Viper Strike

CHAPTER 19

Bangkok was in an uproar, a beeping, screeching, milling-crowd panic that exploded on every side of Tombstone as he tried desperately to argue with the wizened driver of one of the three-wheeled taxis called tuk-tuks.

He was in trouble. He knew that. The tuk-tuk driver spoke almost no English, and he clearly wanted to join the crowd of vehicles and pedestrians surging away from the heart of the city. The unmistakable chatter of automatic weapons fire rattled in the distance, and Tombstone could see a ruddy, spreading glow which might mark the reflection of a large fire on the low-hanging clouds.

It was, Tombstone decided, a coup attempt, a big one, and the presence of those soldiers in the truck outside Hsiao's warehouse headquarters meant that the Chinese general was somehow behind it. It also meant that Tombstone couldn't know who to trust. There were soldiers on the streets. An M-113 personnel carrier was parked at a nearby corner, nervous-looking soldiers manning the Browning.50-caliber machine gun on its roof. Civilians streaming past the vehicle looked at it with expressions ranging from curiosity to fear.

Tombstone had considered walking up, identifying himself, and asking to use a radio… but he didn't dare. Those troops might very well prove to be working for the wrong side. He'd thought of and discarded several other options. He could find a public phone but he had no coins. The shops and businesses on the street might have phones, but every establishment he could see was closed and locked, the owner gone or hiding. If he tried breaking in, he could get arrested… and the question of whose side the authorities might be on rose again.

His best bet was to reach the American embassy. That was when he'd spotted the tuk-tuk and flagged it down.

But the driver didn't seem to understand. "Tawee lahng bahee!" he shrieked, gesturing wildly with his arm as Tombstone tried to block his way.

"Blaho! Blaho!"

Desperate now, Tombstone placed both hands on the front of the tiny vehicle. His laboriously memorized That phrases had abandoned him. How did you say "I want to go to the American Embassy?" Damn! If this went on much longer, he was going to attract the very attention from soldiers or other interested parties that he wanted to avoid. He'd thought most taxi drivers in this city understood English. Why did he have to pick the one who didn't?

He searched his memory for the right words. Sathan thut… that was it.

"American sathan thut!" he said. What was the word for please? "Broad!

Broad!"

The driver's face worked for a moment, then he gave a reluctant nod.

Tombstone sank into the tuk-tuk's seat with a grateful sigh. "Kawpkun," he said.

With its tiny engine popping, the vehicle wheeled back into traffic, threaded onto a side road, then turned north.

Commander Stephen Marusko enjoyed standing night watches as Officer of the Deck. It was peaceful, especially when the carrier was in port. So far this evening there'd been only two departures from routine… a fight in the crew berthing spaces and a fire and security watch reporting that his relief had not shown up, both incidents best left to the MAA duty watch-standers.

There was some continuing activity on deck. The four ships of MEU-6 had steamed into helo range that afternoon, and several big Marine Sea Stallions were parked on the roof. So, too, were two of Jefferson's four KA-6D tanker aircraft. One had just trapped; the other was being readied for launch at 2100 hours to refuel Jefferson's CAP.

A flash of light to the east caught Marusko's eye. He paced to the starboard side of the ship and used his binoculars to scan the shore toward Sattahip.

Odd. The buildings belonging to the naval base were still blacked out.

When the lights had gone out a few hours earlier, he'd ordered the incident logged but assumed the Thais were simply suffering from a local power outage.

Several minutes later, all phone connections with the shore had been lost when the radio station receiving Jefferson's ship-to-shore radio calls had gone off the air. So far, there'd been no explanation, but most likely it was some sort of technical glitch. Marusko had reported the incident to Captain Fitzgerald ― loss of local phone services would mean inconvenience for those of the battle group's crews who were ashore this evening ― but there'd been nothing else to do but watch and wait.

That flash could have been gunfire. Marusko thought again of the rumors floating around about a coup attempt ashore. Suppose the loss of phone service, the blackout at the naval base, were part of an attack by rebels?

Marusko had just decided to call Fitzgerald when the bridge batphone rang. The duty bridge watch-stander held the headset out to him. "Sir? They want the OOD."

"Thanks." He took the handset. "Officer of the Deck."

"Bridge? This is Chief Paulsen down in CATCC. Are we expecting any VIPs aboard tonight, sir?"

"Negative. What have you got?"

"Two bogies inbound, sir. Range five miles. They say they're Royal That Nueys." Marusko's eyebrows rose. "What do they want?"

"Ah, sir… they're requesting clearance to land. They've got the proper frequencies and protocol."

Strange. Some That VIP probably needed to talk to the admiral. Marusko wondered if this had anything to do with the trouble ashore.

"Okay, Chief. Tell 'em to come on in, and pass the word to the Air Boss to give them plenty of room."

"Aye, sir." He heard Paulsen chuckle. "I'm not sure I trust these local drivers."

Marusko hung up the phone, then decided the event was out of the ordinary enough for him to call the Captain.

It had taken nearly an hour to reach their destination, and the tuk-tuk driver was not happy about the change in his travel plans. The sounds of the riot were no more than a few blocks away. Worse, Tombstone had no money, That or American, and the outraged little man was advancing on him, arms waving angrily and voice shrill when someone came up behind the aviator and put a hand on his shoulder.

Tombstone started, then turned to see an American Marine in camouflaged helmet and fatigues. "May I help you, sir?" the Marine asked. Tombstone saw that he was a gunnery sergeant, that he was wearing full combat kit and that a magazine was plugged into the receiver of his M-16.

"Lieutenant Commander Magruder, Gunny," Tombstone said. He suddenly felt very tired and was having trouble speaking. "CO of VF-95, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson. I need to talk to the boat."

The Marine grinned. The black skin of his face was glistening with sweat. "Yes, sir! I'm Gunnery Sergeant George Johnson. I'm off the Jeff too."

Tombstone tried to focus on the Marine. "Jefferson? What… you doing here?"

He put an arm around Tombstone's shoulders, supporting him. "All hell's bustin' loose all over Bangkok, Commander. And we've got a few thousand American tourists out there caught in the crossfire. C'mon. Let's get you inside." When the That driver started to follow them, still shouting what could only be curses and demands for payment, the sergeant bellowed at another Marine standing close by. "Palmer! Pay this man!"

Guided by Johnson, Tombstone stumbled into the brightly lit interior of the embassy. He was suddenly aware of how filthy he looked and felt, the grimy feeling accentuated somehow by the pristine interior of the mansion.

Several That servants watched wide-eyed from across the marble hall, while two Marines in dress Class-As snapped to rigid attention.

"Looks like you've been through the wringer, sir," Johnson observed.

"Got… to call Jefferson," Tombstone said. He was so tired he could barely stand. His burns and bruises throbbed and chaffed beneath his clothing making any movement at all an agony.

"Right in here, Commander," the Marine said. He helped Tombstone through a door labeled "Communications." Inside, other Marines and several civilians were manning computer keyboards and radio consoles. "We've been having some trouble with the phones down there, but we can patch in a direct radio hook-up. We'll fix you right up."

Minutes later, Tombstone was talking to a communications officer on board the Jefferson.

"They're hostile!" Marusko barked, hanging up the phone. "Sound General Quarters! All hands to battle stations!"

The shrill rasp of the klaxon blasted from the 5-MC.

"CIC, Bridge!" he snapped. "Are you tracking them?"

"Yes, sir," the CIC watch officer replied. "Two bogies, bearing zero-nine-five, range now four-one-zero-zero yards, speed one-three-five nautical miles per hour."

Marusko thought hard. Those helicopters could be what they claimed to be, their refusal to stand off the result of communications failure or misunderstanding. But Tombstone's warning moments earlier still rang in his mind: the coup leaders were planning something against the Jefferson, probably an approach by something involving one or more helicopters.

For many years, security had been a major concern of U.S. ship captains and carrier group admirals in every ocean of the world. Aircraft carriers were large, expensive, and extremely tempting as targets. During the Lebanon crisis of the early '80s, serious consideration had been given to the possibility that Syrian-backed terrorists might try to take out an American carrier patrolling off Beirut. Washington had worried about everything from speedboats or Piper Cubs packed with explosives to suicide commandos flying hang gliders, a tactic promptly dubbed "Cruise Druze" by the men forced to stand watch at.50-caliber machine guns mounted along the walkways outboard of the flight deck.

A helicopter loaded with explosives, or bomb-wielding commandos… They wouldn't be able to sink the Jefferson. but they could cause her a hell of a lot of grief.

The UH-1 helicopter bore the red-white-blue-white-red roundel of the Royal That Air Force on its tail boom, but only the pilot was That, a disaffected officer who had been promised more money than he could expect to make in a lifetime of service to the government. Most of the officers involved in the coup had joined the rebellion because they were angered by what they perceived as inaction and stupidity on the part of the government in its handling of the Communist insurrection in the north. Very few'of those mutinous officers, however, could have been induced to attack the American carrier. Ironically, both sides in the conflict still regarded the Americans as powerful and important allies, and a surprise attack on their nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Sattahip Bay would not exactly endear the new regime to Washington.

But Lieutenant Thran Silatharudah would do anything for money. He'd first met Colonel Kriangsak when he'd been up for a court martial. The Royal That Air Force took a dim view of enterprising pilots using military aircraft to smuggle raw opium across the boarder from Laos. Kriangsak had gotten him off by conveniently misplacing some crucial evidence… then had recruited him for Sheng li.

The co-pilot, Thran knew, was Chinese, one of the battalion of trained pilots Hsiao Kuoping had brought first to Burma, then to Thailand as part of Sheng li. Thran had no idea what his reasons for being here were, but it didn't much matter. Sheng li had brought a number of wildly disparate elements together, but the plan itself seemed to be working well.

Lieutenant Thran eased the stick forward and let the Huey drift closer to the ground. The helo, Number 163, was an early UH-B transferred to Thailand at the end of the Vietnam War. Mounted on either side of the hull were two weapon pods, each carrying twenty-four 7-cm unguided rockets.

Below, the town and port area of Sattahip were blacked out, but he could see the spark and flare of small arms fire to the north where coup forces were engaging the base's loyal defenders. Ahead, out in the bay, the Jefferson was a splendid sight, aglow with lights from stem to stern.

"Arm rockets," he said.

"Rockets armed," the co-pilot replied.

The 7-cm rockets might be unguided, but they were accurate enough over a range of a mile or two, and an aircraft carrier was a very large target.

Thran's briefing, however, had stressed that he was not to simply dump his load of forty-eight rockets at random. Kriangsak's orders had emphasized that foreign national helicopters ought to be able to approach to within a few hundred meters of the ship, and at that range he should have a good shot at a most inviting target… the open elevator bay door leading to the carrier's hangar bay. He could see the open bay doors now, two of them on the ship's starboard side, one ahead of the island, the other behind. Yellow light spilled from both flat, oval openings in the carrier's hull. He concentrated on the one toward the Jefferson's stern. Off to his left, the second Huey paced him.

Thran's finger caressed the firing trigger on the stick. If he could just get close enough ― say, less than half a mile ― some of his rockets were certain to enter the carrier's hull through the open elevator doors.

And the hangar deck, he'd been told, would be crowded with aircraft, with fuel, with explosives…

That man-made steel mountain ahead would look spectacular when it exploded.

It was the skipper's bird, but Lieutenant "Nightmare" Marinaro had drawn Tomcat 201 for his evening stint on CAP when his own F-14 had shown an electrical fault during the preflight. He was cruising at fifteen thousand feet fifty miles southwest of Sattahip when his RIO, Lieutenant Mike "Sunny" Crampton, called him over the ICS.

"Hey, Nightmare? Sounds like the shit's hitting the fan back on the bird farm. They've just sounded General Quarters."

"They what?" He'd had his radio input off but he snapped it back on now.

His earphones picked up the buzz and murmur of voices.

"Cowboy, this is Victor Kilo One-one," a new voice called. "Come in, Cowboy."

Cowboy was the call sign for Marinaro's CAP, while VK-11 was the Hawkeye currently coordinating air activities over the battle group. "Victor Kilo, this is Cowboy. Go ahead."

"Cowboy, we have two bogies closing with Homeplate." A rattle-off string of numbers, coordinates and bearings, followed. "Contacts may be hostile.

Intercept and identify. Over."

"Rog." Marinaro brought the stick over and kicked the Tomcat's afterburners. "We're moving."

Thunder rolled across the gulf, trailing unheard behind the plane as the Tomcat broke the sound barrier. Hurtling northeast at better than Mach 1.5, it would take less than three minutes to close the range to the Jefferson's unknown attackers.

The American ship swelled rapidly to fill the Huey's forward cockpit windshield. The targeting reticle held steady on the after elevator door, now so close that Thran thought he could make out the shadowy silhouettes of men against the yellow glare of the hangar bay. As he watched, the hangar bay light began to contract, and he realized that the massive sliding doors of the elevator openings in the ship were closing.

"Range two thousand meters," the pilot said.

It was close enough, and if he waited any longer the elevator doors would be completely shut. He squeezed the firing trigger, and balls of orange flame flashed past the Huey's cockpit on either side, a rapid-fire spray of rockets in quick succession called ripple fire.

Thran was dead on target.

Captain Fitzgerald strode onto the bridge, still pulling on his life-jacket. "Situation, Commander Marusko."

"Two bogies, sir, identified as That air force helicopters, inbound off the aft starboard quarter." He gestured with the phone, still open to CIC.

"They've been warned off but are still approaching. I… we just had a call from Commander Magruder, sir."

"Tombstone?"

"Yes, sir. At the American embassy. He said that the coup leaders were planning to attack Jefferson with helicopters. On the basis of his warning, I put the boat on GQ, but-"

"They're firing!" The warning from the starboard lookout was echoed by the call from the CIC officer over the telephone in his hand. Marusko turned and saw the rapid-fire, stuttering flashes in the night, the flares of tiny rocket engines streaking like tracer bullets toward the carrier.

"I've got the bridge, Mr. Marusko," Fitzgerald said in a voice as calm as death. He took the phone from CAG's hand and brought it to his ear. "CIC, this is the Captain. We are under attack. You may commence fire."

Private First Class Vince Kennedy swung the muzzle of his machine gun toward the approaching threat. He could not make out the helicopters well without lights, but he could see the flashes as they ripple-fired their deadly pods of 2.5-inch rockets.

He heard movement behind him, the high-pitched whine of automated machinery. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the squat, white-painted fire-hydrant shape of Jefferson's aft Phalanx CIWS had taken on a life of its own. The six-barreled snout of the 20-mm Gatling gun swung to bear on the attackers, then shifted left, right, up, down in tiny increments as its pulse-doppler radar locked on.

Realizing that he was perilously close to the weapon's line of fire, Kennedy dropped flat on the deck. The Phalanx cannon fired an instant later with a buzzsaw shriek, spitting out fifty depleted uranium bullets each second. The radar tracked both target and rounds, adjusting the gun slightly to bring the two into perfect alignment.

Like a string of firecrackers, the incoming rockets began exploding between the ship and the incoming Hueys.

Unfortunately, the range was too close, the rockets too fast for a one hundred percent sweep. An instant later, the first 2.5 inch rockets began slamming into the Jefferson.

Lieutenant Thran saw the flash of blossoming explosions. A hit! Another… but then another, much nearer flash caught his eye. Turning in his seat, he saw Helicopter 179 burst into flame and hurtling debris, even as missiles continued to arrow from its weapons pods.

Instinctively, Thran pulled in on the stick and applied foot pressure to the tail rotor controls on the deck, swinging the Huey away from the fiery eruption to starboard. He was not sure what had happened but suspected that the American ship must have launched a missile of some kind. The night sky around him was filled with falling sea spray, and something heavy slammed into the Huey's tail boom somewhere aft.

Dimly, he was aware that the Chinese beside him was screaming wildly.

Eight rockets from that first volley slammed into the Jefferson one after another, tearing metal, hurling shrapnel and debris into the sky.

At Elevator Number Three, starboard side aft of the island, the massive steel doors which had begun sliding shut moments after general quarters had sounded were almost closed. One rocket struck the outer door close beside the door frame, buckling steel plate and causing the door mechanism to grind to a halt with the shriek of tortured metal. Had the doors been all the way open when the rocket arrowed in out of the night, the damage might well have been catastrophic.

One rocket made itself felt through sheer bad luck. Coming in blindly, it struck a KA-6D tanker parked just aft of the island. The explosion sent a sheet of flame searing across the deck as crewmen scattered, trying to protect their heads and faces from the sudden heat. An EA-6B Prowler parked within inches of the tanker caught fire and exploded with a hammer-blow concussion, knocking sailors to the deck. Above the roar of flames, alarms shrilled endlessly.

Fire erupted into the night above the U.S.S. Jefferson.

His Chinese co-pilot was dead. A depleted uranium slug had passed through the Huey's deck, taken off the man's leg, then passed through the bulkhead aft, and Thran had not even felt the shock. Ahead, the night was ablaze as aircraft on the carrier's aft deck burned.

After breaking off his approach, he'd dropped until his landing skids were within a meter of the water. Thran didn't know whether it was his wave-hopping or a lucky hit from one of the rockets, but the Americans had stopped firing at him.

And he still had twenty rockets remaining in his pods. His first thought was to break for shore, his mission accomplished… but Thran was close enough to the American carrier now to see that the damage looked worse than it probably was in fact.

If he could finish the job, the reward might be very rich indeed.

Marinaro's Tomcat roared low across the waters of Sattahip Bay. He'd seen the flash of rockets firing, the strobing of explosions, and the dazzling stab of high-speed gunfire from an aft Phalanx mount. One of the attacking helos had folded up like crumpled aluminum foil as depleted uranium rounds smashed through its hull, then erupted in a blazing explosion as avgas ignited.

Then the aft deck of the carrier had fireballed. Damn!

And the second helo had jinked low and circled to the south, apparently lining up for another shot.

There was no time to coordinate with the Jefferson. They might have a lock on the enemy aircraft… or the damage inflicted by those first rockets might have knocked out the carrier's defense system. Marinaro knew that he didn't even have time to get a missile lock on the enemy himself. In seconds he would be past the target… and another volley of missiles would have been launched.

But there was something else he could do.

He was less than eight hundred meters from the American carrier, which rose in front of his Huey like a gray steel cliff. He could see the aft elevator door, wedged partway open. A full volley into that vital spot might yet cause the fireworks Hsiao had hoped to raise. His finger closed on the trigger…

And then a shock wrenched him violently against his seat harness, and the Huey was spinning wildly as a roar like thunder deafened him. He had a split-second's glimpse of afterburners shining like twin suns, of a cascade of water blasted into the sky by the shock-wave of a supersonic jet.

Thran died as the Huey slammed into the water, still trying to bring his stricken ship under control.