Final Flight

22

When Gunnery Sergeant Tony Garcia reached the bottom of the island ladderwell on the O-3 level, he stood stock still and looked at the carnage, stunned. He had eaten dinner tonight in Naples with two friends and had been sound asleep when general quarters was called away. He had pulled on trousers, shirt, and shoes and raced for the armory, where the corporal on duty had tossed him an M-16 and duty belt. Then he had run for the bridge. Normally he led the squad that guarded the bridge during GQ, but Sergeant Vehmeier had tonight’s duty section. Now he stood looking at the five marines lying amid blood and shrapnel. One of them was conscious.

“Grenades, Gunny,” the wounded man whispered. His back and side were covered in blood and blood oozed out his left sleeve.

Sergeant Vehmeier lay face down in a pool of gore. Garcia turned him over. The man’s hands were gone, only red meat and white bones remained, and his abdomen was ripped open. He had fallen on one of the grenades, probably the first one. Miraculously, he still had a pulse in his neck. Garcia used both hands to scoop Vehmeier’s intestines back into his abdominal cavity. He rolled Vehmeier over, then stripped off his shirt and used that as a bandage to protect the wound.

“Quick,” the sergeant whispered at a knot of gawking sailors. “Get these men to sick bay, right fucking now! This man first.” The sailors leaped to obey.

Garcia wiped his bloody hands on his trousers. “Get tourniquets on these men,” he directed. He stepped over the casualties and climbed the ladder, his M-16 at the ready.

The man at the top, with his foot caught in the door and sprawled on his back down the ladder, had taken a half dozen rounds in the chest. He was beyond help. When Garcia eased the door open to peer out, the body slipped, making noise. Just below the sailors were making a hell of a racket carrying the casualties away, but Garcia froze anyway.

He waited for the bullets to come. He was sweating and his heart was pounding. Nothing. He peered again through the crack in the door, then eased it open enough to slip through.

There were two men down in the passageway, here on the flight deck level. Garcia picked up the Uzis and pistols lying on the deck. One man was still alive, but he wasn’t going anywhere with that hole in his gut. A gym bag lay near him. Garcia opened it carefully. Grenades and some stuff that looked like plastique. Some fuses.

A crumpled body lay at the bottom of the ladderwell up to the next floor. It had almost a dozen wounds in it. Garcia could see the holes in the aluminum sheeting. One of his marines had fired an M-16 clip through the aluminum and nailed this guy.

The wounded man moved and groaned. Garcia swung the M-16 in his direction. It was tempting. The bastard deserved it. But no.

The sergeant looked up the ladderwell. What was waiting up there? Should he go find out? Or should he take another route? Another route would probably be healthier.

He heard a door opening to his left and leaped right, toward a corner. Even as he did, he heard bullets spanging off the steel. In a corner of his mind it registered that there were no loud reports, and he knew the weapon had a silencer.

He sprawled on the deck and scrambled furiously, trying to ensure his body and legs were behind cover. He rolled over and waited for the gunman to round the turn in the passageway. Slowly, slowly he got to his feet, keeping the rifle pointed. He wiped the sweat from his face with the front of his T-shirt and tried to visualize the corridor that he had just left. The door that opened must have been the door to Flight Deck Control. The bastards must be in there! With all those sailors. He couldn’t shoot through the door for fear of hitting a sailor. Damn!

His thigh felt like it was on fire. He looked. A bullet hole in his trouser leg. He felt his thigh. A slug had grazed him, but not too bad. The wound was bleeding some. Those motherfuckers!

He could hear the sound of men running somewhere in the ship, minute vibrations that could be heard for hundreds of feet, and the faint clank of watertight hatches being slammed shut. These were normal noises mixed in with the hum and whine of machinery that was present every minute of every day. He stood listening now for the sound of a door being eased open or shoes scraping on steel or a weapon clinking ever so faintly against a bulkhead. Of these noises, there were none.

It was coming back to him now, those feelings of combat. Always tense, always listening, always waiting … waiting to kill and waiting to die. He had not felt those feelings for twenty years. But now they were back and it seemed like only yesterday. He was sweating profusely and his mouth was dry. He was desperately thirsty.

He heard a watertight door being opened somewhere behind him but near. He pointed his rifle and waited. Now someone was coming around the corridor, in from the starboard side of the island. It was only Staff Sergeant Slagle and a lance corporal. What was his name? Leggett. Corporal Leggett.

The 1-MC hissed. “Men of United States. I am Colonel Qazi. I have taken over the ship. We have your captain and your admiral with us here on the bridge. Further resistance by you is futile and will result in the deaths of your officers and the sailors here with us on the bridge. If another shot is fired at my men by anyone, I will execute one of the Americans here with me and throw his body down onto the flight deck. Now I want everyone to clear the flight deck. Clear the flight deck or I will execute a sailor.”

“What do we do now, Gunny?” Slagle asked.

Garcia examined the silencer on one of the pistols he had picked up from the deck. The slide had been machined to take the silencer by someone who knew his business. He pushed the button on the grip and the magazine popped out into his hand. About ten rounds remained. He reinserted the magazine in the grip and checked that the weapon had a round in the chamber and eased the hammer down. Then he stuffed the pistol in his belt. He gave the other weapons to Slagle. “Get on a phone to Captain Mills—”

“He’s on the beach.” Mills was the marine officer-in-charge.

“So call the lieutenant,” Gunny Garcia rasped. First Lieutenant Potter Dykstra was the second in command and the only other marine officer in the detachment. “Tell him the squad that was on the way to the bridge got wiped out by grenades. And there is at least one gunman in Flight Deck Control. Find out what the lieutenant wants to do. Leggett, you stay right here. If anybody carrying a weapon comes out of Flight Deck Control, kill him. These fuckers are dressed like sailors. I’m going up to the bridge and see what’s what.”

Slagle turned and trotted away.

“Listen, Leggett. These assholes got grenades. They’re liable to toss one out here to see if they can perforate you. Keep your head out of your ass.”

“You bet, Gunny.” Leggett licked his lips and started to peer around the corner.

“Don’t do that, dummy. If you’ve gotta take a peek, get down on the deck and peek around the corner down low. And don’t let him shoot you in the head.” With that, Gunny Garcia turned and went up the ladder in the back of the island, his M-16 pointed ahead of him with the butt braced against his hip.

The fires on the hangar deck were out of control almost immediately after the paint lockers exploded. Men came pouring out of the shops and repair lockers and attacked the fires with AFFF (aqueous film-forming foam) from the fire-fighting stations located around the bay, but the burning paint and chemicals from the sabotaged lockers had been sprayed everywhere, on aircraft, in open cockpits, in the drip pans under the planes, and on aircraft tires. The tires ignited almost immediately and gave off a heavy, thick black smoke. When the CON-FLAG watches failed to close the two interior fire doors, the hangar deck officer, a lieutenant, ordered the doors closed manually. And he sent a man up to the nearest CONFLAG station to light off the hangar deck sprinkler system.

The men fighting the fires were relieved in shifts to don Oxygen-Breathing Apparatus (OBAs), which were self-contained breathing systems. Although the fires were producing immense quantities of toxic gases and smoke, most of it was being vented out the open elevator doors. And the wind was funneling in the doors, feeding the fires.

A minute after he had been dispatched to the CONFLAG station, the messenger was back and informed the hangar deck officer that the CONFLAG watchstander was dead, shot, and the sprinkler control system was shot full of holes.

The hangar deck officer called Damage-Control Central. The hangar deck sprinking system was turned on from DC Central, almost four minutes after the paint lockers had exploded. The sprinklers had little visible effect on the fires, so with the concurrence of the Damage Control Assistant (the officer in actual charge of the ship’s minute-to-minute damage control efforts) in DC Central, the elevator doors on the sides of the bays were closed too. In seconds the interior of Bays Two and Three filled with black smoke and toxic gases. The smoke became so thick that the fire fighters were literally blind inside their flexible rubber masks. Men worked by feel. They hung onto hoses with a death grip, and if one tripped and fell, he dragged men down on both sides of him. A couple men panicked and hyperventilated inside the self-contained OBAs and let go of their hoses. Lost, blind, and seemingly unable to breathe, they ripped off their OBAs and passed out within seconds from the toxic fumes.

Still, the fire-fighting effort continued. In less than ten minutes the fires in Bay One, the forward bay, were out, although the chief in charge there didn’t realize it for another minute or two.

In Bays Two and Three, amidships and aft, the fires continued. Since the air was opaque and the heat was building, the fires were difficult to detect unless someone actually walked into one, so some fires were not attacked by hose teams. Then an A-6 that still contained several thousand pounds of fuel blew up in Bay Two. The concussion and flying fragments cut down almost a dozen men and severed two hoses. The fires spread. Men staggered out of the bay almost overcome by the intense heat or passed out where they stood from heat exhaustion.

In Bay Three, Chief Reed made a command decision. On his own initiative he opened the doors to both Elevators Three and Four, on opposite sides of the bay. The wind rushed in the starboard door, El Three, and pushed the smoke and fumes out El Four. Reed’s decision probably saved the ship. Although the fires burned more intensely in the draft, the overall heat level was lower and the air cleared. Fire fighters were now able to directly attack the flames.

In the meantime, Bay Two had become a hellish inferno.

In DC Central, which was located on the second deck in the main engineering control room, immediately below the aft hangar bay, the Damage Control Assistant had his hands full. On the wall before him were arranged three-dimensional charts that showed every compartment in the ship. Other charts showed the networks of fuel lines, power lines, fire mains, and telephone circuits. A crew of men wearing sound-powered phones marked these charts as they received damage reports from the various fire-fighting teams.

The DCA was a busy man. He had an extraordinarily hot fire burning in the comm spaces and the fumes were spreading to surrounding spaces, which he had ordered evacuated. Every time someone opened a watertight door to enter the fire-fighting zone, the poisoned air spread a little further. All electrical power to the communications spaces had already been secured by the load dispatcher in the central electrical control station. He and the repair-party leader had already concluded that they were facing a magnesium fire, probably a flare, since nothing in the communications spaces would burn with such intensity or give off such toxic fumes. Consequently the fire was attacked with Purple K, a dry, dust-like chemical propelled by gas that would blanket the burning metal and cut off the oxygen supply. Water or AFFF would have merely caused the magnesium to explode, spreading it. The DCA knew that the electrical equipment in the comm spaces would all be ruined by the fine grit of Purple K. It was unavoidable. The fire had to be extinguished as quickly as possible, before the magnesium melted the deck and fell through to another compartment.

Just now the DCA was checking the chart to locate the compartments that might be beneath the burning flare. He wanted to get teams in those compartments, ready to attack the flare if it burned its way through the steel deck it was lying on.

The executive officer, Ray Reynolds, stood looking over his shoulder, listening to the reports that flowed in and the DCA’s responses, and using the telephone periodically. Since the 1-MC announcement that the captain was hostage on the bridge, the DCA had attempted to talk to the captain via the squawk box and the telephone. Both times there was no answer to his call. As far as the DCA was concerned, responsibility for the ship had now passed to the executive officer.

But the DCA had no time to worry about the bridge. He had fires to fight. A large portion of the communications spaces, the DCA learned, protruded over the forward hangar bay, Bay One. He got onto the squawk box to repair locker 1-F, which was responsible for that bay, and alerted them to the possible danger from the fire raging above their heads.

Ray Reynolds stared at the charts of the ship and the greasepencil marks that adorned them. The first priority, he had already decided, was to save the ship. Second was to capture the intruders or thwart them, and third was to free the captain and the admiral.

He stood now absorbing the situation that the DCA faced. Two bad fires were out of control, and the DCA was marshaling every man he needed to fight them. He had secured electrical power near the fires. He had drained the pipes that carried jet fuel to the flight-deck fueling stations and flooded the pipes with carbon dioxide. He was monitoring the level of AFFF in the pumping stations, and he had men relieving the men fighting the fires at regular intervals. Fire-main pressures were still good, both reactors were on the line, and the engineering plant had plenty of steam. The auxiliary generators had been lit off and were ready to take the load if necessary. And the DCA had the repair teams not fighting fires searching the ship for unexploded bombs.

Someone handed Reynolds a telephone. “XO, this is Lieutenant Dykstra.”

“We’re up to our ass in alligators, Dykstra. Are you getting the swamp drained?”

“The quick-reaction squad that was on the way to the bridge was wiped out. Grenades. I think most of the intruders are on the bridge.”

“Keep them there. Don’t let them out.”

“That announcement. That colonel wanted everyone off the flight deck. We must be getting more company.”

Reynolds was aware of that, yet he had had little time to consider the implications. More armed intruders was the last thing he wanted. He turned away from the DCA’s desk and walked to the limit of the telephone cord. He had no doubt that the terrorist on the bridge — that’s what he was, a maniac terrorist — would do exactly what he said. He would execute people if armed resistance continued.

“Play for time, Dykstra. That’s the only option we have. Until we know what they’re up to, it’s senseless to goad these men and have them kill our people for nothing. What’d their leader call himself?”

“Qazi.”

“Put your marines in the catwalks forward and aft so they can control the helo landing area. Have everyone hold their fire. Unless these people are suicidal, they are going to want to leave the ship sooner or later, and we want to be ready when they do. Perhaps then we’ll have a better handle on this.”

“Maybe they are suicidal, sir. Qazi? Maybe that’s a play on ‘kamikaze.’”

“You have any better ideas, Lieutenant?”

“Shoot them when they get out of the helicopters.”

And the fanatics on the bridge would kill everybody there. Ray Reynolds was a poker player, and just now he wanted to see a few more cards. “No. Post your men. Time’s on our side, not theirs.”

He broke the connection and called Operations. No one answered. He tried Combat. No answer there either. He reached for the squawk box, then became aware of the DCA’s voice. “Get everyone out of that area on the O-3 level.” When the DCA saw Reynolds looking at him, he said, “The temperatures are really rising in the spaces above Bay Two, XO. I’m ordering an evacuation. I’m going to have the repair crew up there put AFFF on the deck in all those spaces. Maybe that’ll keep the temperature down and prevent flash fires.”

So the people in Ops and Combat had probably already left their spaces. With the communications gear in the comm spaces out of action and Ops and Combat uninhabitable, the ship could not communicate with the outside world. She was isolated. “Do it,” Reynolds said. There was no other choice. Unless the fires were brought under control, United States was doomed.

Gunnery Sergeant Garcia stood in the signalman’s locker on the after portion of the O-9 level and peered carefully out the open door. Behind him three sailors shifted nervously from foot to foot. They had extinguished all lights in the compartment, at his request. Garcia looked left, up the length of the signal bridge, past the bin full of signal flags and the signal flashing light mounted high on a post, forward to the closed hatch to the navigation bridge. The signal bridge was open to the weather, without roof or walls. A solid, waist-high rail formed one side of this porch-like area and the island superstructure formed the other. Now Gunny Garcia examined the area to his right. The signal bridge curved around and expanded into a large portico on top of the after part of the island. He looked back left, toward the enclosed navigation bridge.

There were windows beside the entrance hatch to the bridge in that portion of the bridge structure that jutted starboard almost to the edge of the flight deck fifty feet below. The back of a raised, padded chair was visible in the red light that illuminated the interior. That was the navigator’s chair, and it was used by the conning officer when he brought the ship alongside a tanker or ammunition ship for an underway replenishment. Garcia wasn’t thinking about unreps just now, he was thinking about people. And there were none in sight.

He turned to the sailors behind him, who were staring at the rifle and the pistol butt sticking out of the waistline of his khaki trousers, trousers now heavily stained with Sergeant Vehmeier’s blood. “What’re you guys doing up here?”

“We’re signalmen. This is our GQ station.”

“Ain’t nobody on the bridge gonna tell you to run up a signal flag tonight. You guys take a hike.”

The sailors didn’t have to be told twice. They shut the door behind them.

Garcia checked the bridge windows again. Still nobody visible. He looked around the dark signalmen’s shack. There was just enough light coming through the door to make out a dark sweater lying on the worn couch. Garcia pulled it on over his white T-shirt, then buckled the duty belt around his waist. The belt had been draped over his shoulder. It contained spare magazines for the M-16.

Too bad he didn’t have any camouflage grease, because his face would show like a beacon on the dark signal bridge. He glanced at the coffeepot. Coffee grounds wouldn’t help much. The chief’s desk. He rummaged through the drawers and came up with a tin of black shoe polish. He smeared some on his face.

A head was visible in the bridge window. The man wasn’t looking back this way. The head disappeared.

It was now or never. Garcia swallowed hard, gripped the rifle firmly, and sprinted toward the closed watertight entrancedoor to the bridge.

He huddled in the corner, out of the wind and rain, and placed his ear against the door. Nothing. Damn. He tried again. Only the pounding of his heart. He could smell smoke, heavy and acrid. It must be coming from the doors to Elevators One and Two, and being swirled up here by the wind.

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. The technician who maintained these fittings apparently didn’t want to risk the captain’s ire. Garcia turned the dog until it was in the open position.

He peered in the window again, taking his time, inching his head up in case someone was there. Nobody. He opened the two dogs on the upper part of the door. This time the door made a noise as the pressure was relieved. Garcia huddled in the corner, as far out of sight of the window as he could get.

Time passed. He watched the dogs, waiting for a lever to betray the touch of a human hand by a movement, no matter how slight. Nothing.

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 his head until he could see inside with his right eye. There was a man 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 was looking out the windows on the starboard side, searching. Garcia lowered his head and held his breath. If he saw the open dogs, the game was up. The gunman would be waiting for the door to open. Garcia begin breathing again and counted seconds. When a half minute had passed he decided to risk the window again.

A loud screech behind him. Garcia spun, ready for anything. God, it was the loudspeaker.

“You there in the catwalk, down on the flight deck. This is Colonel Qazi on the bridge. Leave the flight deck or I will shoot a man 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 open.

“Now, Admiral,” Colonel Qazi said as he hung up the 1-MC mike. “I want you gentlemen to understand me. You and I are going upstairs to Pri-Fly. We won’t be gone long. My two helpers here will ensure no one on the bridge moves a muscle or opens his 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 Pri-Fly and pulled it open. Qazi stood just far enough behind him to make any attempt at going for the pistol impossible.

Inside the Pri-Fly compartment, the air boss and assistant boss, both commanders, stood silently and watched Parker and Qazi enter. The three sailors in the compartment kept their eyes on Qazi’s pistol. Without a word, Qazi examined the panel that controlled the ship’s masthead and flight-deck floodlights. Then he glanced at the air boss. “Where is that helicopter that was searching for the man in the water?”

“We sent it to Naples,” the boss said. He named the airfield. Earl Parker was looking at the column of black smoke rising from Elevator 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 under 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.”

“You.” Qazi pointed the pistol at the senior enlisted man, a second-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 turn them back on.” The sailor’s hands danced across the switches. The flight deck below seemed to disappear into the night, then reappear. “Again.” The sailor obeyed. “Now once more.”

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 bridge.” After the sailors and officers filed out, Qazi fired his pistol into the radio transmitter that sat on a shoulder-high shelf near the door. He stepped around the room putting bullets into every piece of radio gear he could identify. Then he followed the admiral out of the compartment and down the ladder one level toward the navigation bridge.

Gunny Garcia crouched on the signal bridge and stared at the navy-gray aluminum door that covered the entrance to the bridge, now that he had the watertight door open. His first thought was, That’s why the gunman didn’t notice the two open dogs. 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 innocent 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 back. One more glance in the window, then he pushed the door open and crept onto the bridge. He eased the door shut behind him.

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 without the others hearing the shot, he might get a second or two advantage.

He could hear the choppers even here on the bridge. Now if the guy guarding these sailors is just looking at the choppers … He crept to the corner, keeping low, and peered around with the pistol ready.

The gunman was ten feet away walking toward him and looking straight at him! He snapped off a shot. And another. The man was hit! Garcia stuffed the pistol in his pants and stepped out with the M-16 up.

Before he could pull the trigger the bullets from an Uzi tore into his side and he was off balance and falling and the M-16 was hammering and he was desperately pushing himself backward, toward cover.

He was on the floor and he didn’t have the rifle. A sailor ran past him for the door where he had entered.

A stuttering hail of lead cut down another sailor charging toward 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. Another sailor careened past and then Garcia was through the door.

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 cranked the dogs shut with all his strength. There! The bridge windows 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 he could go, his side on fire and his back ready to receive the bullets from the Uzis. But the bullets never came.

When the ear-popping roar of the M-16 filled the bridge, Haddad, the gunman on the port wing of the bridge who had been dividing 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 M-16 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 1-MC 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 tried 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 more resistance, any more shooting, if another of my men dies, I will kill your admiral.”

He put the microphone back in its bracket. “Watch them,” he told Haddad. He walked over to the dead American and dragged his body to the door to the signal bridge. He looked through the window, then eased the door open. Keeping low, he dragged the body through, then wrestled it up over the rail. It fell away toward the deck below, leaving the rail smeared with blood. He went back onto the bridge and dogged the watertight door shut. He propped the interior door open so the dogs were plainly visible. Then he walked the width of the bridge to where the captain and admiral 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 know that.

On the flight deck, sentries had exited the helicopters and spread out to guard them. He could see Noora helping Jarvis out.

Qazi picked up his gym bag and turned to Admiral Parker, who was sitting up nursing his head. He kicked his arm out and rolled him 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 wrists, then rolled him over and placed a piece of tape across his mouth. 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 bridge. Use grenades if you have to. Don’t let them take you alive.”