Читать книгу Damage Control - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 24

Fire. All around him, fire, and something on his legs.

Rafe flailed his arms, seeking to get them free. A tumble of images, separated by flashes of darkness.

“Sir! Stop fighting me! Sir!”

Rafe pushed against something and the vertebrae of his back impacted against a sharp corner, sending more pain through his body in a jolt. He curled up, and the weight settled all over him. Weight and pain. He lay still. More tumbles. No sense of time.

“That leg might be broken. Move him carefully.”

“Sir, we got to get him clear of the bridge. The whole fucker could go!”

“Roger that. Down to the O-3 level.”

“Anyone else alive up here?”

“Captain Rogers is dead. Helmsman is over there, I tried to wrap him, everyone forward of this bulkhead died when the fucker hit us. Admiral was coming back for coffee, that’s why he’s—”

Rafe moved his head under the fire blanket and tried to speak. “—hit us?” he tried to say, but it only came out as a croak. He hurt. But time was moving now.

He felt them putting him in a clamshell. His back and legs hurt so much he couldn’t really think, felt himself going into shock, tried to breathe. The fire blanket fell back from his face.

“—what hit us?” he tried, but again, it was like a hiss of air.

Madje’s face appeared in his arc of vision. It was red and there wasn’t any hair on it.

“Sir? Can you hear me?”

“Whahitus?” Rafe got out.

Madje leaned closer. “That Indian plane hit the deck just forward, sir. The fires are pretty bad. We’re moving you to the O-3 level, and we’re fighting the fires.”

“Whuzinc’mand?”

Madje shook his head. “Captain Rogers died a few feet from you. CAG Lushner may be alive but the flight deck is—no one can go out there.”

Rafe scrabbled at Madje like a corpse rising from the grave. His hands were burned claws and the angry red flesh on his sides showed under the ruins of his flight suit, but he rose almost to a sitting position.

“You—find senior now! Take command!”

Madje nodded, almost saluted, but Rafehausen had fallen back into the stretcher. The admiral coughed in pain as a portion of his left index finger, complete with the nail, remained stuck to the clamshell where he had gripped it to sit up.