Final Flight

21

She asked me not to tell.”

“She knew you would.”

Tarkington’s face was a study. Lines radiated from the corners of his eyes and his face seemed … older.

“She knew you had to tell,” Jake said.

“If she knew I was going to spill it, why did she ask me not to? How come she didn’t just shoot me?”

“Women are like that,” Jake Grafton muttered. “They ask you not to do something they know you’re gonna do, and they watch your face while they ask it.” He shrugged. “Maybe they’re just measuring the size of your heart.”

“I think they were Israelis. Mossad.”

“Any evidence?”

“They ragged on one guy who sounded like an American. They called him an ‘agency asshole.’ Apparently he shot the first guy when he wasn’t supposed to.” Toad looked around desperately. “They didn’t kill me,” he said, his voice rising. “The Mossad only kills terrorists.”

“Or so you’ve heard. And you’ve ratted on them when she asked you not to. Now you feel guilty as hell. Thank you, Judith Farrell.”

Jake picked up the phone and dialed Farnsworth. “Find the senior intelligence officer who’s aboard tonight and tell him to go to the intel center. I’m sending Mr. Tarkington over there now. I want them to wring out Tarkington like a sponge and draft up a Top Secret flash message. Then find out if Admiral Parker’s aboard, or the chief of staff.”

When he cradled the receiver, he said to Toad, “I want you to tell this tale to the Air Intelligence guys. Describe every one of those people. Including Judith. What they were wearing, height and weight, facial features, the works.” As Toad rose to go, Jake added, “Sooner or later, you may get curious about why I had everyone on this boat looking for you all afternoon. Judith Farrell is not a native speaker of English. She’s probably not an American.”

Toad looked dazed. “But she said she was!”

“Tarkington …,” Jake said, exasperation creeping into his voice, “you got yourself smack in the middle of somebody’s heavy operation. Farrell’s on someone’s team. You’re real fucking lucky you didn’t get zapped for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Toad didn’t react, the sap. “Look at it this way, Toad: if you hadn’t meant anything to her, she wouldn’t have bothered to tell you to keep quiet.”

The younger man just stared, his mouth open slightly.

Jake came around the desk and sat on it. Maybe he shouldn’t go into this. But Toad … Why wait for the guy to figure all this out ten years from now? “You care about her, right? And she was telling you she cares about you. She told you the only way she could. The words weren’t the message; it was the way she said it.”

Toad nodded slowly.

“Now quit feeling like a shit and go tell the intel guys everything you know.” Jake pointed toward the door. “Beat it.”

As Toad left the room he glanced back at the captain, who was absently patting his pockets as he gazed at the telephone. Then the door closed.

Private Harold Porter hadn’t worn his slicker for this watch. The rain had soaked him and the wind was making him miserable. He huddled against the side of the ship, under the lip of the flight deck curb, and kept his hands tucked under his armpits. The ship’s red flight-deck floodlights illuminated the.50-caliber machine gun and the ammo feed box. The sound-powered telephone headset he wore kept his ears warm. At least that was something.

Porter elevated his head and watched the helicopter lift off the angle. Its flashing red anticollision light swept the numbers on the side of the island. The chopper rose several feet off the deck and the tail came up, then it accelerated forward off the angled portion of the flight deck. Porter watched it go, then lowered his head back below the curb of the deck.

Those poor bastards in the water were really in the soup. Too bad the action was on the other side of the ship, where he couldn’t see it. The scuttlebutt on the sound-powered circuit was that they were drunk. So if they don’t drown, they’re going to be shoveling shit when old man James gets through with them. Serves the bastards right, Porter decided. He hadn’t been ashore for the last two nights. Envy wrapped its slimy fingers around his heart.

The corporal should be around in a few minutes. Maybe he could get the corporal to go down to the berthing spaces and get his slicker for him. Naw, not Simons, that prick. But maybe Simons would relieve him for a few minutes and let him go get it. He sourly contemplated the odds of talking the corporal into that.

Simons was an asshole, no question. Two little red chevrons and he acted like he’d been promoted to disciple. Why in hell the corps ever promoted a cock-stroking butt-licker like him was a good question to contemplate on a bad night. Aagh, it’s enough to make you puke. You work your ass off spit-shining your fucking shoes and polishing your fucking brass and cleaning your fucking rifle, and then Hershey-bar lifer pricks like Simons …

Someone was coming down the catwalk. Damn! Couldn’t be Simons. Not five minutes early. Oh, it’s some dirt-bag sailor, probably drunk, out wandering around after a big night in town, out to give the corps some shit.

“Hey Dixie-cup, you—”

The first bullet from the silenced 9-millimeter hit Private Porter in the throat. The wind swallowed the muffled report. As the marine’s hands went to his throat, the pistol popped twice more, and the now-lifeless body slumped down into a sitting position.

The assassin opened the breech of the big fifty and the ammo feed box. He lifted out the belt of shells and fed it over the rail, between the big gray canisters that contained the fifty-man life rafts. The ammo belt fell into the blackness. The killer bent over the open breech. In a few seconds he snapped the weapon’s breech and the ammo-box lid closed, and walked forward toward the bow.

Lance Corporal James Van Housen was bored. And when he was bored, he entertained himself with isometric exercises. He strained at the top bar of the catwalk rail, trying to curl it. He counted the seconds: … fourteen, thousand, fifteen, thousand, sixteen, … When he got to twenty, he relaxed and counted his pulse while he examined the sweep second hand of his watch, just visible in the red lights of the ship’s island.

The rest of these guys, they just stand around and get fat while the sergeants kick their asses. Van Housen was staying in shape. He was taking advantage of every opportunity to exercise. That’s what the corps is all about, staying in shape, ready to fight. If they wanted to be marshmallows, they should have joined the fucking navy. The sailors all think exercise is what they do to their dicks in the shower.

Van Housen saw the chopper cross the fantail and make its approach to the helo spot on the angle. The sound-powered circuit talker said the angel had picked one guy up from the liberty boat, which had pulled him from the water. A damn bad night for a swim. The talker didn’t know about the other guy in the water. Van Housen watched a team of corpsmen with a litter run toward the chopper as soon as it touched down.

The lance corporal seized the top rail and lifted again, counting to himself. He finished this set and was flexing his arms, trying to pump out the fatigue toxins, when he saw a sailor come up a ladder from the O-3 level, fifty feet aft, and turn toward him. He first glimpsed the man from the corner of his eye, then turned to watch him.

What the hell is he doing out here at this time of night?

The sailor had something in his right hand, down against his leg. He was concealing it behind his thigh. A doper? Carrying a joint? Naw, it was an object of some kind.

Van Housen stepped back against the bulkhead, partially out of sight because of the way the catwalk zagged outboard around this nearest ladder up from the O-3 level.

As the sailor in a sweater came around the corner, Van Housen was watching his hand. It swung up. A gun! It flashed — Van Housen heard the dull pop — and the bullet rocked him, but he had already launched himself forward. His momentum drove the sailor back against the rail, stunning him. Van Housen wrestled for the gun. There was a silencer on the barrel. He smashed the sailor’s arm against the railing. The pistol fell. Van Housen punched his assailant in the stomach, then again. The man doubled over.

Van Housen could feel himself weakening.

Got to stop this guy! Got to! Before I go down.

He seized the man by the belt and one arm and heaved him up and outboard as he exhaled convulsively from the exertion. The man sprawled on top of a life-raft canister. Van Housen tore the wool cap off and grabbed him by the hair. He smashed his fist into the sailor’s face.

No strength. The blow was weak. His legs were buckling.

The marine summoned every last ounce of strength and hit the man again in the face, swinging with his weight behind the blow. The man slid backward off the canister and disappeared, falling toward the sea.

Van Housen collapsed on the catwalk grid. His sound-powered headset had come off in the fight. He felt his stomach. His hand was warm and black and wet. Blood!

He was fainting. He lowered his head to the grid to stay conscious and felt for the headset. He pulled it toward him and fumbled for the mike button. “This is gun one …”

Then he passed out. He was unconscious when another sailor in a sweater with a pistol in his hand emerged from between the planes on the flight deck and stood looking down into the catwalk.

Lance Corporal Van Housen never felt the next bullet, which killed him.

Admiral Parker was wearing white uniform trousers and a T-shirt. Apparently he had just pulled the trousers on after his orderly woke him. Jake told him about the incident at the Vittorio, and Judith Farrell and Toad Tarkington’s involvement.

“Hell yes, I’ll release a flash message. You briefed Captain James on this yet?”

“Not yet, sir. I just heard this from Tarkington and the captain’s busy with the man overboard.”

“The captain called me just before you knocked. One man’s still in the water and one’s on his way to sick bay, half dead.” Parker turned to his aide, Lieutenant Franklin Delano Roosevelt Snyder. “Get my clothes, Duke. It’s time we went up to the bridge.” As he dressed the admiral told Jake, “Tonight’s Shore Patrol officer has been found dead on the quay. Neck broken.”

“What?” Jake said.

“Murdered.”

“Where?”

“Right in the Shore Patrol office. He was found just a few minutes ago.”

Jake Grafton seized the arms of his chair and leaned forward. “Lieutenant Flynn?”

“Yes.”

“I saw him go toward the office just before I boarded the mike boat to come out to the ship. He went down there with a chief who was on Shore Patrol duty tonight. The chief came back down the quay alone and rode out to the ship on the boat with me. He’s aboard.”

“Did you ever see the chief before? Know his name?”

Jake tried to remember. “Duncan? No … Dustin, I think. Dustin. And I can’t recall ever seeing him before.”

The admiral finished lacing his shoes, straightened and started for the door. Jake and Duke Snyder followed him. “Here we sit,” the admiral muttered, “three miles from the beach on the most valuable target in southern Italy. And we may already have an intruder aboard.”

“Or more than one,” Jake said, recalling the unusual number of drunks on the boat this evening and the confusion on the fantail when the two men went into the water.

Colonel Qazi charged up a ladder on the starboard side of the ship with his two men carrying gym bags right at his heels. At the top of the ladder well, on the O-3 level, they turned inboard to the long passageway that ran the length of the ship on the starboard side. Although this was one of the two main thoroughfares on this deck, it was narrow. Men could pass each other shoulder to shoulder in the corridor, but the knee-knockers were only wide enough for one man at a time to pass through. Qazi consulted the numbers on the little brass plaques near the doors of the compartments as he walked past. He knew the numbering system, but he couldn’t readily visualize just where he was from reading the numbers. For the first time tonight Qazi knew a touch of panic. These passageways all looked the same, narrow and full of ninety-degree turns. The place was a maze, a labyrinth of walls and doors and passageways that led off in every direction but the proper one. When the watertight doors swung shut, he would have to fight his way from space to space and he would never know just where he was or where he was going. He would be trapped like a rat.

He touched the arm of a sailor walking aft. “I’m new aboard. How do I get to the communication spaces?”

“Port side, Chief.” The sailor gestured toward a passageway that led off to the left, presumably to join with the port-side passageway that paralleled this one. “And forward maybe fifty frames. There’s a window to pass messages through. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.” The sailor hurried away. Qazi and his men strode down the indicated passageway.

They were in luck. Just beside the window where the clerks accepted messages for transmission, there was a security door which was locked and unlocked by an access device mounted head-high on the bulkhead. The access device had a keyboard into which those who sought entrance tapped a code, which changed weekly. And as Qazi approached, a sailor was tapping on the keys, which were hidden from an observer’s view by a black lip which surrounded the keyboard.

The sailor started through the security door just as Qazi reached him and planted his shoulder in the man’s back. They crashed through the door together, the two gunmen right behind, extracting their Uzis from their gym bags. Black security curtains screened the doorway from the rest of the compartment. Qazi pushed his man through the drapes into the room and Jamail and Haddad, the gunmen following, stepped clear to each side and opened fire. The silenced weapons made a ripping noise. Spent shells spewed from the ejection ports. The sailor who had preceded Qazi spun toward him, and the colonel grabbed his head and broke his neck.

The other five Americans in the compartment died under the hail of bullets.

The office spaces were lit in white light, in contrast to the red light which had illuminated the ladders and passageways. As their eyes adjusted, the gunmen ran deeper into the communications complex, using their weapons on the four other sailors they found there. Qazi went into the equipment room. Banks of panels with dials and gauges and knobs covered the walls. Or did they? There seemed to be lights behind this equipment. Over there was a passage. Perhaps the power cables came in back there. That communications technician Ali had interrogated, what had he said?

Qazi stepped through the gap in the seven-foot-high gray boxes.

He saw the fist and the wrench swinging just in time, and ducked as the wrench smashed into the panel beside him.

The man wielding it was young. Young and black and scared. And quick. He had the wrench swinging again before Qazi could react. The colonel tried to fall, and the wrench struck his head a glancing blow.

He was on the floor, dazed, and the sailor was on his chest, pinning his arms with his legs, drawing back the wrench for the coup de grace, his lips stretched back exposing his teeth, the cords in his neck as taut as wires.

Qazi heard a pop and blood spurted from the side of the American’s head. The corpse collapsed on top of him. The wrench rang as it hit the linoleum-covered deck.

Jamail rolled the body away. Qazi tried to rise. God, not this!

“Quickly,” he tried to say, his tongue thick. He gestured vaguely at Jamail, who nodded and left him there, struggling to rise from the sitting position.

Jamail and Haddad had almost completed the task of setting the charges when Qazi had the cobwebs sufficiently cleared to stand upright and walk out into the equipment room. “Put one on the electrical cables under the raised area of the floor,” Qazi told them, “back there.” He pointed behind the panels. Haddad seized his gym bag and disappeared into the gap from which Qazi had just come. The colonel inspected the timer on the charge against the power-distribution panel. It was readily apparent what this panel was, because Haddad had opened the metal doors to expose all the switches and connectors. And he had properly armed the magnesium flare, which would ignite thirty seconds after the main explosion. Satisfactory.

“What the fuck?”

The exclamation came from the office, the first compartment they had come through. Jamail heard it too and charged in that direction, his Uzi ready. Qazi was right behind.

The officer in khakis went down under Jamail’s bullets. As he fell, the security curtains fluttered and Qazi heard the sound of the passageway door being jerked open. Jamail pumped a short burst into the curtains.

“Intruders in the comm spaces! Intruders …” The door clicked shut and the rest of the shout was lost.

“Quick! Let’s finish. Arm the fuses and let’s go.”

Fifteen seconds later the three men stood by the door and arranged the straps of their gym bags over their shoulders. Jamail and Haddad put new magazines into their Uzis.

“Jamail, you will lead us out. Clear the passageway left. Haddad, clear it right. Then I will lead you forward — that’s to the right — to the first passageway turning left, which will take us out of the ship onto the catwalk and up to the flight deck. Let’s go.” Qazi nodded and Haddad pulled the curtains aside and opened the door. Jamail went through low. He opened fire as Haddad and Qazi followed him.

In the red-lit corridor a small knot of men were gathered fifty feet aft, most of them facing in this direction. As the Uzi sprayed men dove into open doorways or collapsed onto the deck.

Qazi covered the twenty feet to the outboard passageway and turned the corner when the muffled bursts finally ceased. “The bastard,” he swore viciously as he ran. Jamail used a whole magazine on them — unarmed men. He enjoys this!

The passageway turned left, then right, and ended at a dogged-down watertight door. Qazi grabbed the one handle that was mechanically linked to all eight of the dogs and lifted. Each of the eight dogs rotated ninety degrees. Haddad pushed at the door. All three men were through the opening and Jamail was closing the door when the concussion from the explosions in the communications spaces hammered the deck and bulkheads. The heavy door flew out on its hinges and smacked against Jamail. He picked himself up and, with Haddad, dogged it shut.

The wind was fierce here under the catwalk. Through the grid, Qazi could see the streaks in the black sea from the foaming whitecaps. He waited as his eyes adjusted fully to the darkness. So far so good. Phase one almost complete.

The ship’s public-address system came to life. A speaker was located on the catwalk just above them. They heard the hum and hiss, then a Klaxon began to wail. The volume was deafening, probably so the announcements could be heard all over the flight deck. Qazi inserted his fingers in his ears. When the Klaxon stopped, a voice came on, equally loud: “General quarters, general quarters. All hands man your battle stations. This is not a drill. General quarters, general quarters. Go up and forward on the starboard side and down and aft on the port side. This is not a drill.” The Klaxon resumed its wail, then died abruptly. Even here on the catwalk, Qazi could feel the steel grid under his feet vibrate from the harmonics induced by thousands of running feet.

Time was running out. In three minutes every watertight door and hatch on the ship would be ordered shut. And even now the ship’s quick-reaction team — a squad of armed marines — would be on its way to the bridge to protect the captain. He had to get there first.

Qazi led the way up the ladder to the catwalk and up the next ladder onto the flight deck.

Jake Grafton, Rear Admiral Parker, and Captain James were huddled around the captain’s chair on the bridge when they felt the shock of the explosion in the communications compartment. High up here in the island it was just a dull thud that jolted the steel deck. A man was on the phone reporting intruders in the comm spaces when the explosion occurred.

“Sound general quarters. Then call away the nucleus fire party and set Circle William,” the captain told the OOD, who repeated the order to the bosun’s mate of the watch, who announced it on the ship’s loudspeaker. The nucleus fire party was a group of damage-control specialists who normally responded to fire reports when the ship’s watertight hatches were not closed. They were the most highly trained firemen on the ship, so the captain wanted to use them if possible. The Circle William order was critical to containing the smoke and fumes from a fire. Closure of hatches labeled with a W inside a red circle — Circle William — would seal off the ship’s air-circulating system, preventing smoke and poisonous fumes generated by a fire from being pumped throughout the ship.

“Sir,” the OOD reported, “No one answers the squawk box or telephone in the comm spaces.”

Laird James reached for the microphone of the ship’s public address system. “What are you going to say?” Parker asked.

“I’m going to tell the crew what’s going on.”

“Remember, the intruders can hear you.”

James nodded and keyed the mike. “This is the captain. We have just had an explosion in the communications spaces on the O-3 level. Apparently we have at least one group of intruders aboard this ship. Perhaps more than one group. They are armed. Some of your shipmates have apparently already died.”

He released the mike button and looked at Parker. “My men don’t have guns.”

Parker’s lips tightened into a grim line. “Don’t let them die for nothing.”

James keyed the mike again. “Avoid direct confrontation with the terrorists, yet resist the best way you can. Keep the bridge and DC Central informed.” He paused again and stared for a moment into the blackness of the night sea. “You men are American sailors. I expect each of you to do his duty. That is all.”

James punched the button on a squawk box, an intercom system, labeled “CDC.” “This is the captain. You people manned up down there?”

“Yessir.”

“Get off a voice transmission, scrambled if possible, on your circuits. Tell our escorts to relay it to Sixth Fleet and CIN-CLANT.” CINCLANT was the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.

“Yessir. What do we send?”

“Goddammit, man,” James thundered. “Send the substance of the announcement I just made over the 1-MC.” The 1-MC circuit was the ship’s public-address system. “Tell them we have armed intruders aboard. More info to follow as we get it.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Chief Terry Reed stared in disbelief at the padlock on the door to the after hangar-deck repair locker. The men behind him peered over his shoulder, curious about the delay. Why the hell was this door padlocked? The doorknob had an integral lock, and every man in the chief’s repair party had a key. This locker was their battle station. Chief Reed took a closer look at the doorknob. It had been forced.

“Somebody get a fire ax and pry this damn lock off.”

The chief scanned the hangar bay while he waited. Intruders? Aboard this ship? Captain James didn’t throw words around lightly. He must know what’s going on. The chief looked at the doorknob lock again. Someone had pried it until it broke. And this padlock — it wasn’t navy-issue. Damn. Could the intruders have been here?

A man came running with a fire ax. The chief moved back away from the door. He looked again around the hangar bay, still puzzled. Why would anyone want to get in the repair-party locker? There was nothing in there but damage control gear. The valuable assets were the airplanes, out here in the bay. He stared at them, wings folded and chained to the deck. Some of the machines had access panels and nose domes open, exposing radars and black boxes and bundles of cables. They looked naked. Had they been sabotaged?

Even as the thought occurred to the chief, the paint locker on the opposite side of the bay exploded. In an instant the flammable chemicals stored there were burning fiercely.

The chief looked wildly about for the nearest fire alarm. He saw it against the wall right by the fire-fighting station and lunged for it. His motion galvanized his men into action. They energized the pumps and began dragging the hose out. They had the nozzle half way across the hangar when two more paint lockers exploded.

Qazi and his men huddled under an aircraft wing immediately forward of the island. He counted them. Seven plus himself. “Who’s not here?”

“Mohammed. Apparently he only wounded one of the marines on the machine guns and they fought. He may have gone overboard.”

“Did you set his charges on the antenna leads?”

“Mine and his both.” So all the radio-antenna leads of which Qazi was aware had been severed. The damage could be repaired fairly quickly as soon as the Americans discovered where the breaks were, but the search would take time, and time for the Americans was running out.

Qazi looked up at the dark windows of the bridge, eight decks above him in the island superstructure. The glare of the red flood-lights around the top of the island made it impossible to see if any lights were illuminated on the bridge. Of course, the ship’s senior officers were there. They had to be. The quick-reaction team couldn’t have made it to the bridge yet, but they were undoubtedly on their way. Qazi had to reach the bridge before the marines did or he might not be able to get there at all. Time was running out for him too.

He gestured to two of his men, pointing out the positions he wished them to assume on the flight deck, positions from which they could command the helicopter landing area on the angle, abeam the island. Since the ship’s rescue helicopter was airborne, most of the helo landing area was empty and the whip antennas that surrounded the flight deck had been lowered to their horizontal position. Qazi wanted to ensure everything remained that way.

The rest of his men he led across the deck through the wind and rain toward the hatch that opened into Flight Deck Control, the empire of the aircraft handler. E-2 Hawkeye radar reconnaissance planes were parked beside the island, their tails almost against the steel and their noses pointed across the deck at the helicopter landing area. The wet metal skin of the airplanes glistened in the weak red light. The colonel went under the tails and glanced through the porthole into Flight Deck Control. The compartment was full of men. He stopped in front of the entrance door and motioned for two of his men to grab the handle that would rotate the locking lugs.

Reports were arriving on the bridge over the telephones, the squawk boxes, and the sound-powered circuits. Damage-Control Central reported fires in the comm spaces and on the hangar deck. The airborne helicopter had been unable to find the second man overboard. Fully 20 percent of the ship’s company was still ashore. Most of the ship’s radios seemed to be off the air with suspected antenna problems. As Captain James tried to sort it out, Jake and the admiral stood in the corner and listened to the reports coming in.

Jake looked at his watch. Two minutes had passed since general quarters had sounded.

“What are they after?” the admiral asked, more to himself than Jake. “And where are they?”

The door to Flight Deck Control swung open and Qazi followed two of his men into the space. They had their Uzis in front of them. The rest followed him into the compartment.

“Silence. Hands up,” Qazi shouted in English.

A sea of stunned faces stared at Qazi. He waved at the area behind the scale model of the flight and hangar deck. “Over there. Everyone. Over there!”

No one moved. Qazi pointed the Browning Hi-Power, with its silencer sticking out like an evil finger, at the chiefs and talkers near the maintenance status boards. “Move. Headsets off.”

They stood frozen, staring. The silenced pistol swung toward the status board and popped, but the smack of the bullet punching its way through the plexiglas and splatting into the bulkhead was louder. Eyes shifted hypnotically toward the neat, round hole in the transparent plexiglas. In the silence Qazi could hear the tinkle of the spent cartridge case as it caromed off a folding chair and struck the metal bulkhead.

“Do as he says. Get over here, people.” The speaker was an officer in khakis, a lieutenant commander sitting in a raised padded chair.

The men moved with alacrity, shedding the sound-powered telephone headsets.

When everyone was crammed thigh to thigh in the indicated space with their hands on the back of their necks, Colonel Qazi spoke again. “You will stand silently, without moving. My men will kill every man who moves or opens his mouth. They understand no English. And they know how to kill.” He added, almost as an afterthought, “They enjoy it.”

He turned and went through the doorway that led to the ladder up into the island. He would have to hurry. Were the marines ahead of him?

Qazi went past the door to the down ladder, a standard nonwatertight aluminum door, and opened the door to the ladder going up. Although Qazi didn’t know it, this was the only place on the ship where the ladderwells were sealed with doors and aluminum bulkheads. This feature prevented fumes and noise from the flight deck from penetrating deeper into the ship.

He heard a thundering noise immediately beneath him. Men running up the ladder beneath his feet! Marines on the way to the bridge! He gestured frantically to the men following him. Just then the door from below burst open and one of Qazi’s men triggered an Uzi burst full into the chest of the marine coming through. He fell backward onto the man behind him. The door sagged shut on his ankle.

On the ladder below the marine who had been shot, someone fired his M-16 upward, through the thin aluminum bulkhead. Once, twice, then an automatic burst.

“A grenade,” Qazi whispered hoarsely.

The man nearest the colonel pulled the pin and tossed it over the booted ankle trapped in the door as everyone else fell flat on the deck.

The explosion was muffled. “Another,” Qazi ordered.

This time the explosion was loud and shrapnel sprayed through the aluminum ladderwell wall.

The grenades would merely delay the marines below. They would seek an alternate route upward, and they knew the ship. He had purchased himself mere seconds. Maybe that would be enough. “Quickly now, let’s go.”

Two of his men failed to rise. Someone turned them over. One was dead, a rifle bullet through the heart, and the other had a piece of shrapnel in his abdomen. No time to waste. Qazi charged up the ladder two steps at a time with those of his men who were still on their feet right behind. More gunfire. Qazi paused at the top and glanced back. The last man was down holding his leg. The marines had fired through the aluminum sheeting under the ladder. Even as he looked, another burst came through the aluminum and the wounded man lost his balance and fell. But he still had two men on their feet behind him. Qazi circled the open turnaround and leaped onto the next ladder.

O-5 level, O-6 level, O-7 … On the O-8 level he passed the flag bridge. No marines in sight. Maybe, just maybe …

As he came up the ladder to the O-9 level he saw a marine wearing a pistol belt standing in front of the door to the navigation bridge. The marine had his pistol in his hand and looked apprehensively at Qazi as he took the steps two at a time. Qazi glanced over his shoulder as his head reached the landing coaming — no more marines — and leveled his pistol as he topped the ladder. He shot the surprised sentry point-blank. The body was still falling as Qazi jerked open the door to the navigation bridge and hurtled through.