formless curtain.
Up on the bow between the rows of aircraft, about six hundred feet from where Jake stood, were the upper openings of the forward magazine weapons elevators. Qazi would wheel his weapons down between the parked planes and over to the choppers.
Something smacked the airplane on Jake’s right, a stuttering, smacking sound, and Jake’s eyes went involuntarily to the plane. He glanced toward the sentries in time to see the twinkling muzzle flashes from the weapons of one of the men stretched upon the deck. The rippling thud of more bullets striking metal came from the airplane beside him.
“Quick, get back! Everyone back.”
“Sir,” one of the marines said in a stage whisper, “I can take that guy—”
“Get back out of sight. I don’t want them shooting up these airplanes, and I told you no fucking shooting without my okay! Now get back there, goddammit!” Jake followed the retreating marines. He crouched down under a plane and peered forward between the mainmounts and belly tanks, trying to see the men around the helicopters in the glare of the island floods. He could just make them out. Here under the airplanes Jake and his party were in darkness, invisible to the sentries.
Son of a … All the planes in the hangar destroyed and now they were shooting holes in the ones here on the roof! God damn those bastards! He could well understand the marine’s frustration. Qazi didn’t just have all the good cards; he had the whole deck!
“CAG! Better come look.” It was one of the marines. Jake moved toward the sound. Three of the marines were checking a man lying on the deck. “Dead, with a bullet in the head.” Jake looked. “And here’s a shotgun.” It was one of the men of the flight deck security watch that Reynolds had armed. The young man’s eyes were open, and to Jake it seemed as if the dead man were staring straight at him.
“Okay, Ski. It’s on and working.” Pak and Gardner and three other sailors crouched beside Kowalski in the waist bubble. He was sitting on the floor. They slowly inched their heads up to the windows so they could see the deck and swiveled their heads back and forth, taking in the choppers and the figures around them. “When are we going to do it?”
“Not until they’re aboard those things and ready to take off. If we popped them right now, they might come down to the catapult spaces and gun everybody. We can’t take a chance like that.”
“How are we going to do it?”
“From the control panel below deck.” The primary JBD controls were on a panel in the catwalk, abeam the JBDs for Cats Three and Four. But it was too risky to have someone crawl along the catwalk to the panel with that crowd on deck, so this morning they would use the secondary control panel in the catapult machinery spaces.
“What’s that smell?” one of them asked, sniffing loudly.
“I was sick over there behind the panel,” Kowalski said.
“Oh.”
“Jesus, Ski, you oughta …”
“Yeah.”
“Boy, we’re gonna get those bastards,” one of the greenshirted troopers said and giggled nervously.
“Yeah, we’ll teach ’em not to fuck with the Uncle Sugar Navy,” Pak agreed.
“Them A-rabs is gonna get an edufuckation,” enthused the greenie known as the Russian.
“You guys go below,” Kowalski said. “Pak, you man the panel in the control room. Don’t do nothing until I say, then do exactly what I say. Understand?”
“Hey Ski, can I stay here and watch?” the first greenie asked, elevating his head for another look around. “This is gonna be so good that—”
“Everyone below. You can watch on the monitor down there if it’s working.”
“Aaaw …” They trooped out and dogged the watertight door tightly behind them, leaving Kowalski alone in the darkness with his hangover.
It was the sound of the helicopter engines coming to life that first alerted Jake Grafton. Their low moan rose slowly in pitch until the fuel-air mixture ignited, then it spooled up quickly to a whining howl. When the RPMs were at idle, the main and tail rotors began to turn. The sentries on the deck remained at their posts.
Jake moved until he could see past the noses of the Hawkeyes abeam the island into the parked rows of planes on the bow, the “bow pack.” Yes. There was someone! Pushing a weapon on a bomb cart. A sentry was with him. And there comes another.
“Archer?”
“Yessir.”
“Take a look.” The senior chief moved up beside Jake and peered through the gap between an F-14 mainmount and A-6 belly tank that Jake was using.
“There’s the admiral,” Archer said. Now Jake saw him too, in his whites with his hands bound behind him, walking with three other people.
Kowalski heard the engines of the choppers winding up and donned the sound-powered headset. He adjusted it over his ears and pulled the mike to his lips. “You there, Pak?”
“Yo, Ski. I’m ready.”
“Don’t do nothing until I tell you. But stay ready. These guys are starting their engines. Let me stick my head up for a look-see.” He eased his eyes up to the lower edge of the bulletproof glass. The sentries were no longer lying down; they were milling around smartly. He looked at the last helicopter in line, the one sitting atop the number-four JBD. He could just see the pilot and copilot in the cockpit. Not navy pilots, that’s for sure — no naval aviator in his right mind would set one of those eggbeaters down on top of a JBD. Their tough luck.
“What d’ya see?” Pak’s voice in his ears.
“A bad accident about to happen. Now keep your ears open and your mouth shut.”
The fire-crew bosun watched the helicopters start their engines on the television monitor. He picked up the cards on the desk that he had been using to play solitaire and carefully placed them in their box and put the box in the upper left-hand drawer, right were it belonged. You learned that in the navy, if you learned nothing else — everything in its place.
He stood and stretched, his eyes on the monitor. A figure in white came into the lower right corner of the picture, accompanied by two men, one in khaki and one in sailor’s dungarees. There was a fat man in civilian clothes and a figure that looked like a woman. The bosun stepped forward, closer to the screen.
His men crowded around. “Ain’t that the admiral?” “Jesus, I think it is.” “What
“What are those things on them dollys?”
The men stood right under the television, as close as they could get, and stared up at the screen. “Holy … Those things are
“You guys sit down.” The bosun watched as they took seats on the couch with the stuffing coming out and on the folding chairs. He took down the key to the truck from the hook near the door. “You people stay here.”
“I’m going with you, Bosun,” the first-class said.
“You heard the last announcement.”
“If you’re going, I’m going.”
“Okay.” The warrant officer lifted the lever that rotated the dogs and cracked the door open. He could see the side of the truck a few feet away. It was parked pointing toward the choppers on the angle and there were no planes in front of it. There never were. He snapped off the lights in the compartment with the switch by the door, took a deep lungful of the night sea wind, then pushed the door open and slipped through. The first-class petty officer was right behind him.
Gunny Garcia heard the helicopter engines running as he climbed the ladder into the island, the very same ladder that the gooks had thrown the grenades down, the ones that got Vehmeier and Garcia’s marines. The bodies were gone from the passageway at the bottom, though the blood and shrapnel had not been cleaned up. The blood
