“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.
“No way, CAG,” Triblehorn said. “We’ve lost power to those valves.”
“Halon. Let’s use the Halon system.” The magazines could be filled with Halon gas, a system designed to choke off a fire. It would also suffocate anyone in the compartment not wearing an OBA.
Triblehorn paused. “Halon will kill our guys too.”
Jake rubbed his eyes. “Do it.”
Triblehorn spoke into the intercom box. In seconds the answer came back. The Halon system was also disabled.
Jake slumped into a chair. How will Qazi get out of the magazine through the marines? Hostages won’t help Qazi then, and he knows it. Even as he thought of the problem Jake Grafton knew the answer.
“Where’s that marine officer? I need to talk to him.”
Perhaps he could secure electrical power to the weapons elevator. No good. Qazi will arm one of the nuclear weapons and threaten to detonate it unless he is allowed to leave. And if he is thwarted by marines or inoperative elevators or anything else, he may just carry out the threat. Jake had no doubt that it was technically possible to bypass the safety devices built into the weapon. The weapons were designed to prevent an accidental detonation; of course, a technician who knew what he was doing could intentionally trigger one, given enough time and the right tools. And Qazi probably had enough of both.
The Bay of Naples! Jake rubbed his forehead. It felt like the skin there was dead, as if the blood supply no longer functioned. The explosion would vaporize the ship and everyone aboard her. And the ship was three miles off the coast, in a bay surrounded on three sides by hills and islands which would focus and enhance the concussion, radiation, and thermal pulses from the explosion. And the light and thermal pulses would be reflected off the clouds. How many people are in Naples, anyway? In Pozzuoli, Portici, on the slopes of Vesuvius?
The marine lieutenant was standing beside him, looking at him, waiting.
Will Qazi be bluffing? Can I afford to take the risk of calling him? What if he just lights one of those babies off while he’s down in the magazine?
For a few milliseconds a raw piece of the sun about the size of a man’s fist would exist here on the surface of the earth. The plutonium’s mass would be converted to pure energy. The sky and sea would rip apart. Every human within twenty miles not cremated in the first millionth of a second would see the face of an angry, wrathful God.
“Triblehorn, let’s get underway. We’ll steer the ship from after steering. Get the navigator to lay a course out to sea. Put some lookouts with sound-powered phones up on the bow and let’s slip the cable. Now!”
“Aye aye, sir.” Triblehorn stepped away, issuing orders as if he got the ship underway from engineering every other Thursday. Perhaps he was relieved to have orders he found familiar. Jake watched the officers and sailors. They, too, seemed relieved that something was being done.
The marine shifted nervously beside Jake’s chair. Jake stood. He felt a little light-headed. “Got a cigarette?” he asked the lieutenant.
“I don’t smoke, sir.”
Jake nodded vacantly. The alarm from the forward magazine was still sounding. Were the Americans there still alive? What about Parker? At least the fire in the comm space was extinguished and the ones in the hangar were under control and would soon be out. That was a plus. Perhaps the only one.
What kind of man was this Colonel Qazi? Jake had spent a quarter hour on the bridge watching him. He was not the wired-up fanatic one expected after viewing too many terrorist incidents on television. No. He was competent, calculating, intelligent, and, Jake suspected, absolutely ruthless. Not suicidal. Not on a mission for the glory of Allah. But a man who would do whatever he felt he had to do to get the job done.
“What are we going to do, sir, about the intruders?” Dykstra had a stern, square jaw and a wide mouth that just now was set in a pencil-thin line. His nostrils flared slightly every time he inhaled.
“Whatever that asshole wants us to do, Lieutenant. I’m sure he’ll be telling us just what that is before very long.”
The seawater looked black in the glow of the battle lanterns in the forward magazine. Colonel Qazi waded through the cold, foot-deep water casting his flashlight beam this way and that. Row after row of olive drab sausages met his eye. White missiles hung in racks against the bulkheads. Enough ordnance for a nice little war, he thought as he scanned the compartment. There, a door.
He lifted the single lever that cammed all six of the dogs, then sprung back as the door flew open from the weight of the water behind it. A little waterfall flowed through the doorway until the water in this compartment was equal in depth to the water where Qazi and his companions stood. Qazi stepped through into this compartment. Yes. The weapons were white, about the size of a five-hundred-pound bomb. Each of them was strapped into its own cradle which held it firmly several feet above the deck. Chains and pulleys hung from rails on the overhead.
