Final Flight (33 page)

“This is the captain. You people manned up down there?”

“Yes sir.”

“Get off a voice transmission, scrambled
if possible, on your circuits.

Tell our escorts to relay it to Sixth
Fleet and CINCLANT.” CINCLANT was the Commander
in Chief of the U.s. Atlantic Fleet.

“Yes sir. What do we send?”

“Goddammit, man,” James thundered. “Send the
substance of the announcement I just made over the
I-MC.” The l-MC circuit was the ship’s
public-address system. “Tell them we have armed
intruders aboard. More info to follow as we get
it.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Chief Terry Reed stared in disbelief at the
padlock on the door to the after hangar-deck
repair locker. The men behind him peered over his
shoulder, curious about the delay. Why the
hell was this door padlocked? The doorknob had
an integral lock, and every man in the chief’s
repair party had a key. This locker was their
battle station.

Chief Reed took a closer look at the
doorknob. It had been forced.

“Somebody get a fire ax and pry this damn
lock off.” The chief scanned the hangar bay
while he waited. Intruders? Aboard this ship?
Captain James didn’t throw words around
lightly. He must know what’s going on.

The chief looked at the doorknob lock again.
Someone had pried it until it broke. And this
padlock-it wasn’t navy-issue. Damn. Could
the intruders have been here?

A man came running with a fire ax. The chief
moved back away from the door. He looked again
around the hangar bay, still puzzled. Why would anyone
want to get in the repair-party locker? There was
nothing in there but damage control gear. The valuable
assets were the airplanes, out here in the bay. He
stared at them, wings folded and chained to the deck. Some
of the machines had access panels and nose domes
open, exposing radars and black boxes and
bundles of cables. They looked naked.
Had they been sabotaged?

Even as the thought occurred to the chief, the paint
locker on the opposite side of the bay exploded.
In an instant the flammable chemicals stored there were
burning fiercely.

The chief looked wildly about for the nearest fire
alarm. He saw it against the wall right by the
fire-fighting station and lunged for it. His motion
galvanized his men into action. They energized the
pumps and began dragging the hose out. They had the
nozzle half way across the hangar when two more
paint lockers exploded.

Qazi and his men huddled under an aircraft wing
immediately forward of the island. He counted them. Seven
plus himself. ‘Who’s not here?”

“Mohammed. Apparently he only wounded one
of the marines in the machine guns and they fought. He
may have gone overoard.”

“Did you set his charges on the antenna leads?”

“Mine and his both.” So all the radio-antenna
leads of which Qazi was aware had been severed. The
damage could be repaired fairly quickly as soon as
the Americans discovered where the breaks were, but the
search would take time, and time for the
Americans was running out.

Qazi looked up at the dark windows of the
bridge, eight decks above him in the island
superstructure. The glare of the red ood-lights
around the top of the island made it impossible to see
if any lights were illuminated on the bridge. Of
course, the ship’s senior officers were there. They had
to be. The quick-reaction team couldn’t have made it to the
bridge yet, but they were undoubtedly on their way.
Qazi had to reach the bridge before the marines did or
he might not be able to get there at all. Time was
running out for him too.

He gestured to two of his men, pointing out the
positions he wished them to assume on the flight
deck, positions from which they could command the helicopter
landing area on the angle, abeam the island. Since the
ship’s rescue helicopter was airborne, most
of the helo landing area was empty and the whip antennas that
surrounded the flight deck had been lowered to their
horizontal position. Qazi wanted to ensure
everything remained that way.

The rest of his men he led across the deck through the
wind and rain toward the hatch that opened into Flight
Deck Control, the empire of the aircraft handler.
E-2 Hawkeye radar reconnaissance
planes were parked beside the island, their tails almost
against the steel and their noses pointed across the deck
at the helicopter landing area. The wet metal skin
of the airplanes glistened in the weak red light. The
colonel went under the tails and glanced through the
porthole into Flight Deck Control. The compartment
was full of men. He stopped in front of the entrance
door and motioned for two of his men to grab the handle that
would rotate the locking lugs.

Reports were arriving on the bridge over the
telephones, the squawk boxes, and the sound-powered
circuits. Damage-Control Central reported
fires in the comm spaces and on the hangar deck.
The airborne helicopter had been unable to find the
second man overboard. Fully 20 percent
of the ship’s company was still ashore. Most of the ship’s
radios seemed to be off the air with suspected
antenna problems. As Captain James tried
to sort it out, Jake and the admiral stood in the
corner and listened to the reports coming in.

Jake looked at his watch. Two minutes had
passed since general quarters had sounded.

“What are they after?” the admiral asked, more
to himself than Jake. “And where are they?”

The door to Flight Deck Control
swung open and Qazi followed two of his men into the
space. They had their Uzis in front of them.
The rest followed him into the compartment. “Silence.
Hands up,” Qazi shouted in English. A sea of
stunned faces stared at Qazi. He waved at the
area behind the scale model of the flight and hangar
deck. “Over there. Everyone. Over there!”

No one moved. Qazi pointed the Browning
Hi-Power, with its silencer sticking out like an evil
finger, at the chiefs and talkers near the
maintenance status boards. “Move. Headsets
off.”

They stood frozen, staring. The silenced pistol
swung toward the status board and popped, but the
smack of the bullet punching its way through the
plexiglas and splat ting into the bulkhead was louder.
Eyes shifted hypnotically toward the neat, round
hole in the transparent plexiglas.

In the silence Qazi could hear the tinkle of the
spent cartridge case as it caromed off a folding
chair and struck the metal bulkhead.

“Do as he says. Get over here, people.” The
speaker was an officer in khakis, a lieutenant
commander sitting in a raised padded chair.

The men moved with alacrity, shedding the
sound-powered telephone headsets.

When everyone was crammed thigh to thigh in the
indicated space with their hands on the back of their
necks, Colonel Qazi spoke again. “You will stand
silently, without moving. My men will kill every man
who moves or opens his mouth. They understand no
English. And they know how to kill.” He added, almost
as an afterthought, “They enjoy it.”

He turned and went through the doorway that led to the
ladder up into the island. He would have to hurry, were the
marines head of him?

Qazi went past the door to the down ladder, a
standard on watertight aluminum door, and opened the
door to the ladder going up. Although Qazi didn’t
know it, this was the only place on the ship where the
ladderwells were sealed with doors and aluminum
bulkheads. This feature prevented fumes and
noise from the flight deck from penetrating deeper
into the ship.

He heard a thundering noise immediately beneath him. Men
running up the ladder beneath his feet! Marines on the
way to the bridge! He gestured frantically to the
men following him. Just then the door from below burst open
and one of Qazi’s men triggered an Uzi burst
full into the chest of the marine coming through. He
fell backward onto the man behind him. The door
sagged shut on his ankle.

On the ladder below the marine who had been shot,
someone fired his MI 6 upward, through the thin
aluminum bulkhead. Once, twice, then an
automatic burst.

“A grenade,” Qazi whispered hoarsely.

The man nearest the colonel pulled the pin and
tossed it over the booted ankle trapped in the
door as everyone else fell flat on the deck.

The explosion was muffled. “Another,” Qazi
ordered. This time the explosion was loud and shrapnel
sprayed through the aluminum ladderwell wall.

The grenades would merely delay the marines below.
They would seek an alternate route upward, and they
knew the ship. He had purchased himself mere
seconds. Maybe that would be enough. “Quickly now,
let’s go.

Two of his men failed to rise. Someone turned
them over. One was dead, a rifle bullet through the
heart, and the other had a piece of shrapnel in his
abdomen. No time to waste. Qazi charged up the
ladder two steps at a time with those of his men who were still
on their feet right behind. More gunfire. Qazi
paused at the top and glanced back. The
last man was down holding his leg. The marines had
fired through the aluminum sheeting under the ladder. Even
as he looked, another burst came through the aluminum
and the wounded man lost his balance and fell. But he still
had two men on their feet behind him. Qazi circled
the open turnaround and leaped onto the next ladder.

0-5 level, 0-6 level, 0-go… On the
0-8 level he passed the flag bridge. No
marines in sight. Maybe, just maybe.

As he came up the ladder to the 0-9 level he
saw a marine wearing a pistol belt standing in front
of the door to the navigation bridge. The marine had his
pistol in his hand and looked apprehensively at
Qazi as he took the steps two at a time.
Qazi glanced over his shoulder as his head reached the
landing coaming-no more marines-and leveled his pistol as
he topped the ladder. He shot the surprised
sentry point-blank. The body was still falling as
Qazijerked open the door to the navigation bridge and
hurtled through.

WHEN GUNNERY SERGEANT Tony Garcia
reached the bottom of the island ladderwell on the 0-3
level, he stood stock till and looked at the
carnage, stunned. He had eaten dinner tonight in
Naples with two friends and had been sound
asleep when general quarters was called away. He
had pulled on trouers, shirt, and shoes and raced
for the armory, where the corpoal on duty had tossed
him an MI 6 and duty belt. Then he had run
for the bridge. Normally he led the squad that guarded
the ridge during G tilde but Sergeant
Vehmeier had tonight’s duty ection. Now he stood
looking at the five marines lying amid blood and
shrapnel. One of them was conscious. “Grenades,
Gunny,” the wounded man whispered. His back and
side were covered in blood and blood oozed out his
left sleeve.

Sergeant Vehmeier lay face down in a pool
of gore. Garcia turned him over. The man’s
hands were gone, only red meat and white bones
remained, and his abdomen was ripped open. He had
fallen on one of the grenades, probably the first
one.

Miraculously, he still had a pulse in his
neck. Garcia used both hands to scoop
Vehmeier’s intestines back into his abdominal
cavity. He rolled Vehmeier over, then stripped
off his shirt and used that as a bandage to protect the
wound.

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

Garcia wiped his bloody hands on his trousers.
Get tourniquets on these men,” he directed.
He stepped over the casualties and climbed the
ladder, his MI 6 at the ready.

The man at the top, with his foot caught in the
door and sprawled on his back down the ladder, had
taken a half dozen 1 rounds in the chest. He was
beyond help. When Garcia eased the door open to peer
out, the body slipped, making noise. Just below the
sailors were making a hell of a racket carrying the
casualties away, but Garcia froze anyway.

He waited for the bullets to come. He was sweating
and his heart was pounding. Nothing. He peered again through the
crack in the door, then eased it open enough to slip
through. There were two men down in the passageway, here
on the flight deck level. Garcia picked up the
Uzis and pistols lying on the deck. One man was
still alive, but he wasn’t going anywhere with that hole
in his gut. A gym bag lay near him.

He opened it carefully. Grenades and some stuff that
looked like plastique. Some fuses.

A crumpled body lay at the bottom
of the ladderwell up to the next floor. It had almost
a dozen wounds in it. Garcia could see the holes in
the aluminum sheeting. One of his marines had fired
an MI 6 clip through the aluminum and nailed this
guy.

The wounded man moved and groaned. Garcia
swung the MI 6 in his direction. It was
tempting. The bastard deserved it. But no.

The sergeant looked up the ladderwell. What was
waiting up there?

Should he go find out? Or should he take another
route? Another route would probably be healthier.

He heard a door opening to his left and leaped
right, toward a corner.

Even as he did, he heard bullets spanging
off the steel. In a corner of his mind it registered
that there were no loud reports, and he knew the weapon
had a silencer.

He sprawled on the deck and scrambled
furiously, trying to ensure his body and legs were behind
cover. He rolled over and waited for the gunman
to round the turn in the passageway. lowly, slowly
he got to his feet, keeping the rifle pointed.
He iped the sweat from his face with the front of his
T-shirt and ried to visualize the
corridor that he had just left. The door that pened
must have been the door to Flight Deck Control. The
bastards must be in there! With all those sailors. He
couldn’t hoot through the door for fear of hitting a
sailor. Damn! His thigh felt like it was on
fire. He looked. A bullet hole in his trouser
leg. He felt his thigh.