He stumbled aft, ducking under and stepping over hoses and inching by the busy men until he found a corridor leading outboard. He followed it. He came to a ladder. The watertight hatch was down and dogged into place. In the center of the large hatch was a smaller, round hatch, just big enough to admit one man. This fitting was open and a hose went through it. Jake squirmed through.
The turnarounds were full of men sitting and breathing through rags held before their faces. These men had been evacuated from the compartments above Bays One and Two. There was nowhere else for them to go. If 20 percent of the crew were still on the beach, over forty-four hundred men were aboard.
The central engineering control compartment was still manned and the DCA was at his desk, consulting charts. The engineering department head, Commander Ron Triblehorn, was looking over the reactor control panels when Jake came in, but he strode toward him as soon as he saw him. “How did you get off the bridge?”
“Somebody got onto the bridge and started shooting.”
“The admiral and the captain?”
“Still up there.”
“Ray Reynolds is dead. He was killed a few minutes ago up in the hangar bay. Something fell on him and broke his neck. You’re the senior line officer not on the bridge.” The senior officer not a hostage, he meant.
“Ray’s dead?” Jake sank into a chair. Triblehorn nodded. “How about the chief of staff?” He was a captain.
“On the beach.” Junior officers were gathering, listening and looking at Jake.
Jake looked around the compartment, slightly dazed. He was now responsible for the ship and every man aboard her. Legally responsible. Morally responsible. He was in command.
He rubbed his eyes. They were still smarting from the smoke in the passageways. Ray Reynolds dead! Oh, damn it all to hell. And the poor guy just got his new front teeth!
He tried to think. The terrorists. Helicopters were coming in to land when the shooting started on the bridge. He glanced at the television monitor. The screen displayed a black-and-white picture — from the camera in the television booth just under Pri-Fly — of the helicopters on the flight deck. This was a live picture, real time. He could see people, sentries, some of them lying on the deck and some walking slowly near the machines. The choppers were Italian civilian machines.
“The senior marine officer? Get him down here.” One of the junior officers trotted toward a phone. Jake looked up at Triblehorn. “What’s the situation in the plant?”
“No damage. Both reactors on line. All boilers on the line.” Triblehorn gestured vaguely. “That evaporator that gave us all that trouble last week is acting up—”
Jake cut him off. Evaporators were the least of his worries right now. “Are the marines guarding the entrance to the engineering spaces?” Yes. “Can we get underway?” Yes. “How soon?”
They discussed it. Ten minutes warning. Jake thought hard. “Get things fixed so you can turn the screws within a minute of the decision. Tell the first lieutenant to be ready to slip the anchor chain.” They would just let the chain go, leaving the anchor on the ocean floor rather than taking the time to raise it. If they had to.
“Aye aye, sir.” Triblehorn turned to his junior officers. “You heard him. Do it.”
Jake walked over to the DCA’s desk with Triblehorn right behind. He was on the phone. When he hung up, the three of them reviewed the damage control situation. The fire in Bay Two was under control and would soon be extinguished. Power was off throughout the compartments above the bays and on both sides. Above the bays in the O-3 level, the fumes from the fires in the hangar and the communications spaces still contaminated the air. The DCA was opening the watertight hatches on those levels and ordering degassing fans positioned and started to clear the smoke from the ship. Several hundred tons of the water-foam mixture had been used on the O-3 level and was still slopping around in those spaces, but its effect on the trim of the ship was negligible.
Six bodies had been discovered in the communications spaces and were being removed. At least twenty-six men had been killed fighting fires in the hangar bays, most of them when aircraft exploded. Six marines were dead on the flight deck, shot. And four marines had been killed by grenades thrown by the intruders. Four men were believed to be missing under the rubble in Bays One and Two. Over fifty men were in sick bay being treated for everything from gunshot wounds to smoke inhalation. Last but not least, the DCA reported, all the operations spaces on the O-3 level had been evacuated and the communications equipment in those spaces had been damaged by the heat and smoke and AFFF. It would be a half hour before he could let the operations specialists back into those spaces and get power restored. Meanwhile, the ship was not communicating with anyone. All the radio gear was either smashed or severed from the antenna system.
“Where are the gooks?” Grafton asked as Lieutenant Dykstra joined the group. He was wearing marine battle dress, with helmet and flak vest and ammo belt.
“Three choppers have landed on the flight deck, sir,” Dykstra reported, gesturing at the television monitor. “The intruders are on the bridge and in Flight Deck Control and on the flight deck.”
“Why didn’t you shoot those choppers down before they landed?” Grafton asked the marine officer.
“Commander Reynolds felt that it would be better to wait. With the hostages and all …”
Hostages. Yes, that is what the Americans on the bridge and in Flight Deck Control were — hostages. Jake Grafton sagged into a chair and ground his knuckles together helplessly. Do you sacrifice the lives of defenseless people to foil the intruders, or do you passively resist and wait for an opening, perhaps saving innocent lives? What is it the professional negotiators always say? “Play for time: time is on our side, not theirs.” Well, in the usual terrorist incident that is true. The terrorist’s goal is publicity. But are these people terrorists? Is this crime being publicized? If so, why did they attack the communications facilities?
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
