Final Flight

23

Callie Grafton stood on the balcony of her hotel room and shivered in the chilly wind. She ignored the spattering raindrops and peered into the darkness, across the lights of the city, out to sea. On clear nights she could see the lights of the United States, but not tonight. Too much rain, she thought. Too much cloud. She went back inside and closed the sliding glass door. A piece of the drapery got trapped in the door. She freed it and closed the door again.

It was two A.M. She had been lying on the bed still fully dressed, too tense to sleep. She had last seen Jake three and a half hours ago, when he bid her good-bye and followed that sailor into the alley. He must have decided to spend the night aboard ship. The officer at fleet landing had called and said that Jake was going out on the liberty boat, and that he had asked the officer to call and tell her he might be unable to get back ashore tonight. That was so like Jake. The heavens could be falling and Jake would have someone call and say that none of the pieces had fallen on him.

He called her every time a plane crashed. Someone would fly into the ground or eject from a burning plane. Before the news was announced or anyone was notified, if he was ashore Jake would call. He would talk of this and that and nothing in particular, and he would tell her he loved her, and he would somehow find a way to make the time of the call stick in her mind. Later she would hear of the crash. And then she would know that he hadn’t been the one injured or killed. She had caught on, of course. Whenever he mentioned the time or asked her what she was watching on television or used any of his other little dodges to make the time of the call memorable, she knew.

She stood at the window and stared down into the street. The puddles reflected the light. God, Naples is such a dreary town in the rain! The dirty stone and mud brown stucco soaks up the light. The place looks as old as it is, old and tired and poor and worn and …

The lobby of the hotel had been a mess when she walked through it this evening on the way to her room. The authorities were trundling a body into an ambulance. She had had to wait on the sidewalk while a uniformed man wearing a submachine gun on a strap checked her identification and compared her name to a list of hotel guests. Only then had she been admitted. In the lobby people in formal clothes sat on the black leather sofas without arms and smoked and talked to men with notebooks. The middle elevator had been roped off. She saw the bullet holes in the plaster and the red stains. Another man with a submachine gun had directed her to take the stairs. She had trudged the three flights up the dark staircase with a naked bulb on every landing. Why were all the staircases and buildings painted earth tones? The whole city had that look, that look … of an impoverished old age, of …

Jake’s calls when someone died were his way of reaching out. He wasn’t so much reassuring her as reassuring himself. He was still alive. He still possessed the only thing on earth he valued — her.

She fingered the drapes and wiped away her tears. Perhaps she loved him too much. What would she ever do if she lost him?

She opened the door and went out on the balcony again, trying to see through the rain. He was out there somewhere, in the darkness, on that sea.

The United States still rode on her anchor with her bow pointed into the wind. Smoke from the fires raging within her seeped out of hatches on the O-3 level forward of the island and from the open elevator doors. Below decks her crew fought desperately to save her.

The magnesium flare Qazi had ignited in the communications spaces melted through the steel deck and fell into the forward hangar bay, Bay One. It struck an aircraft and broke into several pieces which caroomed onto the deck, already ankle-deep in foam. There the pieces exploded. Molten metal was showered around the bay and several fires were ignited.

But the main threat was in Bay Two, amidships. Here the fires were raging unchecked in an ink-black hell of noise and poison gases. AFFF rained from the sprinklers mounted in the hangar ceiling, but the moisture had little effect other than to lessen the heat somewhat. Sailors fighting the fires stumbled from the oven-like bay every few minutes for a soaking from an open hose. Thus cooled, they were given water to drink, the oxygen canisters in their OBAs were checked and replaced if necessary, and they were sent back into the bay.

Ray Reynolds knew the very existence of the ship was at stake. Already the temperature in the compartments above Bay Two on the O-3 level had reached one hundred fifty degrees and fires were spontaneously igniting. The problem was the smoke trapped in the hangar. The fires here were invisible. No one even knew exactly how many fires there were.

Reynolds gathered the repair-locker leaders on a sponson where exhausted fire fighters lay flaked out on the deck. “We’re going to have to open the fire doors at both ends of the bay.”

The rush of air through the hangar would exhaust the smoke and fan the flames even hotter. Yet if the hose teams formed a line in Bay One with the wind at their backs, they might be able to snuff the fires before they joined and raged into a giant, unquenchable inferno. Bay Three was already awash in AFFF, so the backline was as ready as it would ever be. The fire leaders rushed away to get their men in place.

Reynolds was betting the ship on this maneuver. If he couldn’t get the fire under control, it would only be a matter of time before he must order the ship abandoned.

The magnesium fires were out in Bay One when Reynolds got there. Reynolds was wearing an OBA. The blackened wreckage of burned-out aircraft looked surreal in the stark white light from emergency lanterns, the only lights functioning. Thank God going into Naples he had had the handler move as many planes as possible to the flight deck to clear space in Bay Two for the sailors to play basketball. Reynolds got the hose teams arrayed five abreast amid the wreckage and gave the signal to open the doors. The door in front of him between Bays One and Two opened about six feet, then jammed. It could neither be closed again nor opened any further.

No time to worry about the door. The die was cast. The hose teams crowded together and squeezed through. Already the smoke was going out the aft bay, for the men there had managed to get that door almost completely open before it too jammed. The hose teams laid the AFFF right at the base of the flames as they came to them and kept moving. The bays were littered with smashed, blackened shells of aircraft which the men had to snake around.

The overhead was afire too, and streams of foam were directed upward. A rack holding a half-dozen aircraft external fuel tanks that had been weakened by fire gave way under the pressure of the stream of foam. The tanks, each weighing two hundred pounds, came floating down amid a veritable waterfall of foam. One of them landed on Ray Reynolds and two sailors near him carrying battle lanterns. When the tank was rolled away, Reynolds was dead.

The hose teams continued aft, smothering the fires with foam. One of the men who had been hit by the tank was still alive, so he was carried below to Sick Bay. The bodies of Commander Ray Reynolds and the sailor who died with him were laid on Elevator One with the corpses of fifteen other men who had died fighting the fires.

Jake Grafton stood in the furnace heat of the starboard O-3 level passageway and peered through the murk. The floor was awash with foamy water. The fluorescent lights were off and the only illumination came from battle lanterns mounted near each knee-knocker and hatchway. The little islands of dim white light revealed a smoky haze full of sweating men wrestling charged hoses. The hoses full of the water-foam mixture under immense pressure had the weight and rigidity of steel pipe. They could only be bent with the combined efforts of several sailors swearing mightily inside their OBAs.

Jake started coughing. “Better get an OBA on,” someone shouted, his words distorted by the faceplate on his rubber mask.

Jake pulled his shirttail from his trousers and held it over his face. His eyes were beginning to smart and itch. He stumbled aft, ducking under and stepping over hoses and inching by the busy men until he found a corridor leading outboard. He followed it. He came to a ladder. The watertight hatch was down and dogged into place. In the center of the large hatch was a smaller, round hatch, just big enough to admit one man. This fitting was open and a hose went through it. Jake squirmed through.

The turnarounds were full of men sitting and breathing through rags held before their faces. These men had been evacuated from the compartments above Bays One and Two. There was nowhere else for them to go. If 20 percent of the crew were still on the beach, over forty-four hundred men were aboard.

The central engineering control compartment was still manned and the DCA was at his desk, consulting charts. The engineering department head, Commander Ron Triblehorn, was looking over the reactor control panels when Jake came in, but he strode toward him as soon as he saw him. “How did you get off the bridge?”

“Somebody got onto the bridge and started shooting.”

“The admiral and the captain?”

“Still up there.”

“Ray Reynolds is dead. He was killed a few minutes ago up in the hangar bay. Something fell on him and broke his neck. You’re the senior line officer not on the bridge.” The senior officer not a hostage, he meant.

“Ray’s dead?” Jake sank into a chair. Triblehorn nodded. “How about the chief of staff?” He was a captain.

“On the beach.” Junior officers were gathering, listening and looking at Jake.

Jake looked around the compartment, slightly dazed. He was now responsible for the ship and every man aboard her. Legally responsible. Morally responsible. He was in command.

He rubbed his eyes. They were still smarting from the smoke in the passageways. Ray Reynolds dead! Oh, damn it all to hell. And the poor guy just got his new front teeth!

He tried to think. The terrorists. Helicopters were coming in to land when the shooting started on the bridge. He glanced at the television monitor. The screen displayed a black-and-white picture — from the camera in the television booth just under Pri-Fly — of the helicopters on the flight deck. This was a live picture, real time. He could see people, sentries, some of them lying on the deck and some walking slowly near the machines. The choppers were Italian civilian machines.

“The senior marine officer? Get him down here.” One of the junior officers trotted toward a phone. Jake looked up at Triblehorn. “What’s the situation in the plant?”

“No damage. Both reactors on line. All boilers on the line.” Triblehorn gestured vaguely. “That evaporator that gave us all that trouble last week is acting up—”

Jake cut him off. Evaporators were the least of his worries right now. “Are the marines guarding the entrance to the engineering spaces?” Yes. “Can we get underway?” Yes. “How soon?”

They discussed it. Ten minutes warning. Jake thought hard. “Get things fixed so you can turn the screws within a minute of the decision. Tell the first lieutenant to be ready to slip the anchor chain.” They would just let the chain go, leaving the anchor on the ocean floor rather than taking the time to raise it. If they had to.

“Aye aye, sir.” Triblehorn turned to his junior officers. “You heard him. Do it.”

Jake walked over to the DCA’s desk with Triblehorn right behind. He was on the phone. When he hung up, the three of them reviewed the damage control situation. The fire in Bay Two was under control and would soon be extinguished. Power was off throughout the compartments above the bays and on both sides. Above the bays in the O-3 level, the fumes from the fires in the hangar and the communications spaces still contaminated the air. The DCA was opening the watertight hatches on those levels and ordering degassing fans positioned and started to clear the smoke from the ship. Several hundred tons of the water-foam mixture had been used on the O-3 level and was still slopping around in those spaces, but its effect on the trim of the ship was negligible.

Six bodies had been discovered in the communications spaces and were being removed. At least twenty-six men had been killed fighting fires in the hangar bays, most of them when aircraft exploded. Six marines were dead on the flight deck, shot. And four marines had been killed by grenades thrown by the intruders. Four men were believed to be missing under the rubble in Bays One and Two. Over fifty men were in sick bay being treated for everything from gunshot wounds to smoke inhalation. Last but not least, the DCA reported, all the operations spaces on the O-3 level had been evacuated and the communications equipment in those spaces had been damaged by the heat and smoke and AFFF. It would be a half hour before he could let the operations specialists back into those spaces and get power restored. Meanwhile, the ship was not communicating with anyone. All the radio gear was either smashed or severed from the antenna system.

“Where are the gooks?” Grafton asked as Lieutenant Dykstra joined the group. He was wearing marine battle dress, with helmet and flak vest and ammo belt.

“Three choppers have landed on the flight deck, sir,” Dykstra reported, gesturing at the television monitor. “The intruders are on the bridge and in Flight Deck Control and on the flight deck.”

“Why didn’t you shoot those choppers down before they landed?” Grafton asked the marine officer.

“Commander Reynolds felt that it would be better to wait. With the hostages and all …”

Hostages. Yes, that is what the Americans on the bridge and in Flight Deck Control were — hostages. Jake Grafton sagged into a chair and ground his knuckles together helplessly. Do you sacrifice the lives of defenseless people to foil the intruders, or do you passively resist and wait for an opening, perhaps saving innocent lives? What is it the professional negotiators always say? “Play for time: time is on our side, not theirs.” Well, in the usual terrorist incident that is true. The terrorist’s goal is publicity. But are these people terrorists? Is this crime being publicized? If so, why did they attack the communications facilities? What is their objective?

Exasperated, he looked from face to face. The officers were staring at him, waiting for him to make decisions and issue orders. The military system in full fucking flower! “Do you people have any ideas or comments? I’d desperately like to hear some.” Blank looks. They were as off balance as he was, but he was the man responsible. “What are these fuckers up to, Dykstra?”

“Maybe they have mines planted below the waterline, sir. Maybe they’re planting more firebombs. I think they’re going to try to sink us.”

Jake snorted. If so, they were taking their time about it, although they were off to a fair start. “Triblehorn?”

“I think it’s political, CAG. I would bet the ranch they are making announcements to the media this very minute. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that we have four TV choppers circling overhead right now, with Dan Rather in one of them.”

“You think we’re all hostages, is that right?”

“Yessir. They’re bearding the paper tiger.”

Bearding the muscle-bound tiger would be a more accurate description, Jake thought. But no. It’s one thing to hijack an airliner full of civilians and wave a pistol in the pilot’s face for the cameras. What we have here is quite another thing altogether. This is an act of war. “I think we had better wait and find out what their objective is before we go off half-cocked,” Jake Grafton said quietly. “So I’ll wait a while. Dykstra, get your men around the edge of the flight deck with enough firepower to drop those choppers in the water if they try to take off. No shooting unless and until I say so. Triblehorn, get this ship ready to get underway. That card may be only a lousy deuce, but I’ll play it if I have to. DCA, get the fires out. We’ll have no options at all if we sink.”

If we sink, Jake thought savagely. Mother of God!

At the same time that Captain Grafton was learning of his accession to command, Gunnery Sergeant Tony Garcia was having his T-shirt and sweater cut off him by two corpsmen in sick bay. They had him stretched out in a passageway on a mobile hospital table equipped with stirrups. They must have got this damned thing from a gynecology clinic, he mused, trying not to dwell on the fire in his side.

A doctor wearing a blue smock splotched with blood stopped and peered at his side. “Nasty. Get an X-ray after you bandage it. May be some internal bleeding. Won’t know till we see the film.” He paced away muttering about bullet and bone fragments.

The corpsmen rolled the table down the passageway.

“Hey you guys,” Garcia said. “When we get done with X-ray, how about putting me in the ward with Sergeant Vehmeier?”

Sailors sat on the deck with their backs against the bulkhead. Many of them were coughing and all had little green oxygen bottles with masks to suck out of. These are the smoke-inhalation cases, Garcia surmised.

The corpsman rolled him under a large X-ray machine and positioned a giant cone above his chest.

Just like fucking Vietnam, Garcia told himself, only the trip to the hospital was a whole lot quicker. No ride in a Huey strapped to a stretcher, absolutely helpless if the damned thing got shot down or crashed. And the wound ain’t so bad, either, all things considered. That machine gun round in the gut had been a real dilly. At least he was conscious, which was something. In Vietnam he had hemorrhaged until he passed out and woke up with needles in his arm and a tube down his nose all the way to his stomach and a tube up his dick and ninety-five brand-new stitches. Those doctors had almost cut him in half. Eleven months in the fucking hospital. Never again. He had told himself that about a million times through the years. Never again. The next time he was just going to die. Nothing could be worth going through that again.

Jesus, Vehmeier got blasted by that fucking grenade. That silly shit. Why in hell did he fall on that bastard? That Vehmeier … it was enough to make a grown man cry, that a guy like Vehmeier …

One of the corpsmen rolled him from the X-ray room and parked the bed along a passageway bulkhead, then hurried away. “Hey, man,” he called, wanting to be beside Vehmeier, but they paid no attention. They were busy, he told himself, and Vehmeier wouldn’t know he was there anyway. They probably got six IV needles stuck in him and have given him enough dope to supply Los Angeles for a week. Too bad about his hands, but with artificial hands he can do everything except pick his nose.

He wondered if he was bleeding internally. He had seen enough bullet wounds to know that there was no way to tell just from looking. You observed the patient for signs that he was losing blood, and if it wasn’t visibly coming out of holes, it must be internal bleeding. And shock looked like hemorrhaging. He wondered if he was in shock. He felt cold, but they had put a blanket over him. Mild shock maybe. He took several deep breaths, trying to see if his lungs were working properly. His side felt as if he had a knife in it. Maybe he shouldn’t do that. Maybe a busted rib would penetrate his lung.

Wonder if that foray on the bridge did any good. He had knocked that one gunman down for sure and maybe the other guy. Those sailors had been shot, but there was no other way. They would have approved, he told himself. They would have wanted him to try.

One of the corpsmen returned, the one with the glasses. “The doctor says you have two cracked ribs, but there are no bullet fragments in your chest. Just an ugly surface wound. You were very lucky.”

Yeah. Very lucky. That slug could have went into my gut and there is no way my gut could take another, not with all that scar tissue down there. Very lucky. Yeah. “How about wheeling me in with Sergeant Vehmeier.”

“Who?”

“That marine that was brought down here a while ago with his hands blown off. He fell on a grenade.”

“Oh. He’s dead. Sorry.” The sailor walked away. It was a busy night.

“Come back here, you fucking swabbie!” Garcia’s voice was coldly furious. The sailor paused and turned, uncertainty on his face. “You said Sergeant Vehmeier is dead?”

“Yeah, Sarge. He was dead when they brought him in here.”

“I’m ‘Gunnery Sergeant’ to you, pill-pusher. Now get some fucking tape and put a permanent bandage on this wound.” Garcia slid his legs off the edge of the bed and hoisted his torso erect, feeling slightly dizzy and nauseous.

“You can’t—”

“Do I have to get the fucking tape and do it myself?”

The sailor scurried away.

Where did they put that fucking rifle?

As the helicopters had settled onto the angle of the flight deck Colonel Qazi marched Admiral Parker down the ladders toward the flight deck with his pistol in his back. He saw no one. The ladderwell was empty. Except at the last flight of stairs before he reached the flight deck level — Qazi’s dead Palestinian lay where he had fallen, still crumpled against the door. The door gaped several inches. He made the admiral step over the corpse and push the door open.

He heard a sound to his left and stepped behind the admiral. The barrel of a rifle pointed at him below one frightened eye. “If you pull that trigger, you’ll kill the admiral. If you don’t, I will. After I kill you.”

Several seconds passed, then the eye and barrel disappeared. Qazi listened as the man retreated.

The wounded man had died. The muscles in his face were slack and his eyes stared fixedly at nothing. The other body lay undisturbed. But their weapons were missing. And their gym bags. The door to Flight Deck Control was open a crack. One of his men there opened it wider and nodded.

On the flight deck he met Noora and Ali. They were surrounded by armed men and had Jarvis between them. More men lay in a circle around the helicopters, their weapons at the ready. The engines of the helicopters were still and the rotors stationary.

Qazi set off diagonally up the flight deck, heading for the catwalk forward of Elevator One. Behind him Ali and Noora shepherded Jarvis along. Immediately behind Jarvis was a man carrying one of the trigger devices. It weighed about forty pounds and was slung across his back on straps. Qazi kept the admiral’s arm firmly in his grasp. Youssef, the Palestinian leader, carried two backpacks over his shoulders. Two gunmen preceded the party and two followed. Two more were out on each side. “Faster,” Qazi told the men in front, and they picked up the pace.