The helicopter jostled as it touched down and the ramp dropped. The entire group deplaned quickly, except for the pilots and the dead man holding Spurs’ hand.
North shoved the man forward as he pushed out of the pile. The terrorist had a bayonet stuck in his back. North must have taken one off of one of the packs.
Gunfire popped outside, erupting all over the ship.
North raised his rifle as the gear tumbled away from Spurs and the pilots turned to him. He fired one shot in each of their faces as Spurs struggled out of the gear.
Looking out, they could see Arab terrorists swarming over the ship. Several unarmed sailors gaped like deer in headlights and were cut down.
“What can we do?” Spurs asked. “What’s our plan?”
North reached into the cockpit and picked up the hand radio mike. He worked it several times, then leaned in again and turned knobs.
“Don’t have one yet. A bullet got the radio. If we blow it here—get killed trying to help—we won’t be able to save the Enterprise.”
They watched the melee helplessly.
Chardoff came out of the bridge hatchway dragging something heavy. He pulled it, stepping backwards as if towing two hundred pounds of sandbags. Next to the bulwarks, he hefted his load over his head with a tremendous yank. It was Commander Naugle—a dark red line on his temple. Chardoff heaved the skipper over, Naugle’s body falling like a limp doll onto the deck thirty feet below.
“Damn!” North whispered.
“Son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch!” Spurs added, hitting one of the packs as she gritted her teeth. Saber, Jabrowski, and now Captain Naugle. There was a big score to settle.
Two of the bad guys came out of the aft hatch onto the weather deck, leading nearly a dozen sailors with their hands on their heads. More sailors came out in small groups, their arms above their heads and followed by a couple of the armed men in black. They were herded to the port side lifeline. All but four of the terrorists went back inside for more, and a number of shots were fired, but the shooting came less frequently as the seconds passed.
A group of seventy or eighty sailors were packed against the side and more came out, some holding bloody wounds. One injured seaman stumbled through the hatch and was immediately shot twice in the head.
Now the goateed terrorist who seemed to have authority stepped up to the closest man and held a semiautomatic pistol to his head.
“Swim or die!” he yelled and without giving the frightened sailor time to consider the choice, the armed man pulled the trigger.
The sailor collapsed and the executioner stepped to the next man. It was the young seaman that had given Spurs directions as he vacuumed the officer’s country carpet when she first came on board. Big Track was next in line behind him.
“Swim or die!” the terrorist yelled again. It seemed that the next second took minutes as the young man stood, apparently frozen in fear. He paused too long. The trigger was being pulled.
Big Track leaped from behind, grabbing the kid as the shot fired narrowly missing the young sailor’s head. The two tumbled over the lifeline and into the water.
It signaled the rest of the crew, now building to over a hundred on the deck. None of them were willing to wait for the gunman’s offer. They dove over the side like lemmings. As more of the crew streamed from the hatch and some from around the superstructure, they followed the lead of their peers and sprinted over the side. At least they had a chance in the water. The numbers of the fleeing crewmembers slowed to a trickle and a few of the tardy ones were shot before completing their goal.
Half a dozen of the terrorists leaned over the side and began firing into the water.
“I’ve seen enough,” North said and ran for the ramp. Spurs slung the Arab’s M-16 over her shoulder and followed him.
Once off of the helicopter, North fired several three to five round, automatic bursts into the group of gunmen, laying five down, two of which went over the side, riddled with bullets. One remaining terrorist ran for cover and returned fire.
Chapter 59
THE BIG E
LIEUTENANT JG VICTOR Bowser watched as the helicopters came into view from the island superstructure outside the bridge. Doug was still out in his F-18 and Vic couldn’t sleep whenever Doug flew. He was always there to see him take off and land.
He looked at the surface fog they were heading into, then into the bridge.
“Damn this shit,” Admiral Pierce said standing by the port side windows inside. “Never fails when I go through the Strait, there’s always fog. I haven’t seen the Rock of Gibraltar once in the last seventeen years. Who else you got out, Richie?” he asked the ship’s captain, viewing through binoculars.
“Besides the two incoming heloes, just two F-18s, Smith and Stedman,” Captain Richard Fulk said. “They’re not due back for about an hour. We’ll be through this soup by then.” He turned to the Admiral. “Probably better launch a flight of 14s for close support. We’ve got four warming up on the flight deck, ready to launch.”
“Don’t bother,” the Admiral said. “Save their energy for this Mauritania thing. They need to be fresh. They’ll be doing flyovers this afternoon. Keep the 18s within fifty miles.”
“Yes sir,” the captain said, seeming irritated that the Admiral was running his ship.
“Let’s hurry and get those heloes down,” the Admiral said. “This crap’s thick.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral,” the captain said
Vic looked back to the approaching heloes. Their ramps were already down even though they were a hundred yards out. Three aqua colored objects fell off of the leading helo and landed in the water. The large aqua balls bobbed in the sea.
“What the hell did they lose?” the Admiral asked, picking up his binoculars. “Some kind of buoys?”
Captain Fulk pulled down a microphone from an overhead console. “What’s going on with those heloes, Bud?” he asked the air boss. “Those SEALs playing some kind of games?”
The reply crackled back over the microphone. “Not to my knowledge, sir.”
“Well, tell them they lost something out the back.”
All on the bridge watched curiously as the first helicopter landed.
It touched down on the circled area just forward of the Island and the men deplaned quickly. They fanned out, some dropping to the deck as though they were setting up a defensive perimeter. The second chopper buzzed the command center and landed near the stern, its men deplaning and fanning out as the first had.
“The hell if they aren’t playing games,” the Admiral said. “You’d better get those assholes off your flight deck. They know better than to do that kind of shit!”
Two of the men from the helicopters carried large containers. Both moved toward opposite ends of the big flattop. They threw their loads out simultaneously and the deck lit up in two flaming explosions.
Gunfire came from below. Several bullets ricocheted past the bridge. The ship’s security gunner, manning an M-60 machine gun, was only able to get off a half dozen shots from his emplacement on the island just below them before he was taken out by a terrorist sniper.
Three of the four two-man F-14 Tomcat crews on the flight deck, realizing they would not be able to launch, deplaned quickly and ran for cover. They were cut down along with a handful of the deck hands. The remaining pilot and weapons officer in the last F-14 lowered their bulletproof canopy, but the explosion from a satchel charge tossed under their fuselage lifted the bird straight up fifty feet as if it were a VTOL Harrier. It fell back to the deck like a huge, snapping rattrap and broke into sections, scattering flaming pieces across the flattop.
Vic ran for the ladder down to the flight deck as the Admiral and the Captain took cover.
Chapter 60
PASSAGEWAY OF HELL
USS Atchison
THE ENTERPRISE LIT up in several fiery explosions as both ships were swallowed by a thick wall of surface fog.
“What are we going to do?” Spurs asked as
she and North hid behind the large cube holding four Tomahawk cruise missiles.
“Three things,” he said, “Contact Admiral Pierce to tell him what these bastards are up to, then disable the Tomahawks to make sure they can’t do it.”
“What’s the third?”
“Actually, it’s the first. We get rid of the chopper. If they know they have no quick escape, it might take the wind out of their sails.”
North leaned his rifle against the missile station. “Stay here.” He looked toward the predawn Moroccan shoreline. A mile and a half out, the Enterprise was silhouetted in front of the rocky hills. North took off, ducking as he ran back into the helicopter. Spurs saw movement in the cockpit. The engines, already idling, revved loud.
Back at the superstructure, Chardoff stopped on the port bridge ladder. He frowned at the chopper.
The helo lifted quickly, but instead of going straight up, it tipped back and came up perpendicular to the deck. At first, it looked like North was going to fly it away, but certainly not like this, with its nose pointed to the sky.
The thing seemed to hover there and Spurs could see glimpses of North through the helo’s side ports as he scampered like a rodent down the inside of the body of the aircraft. At ten feet above the landing pad, North dropped from the open back ramp just as the big, back rotor beat the deck. The rotor blades splintered. Large pieces of it whistled across the ship, like a dozen deadly machetes. They slapped the superstructure, one flying past Chardoff’s head, causing him to duck.
North rolled away, the cropped rotor chasing him, as the helo did a somersault and finally flipped onto its back into the lightly rolling sea, smoking as it slipped under.
Chardoff raised his weapon and fired a dozen semiautomatic shots as North scrambled back toward Spurs. She leaned out from the missile station. With her 16 on full auto, she put the fear of a short life in the Marine with eighteen ricocheting bullets along the bridge ladder forcing Chardoff to dive into the Conn hatchway.
North ran up and slammed his back against the protective steel box as several of Allah’s Jihad opened up on them. Spurs ducked in.
“Where’d you learn to fly?” Spurs asked.
“Same place you learned to shoot,” North said.
“What now, Kimosabe?”
North peeked around the edge of the missiles. A volley of shots convinced him not to take a long gander.
“There’s no way we can get to the bridge or the message center to radio the Admiral,” he said.
“Is there another radio we can get to?”
North’s eyes brightened. “Jabrowski was working on a radio telephone in the CPO berthing area. I say we make our way to the aft hatch and go below for the RT. We can bring it back topside and see if we can get a hold of the Enterprise.”
“Ready when you are,” Spurs said, holding the rifle up.
“Might as well leave that here.”
“Why?”
“You’re out of ammo,” he said.
He popped the taped-together, banana magazines out of his rifle, flipped them around and jammed the full side back in.
Spurs turned her M-16 to its side and saw the open, empty chamber. Hers had only a standard, short magazine. She tossed it to the deck and pulled the Beretta out from under her belt. She’d have to be conservative now.
“Let’s go,” she said and nodded to North.
They bolted from the right side of the missile station, North leading. He gave several three-round automatic bursts as they zigzagged across the deck to the hatch, amid flying steel-jacketed rounds. Spurs ducked through the open hatchway and North backed through, squeezing the trigger twice more before setting the weapon on semi-automatic.
North and Spurs raced down two companionways toward CPO country, North leading. On the second deck down, they ran forward through several compartments.
Five times, startled gunmen turned to see the two flying toward them and five times North’s M-16 sent them to meet Allah.
Finally North stopped at a side compartment and went in. On the lower bunk of one of the two triple racks, sat the portable RT.
“We’re in luck!” he said and ran to it.
He laid the rifle on the bunk and Spurs stuffed her pistol behind her belt.
While she helped him slip his arms through its straps to carry it on his back, Sergeant Krebs, Chardoff’s number one henchman looked through the doorway.
Spurs pulled her Beretta from her belt as North went for his rifle, but not fast enough to prevent the sergeant’s first shot. She fired her two remaining rounds, one hitting the gunman’s M-16 on the barrel guard, the other striking the hatchway. It was enough to make him duck for cover, but her pistol was empty.
North sat hard on the deck grimacing as he pointed his assault rifle to the hatchway and nailed Krebs in the center of his chest when the traitor Marine took another try.
And a red pool grew on the floor under North.
Chapter 61
RADIO FLYER
SPURS DROPPED TO her knees beside North, found the bullet hole mid-way up the inside of his right thigh and covered it with her right hand. With the fingertips of her left hand, she pressed hard above the wound to stop the gushing blood.
“Hold your hand there!” she told him.
As he did, she took off her field jacket, then yanked several times on the left sleeve of her fatigues until it tore off. She wrapped the strip around his thigh, and then grabbed a screwdriver that had been lying next to the RT and twisted the sleeve fabric tight. It seemed to do the job.
North held the screwdriver in place as Spurs helped him to his feet and grabbed the M-16.
“It’s empty too,” he said. He motioned to the dead sergeant. “We can rob his magazines.”
They made their way out the door of the stateroom and over the Marine’s body.
Spurs leaned North against the wall and took the dead man’s ammo, and they were off and limping.
“After we alert the Enterprise, we’ll have to jump overboard,” North said. “They’ll have to sink us to stop them from firing the Tomahawks. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Can’t we knock ‘em out?”
“With what? They’ve got the fire controls. The missiles are in a bomb proof, steel box. We don’t have any explosives.”
“What about the control cables from the fire controls to the missile station?”
“They snaked it through, under the deck,” he said, then his eyes became wide. “There is an access panel under the weapons station.”
“Where?”
“One deck up and about four compartments back.”
They hustled up the companionway and through the compartments, finally coming to the access panel without incident.
Four slotted screws held the small steel door in place, four feet up on the wall.
“We need a screw driver,” Spurs said.
“It just so happens, I’ve got one,” North said sitting down and pulling it out of his tourniquet.
“You fool!”
“Just hurry.”
He held pressure against his leg and handed her the screwdriver.
She passed him the rifle and he kept watch while she took the four screws out, letting them fall.
She caught the last screw in her hand, but the panel door came loose, slipped and clattered on the floor.
They both cringed. Inside were dozens of cables.
“Which one?”
“It should be the big green cable. Under its sheathing are eight leads wrapped together. Probably on top since it was the most recently installed.”
“Yeah, I see it.” Spurs reached in and tried to yank it loose. It wouldn’t budge. “What do I do with it?”
“You got your fingernail file?”
She remembered losing it when she and Sabre were escaping from the boiler tank. “Sorry. In all the excitement, I left my purse.”
A motor whined above them. The Tomahawks were being positioned.
“Hurry,” North
said. “If we have to, we can shoot them.”
Spurs began stabbing the cable with the screwdriver. The first couple of jabs glanced off of the thick rubber insulation, but the next few gouged deep. The motorized whine stopped, but she didn’t know if she had stopped it or it had completed positioning.
Suddenly, bullets struck around the panel. She dropped the screwdriver inside the panel and heard it fall to the floor.
She turned to North.
“Damn it, let me get out of the way first!”
North seemed stunned as he let his rifle fall to the deck.
“It jammed,” he said and pointed toward the hatchway, ten feet away.
One of Allah’s Jihad’s finest stood motioning with his M-16 for Spurs to move away from the panel.
She stepped back and the man moved between them and took North’s rifle.
He backed away smiling.
“You think he understands English?” She asked.
“Let’s find out. Hey towel head, how many humps does your sister have?”
The man rattled off several Arabic syllables, but didn’t seem to understand as he motioned for North to move over to Spurs.
“My leg,” North said pointing at his thigh, “I can’t.”
The terrorist spewed more Arabic, insistently.
“Okay, okay,” North said, holding up his hand. He quickly tied the tourniquet tight and began to scoot over.
“I’ll distract him with the screw,” Spurs said, rushing her words, “you hit him with the panel door.”
“What?”
Spurs flipped the screw through the hatch on the other side of the gunman with her thumb as he watched North.
The screw clicked behind the terrorist and as he turned to look, North got the idea. He picked up the steel access panel door and flung it like a Frisbee.
It caught the gunman in the chest and he fell against the wall, firing his weapon.
Spurs bolted to the terrorist as North struggled to stand. The gunman’s rifle squirted out bullets on full automatic, but the shots weren’t aimed. Spurs grabbed the muzzle of the blazing weapon, directing it away and snapped her foot up in a high kick to the man’s chin. She brought her leg down, did a short hop and kicked again, catching him in the throat. Again, with a third kick, her toes broke teeth as the gunman fell back, unconscious.
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