Final Flight

smears were black now, and the place reeked of smoke.

Garcia had had his troubles wending his way through the gutted area of the O-3 level. The sailors still had hoses and power cables everywhere and the only lights were emergency lanterns. The stench was terrible. It was the overpowering odor of burnt rubber and fried meat.

Now, as he heard the chopper engines, his resolve gave way to apprehension. He might well be too late.

He checked the door to Flight Deck Control as he tiptoed to the ladder upward. The three gooks were right where they had fallen. Leggett was nowhere in sight. Garcia continued up the ladder.

On the third level he heard someone coming down from above. He waited grimly, the Remington leveled.

The first thing he saw was the man’s shoes, black boondockers, then bell-bottom jeans, then the gym bag and the Uzi. He pulled the trigger on the Remington.

The man tumbled and fell at his feet. He was holding his crotch and screaming. Garcia worked the bolt on his rifle and waited. Apparently this one was alone. He stepped over to the man. The.308 slug had hit him in the pelvis. “That’s a nasty wound you got there, fellow,” Garcia said and shot him in the head. The head disintegrated. The gunnery sergeant worked the bolt again, then climbed on up the ladder.

* * *

Each of the seven weapons was on its own dolly, a little fourwheeled yellow cart with a swiveling tongue that turned the front wheels. One man pushed each cart backward down the deck.

Qazi had one of the weapons, the one with the timer already installed, halted abeam the island. He then handcuffed Admiral Parker to the cart. “As you have probably suspected, Admiral, the triggering device bypasses all the weapon’s built-in safeguards. It contains its own battery and can initiate the firing sequence.” Qazi held up a small metal box and continued, speaking over the noise of the helicopter engines, “I can activate the trigger with one push on this button. And I will push this button, if …” He turned and watched the sentries lift two weapons, still on their dollies, into each helicopter.

Standing beside them, Ali removed a small two-way radio from a holster in his belt and spoke into it.

Qazi turned back to Parker. “There is going to be some shooting here on deck in a moment. That’s unavoidable. It is necessary that we disable the planes on the flight deck so that your people cannot follow us once they decide we are beyond the range where we could trigger this device. I hope you realize that, in a way, disabling these aircraft is an act of good faith on my part. I certainly hope that we’re allowed to depart unmolested and I don’t have to push this button. Because I will destroy this ship if I have to, Admiral, so help me God. Do you understand?”

As usual, Earl Parker’s face was impassive. He had been watching the bombs being loaded into the helicopters, and hearing the question he glanced at Qazi, then turned his eyes back to the idling machines.

The gunmen who had been in Flight Deck Control ran past them, heading for the helicopters. The woman was helping the fat man in civilian clothes, the weapons expert, into the chopper parked the furthest forward on the angle, the lead machine.

“So long, Admiral,” Qazi said and turned away. He and Ali walked briskly toward the lead machine as the sentries fanned out toward the bow and the stern. Almost in unison, they pulled pins from grenades and threw them into the parked aircraft. Then they opened fire with their Uzis.

* * *

“Grenades!”

The senior marine, a sergeant, shouted the warning and fell flat upon the deck. Jake Grafton, Chief Archer, and the rest of the marines did the same.

Jake heard the sound of one of the grenades striking a nearby aircraft, then the boom of an explosion. A group of explosions followed, too close together to count.

The shrapnel and bullets sounded like hail on a tin roof as they tore into the fuselages of the nearby planes. Jake looked up the deck. He could see the gunmen and the flashes of their submachine guns. More grenades came raining in.

* * *

“What’s going on, Ski?” Pak demanded. He and the others were watching the activity on the television monitor, but Kowalski’s view was not limited to what the camera was seeing.

“They’re shooting the shit outta everything. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

Kowalski had hoped to wait until the gunmen were in the helicopter, to ensure they didn’t come looking for his unarmed catapult crew, but this was ridiculous.

“Okay, raise it up … now!”

The helicopter sitting on number-four JBD pitched forward amid flying sparks as its rotors dug into the steel deck. The giant jet blast deflector had risen from the deck on its forward hinge as if the weight of the helicopter weren’t there.

The rotors disintegrated. Gunmen fell and sparks flew everywhere as shards of the rotors impacted steel and tore into human flesh. At least one of the gunmen dropped a live grenade and it exploded beside him with a flash.

“JBD down!”

The helicopter collapsed back onto its wheels. Its engines screamed as they overrevved without the load of the rotors.

“JBD up!”

This time the blast deflector turned the chopper over onto its nose. The machine teetered there, then continued over onto its back and caught fire. Flying debris struck the tail rotor of the next helicopter forward and broke it off.

Kowalski heard shouting and laughter in his ears. The guys in the control room were hysterical and Pak had his mike button depressed. “We did it,” he screamed at the cat captain in the bubble. “We did it!”

The fuel tank in the wrecked helicopter ignited explosively in a yellowish orange whoosh and pieces of the machine showered the deck.

* * *

Gunny Garcia stepped out onto Vulture’s Row and looked down onto the flight deck. The burning chopper cast a brilliant light on the scene. He wasn’t too late! With trembling hands he twisted the parallax ring on the sniperscope to its closest setting and adjusted the magnification ring as he scanned the scene below. Gunmen were shooting into the planes and throwing grenades. He swung the rifle onto a man on his feet near the fire and tried to steady the cross hairs.

The cross hairs danced uncontrollably. He rested the rifle on the rail in front of him and took a short deep breath, then squeezed off a shot. The man collapsed.

Garcia chambered another round.

He had shot three of them when the yellow flight-deck crash truck came bolting from its parking place behind the island, its engine at full throttle audible even above the noise of the chopper engines. There was a man on the nozzle on top of the cab and he had the water-foam mixture spouting fifty feet in front of the truck. The man spun the nozzle and one of the gunmen was blasted off his feet by the water stream. The truck roared across the deck, straight for the helicopter at the head of the angle.

There was a man in front of the chopper, shooting at the truck. Garcia got him in the telescopic sight and jerked off a round. The man went over backward. Muzzle flashes came from the open door in the side of the helicopter. Garcia aimed into the flashes and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The rifle was empty. The truck swerved, its left front tire peeling from the rim.

The fire-truck engine was roaring like an enraged lion as the machine careened left and crashed into the second helicopter in line. The truck slowed, but now the chopper was skidding sideways toward the rail. The chopper’s mainmounts struck the flight deck rail and it tilted. Smoke poured from the truck’s rear tires. Then the chopper went over the side and the cab of the truck bucked up as the front wheels struck the rail and it followed the helicopter toward the sea, its engine still at full throttle.

Bullets slapped the steel beside Garcia. He crouched behind the rail coaming and feverishly fed more shells