Final Flight

26

The United States pitched gently in the corrugated sea as she charged onward through the night at flank speed, a gentle seesawing of the bow and stern that her crew, accustomed as they were, ignored. They did notice, however, the vibration as her four thirty-three-ton screws thrashed the sea to foam. Inside the ship one could feel the vibration in the decks and passageways and half sense it in the air, a dynamic tension of ominous power and urgency.

The wind had veered more to the east. It was fresh and crisp and empty of rain. Through the opening rifts in the clouds stars were visible, had anyone on the flight deck taken the time to glance upward. From force of habit Jake Grafton did as he stepped on deck trailed by four armed marines in camouflage utilities and helmets. In his right hand he carried a walkietalkie. Beside him Senior Chief Archer carried his toolbox in one hand and the bolt-cutter in the other. Jake sniffed the sea wind and saw the stars’ brightness in the inky tears in the clouds above. The temperature here on the flight deck was fifteen degrees or so colder than inside the ship. He shivered and peered about the deck.

He and his companions stood amid a forest of aircraft with wings jutting upward at crazy angles. Ahead of him on the right the island loomed with its band of red and white floodlights around the top combining to cast a soft, reddish glare on the deck and aircraft. Behind the island and nearer to him a mast reached up into the blackness. On this mast were numerous antennas. He stared at it a second, slightly puzzled. Oh yes, the radar dishes weren’t rotating.

He walked forward, toward the bow, between the aircraft until he could see the helicopters parked on the angle. He moved in beside a plane and waited, hoping his night vision would improve. Sentries lay on the deck around the choppers, facing outward. Behind the prone men a supervisor walked slowly back and forth with an assault rifle cradled in his arms. The rotors of the choppers were still and the engines silent.

A row of E-2s were parked athwartships between the helicopters and the island, their noses pointed at the helicopters. Forward of the Hawkeyes, Jake could see the rows of aircraft that were parked atop the bow catapults facing aft, with nose tow bars attached so they could be quickly towed aft and spotted for a launch. Beyond the airplanes on the bow and to the left, outboard, of the helicopters on the angle the blackness of the night made a formless curtain.

Up on the bow between the rows of aircraft, about six hundred feet from where Jake stood, were the upper openings of the forward magazine weapons elevators. Qazi would wheel his weapons down between the parked planes and over to the choppers.

Something smacked the airplane on Jake’s right, a stuttering, smacking sound, and Jake’s eyes went involuntarily to the plane. He glanced toward the sentries in time to see the twinkling muzzle flashes from the weapons of one of the men stretched upon the deck. The rippling thud of more bullets striking metal came from the airplane beside him.

“Quick, get back! Everyone back.”

“Sir,” one of the marines said in a stage whisper, “I can take that guy—”

“Get back out of sight. I don’t want them shooting up these airplanes, and I told you no fucking shooting without my okay! Now get back there, goddammit!” Jake followed the retreating marines. He crouched down under a plane and peered forward between the mainmounts and belly tanks, trying to see the men around the helicopters in the glare of the island floods. He could just make them out. Here under the airplanes Jake and his party were in darkness, invisible to the sentries.

Son of a … All the planes in the hangar destroyed and now they were shooting holes in the ones here on the roof! God damn those bastards! He could well understand the marine’s frustration. Qazi didn’t just have all the good cards; he had the whole deck!

“CAG! Better come look.” It was one of the marines. Jake moved toward the sound. Three of the marines were checking a man lying on the deck. “Dead, with a bullet in the head.” Jake looked. “And here’s a shotgun.” It was one of the men of the flight deck security watch that Reynolds had armed. The young man’s eyes were open, and to Jake it seemed as if the dead man were staring straight at him.

“Okay, Ski. It’s on and working.” Pak and Gardner and three other sailors crouched beside Kowalski in the waist bubble. He was sitting on the floor. They slowly inched their heads up to the windows so they could see the deck and swiveled their heads back and forth, taking in the choppers and the figures around them. “When are we going to do it?”

“Not until they’re aboard those things and ready to take off. If we popped them right now, they might come down to the catapult spaces and gun everybody. We can’t take a chance like that.”

“How are we going to do it?”

“From the control panel below deck.” The primary JBD controls were on a panel in the catwalk, abeam the JBDs for Cats Three and Four. But it was too risky to have someone crawl along the catwalk to the panel with that crowd on deck, so this morning they would use the secondary control panel in the catapult machinery spaces.

“What’s that smell?” one of them asked, sniffing loudly.

“I was sick over there behind the panel,” Kowalski said.

“Oh.”

“Jesus, Ski, you oughta …”

“Yeah.”

“Boy, we’re gonna get those bastards,” one of the greenshirted troopers said and giggled nervously.

“Yeah, we’ll teach ’em not to fuck with the Uncle Sugar Navy,” Pak agreed.

“Them A-rabs is gonna get an edufuckation,” enthused the greenie known as the Russian.

“You guys go below,” Kowalski said. “Pak, you man the panel in the control room. Don’t do nothing until I say, then do exactly what I say. Understand?”

“Hey Ski, can I stay here and watch?” the first greenie asked, elevating his head for another look around. “This is gonna be so good that—”

“Everyone below. You can watch on the monitor down there if it’s working.”

“Aaaw …” They trooped out and dogged the watertight door tightly behind them, leaving Kowalski alone in the darkness with his hangover.

It was the sound of the helicopter engines coming to life that first alerted Jake Grafton. Their low moan rose slowly in pitch until the fuel-air mixture ignited, then it spooled up quickly to a whining howl. When the RPMs were at idle, the main and tail rotors began to turn. The sentries on the deck remained at their posts.

Jake moved until he could see past the noses of the Hawkeyes abeam the island into the parked rows of planes on the bow, the “bow pack.” Yes. There was someone! Pushing a weapon on a bomb cart. A sentry was with him. And there comes another.

“Archer?”

“Yessir.”

“Take a look.” The senior chief moved up beside Jake and peered through the gap between an F-14 mainmount and A-6 belly tank that Jake was using.

“There’s the admiral,” Archer said. Now Jake saw him too, in his whites with his hands bound behind him, walking with three other people.

Kowalski heard the engines of the choppers winding up and donned the sound-powered headset. He adjusted it over his ears and pulled the mike to his lips. “You there, Pak?”

“Yo, Ski. I’m ready.”

“Don’t do nothing until I tell you. But stay ready. These guys are starting their engines. Let me stick my head up for a look-see.” He eased his eyes up to the lower edge of the bulletproof glass. The sentries were no longer lying down; they were milling around smartly. He looked at the last helicopter in line, the one sitting atop the number-four JBD. He could just see the pilot and copilot in the cockpit. Not navy pilots, that’s for sure — no naval aviator in his right mind would set one of those eggbeaters down on top of a JBD. Their tough luck.

“What d’ya see?” Pak’s voice in his ears.

“A bad accident about to happen. Now keep your ears open and your mouth shut.”

The fire-crew bosun watched the helicopters start their engines on the television monitor. He picked up the cards on the desk that he had been using to play solitaire and carefully placed them in their box and put the box in the upper left-hand drawer, right were it belonged. You learned that in the navy, if you learned nothing else — everything in its place.

He stood and stretched, his eyes on the monitor. A figure in white came into the lower right corner of the picture, accompanied by two men, one in khaki and one in sailor’s dungarees. There was a fat man in civilian clothes and a figure that looked like a woman. The bosun stepped forward, closer to the screen.

His men crowded around. “Ain’t that the admiral?” “Jesus, I think it is.” “What is going on?” “Beats the living shit outta me, man.” “They never tell us nothing.”

“What are those things on them dollys?”

The men stood right under the television, as close as they could get, and stared up at the screen. “Holy … Those things are nukes.”

“You guys sit down.” The bosun watched as they took seats on the couch with the stuffing coming out and on the folding chairs. He took down the key to the truck from the hook near the door. “You people stay here.”

“I’m going with you, Bosun,” the first-class said.

“You heard the last announcement.”

“If you’re going, I’m going.”

“Okay.” The warrant officer lifted the lever that rotated the dogs and cracked the door open. He could see the side of the truck a few feet away. It was parked pointing toward the choppers on the angle and there were no planes in front of it. There never were. He snapped off the lights in the compartment with the switch by the door, took a deep lungful of the night sea wind, then pushed the door open and slipped through. The first-class petty officer was right behind him.

Gunny Garcia heard the helicopter engines running as he climbed the ladder into the island, the very same ladder that the gooks had thrown the grenades down, the ones that got Vehmeier and Garcia’s marines. The bodies were gone from the passageway at the bottom, though the blood and shrapnel had not been cleaned up. The blood smears were black now, and the place reeked of smoke.

Garcia had had his troubles wending his way through the gutted area of the O-3 level. The sailors still had hoses and power cables everywhere and the only lights were emergency lanterns. The stench was terrible. It was the overpowering odor of burnt rubber and fried meat.

Now, as he heard the chopper engines, his resolve gave way to apprehension. He might well be too late.

He checked the door to Flight Deck Control as he tiptoed to the ladder upward. The three gooks were right where they had fallen. Leggett was nowhere in sight. Garcia continued up the ladder.

On the third level he heard someone coming down from above. He waited grimly, the Remington leveled.

The first thing he saw was the man’s shoes, black boondockers, then bell-bottom jeans, then the gym bag and the Uzi. He pulled the trigger on the Remington.

The man tumbled and fell at his feet. He was holding his crotch and screaming. Garcia worked the bolt on his rifle and waited. Apparently this one was alone. He stepped over to the man. The.308 slug had hit him in the pelvis. “That’s a nasty wound you got there, fellow,” Garcia said and shot him in the head. The head disintegrated. The gunnery sergeant worked the bolt again, then climbed on up the ladder.

Each of the seven weapons was on its own dolly, a little fourwheeled yellow cart with a swiveling tongue that turned the front wheels. One man pushed each cart backward down the deck.

Qazi had one of the weapons, the one with the timer already installed, halted abeam the island. He then handcuffed Admiral Parker to the cart. “As you have probably suspected, Admiral, the triggering device bypasses all the weapon’s built-in safeguards. It contains its own battery and can initiate the firing sequence.” Qazi held up a small metal box and continued, speaking over the noise of the helicopter engines, “I can activate the trigger with one push on this button. And I will push this button, if …” He turned and watched the sentries lift two weapons, still on their dollies, into each helicopter.

Standing beside them, Ali removed a small two-way radio from a holster in his belt and spoke into it.

Qazi turned back to Parker. “There is going to be some shooting here on deck in a moment. That’s unavoidable. It is necessary that we disable the planes on the flight deck so that your people cannot follow us once they decide we are beyond the range where we could trigger this device. I hope you realize that, in a way, disabling these aircraft is an act of good faith on my part. I certainly hope that we’re allowed to depart unmolested and I don’t have to push this button. Because I will destroy this ship if I have to, Admiral, so help me God. Do you understand?”

As usual, Earl Parker’s face was impassive. He had been watching the bombs being loaded into the helicopters, and hearing the question he glanced at Qazi, then turned his eyes back to the idling machines.

The gunmen who had been in Flight Deck Control ran past them, heading for the helicopters. The woman was helping the fat man in civilian clothes, the weapons expert, into the chopper parked the furthest forward on the angle, the lead machine.

“So long, Admiral,” Qazi said and turned away. He and Ali walked briskly toward the lead machine as the sentries fanned out toward the bow and the stern. Almost in unison, they pulled pins from grenades and threw them into the parked aircraft. Then they opened fire with their Uzis.

“Grenades!”

The senior marine, a sergeant, shouted the warning and fell flat upon the deck. Jake Grafton, Chief Archer, and the rest of the marines did the same.

Jake heard the sound of one of the grenades striking a nearby aircraft, then the boom of an explosion. A group of explosions followed, too close together to count.

The shrapnel and bullets sounded like hail on a tin roof as they tore into the fuselages of the nearby planes. Jake looked up the deck. He could see the gunmen and the flashes of their submachine guns. More grenades came raining in.

“What’s going on, Ski?” Pak demanded. He and the others were watching the activity on the television monitor, but Kowalski’s view was not limited to what the camera was seeing.

“They’re shooting the shit outta everything. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

Kowalski had hoped to wait until the gunmen were in the helicopter, to ensure they didn’t come looking for his unarmed catapult crew, but this was ridiculous.

“Okay, raise it up … now!”

The helicopter sitting on number-four JBD pitched forward amid flying sparks as its rotors dug into the steel deck. The giant jet blast deflector had risen from the deck on its forward hinge as if the weight of the helicopter weren’t there.

The rotors disintegrated. Gunmen fell and sparks flew everywhere as shards of the rotors impacted steel and tore into human flesh. At least one of the gunmen dropped a live grenade and it exploded beside him with a flash.

“JBD down!”

The helicopter collapsed back onto its wheels. Its engines screamed as they overrevved without the load of the rotors.

“JBD up!”

This time the blast deflector turned the chopper over onto its nose. The machine teetered there, then continued over onto its back and caught fire. Flying debris struck the tail rotor of the next helicopter forward and broke it off.

Kowalski heard shouting and laughter in his ears. The guys in the control room were hysterical and Pak had his mike button depressed. “We did it,” he screamed at the cat captain in the bubble. “We did it!”

The fuel tank in the wrecked helicopter ignited explosively in a yellowish orange whoosh and pieces of the machine showered the deck.

Gunny Garcia stepped out onto Vulture’s Row and looked down onto the flight deck. The burning chopper cast a brilliant light on the scene. He wasn’t too late! With trembling hands he twisted the parallax ring on the sniperscope to its closest setting and adjusted the magnification ring as he scanned the scene below. Gunmen were shooting into the planes and throwing grenades. He swung the rifle onto a man on his feet near the fire and tried to steady the cross hairs.

The cross hairs danced uncontrollably. He rested the rifle on the rail in front of him and took a short deep breath, then squeezed off a shot. The man collapsed.

Garcia chambered another round.

He had shot three of them when the yellow flight-deck crash truck came bolting from its parking place behind the island, its engine at full throttle audible even above the noise of the chopper engines. There was a man on the nozzle on top of the cab and he had the water-foam mixture spouting fifty feet in front of the truck. The man spun the nozzle and one of the gunmen was blasted off his feet by the water stream. The truck roared across the deck, straight for the helicopter at the head of the angle.

There was a man in front of the chopper, shooting at the truck. Garcia got him in the telescopic sight and jerked off a round. The man went over backward. Muzzle flashes came from the open door in the side of the helicopter. Garcia aimed into the flashes and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The rifle was empty. The truck swerved, its left front tire peeling from the rim.

The fire-truck engine was roaring like an enraged lion as the machine careened left and crashed into the second helicopter in line. The truck slowed, but now the chopper was skidding sideways toward the rail. The chopper’s mainmounts struck the flight deck rail and it tilted. Smoke poured from the truck’s rear tires. Then the chopper went over the side and the cab of the truck bucked up as the front wheels struck the rail and it followed the helicopter toward the sea, its engine still at full throttle.

Bullets slapped the steel beside Garcia. He crouched behind the rail coaming and feverishly fed more shells into the rifle.

The engines of the only helicopter left, the one at the head of the angle, were winding up to takeoff power. The roar deepened as the pilot lifted the collective and the rotors bit into the air.

Garcia slammed the bolt closed and came up swinging the rifle for the cockpit. He got the cross hairs onto the pilot of the chopper…. Something smashed into his left shoulder, jerking the rifle off-target just as he pulled the trigger. He tried to hold the rifle with his left hand and work the bolt with his right, but his left wouldn’t work. The chopper lifted from the deck and began traveling forward, toward the edge of the angled deck.

More bullets slapped into the steel near him. His left arm wouldn’t work right. Then he lost the rifle; it fell away toward the deck below.

Enraged, he watched the helicopter clear the edge of the flight deck and fade into the darkness. Garcia sank down behind the coaming and sobbed.

Jake Grafton sprinted up the deck as bullets zipped around him and the roars of M-16s on full automatic filled his ears. He ran toward the weapon on the dolly in front of the E-2 Hawkeyes parked tail-in to the island. A man in whites lay by the dolly.

Senior Chief Archer reached the bomb even as Jake did. Archer began examining the weapon with a flashlight as Jake knelt by the admiral. Blood oozed from a dozen wounds in his torso and legs. Shrapnel from the helicopter rotor blades or a grenade.

“Admiral? Cowboy? It’s Jake. Can you hear me?”

Behind Jake, the last of the gunmen were going down as the flames from the burning chopper rose higher and higher into the night.

Parker’s eyes and lips were moving. Jake bent down, trying to hear.

“Jake …”

“Yeah. It’s me, Cowboy.”

Parker’s eyes focused. “Don’t let him get away, Jake.” His hand grasped the front of Jake’s shirt and he pulled him down. “Don’t let him get away. Stop …” Parker coughed blood.

“You know me, Cowboy. We’ll get ’em.”

Parker was drowning in his own blood. He was coughing and choking and trying to talk. In a supreme effort he got air in, then, “Don’t let him use those weapons …” He gagged and his body bucked as his lungs fought for air. Jake held on as the convulsions racked him.

Finally Parker’s body went limp.

“I don’t know, CAG.” It was Archer. He was looking at the trigger. “I just dunno. It’s definitely got a radio receiver built in, and somebody built this that knew a hell of a lot, but I’m damned if I can figure what will happen if I cut this wire here.” He pointed.

Jake grabbed the bolt-cutter from the deck where Archer had dropped it and used it on the handcuffs that held Parker’s wrist to the dolly.

Jake dropped the big tool and seized the tongue of the dolly. The brake was automatically released when he lifted it. He began to pull the dolly.

“What are you gonna do?” Archer asked.

“Over the side. The radio receiver won’t work underwater, and maybe the water will short out this trigger thing.”

Archer joined him on the other side of the tongue. They began to trot. “Not too fast,” Archer warned, “or this thing’ll tip over.”

They pulled it around the front of the island toward the starboard rail. “This thing may go off when it hits the water,” Archer said.

“We’ll have to risk it. We’re out of time.”

There’s a bomb chute somewhere here on the starboard side of the island, Jake remembered. There! He turned the dolly around and backed it toward the chute, which was a metal ramp with lips that extended downward at an angle over the catwalk and ended out in space.

The rear wheels of the dolly went in and then the front and it started to roll. It fell away toward the sea. Jake Grafton turned his face and closed his eyes. If it blew, he would never even feel it.

His heart pounded. Every thump in his chest was another half second of life. Oh, Callie, I love you so….

When he finally realized there would be no explosion, he tried to walk and his legs wouldn’t work. He fell to the deck and rolled over on his back. Slowly, slowly he sat up. Archer was sitting on the deck near him with his face in his hands.

Qazi crossed from the open right-side door of the helicopter to the bucket seats that lined the other bulkhead. He had been watching the lights of the carrier recede into the gloom.

“How far away are we?” Ali shouted, barely making himself heard over the engine noise. “When we get to eight miles …”

Qazi handed him the radio triggering box. Ali used the telephone by the door to speak to the pilots, then held his watch under the small lamp near the phone, one of three small lights that kept the interior from total darkness. He stepped to the door and leaned out into the slipstream, looking aft.

Noora and Jarvis were huddled in the corner. Noora had Jarvis’s head cradled on her breast and was rocking softly from side to side. Jarvis’s face was down and Qazi could only see the top of his head.

On Qazi’s right, three of the gunmen sat with their weapons between their knees and their heads back against the bulkhead, their eyes closed and their faces slack. They looked totally exhausted. These three had managed to scramble aboard as the flight-deck crash truck charged them, then turned in the door and emptied their weapons at the truck. They were the only survivors of the thirty-six men Qazi had taken to the ship.

Yet he had two bombs. The skins of the weapons were white and reflected the glow of the little light over the telephone near the door. Ali was still leaning out into the slipstream. He pulled himself inside, checked his watch, and grinned at Qazi. He braced himself against the bulkhead and manipulated the controls on the box.

Nothing happened. He tried again with a frown on his face. He leaned out the door with the box in his hand and pointed it aft at the carrier.

Ali hurled the control box at Qazi, who didn’t flinch as it bounced off the padded bulkhead and fell to the floor. “Traitor,” Ali screamed as he grabbed for his pistol.

Qazi shot him. Once, twice, three times with the silenced Hi-Power. He could feel the recoil, but the high ambient noise level covered the pistol’s muffled pops.

Ali sagged backward through the door. The slipstream caught him and his hand flailed, then he was gone.

The gunmen didn’t move. Noora continued to rock back and forth with her eyes closed, her arms around Jarvis.

Colonel Qazi slowly put the pistol back into his trouser waistband. He zipped up the leather jacket he was wearing. It was chilly here. He stuffed his hands into the jacket pockets and stared at the white weapons.