed slowly, and the rest of the group lowered their cameras and trailed after them.

  They passed the bow catapult control bubble and the upright JBD and approached the island. It had looked small and unobtrusive from the bow, but as they neared, it took on the aura of a ten-story building festooned with radar dishes and radio antennae.

  The lieutenant led his five through an oval door — they had to step over the combing — and into a ladderwell. Their footsteps echoed thunderously against the metal walls as they trudged up flight after flight of steep stairs (ladders, the sailors called them), swimming against a steady stream of people trooping down. The ship was so stupendously large, yet the passageways and ladders were narrow, with low ceilings, and crammed with pipes and wires and fire fighting gear; the ship’s interior was incongruously disconcerting to visitors unfamiliar with warship architecture. Some people found themselves slightly claustrophobic inside this rabbit warren of bulkheads and ladders and people charging hither and yon on unimaginable errands. Toad paused on several landings to let his charges catch up and catch their breath.

  Six stories up they exited onto a viewing area their guide quaintly referred to as Vulture’s Row. Several other groups of journalists were also there. Everyone with a camera snapped numerous photos of the planes parked neatly in rows on the deck below and the junior officers answered technical questions as fast as they were posed. Several of the tour guides were pilots who expounded with youthful enthusiasm on the thrills associated with flying off and onto the carrier.

  “Are you a pilot?” the Frenchman with a Japanese camera asked Lieutenant Tarkington.

  “No, sir. I’m an RIO — that means Radar Intercept Officer — on F-14s. Those are the sharky-looking jobs down there with the wings that move backwards and forwards.”

  The Frenchman stared. “Ze wings?”

  “Yeah, the wings move.” Tarkington pretended to be an airplane and waggled his arms appropriately. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Judith Farrell roll her gaze heavenward.

  “Oui, oui. Formidable!”

  “Yep, sure is,” the irrepressible Tarkington agreed heartily.

  When their turn came, Tarkington led his followers into “Pri-Fly,” a glassed-in room that stuck out of the top of the island over the flight deck and offered a magnificent view. Here, he explained, the air boss, a senior commander, controlled the launch and recovery of aircraft. As Tarkington drawled along a helicopter came in to land, settling gently onto the forward portion of the landing area. Several of the group took pictures of the air boss standing beside his raised easy chair with all his radios and intercom boxes in the background.

  Tarkington’s group then packed themselves into the minuscule island elevator for the ride down to the flight deck level. Somehow the lieutenant ended up jammed face-to-face with Judith Farrell. He beamed at her and she stared at his Adam’s apple. The machinery was noisy and the whole contraption lurched several times. “Nobody’s died in here since last week, ma’am,” he whispered.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘ma’am,’” Farrell said, refusing to whisper.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When the door opened, they went down another ladder to the O-3 level and then through a myriad of turns to a ready room. The tourists were greeted by an officer who gave a little explanation of how aircrews planned and briefed their missions in ready rooms like this throughout the O-3 level. He showed them the closed-circuit television monitors around the room on which the only show playing during flight operations was the launch and recovery of aircraft on the “roof,” the flight deck. And he got some laughs with his explanation of the greenie board that hung on one bulkhead. Every pilot in this squadron had color marks recorded for each of his carrier approaches, which his squadron mates witnessed in glorious detail on the television monitors. Green was the predominate color and symbolized an OK pass, the best grade possible. Yellow was a fair grade and a few red spots recorded no-grade or cut passes. Apparently a pilot’s virtues and sins were recorded in living color for all to see.

  Back in the passageway one of the reporter-photographers delayed the group almost three minutes as he repeatedly snapped an apparently endless, narrow passageway that ran fore and aft. At this level the openings in the frames that supported the flight deck were oval in shape and only wide enough for people to pass through in single file. “Knee-knockers,” Tarkington called them. The passageway appeared to be an oval tube receding into infinity. The photographer got a shot of a sailor in the passageway over a hundred yards away that later appeared in a German newsmagazine. The picture demonstrated visually, in a way words never could, just how large, how massive, this ship truly was.

  “It’s very noisy,” one of the visitors said to Toad, who nodded politely. The hum and whine of the fans inside the air conditioning sys
tem was the background noise the ship’s inhabitants became aware of only when it ceased.

  “What is that smell? I’ve noticed it ever since we came aboard,” Judith Farrell said.

  “I don’t really know,” Toad replied as he examined her nose to see if it crinkled when she sniffed. “I always thought it was the oil they used to lubricate the blowers in the air-conditioning system, or the hatch hinges, or whatever.” All the other visitors were inhaling lungfuls. “You don’t notice it after awhile,” Toad finished lamely.

  The photographer was finished. They went down another set of ladders and back to the wardroom where they had begun the tour.

  “I sure am glad you folks could come out today for a little visit,” Tarkington said as he shook hands with the men. “Hope we didn’t walk you too much or wear you down. But there’s a lot to see and it takes a little doing to get around.” He turned and gazed into Judith Farrell’s clear blue eyes. “I just might get up Paris way sometime this summer, ma’am, and maybe you could return the hospitality and give me a little tour of Gay Paree?”

  She favored him with the smallest smile she could manage as she ensured he had only her fingertips to shake.

  “I hope you enjoyed your tour,” Captain Grafton said to the group.

  “Very much,” the Italian woman replied as heads bobbed in agreement.

  “There’s more Kool-Aid,” Grafton gestured toward the refreshment table, “if you’re thirsty. Please help yourselves. The boats will be leaving in about five minutes to take you back to the beach. Your tour guides will escort you to the quarterdeck. If you have any unanswered questions, now is the time to ask them.”

  “Are nuclear weapons aboard this ship, please?” The question came from one of the Frenchmen.

  “The American government can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard any ship.”

  “But what if a war begins?” Judith Farrell asked loudly.

  Grafton’s face showed no emotion. “In that event, ma’am, we’ll do the best we can to defend ourselves in accordance with American government policy and our commitments to NATO.”

  “Isn’t it possible the presence of this ship in these waters adds to international tension, rather than lessens it?” Farrell persisted.

  “I’m not a diplomat,” Grafton said carefully. “I’m a sailor. You should ask the State Department that question.” He glanced at his watch, then at the junior officer tour guides. “Gentlemen, perhaps it’s time to take these folks to the quarterdeck.”

  As his group prepared to descend the ladder from the quarterdeck to the carly float Lieutenant Tarkington again shook each hand. To Farrell he said, “I sure am glad I had the chance to get to know you, ma’am. It’s a small world and you just never know when or where we’ll meet again.”

  She brushed past him and was three steps down the ladder when she heard him say loudly, “I’m sure you’re a fine reporter, Judith, but you shouldn’t work so hard at playing the role.” Teetering on her heels, she turned and caught a glimpse of Tarkington’s face, dead serious, as the man behind her on the ladder lost his balance and almost sent her sprawling.

  “Don’t forget the Toad, Judith Farrell.”

  * * *

  A week later the Tangiers police received an enquiry from Paris about the J’Accuse reporter. He had not returned from his trip nor had he filed a story. At the hotel where he had reservations, the bartender, a retired merchant mariner from Marseilles, identified the reporter from a black-and-white photograph which pictured a middle-aged man with thinning hair and heavy jowls. The bartender gave a tolerably accurate description of the young woman to the police, but he had not overheard any of the couple’s conversation. The reporter’s bed had not been disturbed and his luggage was missing when the hotel maid entered the next morning. The bartender ventured the opinion that the woman was not a prostitute, and this professional observation caused police to make fruitless enquiries at every other hotel in Tangiers that catered to foreigners. Where the pair had gone after they left the hotel bar was never established.

  An official of the French government asked the American embassy in Paris if the J’Accuse press pass to the United States had been used, and was informed several days later that it had. Two weeks after the event a photo of the missing journalist was shown to the naval officers who had guided the tours. The ship was then at sea in the Mediterranean. None of those who viewed the picture could recall the individual, so that information, for whatever it was worth, was passed via the embassy to the French authorities.

  The American embassy CIA man reported the disappearance to his superiors, and U.S. Naval Intelligence was routinely informed. Apparently the incident was too unimportant to be included in the summaries prepared for the National Security Council. After all, the group had not been shown anything classified or anything that was not shown as a matter of course to any visitor to the ship. Notations were made in the appropriate computer records and within a month the incident was forgotten by those few persons in the intelligence community who were aware of it.

  The reporter was never seen again. Since he was divorced and his only daughter lived in Toulon with children of her own, his disappearance caused scarcely a ripple. Within six weeks his mistress had another regular visitor and J’Accuse had another reporter at a lower salary.

  3

  El Hakim, the ruler, stood at the window and gazed east in the direction of Mecca. He took a deep breath. Ah, the air smelled of the desert — it smelled of nothing at all. It was pure and empty, as Allah had made it.

  “There are enormous risks involved, Colonel Qazi.” The colonel sat behind him on a carpet before a low table. A hot dry wind stirred the curtains. El Hakim continued, “The Americans declared war at the end of the last century when one of their warships was merely suspected of being lost due to hostile action. The course you propose is unambiguous, to say the least.”

  El Hakim turned from the window and glanced down at Qazi, today dressed in clean, faded khakis. About forty, Qazi was dark with European features. Only his cheekbones hinted at his ancestry. The son of a British army sergeant and an Arab girl, Qazi often moved about Europe as a wealthy playboy or businessman, sometimes Greek, sometimes French, English, or Italian. He spoke seven languages without an accent. In a military environment he stood ramrod straight. “You have never failed us, Qazi. And you have never attempted so much.”

  The colonel remained silent.

  El Hakim obliquely examined the seated man. Qazi did not think like most soldiers, he reflected. He thought like the spy Allah must have intended him to be. And his ability to slip so completely into the roles of these people he pretended to be — indeed, to actually become the man his papers said he was — this ability troubled El Hakim, who had heard the stories of Qazi’s feats from informants and silently marveled, since he himself had spent his entire forty-nine years in the Arab world, except for one six-month visit to England twenty years ago. On that one foreign excursion he had felt so utterly, totally out of place, among people who seemed to have just arrived from another planet. One just never knew, he told himself now, when Qazi was onstage. He was a dangerous man. A very dangerous man. But most dangerous for whom?

  El Hakim reluctantly resumed his seat. “Tell me about the ship.”

  “Her main weapons are her aircraft. Her deck is crammed with airplanes and to ready them for launch requires many men and a reasonable amount of time. It cannot be done quickly, if at all, while the ship is at anchor and unprepared. Then she is most vulnerable.

  “She carries three missile launchers, known as the Basic Point Defense Missile System.” Qazi opened a reference book and displayed a picture of the ship. “A battery is located on each side of the after end of the flight deck, below the level of the flying deck, and one is forward of these two aircraft elevators in front of the island, on the starboard side of the ship.” He pointed them out. “The reference book says these contain Sea Sparrow missiles with a ten- to twelve-mile
range.

  “Her only other weapons are four close-in weapons systems, called CIWS.” He pronounced the acronym as the American Navy did, “see-whiz.” “These are very rapid-fire machine guns aimed by radar and lasers. Two are located on each side of the ship.” His finger moved to the prominent little domes that housed each installation. “These weapons automatically engage incoming missiles and shoot them down before they can strike the ship. Maximum range for these systems is about two kilometers. They are for last-chance, close-in defense.”

  “Is that all the weapons the ship has?”

  “At sea, Excellency, the ship is surrounded by surface combatants with modern guns and missiles with ranges beyond ninety miles. These escorts also carry antisubmarine weapons. Occasionally a large surface combatant, such as a battleship, will accompany the task group. When the carrier anchors, several of her escorts will anchor nearby.”

  “But the carrier? Has she any other weapons?”

  “Four machine guns, about 12.5 millimeter, are mounted on the catwalks around the flight deck when the ship is anchored, two on each side. These are constantly manned by marines. These guns could engage any unauthorized boat that comes too close, or a helicopter. The carrier’s crew does not carry small arms.”

  El Hakim arched an eyebrow. “Not even the officers?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And how many men are in the crew?”

  “About five thousand six hundred, Excellency.”

  The ruler gazed incredulously at the photograph in the reference book, Jane’s Fighting Ships. Although it is a big ship, he thought, with that many peasants crammed into such tight quarters the discipline problems must be stupendous. He remembered the stories he had heard about the slums of Los Angeles and New York, and allowed his upper lip to rise contemptuously.