Final Flight

24

The power was off in the forward mess deck. Emergency battle lanterns provided the only illumination. The unarmed sailors who packed the place gaped when they realized that the officer in whites with tape over his mouth and wrists handcuffed together was Admiral Parker. Ali and his troops pointed their weapons and gestured. The sailors hastily retreated through the watertight hatches into the passageways beyond with many backward glances at Admiral Parker, who watched them go impassively. Qazi’s men dogged the hatches shut again behind the last Americans.

The entrance to the forward magazine was a hatch leading downward. It was marked with a warning in red: “Unauthorized Personnel, Keep Out. This Means YOU.” Everyone donned gas masks: Noora helped Jarvis with his, and Qazi placed one on Admiral Parker and ensured it was properly positioned on his face and functioning correctly. Then Ali and his men opened the dogs on the magazine hatch and lifted it to the open position.

The first man through the magazine hatch found the compartment below empty. It was merely a security access area. A large vault door stood at the end of the compartment with a television camera immediately above it. The gunman put a pistol bullet through the camera and the red light just below the lens went out. He could hear the muffled sound of an alarm. He quickly set a shaped charge on the door, then stood to one side and detonated it. Within seconds his companion, Youssef, slipped a hose attached to a metal canister through the small hole in the door punched by the explosive and opened the valve on the canister. As the gas hissed through the hole the first man methodically set plastique charges on the vault door. When he had the fuses set, he scrambled away up the ladder. Youssef secured the valve on the canister, pulled the hose from the hole, and scurried after his companion.

The explosion jolted the mess deck. Down the ladder the two men went again.

The access compartment was in total darkness. Shattered glass from the fluorescent tubes in the overhead and the emergency battle lanterns lay on the deck. The security door was off its hinges and badly warped. Smoke eddied uncertainly. The two men pulled the door free and groped their way into the next compartment.

One of the three marines in the compartment was still conscious, so the intruders shot him. They ignored the others. The gas would keep its victims out cold for several hours. Qazi had insisted on the use of nonlethal gas; not because of any concern for the victims, but just in case one of his key people had a defective mask.

Another hinged watertight door stood against the forward bulkhead of this compartment. It had no locks, but opening the door would be fatal if there were armed marines on the other side. The two gunmen set another shaped charge and backed away. It exploded with a metallic thud.

Youssef approached the hole with his canister. He never got there. A marine on the other side of the door put his rifle against the hole and opened fire. The M-16 slugs spanged against the canister and tore into Youssef’s arm and ripped his throat apart.

The demolition man huddled against the door. He pulled his backpack off and began packing the dogs with plastique, working in the darkness without his flashlight entirely by feel. Bullets sprayed periodically through the one-inch hole blown by the shaped charge as the muzzle flashes strobed the smokefilled atmosphere. The demolition man cringed under the lashings of the thunderous reports of the M-16, magnified to soulnumbing intensity in this enclosed steel box. Between rifle bursts he could hear an alarm ringing continuously.

In the compartment on the other side of the door, the senior of the three young marines there was trying desperately to inform someone of their plight. The overpressure from the shaped charge that blasted a hole in the door had practically deafened them. Still, the sergeant could hear well enough to learn that the phones and intercom box on the wall were dead. He had already triggered the alarm, which also rang in Central Control, in the main engineering station, and on the bridge. One man was vomiting; he already had too much of the gas. The man at the door changed the magazine in his rifle and sent another burst through the hole. The rifle sounded to him as if it were being fired in a vacuum.

The senior marine was Sergeant Bo Albright from Decatur, Georgia. He groped through the silent, choking darkness for the bulkhead-mounted controls which would flood the magazines. He found them and pulled the safety pin from the lever that energized the system. He pulled the lever down. A row of green lights illuminated above a series of six buttons. He jabbed the first two buttons and held them. In three seconds the lights turned from green to red. He pushed the buttons in succession until all the lights were red.

In the compartment two decks below his feet that ran the width of the ship, the actual magazines, water rushed in from the sea.

“Get away from the door,” Albright screamed into the ear of the rifleman. Together they pushed a desk away from the wall and crouched behind it with their rifles. They were as far away from the door as they could get. Albright stuck his fingers in his ears, scrunched his eyes shut, and opened his mouth. He waited.

The plastique around the door detonated. The concussion jolted them with the wallop of a baseball bat.

Albright peered through the darkness, blinking rapidly, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs. They would be coming!

Lights through the gap where the door had been! He triggered a burst. Another. Something was thudding into the desk. He fired again.

He was falling. Slowly, languidly, drifting and falling. The gas! He squeezed the trigger on the rifle and held it down as he went over the edge and tumbled into a black, alien vastness.

“Wake up, Ski. Wake up.” The sailor shook the catapult captain vigorously. “Goddammit Ski, wake up!”

Aviation Boatswains Mate (Equipment) Second-Class Eugene Kowalski groaned and opened one eye. “Okay, asshole, I’m awake. We’d better be fucking sinking or …”

“We’re at GQ, Ski. A bunch of terrorists have landed on the flight deck. No shit.”

Kowalski groaned again and sat up. He was on the floor of the waist catapult control station, still in civilian clothes. No doubt someone had carried him here to sleep it off when he came back to the ship drunk. That was what usually happened. He had awakened here on the floor of the waist bubble before — several times, in fact. “Terrorists, huh?”

“Fucking A. And the captain and the admiral are hostages on the bridge and there’s a big fire in the hangar and one in the comm spaces.” He drew a breath. “And three choppers full of terrorists landed on the flight deck a little bit ago.”

“Cut me some fucking slack, Pak. You idiots didn’t let me sleep through all of that.”

“What could you have done? And this is your GQ station, so when they called it away you were right here. We’d have woke you up for a launch.” His voice was so sincere that Kowalski eyed the Korean. Maybe he was telling the truth.

“So how come you woke me up now?”

“You ain’t gonna believe this, Ski. One of those choppers is sitting right on top of number-four JBD. Right smack dab on top of it.”

Kowalski took his time about standing up. Pak grabbed him under the armpit to help and Ski shook him off. He finally got erect and remained that way by hanging onto the cat officer’s little desk.

“Jesus, Ski, you pissed your pants.”

“There’s some aspirin in my desk. Get me three of them.” His desk was in the Cat Four control room. “And some water. A glass of water.”

“We ain’t got …”

“Put it in a coffee cup.” Pak dashed out. The cat captain lifted himself into the cat officer’s raised chair and rested his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands. After a moment he felt his crotch. It was wet. He tried to remember how he had gotten back to the ship. Captain Grafton was in there somewhere, but the rest was hazy. Maybe the XO was right. Maybe he was an alcoholic.

He slipped off the chair and rushed out the door of the bubble. Here he was on a little sponson on the O-3 level, outside the skin of the ship. He grabbed hold of the safety wire and leaned out and retched. The wind swirled some of the vomit back onto him. He puked until he had the dry heaves, and when they subsided he took off his torn sport shirt, wiped his face with it, and threw it over the side. The stench of something burning was strong. Too strong. It made him feel sick again. He went back into the bubble and collapsed into the cat officer’s padded chair.

Pak came back with two other guys. “A committee, huh?” They stood and watched Ski swallow the aspirin and drink the water. “Where’s Laura?” Laura was the captain of number-three catapult.

“He didn’t get back. He’s on the beach.”

Ski sat the cup down with a bang. “Okay, let’s take a look. Raise this thing.”

The three sailors looked at each other in the weak glow of the little red lights here in the bubble. “The terrorists got guns, Ski. They’ve been shooting people right and left. They have the captain and admiral—”

“This bubble’s bulletproof, fireproof, and bombproof. They can’t do nothing to us in here.”

“Yeah, but they could get into the cat control rooms and—”

“We’ll have to risk it. I ain’t gonna get out on the catwalk and stick my head up over the edge.”

“Pak did. That’s how he knows there’s a chopper on four JBD. And he went back and checked the fifty caliber on the stern. The marine back there is dead, shot, and the ammo belt is missing.” Pak nodded nervous confirmation.

Kowalski shook his head. “And I’ll bet the grunt on the port bow gun is dead too and the belt’s in the water. Yeah. Well. Pak, you’re an idiot. We gotta raise the bubble. But it wouldn’t hurt to disable the horn.”

One of the men went outside the cab and used a knife to saw through the wire to the warning Klaxon that sounded every time the control bubble went up or down. When he returned, he pushed a button on the bulkhead near the door. As the bubble began to slowly rise in splendid, and safe, silence he dogged down the entrance hatch.

The control cab rose on its hydraulic arms until it protruded eighteen inches above the level of the flight deck. Everything above deck was glass, inch-thick glass that was tilted in at the top so that objects striking it would be deflected upward. Inside the cab, all four men stood with knees bent so only their eyes were above the lower edge of the window. They stared at the helicopters on the flight deck, stark in the island’s red floodlights, rotors stationary. The sentries guarding them were also visible. The lights in the control cab were off so the men on deck could not see in, yet when the sentry turned their way, all four dropped their heads down below the window. In a moment one of them raised up for another peek.

“They’re civilian choppers. See, that’s Italian on the side of that one.”

“What’ya expect? Chinese? Look over there. See that guy with the submachine gun? He’s one of them.”

“He’s dressed like a sailor,” Kowalski said.

“Yeah. They all are. And they got the captain …”

“Sure. Yeah. I got that.” Kowalski picked up the phone and held it in his hand. “Maybe we oughta call the office. Maybe the bosun’s up there, or one of the chiefs.” The office he was referring to was the V-2 division office, where the khaki in charge of the catapults had their desks. He stared aft at the third helicopter. From this angle it certainly looked like it was sitting on the JBD.

“Ain’t nobody there,” Pak told him. “There’s a big fire up in the comm spaces, and the office was inside the fire boundaries, so they ran everybody out. I think they got ’em all fighting fires, either in the comm spaces or down in the hangar.”

Kowalski grabbed the ship’s blue telephone book and thumbed through it. He dialed a number. It rang and rang. Finally he used his thumb to break the circuit. “The XO ain’t in his stateroom,” he announced.

A third-class petty officer from the Cat Three crew spoke up. “We figured you’re all we got, Ski. There’s terrorists in Flight Deck Control. And they’re on the bridge. And they made an announcement over the 1-MC about how they’re gonna shoot hostages and toss them down on the deck if anybody resists. Maybe the terrorists are in Pri-Fly or over in the air department office. We didn’t figure we should take the chance calling them. We tried to call the bow cats and the phones are dead up there. We sent a greenie looking for one of the chiefs or a cat officer, and he ain’t come back. The passageways up forward are filled with smoke and they’re grabbing guys to fight fires. So you’re our man. What are we gonna do?”

Kowalski hung the phone back in its wall cradle. He rubbed his face with both hands. “If I’m all we’ve got, we’re in deep fucking shit.” He took one more look around the flight deck, at the choppers and the sentries and the jets sitting with folded wings on the bow and aft of the waist JBDs. Wisps of steam rose from the catapult slots: this would be leakage from the preheaters coming through the gaps in the rubber seals that were placed in the slots when the cats were not in use.

After a moment he asked for a cigarette and someone gave him one. He sat down on the floor and smoked it slowly. “What are these terrorists after?”

The men beside him shrugged.

“But they came on the helicopters, right?”

“Some of them did, anyway,” one of his listeners answered.

“And they probably expect to leave the same way.” Nods of assent from everyone. “So you guys go get the JBD hydraulic system fired up.”

“We thought you’d say that, Ski,” Airman Gardner said with a quick grin as he left with the others.

When Sergeant Albright set off the main alarm in the magazine, a red light began to flash on the main engineering panel and an audible tone sounded in the compartment.

“Well, gentlemen,” Jake Grafton said bitterly as he and the chief engineer watched the lights indicating the positions of the magazine flooding valves turn from green to red. “Now we know why Colonel Qazi is here.”

He had already been informed that Qazi and the admiral were on the forward mess deck. He and the marine lieutenant had been discussing the possibility of surrounding the mess area and trying to trap Qazi. It was too late for that.

The magazines! Even as they spoke, the lights turned green again. Then the lights went out.

“Goddammit,” Triblehorn swore softly. “They’ve closed the valves and chopped the power.”

“Can you flood from Central Control?” Jake asked. The central control station two decks below where they sat actually distributed power and controlled the position of emergency valves. Triblehorn tried the squawk box.

Jake tried to digest it. Qazi and his men were forcing their way into the magazines. To set a charge to detonate the bombs stored there and sink the ship in one glorious, suicidal fireball? If so, why were the helicopters still on the flight deck? No, they were planning to leave the same way most of them arrived. And they were going to take something with them. That something could only be nuclear weapons.

“No way, CAG,” Triblehorn said. “We’ve lost power to those valves.”

“Halon. Let’s use the Halon system.” The magazines could be filled with Halon gas, a system designed to choke off a fire. It would also suffocate anyone in the compartment not wearing an OBA.

Triblehorn paused. “Halon will kill our guys too.”

Jake rubbed his eyes. “Do it.”

Triblehorn spoke into the intercom box. In seconds the answer came back. The Halon system was also disabled.

Jake slumped into a chair. How will Qazi get out of the magazine through the marines? Hostages won’t help Qazi then, and he knows it. Even as he thought of the problem Jake Grafton knew the answer.

“Where’s that marine officer? I need to talk to him.”

Perhaps he could secure electrical power to the weapons elevator. No good. Qazi will arm one of the nuclear weapons and threaten to detonate it unless he is allowed to leave. And if he is thwarted by marines or inoperative elevators or anything else, he may just carry out the threat. Jake had no doubt that it was technically possible to bypass the safety devices built into the weapon. The weapons were designed to prevent an accidental detonation; of course, a technician who knew what he was doing could intentionally trigger one, given enough time and the right tools. And Qazi probably had enough of both.

The Bay of Naples! Jake rubbed his forehead. It felt like the skin there was dead, as if the blood supply no longer functioned. The explosion would vaporize the ship and everyone aboard her. And the ship was three miles off the coast, in a bay surrounded on three sides by hills and islands which would focus and enhance the concussion, radiation, and thermal pulses from the explosion. And the light and thermal pulses would be reflected off the clouds. How many people are in Naples, anyway? In Pozzuoli, Portici, on the slopes of Vesuvius?

The marine lieutenant was standing beside him, looking at him, waiting.

Will Qazi be bluffing? Can I afford to take the risk of calling him? What if he just lights one of those babies off while he’s down in the magazine?

For a few milliseconds a raw piece of the sun about the size of a man’s fist would exist here on the surface of the earth. The plutonium’s mass would be converted to pure energy. The sky and sea would rip apart. Every human within twenty miles not cremated in the first millionth of a second would see the face of an angry, wrathful God.

“Triblehorn, let’s get underway. We’ll steer the ship from after steering. Get the navigator to lay a course out to sea. Put some lookouts with sound-powered phones up on the bow and let’s slip the cable. Now!”

“Aye aye, sir.” Triblehorn stepped away, issuing orders as if he got the ship underway from engineering every other Thursday. Perhaps he was relieved to have orders he found familiar. Jake watched the officers and sailors. They, too, seemed relieved that something was being done.

The marine shifted nervously beside Jake’s chair. Jake stood. He felt a little light-headed. “Got a cigarette?” he asked the lieutenant.

“I don’t smoke, sir.”

Jake nodded vacantly. The alarm from the forward magazine was still sounding. Were the Americans there still alive? What about Parker? At least the fire in the comm space was extinguished and the ones in the hangar were under control and would soon be out. That was a plus. Perhaps the only one.

What kind of man was this Colonel Qazi? Jake had spent a quarter hour on the bridge watching him. He was not the wired-up fanatic one expected after viewing too many terrorist incidents on television. No. He was competent, calculating, intelligent, and, Jake suspected, absolutely ruthless. Not suicidal. Not on a mission for the glory of Allah. But a man who would do whatever he felt he had to do to get the job done.

“What are we going to do, sir, about the intruders?” Dykstra had a stern, square jaw and a wide mouth that just now was set in a pencil-thin line. His nostrils flared slightly every time he inhaled.

“Whatever that asshole wants us to do, Lieutenant. I’m sure he’ll be telling us just what that is before very long.”

The seawater looked black in the glow of the battle lanterns in the forward magazine. Colonel Qazi waded through the cold, foot-deep water casting his flashlight beam this way and that. Row after row of olive drab sausages met his eye. White missiles hung in racks against the bulkheads. Enough ordnance for a nice little war, he thought as he scanned the compartment. There, a door.

He lifted the single lever that cammed all six of the dogs, then sprung back as the door flew open from the weight of the water behind it. A little waterfall flowed through the doorway until the water in this compartment was equal in depth to the water where Qazi and his companions stood. Qazi stepped through into this compartment. Yes. The weapons were white, about the size of a five-hundred-pound bomb. Each of them was strapped into its own cradle which held it firmly several feet above the deck. Chains and pulleys hung from rails on the overhead.

“Did the water harm them?” Qazi heard Ali say.

“Oh no,” Jarvis replied. He tilted his gas mask away from his face and sniffed experimentally, then removed it. “They’re waterproof so they can be carried on external bomb racks through rain and snow and still function.” He was examining one of the devices under a powerful flashlight. The sheen of moisture on the top of his bald head glistened occasionally in the stray light reflecting from the water’s surface. He spread his legs and lowered his gut like a sumo wrestler. He used a screwdriver on an access plate. In seconds he had it off and was shining a flashlight into the interior of the weapon. “Hail wouldn’t do the covering on the radar transceiver in the nose any good, of course,” Jarvis continued softly, “but a little bath shouldn’t hurt anything. As long as these access panels were properly fitted …”He knelt in the water and bent his head down so he could get a better view inside the weapon.

He looked up at Noora. She had removed her mask too and was using her hand to fluff her hair. “This one looks fine.” He searched her face expectantly and was rewarded. A trace of a smile lifted the corners of her lips. His eyes flicked down and he grinned nervously as he moved toward the next bomb.

“Put this one on a dolly and connect your device to it before you check the others,” Qazi said.

They positioned a bomb cart beside the weapon and four of them surrounded it, two on the nose and two on the tail. There were no good handholds, but they were running out of time. Jarvis danced from foot to foot, chanting, “Oh, don’t drop it. Please, don’t drop it …”

They got it two inches out of the cradle and set it back down. It was too heavy. “Use a pulley,” Qazi said.

On the end of the chain was a piece of metal that fitted into the two metal eyes on top of the weapon. These eyes would fit up into an airplane’s bomb rack where two hooks would mate the weapon to the plane. With the mechanical advantage provided by the pulley, it only took two men pulling on the chain to lift the weapon from its cradle and lower it gently onto the dolly.

The water lapped at the bottom of the weapon. Jarvis opened the access panel and used strapping tape to secure the trigger device he had constructed to the top of the weapon. Then he ran two wires with alligator clips on the ends from the device through the access panel. He used the flashlight to attach the wires inside the weapon. When he was finished, he stood back as Qazi bent to look inside.

The interior of the weapon was a maze. Qazi had expected this. He tried to remember exactly what he was looking for. Yes, that clip was on the wire leading from the battery. And this other clip was on the wire bundles that led to the detonators. Jarvis had had to scrape some insulation from both wires to affix the clips.

“Satisfactory.” He straightened and found himself looking at Admiral Parker, whose face was still obscured behind his gas mask. “I’m sorry, Admiral. But we need these weapons.”

Parker turned away. He seemed to be listening.

Now Qazi heard it too, a faint rumbling. What was that?

Qazi pointed his flashlight at the water contact with the doorway. The water was moving, ever so slightly. But it should move as the ship rocked at anchor. Parker was looking at the water too. Qazi felt the deck beneath his feet tremble.

Now he understood. The rumble had been the anchor chain running out. The ship was underway!