Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 2 - Final Flight

by Final Flight (lit)

  Get a grip on yourself, man! Don't let these sailors see you out of control. He took three or four deep breaths and tried to arrange his face.

  "Tri8orn, how long until we can get power restored to the weapons elevators up from the forward magazine?" "Oh, maybe fifteen minutes." "Do it." Jake turned to the marine officer, Lieutenant Dykstra. "Get your people off the flight deck. Nobody, and I mean nobody, pulls a trigger unless I give my personal approval. If they do, I'll court-martial them and you." A sneer of contempt crossed Dykstra's face. "I hope to God you know what the fuck you're doing. Sir." Dykstra turned and stalked away.

  The navigator was still bending over the chart. Jake glanced over his shoulder. The navigator was on the phone, probably to the sailor in the after steering compartment. The emergency helm was there, below the waterline in the after part of the ship, near the giant hydraulic rams that controlled the rudder. The navigator covered the mouthpiece with his hand and looked at Jake, who asked, "Where are we?" The navigator pointed. About ten miles southeast of the anchorage.

  "What's our speed?" "Seventeen knots." "Let's put on all the turns we can. Work her up to flank speed." "There may be ships out there. The radar's not in service and we only have two lookouts.

  Visibility is poor. I'm DR-+ our track." DR meant "dead reckoning," drawing a line based on speed and time.

  "Flank speed." Jake wanted the United States as far from land as possible in case Qazi pushed the panic button. He would just have to pray that Lady Luck kept this blind, stampeding elephant from colliding with another ship. The two lookouts wouldn't help much with this limited visibility; by the time they saw and reported a ship on a collision course, it would be too late to avoid the collision.

  And Lady Luck seemed to be off duty just now.

  Jake picked up the I comMC microphone from its bracket on the engineering watch officer's desk. The watch officer flipped the switches. This had better be good. Qazi would hear it. He cleared his throat, pushed the button and began to speak.

  His announcement was heard all over the ship, except in those spaces where the public-address system was not working because of fire damage to the wires or loudspeakers. As it happened, two of the silent areas were the portside catwalk on the flight deck and the midships area of the 0-3 level, where the waist catapult control rooms were located.

  On the portside catwalk forward of the angle, up near the bow, Gunnery Sergeant Garcia stepped over the body of Lance Corporal Van Housen and laid familiar hands on the Browning$50caliber machine gun. He snapped the ammo box open and carefully fed in the belt of cartridges he had so painfully carried up I from the ship's armory draped around his shoulders. Then he opened the breech and slipped the belt in. He closed the breech and cycled the bolt. It jammed.

  He tried again. No. The cartridge felt like it was hitting an obstruction. Don't tell me!

  No! He used his fingers to try and seat a cartridge. They've spiked it. They had pushed a metal plug, probably tapered, into the chamber and his attempts to chamber a cartridge had forced the plug deeper into the barrel, jamming it. I And Garcia, you ass, you didn't look first! You should have known!

  He looked aft along the length of the catwalk at the helicopters sitting silently on the angle and tried to decide if he had the time to go get a rod to force down the barrel to push out the plug. So near and yet so far! There they sat, and here he was with a weapon could destroy all three machines right where they were, or tter yet, as they lifted off the deck, so they would fall into the without damaging anything else. And it wouldn't take ammo. Van Housen lay face down.

  Another dead marine. At least he had had the sense to pick up another weapon in theory It was slung over his shoulder, a Model 700 Remington$308 caliber with a sniper scope. The marines called it the M-40. hefted it in his hands and stared at the helicopters. No. The best place for this was up in the island. On Vulture's Row.

  From there he could command the entire angled deck. He turned away from the machine gun and the dead marine and went below.

  Captain Grafton's announcement should have been heard in the waist catapult control bubble because the loudspeaker there functioning perfectly. Or would have been functioning pertly had the volume been turned up even slightly. As it was, the lume knob had been cranked to its lowest setting by some kind ul earlier in the evening when Kowalski was brought here to ep it off. Now the loudspeaker didn't even hiss.

  Kowalski sat on the floor of the darkened bubble with a headset a sound-powered telephone over his ears and listened to one of the cat crewmen working on the JBD hydraulic pump in the Cat ur control spaces under the hookup area. The power was off to the pump and the crewmen were trying to tie in a line to another cuit at the main catapult junction box. A man there wearing a adset gave Kowalski an account of their progress when goaded operly.

  "How much longer?" "Goddamn, Ski, we're working as fast as we fucking can. Give a break, will ya?" "I just asked a civil question, peckerhead.

  Gimme a guesstiate." "Ski wants an estimate.... The Russian says five minutes." "I'm looking" at my watch. You tell the Russian he had better mpit." "Where is the ship going, Ski? We can feel the vibrations here. ey his mother really cranking." "You people just worry about your end of the navy. Ten minutes, Ski thought, maybe fifteen. The Russian always ought he was about finished.

  Ski checked the clock on the bulkhead behind him.

  His watch was broken.

  Probably happened last night at that bar.

  He swallowed two more aspirin and inched his way upright. He eased his head level with the deck and surveyed the situation. One of the sentries was walking slowly around the choppers. The wind was whipping his shirt and trousers. The guys below were right; this tub was really bucketing along.

  One of the places Captain Grafton's I comMC announcement was heard was in the fire crew's shack in the after part of the island superstructure, on the flight deck level. The firemen had a watertight door that gave them immediate access to their large fire truck parked just outside on the flight deck. If there had been planes aloft or planes on the deck with engines turning, the bosun would have had his men in asbestos suits and sitting in the truck with the engine running. Now as the bosun listened to the announcement he knocked his pipe out into the ashtray on his desk and slowly refilled it.

  He was bone tired and filthy. So were his men, who sat or lay on the floor all over the compartment.

  They had been down in the hangar bays fighting the fires. That place was a gutted shell now. The bosun and his men had helped the damage-control teams there stack the bodies like cordwood on the elevator when the fires were out. They had helped lay out Ray Reyolds. And they had laid out the waist cat officer and two of the catapult chiefs.

  They had died when an airplane with a little fuel left in its tank had exploded. The bosun wiped the grime off his face with his shirttail.

  "Don't interfere with the intruders," the CAG had said. So the fucking terrorists had the U.s. Navy by the gonads and there was nothing anybody could do. Ha! No doubt that announcement had been made to please the terrorists, because they had heard it too. This Grafton, another over-the-hill, worn-out jet-jock who's pulled too many Gs. A far cry from Laird James.

  Now there was a real sailor, an asshole to work foranda perfectionist hairsplitter, but the bosun had spent twenty-seven years working for driven men who demanded perfection and were satisfied with nothing less.

  He was used to them. This Grafton!

  He'll probably get courtmartialed after tonight, the bosun told himself bitterly.

  When he had his pipe drawing well, he leaned back in his chair and put his feet on his desk and regarded the no-smoking sign posted on the wall.

  Yep, Grafton was just like Ray Reynolds.

  Stick the fucking sign on the fucking bulkhead, Bosun, and don't get caught smoking by the sheriff's boys or by the XO on one of his little jaunts around the boat. Don't get caught breaking any of the chickenshit little rules. Just fight the fires and stack
the bodies, Bosun.

  Before those terrorists got to the bridge, Captain James made an announcement. Do your duty, he said. That fit the bosun's pistol. He had made warrant officer four, the senior warrant rank, by doing the right thing regardless of what the book said. They couldn't hurt him with a fitness report now. No, sir. It would take a court-martial to rip the gold and blue off his sleeves. And the navy doesn't court-martial guys who do the right thing. It just shits all over assholes like Captain Grafton who earn their rank pushing paper, then fold up when the chips are down.

  "Is there fuel in the truck?" he asked his first-class. "Of course." "When did you start it last?" "This morning. No, yesterday, daily maintenance inspection. Started on the first crank." The bosun puffed on his pipe and stared at the television monitor over the door. The helicopters just sat there. Occasionally one of the sentries moved a little. The monitor swayed slightly in its mount.

  Grafton really has this tub cranked up, the bosun thought. Wonder if he knows what the hell he's doing?

  "Where in the fuck are those crazy assholes going at thirty-three knots?" The skipper of the cruiser Gettysburg roared this question at his navigator, operations officer, and communications officer collectively.

  All three stood beside him on the bridge and together they regarded the little arrangement of lights several miles ahead in the murk that was the United States.

  "Thirty-three knots, limited visibility, right through the Italian coastal shipping lanes, right through all these little fucking fishing boats and yachts full of rich queers-those crazy assholes must be out of their fucking minds!" He turned and faced the communications officer.

  "Why in hell can't you talk to her?" "They're not answering on any circuit, Captain. We don't think they're transmitting on any frequency. None of their radars are radiating.

  They're observing EMCON." EMC0ATION meant "emissions control." The captain picked up the Navy Red telephone and pushed the transmit button futilely. He wiped his forehead and slowly put the instrument back into its cradle.

  "They're certainly in a hurry to go somewhere," the ops officer observed calmly. He had always found it best to stay calm when the skipper blew off steam.

  "Okay," the captain said, his voice back to normal. "Get on the horn to Sixth Fleet.

  Tell him what's going on. See if he knows something we don't. Find out what he wants us to do.

  And get off a flash OPREP to Washington." An 0PREP was an "operational report," used to advise naval headquarters of emergencies.

  "We're doing all the turns we can, sir," the 00Do piped up. "We're not going to catch them if they keep this speed up." "Thank you, Mr. Epley," the Old Man said sourly. He gestured at the communications officer.

  "Okay. Call Sixth Fleet and send the OP REP. Ops, you get down to Combat and sort out the surface picture.

  The United States isn't talking to us, she's not talking to anybody.

  She may run down one of these civilians.

  Try to call anyone in her way on the civilian emergency nets and tell them to get the hell out of the way. And if that doesn't work, we'll pick up survivors." "Aye aye, sir." "Willie," he said to the navigator. "I want to know where we are every damn minute and where we're heading. I don't want to follow those fools smack onto a reef or island at thirty-three knots. Let me see a chart with a projection of this course. They may be running for a launch position." That was the hypothesis that made the most sense, really.

  The carrier was silently racing to get into position to launch a strike.

  But against whom?

  It's like a nightmare, the captain told himself as he looked at the backs of his departing officers.

  One day they had a war and nobody told you. Is this the big one? Naw, they would have told us, for Chrissake!

  Maybe Laird James and Earl Parker have gone off their nut. Maybe there's been a mutiny.

  Infuriated and thoroughly confused, the captain sat in his chair and tried to get his blood pressure under control as his ship bored into the swells. White water spewed back from the bow, hen the bow rose clear of the sea and crashed majestically into he next swell in another thunderous cloud of spray. He pushed is squawk-box button for the chief engineer and warned him to be ready to cut power to the shafts instantly if the screws came out of the water. He had gotten his ship underway in record time, getting the nchor up in seventeen minutes from the time the capstan had egan to turn.

  Due to the sonar dome under the bow, he couldn't ove the ship until the anchor cleared the water. The United States ad been seven miles ahead, but he had managed to close the istance because she had stayed at seventeen knots for almost twenty minutes. Then she accelerated to thirty-three. Now, with he larger swells here in the open sea, he was hard-pressed just to watch her speed.

  Sooner or later he would close on her; if she turned port or starboard he would turn inside her and close, roviding he didn't have to back off some turns to keep the screws in the water and could stay with her.

  Something was seriously wrong aboard United States. He tried to imagine a combination of circumstances in peacetime that would ustify a capital ship weighing anchor unannounced in the dead of night and steaming off alone, without her escorts, at high speed hrough crowded shipping lanes with radar and radios silent. hen, or if, he caught up with her, it wouldn't hurt to be ready for Nothing.

  "Lieutenant Epley, sound general quarters." Meanwhile, aboard United States, Jake Grafton was huddled in ngineering with the ship's department heads and every squad skipper who was aboard, plus about half the executive officers. His operations officer and the flag ops boss were also present. Jake had told Qazi when he called the second time that restoring power to the elevators would require half an hour, and azi had given him half that time. Still, twenty minutes had assed and the new circuit had not been energized.

  All that reained was the throwing of a switch by the load dispatcher in entral Control. Jake had not yet told him to throw the switch.

  "Goddammit, Captain," the weapons boss shouted, "We can't zust let that terrorist take some bombs and fly off this ship. We an't." This statement was merely a rehash of arguments voiced for the last ten minutes by desperate, angry men crowded around Jake.

  "Now you listen," Jake said calmly, "All of you. This is going to the the last word. I've listened to all your arguments. We've hashed and rehashed this for ten minutes. In my opinion, we've got no other choice. This man has us by the balls. None of you has suggested a viable alternative course of action." "Goddammit-was "No! Don't you cuss at me! I'm the man responsible and I've 1 made the fucking decision. End of discussion!" "I still don't see why we can't zap his choppers with missiles when they are about five miles out, after the bomb is disarmed." Everyone assumed that Qazi would leave an armed weapon on deck that he could explode by radio control if he were pursued.

  "Bullshit. We've got no radar." Jake pushed his way to the engineering watch officer's desk and picked up the I comMC microphone. "Central Control, this is Grafton. Energize the emergency circuit to the forward weps elevators." He threw the mike on the desk.

  "Now when these people get gone, I want every E-2 and F-Ibled on the flight deck that can fly fueled and armed for an immediate takeoff. You skippers, get your crews suited up and briefed. Weapons, get ready to bring missiles up from the magazines. And get some senior people to inspect those magazines as soon as the terrorists get out of them.

  Qazi may leave something ticking down there. Air Department, get your people ready to go. We're going to shoot down Mr. Qazi and his friends when they're the hell and gone away from this ship." They stood and stared.

  "Do it now." "Jesus, CAG," the weapons boss said. "You should have told us that ten minutes ago. We thought you were just going to let them get you!" Jake shooed them out.

  He bummed a cigarette and sat down with shaking hands to smoke it. These guys weren't using their heads. Qazi had had all the answers up to this point; he probably had an answer to the possibility of aircraft pursuers
. The likeliest answer was just to detonate the bomb aboard ship when he was five or six miles away at fifty feet over the ocean, tail-on to the blast. Still, in war nothing ever goes the way you've planned it, so the name of the game is keeping options open. The ship's officers just don't realize how few options we have. He had decided earlier, when the discussion started, not to stress the fact that there as a 90 percent chance no one on this ship would live another our. So now they have a straw to grab for, something to do to eep them and the men busy while the last minutes tick "by.