Damage Control by Gordon Kent Read Free Book Online Page B

forward part of the bridge started to warp and collapse. He must have been moving the admiral by then. Things were missing—time, space, fire, pain. It was as if the last hour was a movie, and all he had was the promos.
    He put a hand to his head and hair came away, burned. His face felt as if he had a bad sunburn. He shook his head inside the respirator mask.
    Who was next in command?
    Figure the CAG as dead, burned in his cockpit, or ejecting into the water and thus unavailable. The boat’s skipper was dead. That left the flag captain, the navigator, and the engineer, all captains. The flag captain ought to be down on the O-3 level in the flag spaces, where Madje had planned to move Admiral Rafehausen. Seemed like a good place to start. He shone a flashlight down the ladder well through the smoke.
Where had he got a flashlight?
    “Looks clear,” he shouted through the hatch.
    “Lead the way, sir. We’ll bring the admiral.”
    A blast from outside the tower rocked it, moved it byseveral inches and distorted the bulkhead to his left. He touched it cautiously and it burned him.
    “Down! Now! Quick as you can! This wall is hot! Go, go!”
    They ran and fell and fought down the steel ladder, around a platform and down again, with wrenching noises above them and a roaring like a jet engine. Madje knew that the flight deck was just the other side of
this
hatch, and he could see from the distortion all along the wall that the other side was exposed to extreme temperature. The heat came through the respirator, burned his face again and scorched his hands.
    When this wall burned through, the tower would collapse. The structural beams visible on the vertical surface were spalding, huge flakes of hot metal shooting off them in response to impacts from elsewhere. For the first time, it occurred to Madje that the carrier might not recover.
Radio India
    “We interrupt the regularly scheduled program for a special bulletin. Residents of the city of Mahe report the sound of explosions and what they describe as ‘rapid gunfire’ from the nearby Mahe Naval Base. Radio India is trying to establish contact with the local naval headquarters. Elsewhere in the nation, two incidents of what also appears to be fighting have occurred, one in Pondicherry, one in the far north of Uttar Pradesh state. A government spokesman denied that any such thing was occurring and pooh-poohed the idea of terrorism. A spokesman told this reporter that, quote, ‘Military fire practice rounds here all the time.’ Amal Gupta, Delhi.”
USS
Thomas Jefferson
    Madje followed the stretcher-bearers down the ladder to the O-2 level, below the flight deck. It was full of smoke, it was hot as hell, and there was already water up to their ankles. His arms and back were hurting through the adrenaline from the effort of carrying the helmsman.
    “Shit!” the lead man on the stretcher shouted. “We sinkin’?”
    “Fire hoses!” Madje shouted. “Move! Move!”
    Around another platform, through another hatch and down to O-3. Water was pouring through the ladder well, all run-off from the fire hoses fighting the fires in the corridor above. A sailor in a respirator was standing at the bottom of the ladder.
    “Where you boys coming from?” he said harshly. Close up, Madje could see he was a Chief Petty Officer.
    “That’s Admiral Rafehausen, hurt bad. The guy over my shoulder’s the helmsman from the bridge. I’m Lieutenant Madje.”
    The CPO looked as if he might let Madje off this time. “Get t’admiral forward. Doc has Ready Room Two for casualties. Then get your asses up to Chief White forward. Sir, I have to ask you to join a fire team.”
    “Chief, I have a last order from the admiral. Then I’ll be back.”
    Even through the respirator, Madje could read the chief’s contempt, as if officers could be expected to find excuses to avoid firefighting. Maybe they could. Madje followed the stretcher down the starboard passageway to Ready Room Two, passed the