Damage Control. Gordon Kent

side of his helmet. “Gup!”

      “Sorry.” Guppy mumbled something but opened his knee-board pad and started following the voices on AW.

      USS Thomas Jefferson

      Madje had been lucky, protected by the heavy central bulkhead when the first explosion happened. Madje had dragged the admiral clear of the fire on adrenaline alone, put a fire blanket over him, and donned a breathing apparatus, then rescued the helmsman. He would never remember doing any of these things. His first conscious action had been getting the firefighting team to help him get the admiral out of the smoke.

      But the thing he would never forget was the sheet of flame covering the whole deck as the fire spread, interspersed with fountains of fire as aircrews punched out of their stranded planes. He had seen it for only a moment, a second, before the 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 by several 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 unmoving helmsman to a triage team, and got a spasm of pleasure when they gave him a thumbs-up. He watched two corpsmen hovering over the admiral, loitered for a moment, and realized that there was nothing, nothing he could do here. He sloshed back out into the passageway, got a look from the chief, and headed forward. He squeezed past a hose team preparing to go topside, climbed over the knee knockers at frame 133, and found himself squelching into the relatively clean flag area and its brilliantly polished blue tile floor. He looked in flag ops and flag intel and the living quarters. No flag captain.

      It was quiet, and he was tired. He stood in the flag briefing room, alone, insulated from the fires three decks above, and thought how easy it would be to sit down. Then he did. His legs hurt and his back felt as if he had twisted it, and his face felt swollen. It probably was. He lifted the respirator off his chest—and got back up.

      “Fuck,” he said aloud. He put the respirator back on, felt it tug at the fatigue in his spine, and got a twinge of his own eventual middle age.

      Bangalore, India

      A Toyota panel truck backed up to the loading dock of Building Three of the New World Technological Center. Three figures wearing heavy coveralls, gloves, and hoods got out. While one pulled up the loading gate to the interior, the other two opened the rear doors of the truck and took out two large fans, which they carried into the building. Unreeling electrical cords while two of the building’s workers watched and did nothing—the people in the coveralls, one of them a woman, smiled at them—they plugged the fans into a wall socket. The third figure unreeled a hose from the panel truck. All three people put on goggles and respirators, and one of them went to the truck’s driver’s seat. The others turned on the fans. Sarin gas began to flow through the hose.

      USS Thomas Jefferson

      Madje went back out into the passageway, headed aft. He passed another fire party checking a hose, and then he got to the big steel hatch labeled “Combat Information Center.” It was dogged shut. He rapped at it with his knuckles. “Flag lieutenant!” he shouted. Heads turned in the passageway, he was so loud.

      Inside, somebody undogged the hatch. He pushed through and they dogged it behind him.

      “Flag captain here?”

      He could see from the kid’s patches he was from the S-3 squadron and probably attached to the ASW module just forward. The kid just shook his head. He looked numb.

      He passed the ASuW station and walked into the domain of the tactical action officer. There was a little smoke here, but no smell of fire. The screens were lit and functioning.

      “TAO?”

      “Mister Madje?”

      “Sir, the admiral sent me to find out who the senior officer is and place him in command. The skipper is dead. I think the CAG is gone, too.”

      The