Soleck’s AG 703, flying as a mission tanker, had twenty thousand pounds of JP-5 to give when the carrier ceased to be a haven. AG 706, the last plane to launch before the catastrophe, had as much again. Scattered across two hundred miles of ocean were eleven other planes, mostly F-18 Hornets, famous for their short legs and suddenly bereft of their home base. Some of them had been on Combat Air Patrol since the last launch event more than an hour before, and their fuel tanks were as close to dry as their flight parameters and safety allowed. Down to the south, Donitz had already gone to burner and made at least one turn against exercise opposition from another flight of Indian Air Force Jaguars before the accident; he had less fuel than any of the others. Up to the north, two F-14 Tomcats from VF-171 were on picket with the northernmost fleet elements, and somewhere up there was supposed to be Stevens’s S-3 with a buddy store holding more gas. The rest of the planes were close at hand, waiting in the stack for the launch of the rest of a sea-strike package that would never come.
“Where we gon’ to land?” Guppy said. He was shaken, his voice a monotone, his face as gray as his flight helmet.
Soleck had the plane under control and the altitude even. Now he was trying to watch the whole sky for other planes. The tower had been off the air from the moment of the accident. He could see that the initial explosion and the resulting fire had stripped every antenna from the carrier, and that meant that the planes in the stack were on their own. Soleck feared that other pilots might leave their assigned altitudes and start flailing around, increasing the risk of collision.
“Gup, we could fly to China with this much gas. Shut up and get me Alpha Whiskey on radio two. And try and raise the skipper in 701.”
Soleck could hear a babble of pilot exchanges on Alpha Whiskey, with every plane in the stack clamoring for fuel and information. Alpha Whiskey, the radio frequency reserved for air-warfare command and usually controlled from the Ticonderoga-class cruiser Fort Klock, was being clobbered. “Start writing that shit down, Gup. Get their fuel states. Hey, Guppy! Stay with me, man.”
Soleck had completed his turn at the north end of their track, and they were now nose-on to the burning carrier, just a mile out. The plume of smoke rose more than a thousand feet, and the tower leaned out over the starboard side. Guppy couldn’t take his eyes off it.
Soleck reached over and slapped the side of his helmet. “Gup!”
“Sorry.” Guppy mumbled something but opened his knee-board pad and started following the voices on AW.
Madje had been lucky, protected by the heavy central bulkhead when the first explosion happened. Madje had dragged the admiral clear of the fire on adrenaline alone, put a fire blanket over him, and donned a breathing apparatus, then rescued the helmsman. He would never remember doing any of these things. His first conscious action had been getting the firefighting team to help him get the admiral out of the smoke.
But the thing he would never forget was the sheet of flame covering the whole deck as the fire spread, interspersed with fountains of fire as aircrews punched out of their stranded planes. He had seen it for only a moment, a second, before the forward part of the bridge started to warp and collapse. He must have been moving the admiral by then. Things were missing — time, space, fire, pain. It was as if the last hour was a movie, and all he had was the promos.
He put a hand to his head and hair came away, burned. His face felt as if he had a bad sunburn. He shook his head inside the respirator mask.
Who was next in command?
Figure the CAG as dead, burned in his cockpit, or ejecting into the water and thus unavailable. The boat’s skipper was dead. That left the flag captain, the navigator, and the engineer, all captains. The flag captain ought to be down on the O-3 level in the flag spaces, where Madje had planned to move Admiral Rafehausen. Seemed like a good place to start. He shone a flashlight down the ladder well through the smoke. Where had he got a flashlight?
“Looks clear,” he shouted through the hatch.
“Lead the way, sir. We’ll bring the admiral.”
A blast from outside the tower rocked it, moved it by several inches and distorted the bulkhead to his left. He touched it cautiously and it burned him.
“Down! Now! Quick as you can! This wall is hot! Go, go!”
They ran and fell and fought down the steel ladder, around a platform and down again, with wrenching noises above them and a roaring like a jet engine. Madje knew that the flight deck was just the other side of this hatch, and he could see from the distortion all along the wall that the other side was exposed to extreme temperature. The heat came through the respirator, burned his face again and scorched his hands.
When this wall burned through, the tower would collapse. The structural beams visible on the vertical surface were spalding, huge flakes of hot metal shooting off them in response to impacts from elsewhere. For the first time, it occurred to Madje that the carrier might not recover.
“We interrupt the regularly scheduled program for a special bulletin. Residents of the city of Mahe report the sound of explosions and what they describe as ‘rapid gunfire’ from the nearby Mahe Naval Base. Radio India is trying to establish contact with the local naval headquarters. Elsewhere in the nation, two incidents of what also appears to be fighting have occurred, one in Pondicherry, one in the far north of Uttar Pradesh state. A government spokesman denied that any such thing was occurring and pooh-poohed the idea of terrorism. A spokesman told this reporter that, quote, ‘Military fire practice rounds here all the time.’ Amal Gupta, Delhi.”
Madje followed the stretcher-bearers down the ladder to the O-2 level, below the flight deck. It was full of smoke, it was hot as hell, and there was already water up to their ankles. His arms and back were hurting through the adrenaline from the effort of carrying the helmsman.
“Shit!” the lead man on the stretcher shouted. “We sinkin’?”
“Fire hoses!” Madje shouted. “Move! Move!”
Around another platform, through another hatch and down to O-3. Water was pouring through the ladder well, all run-off from the fire hoses fighting the fires in the corridor above. A sailor in a respirator was standing at the bottom of the ladder.
“Where you boys coming from?” he said harshly. Close up, Madje could see he was a Chief Petty Officer.
“That’s Admiral Rafehausen, hurt bad. The guy over my shoulder’s the helmsman from the bridge. I’m Lieutenant Madje.”
The CPO looked as if he might let Madje off this time. “Get t’admiral forward. Doc has Ready Room Two for casualties. Then get your asses up to Chief White forward. Sir, I have to ask you to join a fire team.”
“Chief, I have a last order from the admiral. Then I’ll be back.”
Even through the respirator, Madje could read the chief’s contempt, as if officers could be expected to find excuses to avoid firefighting. Maybe they could. Madje followed the stretcher down the starboard passageway to Ready Room Two, passed the unmoving helmsman to a triage team, and got a spasm of pleasure when they gave him a thumbs-up. He watched two corpsmen hovering over the admiral, loitered for a moment, and realized that there was nothing, nothing he could do here. He sloshed back out into the passageway, got a look from the chief, and headed forward. He squeezed past a hose team preparing to go topside, climbed over the knee knockers at frame 133, and found himself squelching into the relatively clean flag area and its brilliantly polished blue tile floor. He looked in flag ops and flag intel and the living quarters. No flag captain.