He sprawled on the deck and scrambled furiously, trying to ensure his body and legs were behind cover. He rolled over and waited for the gunman to round the turn in the passageway. Slowly, slowly he got to his feet, keeping the rifle pointed. He wiped the sweat from his face with the front of his T-shirt and tried to visualize the corridor that he had just left. The door that opened must have been the door to Flight Deck Control. The bastards must be in there! With all those sailors. He couldn’t shoot through the door for fear of hitting a sailor. Damn!
His thigh felt like it was on fire. He looked. A bullet hole in his trouser leg. He felt his thigh. A slug had grazed him, but not too bad. The wound was bleeding some. Those motherfuckers!
He could hear the sound of men running somewhere in the ship, minute vibrations that could be heard for hundreds of feet, and the faint clank of watertight hatches being slammed shut. These were normal noises mixed in with the hum and whine of machinery that was present every minute of every day. He stood listening now for the sound of a door being eased open or shoes scraping on steel or a weapon clinking ever so faintly against a bulkhead. Of these noises, there were none.
It was coming back to him now, those feelings of combat. Always tense, always listening, always waiting … waiting to kill and waiting to die. He had not felt those feelings for twenty years. But now they were back and it seemed like only yesterday. He was sweating profusely and his mouth was dry. He was desperately thirsty.
He heard a watertight door being opened somewhere behind him but near. He pointed his rifle and waited. Now someone was coming around the corridor, in from the starboard side of the island. It was only Staff Sergeant Slagle and a lance corporal. What was his name? Leggett. Corporal Leggett.
The 1-MC hissed. “Men of United States. I am Colonel Qazi. I have taken over the ship. We have your captain and your admiral with us here on the bridge. Further resistance by you is futile and will result in the deaths of your officers and the sailors here with us on the bridge. If another shot is fired at my men by anyone, I will execute one of the Americans here with me and throw his body down onto the flight deck. Now I want everyone to clear the flight deck. Clear the flight deck or I will execute a sailor.”
“What do we do now, Gunny?” Slagle asked.
Garcia examined the silencer on one of the pistols he had picked up from the deck. The slide had been machined to take the silencer by someone who knew his business. He pushed the button on the grip and the magazine popped out into his hand. About ten rounds remained. He reinserted the magazine in the grip and checked that the weapon had a round in the chamber and eased the hammer down. Then he stuffed the pistol in his belt. He gave the other weapons to Slagle. “Get on a phone to Captain Mills—”
“He’s on the beach.” Mills was the marine officer-in-charge.
“So call the lieutenant,” Gunny Garcia rasped. First Lieutenant Potter Dykstra was the second in command and the only other marine officer in the detachment. “Tell him the squad that was on the way to the bridge got wiped out by grenades. And there is at least one gunman in Flight Deck Control. Find out what the lieutenant wants to do. Leggett, you stay right here. If anybody carrying a weapon comes out of Flight Deck Control, kill him. These fuckers are dressed like sailors. I’m going up to the bridge and see what’s what.”
Slagle turned and trotted away.
“Listen, Leggett. These assholes got grenades. They’re liable to toss one out here to see if they can perforate you. Keep your head out of your ass.”
“You bet, Gunny.” Leggett licked his lips and started to peer around the corner.
“Don’t do that, dummy. If you’ve gotta take a peek, get down on the deck and peek around the corner down low. And don’t let him shoot you in the head.” With that, Gunny Garcia turned and went up the ladder in the back of the island, his M-16 pointed ahead of him with the butt braced against his hip.
The fires on the hangar deck were out of control almost immediately after the paint lockers exploded. Men came pouring out of the shops and repair lockers and attacked the fires with AFFF (aqueous film-forming foam) from the fire-fighting stations located around the bay, but the burning paint and chemicals from the sabotaged lockers had been sprayed everywhere, on aircraft, in open cockpits, in the drip pans under the planes, and on aircraft tires. The tires ignited almost immediately and gave off a heavy, thick black smoke. When the CON-FLAG watches failed to close the two interior fire doors, the hangar deck officer, a lieutenant, ordered the doors closed manually. And he sent a man up to the nearest CONFLAG station to light off the hangar deck sprinkler system.
The men fighting the fires were relieved in shifts to don Oxygen-Breathing Apparatus (OBAs), which were self-contained breathing systems. Although the fires were producing immense quantities of toxic gases and smoke, most of it was being vented out the open elevator doors. And the wind was funneling in the doors, feeding the fires.
A minute after he had been dispatched to the CONFLAG station, the messenger was back and informed the hangar deck officer that the CONFLAG watchstander was dead, shot, and the sprinkler control system was shot full of holes.
The hangar deck officer called Damage-Control Central. The hangar deck sprinking system was turned on from DC Central, almost four minutes after the paint lockers had exploded. The sprinklers had little visible effect on the fires, so with the concurrence of the Damage Control Assistant (the officer in actual charge of the ship’s minute-to-minute damage control efforts) in DC Central, the elevator doors on the sides of the bays were closed too. In seconds the interior of Bays Two and Three filled with black smoke and toxic gases. The smoke became so thick that the fire fighters were literally blind inside their flexible rubber masks. Men worked by feel. They hung onto hoses with a death grip, and if one tripped and fell, he dragged men down on both sides of him. A couple men panicked and hyperventilated inside the self-contained OBAs and let go of their hoses. Lost, blind, and seemingly unable to breathe, they ripped off their OBAs and passed out within seconds from the toxic fumes.
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.