Still, the fire-fighting effort continued. In less than ten minutes the fires in Bay One, the forward bay, were out, although the chief in charge there didn’t realize it for another minute or two.
In Bays Two and Three, amidships and aft, the fires continued. Since the air was opaque and the heat was building, the fires were difficult to detect unless someone actually walked into one, so some fires were not attacked by hose teams. Then an A-6 that still contained several thousand pounds of fuel blew up in Bay Two. The concussion and flying fragments cut down almost a dozen men and severed two hoses. The fires spread. Men staggered out of the bay almost overcome by the intense heat or passed out where they stood from heat exhaustion.
In Bay Three, Chief Reed made a command decision. On his own initiative he opened the doors to both Elevators Three and Four, on opposite sides of the bay. The wind rushed in the starboard door, El Three, and pushed the smoke and fumes out El Four. Reed’s decision probably saved the ship. Although the fires burned more intensely in the draft, the overall heat level was lower and the air cleared. Fire fighters were now able to directly attack the flames.
In the meantime, Bay Two had become a hellish inferno.
* * *
In DC Central, which was located on the second deck in the main engineering control room, immediately below the aft hangar bay, the Damage Control Assistant had his hands full. On the wall before him were arranged three-dimensional charts that showed every compartment in the ship. Other charts showed the networks of fuel lines, power lines, fire mains, and telephone circuits. A crew of men wearing sound-powered phones marked these charts as they received damage reports from the various fire-fighting teams.
The DCA was a busy man. He had an extraordinarily hot fire burning in the comm spaces and the fumes were spreading to surrounding spaces, which he had ordered evacuated. Every time someone opened a watertight door to enter the fire-fighting zone, the poisoned air spread a little further. All electrical power to the communications spaces had already been secured by the load dispatcher in the central electrical control station. He and the repair-party leader had already concluded that they were facing a magnesium fire, probably a flare, since nothing in the communications spaces would burn with such intensity or give off such toxic fumes. Consequently the fire was attacked with Purple K, a dry, dust-like chemical propelled by gas that would blanket the burning metal and cut off the oxygen supply. Water or AFFF would have merely caused the magnesium to explode, spreading it. The DCA knew that the electrical equipment in the comm spaces would all be ruined by the fine grit of Purple K. It was unavoidable. The fire had to be extinguished as quickly as possible, before the magnesium melted the deck and fell through to another compartment.
Just now the DCA was checking the chart to locate the compartments that might be beneath the burning flare. He wanted to get teams in those compartments, ready to attack the flare if it burned its way through the steel deck it was lying on.
The executive officer, Ray Reynolds, stood looking over his shoulder, listening to the reports that flowed in and the DCA’s responses, and using the telephone periodically. Since the 1-MC announcement that the captain was hostage on the bridge, the DCA had attempted to talk to the captain via the squawk box and the telephone. Both times there was no answer to his call. As far as the DCA was concerned, responsibility for the ship had now passed to the executive officer.
But the DCA had no time to worry about the bridge. He had fires to fight. A large portion of the communications spaces, the DCA learned, protruded over the forward hangar bay, Bay One. He got onto the squawk box to repair locker 1-F, which was responsible for that bay, and alerted them to the possible danger from the fire raging above their heads.
Ray Reynolds stared at the charts of the ship and the greasepencil marks that adorned them. The first priority, he had already decided, was to save the ship. Second was to capture the intruders or thwart them, and third was to free the captain and the admiral.
He stood now absorbing the situation that the DCA faced. Two bad fires were out of control, and the DCA was marshaling every man he needed to fight them. He had secured electrical power near the fires. He had drained the pipes that carried jet fuel to the flight-deck fueling stations and flooded the pipes with carbon dioxide. He was monitoring the level of AFFF in the pumping stations, and he had men relieving the men fighting the fires at regular intervals. Fire-main pressures were still good, both reactors were on the line, and the engineering plant had plenty of steam. The auxiliary generators had been lit off and were ready to take the load if necessary. And the DCA had the repair teams not fighting fires searching the ship for unexploded bombs.
Someone handed Reynolds a telephone. “XO, this is Lieutenant Dykstra.”
“We’re up to our ass in alligators, Dykstra. Are you getting the swamp drained?”
“The quick-reaction squad that was on the way to the bridge was wiped out. Grenades. I think most of the intruders are on the bridge.”
“Keep them there. Don’t let them out.”
“That announcement. That colonel wanted everyone off the flight deck. We must be getting more company.”
Reynolds was aware of that, yet he had had little time to consider the implications. More armed intruders was the last thing he wanted. He turned away from the DCA’s desk and walked to the limit of the telephone cord. He had no doubt that the terrorist on the bridge — that’s what he was, a maniac terrorist — would do exactly what he said. He would execute people if armed resistance continued.
“Play for time, Dykstra. That’s the only option we have. Until we know what they’re up to, it’s senseless to goad these men and have them kill our people for nothing. What’d their leader call himself?”
“Qazi.”
“Put your marines in the catwalks forward and aft so they can control the helo landing area. Have everyone hold their fire. Unless these people are suicidal, they are going to want to leave the ship sooner or later, and we want to be ready when they do. Perhaps then we’ll have a better handle on this.”
“Maybe they are suicidal, sir. Qazi? Maybe that’s a play on ‘kamikaze.’”
“You have any better ideas, Lieutenant?”
“Shoot them when they get out of the helicopters.”
And the fanatics on the bridge would kill everybody there. Ray Reynolds was a poker player, and just now he wanted to see a few more cards. “No. Post your men. Time’s on our side, not theirs.”
He broke the connection and called Operations. No one answered. He tried Combat. No answer there either. He reached for the squawk box, then became aware of the DCA’s voice. “Get everyone out of that area on the O-3 level.” When the DCA saw Reynolds looking at him, he said, “The temperatures are really rising in the spaces above Bay Two, XO. I’m ordering an evacuation. I’m going to have the repair crew up there put AFFF on the deck in all those spaces. Maybe that’ll keep the temperature down and prevent flash fires.”
So the people in Ops and Combat had probably already left their spaces. With the communications gear in the comm spaces out of action and Ops and Combat uninhabitable, the ship could not communicate with the outside world. She was isolated. “Do it,” Reynolds said. There was no other choice. Unless the fires were brought under control, United States was doomed.
* * *
Gunnery Sergeant Garcia stood in the signalman’s locker on the after portion of the O-9 level and peered carefully out the open door. Behind him three sailors shifted nervously from foot to foot. They had extinguished all lights in the compartment, at his request. Garcia looked left, up the length of the signal bridge, past the bin full of signal flags and the signal flashing light mounted high on a post, forward to the closed hatch to the navigation bridge. The signal bridge was open to the weather, without roof or walls. A solid, waist-high rail formed one side of this porch-like area and the island superstructure formed the other. Now Gunny Garcia examined the area to his right. The signal bridge curved around and expanded into
a large portico on top of the after part of the island. He looked back left, toward the enclosed navigation bridge.
There were windows beside the entrance hatch to the bridge in that portion of the bridge structure that jutted starboard almost to the edge of the flight deck fifty feet below. The back of a raised, padded chair was visible in the red light that illuminated the interior. That was the navigator’s chair, and it was used by the conning officer when he brought the ship alongside a tanker or ammunition ship for an underway replenishment. Garcia wasn’t thinking about unreps just now, he was thinking about people. And there were none in sight.
He turned to the sailors behind him, who were staring at the rifle and the pistol butt sticking out of the waistline of his khaki trousers, trousers now heavily stained with Sergeant Vehmeier’s blood. “What’re you guys doing up here?”
“We’re signalmen. This is our GQ station.”
“Ain’t nobody on the bridge gonna tell you to run up a signal flag tonight. You guys take a hike.”
The sailors didn’t have to be told twice. They shut the door behind them.
Garcia checked the bridge windows again. Still nobody visible. He looked around the dark signalmen’s shack. There was just enough light coming through the door to make out a dark sweater lying on the worn couch. Garcia pulled it on over his white T-shirt, then buckled the duty belt around his waist. The belt had been draped over his shoulder. It contained spare magazines for the M-16.
Too bad he didn’t have any camouflage grease, because his face would show like a beacon on the dark signal bridge. He glanced at the coffeepot. Coffee grounds wouldn’t help much. The chief’s desk. He rummaged through the drawers and came up with a tin of black shoe polish. He smeared some on his face.
A head was visible in the bridge window. The man wasn’t looking back this way. The head disappeared.
It was now or never. Garcia swallowed hard, gripped the rifle firmly, and sprinted toward the closed watertight entrancedoor to the bridge.
He huddled in the corner, out of the wind and rain, and placed his ear against the door. Nothing. Damn. He tried again. Only the pounding of his heart. He could smell smoke, heavy and acrid. It must be coming from the doors to Elevators One and Two, and being swirled up here by the wind.
The door was heavy and was held shut with six dogs. He moved in front of the door and very carefully raised his head toward the window. Slowly, ever so slowly, careful not to let the rifle barrel touch the metal of the bulkhead or door. More and more of the room came into view, until he was looking directly in the window. Two sailors were visible sitting on the deck with their backs against the forward bulkhead, their arms crossed on their knees and their heads down on their arms. Someone had obviously ordered them into this position and was guarding them. He looked left, trying to see the sentry. No way. There was a little passageway in from this door and window, about four feet in length, and he couldn’t see around that corner. And the sentry couldn’t see this door.
He could, however, see the navigator’s chair and the chart table and the usual compass repeater and ship’s clock and, between the windows, telephone headsets mounted in clips. He looked for reflections in the bridge windows. The windows here were all slanted outward at the top so the view down toward the water and the flight deck would be unimpaired. So no reflections.
He lowered his head away from the window and applied pressure to the lower right dog. It moved. Without sound, thank God. The technician who maintained these fittings apparently didn’t want to risk the captain’s ire. Garcia turned the dog until it was in the open position.
He peered in the window again, taking his time, inching his head up in case someone was there. Nobody. He opened the two dogs on the upper part of the door. This time the door made a noise as the pressure was relieved. Garcia huddled in the corner, as far out of sight of the window as he could get.
Time passed. He watched the dogs, waiting for a lever to betray the touch of a human hand by a movement, no matter how slight. Nothing.
Where in the fuck was Slagle? That was one hell of a phone call he was making to the lieutenant.
Finally he eased back to the window and ever so carefully raised his head until he could see inside with his right eye. There was a man there. A man with a submachine gun in his hands, the strap over his right shoulder and a gym bag over the other. The man was looking out the windows on the starboard side, searching. Garcia lowered his head and held his breath. If he saw the open dogs, the game was up. The gunman would be waiting for the door to open. Garcia begin breathing again and counted seconds. When a half minute had passed he decided to risk the window again.
A loud screech behind him. Garcia spun, ready for anything. God, it was the loudspeaker.
“You there in the catwalk, down on the flight deck. This is Colonel Qazi on the bridge. Leave the flight deck or I will shoot a man here on the bridge. Go below. Now! Or this man dies.”
Gunny Garcia glanced in the window. The gunman was gone. He opened the remaining three dogs and pulled the heavy door open.
* * *
“Now, Admiral,” Colonel Qazi said as he hung up the 1-MC mike. “I want you gentlemen to understand me. You and I are going upstairs to Pri-Fly. We won’t be gone long. My two helpers here will ensure no one on the bridge moves a muscle or opens his mouth. They will cheerfully shoot anyone who is so foolish. Come, Admiral.”
Cowboy Parker looked from face to face. Laird James and Jake Grafton had their eyes on him. They were standing with him on the left wing of the bridge, near the captain’s chair. The bridge watch team were all seated on the floor in a row across the bridge, facing aft, their heads down on their knees, one of the gunmen watching them while the other pointed his weapon at the three senior officers. “What are you after, Colonel?”
“No.” Qazi’s voice was flat and hard. “We’re not going to do it that way, Admiral. No conversations.” The muzzle of the pistol twitched in the direction of the door.
Admiral Parker moved and felt the blunt nose of the silencer dig into the back of his neck.
There was no one in the passageway, no one except the dead marine who lay on his side upon the deck by the bridge door. Parker paused and Qazi dug the pistol into his neck. “Step over him.” Parker did so, looking down and feeling very much responsible for the death of that young man. What had gone wrong?
As they climbed the ladder Parker said bitterly, “You’re a bastard.”
“True. And my father was an Englishman. So you’re in big trouble and your next cute little remark will be your last. Believe it. I don’t need an admiral.”
Nothing in his thirty years in the navy had prepared Earl Parker for this … this feeling of despair, frustration, and utter helplessness. He was living a terrible nightmare from which he would never awaken. His men were dying all around him and he was powerless to lift a finger. He was being robbed of everything he had worked a lifetime for, of everything that made life worth living. He was being murdered an inch at a time. Hatred and rage flooded him.
But since he was Earl Parker, none of it showed. He flexed his fists as he topped the ladder, his stride even and confident, his shoulders relaxed, then forced himself to unball his fists. His face remained a mask, an arrangement of flesh under the absolute control of its owner. Don’t let the bastard know he’s getting to you, he told himself, wishing he hadn’t made that last remark. My chance will come. God, please, let it come.
Parker undogged the door to Pri-Fly and pulled it open. Qazi stood just far enough behind him to make any attempt at going for the pistol impossible.
Inside the Pri-Fly compartment, the air boss and assistant boss, both commanders, stood silently and watched Parker and Qazi enter. The three sailors in the compartment kept their eyes on Qazi’s pistol. Without a word, Qazi examined the panel that controlled the ship’s masthead and flight-deck floodlights. Then he glanced at the air boss. “Where is that helicopter that was searching for the man in the water?”
&nbs
p; “We sent it to Naples,” the boss said. He named the airfield. Earl Parker was looking at the column of black smoke rising from Elevator Four and being carried aft by the wind. Smaller columns of smoke were coming from Elevators One and Two, forward on the starboard side, and were waffling around the island. On the flight deck below, the planes stood wet and glistening in rows under the red floodlights. Even here, in this sealed compartment, Parker could smell the smoke.
“And the liberty boat?”
“We sent it back to the beach too.”
“You.” Qazi pointed the pistol at the senior enlisted man, a second-class petty officer. “Come here.”
The man looked at the admiral and then at the air boss.
“Do as he says,” the boss said.
The sailor moved slowly, his eyes on the gun.
“Turn off the flight-deck floodlights, wait five seconds, then turn them back on.” The sailor’s hands danced across the switches. The flight deck below seemed to disappear into the night, then reappear. “Again.” The sailor obeyed. “Now once more.”
With the lights back on, Qazi seized the admiral’s arm and backed him up. “All you people leave. Go below. If anyone comes back to this compartment, I will kill them and the hostages on the bridge.” After the sailors and officers filed out, Qazi fired his pistol into the radio transmitter that sat on a shoulder-high shelf near the door. He stepped around the room putting bullets into every piece of radio gear he could identify. Then he followed the admiral out of the compartment and down the ladder one level toward the navigation bridge.
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