Final Flight (32 page)

No strength. The blow was weak. His legs were
buckling. The marine summoned every last ounce of
strength and hit the man again in the face, swinging with his
weight behind the blow. The man slid backward off the
canister and disappeared, falling toward the sea.

Van Housen collapsed on the catwalk grid.
His sound-powered adset had come off in the fight. He
felt his stomach. His hand was warm and black and wet.
Blood!

He was fainting. He lowered his head to the grid
to stay conscious and felt for the headset. He pulled
it toward him and m4 for the mike button. “This is
gun one. Then he passed out. He was unconscious
when another sailor wearing a sweater with a pistol in
his hand emerged from between the anes on the flight deck and
stood looking down into the catlk.

Lance Corporal Van Housen never felt the
next bullet, which killed him.

Admiral Parker was wearing white uniform
trousers and a T-shirt.

Apparently he had just pulled the trousers on after
his orderly woke him. Jake told him about the
incident at the Vittorio, and Judith Farrell
and Toad Tarkington’s involvement.

“Hell yes, I’ll release a flash
message. You briefed Captain James on this
yet?”

“Not yet, sir. I just heard this from Tarkington
and the captain’s busy with the man overboard.”

“The captain called me just before you knocked. One
man’s still in the water and one’s on his way to sick
bay, half dead.” Parker turned to his aide,
Lieutenant Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Snyder. “Get my clothes, Duke. It’s time
we went up to the bridge.” As he dressed the
admiral told Jake, “Tonight’s Shore Patrol
officer has been found dead on the quay. Neck
broken.”

“What?” Jake said. “Murdered.”

“Where?”

“Right in the Shore Patrol office. He was
found just a few minutes ago.

Jake Grafton seized the arms of his chair and
leaned forward.

“Lieutenant Flynn?”

“Yes.”

“I saw him go toward the office just before I
boarded the mike boat to come out to the ship. He went
down there with a chief who was on Shore Patrol
duty tonight. The chief came back down the quay
alone and rode to the ship on the boat with me. He’s
aboard.”

fore? Know his name?” Jake tried to remember.
“Duncan? No… Dustin, I think. Dustin.
And I can’t recall ever seeing him before.”

The admiral finished lacing his shoes, straightened
and started for the door. Jake and Duke Snyder
followed him. “Here we sit,” the admiral
muttered, “three miles from the beach on the most
valuable target in southern Italy. And we may
already have an intruder aboard.”

“Or more than one, Jake said, recalling the
unusual number of drunks on the boat this evening
and the confusion on the fantail when the two men went
into the water.

Colonel Qazi charged up a ladder on the
starboard side of the ship with his two men carrying gym
bags right at his heels. At the top of the ladder
well, on the 0-3 level, they turned
inboard to the long passageway that ran the length of the
ship on the starboard side. Although this was one of the two
main thoroughfares on this deck, it was narrow. Men
could pass each other shoulder shoulder in the
corridor, but the knee-knockers were only wide enough
for one man at a time to pass through. Qazi consulted
the numbers on the little brass plaques near the
doors of the compartments as he walked past. He knew
the numbering system, but he couldn’t readily
visualize just where he was from reading the numbers.

For the first time tonight Qazi knew a touch of panic.
these passageways all looked the same, narrow and
full of ninety-degree turns. The place was a
maze, a labyrinth of walls and doors and
passageways that led off in every direction but the
proper one. When the watertight doors swung
shut, he would have to move his way from space to space
and he would never know just where he was or where he was going.
He would be trapped like a that.

He touched the arm of a sailor walking aft.
“I’m new aboard. How do I get to the
communication spaces?”

“Port side, Chief.” The sailor gestured
toward a passageway that led off to the left,
presumably to join with the port-side
passageway that paralleled this one. “And forward
maybe fifty frames. There’s a window to pass
messages through. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.” The sailor hurried away. Qazi
and his men strode down the indicated passageway.

They were in luck. Just beside the window where the clerks
accepted messages for transmission, there was a
security door which was locked and unlocked by an
access device mounted head-high on the bulkhead.
The access device had a keyboard to which those who
sought entrance tapped a code, which changed weekly.
And as Qazi approached, a sailor was tapping on
the keys, which were hidden from an observer’s view by a
black lip which surrounded the keyboard.

The sailor started through the security door just as
Qazi reached him and planted his shoulder in the man’s
back. They crashed through the door together, the two
gunmen right behind, extracting their Uzis from their gym
bags. Black security curtains screened the
doorway from the rest of the compartment. Qazi pushed his
man through the drapes into the room and Jamail and
Haddad, the gunmen following, stepped clear to each
side and opened fire. The silenced weapons made
a ripping noise.

Spent shells spewed from the ejection ports. The
sailor who had preceded Qazi spun toward him,
and the colonel grabbed his head and broke his neck.

The other five Americans in the compartment died under
the hail of bullets.

The office spaces were lit in white light, in
contrast to the red light which had illuminated the ladders
and passageways. As their eyes adjusted, the
gunmen ran deeper into the communications complex, using
their weapons on the four other sailors they found
there. Qazi went into the equipment room. Banks of
panels with dials and gauges and knobs covered the
walls. Or did they? There seemed to be lights
behind this equipment. Over there was a passage. Perhaps
the power cables came in back there. That communications
technician Ali had interrogated, what had he
said?

Qazi stepped through the gap in the seven-foot-high
gray boxes.

He saw the fist and the wrench swinging just in time, and
ducked as the wrench smashed into the panel beside him.

The man wielding it was young. Young and black and
scared. And quick.

He had the wrench swinging again before Qazi could
react. The colonel tried to fall, and the
wrench struck his head a glancing blow.

He was on the floor, dazed, and the sailor was on
his chest, pinning his arms with his legs, drawing back the
wrench for the coup de grace, his lips stretched back
exposing his teeth, the cords in his neck as taut as
wires.

Qazi heard a pop and blood spurted from the
side of the American’s head.

The corpse collapsed on top of him. The
wrench rang as it hit the linoleum-covered deck.

Jamail rolled the body away. Qazi tried
to rise. God, not this!

“Quickly,” he tried to say, his tongue thick.
He gestured vaguely at Jamail, who nodded and
left him there, struggling to rise from the sitting
position.

Jamail and Haddad had almost completed the task
of setting the charges when Qazi had the cobwebs
sufficiently cleared to stand upright and walk out into the
equipment room. “Put one on the electrical
cables under the raised area of the floor,” Qazi
told hem, “back there.” He pointed behind the
panels. Haddad eized his gym bag and disappeared
into the gap from which Qazi ad just come. The colonel
inspected the timer on the charge against the
power-distribution panel. It was readily apparent
what his panel was, because he had opened the metal
doors to expose all the switches and connectors.
And he had properly remembered the magnesium
flare, which would ignite thirty seconds after the main
explosion. Satisfactory. “What the fuck?”

The exclamation came from the office, the first compartment
they had come through. Jamail heard it too and charged in
that direction, his Uzi ready. Qazi was right behind.
The officer in khakis went down under Jamail’s
bullets. As he ell, the security curtains
fluttered and Qazi heard the sound of the passageway
door being jerked open. Jamail pumped a short
burst into the curtains.

“Intruders in the comm spaces! Intruders…”
The door clicked shut and the rest of the shout was lost.
“Quick! Let’s finish. Arm the fuses and let’s
go.” Fifteen seconds later the three men stood
by the door and arranged the straps of their gym bags
over their shoulders. Jamail and Haddad put new
magazines into their Uzis. “Jamail, you will lead us
out. Clear the passageway left. Hadad, clear
it right. Then I will lead you forward-that’s to the
flight-to the first passageway turning left, which will
take us out of the ship onto the catwalk and
up to the flight deck. Let’s go. Qazi nodded and
Haddad pulled the curtains aside and opened the
door. Jamail went through low. He opened fire as
Haddad and azi followed him.

In the red-lit corridor a small knot of men
were gathered fifty feet aft, most of them facing in
this direction. As the Uzi sprayed men dove
into open doorways or collapsed onto the deck.
Qazi covered the twenty feet to the outboard
passageway and turned the corner when the muffled
bursts finally ceased. “The bastard,” he swore
viciously as he ran. Jamail used a whole
mage on them-unarmed men. He enjoys this!

The passageway turned left, then right, and ended
at a doggeddown watertight door. Qazi grabbed
the one handle that was mechanically linked to all eight
of the dogs and lifted. Each of the eight dogs
rotated ninety degrees. Haddad pushed at the
door. All three men were through the opening and Jamail
was closing the door when the concussion from the explosions
in the communications spaces hammered the deck and
bulkheads. The heavy door flew out on its hinges
and smacked ag/jamail. He picked himself up and,
with Haddad, dogged it shut.

The wind was fierce here under the catwalk.
Through the grid, Qazi could see the streaks in the
black sea from the foaming whitecaps. He waited
as his eyes adjusted fully to the darkness. So far so
good.

Phase one almost complete.

The ship’s public-address system came
to life. A speaker was located on the catwalk just
above them. They heard the hum and hiss, then a
Klaxon began to wail. The volume was deafening,
probably so the announcements could be heard all
over the flight deck. Qazi inserted his fingers in his
ears. When the Klaxon stopped, a voice came
on, equally loud: “General quarters, general
quarters. All hands man your battle stations. This
is not a drill.

General quarters, general quarters. Go up and
forward on the starboard side and down and aft on the
port side. This is not a drill.” The Klaxon
resumed its wail, then died abruptly. Even here
on the catwalk, Qazi could feel the steel grid
under his feet vibrate from the harmonics induced
by thousands of running feet.

Time was running out. In three minutes every
watertight door and hatch on the ship would be ordered
shut. And even now the ship’s quick-reaction
team-a squad of armed marines-would be on its way
to the bridge to protect the captain. He had to get
there first.

Qazi led the way up the ladder to the catwalk and
up the next ladder onto the flight deck.

Jake Grafton, Rear Admiral Parker, and
Captain James were huddled around the captain’s
chair on the bridge when they felt the shock of the
explosion in the communications compartment. High up here
in the island it was just a dull thud that jolted the steel
deck. A man was on the phone reporting intruders
in the comm spaces when the explosion occurred.

“Sound general quarters. Then call away the
nucleus fire party and set Circle
William,” the captain told the OOD, who
repeated he order to the bosun’s mate of the watch,
who announced it on he ship’s loudspeaker. The
nucleus fire party was a group of damage-control
specialists who normally responded to fire
reorts when the ship’s watertight hatches were not
closed. They were the most highly trained firemen on
the ship, so the captain wanted to use them if
possible. The Circle William order was
critical to containing the smoke and fumes from a fire.
Closure of hatches labeled with a W
inside a red circle-Circle William-would
seal off the ship’s air-circulating system,
preventing smoke and poisonous fumes generated by a
fire from being pumped hroughout the ship.

“Sir,” the OOD reported, “No one
answers the squawk box or telephone in the comm
spaces.

Laird James reached for the microphone of the
ship’s public ddress system. “What are you
going to say?” Parker asked. “I’m going to tell the
crew what’s going on.”

“Remember, the intruders can hear you.

James nodded and keyed the mike. “This is the
captain. We ave just had an explosion in the
communications spaces on the com3 level.
Apparently we have at least one group of intruders
board this ship. Perhaps more that one group. They are
armed. Some of your shipmates have apparently already
died.” He released the mike button and looked
at Parker. “My men don’t have guns.

Parker’s lips tightened into a grim line.
“Don’t let them die for othing.”

James keyed the mike again. “Avoid direct
confrontation with the terrorists, yet resist the best
way you can. Keep the bridge and C
Central informed.” He paused again and stared for a
moment nto the blackness of the night sea. “You men
are American ailors. I expect each of you to do
his duty. That is all.” James punched the
button on a squawk box, an intercom system,
labeled “CDC.”