After a moment he asked for a cigarette and someone gave him one. He sat down on the floor and smoked it slowly. "What are these terrorists after?" The men beside him shrugged. "But they came on the helicopters, right?" "Some of them did, anyway," one of his listeners answered. "And they probably expect to leave the same way." Nods of assent from everyone.
"So you guys go get the JBD hydraulic system fired up." "We thought you'd say that, Ski," Airman Gardner said with a quick grin as he left with the others.
When Sergeant Albright set off the main alarm in the magazine, a red light began to flash on the main engineering panel and an audible tone sounded in the compartment.
"Well, gentlemen," Jake Grafton said bitterly as he and the chief engineer watched the lights indicating the positions of the magazine flooding valves turn from green to red. "Now we know why Colonel Qazi is here." He had already been informed that Qazi and the admiral were on the forward mess deck. He and the marine lieutenant had been discussing the possibility of surrounding the mess area and trying to trap Qazi.
It was too late for that. The magazines! Even as they spoke, the lights turned green again. Then the lights went out.
"Goddammit," Tri8orn swore softly. "They've closed the valves and chopped the power." "Can you flood from Central Control?" Jake asked. The central control station two decks below where they sat actually distributed power and controlled the position of emergency valves. Tri8orn tried the squawk box.
Jake tried to digest it. Qazi and his men were forcing their way into the magazines. To set a charge to detonate the bombs stored there and sink the ship in one glorious, suicidal fireball? If so, why were the helicopters still on the flight deck? No, they were planning to leave the same way most of them arrived. And they were going to take something with them. That something could only be nuclear weapons.
"No way, GAG," Tri8orn said.
"We've lost power to those valves." "Halon. Let's use the Halon system." The magazines could be filled with Halon gas, a system designed to choke off a fire. It would also suffocate anyone in the compartment not wearing an 0BA.
Tri8orn paused. "Halon will kill our guys too." Jake rubbed his eyes. "Do it." Tri8orn spoke into the intercom box.
In seconds the answer came back. The Halon system was also disabled. Jake slumped into a chair.
How will Qazi get out of the magazine through the marines? Hostages won't help Qazi then, and he 1 knows it. Even as he thought of the problem Jake Grafton knew the answer.
"Where's that marine officer? I need to talk to him." Perhaps he could secure electrical power to the weapons elevator. No good. Qazi will arm one of the nuclear weapons and threaten to detonate it unless he is allowed to leave. And if he is thwarted by marines or inoperative elevators or anything else, he may just carry out the threat.
Jake had no doubt that it was technically possible to bypass the safety devices built into the weapon. The weapons were designed to prevent an accidental etonation; of course, a technician who knew what he was doing would intentionally trigger one, given enough time and the right tools. And Qazi probably had enough of both. The Bay of Naples! Jake rubbed his forehead. It felt like the skin here was dead, as if the blood supply no longer functioned. The xplosion would vaporize the ship and everyone aboard her. And he ship was three miles off the coast, in a bay surrounded on hree sides by hills and islands which would focus and enhance he concussion, radiation, and thermal pulses from the explosion.
and the light and thermal pulses would be reflected off the louds. How many people are in Naples, anyway? In Pozzuoli, ortici, on the slopes of Vesuvius?
The marine lieutenant was standing beside him, looking at him, waiting.
Will Qazi be bluffing? Can I afford to take the risk of calling im?
What if he just lights one of those babies off while he's down in the magazine? For a few milliseconds a raw piece of the sun about the size of a an's fist would exist here on the surface of the earth.
Thezplutoium's mass would be converted to pure energy. The sky and sea would rip apart. Every human within twenty miles not cremated on the first millionth of a second would see the face of an angry, wrathful God.
"Tri8orn, let's get underway. We'll steer the ship from after steering. Get the navigator to lay a course out to sea. Put some lookouts with sound-powered phones up on the bow and let's slip the cable. Now!" "Aye aye, sir." Tri8orn stepped away, issuing orders as if he got the ship underway from engineering every other Thursday. Perhaps he was relieved to have orders he found familiar. Jake watched the officers and sailors. They, too, seemed relieved that something was being done.
The marine shifted nervously beside Jake's chair.
Jake stood. He felt a little light-headed.
"Got a cigarette?" he asked the lieutenant.
"I don't smoke, sir." Jake nodded vacantly. The alarm from the forward magazine was still sounding. were the Americans there still alive? What about Parker? At least the fire in the comm space was extinguished and the ones in the hangar were under control and would soon be out. That was a plus.
Perhaps the only one.
What kind of man was this Colonel Qazi?
Jake had spent a quarter hour on the bridge watching him. He was not the wiredup fanatic one expected after viewing too many terrorist incidents on television. No. He was competent, calculating, intelligent, and, Jake suspected, absolutely ruthless. Not suicidal. Not on a mission for the glory of Allah. But a man who would do whatever he felt he had to do to get the job done.
"What are we going to do, sir, about the intruders?" Dykstra 1 had a stern, squarejaw and a wide mouth that just now was set in a pencil-thin line. His nostrils flared slightly every time he inhaled.
"Whatever that asshole wants us to do, Lieutenant. I'm sure he'll be telling us just what that is before very long." The seawater looked black in the glow of the battle lanterns in the forward magazine.
Colonel Qazi waded through the cold, foot-deep water casting his flashlight beam this way and that. Row after row of olive drab sausages met his eye.
White missiles hung in racks against the bulkheads. Enough ordnance for a nice little war, he thought as he scanned the compartment. There, a door.
He lifted the single lever that controlled all six of the dogs, then sprung back as the door flew open from the weight of the water behind it. A little waterfall flowed through the doorway until the water in this compartment was equal in depth to the water where Qazi and his companions stood. Qazi stepped through into this compartment. Yes.
The weapons were white, about the size of a five-hundred-pound bomb.
Each of them was strapped into its own cradle which held it firmly several feet above the deck.
Chains and pulleys hung from rails on the overhead.
"Did the water harm them?" Qazi heard Ali say. "Oh no," Jarvis replied. He tilted his gas mask away from his face and sniffed experimentally, then removed it. "They're waterproof so they can be carried on external bomb racks through rain and snow and still function." He was examining one of the devices under a powerful flashlight. The sheen of moisture on the top of his bald head glistened occasionally in the stray light reflecting from the water's surface. He spread his legs and lowered his gut like a sumo wrestler. He used a screwdriver on an access plate. In seconds he had it off and was shining a flashlight into the znterior of the weapon. "Hail wouldn't do the covering on the adar transceiver in the nose any good, of course," Jarvis continued softly, "but a little bath shouldn't hurt anything. As long as these access panels were properly fitted..." He knelt in the water and bent his head down so he could get a better view inside the weapon.
He looked up at Noora. She had removed her mask too and was using her hand to fluff her hair. "This one looks fine." He searched her face expectantly and was rewarded. A trace of a smile lifted the corners of her lips. His eyes flicked down and he grinned nervously as he moved toward the next bomb.
"Put this one on a dolly and connect your device to it before you
check the others," Qazi said.
They positioned a bomb cart beside the weapon and four of them surrounded it, two on the nose and two on the tail. There were no good handholds, but they were running out of time. Jarvis danced from foot to foot, chanting, "Oh, don't drop it. Please, don't drop it.
They got it two inches out of the cradle and set it back down. It was too heavy. "Use a pulley," Qazi said.
On the end of the chain was a piece of metal that fitted into the two metal eyes on top of the weapon. These eyes would fit up into an airplane's bomb rack where two hooks would mate the weapon to the plane.
With the mechanical advantage provided by the pulley, it only took two men pulling on the chain to lift the weapon from its cradle and lower it gently onto the dolly.
The water lapped at the bottom of the weapon.
Jarvis opened the access panel and used strapping tape to secure the trigger device he had constructed to the top of the weapon. Then he ran two wires with alligator clips on the ends from the device through the access panel.
He used the flashlight to attach the wires inside the weapon. When he was finished, he stood back as Qazi bent to look inside.
The interior of the weapon was a maze. Qazi had expected this. He tried to remember exactly what he was looking for. Yes, that clip was on the wire leading from the battery. And this other clip was on the wire bundles that led to the detonators. Jarvis had had to scrape some insulation from both wires to affix the clips. "Satisfactory." He straightened and found himself looking at Admiral Parker, whose face was still obscured behind his gas mask. "I'm sorry, Admiral. But we need these weapons.
Parker turned away. He seemed to be listening.
Now Qazi heard it too, a faint rumbling. What was that? Qazi pointed his flashlight at the water contact with the doorway. The water was moving, ever so slightly.
But it should move as the ship rocked at anchor.
Parker was looking at the water too. Qazi felt the deck beneath his feet tremble.
Now he understood. The rumble had been the anchor chain running out.
The ship was underway!
THE OFFICER-OF-THE-DECK of the Aegis-class cruiser, SS Gettysburg, anchored three miles north of the United States, as momentarily confused. The carrier's lights were moving in elation to him. The lookout on the port wing of the bridge had called it to his attention. The lights of the carrier had only been isible for the last fifteen minutes, since the rain had slackened. He quickly scanned the wind-direction indicator to see if the wind ad changed; that would cause the ships to swing on their anchors. No. Perhaps his ship was moving, dragging its anchor nlikely, since the wind velocity had also eased.
But... He wung the alidade to the lighthouse at the entrance to Naples arbor, just visible through the rain, and noted the bearing. He hecked another point a little further up the coast. The bearings were the same numbers as in the passdown log, the same numers the radar operator in Combat had been verifying all evening. is ship was still stationary.
But the carrier wasn't. "Bridge, Combat." It was the squawk box, on this class of ships known as the Internal Voice Communication System which combined a telephone, a speaker system at selected locations, and all of the internal networks in the ship. "Bridge, aye." "The United States is underway. We have them headed course Two Five Zeroz at four knots on radar." The watch officer in Combat had established a track on the SPS-55 radar, which was operating.
The carrier was heading directly into the prevailing wind, in the same direction she had been pointing as she rode at her anchor. "Keep tracking her and call her up. Find out if we've missed something.
Have someone check the messages." Lieutenant (jg) Epley already suspected the worst. Somehow, some way, a message notifying the cruiser of a planned ship movement had gone 1 astray. If so, he thought glumly, there would be absolute hell to pay. Somebody had dropped the ball rather spectacularly. I "Aye aye, sir." The OD looked again through the water-streaked bridge window at the carrier's moving lights as he twirled the handle on the "growler," an old-fashioned intercom box. He could just hear the growler sounding in the captain's cabin directly beneath the bridge.
"Captain." The Old Man sounded half asleep. No doubt he was.
"Sir, this is the OD. The United States seems to be underway. There's no mention-was "What?" The captain was fully awake now.
"Yes sir. She's moving.
Combat verifies on radar." "Have you called her on the bridge.to.bridge?" "Not yet, sir. Combat-was "I'll be right there." The connection broke.
Epley pointed his binoculars at the carrier. He could see the masthead lights and the floodlights around the top of the island, though his view was slightly out of focus with all this moisture in the air.
"Bridge, Combat. Her speed is up to seven knots. No answer to our calls on Fleet Tactical or Navy Red." Fleet Tactical was a clear voice UHF circuit. Navy Red, or Fleet Secure, was an encrypted 1 voice circuit.
"Keep trying." "Watch to see if she turns," the 00Do told the port lookout and his quartermaster, who had already noted the time and event in the log.
The captain arrived on the bridge in less than a minute. He carried his shoes in his hand and tossed them on his chair. He wasted only ten seconds verifying that the United States was indeed underway, then grabbed the Navy Red radiotelephone. No answer. He called Combat and found they had had no luck either. He stuck his head out of the port bridge-wing doorway and yelled to the signalman to try and raise the carrier with his flashing light, then spent a tense, unhappy minute on the phone with the cruiser's operations officer, who was as mystified as he was. The navigator was equally perplexed.
"Set the special sea and anchor detail, Mr. Epley. We're going to see how fast we can get underway. We can't let the flagship just steam off over the goddamned horizon without us. Then call the communications officer and tell him I want to see him here on the bridge in precisely sixty seconds." He sat down in his chair and put on his shoes, fuming, "The goddamn flagship gets underway in the middle of the fucking night and no one aboard my ship knows jack about it. I'm going to get out of the goddamn navy and buy a pig farm." The call, when it came, was from Admiral Parker. The chief engineer summoned Jake to the telephone. He had been huddled with the navigator over a chart, plotting a course that would take the ship as far away from land as quickly as possible. The navigator had had to obtain the chart from his stateroom, since he couldn't get up into the island to his office.
"Captain Grafton." "Jake, this is the admiral. I'm here with Colonel Qazi and he asked me to call you." "Yes sir." Jake listened intently. "Where are you, sir?" "Uh, I think we'd better skip that. Are you the senior officer in charge?" "Yes sir. I think so." Jake could hear someone whispering, but he couldn't make out the words.
In a moment the admiral spoke again. "Qazi has armed a nuclear weapon.
He..." Jake heard a muffled phrase, then a new voice came on the line.
"Captain Grafton, I am Colonel Qazi. You have heard Admiral Parker tell you I have armed a nuclear weapon. Do you doubt it?" "No." "Unless you and your men cooperate and do precisely as I tell you, I will detonate this device. I will destroy this ship and every living soul aboard her." He paused and Jake pressed the telephone against his ear. "Did you hear me, Captain?" His voice was calm, assured, confident.
"I heard you." "This is what you will do. You will restore power to the weapons elevators servicing the forward magazine.
You will call off your marines. You will ensure your crew does not interfere with me or my men as we leave the ship. You will not interfere with the helicopters on the flight deck. If you interfere with me in any way, Captain, if you try to thwart me, I will detonate this device." "Let me talk to the admiral." "I think not, Captain. This is your decision, not his. You hold his life, your life, and the lives of every man on this ship in your hands." "Including yours.
"Including mine. I am in your hands. You have the power to decide if this weapon will be detonated. If it is, you will be responsibl
e." Jake tried to laugh. It sounded more like a croak.
"This is deadly serious, Captain." "Looks to me like we have a Mexican standoff here, Colonel. 1 You fail if you die here too." "No, sir. If this bomb explodes I will have shown the world the Americans cannot be trusted. No one will ever know why this bomb exploded, but the evidence will be irrefutable that it did. 1 Your fleets will be disarmed by the American people. Your ships will be banned from the oceans of the world. I will have dealt a mortal blow to American power. I will have accomplished what the Germans and the Japanese could not in World War II. I will have destroyed the United States Navy. And I will have accomplished it very, very cheaply, at the cost of only my life and a few of my men.
Think about it, Captain. You have ten seconds." Jake was acutely aware of the sound of his own breathing. He rotated the phone so the transmitter was up over his head and azi could not hear it. The bastard sounded so goddamn confient, so sure he had all the cards. And he did. The U.s. Navy was nished if a nuclear weapon detonated aboard a ship; Congress would sink it to the cheers of outraged, frightened voters. And the oviets would inherit the earth. "Your answer?" "How do I know you won't leave the ship and then blow it up?" "You don't, Captain. What is your decision?" "You'll get what you tilde tilde tilde tilde tilde greater-than tilde "I thought you would arrive at that rational conclusion. I await an announcement over your public-address system." The connection broke and Jake was left with a buzzing in his ear. Jake slammed the instrument into its cradle.
Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 2 - Final Flight Page 36