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.