Strike Force Alpha

by Mack Maloney

  Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln

  Lieutenant Commander Ken Gwinn had just reported to the bridge when the mysterious black helicopter crashed onto the Lincoln’s forward flight deck.

  The impact had sent a violent shudder through the ship, but the crew recovered quickly. The intercoms were immediately screeching with fouled deck warnings. All flight operations came to a halt. The carrier’s fire suppression teams were rushed to the top. The ship’s flight surgeons were told to stand by.

  There were 18 people on the Lincoln’s bridge when it happened. The floating behemoth was run from here, the place where all commands affecting the ship’s movements originated. The helmsman steered the ship; the lee helmsman told the engine room how much speed to make. There were also lookouts and boatswains and the quartermaster of the watch who assisted in navigation, weather readings, and kept the ship’s log. All flight operations were conducted one level up in the Primary Flight Center, essentially the air traffic control tower for the carrier.

  Gwinn was the bridge communications officer, a new duty recently installed on the Lincoln. He was in charge of handling all messages flowing on and off the bridge. Stationed three feet to the right of the captain’s chair, Gwinn was equipped with a secure laptop called a Q Fax, used in times of sensitive maneuvers or combat ops. Only the most important messages, from around the ship, from around the world, showed up here, printing out on long strips of bright yellow paper with the push of a button. It was Gwinn’s job to make sure these messages got in front of the captain as quickly as possible.

  From his vantage point high on the carrier’s superstructure Gwinn had watched the rescue crews extract the pilot from the burning helicopter and then push the wreckage over the side. The fire crews washed down the deck and a quick foreign object sweep was done. All launchers were declared safe. Planes would soon be taking off again.

  Not long after, an urgent message from the ship’s surgeon blinked onto Gwinn’s screen. The person flying the helicopter was seriously injured. He couldn’t talk, but he could write. He was claiming to be a U.S. special operations agent, but his supposed outfit was not on a list of special commands held by the Lincoln’s intelligence officer. Still, the man came bearing some startling news: a large number of Arab airliners were in the process of being hijacked all over the Gulf. The hijackers would soon be trying to crash these planes into the Abraham Lincoln. What’s more, he had a CD-ROM with him to prove it. Somehow, the disk had survived the crash.

  Gwinn audibly gulped when he read the message. Could this be true? The carrier was not even halfway through its transit of Hormuz. There was very little room to maneuver, and the big turn to port would be coming up quickly, requiring the carrier to slow to less than 10 knots. This was the worst situation to be in if someone was trying to crash something into you, because this was when the ship was its most vulnerable.

  Gwinn passed the message to the CO. The captain read it twice. At almost the same time, a report appeared from the carrier’s radio shack. Someone was sending messages to the Lincoln over shortwave radio claiming the same thing, that a number of hijacked airliners were heading for the carrier. The person sending the messages did not identify himself or his location, for security reasons, or so he said. And now the ship was even getting phone calls from equally reticent persons, claiming to have the same information.

  The captain took this all in and thought it over—for about two seconds. Had it just been phone calls or radio transmissions, he might have been of a different mind. But combined with the mysterious copter pilot’s suicidal dash to get to the ship and his claim to have evidence on a CD-ROM…well, that was enough for the captain to act.

  Nine F-14 Tomcats were on deck, standing by in case the CAP already airborne had some dropouts. The captain ordered these planes into the air immediately and told the Air Boss upstairs to prep and launch as many other fighters as humanly possible. Then the captain called the ship to a general alert.

  Then he pulled out a secure sat phone and called the Pentagon, using a top-secret scrambled number given to him in the event of something like this. Gwinn could tell from the captain’s side of the conversation that he was delivering unexpected and frightening news to Washington. The Pentagon told the captain to keep the sat line clear and open; the CO ordered the communications shack to make it so.

  The captain called down to the carrier’s air defense section next, asking for its status. The news here was not good, either. The Lincoln’s massive security bubble had engulfed so many different types of aircraft by now, the computers were having a hard time tracking them all. Blaring out over the comm speakers, this report only added to the tension building on the bridge. Minutes before, the fleet’s vaulted defense had been unable to stop a lone helicopter from reaching the carrier. How were they going to stop a large number of airliners?

  The captain sat back and began chewing on the end of his pipe. Gwinn noticed his hands were shaking. Not a good sign. His Q Fax screen blinked again. Another message was coming in.

  It was from the ship’s radar suite. An airliner had just been spotted straying off-course over Saudi Arabia, about sixty miles northwest of Hormuz. It had turned south and was heading for the carrier. Gwinn quickly handed the message to the captain. The pipe nearly fell out of the Old Man’s mouth.

  This airliner might be having engine problems. Or its navigation computer may have malfunctioned. But the captain couldn’t take any chances. He directed two Tomcats to intercept the wayward airliner and take appropriate action. Those three words again. The moment the captain broke his radio connection, another report blinked onto Gwinn’s screen. A second airliner had veered off-course, 30 miles to the north. It, too, was heading for the carrier.

  Before Gwinn had a chance to pass this second report on, he received another message. A third airliner was now heading for the ship, coming straight down the Gulf. Gwinn hastily passed the two reports to the captain; his screen blinked yet again. A fourth plane had turned in their direction; this one was coming from the west.

  The captain immediately called the ship to Condition Zebra. This meant an attack was imminent. Everything onboard was to be locked up tight. Thousands of sailors went rushing to predetermined positions, places they were supposed to be when a nuclear bomb, or something nearly as catastrophic, was about to hit the boat. Those last planes lined up on the carrier’s catapults were launched; then the deck was cleared. Everyone on the bridge donned oversize helmets and life-saving gear, the captain included. Transparent blast shields were lowered over the bridge’s huge windows, darkening everything inside.

  The captain sent a message to every pilot in the CAP. It was the same order he’d just given the two F-14 pilots. Any aircraft, civilian or military, entering the carrier’s protection zone was to be shot down, no questions asked. He then relayed the gist of his orders to every other ship in the battle group. They, too, began zipping up.

  Gwinn was trying hard not to show his alarm. People up here were counting on him. Many more of the carrier’s planes were in the air, thanks to the mysterious copter pilot and the ghostly radio and phone calls. And all those jets had the capacity to shoot down an airliner. But it was a question of time and numbers: Could the carrier’s planes find all four airliners before the airliners found the ship?

  Gwinn’s comm screen blinked again. The radar team had detected a fifth airliner veering toward the battle group. As soon as Gwinn ripped this message, another one popped onto his screen. A sixth airliner was heading for them.

  It was Gwinn’s hands that were shaking now. He passed the new information to the CO. The captain immediately asked the navigation officer how much more time before the ship passed out of the strait. “At least another ten minutes,” was the reply, and that was only before the carrier reached a point wide enough to start basic evasive maneuvers. Until then they had no choice but to keep going straight ahead, as fast as they could.

  Gwinn could sense a fog of disaster starting to swirl around him.
The tension on the bridge became very heavy. Many people up here were equipped with binoculars; they were pointing them in every direction. The visibility was absolutely clear. That’s good, right? Gwinn thought. Or did they want to see what was coming their way?

  While all this was going on, Gwinn’s screen began blinking yet again. A new message popped on-screen.

  Two more airliners had been spotted heading for the carrier.

  Above the Persian Gulf

  Sergeant Dave Hunn knew something was wrong when he heard the awful scream.

  It was a chilling sound, like from a woman but definitely coming from a man. High-pitched and mortal, it was cut off suddenly, the last vibrations from a set of torn vocal cords. The male flight attendant, his throat slashed, fell backward in the aisle about ten feet behind Hunn’s seat, a tray of hot tea scalding him as he went down. Two men were standing over him. They were the al-Habazz cell members. One stepped on top of the dying attendant, put a gun to an old woman’s head, and pulled the trigger. Her brains were blown out. Screams from the woman’s family. Five shots later, they were all dead, too.

  But none of this was computing for Hunn.

  Why were the terrorists doing this? Why weren’t they waiting until they made their connecting flights?

  Why were they killing their own people?

  There was only one explanation. This thing is happening right now….

  This was not good. Hunn hadn’t expected to have a confrontation with the would-be hijackers, or at least not so soon. But here they were, carrying huge handguns, waving around banana knives, and killing passengers at random. Hunn, on the other hand, was armed with nothing more than a .22 handgun, one of the pistols from the shoot-out at the Royal Dubai. The Algerian popgun was small but was the only weapon he thought he could hide under his madras. Problem was, it only had two bullets left.

  The terrorists began screaming at the passengers to stay in their seats and that they were now in control of the airplane and that they were all going to make Allah proud of them. At the same time, they stood up an old man right behind Hunn and shot him in the throat. He collapsed back into his seat, bleeding furiously.

  The plane itself was small, a two-engine job; this was the flight going to Crete. It had a cramped compartment, with very low overheads and narrow aisles. Plus, they were flying at 22,000 feet, high enough where one shot-out window could implode the plane. These were not conditions conducive to gunplay, not that the inside of any aircraft was.

  The terrorists had stood up another woman and were now marching her backward down the aisle, heading for the cockpit. They seemed to be carrying out a step-by-step plan: kill a few passengers, suddenly, horribly, to stun everyone else. It was a quick and economical way to get control, and it was working. An eerie quiet came over the cabin as many passengers saw their fervor for Islam go south. Literally losing their religion. Hunn had a very difficult choice to make now. He didn’t know why the terrorists had acted when they did, but he had to do something. Yet for every bullet they used on the passengers, that was one less bullet he would have to worry about later on. The terrorists both had handguns, though, with a capacity for nine rounds in each clip and probably more clips in their pockets. Hunn would have given anything for his M16 right now.

  The two cell members were not large men. They were probably in their early twenties, and both bore a faint resemblance to the late Jamaal el-Habini. When the woman they’d taken began to struggle, they shot her in the back. She fell right next to Hunn’s aisle seat. One more bullet gone. The terrorists were now just five feet in front of him, still walking backward towards the flight compartment, still screaming about Paradise and Allah. Hunn really had no choice. He had to stay frozen and let them get to the cockpit. Only then could he think about making a move.

  But then they grabbed a young girl. She was not wearing Islamic garb; rather, she was dressed in Western-style clothes. She was about 10 years old, and in a strange way, reminded Hunn of his kid sister. The terrorists yanked the girl from the arms of her mother and pushed one of their pistols into her right ear. She screamed. She began to fight. Hunn could see the terrorist begin to squeeze his trigger.

  Damn….

  Hunn stood up, pulled the pistol from his waistband, and shot the guy holding the young girl twice, right between the eyes. The man went over like a lead weight, pulling the girl down with him. His partner, like everyone else on the plane, was shocked to see a Muslim woman with a firearm. He fired two shots back at Hunn. Unaimed, the recoil almost knocking him over, the first one missed by five feet.

  The second one went right into Hunn’s chest.

  The first indication the pilots of the airliner had that something was wrong was when the cockpit door flew open and the lone terrorist stumbled in.

  The copilot in the right-side seat saw the gun and screamed.

  “What are you doing? What do you want?”

  The terrorist was shaking. This hadn’t been as easy as he’d been told. “I want you to turn this aircraft due south,” he said, his voice nervous, moving his gun back and forth between the two pilots. “Do what I say and you won’t get hurt.”

  The pilots were instantly terrified—and confused. This man was obviously a Muslim. So were they.

  “Sir…” the copilot asked him, “are you sure you’re on the right plane?”

  The terrorist replied by shooting him in the head. Then he turned the gun on the pilot.

  “Turn south,” he said. “Now….”

  “But, my friend…” the pilot said, “we are brothers….”

  The gun pressed deeper into his temple.

  “South….”

  The pilot got the message. He started a long bank back toward the lower Gulf.

  “But to where?” he asked the hijacker.

  “To heaven, brother,” the man replied.

  The terrorist settled down a bit and wiped the sweat from his brow. He’d done everything he’d been taught to do. Terrorize the passengers quickly, get control of the outer cabin, then the pilots. He just didn’t expect to be doing it all alone. He looked down to see the pilot had wet himself. No matter, they would have to fly for only a little while, just until they spotted the U.S. battle group. Then he would kill the pilot, get into his seat, and fly the airliner into the carrier himself.

  He switched the pistol from his right hand to his left and wiped the sweat from his eyes again. Suddenly he was very hot. He could hear nothing behind him; the passengers were absolutely quiet, petrified into silence. At least that part of the plan had worked.

  He closed the flight compartment door finally and then crouched beside the pilot, keeping the gun trained on his head.

  Strangely though, no sooner had the door been shut than he heard someone knocking on it. Who could this be?

  He stood up, opened the door, and saw a huge woman in a bloody burka standing in the doorway. The same woman who had shot his partner. But this woman had a goatee.

  The next thing the hijacker saw was the barrel of a gun—his partner’s gun. With all the strength he could muster, Dave Hunn pulled the trigger and shot the hijacker in the forehead. The man was blown backward. He hit the flight control panel, then slumped on top of the dead copilot. The plane started to dive. A chorus of screams rose up from the passengers. Hunn staggered into the cockpit and pulled both bodies away from the bloody controls, allowing the pilot to right the plane. Then he collapsed into the copilot’s seat himself.

  “Sorry, I fucked up,” he began murmuring. “I’m really sorry….”

  The pilot was absolutely astonished. He wet himself a second time. It was only when Hunn reached up and took what remained of the burka off his head that the pilot realized he wasn’t a woman.

  He was also bleeding heavily. Hunn reached inside his shirt pocket and came out with a very bloody Koran. Jamaal’s Koran. It had deflected the bullet away from his heart, but not by much.

  The pilot began turning the plane to the west, towards Oman, the nearest p
lace he could land. Then he reached over and touched Hunn’s arm. This man who had just saved their lives was already turning cold.

  “Brother…. oh, brother,” the pilot said, “is there anything I can do for you?”

  Hunn slumped farther into the seat. He was fading fast.

  “Yeah,” he was just about able to say. “Fly this thing to Queens, will you?”

  Chapter 29

  Contrails.

  The sky above Ocean Voyager was filled with them when Ryder took off.

  They reminded him of photographs taken during the Battle of Britain or, better yet, some gigantic piece of surreal art. The puffy white clutter might not have seemed so unusual on a normal day; the Gulf’s air lanes were always busy. But after rising just a few thousand feet above the ship, Ryder could see that a half-dozen of those contrails, coming from a half-dozen different points in the sky, had cut across the normal lines of air travel and had abruptly ended above the same point: the Strait of Hormuz, 35 miles to the south.

  Contrails were like the stars: they told you not what was happening now but what had happened sometime before. Ryder could read them, though; he knew what this meant: the six cross-cutting contrails belonged to hijacked airliners, probably those planes that had left Bahrain later in the morning and thus had a shorter distance to fly back once they’d been seized. And as he judged these peculiar contrails were at least 10 minutes old, this meant these planes were already falling on the battle group. The mass mayhem had begun, just over the horizon.

  There was nothing Ryder could do about that now. He was up here for a different reason. If six airliners were already close to the battle group, that meant four still were not. And if the planes trying to crash into the carrier now were the ones that had left Bahrain late, then the missing planes were probably ones that had taken off early. Four in a row, just around 8:00 A.M. They’d all headed toward Europe almost two hours ago, all flying roughly north by northwest. They’d probably be coming back the same way. The Navy would never make it out this far in time to intercept them. No one would. It was up to him and Phelan to stop these planes. Or at least that’s how Ryder understood it.