The cross hairs danced uncontrollably.
He rested the rifle on the rail in front of him and took a short deep breath, then squeezed off a shot.
The man collapsed.
Garcia chambered another round.
He had shot three of them when the yellow flight-deck crash truck came bolting from its parking place behind the island, its engine at full throttle audible even above the noise of the chopper engines. There was a man on the nozzle on top of the cab and he had the water-foam mixture spouting fifty feet in front of the truck. The man spun the nozzle and one of the gunmen was blasted off his feet by the water stream. The truck roared across the deck, straight for the helicopter at the head of the angle.
There was a man in front of the chopper, shooting at the truck. Garcia got him in the telescopic sight and jerked off a round. The man went over backward. Muzzle flashes came from the open door in the side of the helicopter. Garcia aimed into the flashes and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. The rifle was empty. The truck 1 swerved, its left front tire peeling from the rim.
The fire-truck engine was roaring like an enraged lion as the machine careened left and crashed into the second helicopter in line. The truck slowed, but now the chopper was skidding sideways toward the rail.
The chopper's mainmounts struck the flight deck rail and it tilted. Smoke poured from the truck's rear tires. Then the chopper went over the side and the cab of the truck bucked up as the front wheels struck the rail and it followed the helicopter toward the sea, its engine still at full throttle.
Bullets slapped the steel beside Garcia. He crouched behind the rail coaming and feverishly fed more shells into the rifle.
The engines of the only helicopter left, the one at the head of the angle, were winding up to takeoff power. The roar deepened as the pilot lifted the collective and the rotors bit into the air. Garcia slammed the bolt closed and came up swinging the rifle for the cockpit. He got the cross hairs onto the pilot of the chopper.
Something smashed into his left shoulder, jerking the rifle off-target just as he pulled the trigger. He tried to hold the rifle with his left hand and work the bolt with his right, but his left wouldn't work. The chopper lifted from the deck and began traveling forward, toward the edge of the angled deck.
More bullets slapped into the steel near him. His left arm wouldn't work right. Then he lost the rifle; it fell away toward the deck below.
Enraged, he watched the helicopter clear the edge of the flight deck and fade into the darkness.
Garcia sank down behind the coaming and sobbed.
Jake Grafton sprinted up the deck as bullets zipped around him and the roars of M- I 6's on full automatic filled his ears. He ran toward the weapon on the dolly in front of the E-2 Hawkeyes parked tail-in to the island.
A man in whites lay by the dolly.
Senior Chief Archer reached the bomb even as Jake did. Archer began examining the weapon with a flashlight as Jake knelt by the admiral. Blood oozed from a dozen wounds in his torso and legs.
Shrapnel from the helicopter rotor blades or a grenade.
"Admiral? Cowboy? It's Jake. Can you hear me?" Behind Jake, the last of the gunmen were going down as the flames from the burning chopper rose higher and higher into the comnight.
Parker's eyes and lips were moving. Jake bent down, trying to hear.
"Jake "Yeah. It's me, Cowboy." Parker's eyes focused. "Don't let him get away, Jake." His hand grasped the front of Jake's shirt and he pulled him down. "Don't let him get away. Stop..." Parker coughed blood.
"You know me, Cowboy. We'll get 'em." Parker was drowning in his own blood. He was coughing and choking and trying to talk. In a supreme effort he got air in, then, "Don't let him use those weapons..." He gagged and his body bucked as his lungs fought for air. Jake held on as the convulsions racked him.
Finally Parker's body went limp.
"I don't know, CAG." It was Archer. He was looking at the trigger. "I just dunno. It's definitely got a radio receiver built in, and somebody built this that knew a hell of a lot, but I'm damned if! can figure what will happen if! cut this wire here." He pointed.
Jake grabbed the bolt-cutter from the deck where Archer had dropped it and used it on the handcuffs that held Parker's wrist to the dolly.
Jake dropped the big tool and seized the tongue of the dolly. The brake was automatically released when he lifted it. He began to pull the dolly. "What are you gonna do?" Archer asked.
"Over the ,ide. The radio receiver won't work underwater, and maybe the water will short out this trigger thing." Archer joined him on the other side of the tongue.
They began to trot. 'ationot too fast," Archer warned, "or this thing'll tip over.
They pulled it around the front of the island toward the starboard rail.
"This thing may go off when it hits the water," Archer said.
"We'll have to risk it. We're out of time." There's a bomb chute somewhere here on the starboard side of the island, Jake remembered.
There! He turned the dolly around and backed it toward the chute, which was a metal ramp with lips that extended downward at an angle over the catwalk and ended out in space.
The rear wheels of the dolly went in and then the front and it started to roll. It fell away toward the sea. Jake Grafton turned his face and closed his eyes. If it blew, he would never even feel it.
His heart pounded. Every thump in his chest was another half second of life. Oh, Callie, I love you so.
When he finally realized there would be no explosion, he tried to walk and his legs wouldn't work. He fell to the deck and rolled over on his back.
Slowly, slowly he sat up. Archer was sitting on the deck near him with his face in his hands.
0 0 0 Qazi crossed from the open right-side door of the helicopter to he bucket seats that lined the other bulkhead. He had been watching the lights of the carrier recede into the gloom. "How far away are we?" Ali shouted, barely making himself eard over the engine noise. "When we get to eight miles Qazi handed him the radio triggering box.
Ali used the telephone by the door to speak to the pilots, then held his watch nder the small lamp near the phone, one of three small lights hat kept the interior from total darkness. He stepped to the door and leaned out into the slipstream looking aft.
Noora and Jarvis were huddled in the corner.
Noora had Jarvis's head cradled on her breast and was rocking softly from ide to side. Jarvis's face was down and Qazi could only see the op of his head.
On Qazi's right, three of the gunmen sat with their weapons between their knees and their heads back against the bulkhead, their eyes closed and their faces slack.
They looked totally exausted. These three had managed to scramble aboard as the flight-deck crash truck charged them, then turned in the door and emptied their weapons at the truck. They were the only survivors of the thirty-six men Qazi had taken to the ship. Yet he had two bombs. The skins of the weapons were white and reflected the glow of the little light over the telephone near the door.
Ali was still leaning out into the slipstream. He pulled himself inside, checked his watch, and grinned at Qazi. He braced himself against the bulkhead and manipulated the controls on the box.
Nothing happened. He tried again with a frown on his face. He leaned out the door with the box in his hand and pointed it aft at the carrier.
Ali hurled the control box at Qazi, who didn't flinch as it bounced off the bulkhead and fell to the floor. "Traitor," Ali screamed as he grabbed for his pistol.
Qazi shot him. Once, twice, three times with the silenced HiPower. He could feel the recoil, but the high ambient noise level covered the pistol's muffled pops.
Ali sagged backward through the door. The slipstream caught him and his hand flailed, then he was gone.
The gunmen didn't move. Noora continued to rock back and forth with her eyes closed, her arms around Jarvis.
Colonel Qazi slowly put the pistol back into his trouser waistband. He z
ipped up the leatherjacket he was wearing. It was chilly here. He stuffed his hands into the jacket pockets and stared at the white weapons.
LAIRD JAMES was in a coma when Jake checked on him in sick bay. An IV bottle of whole blood hung on a hook beside the bed, and two corpsmen were preparing him for the operating room. The blue oxygen mask over his nose and mouth made the rest of his face look white as chalk.
"Is he going to make it?" Jake asked the corpsmen, who didn't look up.
"He's lost a lot of blood. Bullet through his liver. His heart stopped once and we gave it a kick-start." Jake turned and went back through the ward, looking at the burn, gunshot, and smoke victims. There were more patients than beds and some of the men lay on blankets on the deck. Most were conscious, a few were sleeping, and here and there several were delirious.
One man was handcuffed to his bed. A marine wearing a duty belt with a pistol sat on a molded plastic chair near the bed, facing the prisoner.
The man in the bed looked at Jake, then looked away. Jake picked up the clipboard from a hook on the bottom of the bed and read it. Name unknown, no ID. "Can't or won't speak English." "He's one of the terrorists, sir," the marine said. "He fell overboard from the liberty boat earlier this evening." Jake nodded, replaced the clipboard on the bed, then moved on. Chaplain Berkowitz was moving through the ward, taking his time, pausing for a short conversation at every bed.
The second-deck passageways outside sick bay were still crowded with men sitting and standing, but the crowd was thinning as the chiefs and division officers got people sorted into working parties and led them off. The I comMC blared continually with muster information for the various divisions and squadrons.
Jake climbed a ladder to the hangar deck.
Foam still covered the wreckage of aircraft and lay several inches deep on the deck. The bulkheads and overhead were charred black. The glow of emergency lights was almost lost in the dark cavern.
In Flight Deck Control the handler was roaring orders over the radio system he used to talk to his key people on the flight deck. Will Cohen, the air wing maintenance officer, turned to Jake when he saw him enter the space.
Every airplane on the flight deck had shrapnel or bullet damage. "All of them?" Jake asked, stunned. "Even the ones clear up on the bow?" Cohen showed him a list he was compiling.
They went over it, plane by plane. Jake wanted every fighter and tanker available airborne as soon as possible. He had Harvey Schultz briefing a dozen F-14 crews and a dozen FirstA- I 8 Hornet pilots. But he had to get them some airplanes It quickly became apparent that the E-2's parked next to the 1 island would not be flying tonight. One of them had absorbed so much shrapnel from the disintegrating rotors of the upended 1 helicopter that Cohen thought it would never fly again.
The others would require rework at an intermediate maintenance facility back in the States. Three of the tactical jets had caught fire, and the fires had damaged two other machines before they were extinguished. All the planes had bullet holes in them, and maintenance crews were checking right now to determine the extent of the damage. "We can't take them to the hangar, and the wind makes opening the radomes and engine-bay doors hazardous," Cohen said.
"We're going to damage some planes just inspecting them unless you slow the ship down or run with the wind over the stern." Jake had the ship heading due south 'at twenty-five knots, straight at the island of Sicily. Gettysburg was a mile away on the starboard beam.
Her captain had requested this slower speed to enable his ship to ride easier.
The bullet hole in the plexiglas status board caught Jake's eye. Someone had drawn a yellow circle around it. It looked obscene.
"One hour," Jake told the maintenance officer.
"We launch in one hour. Get me some planes." On the bridge Jake ordered the ship slowed to fifteen knots. The reduced wind would also help the crash crews who were trying to clean up the nuclear contamination from the wreckage of the chopper immediately in front of number-four JBD. When the helicopter had turned upside down, the ensuing fuel fire had ruptured one of the weapons, causing the conventional explosive inside to cook off and scatter nuclear material.
Most of it had been carried over the port side of the ship, but the wreckage and flight deck were still hot. The crash crew was using high-pressure hoses to wash the radioactive contamination into the sea, where it would soon disperse to harmless concentrations.
Now Jake stood beside the captain's chair and tried to absorb the avalanche of information flowing at him from all over the ship. The information came faster than Jake could assimilate it. The navigator came over to help.
Several long messages were handed to him to approve before they were sent by flashing light to Gettysburg for electronic transmission. The first one he looked at was a Top Secret flash message giving the bare bones of the incident. The second one was ten pages long and covered the incident in detail.
Jake took exactly one minute to read them both as he listened to someone give him an estimate of how soon various radio circuits could be repaired.
Jake handed the short message to the signalman for transmission and used a borrowed pencil to draft a final paragraph for the longer one: Intentions: Will launch all available fighters ASAP to pursue, find, and destroy helicopter that escaped.
Gettysburg radar tracked it toward Sicily. Contact now lost. Believe helicopter will land and refuel vicinity of Palermo. Urgently request assistance." He stared at the paragraph and chewed on the pencil. The landing near Palermo was only likely because of the chopper's fuel state. There was no way it could fly the width of the Mediterranean without refueling.
Perhaps Qazi intended to transfer the bombs in Sicily to another aircraft, a faster one.
"All available fighters" "comt was a joke: right now he didn't have any. And what assistance could anyone give?
Never hurts to ask, he told himself and handed the message to the waiting signalman. Then he pursued the sailor, took the message back, and added one more sentence. "While in hot pursuit, intend to enter foreign airspace without clearance." The squawk box again. "Bridge, Handler." "Bridge, aye." "We have three aircraft on deck with strike damage, CAG. I need room.
Request permission to jettison these three aircraft." "Push 'em over the side?" "Have someone take the classified boxes out of them and do it." For some reason the squawk boxes and telephones fell momentarily silent.
The navigator and several of the officers from the flag staff were having a discussion behind him, the O0Do and the quartermaster were hard at it, and the junior officer-of-the-deck was briefing the lookouts, yet for the first time since Qazi escaped, no one was talking to Jake. He eyed the captain's chair. He was so tired, exhausted physically and emotionally, and it was tempting. Why not? He heaved himself into it.
Cowboy Parker dead, Ray Reynolds, over a dozen marines and nearly fifty sailors.
Major damage to the ship, enough to put her into a yard for a year or so. And forty-some planes lost. That list would grow as the machines were inspected. Any way you cut it, a major debacle. And to top it off, Qazi got away with two nuclear weapons.
But this was not the time to dissect the disaster; worry now about winning the next battle. Win the next one and you will win the war. But can we win? So far Qazi has had all the cards; he has prepared and planned and plays a trump at every turn. What has he prepared in the event he is followed?
What are his options?
"CAG." Someone was standing beside him.
It was his deputy air wing commander, Harry March.
Will Cohen stood beside him with a paper cup full of coffee, which he offered to Jake along with a cigarette. Jake gratefully accepted it and got down from James's chair. Out of the corner of s eye, he saw Harvey Schultz come onto the bridge in his flight ear, with his helmet bag in his hand. He was the senior fighter uadron skipper and would lead the planes after Qazi. As Cohen lit the cigarette for him, Jake listened to March. "We ave three turkeys that can fly, CAG," March said. "
Turkey" was the slang name for the F-14 Tomcat. "One KA-6 tanker and two Hornets. We're putting our most experienced people in them and launching in thirty minutes." March spread out a chart of the editerranean. "When they get airborne, they'll be talking to the ettysburg.
All our radars and radios are out and will be for some ours.
Out the window Jake could see airplanes being towed around he flight deck by low, yellow tractors. The respot for launch was lmost complete.
March was still speaking: "Gettysburg has told us ia flashing light that the chopper is headed for Sicily. There is U.s. frigate that cleared the Strait of Messina twelve hours ago and is now off the eastern coast of Sicily. Gettysburg is trying to otify the Italian authorities, but that's all going to take time.
Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 2 - Final Flight Page 39