Jake was acutely aware of the sound of his own breathing. He rotated the phone so the transmitter was up over his head and Qazi could not hear it. The bastard sounded so goddamn confident, so sure he had all the cards. And he did. The U.S. Navy was finished if a nuclear weapon detonated aboard a ship; Congress would sink it to the cheers of outraged, frightened voters. And the Soviets would inherit the earth.
“Your answer?”
“How do I know you won’t leave the ship and then blow it up?”
“You don’t, Captain. What is your decision?”
“You’ll get what you want.”
“I thought you would arrive at that rational conclusion. I await an announcement over your public-address system.” The connection broke and Jake was left with a buzzing in his ear. Jake slammed the instrument into its cradle.
Get a grip on yourself, man! Don’t let these sailors see you out of control. He took three or four deep breaths and tried to arrange his face.
“Triblehorn, how long until we can get power restored to the weapons elevators up from the forward magazine?”
“Oh, maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Do it.” Jake turned to the marine officer, Lieutenant Dykstra. “Get your people off the flight deck. Nobody, and I mean nobody, pulls a trigger unless I give my personal approval. If they do, I’ll court-martial them and you.”
A sneer of contempt crossed Dykstra’s face. “I hope to God you know what the fuck you’re doing. Sir.” Dykstra turned and stalked away.
The navigator was still bending over the chart. Jake glanced over his shoulder. The navigator was on the phone, probably to the sailor in the after steering compartment. The emergency helm was there, below the waterline in the after part of the ship, near the giant hydraulic rams that controlled the rudder. The navigator covered the mouthpiece with his hand and looked at Jake, who asked, “Where are we?”
The navigator pointed. About ten miles southeast of the anchorage.
“What’s our speed?”
“Seventeen knots.”
“Let’s put on all the turns we can. Work her up to flank speed.”
“There may be ships out there. The radar’s not in service and we only have two lookouts. Visibility is poor. I’m DR-ing our track.” DR meant “dead reckoning,” drawing a line based on speed and time.
“Flank speed.” Jake wanted the United States as far from land as possible in case Qazi pushed the panic button. He would just have to pray that Lady Luck kept this blind, stampeding elephant from colliding with another ship. The two lookouts wouldn’t help much with this limited visibility; by the time they saw and reported a ship on a collision course, it would be too late to avoid the collision. And Lady Luck seemed to be off duty just now.
Jake picked up the 1-MC microphone from its bracket on the engineering watch officer’s desk. The watch officer flipped the switches. This had better be good. Qazi would hear it. He cleared his throat, pushed the button and began to speak.
His announcement was heard all over the ship, except in those spaces where the public-address system was not working because of fire damage to the wires or loudspeakers. As it happened, two of the silent areas were the portside catwalk on the flight deck and the midships area of the O-3 level, where the waist catapult control rooms were located.
On the portside catwalk forward of the angle, up near the bow, Gunnery Sergeant Garcia stepped over the body of Lance Corporal Van Housen and laid familiar hands on the Browning.50-caliber machine gun. He snapped the ammo box open and carefully fed in the belt of cartridges he had so painfully carried up from the ship’s armory draped around his shoulders. Then he opened the breech and slipped the belt in. He closed the breech and cycled the bolt. It jammed.
He tried again. No. The cartridge felt like it was hitting an obstruction. Don’t tell me! No! He used his fingers to try and seat a cartridge.
They’ve spiked it. They had pushed a metal plug, probably tapered, into the chamber and his attempts to chamber a cartridge had forced the plug deeper into the barrel, jamming it. And Garcia, you ass, you didn’t look first! You should have known!
He looked aft along the length of the catwalk at the helicopters sitting silently on the angle and tried to decide if he had the time to go get a rod to force down the barrel to push out the plug. So near and yet so far! There they sat, and here he was with a weapon that could destroy all three machines right where they were, or better yet, as they lifted off the deck, so they would fall into the sea without damaging anything else. And it wouldn’t take ammo.
Van Housen lay face down. Another dead marine.
At least he had had the sense to pick up another weapon in the armory. It was slung over his shoulder, a Model 700 Remington in.308 caliber with a sniperscope. The marines called it the M-40. He hefted it in his hands and stared at the helicopters. No. The best place for this was up in the island. On Vulture’s Row. From there he could command the entire angled deck. He turned away from the machine gun and the dead marine and went below.
Captain Grafton’s announcement should have been heard in the waist catapult control bubble because the loudspeaker there was functioning perfectly. Or would have been functioning perfectly had the volume been turned up even slightly. As it was, the volume knob had been cranked to its lowest setting by some kind soul earlier in the evening when Kowalski was brought here to sleep it off. Now the loudspeaker didn’t even hiss.
Kowalski sat on the floor of the darkened bubble with a headset of a sound-powered telephone over his ears and listened to one of the cat crewmen working on the JBD hydraulic pump in the Cat Four control spaces under the hookup area. The power was off to the pump and the crewmen were trying to tie in a line to another circuit at the main catapult junction box. A man there wearing a headset gave Kowalski an account of their progress when goaded properly.
“How much longer?”
“Goddamn, Ski, we’re working as fast as we fucking can. Give us a break, will ya?”
“I just as’d a civil question, peckerhead. Gimme a guesstimate.”
“Ski wants an estimate…. The Russian says five minutes.”
“I’m lookin’ at my watch. You tell the Russian he had better hump it.”
“Where is the ship going, Ski? We can feel the vibrations here. They must have this mother really cranking.”
“You people just worry about your end of the navy.”
Ten minutes, Ski thought, maybe fifteen. The Russian always thought he was about finished. Ski checked the clock on the bulkhead behind him. His watch was broken. Probably happened last night at that bar.
He swallowed two more aspirin and inched his way upright. He eased his head level with the deck and surveyed the situation. One of the sentries was walking slowly around the choppers. The wind was whipping his shirt and trousers. The guys below were right; this tub was really bucketing along.
One of the places Captain Grafton’s 1-MC announcement was heard was in the fire crew’s shack in the after part of the island superstructure, on the flight deck level. The firemen had a watertight door that gave them immediate access to their large fire truck parked just outside on the flight deck. If there had been planes aloft or planes on the deck with engines turning, the bosun would have had his men in asbestos suits and sitting in the truck with the engine running. Now as the bosun listened to the announcement he knocked his pipe out into the ashtray on his desk and slowly refilled it.