Exasperated, he looked from face to face. The officers were staring at him, waiting for him to make decisions and issue orders. The military system in full fucking flower! “Do you people have any ideas or comments? I’d desperately like to hear some.” Blank looks. They were as off balance as he was, but he was the man responsible. “What are these fuckers up to, Dykstra?”
“Maybe they have mines planted below the waterline, sir. Maybe they’re planting more firebombs. I think they’re going to try to sink us.”
Jake snorted. If so, they were taking their time about it, although they were off to a fair start. “Triblehorn?”
“I think it’s political, CAG. I would bet the ranch they are making announcements to the media this very minute. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that we have four TV choppers circling overhead right now, with Dan Rather in one of them.”
“You think we’re all hostages, is that right?”
“Yessir. They’re bearding the paper tiger.”
Bearding the muscle-bound tiger would be a more accurate description, Jake thought. But no. It’s one thing to hijack an airliner full of civilians and wave a pistol in the pilot’s face for the cameras. What we have here is quite another thing altogether. This is an act of war. “I think we had better wait and find out what their objective is before we go off half-cocked,” Jake Grafton said quietly. “So I’ll wait a while. Dykstra, get your men around the edge of the flight deck with enough firepower to drop those choppers in the water if they try to take off. No shooting unless and until I say so. Triblehorn, get this ship ready to get underway. That card may be only a lousy deuce, but I’ll play it if I have to. DCA, get the fires out. We’ll have no options at all if we sink.”
If we sink, Jake thought savagely. Mother of God!
At the same time that Captain Grafton was learning of his accession to command, Gunnery Sergeant Tony Garcia was having his T-shirt and sweater cut off him by two corpsmen in sick bay. They had him stretched out in a passageway on a mobile hospital table equipped with stirrups. They must have got this damned thing from a gynecology clinic, he mused, trying not to dwell on the fire in his side.
A doctor wearing a blue smock splotched with blood stopped and peered at his side. “Nasty. Get an X-ray after you bandage it. May be some internal bleeding. Won’t know till we see the film.” He paced away muttering about bullet and bone fragments.
The corpsmen rolled the table down the passageway.
“Hey you guys,” Garcia said. “When we get done with X-ray, how about putting me in the ward with Sergeant Vehmeier?”
Sailors sat on the deck with their backs against the bulkhead. Many of them were coughing and all had little green oxygen bottles with masks to suck out of. These are the smoke-inhalation cases, Garcia surmised.
The corpsman rolled him under a large X-ray machine and positioned a giant cone above his chest.
Just like fucking Vietnam, Garcia told himself, only the trip to the hospital was a whole lot quicker. No ride in a Huey strapped to a stretcher, absolutely helpless if the damned thing got shot down or crashed. And the wound ain’t so bad, either, all things considered. That machine gun round in the gut had been a real dilly. At least he was conscious, which was something. In Vietnam he had hemorrhaged until he passed out and woke up with needles in his arm and a tube down his nose all the way to his stomach and a tube up his dick and ninety-five brand-new stitches. Those doctors had almost cut him in half. Eleven months in the fucking hospital. Never again. He had told himself that about a million times through the years. Never again. The next time he was just going to die. Nothing could be worth going through that again.
Jesus, Vehmeier got blasted by that fucking grenade. That silly shit. Why in hell did he fall on that bastard? That Vehmeier … it was enough to make a grown man cry, that a guy like Vehmeier …
One of the corpsmen rolled him from the X-ray room and parked the bed along a passageway bulkhead, then hurried away. “Hey, man,” he called, wanting to be beside Vehmeier, but they paid no attention. They were busy, he told himself, and Vehmeier wouldn’t know he was there anyway. They probably got six IV needles stuck in him and have given him enough dope to supply Los Angeles for a week. Too bad about his hands, but with artificial hands he can do everything except pick his nose.
He wondered if he was bleeding internally. He had seen enough bullet wounds to know that there was no way to tell just from looking. You observed the patient for signs that he was losing blood, and if it wasn’t visibly coming out of holes, it must be internal bleeding. And shock looked like hemorrhaging. He wondered if he was in shock. He felt cold, but they had put a blanket over him. Mild shock maybe. He took several deep breaths, trying to see if his lungs were working properly. His side felt as if he had a knife in it. Maybe he shouldn’t do that. Maybe a busted rib would penetrate his lung.
Wonder if that foray on the bridge did any good. He had knocked that one gunman down for sure and maybe the other guy. Those sailors had been shot, but there was no other way. They would have approved, he told himself. They would have wanted him to try.
One of the corpsmen returned, the one with the glasses. “The doctor says you have two cracked ribs, but there are no bullet fragments in your chest. Just an ugly surface wound. You were very lucky.”
Yeah. Very lucky. That slug could have went into my gut and there is no way my gut could take another, not with all that scar tissue down there. Very lucky. Yeah. “How about wheeling me in with Sergeant Vehmeier.”
“Who?”
“That marine that was brought down here a while ago with his hands blown off. He fell on a grenade.”
“Oh. He’s dead. Sorry.” The sailor walked away. It was a busy night.
“Come back here, you fucking swabbie!” Garcia’s voice was coldly furious. The sailor paused and turned, uncertainty on his face. “You said Sergeant Vehmeier is dead?”
“Yeah, Sarge. He was dead when they brought him in here.”
“I’m ‘Gunnery Sergeant’ to you, pill-pusher. Now get some fucking tape and put a permanent bandage on this wound.” Garcia slid his legs off the edge of the bed and hoisted his torso erect, feeling slightly dizzy and nauseous.
“You can’t—”
“Do I have to get the fucking tape and do it myself?”
The sailor scurried away.
Where did they put that fucking rifle?
As the helicopters had settled onto the angle of the flight deck Colonel Qazi marched Admiral Parker down the ladders toward the flight deck with his pistol in his back. He saw no one. The ladderwell was empty. Except at the last flight of stairs before he reached the flight deck level — Qazi’s dead Palestinian lay where he had fallen, still crumpled against the door. The door gaped several inches. He made the admiral step over the corpse and push the door open.
He heard a sound to his left and stepped behind the admiral. The barrel of a rifle pointed at him below one frightened eye. “If you pull that trigger, you’ll kill the admiral. If you don’t, I will. After I kill you.”
Several seconds passed, then the eye and barrel disappeared. Qazi listened as the man retreated.
The wounded man had died. The muscles in his face were slack and his eyes stared fixedly at nothing. The other body lay undisturbed. But their weapons were missing. And their gym bags. The door to Flight Deck Control was open a crack. One of his men there opened it wider and nodded.