While there was still a city left to defend.
Chapter Fifty Five
New York Air Defense Interception Zone Secondary Command Center, La Guardia Airport, New York, United States
“Manhattan is taking a real pounding.” Mayor Bloomberg looked across at the blacked-out island, scarred by the fireballs rising from the multiple impact points. The power over there had failed under the repeated ground shocks and that was adding to the chaos that was developing as people tried to flee the ruthless bombardment. “When can we do something about it?”
“We’re trying to get the system online now. The original control was by way of the World Trade Center complex but that’s gone. We’re trying to reroute around the holes knocked in the net.” Colonel Mark Gridley was trying to re-assemble the communications net while he spoke. The problem was that the original flurry of rocks had taken down many of the nodes the system depended on and there was no reliable way of finding out which were up other than by ‘binging’ them. The good news was that each time he found a functional node, it opened up new prospects for routing signals. Also, a side issue now but one that would become important when the attack was over, the destroyed nodes formed a map of the wrecked areas of the city. Why knew how many people were trapped in the wreckage.
Over on the horizon another series of fireballs rose over Roosevelt Island. The fall of the rocks was intermittent, there would be a flurry of hits and then a pause while there were only a few scattered hits. Almost as if work gangs were rolling the 100-ton rocks through. Which, Gridley thought. was probably exactly what was happening. “Mayor, the damage I’m plotting suggests the portal is drifting up the west side of Manhattan. If it continues on its present course, it’ll cross over the Hudson between Hoboken and Union City. We’d better get warnings out to New Jersey.”
“I think they’re probably better informed than we are at this point.” Bloomberg spoke drily, disguising the fact he was horrified by how quickly the city’s defense systems had become unglued. It had been almost a year since Sheffield and Detroit had been attacked and, during that time, New York had installed a system that was supposed to stop such attacks in their tracks. Yet, faced with its first assault, the new system had collapsed almost completely.
“Sir, radio message from the Intrepid.” Bloomberg knew that the ship was acting as a forward observation point. During the Mobilization she had been considered for restoration to the active fleet but the old lady was too far gone. Still, she had her radios and with the data communications net shot full of holes, she was performing admirably. “She reports a new group of rocks falling just south of her, working their way north west. She says… I’m sorry sir, she’s gone off the air. Very suddenly.”
Bloomberg’s lips twisted. That almost certainly meant the museum ship had taken at least one rock. She might survive it but if she did, she would be a dreadful sight afterwards.
“Sir, I’m through to the portal intercept missiles at Secaucus. They have a firing solution on the portal.” Gridley listened for a few seconds. “They can fire as soon as the current rock flurry tapers off. They warn us though, if there’s a problem, the missiles will come down in Harlem.”
Bloomberg didn’t hesitate. “They may fire when ready, Mister Gridley.”
USS Intrepid. New York
If the ‘Evil Eye’ hadn’t already been firmly aground, she would have been sinking fast. The rock had hit two thirds down the length of her hull, ripping straight through he flight and hangar decks before expending its energy blowing a hole in her bottom and excavating a crater in the soft mud underneath. Looking at her, Norman Orwell thought the ship was putting up a hell of a fight but losing anyway. It was the crater more than anything else, it had stripped the support out from under her. By the way her bow and stern were rising, her back was already broken. She was burning as well, the fires from her hangar deck blazing uncontrolled. The city fire brigades had as much as they could do coping with the damage in the main part of Manhattan. The fires there also out of control and people had to be rescued. The Intrepid could cope on her own.
“Everybody ready?” Orwell looked around at his emergency rescue team. They weren’t professional firefighters or emergency medical personnel. They were museum researchers, restorers, administrators, few of them less than fifty and none of them with anything more than rudimentary rescue training. Most of their equipment dated from the Second World War and much of it had seen service when Intrepid had been hit by Kamikaze aircraft off Japan. How well it would work now was an open question. Yet, the people around him nodded and gave thumb’s up signs. “Team One, forward, try and get the people there to safety. Team two, with me, we’ll go amidships and get the people out of the radio room.”
“How many Norman?”
“There should be twelve up front and ten in the radio room.” The fact that forty people were about to run onto a burning, wrecked aircraft carrier to rescue twenty two didn’t register with anybody. Rescuing those in danger almost regardless of cost was an ingrained human reaction. The same reaction that would cause half a dozen men to risk – and sometimes lose – their lives to rescue one person from a sinking car in a flooded river or trapped on the ice in a frozen winter. In the final analysis, it was why humans were winning The Salvation War.
Orwell led his group up the gangway that led to the hangar deck abreast of the island. The blast of heat from the fires further aft seemed to engulf him as he entered the hangar and he saw the displays that he had been so proud of were already shattered and broken. That hurt him more than the damage to the ship. As a naval historian, seeing all that history literally going up in smoke was something that cut deep into his heart. “Follow me, we have to get into the island. The radio room is on the second deck. Birkenhead Drill.”
He stumbled across the deck, feeling his way through the increasingly-dense smoke. For all its age, his protective gear seemed to be working, he could breath at least. Behind him, members of his team were unreeling safety lines so that they could find their way out of the ship once they had the survivors secured. In front of him was the hatch that led to the island over their heads. The dogs unfastened smoothly, one piece of luck in a night where New York’s had run out. He and his team had to get one deck up before they would join the route through the ship that had been cleared for tourists. That would lead them straight up to the radio room. If it was still there.
Under his feet, he could feel the deck still angling as the broken ship settled further into the mud. That mud had almost spelled her doom once, it had been a hell of a job to get her clear of it when she had been towed away for renovation. Orwell scrambled upwards, his feet turning on bits of wreckage that had fallen when the ship had first been hit. Another hatch this one hard to open. The dogs took repeated blows from sledgehammers before they finally sprung open and the hatch was cleared. The good news was, they were level with the flight deck and the way up was easy.
The radio room was a disaster. Parts of the overhead had caved in and the men and women working on the equipment were down, trapped under the beams and debris. Orwell led the way in and started to check the people. One woman, her blonde hair caked and matted with blood groaned as he touched her. She was a priority, the Birkenhead Drill applied here, women and children first. Two of the rescue team came to his aid and they lifted a fallen equipment locker off her. Once they had her free, she was passed down the line to the people waiting to get her off the ship. It wasn’t the way the emergency drills said things should be done but this was a special case. A t the rate the fires were spreading, the island would be engulfed soon.
The casualties were being passed out, the three remaining women first, then the men as they were freed from the entangling wreckage that had tried to kill them. By the time the last one was on his way out, the smoke in the radio room was so thick Orwell could hardly breathe even with the aid of his mask and oxygen bottle. He grabbed the line and started to follow it out, feeling the heat of the fires on him as he did so. Down the steps, through the hatches, back on to the hangar deck. The way they had come in was impassible, the fire had already spread to block it, so he, his team and the people from the radio room made their way forward until the way down the forward gangplank was clear.