gushed from overhead pipes, not the drizzle of an office building’s automatic
fire-sprinkler system, but a torrent, a downpour designed to control fuel
fires in the hangar spaces … or decontaminate the entire carrier in a gas or
nuclear attack by flooding the deck with gushing, high-pressure fountains of
sea water.
For years, critics of America’s aircraft carrier program had contended
that supercarriers were bad investments, gigantic, traveling airfields that
were turned into gigantic bombs by enormous stores of jet fuel and munitions.
The spectacular destruction of Soyuz a few days before might well have proven
the critics right; the destruction of Jefferson in a fiery holocaust could
spell the end for Navy carriers, much as the spectacular crashes of the
dirigibles Hindenburg and Shenandoah had ended the era of lighter-than-air
flight.
But aircraft carriers are remarkably strong and flexible instruments,
virtually unsinkable with their thousands of watertight compartments, with
fire-control and damage-control systems of unparalleled scope and control.
It took time. The steel bulkheads of the hangar deck were red hot in
places, and part of the deck had sagged dangerously as support struts gave
way. When critical phone lines burned through and went dead, the DCO had to
coordinate the fight through sound-powered telephones and messengers, as he
deployed armies of sweating, gasping men in cumbersome OBA gear, wielding foam
and high-pressure hoses in the inky, smoke-choked furnace of Jefferson’s
belly.
But at last, as water and foam flooded ankle-deep across the deck of Bay
One, the fires were brought under control. Cautiously, fire doors were open,
sending streams of air through the stifling chamber to clear the smoke and
choking, poisonous fumes … and to search out and expose new sources of flame
that might be fanned alight by the rush of air. The DC parties waded ahead,
hosing down every surface, smothering the now-retreating flames with foam.
It was nearly 1400 hours when the DCO at last made his report to the
bridge. The Jefferson was going to live after all.
1530 hours Zulu (1630 hours Zone)
Soviet Aircraft Carrier Kreml
The Norway Maelstrom
Within the five-mile gap between the islands of Mosken and Moskenesoya,
the tide was running high. Through that gap, each day with the tide the water
of the Norwegian Sea surged southeast into the Vestfjord, and then, as the
tide changed, swirled back toward the way it had come.
Exercising their artistic license, Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne had
greatly exaggerated the force of the so-called “Norway Maelstrom.” Melville
had transformed it into a living thing when he’d had Ahab vow to chase the
white whale “round the Norway Maelstrom, and round Perdition’s flames.” In
fact, the current might run as fast as seven knots when the tide was in full
flood. The whirlpool had been known to snag smaller vessels, the fishing
smacks and trawlers and merchantmen that had plied seafaring Norway’s rugged
coastline for centuries, but nothing larger.
This time, the Maelstrom had captured bigger game.
Kreml drifted southeast with the current. Had his e