Final Flight (40 page)

“Now when these people get gone, I want every E-2
and F-Ibled on the flight deck that can fly fueled
and armed for an immediate takeoff. You skippers, get
your crews suited up and briefed. Weapons, get
ready to bring missiles up from the magazines. And
get some senior people to inspect those
magazines as soon as the terrorists get out of them.
Qazi may leave something ticking down there. Air
Department, get your people ready to go. We’re going
to shoot down Mr. Qazi and his friends when they’re the
hell and gone away from this ship.” They stood and
stared.

“Do it now.”

“Jesus, CAG,” the weapons boss said. “You
should have told us that ten minutes ago. We thought you were
just going to let them get you!” Jake shooed them out.
He bummed a cigarette and sat down with shaking
hands to smoke it. These guys weren’t using their
heads. Qazi had had all the answers up to this
point; he probably had an answer to the
possibility of aircraft pursuers. The
likeliest answer was just to detonate the bomb
aboard ship when he was five or six miles away
at fifty feet over the ocean, tail-on to the
blast. Still, in war nothing ever goes the way you’ve
planned it, so the name of the game is keeping options
open. The ship’s officers just don’t realize how
few options we have. He had decided earlier, when
the discussion started, not to stress the fact that there as a
90 percent chance no one on this ship would live
another hour. So now they have a straw to grab
for, something to do to eep them and the men busy while the last
minutes tick “by.

“CAG,” Trixorn said after the others had
filed out. “Maybe out should let the crew know what this
terrorist is up to? Make an nnouncement on the
I comMC.”

“So everyone can have a final moment to polish their
soul before they get cremated alive? Nope. We
don’t need any panic. hey’ll have to go meet their
maker with the tarnish still on. Death’s a come-az-you-are
deal, anyway.”

What a great naval leader you are, Jake
Grafton. Here you are, twenty-three years in the
navy, presiding over a naval debacle that ill
make Pearl Harbor look like a minor traffic
accident. And if by some miracle you survive, the
admirals and congressmen will ram your nuts into a
vise and take turns on the handle. “How come you
don’t have any ashtrays down here?” he asked he
engineering watch officer.

“The X0 made us take them out. Smoking’s
bad for you. “No kidding.

Look where it’s got me,” Jake said. “Call
the aster-at-arms shack and have them bring me a big
bolt-cutter. one of those things they use
to cut padlocks off. Tell them to urry.

“You sent for me, GAG?” The speaker was a
senior chief petty officer wearing glasses. His
name tag read “Archer, E0D.” E0Do eant
Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

“Yeah. Pull up a chair and drop anchor.”
The senior chief did requested. He was of modest
stature, with intelligent eyes and even, regular
features. His uniform hung on him as if it were
tailor-made. He had fine, delicate hands.
He looked as if he were eally a banker or an
accountant, except for the bare legs of a tattooed
woman on his upper arm which peeped out from under is
short-sleeved khaki shirt.

“Senior Chief, I need some answers about
nuclear weapons. We’ve got a little problem.”

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 walkie-talkie. 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 1 the stars” brightness in the inky tears
in the clouds above. The mperature here on the flight
deck was fifteen degrees or so colder than
inside the ship. He shivered and peered about the eck.

He and his companions stood amid a forest of
aircraft with ings jutting upward at crazy
angles. Ahead of him on the right side island
loomed with its band of red and white floodlights found
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
eren’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
imrove. Sentries lay on the deck around the
choppers, facing outard. Behind the prone men a
supervisor walked slowly back and rth with an
assault rifle cradled in his arms.

The rotors of the choppers were still and the engines
silent.

A row of E-2’s were parked aboardships between the
helicopters and the island, their noses pointed at the
helicopters. Forard of the Hawkeyes, Jake could
see the rows of aircraft that were parked atop the bow
catapults facing aft, with nose tow bars ttached
so they could be quickly towed aft and spotted for a unch.
Beyond the airplanes on the bow and to the left,
outoard, 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 weapns down between
the parked planes and over to the choppers. Something
smacked the airplane on Jake’s right,
a stuttering, macking sound, and Jake’s eyes went
involuntarily to the plane. He glanced toward the
sentries in time to see the twinkling muzle flashes
from the weapons of one of the men stretched upon he 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

“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 JBD’S 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..

“yea.”

“Boy, we’re gonna get those bastards,” one
of the greenhirted troopers said and giggled nervously.
“Yeah, we’ll teach “em not to fuck with the Uncle
Sugar Navy,” Jak agreed.

“Them Arabs 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, levating his head for another look
around. “This is gonna be so good that-was

“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 RPM’S 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?”

“Yes sir.”

“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 persons.

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 looksee.” 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-fourJBD. 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.”

ok 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 word.”

“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 0-3 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 arines did the same.

Jake heard the sound of one of the grenades striking
a nearby ircraft, 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 sniper scope 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- I
6’s 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 comnight.

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! can figure what will
happen if! cut this wire here.” He pointed.