“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