stepped around the room putting bullets into every piece of radio gear he could identify. Then he followed the admiral out of the compartment and down the ladder one level toward the navigation bridge.
Gunny Garcia crouched on the signal bridge and stared at the navy-gray aluminum door that covered the entrance to the bridge, now that he had the watertight door open. His first thought was, That’s why the gunman didn’t notice the two open dogs. The watertight door was hidden by this aluminum door. A mild piece of luck, in a business where you need every ounce of luck you can get.
His second thought came when he put his hand on the doorknob and started to turn it. There were, he knew, a lot of American sailors on that bridge. The whole watch team, since the ship was at general quarters. And not a one of them armed. How many gunmen there were he didn’t know. So he was going to go charging into a firefight where he was outnumbered and some innocent Americans were going to be shot, some of them fatally. Casualties would be unavoidable.
Gunny Garcia took his hand off the doorknob and crouched, thinking about it. The fumes from the hangar fire were in his nostrils and the low moan of the wind in the masthead wires was in his ears. What to do? Where in the name of God was that asshole Slagle? What would the lieutenant want him to do? What would the captain, if he were aboard, tell him to do? If he was going to do anything at all, he was going to have to get to it pretty quickly, before that bunch with the Uzis decided to look out this window again.
When he had been in combat before he had been only twenty, just another rifleman in Vietnam. The sergeants and the officers made the decisions and he laid his ass on the line carrying them out. It was still his ass, but now it was his decision too. That’s what you get, Tony, he told himself, for working your butt off for all these chevrons and rockers. Now you gotta earn ’em.
Yet instinctively he waited. You stayed alive in combat by listening to your instincts. The people who didn’t have the right instincts died. Combat was natural selection with a vengeance.
What light there was disappeared. Then it came back on. Garcia looked around. And once more. Someone was flashing the big floods on the island.
A signal? To whom?
A minute went by, then another. He risked another glance in the window. Still just the two sailors sitting on the deck.
Damnation! What was going on?
What was that noise? That buzzing? A helicopter! Gradually the noise grew louder. More than one, Garcia decided. He knew where they were without looking. They were coming in with the wind on their nose, across the stern of the ship.
He took the pistol from his trousers and thumbed the hammer back. One more glance in the window, then he pushed the door open and crept onto the bridge. He eased the door shut behind him.
The sailors didn’t look up. Good for them. So far so good.
He would try the silenced pistol first. If he could drop a man without the others hearing the shot, he might get a second or two advantage.
He could hear the choppers even here on the bridge. Now if the guy guarding these sailors is just looking at the choppers … He crept to the corner, keeping low, and peered around with the pistol ready.
The gunman was ten feet away walking toward him and looking straight at him! He snapped off a shot. And another. The man was hit! Garcia stuffed the pistol in his pants and stepped out with the M-16 up.
Before he could pull the trigger the bullets from an Uzi tore into his side and he was off balance and falling and the M-16 was hammering and he was desperately pushing himself backward, toward cover.
He was on the floor and he didn’t have the rifle. A sailor ran past him for the door where he had entered.
A stuttering hail of lead cut down another sailor charging toward him. The game was up. Surprise was lost; to stay was to die. He scrambled on all fours crab-like for the door, now open. Another sailor careened past and then Garcia was through the door.
He would never make it. The gunmen would come to the door and cut him down. The watertight door was impervious to bullets. He pushed it shut and used the dogs to pull himself to his feet. He cranked the dogs shut with all his strength. There! The bridge windows were thick. Bulletproof. It would take them about fifteen seconds to get this thing open.
He turned and hobbled toward the signalmen’s shack as fast as he could go, his side on fire and his back ready to receive the bullets from the Uzis. But the bullets never came.
When the ear-popping roar of the M-16 filled the bridge, Haddad, the gunman on the port wing of the bridge who had been dividing his attention between the captain and the approaching helicopters, dropped to his knees and spun for cover. The jacketed slugs from Garcia’s weapon ricocheted off the steel and smashed into the portside bridge windows, crazing them with a thousand tiny cracks.
Admiral Parker grabbed Qazi’s gun hand.
Grafton was the closest to the door. He launched himself through it.
From behind the helm installation, Haddad fired a burst toward Garcia and another over the body of his downed comrade at a sailor trying to make the door on the starboard wing. The sailor crumpled like a rag doll.
Parker twisted Qazi’s wrist with maniacal fury. Qazi drew back his left hand and chopped at the admiral — once, twice — but he was off balance and couldn’t get his weight behind the blows. He went to his knees to keep his bones from snapping. The veins in Parker’s forehead stood out like red cords. The pistol fell. Qazi flailed desperately at Parker’s testicles.
The admiral was a man possessed. They struggled in silence. Qazi went to the floor to deny Parker leverage. His desperation gave way to panic; he had come so far, risked so much, and now this one man was defeating him!
Then suddenly it was over. Haddad struck the admiral on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol and he fell like a tree.
Qazi retrieved his weapon and slowly got to his feet. His right wrist was already yellow and purple. As he massaged it and opened and closed his hand experimentally he glanced at Captain James, still behind the captain’s chair, leaning against the wall and looking at him. For the first time in a very long time a smile creased Laird James’s leathery face. Then he slid down the wall and rolled face down. A blood stain was spreading across the back of his shirt. One of the ricocheting M-16 slugs, probably.
The helicopters settled into the glow of the island floodlights. Qazi checked his man who lay in a twisted heap in the middle of the bridge. It was Jamail, the man who liked to kill.
The other gunman, Haddad, stood facing the Americans still seated against the wall. Three of them wore khaki. He was swearing at them in Arabic, his Uzi ready.
“No,” Qazi told him and walked to where he could see down through the impact-crazed windows onto the angle of the flight deck. The helicopters were just touching down.
There was much to be done. He picked up the microphone for the 1-MC and pushed the button. “American sailors! This is Colonel Qazi. Three of my helicopters have just landed on the flight deck. If you interfere, more men will die. Someone just tried to gain entry to the bridge. As a lesson to you, the body of one of your sailors will be thrown to the flight deck. If there is any more resistance, any more shooting, if another of my men dies, I will kill your admiral.”
He put the microphone back in its bracket. “Watch them,” he told Haddad. He walked over to the dead American and dragged his body to the door to the signal bridge. He looked through the window, then eased the door open. Keeping low, he dragged the body through, then wrestled it up over the rail. It fell away toward the deck below, leaving the rail smeared with blood. He went back onto the bridge and dogged the watertight door shut. He propped the interior door open so the dogs were plainly visible. Then he walked the width of the bridge to where the captain and admiral lay on the deck.
James still had a pulse; he was no doubt hemorrhaging internally. He would probably die soon. But the Americans didn’t know that.
On the flight deck, sentries had exited the helicopters and spread out to guard them. He could see Noora helping Jarvis out.
Qazi picked up his gym bag and turned to Admiral Parker, who was sitting up nursing his head. He kicked his
