Before Tom could reply, a warning Klaxon screamed. The banshee wail filled the room, echoing in the larger medical department on the other side of the open door.
It was, Delroy thought, loud enough to wake the dead. But it didn’t this time. The flesh that had once been Dwight Mellencamp lay unmoving in the body bag.
Tom turned and charged out the door.
Delroy followed at the younger man’s heels as they pounded through the medical department and ran out into the hall. A stream of men and women hurried through the halls and climbed the stairs leading up to the flight deck. They strapped on protective gear—vests and helmets—as they quickly filed upward.
“What’s going on?” a sailor asked a Marine.
“Dunno,” the Marine corpsman said. “Our general orders are to assemble on the flight deck and stand ready to deploy.”
“Deploy?” The sailor caught the stair railing and yanked himself around. “Deploy where?”
“The border,” the Marine replied. “That’s where the heat is. Don’t you keep up with current events?” The Marine shook his head.
“Man, that’s crazy.”
Pausing, Delroy let the last of the crewmen and Marines climb the stairs. He fell in behind them, sprinting up through the 02 level. In seconds, he was on the flight deck, coming up inside the island that housed the bridge.
Delroy surveyed the activity that swept the landing helicopter dockship. Movement filled the LHD as deck crews dressed in colorcoded jerseys—primarily red for fuel and ordnance and yellow for spotters—ran to their assigned posts. Marines erupted from flight deck ramp tunnel, moving at a dead run with their gear tied securely around them and their assault rifles held at port arms before them. In the old days, military Jeeps had been able to drive up those ramps, but the Humvees they used now were too wide. The next generation of landing helicopter dockships had already worked appropriate changes into the redesigns.
Fighter jets, AV-8B Harriers, rolled off the flight deck, dropping out over the dark sea then rising like kites caught by the wind. Wasp had nine takeoff and landing positions on the deck for helicopters, six to port and three to starboard. The port and stern elevators brought up CH-46E and CH-53E helicopters and the Harriers two at a time.
The CH-46Es, designated Sea Knights, had the distinctive twin prop design. The CH-53E Sea Stallions had the more traditional appearance of a main rotor backed by a tail rotor and were currently ranked as the fastest helos the Marines handled. As soon as the helos were in place and had been boarded by Marine troops, they leapt into the sky.
No voices could be heard over the din that filled Wasp’s flight deck. Jet turbines on the Harriers screamed, competing with the whirling rotors on the cargo helicopters used as troop transports. Navy crew outfitted the aircraft as they rolled on deck from the elevators.
Delroy kept moving toward the island, which was what most of the crew called the bridge structure on the ship’s starboard side. As chaplain for the ship, Delroy had to remain available to help out where he could. He raced up the stairs and through the coded doors leading to Primary Flight. Pri-Fly was Wasp’s nerve center for air operations.
Commander Kelly Tomlinson stood watch this morning. Designated the air boss, he’d served in the same capacity for a handful of years. He was tall and muscular with a shock of blond hair and a surfer’s tan. He also held the current record for bench presses down in the ship’s fitness center and had been a fierce surfing competitor in Hawaii before giving up that dream and stepping into the military life.
The commander glanced at Delroy then resumed watching the deck activity through the heavy-duty glass. “Good to have you, Chaplain.”
“Thank you, sir.” Delroy moved to his usual place back of the shipboard computers. He stood with Lieutenant Gabriel Morales, who was in charge of the Landing Signals Officers. They’d shared stories in the galley about small towns and family.
Morales’s LSOs remained grouped and ready to assist with aircraft landing. Each man and woman was clothed in deck gear, including helmets and goggles. The lieutenant was lanky but muscular. He had grown up on a working cattle ranch in west Texas and sported a mustache that pushed the envelope on navy regs.
“What’s up, Gabe?” Delroy asked.
“The Syrians just launched a full-blown attack across the border,”
Gabe said in a low voice. “They took out the communications towers with SCUDs and FROG-7s. From what I understand, the U.N. peacekeeping forces and the 75th Rangers are taking a beating.”
Delroy glanced at the state-of-the-art weather forecasting equipment that was the heart of the Pri-Fly area. Weather affected every operation. A small television monitor mounted next to the computer screens showed a battle in progress. The tagline read TURKISHSYRIAN BORDER.
“What triggered the attack?” Delroy asked.
Gabe shrugged. His dark brown eyes flashed as he watched the aircraft lifting off Wasp’s flight deck. “Who knows? It was waiting to happen, Del. Only a matter of time. The intel I was looking at, man, you just knew the Syrians were gonna jump some time.”
“What are we doing?”
“Air and troop support. Those gunships are herding jump troops. We’re also providing medical corpsmen to handle on-site wounded. Once a triage is established, the wounded that can travel will be sent back here. From what we’ve heard so far, there are a lot of casualties. Gonna be a lot more.”
Glancing at his watch, Delroy did the math. With the border two hundred miles away, give or take a handful, the trip in-country would take time. “The border is an hour and a half away.”
“An hour and twenty minutes,” Gabe corrected.
As Delroy watched the television screen, coverage shifted to Glitter City. Several
