“So how come you woke me up now?”
“You ain’t gonna believe this, Ski. One of those choppers is sitting right on top of number-four JBD. Right smack dab on top of it.”
Kowalski took his time about standing up. Pak grabbed him under the armpit to help and Ski shook him off. He finally got erect and remained that way by hanging onto the cat officer’s little desk.
“Jesus, Ski, you pissed your pants.”
“There’s some aspirin in my desk. Get me three of them.” His desk was in the Cat Four control room. “And some water. A glass of water.”
“We ain’t got …”
“Put it in a coffee cup.” Pak dashed out. The cat captain lifted himself into the cat officer’s raised chair and rested his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands. After a moment he felt his crotch. It was wet. He tried to remember how he had gotten back to the ship. Captain Grafton was in there somewhere, but the rest was hazy. Maybe the XO was right. Maybe he was an alcoholic.
He slipped off the chair and rushed out the door of the bubble. Here he was on a little sponson on the O-3 level, outside the skin of the ship. He grabbed hold of the safety wire and leaned out and retched. The wind swirled some of the vomit back onto him. He puked until he had the dry heaves, and when they subsided he took off his torn sport shirt, wiped his face with it, and threw it over the side. The stench of something burning was strong. Too strong. It made him feel sick again. He went back into the bubble and collapsed into the cat officer’s padded chair.
Pak came back with two other guys. “A committee, huh?” They stood and watched Ski swallow the aspirin and drink the water. “Where’s Laura?” Laura was the captain of number-three catapult.
“He didn’t get back. He’s on the beach.”
Ski sat the cup down with a bang. “Okay, let’s take a look. Raise this thing.”
The three sailors looked at each other in the weak glow of the little red lights here in the bubble. “The terrorists got guns, Ski. They’ve been shooting people right and left. They have the captain and admiral—”
“This bubble’s bulletproof, fireproof, and bombproof. They can’t do nothing to us in here.”
“Yeah, but they could get into the cat control rooms and—”
“We’ll have to risk it. I ain’t gonna get out on the catwalk and stick my head up over the edge.”
“Pak did. That’s how he knows there’s a chopper on four JBD. And he went back and checked the fifty caliber on the stern. The marine back there is dead, shot, and the ammo belt is missing.” Pak nodded nervous confirmation.
Kowalski shook his head. “And I’ll bet the grunt on the port bow gun is dead too and the belt’s in the water. Yeah. Well. Pak, you’re an idiot. We gotta raise the bubble. But it wouldn’t hurt to disable the horn.”
One of the men went outside the cab and used a knife to saw through the wire to the warning Klaxon that sounded every time the control bubble went up or down. When he returned, he pushed a button on the bulkhead near the door. As the bubble began to slowly rise in splendid, and safe, silence he dogged down the entrance hatch.
The control cab rose on its hydraulic arms until it protruded eighteen inches above the level of the flight deck. Everything above deck was glass, inch-thick glass that was tilted in at the top so that objects striking it would be deflected upward. Inside the cab, all four men stood with knees bent so only their eyes were above the lower edge of the window. They stared at the helicopters on the flight deck, stark in the island’s red floodlights, rotors stationary. The sentries guarding them were also visible. The lights in the control cab were off so the men on deck could not see in, yet when the sentry turned their way, all four dropped their heads down below the window. In a moment one of them raised up for another peek.
“They’re civilian choppers. See, that’s Italian on the side of that one.”
“What’ya expect? Chinese? Look over there. See that guy with the submachine gun? He’s one of them.”
“He’s dressed like a sailor,” Kowalski said.
“Yeah. They all are. And they got the captain …”
“Sure. Yeah. I got that.” Kowalski picked up the phone and held it in his hand. “Maybe we oughta call the office. Maybe the bosun’s up there, or one of the chiefs.” The office he was referring to was the V-2 division office, where the khaki in charge of the catapults had their desks. He stared aft at the third helicopter. From this angle it certainly looked like it was sitting on the JBD.
“Ain’t nobody there,” Pak told him. “There’s a big fire up in the comm spaces, and the office was inside the fire boundaries, so they ran everybody out. I think they got ’em all fighting fires, either in the comm spaces or down in the hangar.”
Kowalski grabbed the ship’s blue telephone book and thumbed through it. He dialed a number. It rang and rang. Finally he used his thumb to break the circuit. “The XO ain’t in his stateroom,” he announced.
A third-class petty officer from the Cat Three crew spoke up. “We figured you’re all we got, Ski. There’s terrorists in Flight Deck Control. And they’re on the bridge. And they made an announcement over the 1-MC about how they’re gonna shoot hostages and toss them down on the deck if anybody resists. Maybe the terrorists are in Pri-Fly or over in the air department office. We didn’t figure we should take the chance calling them. We tried to call the bow cats and the phones are dead up there. We sent a greenie looking for one of the chiefs or a cat officer, and he ain’t come back. The passageways up forward are filled with smoke and they’re grabbing guys to fight fires. So you’re our man. What are we gonna do?”
Kowalski hung the phone back in its wall cradle. He rubbed his face with both hands. “If I’m all we’ve got, we’re in deep fucking shit.” He took one more look around the flight deck, at the choppers and the sentries and the jets sitting with folded wings on the bow and aft of the waist JBDs. Wisps of steam rose from the catapult slots: this would be leakage from the preheaters coming through the gaps in the rubber seals that were placed in the slots when the cats were not in use.
After a moment he asked for a cigarette and someone gave him one. He sat down on the floor and smoked it slowly. “What are these terrorists after?”
The men beside him shrugged.
“But they came on the helicopters, right?”
“Some of them did, anyway,” one of his listeners answered.
“And they probably expect to leave the same way.” Nods of assent from everyone. “So you guys go get the JBD hydraulic system fired up.”
“We thought you’d say that, Ski,” Airman Gardner said with a quick grin as he left with the others.
When Sergeant Albright set off the main alarm in the magazine, a red light began to flash on the main engineering panel and an audible tone sounded in the compartment.
“Well, gentlemen,” Jake Grafton said bitterly as he and the chief engineer watched the lights indicating the positions of the magazine flooding valves turn from green to red. “Now we know why Colonel Qazi is here.”
He had already been informed that Qazi and the admiral were on the forward mess deck. He and the marine lieutenant had been discussing the possibility of surrounding the mess area and trying to trap Qazi. It was too late for that.
The magazines! Even as they spoke, the lights turned green again. Then the lights went out.
“Goddammit,” Triblehorn swore softly. “They’ve closed the valves and chopped the power.”
“Can you flood from Central Control?” Jake asked. The central control station two decks below where they sat actually distributed power and controlled the position of emergency valves. Triblehorn tried the squawk box.
Jake tried to digest it. Qazi and his men were forcing their way into the magazines. To set a charge to detonate the bombs stored there and sink the ship in one glorious, suicidal fireball? If so, why were the helicopters still on the flight deck? No, they were planning to leave the same way most of them arrived. And they were going to take something with them. That something could only be nuclear weapons.