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.
He was bone tired and filthy. So were his men, who sat or lay on the floor all over the compartment. They had been down in the hangar bays fighting the fires. That place was a gutted shell now. The bosun and his men had helped the damage-control teams there stack the bodies like cordwood on the elevator when the fires were out. They had helped lay out Ray Reynolds. And they had laid out the waist cat officer and two of the catapult chiefs. They had died when an airplane with a little fuel left in its tank had exploded. The bosun wiped the grime off his face with his shirttail.
“Don’t interfere with the intruders,” the CAG had said. So the fucking terrorists had the U.S. Navy by the gonads and there was nothing anybody could do. Ha! No doubt that announcement had been made to please the terrorists, because they had heard it too. This Grafton, another over-the-hill, worn-out jet-jock who’s pulled too many Gs. A far cry from Laird James. Now there was a real sailor, an asshole to work for and a perfectionist hairsplitter, but the bosun had spent twenty-seven years working for driven men who demanded perfection and were satisfied with nothing less. He was used to them. This Grafton! He’ll probably get court-martialed after tonight, the bosun told himself bitterly.
When he had his pipe drawing well, he leaned back in his chair and put his feet on his desk and regarded the no-smoking sign posted on the wall. Yep, Grafton was just like Ray Reynolds. Stick the fucking sign on the fucking bulkhead, Bosun, and don’t get caught smoking by the sheriffs boys or by the XO on one of his little jaunts around the boat. Don’t get caught breaking any of the chickenshit little rules. Just fight the fires and stack the bodies, Bosun.
Before those terrorists got to the bridge, Captain James made an announcement. Do your duty, he said. That fit the bosun’s pistol. He had made warrant officer four, the senior warrant rank, by doing the right thing regardless of what the book said. They couldn’t hurt him with a fitness report now. No, sir. It would take a court-martial to rip the gold and blue off his sleeves. And the navy doesn’t court-martial guys who do the right thing. It just shits all over assholes like Captain Grafton who earn their rank pushing paper, then fold up when the chips are down.
“Is there fuel in the truck?” he asked his first-class.
“Of course.”
“When did you start it last?”
“This morning. No, yesterday, daily maintenance inspection. Started on the first crank.”
The bosun puffed on his pipe and stared at the television monitor over the door. The helicopters just sat there. Occasionally one of the sentries moved a little.
The monitor swayed slightly in its mount. Grafton really has this tub cranked up, the bosun thought. Wonder if he knows what the hell he’s doing?
“Where in the fuck are those crazy assholes going at thirty-three knots?” The skipper of the cruiser
He turned and faced the communications officer. “Why in hell can’t you talk to her?”
“They’re not answering on any circuit, Captain. We don’t think they’re transmitting on any frequency. None of their radars are radiating. They’re observing EMCON.” EMCON meant “emissions control.”
The captain picked up the Navy Red telephone and pushed the transmit button futilely. He wiped his forehead and slowly put the instrument back into its cradle.
“They’re certainly in a hurry to go somewhere,” the ops officer observed calmly. He had always found it best to stay calm when the skipper blew off steam.
“Okay,” the captain said, his voice back to normal. “Get on the horn to Sixth Fleet. Tell him what’s going on. See if he knows something we don’t. Find out what he wants us to do. And get off a flash OPREP to Washington.” An OPREP was an “operational report,” used to advise naval headquarters of emergencies.
“We’re doing all the turns we can, sir,” the OOD piped up. “We’re not going to catch them if they keep this speed up.”
“Thank you, Mr. Epley,” the Old Man said sourly. He gestured at the communications officer. “Okay. Call Sixth Fleet and send the OPREP. Ops, you get down to Combat and sort out the surface picture. The
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Willie,” he said to the navigator. “I want to know where we are every damn minute and where we’re heading. I don’t want to follow those fools smack onto a reef or island at thirty-three knots. Let me see a chart with a projection of this course. They may be running for a launch position.” That was the hypothesis that made the most sense, really. The carrier was silently racing to get into position to launch a strike. But against whom?
It’s like a nightmare, the captain told himself as he looked at the backs of his departing officers. One day they had a war and nobody told you. Is this the big one? Naw, they would have told
Infuriated and thoroughly confused, the captain sat in his chair and tried to get his blood pressure under control as his ship labored into the swells. White water spewed back from the bow, then the bow rose clear of the sea and crashed majestically into the next swell in another thunderous cloud of spray. He pushed his squawk-box button for the chief engineer and warned him to be ready to cut power to the shafts instantly if the screws came out of the water.
