Carrier c-1

by Keith Douglass

  "I am not optimistic about the promise of negotiations with these people," Magruder said.

  "That's putting it mildly, Admiral. It'll be Pueblo all over again, only worse."

  "What about Bushmaster, sir?" Even on a scrambled line, Magruder didn't want to make a direct reference to the SEAL team already ashore.

  "Bushmaster remains in place. They will be a positive asset for Righteous Thunder… if it comes to that."

  "Understood."

  "Hang in there, Tom. Seventh Fleet is already deploying, so you'll have plenty of backup in another day or two. Until then, it's up to you to keep an eye on the bastards."

  "Aye aye, Admiral."

  "CINCPAC out." The line went dead.

  Magruder replaced the handset. Colonel Caruso would be proceeding with the final preparations for a landing in any case. In a situation like this one, the Marine motto of Semper Fidelis was best reinforced by the Boy Scouts' Be prepared.

  They would be ready to go in, no matter what happened. And as much as Magruder felt that Washington was making a mistake, he would be ready as well, ready to carry out the President's orders.

  But the frustration he felt was almost tangible, like the thundering shudder in the air on the flight deck during a cat launch. He turned to an aide. "I'll be on the Flag Bridge."

  The waiting was always the hard part.

  1400 hours

  Nyongch'on-kiji

  The lookouts gave warning seconds before the door banged open. Coyote watched in silence with the men of Chimera's crew as Major Po walked in, flanked by guards with AK-47 rifles.

  There'd been no more interrogations since the day before, no attention from their captors at all save for the arrival several hours before of a squad of silent peasants who replaced full honey buckets and left behind a washtub containing the midday meal: an unsavory mash of rice and chunks of raw fish.

  "All you, kneel down!" Po shouted. The Americans stirred uneasily. This was something new in the routine. "All down, sonabichi! All down!" the major screamed. A guard slammed his rifle butt into the shoulders of the nearest American sailor, driving him to his knees. Reluctantly, other sailors began, facing the Koreans in a thickly packed semicircle.

  Coyote knelt with the others, sharply aware of the hostility among the prisoners. The SEAL's pre-dawn visit had instilled a fierce new hope in all of them. They'd not been abandoned, whatever their captors might say.

  The Koreans felt it too, Coyote thought, They looked nervous and wary of the Americans. He thought of the pistol and knife, hidden away among the rafters in the back of the room. All we need to do is hold out a little longer, he thought.

  "Where sonabichi captain!" Major Po snapped. He looked among the Americans until he found Gilmore. "You! You!" He indicated two sailors. "You bring!"

  Goaded by blows and snarled orders, the sailors dragged the Captain to the center of the semicircle and propped him up. Gilmore was weaker today. Coyote wasn't even certain the man was aware of his surroundings.

  The major surveyed the scene, then turned to face the door. "Turo ose yo!"

  More soldiers spilled into the room, followed a moment later by Colonel Li. The man exchanged several low-voiced phrases with the major, then surveyed the gathered Americans. "We will try something different," he said, the words cold and without accent. "Captain Gilmore, I hold you responsible for the lives of your men. You can order them to cooperate, or watch them die one by one."

  "Go… hell…" Gilmore said. His voice was very weak, his face pale and drawn.

  Li shrugged. "As you will." His gaze passed across the Americans once more. Again, his eyes locked with Coyote's, then passed on to a sailor kneeling nearby. He pointed. "Paro ku kot!"

  Two North Korean soldiers slung their rifles and advanced on the sailor, who tried to back up, tried to rise, but was grabbed before he could get to his feet. They grabbed him, one holding each arm, and dragged him to the wall next to the door. Colonel Li nodded to the major, who drew his pistol and snapped back the slide with a loud snick-clack, chambering a round.

  They made the American kneel again, his face against the wall. The major stood behind him, the muzzle of the pistol pressed against the back of the sailor's head.

  "Captain?"

  "Don't do it, Captain!" the sailor screamed. "Don't-"

  One of the men holding him slammed an elbow against the side of his head. "Kae!" the soldier snapped. "Choyong hi!"

  Struggling, the Captain tried to rise. Coyote felt the tension, the sheer rage among the Americans building, felt his own heart hammering under the assault. He remembered the staged firing squad, the fear and the sheer relief he'd felt at the unexpected reprieve, and wondered if this was the same thing again.

  "Hang on, Sobieski!" someone shouted. "The bastards don't mean it!"

  Li looked at the major. "Kot hasipsiyo!"

  The shot was like a physical blow, unnaturally loud inside the bare-walled room. A splash of scarlet appeared on the wall in front of the sailor's face. The two soldiers released Sobieski's arms and he sagged to the floor. There was a gaping red cavity where his forehead had been.

  "Two hours, Captain," Li said. His voice was scarcely above a whisper, but every man heard it in the ringing silence which followed the shot. "In two hours I shall return. You and your men will sign the confessions we have prepared for them, or in two hours another of your men will die. Until then, Captain…"

  The silence remained long moments after the Koreans departed.

  1545 hours

  Hanger deck, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  The immense hangar deck occupied fully two-thirds of Jefferson's 1,092-foot length, two levels below her flight deck and extending from just forward of her number one elevator almost all the way aft to the fantail. The deck was covered by the same dark-gray, non-skid surface as the flight deck, while bulkheads and overhead were painted white. Hanging in row upon colorful row along the overhead were flags of countries, U.S. territories, and states, as well as Navy signal flags. The hangar deck echoed with voices, the metallic clangor of tools and hand carts banging and squeaking in the vast, almost subterranean space.

  Tombstone picked his way carefully across the deck. It was busy, a maelstrom of purposeful confusion. The room was crowded with aircraft, so much so that navigating in a straight line was impossible, for the planes, wings folded, were parked so close together that each nearly touched its neighbors. With over eighty aircraft in a carrier air wing, there never seemed to be space enough on board ship to store them all. Indeed, even during launch and recovery operations, some had to be kept topside on the flight deck. Tombstone found himself wondering again how the Mangler could possibly work out the intricate geometry of moving them from hangar deck to flight deck and back without becoming hopelessly mired in an aircraft carrier's version of gridlock.

  He'd been heading aft toward the fantail but found that route blocked. Jefferson's boats and launches were stored in the aft end of the hangar bay, close by the passageway leading to the fantail, stacked two-high on spidery wheeled cradles, and the way through was a narrow one. This afternoon it was walled off by a row of flat-topped mules. Crews were moving among the parked aircraft on preflight inspections, readying them for combat in case Operation Righteous Thunder was given a go, and spare equipment had been wheeled back out of the way.

  Tombstone decided to get his view of the sea at an elevator instead.

  Jefferson had four elevators, three to starboard, one to port, flat deck sections which moved between the hangar deck and the flight deck along rails on the outside of the hull. They were accessed from the hangar bay through broad, oval openings in the bulkheads which were normally left open for ventilation below decks, though they could be sealed off with massive sliding doors in cold weather. Dodging blue shirts and their mules, Tombstone made his way to the elevator portside and aft.

  Like the fantail, the elevators offered unobstructed views of the sea rushing past the ship some twenty feet below. Walking
into the light spilling into the hangar bay from outside, Tombstone had to stop and fish in his jacket pocket for his sunglasses. A mule and several blue shirts were manhandling an F-14 onto the elevator, and he moved out of their way, leaning against the elevator's safety netting.

  Musing, he looked at the sunglasses before putting them on. They were the teardrop pilot's model with gold wire frames… like his leather flight jacket, very much in keeping with his image as a Navy aviator.

  The image he was no longer able to maintain.

  "Ho, Tombstone. I've been looking for you."

  He turned and saw Batman advancing across the red and yellow warning stripes painted on the deck. Like Tombstone, Batman wore sunglasses and jacket, his hat cocked at a rakish angle. He acknowledged the lieutenant with a nod and hoped the man didn't want a conversation. Tombstone didn't feel like talking just now.

  "Listen," Batman said. "I've been trying to find you all day." Tombstone smiled. Jefferson was a small city with a population of over six thousand. Usually it was easy to get lost in her, but somehow, this time, he'd failed. "Well, looks like you found me."

  "Yeah." Batman looked uncertain… even embarrassed. "Look, I know this might not be the best time, Stoney, but I don't know who else to talk to. I'm… I'm wondering if I can do it again." With a sharp motion, Batman pulled the sunglasses off and looked into Tombstone's eyes. "I killed two guys yesterday. You shot down your MiG and it didn't even faze you. I need to know how you handle a thing like that."

  So that was it. Several sharp or sarcastic replies rose in Tombstone's mind, but he pushed them aside. The openness, the vulnerability in Batman's expression was something he'd not seen there before.

  "I don't think I have any answers," he said, shaking his head. "I didn't… handle it. I have a feeling it's going to stay with me for a long time."

  When Batman didn't answer, Tombstone continued. "That was what all the training was for, right? ACM? Making the kill?"

  "Making the kill… right. But it was always… you know. A target. Not a man."

  "I doubt very much that the enemy pilot would have extended you the same courtesy, but that's beside the point. You strap on an F-14 for one purpose only, to engage the enemy, to shoot him down before he shoots you down or before he kills friends and shipmates. If there's a better reason than that, I've never heard it."

  "I keep wondering if those guys I nailed had families."

  "Of course they did." Bitterness edged Tombstone's voice. "Coyote had family. Mother, father. A wife I'm going to have to go see when we get back to the World."

  "Is that all there is to it? Revenge? They hit you, you hit them back?"

  "Hell, no. I'll leave that to the politicians." Tombstone's fists clenched. "But I might lock and fire remembering what a hell of a fine guy Coyote was."

  As he said it, for the first time since his bolters the night before, Tombstone pictured himself going up again, pictured himself once more bringing the HUD pipper into line with an enemy MiG. Tombstone was an aviator. There was no escaping that part of him.

  A warning klaxon sounded, a harsh bray above the noises of machinery and sea. The elevator gave a lurch, then began rising up the side of the carrier.

  "You know you can't have any doubts about it once you're up there, right?" said Tombstone.

  "I'm realizing that now."

  "You remember the Top Gun motto?"

  The other aviator nodded, but Tombstone pressed ahead. "'Fight to fly, fly to fight… fight to win!'"

  "Fight to win. Yeah."

  Tombstone shrugged. "The decision is yours, son, but if you don't mean business, you've got absolutely zero reason to be up there."

  "So how about you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Coyote and Mardi Gras. Frenchie… Losing those guys was a real shock. I thought, well, some of the guys were wondering if you'd lost it, know what I mean? Lost the edge."

  It was not the edge that he'd lost so much, Tombstone realized now, as the will to push that edge, to see how far it would stretch. To do what he did, to be who he was, meant accepting a measure of responsibility which he'd never yet been able to shoulder comfortably.

  "I haven't lost it, Batman. Not yet." He was surprised to discover he meant it.

  With another lurch, the elevator arrived topside, meshing perfectly with a round-cornered gap cut from the carrier's flight deck. It was as frantic here as it had been below. Red-shirted ordnancemen were arming the parked aircraft for their next mission. At several points on the deck, red lines delineated the bomb elevators where missiles and other munitions were being brought up from the ship's magazines for loading. Other men crawled over and under each aircraft, giving them their preflights.

  No longer masked from the wind by the curve of Jefferson's hull, Tombstone had to lean over and shout to make himself heard. "You're the one with the responsibility," Tombstone yelled. "For yourself and your shipmates! You have to know why you're up there, and that's to fight to win. If you don't, you let yourself down, and your shipmates!"

  They started across the flight deck, keeping clear of hurtling mules and ordies hauling bomb carts.

  "Hey, Stoney. You won't… I mean…"

  Tombstone grinned. "I won't tell a soul, Batman." Together they walked toward the island.

  1600 hours

  Nyongch'on-kiji

  "Kot hasipsiyo!" The shot rang out, splattering more blood across the wall.

  Seaman Jacobs crumpled as the soldiers released him and he fell, collapsing to the floor across Sobieski's body. Coyote felt the horror of the death, of the methodical murder of a helpless man.

  Li faced the ring of stunned Americans. "A death every two hours, Captain, until you and your men cooperate." He gathered his men with a gesture. "Kapsida!"

  Bailey, the corpsman, was the first to move when the Koreans left, hurrying to Jacobs's side and feeling the man's throat for a pulse. "He's dead."

  "We've got to do something," Zabelsky said. The words were a low murmur, almost a litany. "We've got to do something."

  "Nothin'… we can do," Gilmore said. "Nothing…"

  "We've got a gun-"

  "Belay that right now!" Bronkowicz growled. "We won't help the SEALs… we won't help ourselves if we give it all away now."

  "Yeah," Wilkinson said. "What are you going to do, son, shoot your way into the compound out there? Then what?"

  Zabelsky whirled, his face a mask of rage. "Jacobs was my buddy!"

  "And our shipmate," Bailey said softly. He laid a hand on Zabelsky's shoulder. "We don't help him by getting ourselves shot too."

  A clattering sound from outside caught their attention. "Hey, guys!" one of the lookouts called. "It's a helo!"

  "Not one of ours," Zabelsky said.

  "Shit no. Commie job, looks like. Red star on the tail."

  Coyote joined the lookout, balancing atop a bucket to see out. The helicopter was settling to earth amid whirling dust, landing at the small airstrip on the far side of the compound. "Mi-8 Hip," he announced, recognizing the type. "Military transport. Looks like we have visitors."

  "What kind?" Wilkinson asked.

  "VIPs," Coyote replied. He could just barely make out several men climbing from the bulky machine's side door, walking doubled over beneath its still-turning rotors. One wore an officer's uniform ornate with medals and gold braid. The others looked like aides or junior officers. They were met by Li and Major Po, both of whom saluted the newcomers with crisp military precision. "Looks like high-ranking brass."

  "I don't think I like this," Wilkinson said.

  Coyote had to agree.

  CHAPTER 20

  1800 hours

  Nyongch'on-kiji

  "Kot hasipsiyo!"

  This time a third class radioman named Heatley died, slammed forward off his knees as the major's automatic pistol barked, and adding his blood and brain tissue and chips of bone to the dark splatter of gore on the wall next to the door.

  In the silence whic
h followed, Colonel Li turned and smiled at his kneeling audience. "I'm sure you all are aware of the helicopter which arrived not long ago. You will be interested to know that orders have arrived from my superiors in P'yongyang directing that you be sent there for, shall we say, further debriefing."

  There was a stir among the prisoners. Coyote kneeled with the rest, trying to control the hammering in his chest. The torture of watching men being shot in cold blood with clockwork regularity was worse than any beating he'd suffered so far.

  "I feel it is only fair to warn you that you cannot expect such… lenient treatment in P'yongyang as you have enjoyed here," the colonel continued. "General Chung Sun-Jae, who has come here from the capital to take charge of you, is a man interested in results but with little concern for the time it takes… or the means employed to get them." He shrugged, a deliberately Western gesture. "I had hoped that some of you at least would be willing to cooperate with me first. Any persons here who wish to do so, of course, have only to ask to see me, Colonel Li. Perhaps you can yet be spared the uncertainties that a prolonged stay in P'yongyang would bring."

  "Screw you, flat-face," someone in the back ranks of the Americans muttered.

  Li ignored the interruption. "At dawn tomorrow, all of you will be loaded onto trucks and transported west to special camps in the P'yongyang area. Those who decide to cooperate with me will receive special privileges… better food, medical aid… and a chance to avoid General Chung's more creative approaches to prisoner interviews. Certainly, we should be able to spare you the pain and humiliation of a trial, as well as whatever punishment the court chooses to hand down. For the rest of you, well…" The officer looked down and nudged Heatley's body with the toe of his boot. "Perhaps you will come to envy these men who have already given their lives. They might well be the lucky ones, yes?"