into the rifle.
The engines of the only helicopter left, the one at the head of the angle, were winding up to takeoff power. The roar deepened as the pilot lifted the collective and the rotors bit into the air.
Garcia slammed the bolt closed and came up swinging the rifle for the cockpit. He got the cross hairs onto the pilot of the chopper…. Something smashed into his left shoulder, jerking the rifle off-target just as he pulled the trigger. He tried to hold the rifle with his left hand and work the bolt with his right, but his left wouldn’t work. The chopper lifted from the deck and began traveling forward, toward the edge of the angled deck.
More bullets slapped into the steel near him. His left arm wouldn’t work right. Then he lost the rifle; it fell away toward the deck below.
Enraged, he watched the helicopter clear the edge of the flight deck and fade into the darkness. Garcia sank down behind the coaming and sobbed.
Jake Grafton sprinted up the deck as bullets zipped around him and the roars of M-16s on full automatic filled his ears. He ran toward the weapon on the dolly in front of the E-2 Hawkeyes parked tail-in to the island. A man in whites lay by the dolly.
Senior Chief Archer reached the bomb even as Jake did. Archer began examining the weapon with a flashlight as Jake knelt by the admiral. Blood oozed from a dozen wounds in his torso and legs. Shrapnel from the helicopter rotor blades or a grenade.
“Admiral? Cowboy? It’s Jake. Can you hear me?”
Behind Jake, the last of the gunmen were going down as the flames from the burning chopper rose higher and higher into the night.
Parker’s eyes and lips were moving. Jake bent down, trying to hear.
“Jake …”
“Yeah. It’s me, Cowboy.”
Parker’s eyes focused. “Don’t let him get away, Jake.” His hand grasped the front of Jake’s shirt and he pulled him down. “Don’t let him get away. Stop …” Parker coughed blood.
“You know me, Cowboy. We’ll get ’em.”
Parker was drowning in his own blood. He was coughing and choking and trying to talk. In a supreme effort he got air in, then, “Don’t let him use those weapons …” He gagged and his body bucked as his lungs fought for air. Jake held on as the convulsions racked him.
Finally Parker’s body went limp.
“I don’t know, CAG.” It was Archer. He was looking at the trigger. “I just dunno. It’s definitely got a radio receiver built in, and somebody built this that knew a hell of a lot, but I’m damned if I can figure what will happen if I cut this wire here.” He pointed.
Jake grabbed the bolt-cutter from the deck where Archer had dropped it and used it on the handcuffs that held Parker’s wrist to the dolly.
Jake dropped the big tool and seized the tongue of the dolly. The brake was automatically released when he lifted it. He began to pull the dolly.
“What are you gonna do?” Archer asked.
“Over the side. The radio receiver won’t work underwater, and maybe the water will short out this trigger thing.”
Archer joined him on the other side of the tongue. They began to trot. “Not too fast,” Archer warned, “or this thing’ll tip over.”
They pulled it around the front of the island toward the starboard rail. “This thing may go off when it hits the water,” Archer said.
“We’ll have to risk it. We’re out of time.”
There’s a bomb chute somewhere here on the starboard side of the island, Jake remembered. There! He turned the dolly around and backed it toward the chute, which was a metal ramp with lips that extended downward at an angle over the catwalk and ended out in space.
The rear wheels of the dolly went in and then the front and it started to roll. It fell away toward the sea. Jake Grafton turned his face and closed his eyes. If it blew, he would never even feel it.
His heart pounded. Every thump in his chest was another half second of life. Oh, Callie, I love you so….
When he finally realized there would be no explosion, he tried to walk and his legs wouldn’t work. He fell to the deck and rolled over on his back. Slowly, slowly he sat up. Archer was sitting on the deck near him with his face in his hands.
Qazi crossed from the open right-side door of the helicopter to the bucket seats that lined the other bulkhead. He had been watching the lights of the carrier recede into the gloom.
“How far away are we?” Ali shouted, barely making himself heard over the engine noise. “When we get to eight miles …”
Qazi handed him the radio triggering box. Ali used the telephone by the door to speak to the pilots, then held his watch under the small lamp near the phone, one of three small lights that kept the interior from total darkness. He stepped to the door and leaned out into the slipstream, looking aft.
Noora and Jarvis were huddled in the corner. Noora had Jarvis’s head cradled on her breast and was rocking softly from side to side. Jarvis’s face was down and Qazi could only see the top of his head.
On Qazi’s right, three of the gunmen sat with their weapons between their knees and their heads back against the bulkhead, their eyes closed and their faces slack. They looked totally exhausted. These three had managed to scramble aboard as the flight-deck crash truck charged them, then turned in the door and emptied their weapons at the truck. They were the only survivors of the thirty-six men Qazi had taken to the ship.
Yet he had two bombs. The skins of the weapons were white and reflected the glow of the little light over the telephone near the door. Ali was still leaning out into the slipstream. He pulled himself inside, checked his watch, and grinned at Qazi. He braced himself against the bulkhead and manipulated the controls on the box.
Nothing happened. He tried again with a frown on his face. He leaned out the door with the box in his hand and pointed it aft at the carrier.
Ali hurled the control box at Qazi, who didn’t flinch as it bounced off the padded bulkhead and fell to the floor. “Traitor,” Ali screamed as he grabbed for his pistol.
Qazi shot him. Once, twice, three times with the silenced Hi-Power. He could feel the recoil, but the high ambient noise level covered the pistol’s muffled pops.
Ali sagged backward through the door. The slipstream caught him and his hand flailed, then he was gone.
The gunmen didn’t move. Noora continued to rock back and forth with her eyes closed, her arms around Jarvis.
Colonel Qazi slowly put the pistol back into his trouser waistband. He zipped up the leather jacket he was wearing. It was chilly here. He stuffed his hands into the jacket pockets and stared at the white weapons.
27
Laird James was in a coma when Jake checked on him in sick bay. An IV bottle of whole blood hung on a hook beside the bed, and two corpsmen were preparing him for the operating room. The blue oxygen mask over his nose and mouth made the rest of his face look white as chalk.
“Is he going to make it?” Jake asked the corpsmen, who didn’t look up.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. Bullet through his liver. His heart stopped once and we gave it a kick-start.”
Jake turned and went back through the ward, looking at the burn, gunshot, and smoke victims. There were more patients than beds and some of the men lay on blankets on the deck. Most were conscious, a few were sleeping, and here and there several were delirious.
One man was handcuffed to his bed. A marine wearing a duty belt with a pistol sat on a molded plastic chair near the bed, facing the prisoner. The man in the bed looked at Jake, then looked away. Jake picked up the
