The Edge of Honor (76 page)

Stunned by the force of that second impact, he knew immediately that the ship had been hit, and hit hard. A terrified young radarman was shouting to him as the interior lights failed in the captain’s cabin passageway.

“What?”

“Chief, I’m supposed to get the Old Man up to Combat.

I can’t wake him, and his door’s locked. What do I do?” The kid was badly frightened.

“Go on back to Combat; tell your chief. Move it!”

The young radarman practically climbed over him in his haste to get up the ladder, and now, as the ship began to slow down and more lighting circuits and the ventilation failed, the GQ alarm finally sounded.

“Right, a fucking day late and a dollar short,” Jackson yelled to no one. There was a long blast of high-pressure steam from the after stack; the first tendrils of smoke wrapped around his face as he stood at the base of the ladder. Smoke. Hell, there was no point in going to the bridge now, he had to find the source of that smoke and start to do his GQ job of getting people clear if that shit was inside the ship. He turned around and jumped back down the ladder, heading for Broadway. As he came out into the wardroom passageway, there were no signs of smoke or fire in the immediate area. But that had been a big, deep hit, back aft on the port side. He knew instinctively that there would be fire and smoke, lots of smoke, back there somewhere, so the first order of business was to get to his stash of EEBDs. The EEBDs, emergency escape breathing devices, were a combination of a clear plastic hood and a steel cylinder the size of a road flare.

To wear it, one pulled the bag over his head, tightened the collar string, and then pulled a lanyard on the cylinder, releasing a measured flow of compressed air. They were good for about five to eight minutes of clean air, typically long enough to escape from inside a smoke-filled ship to one of the weather decks.

By the time he had reached his office on Broadway, black oil-fire smoke was beginning to seep up the passageway from the area of the mess decks.

The lights were out, but there were several battle lanterns positioned on Broadway and a steady stream of men hustled both forward and aft along Broadway, on their way to GQ stations or their damage-control lockers. Jackson saw Martinez go by, headed aft, an OBA already strapped on. The boatswain appeared to be heading for the after part of the ship.

He looked like a khaki-clad battleship steaming down the passageway, throwing up a wake of sailors trying to get out of his way.

Jackson unlocked his office and, by the light of the single battle lantern, retrieved his canvas bag of EEBDs.

He stuffed six of the cylindrical packets into various pockets and carried one in his hand. He grabbed a spare flashlight from the rack of flashlights mounted on a bulkhead and jammed it into his belt. Out of habit, he closed the door and locked it. The other MAAs could get in if they had to: They all had keys. He headed aft with the diminishing crowd of damage-control people, toward the smoke.

RD1 Rockheart followed the battered parade of CIC watch slanders down the first ladder, making sure he was the last man in the line, behind Chief Hallowell and the two docs. He had to break loose, and he was desperately trying to figure out a way to do it. The baby doc had said the remains of the North Vietnamese jet had crashed amidships, flooding out Two Fire Room and doing a lot of damage to the spaces around the fire room, like the starboard shaft alley. All of his money was in that starboard shaft alley. He figured if he could get down there in the confusion, he could find his rag bag and salvage it before this goddamn boat sank or whatever it was going to do. Nearly twenty thousand dollars was in that bag.

As the surface supe, he had been completely out of the picture when the action broke loose over on the air side, preoccupied as he was with what should have been going down at the Lucky Bag. Holcomb’s shouted order to send a man down to wake the captain had been the first indication that it wasn’t just another Red Crown air-side flap, and the thunder of multiple missile launches had underscored that impression. He had been reaching for his steel helmet when the bomb had come through the bulkhead. Fortunately, he had been bending over, his head below the level of the DRT, when the bomb’s impact shattered the plotting surface, spewing glass all over the surface module. The two plotters had been cut to ribbons, but Rocky, ever the lucky guy, had picked himself up unscathed. He had quickly turned to help bandage the plotters, not looking into the EW module for several minutes until someone reported the bomb. When he finally glanced in there, he had very nearly puked at the blood, the only thing saving him being the sight of that big black thing lying there on the deck. The baby doc’s news that his hidey-hole might be in danger had galvanized him as the casualties and the damage could not. He had to get his money out of there. But first, he had to get there.

As the group of wounded and their helpers reached the 01 level by the wardroom doors, they encountered the smoke from the fires amidships, which was beginning to fill the interior passageways. Several of the men started coughing and choking. The smoke gave Rocky an idea.

He tapped the chief on the shoulder.

“You don’t need me to get these guys to the front porch,” he said. “The hatch to the weather decks is right there. I’m an MAA. I’m going to go aft, make sure all the stragglers are out of the interior. This smoke is getting pretty thick.”

The chief nodded as the first of his charges made it through the open weather decks hatch. “Yeah, do it.

Maybe find an OBA first, though. It’s only gonna get worse the farther aft you go.”

“Right, Chief.” Rocky waved them on through the hatch, dogged it down behind them, and then headed down one more ladder and turned toward Broadway. He had to bend almost double to find clear air down near the deck; it was really getting thick down here, complicated by the fact that all the overhead lights were out and the only illumination came from the battle lanterns, themselves shrouded in smoke. No way he could get his hands on one of the big oxygen-breathing apparatus used by the on-scene firefighters, but there were some of the EEBDs that Chief Jackson kept in his office. Rocky figured if he could get four or five of them, they would provide enough breathing time to penetrate into the ship to get his stash out of the shaft alley. The hoods had the added advantage of being semiopaque, so his face would be masked.

The smoke was noticeably thicker when Jackson reached the mess decks, although the source of the smoke did not seem to be on the mess decks themselves. The Repair Five damage-control team, which was responsible for covering the midships and the main propulsion spaces, had obviously manned up its locker and already gone to the scene of whatever the problem was, leaving behind a pile of equipment, a phone talker, and the plotter. Jackson went over to the plotter, an auxiliary-gang fireman.

The plotter’s job was to plot the status of damage-control efforts in the Repair Five area of responsibility on a multicolored diagram of the ship’s internal structure that showed every compartment, ladder, trunk, void, and their associated fire-main systems. He bent over the plotting board, where he translated the reports coming from the scene via the phone talker into symbols on the status board. He used a grease pencil to mark down fire and flooding boundaries and the symbols for fire, flooding, and smoke.

Being a chief, Jackson knew the symbols. The board revealed what they had: a fifteen-foot-wide hole in the port side, at the waterline, toward the back end of Number Two Fire Room. A maze of diagonal lines with a large F in a circle indicated that Number Two Fire Room was flooding out. There were also indications of flooding aft of the fire room, in a supply storage room on the third deck, and possibly in the starboard shaft alley. Fire and smoke symbols were marked on the main deck above the fire room and up along the port-side boat decks. Since Repair Five did not handle anything above the main deck, the bomb hit in Combat was not shown.

Jackson frowned. If the hit was in Number Two Fire Room, why was there all this smoke infiltrating the mess decks and surrounding areas? He grabbed a sound-powered phone handset, rolled the barrel switch to the bridge position, and cranked the hooter. A frightened-sounding voice responded, “Bridge.”

“This is Chief Jackson. I’m on the mess decks at Repair Five and I’m heading aft to look for stragglers.

Tell the exec.”

“XO ain’t here, Chief. Word we got is, he’s back aft somewheres, where that fuckin’ Mig hit us. They got a big-ass oil fire out on deck.”

“Mig?”

“Yeah. Word up here is that one a them Migs did a kamikaze number on us, put a bomb into Combat.”

“Holy shit! Okay—tell the Captain, then.”

“He ain’t here, either. Chief? They’re talkin’ about evacuatin’ Combat and the bridge area on accounta that bomb in there. OOD says it might go off anytime now.”

“Ah. I get it—you’ve got a ticker sitting in Combat.

Okay. I’m still going to do my sweep. Tell the OOD, he needs me, use the One ME. We’re getting a hell of a lot of smoke inside the ship.”

“Will do her.”

Jackson hung up the phone. Things were clearer now, although the atmosphere on the mess decks was going the other way. Repair Five was one of four stations on the circuit: Repair Two forward, Repair Three aft, and Damage Control Central, located on the third deck between the forward engine room and the after fire room, almost beneath the mess decks. He wondered briefly how long the Repair Five plotter and his talker would be able to keep their stations. Or DC Central, for that matter— the smoke was streaming in through the vents, even though they should have been shut off. That didn’t make sense either, although the source did: an airplane full of fuel had crashed aboard, like the Japanese used to do during Willy Willy Twice. What is it with these people?

he thought. You got a bomb in, what’s with all this suicide shit, anyway? Aviation fuel scattered all over the place, lots of fires, lots of holes, and even more smoke.

Smoke, that was the killer. His eyes were already stinging.

The kid trying to plot was wiping his eyes continuously.

“You guys, you got somewhere else to set up shop?

You’re gonna get smoked out of here.”

“Yeah, Chief,” the plotter said.

“We’re supposed to relocate to the oh-one level, starboard side, by the three inch fifty. There’s a DC phone jack up there.”

“You better do it to it; I’d say you’ve got five minutes of air left in here, maybe less. Tell Central you’re going off the line, and warn them that the space above them is being smoked out. They may want to move, too.”

“Aye, Chief. You ain’t gotta say it twice.”

Jackson moved to the after end of the mess decks, unfolding his EEBD hood. If the fires were topside, why the hell was the smoke coming into the ship when all the vents were without power? He reached the hatch to DC Central. It was dogged down tight. If they had closed their vent registers, they would be safe from smoke— unless he opened the hatch.

He decided not to open the hatch. He slipped the hood over his head, pulled the neck tapes tight, and then pulled the cylinder lanyard. He headed aft into the gloom of the after officers’ passageway and began checking berthing compartments. He almost hoped he would stumble into his dear friend Bullet.

As Rocky remembered, Chief Jackson kept a dozen or so EEBDs in his office, because it was the chief MAA’s duty to go through the ship after battle damage and make sure no one was trapped in damaged spaces. Rocky counted on there being some left, even if Jackson had taken some already. He reached the office, coughing in the smoke, looked up and down the deserted passageway, and unlocked the door. Inside, he grabbed a spare flashlight from the flashlight box and saw the canvas bag of EEBDs out on Jackson’s desk. Good, Jackson had already been here, and apparently for the same reason.

He looked in the bag, counting quickly. There were five left. He took them all, lifting the bag itself and slinging it over his shoulder, and headed back out into the passageway, closing the door behind him. He could not see very far down Broadway, but from the sounds of things, there was obviously a hell of a problem down around the mess decks. He undid one of the EEBDs and pulled the bag over his head. He made sure his silver MAA badge was visible on his pocket, snapped on the light, and set out for the shaft alley.

As he went through the mess decks, he could see the late arrivals in Repair Five getting on their gear and hauling cans of firefighting foam toward the emergency escape ladder that went up to the weather decks above.

There was a lot of yelling going on and the roaring sound of a big oil fire topside. The insulating tiles in the overhead of the mess decks were curling up from the heat above. He saw some of the MMs from Number Two Engine Room standing on the mess decks, their dungarees soaked, talking to the Repair Five plotter as he noted the damage on his board.

With his face almost invisible in the hood, Rocky kept going, through the mess decks, past the galley office, and into the after officers’ passageway.

He fleetingly remembered the setup operation on Bullet and wondered what had happened. The smoke in the passageway was really bad and he needed his flashlight on white even to see the deck. Several times, he had to read compartment labels to know where he was.

The entrance down to the shaft alley was between Number Two Fire Room’s after bulkhead and the Number Two Engine Room’s forward bulkhead. There were no berthing compartments below this deck, so anyone who saw him down there would want to know what the hell he was doing, but in this dense smoke, that shouldn’t be a problem. He overshot the deck scuttle that led to the shaft alley’s vestibule before he realized it, then had to double back to find it again, his flashlight probing the twists and turns in the passageway until he found the step-aside alcove. He kept looking up into the smoky haze to make sure no one was around him as he stopped above the scuttle, surprised to find that the air right above the scuttle was for some reason fairly clear of smoke.

The plastic hood began to adhere to his face; for a panicky instant, he thought he was suffocating. Then he remembered. He whipped another EEBD out of the bag and was unfolding the hood when he heard a noise.