by Gordon Kent
He put a hand to his head and hair came away, burned. His face felt as if he had a bad sunburn. He shook his head inside the respirator mask.
Who was next in command?
Figure the CAG as dead, burned in his cockpit, or ejecting into the water and thus unavailable. The boat’s skipper was dead. That left the flag captain, the navigator, and the engineer, all captains. The flag captain ought to be down on the O-3 level in the flag spaces, where Madje had planned to move Admiral Rafehausen. Seemed like a good place to start. He shone a flashlight down the ladder well through the smoke. Where had he got a flashlight?
“Looks clear,” he shouted through the hatch.
“Lead the way, sir. We’ll bring the admiral.”
A blast from outside the tower rocked it, moved it by several inches and distorted the bulkhead to his left. He touched it cautiously and it burned him.
“Down! Now! Quick as you can! This wall is hot! Go, go!”
They ran and fell and fought down the steel ladder, around a platform and down again, with wrenching noises above them and a roaring like a jet engine. Madje knew that the flight deck was just the other side of this hatch, and he could see from the distortion all along the wall that the other side was exposed to extreme temperature. The heat came through the respirator, burned his face again and scorched his hands.
When this wall burned through, the tower would collapse. The structural beams visible on the vertical surface were spalding, huge flakes of hot metal shooting off them in response to impacts from elsewhere. For the first time, it occurred to Madje that the carrier might not recover.
Radio India
“We interrupt the regularly scheduled program for a special bulletin. Residents of the city of Mahe report the sound of explosions and what they describe as ‘rapid gunfire’ from the nearby Mahe Naval Base. Radio India is trying to establish contact with the local naval headquarters. Elsewhere in the nation, two incidents of what also appears to be fighting have occurred, one in Pondicherry, one in the far north of Uttar Pradesh state. A government spokesman denied that any such thing was occurring and pooh-poohed the idea of terrorism. A spokesman told this reporter that, quote, ‘Military fire practice rounds here all the time.’ Amal Gupta, Delhi.”
USS Thomas Jefferson
Madje followed the stretcher-bearers down the ladder to the O-2 level, below the flight deck. It was full of smoke, it was hot as hell, and there was already water up to their ankles. His arms and back were hurting through the adrenaline from the effort of carrying the helmsman.
“Shit!” the lead man on the stretcher shouted. “We sinkin’?”
“Fire hoses!” Madje shouted. “Move! Move!”
Around another platform, through another hatch and down to O-3. Water was pouring through the ladder well, all run-off from the fire hoses fighting the fires in the corridor above. A sailor in a respirator was standing at the bottom of the ladder.
“Where you boys coming from?” he said harshly. Close up, Madje could see he was a Chief Petty Officer.
“That’s Admiral Rafehausen, hurt bad. The guy over my shoulder’s the helmsman from the bridge. I’m Lieutenant Madje.”
The CPO looked as if he might let Madje off this time. “Get t’admiral forward. Doc has Ready Room Two for casualties. Then get your asses up to Chief White forward. Sir, I have to ask you to join a fire team.”
“Chief, I have a last order from the admiral. Then I’ll be back.”
Even through the respirator, Madje could read the chief’s contempt, as if officers could be expected to find excuses to avoid firefighting. Maybe they could. Madje followed the stretcher down the starboard passageway to Ready Room Two, passed the unmoving helmsman to a triage team, and got a spasm of pleasure when they gave him a thumbs-up. He watched two corpsmen hovering over the admiral, loitered for a moment, and realized that there was nothing, nothing he could do here. He sloshed back out into the passageway, got a look from the chief, and headed forward. He squeezed past a hose team preparing to go topside, climbed over the knee knockers at frame 133, and found himself squelching into the relatively clean flag area and its brilliantly polished blue tile floor. He looked in flag ops and flag intel and the living quarters. No flag captain.
It was quiet, and he was tired. He stood in the flag briefing room, alone, insulated from the fires three decks above, and thought how easy it would be to sit down. Then he did. His legs hurt and his back felt as if he had twisted it, and his face felt swollen. It probably was. He lifted the respirator off his chest—and got back up.
“Fuck,” he said aloud. He put the respirator back on, felt it tug at the fatigue in his spine, and got a twinge of his own eventual middle age.
Bangalore, India
A Toyota panel truck backed up to the loading dock of Building Three of the New World Technological Center. Three figures wearing heavy coveralls, gloves, and hoods got out. While one pulled up the loading gate to the interior, the other two opened the rear doors of the truck and took out two large fans, which they carried into the building. Unreeling electrical cords while two of the building’s workers watched and did nothing—the people in the coveralls, one of them a woman, smiled at them—they plugged the fans into a wall socket. The third figure unreeled a hose from the panel truck. All three people put on goggles and respirators, and one of them went to the truck’s driver’s seat. The others turned on the fans. Sarin gas began to flow through the hose.
USS Thomas Jefferson
Madje went back out into the passageway, headed aft. He passed another fire party checking a hose, and then he got to the big steel hatch labeled “Combat Information Center.” It was dogged shut. He rapped at it with his knuckles. “Flag lieutenant!” he shouted. Heads turned in the passageway, he was so loud.
Inside, somebody undogged the hatch. He pushed through and they dogged it behind him.
“Flag captain here?”
He could see from the kid’s patches he was from the S-3 squadron and probably attached to the ASW module just forward. The kid just shook his head. He looked numb.
He passed the ASuW station and walked into the domain of the tactical action officer. There was a little smoke here, but no smell of fire. The screens were lit and functioning.
“TAO?”
“Mister Madje?”
“Sir, the admiral sent me to find out who the senior officer is and place him in command. The skipper is dead. I think the CAG is gone, too.”
The TAO nodded. “CAG died in the first hit. His Tomcat was on cat four.”
“I’m trying to find the flag captain.”
“I can’t help you, Madje. I can tell you that I’m conning the ship from here and waiting for somebody senior to take command.” The TAO was a mere lieutenant-commander.
The huge screen in front of the TAO was repeated from a JOTS terminal. It showed the Fort Klock alongside the wounded Jefferson, with other ships supporting her fire-fighting efforts.
“Tell the admiral we’re going to get through this. We have four ships alongside putting water and chemicals on the fire, and we’ve cleared the O-2 level of fires and started to take back the flight deck. How is he?”
“Badly burned, I think. But he spoke to me a couple of times.”
“That’s good. As to command, eventually some son-of-a-bitch will realize that he’s senior to me and come relieve me.”
A sailor held a radiophone out to the TAO. “Captain Lash on the Fort Klock, sir.”
“Give it here,” the TAO said wearily. “TAO, Jefferson. Go ahead.”
“Jefferson, what’s the status on command? Air Ops says the CAG and Captain Rogers are out. Where’s Admiral Rafehausen?”
“Sir, I have his flag lieutenant right here. The admiral is injured but should recover, over.”
“Copy injured.” Pause. “Jefferson, I’m taking command of the battle group effective twelve forty-nine GMT.”
“Roger, copy. Fort Klock has taken command.” The TAO looked around as if he was
hoping someone senior would come in the scuttle.
“I’m taking the exercise; effective immediately. I want a status on your fires when you can pass it, and I want to know the fuel status of every plane up, TAO.”
“Air Ops is working on that, sir. We have—” the TAO looked at a sheet of paper being held in front of him—“eleven planes up. Sorry, make that thirteen.”
“Get me their fuel status.”
“I’m on it.”
“You have hull-integrity issues?”
“No, sir. We’ve cleared the fires off the O-2 level, we’re working forward from the bow of the flight deck, and the stern is on fire. I have no working elevator and cat two may be savable. That’s what I know now, sir.”
“Keep me apprised. I’ll get a smallboy on your stern. Does she steer?”
“She does.”
“I have to put out a sitrep to Fifth Fleet ASAP. Any idea of your casualties?”
“No idea, sir. No idea at all.”
Pause. The TAO was looking at the hatch to Air Ops, where an officer was trying to get his attention.
“Stay in touch, TAO.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Madje felt that he knew too much. He was sagging, done with his immediate duty and frightened of the prospect before them. He cleared his throat. “I’ll—I’ll go fight fires. Sir.”
“That sounds like sense to me.” The TAO turned away from him to the officer who had just entered from Air Ops. “Those the fuel figures?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Somebody’s going for a swim.”
“Yes, sir.”
Madje took a deep breath, tried to ignore his back, and got the scared kid at the hatch to let him out. And then he went to fight fires.
5
AG 703
Soleck was keeping his eyes on the air traffic and his brain on the fuel. “Gup, as soon as you get their fuel states, start working out what they need to get to—” He looked down at his card of the day, registered the primary bingo field, the precleared field where planes could land in an emergency, as Mahe. This was certainly an emergency. “—Mahe, India. It’s on your kneeboard.” Guppy looked over at him, trying to say something about being in over his head. “Just do it, Gup. Fudge the numbers. Guess.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good.” Soleck fed radio one into his helmet and dialed up AG 706 on the squadron frequency.
“AG 706, this is 703, over?”
Pause.
“703, go ahead.” That was Scarlatti, known to the air wing as “Mozart,” a nugget only a little more experienced than Guppy, and damn Stevens for taking Goldy. They were an inexperienced squadron and Soleck wasn’t sure he was ready to do what had to be done.
“Mozart, this is Soleck. Listen up; we’ve got all the gas that’s in the air and close to the stack. You and me. We’re going to have to set up a fueling station headed inbound as soon as AW gives us a bingo field, and we tank the Hornets until they can go feet-dry. You copy all that, Mozart?”
Pause. Soleck could almost hear the gears grinding in Mozart’s mind.
“Roger, 703, I copy. What do you want me to do right now?”
“Stay on your assigned track and altitude until I come up again. Stay on this freq and monitor guard and AW. I’ll get back to you. Soleck, out.”
“AW on one, sir.” Soleck wondered if Guppy had ever called him “sir” before. “And nothing from Mister Stevens.”
The AW said, “703, what is your status and give?”
Soleck was pretty sure that was Captain Lash—Alpha Whiskey—himself, not some designated junior officer. That alone told Soleck plenty.
“AW, this is 703. We have twenty-two thousand pounds to give on original mission parameters. AG 706 has the same. AW, I’m prepared to set a track to a designated bingo and tank en route. Request ID on senior officer in the air, and request location of bingo. My card of the day says Mahe Naval Air Station. Over?”
“Wait one, 703.”
Soleck breathed out, relaxed his grip on the controls a fraction. Somebody was in charge down there; the world had not ended; and AW was on the air.
“703, this is AW. I have Air Ops on handheld; I have to transfer fuel data via another line because they have lost their antennas. Copy?”
“Roger, AW.” Soleck tried to imagine the difficulty. Air Ops, if they were in business, would know the fuel needs of every plane—more important, unlike the bridge of a cruiser, Air Ops would be full of pilots who could work the numbers on fuel problems. And Air Ops was where bingo fields were set. But, according to AW, all that information had to flow across a handheld, probably a walkie-talkie.
The AW came back on. “I have Lieutenant-Commander Donitz as senior officer in the air. And 703, just so you know the whole deal, our best information is that Mahe is down or not responding. We have no response from Calicut, either. We’re trying to find you a bingo field, but something is going down in India, over.”
Soleck felt a cold ball form in his gut.
Mahe Naval Base, India
They had picked up the other three Americans from the HQ building’s bottom storey—an ex-SEAL named Fidelio, whom everybody called Fidel; a female petty officer, Dee Clavers, who had been an almost-Women’s NBA center; and a female jg named Ong, an anime princess so small she had barely managed to make the Navy minimum.
There were too many of them now, Alan thought—five Americans and four Indians and the three Indian Marines. Too few with weapons and too many who’d never been in a fight. He muttered to Fidel, whom he’d served with before, “This isn’t any good, Chief.”
Fidel grunted. “What’s the plan?”
“I have to get to something I can communicate with Fifth Fleet on. Everything’s out here, cell-phone system’s swamped.”
“Hotel.”
“Yeah, exactly what I think.” They were staying at a beach hotel ten miles away. The hotel was as close to a home as they had.
Fidel nodded. “Car park, the van, then hotel, gotcha. You any good with that gun?”
“Not bad.”
“I’m a lot better than not bad.” Fidel held out his hand for the gun. “You lead, I shoot, Commander.”
AG 703
“Sri Lanka,” Soleck said quietly. Every airfield he could find and plot, he had entered into a chart on his computer, complete with range rings.
“203 is inbound for gas, figures he has eight minutes of fuel remaining.” Gup still spoke in a monotone, but tracking the fuel for eleven other planes was keeping his mind occupied.
Soleck had walled off the emergency, taken a bite out of his own responsibilities and was chewing hard. He cycled frequencies on the radio until he had AW. “AW, this is 703, over.”
“Go ahead, 703.” Different voice.
“Any luck on a bingo?”
“Negative, 703.” The speaker’s voice went up an octave. “We’re trying to raise anyone in southern India and we’re—”
Soleck cut him off. “Can you raise Trincomalee in Sri Lanka? They’re a little over five hundred nautical miles from us. Different country. Maybe whatever’s going down in India isn’t there. We’re going to splash a Hornet if we don’t start tanking.”
“Wait one.”
Soleck watched his instruments for a few seconds, thinking of the decision process that would have to happen on the bridge of the Fort Klock—the country clearance, the levels of military bureaucracy. He made his decision and turned the plane east, pointing the nose toward the distant island of Sri Lanka. Then he dialed up strike common, which was being used by all the pilots airborne. “203, this is 703, over.”
“703, this is 203, go ahead.” Donitz sounded professional, unhurried, despite the fact that his plane was running on fumes.
“203, am I correct that you are strike lead?”
“703, no one has told me that, but yeah, I think I’m the only el kadar in the air.”
“Sir, I’d like to get the stack moving towards Trincomalee, Sri Lan
ka. I’m assuming that their field is open and they’ll let us in. The distance is five seven five nautical miles from my position and my best guess is that we can get all of you there with enough gas to land.”
“Soleck, I don’t even have Trincomalee on my bingo card.”
“Me, either, sir. But Alpha Whiskey says southern India is down and it’s the best I can come up with. Every minute we stay here wastes gas. Worst case, we’ll be feet-dry in an hour and someone will give us a vector to an Indian field.”
“Do it. I don’t have the comms or computers to figure this out. You sure?”
“Sure as I can be. It’ll be close. Break, break. All planes, this is 703. 706 will rendezvous on 703 at angels one-one course 110, speed two hundred knots. Planes will tank as called by 703 in fuel priority. Sound off.”
Soleck was pleased to watch Gup making check marks next to the planes he had listed on his kneeboard as they called in.
The thing was doable.
Mahe Naval Base, India
They parted company with the Marines and the Indian sailors outside the headquarters building and then huddled in a window embrasure while shooting sounded in the street. A car had been blown up down the block, maybe by a rocket-propelled grenade, and the Marine sergeant said that a lot of the firing was coming from a security building down there.
“We’ll have to go the back way,” Alan said. He pointed. Down behind the buildings was a chain-link fence and then weeds—grass, scrub bushes, a few trees. “There’s a creek down there somewhere. Wasteland.” He knew what the base looked like on a map, knew that the creek divided it so completely that a bridge had been built over it. The wasteland might give them cover. He looked at Fidel. “Unless you want to hole up inside again.”