“You heard the last announcement.”
“If you’re going, I’m going.”
“Okay.” The warrant officer lifted the lever that rotated the dogs and cracked the door open. He could see the side of the truck a few feet away. It was parked pointing toward the choppers on the angle and there were no planes in front of it. There never were. He snapped off the lights in the compartment with the switch by the door, took a deep lungful of the night sea wind, then pushed the door open and slipped through. The first-class petty officer was right behind him.
* * *
Gunny Garcia heard the helicopter engines running as he climbed the ladder into the island, the very same ladder that the gooks had thrown the grenades down, the ones that got Vehmeier and Garcia’s marines. The bodies were gone from the passageway at the bottom, though the blood and shrapnel had not been cleaned up. The blood smears were black now, and the place reeked of smoke.
Garcia had had his troubles wending his way through the gutted area of the O-3 level. The sailors still had hoses and power cables everywhere and the only lights were emergency lanterns. The stench was terrible. It was the overpowering odor of burnt rubber and fried meat.
Now, as he heard the chopper engines, his resolve gave way to apprehension. He might well be too late.
He checked the door to Flight Deck Control as he tiptoed to the ladder upward. The three gooks were right where they had fallen. Leggett was nowhere in sight. Garcia continued up the ladder.
On the third level he heard someone coming down from above. He waited grimly, the Remington leveled.
The first thing he saw was the man’s shoes, black boondockers, then bell-bottom jeans, then the gym bag and the Uzi. He pulled the trigger on the Remington.
The man tumbled and fell at his feet. He was holding his crotch and screaming. Garcia worked the bolt on his rifle and waited. Apparently this one was alone. He stepped over to the man. The.308 slug had hit him in the pelvis. “That’s a nasty wound you got there, fellow,” Garcia said and shot him in the head. The head disintegrated. The gunnery sergeant worked the bolt again, then climbed on up the ladder.
* * *
Each of the seven weapons was on its own dolly, a little fourwheeled yellow cart with a swiveling tongue that turned the front wheels. One man pushed each cart backward down the deck.
Qazi had one of the weapons, the one with the timer already installed, halted abeam the island. He then handcuffed Admiral Parker to the cart. “As you have probably suspected, Admiral, the triggering device bypasses all the weapon’s built-in safeguards. It contains its own battery and can initiate the firing sequence.” Qazi held up a small metal box and continued, speaking over the noise of the helicopter engines, “I can activate the trigger with one push on this button. And I will push this button, if …” He turned and watched the sentries lift two weapons, still on their dollies, into each helicopter.
Standing beside them, Ali removed a small two-way radio from a holster in his belt and spoke into it.
Qazi turned back to Parker. “There is going to be some shooting here on deck in a moment. That’s unavoidable. It is necessary that we disable the planes on the flight deck so that your people cannot follow us once they decide we are beyond the range where we could trigger this device. I hope you realize that, in a way, disabling these aircraft is an act of good faith on my part. I certainly hope that we’re allowed to depart unmolested and I don’t have to push this button. Because I will destroy this ship if I have to, Admiral, so help me God. Do you understand?”
As usual, Earl Parker’s face was impassive. He had been watching the bombs being loaded into the helicopters, and hearing the question he glanced at Qazi, then turned his eyes back to the idling machines.
The gunmen who had been in Flight Deck Control ran past them, heading for the helicopters. The woman was helping the fat man in civilian clothes, the weapons expert, into the chopper parked the furthest forward on the angle, the lead machine.
“So long, Admiral,” Qazi said and turned away. He and Ali walked briskly toward the lead machine as the sentries fanned out toward the bow and the stern. Almost in unison, they pulled pins from grenades and threw them into the parked aircraft. Then they opened fire with their Uzis.
* * *
“Grenades!”
The senior marine, a sergeant, shouted the warning and fell flat upon the deck. Jake Grafton, Chief Archer, and the rest of the marines did the same.
Jake heard the sound of one of the grenades striking a nearby aircraft, then the boom of an explosion. A group of explosions followed, too close together to count.
The shrapnel and bullets sounded like hail on a tin roof as they tore into the fuselages of the nearby planes. Jake looked up the deck. He could see the gunmen and the flashes of their submachine guns. More grenades came raining in.
* * *
“What’s going on, Ski?” Pak demanded. He and the others were watching the activity on the television monitor, but Kowalski’s view was not limited to what the camera was seeing.
“They’re shooting the shit outta everything. You ready?”
“Yeah.”
Kowalski had hoped to wait until the gunmen were in the helicopter, to ensure they didn’t come looking for his unarmed catapult crew, but this was ridiculous.
“Okay, raise it up … now!”
The helicopter sitting on number-four JBD pitched forward amid flying sparks as its rotors dug into the steel deck. The giant jet blast deflector had risen from the deck on its forward hinge as if the weight of the helicopter weren’t there.
The rotors disintegrated. Gunmen fell and sparks flew everywhere as shards of the rotors impacted steel and tore into human flesh. At least one of the gunmen dropped a live grenade and it exploded beside him with a flash.
“JBD down!”
The helicopter collapsed back onto its wheels. Its engines screamed as they overrevved without the load of the rotors.
“JBD up!”
This time the blast deflector turned the chopper over onto its nose. The machine teetered there, then continued over onto its back and caught fire. Flying debris struck the tail rotor of the next helicopter forward and broke it off.
Kowalski heard shouting and laughter in his ears. The guys in the control room were hysterical and Pak had his mike button depressed. “We did it,” he screamed at the cat captain in the bubble. “We did it!”
The fuel tank in the wrecked helicopter ignited explosively in a yellowish orange whoosh and pieces of the machine showered the deck.
* * *
Gunny Garcia stepped out onto Vulture’s Row and looked down onto the flight deck. The burning chopper cast a brilliant light on the scene. He wasn’t too late! With trembling hands he twisted the parallax ring on the sniperscope to its closest setting and adjusted the magnification ring as he scanned the scene below. Gunmen were shooting into the planes and throwing grenades. He swung the rifle onto a man on his feet near the fire and tried to steady the cross hairs.
The cross hairs danced uncontrollably. He rested the rifle on the rail in front of him and took a short deep breath, then squeezed off a shot. The man collapsed.
Garcia chambered another round.
He had shot three of them when the yellow flight-deck crash truck came bolting from its parking place behind the island, its engine at full throttle audible even above the noise of the chopper engines. There was a man on the nozzle on top of the cab and he had the water-foam mixture spouting fifty feet in front of the truck. The man spun the nozzle and one of the gunmen was blasted off his feet by the water stream. The truck roared across the deck, straight for the helicopter at the head of the angle.
There was a man in front of the chopper, shooting at the truck. Garcia got him in the telescopic sight and jerked off a round. The man went over backward. Muzzle flashes came from the open door in the side of the helicopter. Garcia aimed into the flashes and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The rifle was empty. The truck swerved, its left
front tire peeling from the rim.
The fire-truck engine was roaring like an enraged lion as the machine careened left and crashed into the second helicopter in line. The truck slowed, but now the chopper was skidding sideways toward the rail. The chopper’s mainmounts struck the flight deck rail and it tilted. Smoke poured from the truck’s rear tires. Then the chopper went over the side and the cab of the truck bucked up as the front wheels struck the rail and it followed the helicopter toward the sea, its engine still at full throttle.
Bullets slapped the steel beside Garcia. He crouched behind the rail coaming and feverishly fed more shells into the rifle.
The engines of the only helicopter left, the one at the head of the angle, were winding up to takeoff power. The roar deepened as the pilot lifted the collective and the rotors bit into the air.
Garcia slammed the bolt closed and came up swinging the rifle for the cockpit. He got the cross hairs onto the pilot of the chopper…. Something smashed into his left shoulder, jerking the rifle off-target just as he pulled the trigger. He tried to hold the rifle with his left hand and work the bolt with his right, but his left wouldn’t work. The chopper lifted from the deck and began traveling forward, toward the edge of the angled deck.
More bullets slapped into the steel near him. His left arm wouldn’t work right. Then he lost the rifle; it fell away toward the deck below.
Enraged, he watched the helicopter clear the edge of the flight deck and fade into the darkness. Garcia sank down behind the coaming and sobbed.
* * *
Jake Grafton sprinted up the deck as bullets zipped around him and the roars of M-16s on full automatic filled his ears. He ran toward the weapon on the dolly in front of the E-2 Hawkeyes parked tail-in to the island. A man in whites lay by the dolly.
Senior Chief Archer reached the bomb even as Jake did. Archer began examining the weapon with a flashlight as Jake knelt by the admiral. Blood oozed from a dozen wounds in his torso and legs. Shrapnel from the helicopter rotor blades or a grenade.
“Admiral? Cowboy? It’s Jake. Can you hear me?”
Behind Jake, the last of the gunmen were going down as the flames from the burning chopper rose higher and higher into the night.
Parker’s eyes and lips were moving. Jake bent down, trying to hear.
“Jake …”
“Yeah. It’s me, Cowboy.”
Parker’s eyes focused. “Don’t let him get away, Jake.” His hand grasped the front of Jake’s shirt and he pulled him down. “Don’t let him get away. Stop …” Parker coughed blood.
“You know me, Cowboy. We’ll get ’em.”
Parker was drowning in his own blood. He was coughing and choking and trying to talk. In a supreme effort he got air in, then, “Don’t let him use those weapons …” He gagged and his body bucked as his lungs fought for air. Jake held on as the convulsions racked him.
Finally Parker’s body went limp.
“I don’t know, CAG.” It was Archer. He was looking at the trigger. “I just dunno. It’s definitely got a radio receiver built in, and somebody built this that knew a hell of a lot, but I’m damned if I can figure what will happen if I cut this wire here.” He pointed.
Jake grabbed the bolt-cutter from the deck where Archer had dropped it and used it on the handcuffs that held Parker’s wrist to the dolly.
Jake dropped the big tool and seized the tongue of the dolly. The brake was automatically released when he lifted it. He began to pull the dolly.
“What are you gonna do?” Archer asked.
“Over the side. The radio receiver won’t work underwater, and maybe the water will short out this trigger thing.”
Archer joined him on the other side of the tongue. They began to trot. “Not too fast,” Archer warned, “or this thing’ll tip over.”
They pulled it around the front of the island toward the starboard rail. “This thing may go off when it hits the water,” Archer said.
“We’ll have to risk it. We’re out of time.”
There’s a bomb chute somewhere here on the starboard side of the island, Jake remembered. There! He turned the dolly around and backed it toward the chute, which was a metal ramp with lips that extended downward at an angle over the catwalk and ended out in space.
The rear wheels of the dolly went in and then the front and it started to roll. It fell away toward the sea. Jake Grafton turned his face and closed his eyes. If it blew, he would never even feel it.
His heart pounded. Every thump in his chest was another half second of life. Oh, Callie, I love you so….
When he finally realized there would be no explosion, he tried to walk and his legs wouldn’t work. He fell to the deck and rolled over on his back. Slowly, slowly he sat up. Archer was sitting on the deck near him with his face in his hands.
* * *
Qazi crossed from the open right-side door of the helicopter to the bucket seats that lined the other bulkhead. He had been watching the lights of the carrier recede into the gloom.
“How far away are we?” Ali shouted, barely making himself heard over the engine noise. “When we get to eight miles …”
Qazi handed him the radio triggering box. Ali used the telephone by the door to speak to the pilots, then held his watch under the small lamp near the phone, one of three small lights that kept the interior from total darkness. He stepped to the door and leaned out into the slipstream, looking aft.
Noora and Jarvis were huddled in the corner. Noora had Jarvis’s head cradled on her breast and was rocking softly from side to side. Jarvis’s face was down and Qazi could only see the top of his head.
On Qazi’s right, three of the gunmen sat with their weapons between their knees and their heads back against the bulkhead, their eyes closed and their faces slack. They looked totally exhausted. These three had managed to scramble aboard as the flight-deck crash truck charged them, then turned in the door and emptied their weapons at the truck. They were the only survivors of the thirty-six men Qazi had taken to the ship.
Yet he had two bombs. The skins of the weapons were white and reflected the glow of the little light over the telephone near the door. Ali was still leaning out into the slipstream. He pulled himself inside, checked his watch, and grinned at Qazi. He braced himself against the bulkhead and manipulated the controls on the box.
Nothing happened. He tried again with a frown on his face. He leaned out the door with the box in his hand and pointed it aft at the carrier.
Ali hurled the control box at Qazi, who didn’t flinch as it bounced off the padded bulkhead and fell to the floor. “Traitor,” Ali screamed as he grabbed for his pistol.
Qazi shot him. Once, twice, three times with the silenced Hi-Power. He could feel the recoil, but the high ambient noise level covered the pistol’s muffled pops.
Ali sagged backward through the door. The slipstream caught him and his hand flailed, then he was gone.
The gunmen didn’t move. Noora continued to rock back and forth with her eyes closed, her arms around Jarvis.
Colonel Qazi slowly put the pistol back into his trouser waistband. He zipped up the leather jacket he was wearing. It was chilly here. He stuffed his hands into the jacket pockets and stared at the white weapons.
27
Laird James was in a coma when Jake checked on him in sick bay. An IV bottle of whole blood hung on a hook beside the bed, and two corpsmen were preparing him for the operating room. The blue oxygen mask over his nose and mouth made the rest of his face look white as chalk.
“Is he going to make it?” Jake asked the corpsmen, who didn’t look up.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. Bullet through his liver. His heart stopped once and we gave it a kick-start.”
Jake turned and went back through the ward, looking at the burn, gunshot, and smoke victims. There were more patients than beds and some of the men lay on blankets on the deck. Most were conscious, a few were sleeping, and here and there several were delirious.
One man was handcuffed
to his bed. A marine wearing a duty belt with a pistol sat on a molded plastic chair near the bed, facing the prisoner. The man in the bed looked at Jake, then looked away. Jake picked up the clipboard from a hook on the bottom of the bed and read it. Name unknown, no ID. “Can’t or won’t speak English.”
“He’s one of the terrorists, sir,” the marine said. “He fell overboard from the liberty boat earlier this evening.”
Jake nodded, replaced the clipboard on the bed, then moved on. Chaplain Berkowitz was moving through the ward, taking his time, pausing for a short conversation at every bed.
The second-deck passageways outside sick bay were still crowded with men sitting and standing, but the crowd was thinning as the chiefs and division officers got people sorted into working parties and led them off. The 1-MC blared continually with muster information for the various divisions and squadrons.
Jake climbed a ladder to the hangar deck. Foam still covered the wreckage of aircraft and lay several inches deep on the deck. The bulkheads and overhead were charred black. The glow of emergency lights was almost lost in the dark cavern.
In Flight Deck Control the handler was roaring orders over the radio system he used to talk to his key people on the flight deck. Will Cohen, the air wing maintenance officer, turned to Jake when he saw him enter the space.
Every airplane on the flight deck had shrapnel or bullet damage. “All of them?” Jake asked, stunned. “Even the ones clear up on the bow?” Cohen showed him a list he was compiling. They went over it, plane by plane. Jake wanted every fighter and tanker available airborne as soon as possible. He had Harvey Schultz briefing a dozen F-14 crews and a dozen F/A-18 Hornet pilots. But he had to get them some airplanes.
It quickly became apparent that the E-2s parked next to the island would not be flying tonight. One of them had absorbed so much shrapnel from the disintegrating rotors of the upended helicopter that Cohen thought it would never fly again. The others would require rework at an intermediate maintenance facility back in the States. Three of the tactical jets had caught fire, and the fires had damaged two other machines before they were extinguished. All the planes had bullet holes in them, and maintenance crews were checking right now to determine the extent of the damage. “We can’t take them to the hangar, and the wind makes opening the radomes and engine-bay doors hazardous,” Cohen said. “We’re going to damage some planes just inspecting them unless you slow the ship down or run with the wind over the stern.”
Final Flight jg-2 Page 38
