CARRIER 2: VIPER STRIKE By Keith Douglass

“CIC, Bridge!” he snapped. “Are you tracking them?”

“Yes, sir,” the CIC watch officer replied. “Two bogies, bearing

zero-nine-five, range now four-one-zero-zero yards, speed one-three-five

nautical miles per hour.”

Marusko thought hard. Those helicopters could be what they claimed to

be, their refusal to stand off the result of communications failure or

misunderstanding. But Tombstone’s warning moments earlier still rang in

his mind: the coup leaders were planning something against the

Jefferson, probably an approach by something involving one or more

helicopters.

For many years, security had been a major concern of U.S. ship captains

and carrier group admirals in every ocean of the world. Aircraft

carriers were large, expensive, and extremely tempting as targets.

During the Lebanon crisis of the early ’80s, serious consideration had

been given to the possibility that Syrian-backed terrorists might try to

take out an American carrier patrolling off Beirut. Washington had

worried about everything from speedboats or Piper Cubs packed with

explosives to suicide commandos flying hang gliders, a tactic promptly

dubbed “Cruise Druze” by the men forced to stand watch at .50-caliber

machine guns mounted along the walkways outboard of the flight deck.

A helicopter loaded with explosives, or bomb-wielding commandos … They

wouldn’t be able to sink the Jefferson. but they could cause her a hell

of a lot of grief.

2038 hours, 19 January

RTAF Helicopter 163, Sattahip

The UH-1 helicopter bore the red-white-blue-white-red roundel of the

Royal That Air Force on its tail boom, but only the pilot was That, a

disaffected officer who had been promised more money than he could

expect to make in a lifetime of service to the government. Most of the

officers involved in the coup had joined the rebellion because they were

angered by what they perceived as inaction and stupidity on the part of

the government in its handling of the Communist insurrection in the

north. Very few’of those mutinous officers, however, could have been

induced to attack the American carrier. Ironically, both sides in the

conflict still regarded the Americans as powerful and important allies,

and a surprise attack on their nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in

Sattahip Bay would not exactly endear the new regime to Washington.

But Lieutenant Thran Silatharudah would do anything for money. He’d

first met Colonel Kriangsak when he’d been up for a court martial. The

Royal That Air Force took a dim view of enterprising pilots using

military aircraft to smuggle raw opium across the boarder from Laos.

Kriangsak had gotten him off by conveniently misplacing some crucial

evidence … then had recruited him for Sheng li.

The co-pilot, Thran knew, was Chinese, one of the battalion of trained

pilots Hsiao Kuoping had brought first to Burma, then to Thailand as

part of Sheng li. Thran had no idea what his reasons for being here

were, but it didn’t much matter. Sheng li had brought a number of

wildly disparate elements together, but the plan itself seemed to be

working well.

Lieutenant Thran eased the stick forward and let the Huey drift closer

to the ground. The helo, Number 163, was an early UH-B transferred to

Thailand at the end of the Vietnam War. Mounted on either side of the

hull were two weapon pods, each carrying twenty-four 7-cm unguided

rockets.

Below, the town and port area of Sattahip were blacked out, but he could

see the spark and flare of small arms fire to the north where coup

forces were engaging the base’s loyal defenders. Ahead, out in the bay,

the Jefferson was a splendid sight, aglow with lights from stem to

stern.

“Arm rockets,” he said.

“Rockets armed,” the co-pilot replied.

The 7-cm rockets might be unguided, but they were accurate enough over a

range of a mile or two, and an aircraft carrier was a very large target.

Thran’s briefing, however, had stressed that he was not to simply dump

his load of forty-eight rockets at random. Kriangsak’s orders had

emphasized that foreign national helicopters ought to be able to

approach to within a few hundred meters of the ship, and at that range

he should have a good shot at a most inviting target … the open

elevator bay door leading to the carrier’s hangar bay. He could see the

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