steel plates blistered through the fire retardant gear. He could feel the skin along his leg where he landed starting to stick to the fabric. Beaman let out a scream, then shoved himself up and away from the deck, drawing on reserves of energy he wouldn’t have guess that he had.
“Too close!” Beaman could make out the words that the investigator mouthed, unable to hear over the noise.
Too close. Too damned close. Beaman shook his head, clearing away the fog that threatened to consume his consciousness. Get himself killed, pass out or something, and he’d put the whole team at risk trying to come after him.
He nodded to let the messenger know he understood, then motioned them forward. They resumed their achingly slow progress around the fire, inching forward in the near-complete darkness.
Another two steps, and Beaman felt the heat start to decrease drastically. Was it possible — yes, by God. Through the veil of partially combusted missile fuel, burning bits of debris, he could see the open hangar bay doors. Outside, the gale raged, the wind blowing parallel to the length of the ship, sucking the smoke outside and creating a draft on the entire hangar bay.
But how could they contain the fire already raging inside? If only there were some way to channel the force of the storm into the hangar bay, let Mother Nature’s rain dowse the flames, cool the inferno to a point that the man-made fire fighting systems had a chance to beat it out?
Could they push it overboard? Sure, if they were up on the flight deck with yellow gear and Tilly, the flight deck crane that was used to hoist burning aircraft over the side. But down here?
Wait. It just might be possible — he stepped back farther from the flames, felt the air inside his suit start to cool slightly. He lifted the walkie-talkie to his masked face and started shouting.
“He wants to
“Turn abeam to the wind, Admiral,” Coyote said. “Open the hangar bay doors on both sides. According to DCC, it might just work.”
“What idiot is down in Damage Control Central?” Batman snapped. “This is lunacy — the last thing we need is to feed more oxygen in to the fire. All that’s going to do is spread it and gut this air craft carrier like a — like a — ” Batman spluttered to a stop, and Coyote leaped into the silence.
“I think it will work, Admiral. Frankly, with fires topside and in the hangar bay, it’s our only chance. We can fight one, maybe both for a while. But not much longer if we have any chance of ever using the flight deck again. It’s going to buckle — and that will be the least of it.” He pointed at the damage control schematic of the ship. “Another five minutes, and it’s going to get to the catapults. Then you can kiss that flight deck good-bye for good.”
Batman was silent for a moment. Then he said, “What about the men on the deck? We’ve lost internal communications with Repair Eight. The wind shifts and it’ll foul their plan of attack completely.”
“Messengers,” Coyote said. “In the end, it’ll help them, too. They’re going to have to push that flaming mass of metal over the side one way or another, and right now they’re working at cross angles to the wind. We turn, we give them a tail wind.”
“Dangerous.”
“It always is.”
Batman stared down at the flight deck, watching the coordinated chaos that represented one of the finest fire fighting actions he’d ever seen anywhere, in training films, in drills, in actual videotapes of disasters. The missiles that had hit the flight deck had come in at a low angle. One had plowed through four helos parked aft, another had taken out two E-2 Hawkeyes parked next to the island. He shuddered as he studied that particular hit. Another twenty feet and the missile would have snapped the tower right off the ship.
Finally, Batman said, “Do it. But don’t kill anyone in the process.”
“Okay, stand by,” the team leader shouted. “Hosemen, get over to the other side and get the windward hangar door open. It’ll take them about two minutes to get us abeam of the wind.” The team leader looked over at Beaman. “I hope to hell you’re right about this. DCC thinks you are.”
Beaman tried to speak, but all he could manage was a hoarse croak. Pain rattled down his throat as scorched tissue protested. The corpsman leaned over him and pressed a canteen of water into his hand. “Drink a little more — you’re headed down to sick bay, man.”
Beaman struggled to his feet and tried to shove the corpsman away. He took another slug of water in, rolled it around in his mouth and let it seep into the damaged tissue. Finally, he felt the tightness in his throat start to ease up. “Not yet,” he whispered. “I have to see if it works.”
The corpsman grabbed him by the arm and tried to pull him over toward a transport litter. “Going down to triage
The team leader stepped between the two of them, breaking the corpsman’s hold on Beaman’s arm. “Not yet. He earned this.” A hard, shuddering, grating vibration ran up through the soles of their feet, and all three turned to stare at the hangar bay doors slowing inching back along their tracks. The world outside was solid gray, and sheets of rain were already pelting the remaining gear inside the hangar bay. Water slashed across the vastness of the hangar bay, flashing into steam as it hit the still raging fire. The howl of the fire competed with the hiss of steam and the keening of the wind through the four-foot gap in the beam of the ship.
“More. All the way,” the team leader said into his walkie-talkie.
Beaman broke away from the rest of them and walked unsteadily toward the massive, three-story metal doors. He heard a shouted curse, then the corpsman joined him, steadying him by holding one elbow as they moved as quickly as they could across the open bay. They fell in side by side along the line of men and women straining to move the massive bulk of the hangar doors.
Beaman found a handhold and felt a moment of despair at that massive inertia with which the steel doors resisted the best efforts of the team. The doors inched back achingly slow, grinding and squealing inch by inch over the greased tracks upon which they rode.
Then something gave. Almost imperceptibly, the doors picked up speed, increasing the thin slit window open to the weather outside.
The difference was noticeable almost immediately. The wind picked up, battering at the flames, driving them out of the open doors on the opposite side of the hangar. The fire licked hungrily at the edge of the deck above and the low catwalk that surrounded the flight deck. Beaman saw a canister life raft sway unsteadily as the flames reach it. First one support line gave way, then the second. The canister tumbled down into the fire, and as the plastic seal around it gave way, it gouted forth the eerie shape of an automatically inflating life raft. It seemed to float for a moment on top of the burning hot air, tossed upside down by the draft, and then the tough plastic vaporized in the flames. Beaman saw one small fragment spiraling in the updraft before the wind forced it out the other side of the ship.
“It’s working,” the team leader shouted. “Come on now — put your back into it!” Each person redoubled his efforts, pushing muscle and sinew past the point of pain, welding their flesh with that of the ship they sought to save.
“I see it,” Beaman shouted. “Grissom, I see the boundary of it.” He dropped his hold on the door, now sliding easily along its track, and raced forward to the fire. He stopped just twenty feet away, the hard pounding rain and wind almost driving him forward into the inferno involuntarily. He turned back to the team leader. “We need some shoring timbers, then some flat sheets of metal. And yellow gear.”
“You think it will work?” Grissom asked.
Beaman nodded. “The wind is driving the smoke away from us, the rain’s acting like a fogger, and we got fresh air coming in. Come on, we got to get it off the deck
Within moments, the damage control team had a makeshift tractor rigged on the front of the yellow gear. “I got it,” Beaman said and stepped forward to take the driver’s seat.
“No way.” This time, the corpsman locked his arm around Beaman’s neck and pulled him back. Beaman felt pain flash in his upper arm, then looked up at the corpsman. The man’s features were fuzzy — and there was something about a fire, some reason Beaman had to stay awake, had to, had to get to the — With the urgency beating his brain, Beaman slid to the deck, unconscious.
The corpsman held up the empty syringe. “Morphine. It’ll do it every time,” he said aloud.
