CARRIER 2: VIPER STRIKE By Keith Douglass

trying to be charming, but somehow it wasn’t coming off well. He seemed

ruffled by her challenging approach toward Tombstone.

“Sorry, we can’t. We’ll need to get back to our hotel. In fact, if we

can arrange it, it would probably be easiest if we could conduct most of

our interviews with the commander in Bangkok instead of out here.

Possibly at our hotel?”

“As you wish. How long will you need him?”

“Oh, two or three sessions will be enough. I imagine we could fit him

in for an hour or two these next few evenings.”

Tombstone groaned to himself. “May I remind the admiral,” he said,

picking with care the words he could use in front of the press, “that

I’ve been assigned to temporary duty ashore.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem, Stoney. We can find someone to

take your place. ‘Full cooperation,” remember?”

It appeared that there would be no escape.

Twenty minutes later he was leading Pamela and her crew through the

twisting bowels of Jefferson, taking them down the island deck by deck

until they were in the maze of passageways beneath the flight deck. The

experience of walking down one of Jefferson’s long interior corridors

never failed to amaze a first-time visitor. The passageways ran

straight for hundreds of feet; every thirty feet or so they were

interrupted by a cross frame with an oval-shaped door called a

“knee-knocker” because they forced a tall person to simultaneously stoop

and step high to go through. Watching someone approach down a

passageway was like watching one’s own reflection in an endlessly

reflected series of arched mirrors.

“My God,” Baughman said breathlessly as they turned a sudden corner and

confronted another infinite regression of knee-knockers. “How many

miles of tunnels do you have in this thing?”

Tombstone grinned. “Never counted ’em. It might give you an idea of

her size, though, if you think of Jefferson as an eighty-story building

lying on her side. In some ways, she’s a self-contained city. We’ve

got a population of over six thousand, with one radio station and two

television stations, a barber shop, a hospital complete with OR, a

dentist’s office, a ship’s exchange which passes for our own shopping

mall, a newspaper and printing office, laundry service, a hobby shop.”

“Anybody ever get lost down here?” Pamela asked. She stepped back

against a gray-painted bulkhead as three dungaree-clad sailors squeezed

past, going the other way.

“All the time,” Tombstone replied. “Everybody carries maps the first

few days they’re aboard. After that, well … I know I’d get lost

trying to find my way around down in snipe country, and I’ve been aboard

six months.”

“Snipe country?”

“Engineering spaces, below and aft. Don’t worry. That’s not where

we’re going.”

“Do you know where we’re going?” Griffith said. He was out of breath,

lugging the bulky camera he balanced on his shoulder. He’d taken a

number of shots of various parts of the ship at Pamela’s direction, but

he looked as though he’d be a lot happier taping congressmen in a

shore-based studio.

“Sure thing, Mr. Griffith. This way.”

They took another turn into a blind corner with a ladder zigzagging

precipitously into the depths of the ship. He led them down three

levels.

Pamela seemed to be bearing up well under the indignities of navigating

the steep ladders in her skirt; more than once, though, Tombstone had to

lead the way with a bellowed “make a hole” to clear the sightseeing

sailors who had gathered near the base of the next ladder down. It

seemed that Jefferson’s grape vine was working at full efficiency,

alerting sailors to the fact that a woman was making a tour of the

vessel.

“We were on the 0-3 deck,” he explained as they left the ladder and

doubled back in an unexpected direction. “That’s the level immediately

under the ‘roof,” or flight deck. Now we’re on the 0-1 level, coming up

on the hangar deck.”

“Does that mean we’re as far down in the ship as we can go?”

“Hardly. It means the decks below this one are numbered differently …

one, two, three, and so on down to the keel. Counting the island,

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