Operation Southern Cross - 02 (2 page)

Somewhere in the Caribbean
Thirty minutes later

THE USS
LEXINGTON
WAS THE OLDEST WORKING
ship in the U.S. Navy.

She was also one of the Navy’s most decorated aircraft carriers. Nicknamed the “Blue Ghost,” the carrier saw action in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and all told nearly 50 years of continuous military service. Though never considered a super-carrier—it was from the 1940s-era Essex class—at over 900 feet long and with a crew of about sixteen hundred, in its time, the
Lexington
was state of the art. It could carry more than four dozen warplanes and do over thirty knots.

Even after it was taken out of active service in the 1970s, the
Lex
found a new life. When the Navy needed a carrier off which its new fighter pilots could practice landings and takeoffs, the
Lexington
was tapped to fill the role, which it did until it was decommissioned in 1991. After that, it was set up as a museum in Corpus Christi, Texas.

But that was not the end of her. Once the
Lex
went into retirement, the Navy had its new pilots practice off of its working super-carriers, usually ones that had just finished up a tour or were being refurbished. But this arrangement had proved problematic over the years, and now, especially after 9/11, with America’s aircraft carriers being extra busy with so many trouble spots around the world, these practice sessions began to be a burden.

So, while it was impractical to build a huge ship just to have student pilots land and take off from, the Navy knew a practice ship was needed. That’s when the idea of bringing back the old
Lex
came up. In a bid to save billions by spending millions, the Pentagon decided to take the warhorse out of mothballs and have a small ferry crew sail it to San Diego, where it would be evaluated with the idea of being refurbished and serving the Navy’s student pilots once again.

That’s how the USS
Lexington
happened to be cruising the lower Caribbean when the war between the United States and Venezuela began.

IT STARTED WITH A STRANGE MESSAGE FROM AN UNLIKELY
source.

The
Lex
was sailing a hundred miles off the coast of Costa Rica when the communication arrived. About a half day away from entering the Panama Canal, at the time the ship was roughly midway in its journey to San Diego. The message appeared shortly after 0100 hours, popping up on the ship’s ICC screen (Internet control center), a sort of makeshift radio shack located up on the ship’s navigation bridge. The
Lex
’s ferry crew had support groups in both Corpus Christi and San Diego. They were tracking the elderly ship’s progress via GPS satellites and were in constant contact with the
Lex
via the Internet. In fact, barrages of e-mail had been going back and forth since the
Lex
left Texas two days before.

But this message was not from one of the ship’s support teams. It was from, of all places, U.S. Army Special Operations Command. They had some helicopters in the area that needed a place to land. Could the
Lex
help them out?

It seemed like no problem at first. The people crewing the
Lexington
—just the bare minimum of 350, all Naval Reserve officers and sailors—were on a very simple mission: Take the old carrier from Corpus Christi to the San Diego shipyards. There weren’t going to be any flight operations. She was carrying no aircraft. The catapults didn’t work, there were no arresting wires. There wasn’t even an air traffic team onboard.

But letting a few copters land on her deck? How hard could that be? And as it was Army SOC doing the asking, that meant there might be some kind of top-secret aspect to this. At the very least, it would be something the ferry crew could tell their grandkids someday.

So the man commanding the ship—a middle-aged Naval Reserve officer named Jumbo Eliot—typed back a response immediately. By all means, the copters could land aboard his ship, if they could find it. The reply from Army SOC stated that there would be twelve copters in all. Again, no problem, Eliot replied. Then he asked where would the
Lex
be bringing the copters once they’d landed. To Panama? All the way to San Diego?

There was a long hesitation in the reply message. Finally, it popped onto the screen. “To be determined,” was all it said.

But then came another strange request: The person at Army SOC asked if Eliot could get on a secure phone. All Eliot had was his cell phone, so he typed in his number and then retreated to his very spare captain’s quarters. His phone was ringing even before he shut his door.

The caller identified himself as Bob Shaw, major, U.S. Army. He worked for both the DIA and Army Special Ops Command. He apologized for the interruption, but then surprised Eliot by saying the topics they were about to discuss were highly classified. And while Eliot’s standard security clearance was “Secret,” Shaw was temporarily raising it to “Top Secret.”

Shaw told him the incoming copters belonged to one of the country’s most classified Special Ops units. They were so secret, few people outside of Army SOC even knew the unit existed. Shaw explained they were an offshoot of the famous TF-160 Nightstalkers, the copter drivers whose job it was to fly people like Rangers and Delta Force in and out of their missions. Eliot didn’t have to be told who TF-160 was. Everyone in the military knew about the Nightstalkers. Heroic to a fault, they flew the copters that dark day in Somalia back in 1993, in the disastrous mission forever known as Black Hawk Down.

Eliot had just assumed the TF-160 copters were taking part in a training mission—unexpectedly landing at sea, that sort of thing. He was just about to tell Shaw the
Lex
would help in any way it could, when suddenly the call was interrupted by a loud squeal of static. When Shaw came back on the line, his heretofore calm voice sounded very troubled, very anxious.

“How many people do you have onboard?” he asked Eliot, a bit out of breath.

Eliot replied the ship was carrying a very skeletal crew of 350.

Then, an even stranger question: “Do you have any weapons aboard?” Shaw asked.

In the background, behind Shaw’s voice, Eliot could hear a roomful of people, talking loudly and trying to be heard over each other. He could almost feel the tension through the phone connection.

Eliot told Shaw: “This is just a ferry cruise. We are barely more than a hull and some engines. We don’t have a squirt gun onboard.”

Another interruption of static; more tense voices, some were now shouting. Then Shaw told him: “Put every man you can spare up on your flight deck. Give them flashlights, flares, anything with illumination. Then turn on every light you have onboard. And if you have ship’s horns, sound them.”

Eliot couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was just recovering a bunch of black ops copters on a training mission, right?

Shaw’s reply was stark.

“Negative, Captain,” he said. “This situation has just turned hostile…”

THERE WERE NO BELLS TO RING ABOARD THE
LEX
. NO
horns, not even a Klaxon system. So Eliot ran to the officers’ galley, clicked on the ship’s intercom button, put an air horn up to the mike and let it blow. The noise was deafening, almost painful. But it got the attention of everyone onboard.

Then Eliot made an astonishing announcement: every available light aboard the ship was to be turned on. Plus, every available crewman was to report to the flight deck and they were to bring flashlights, ship’s beacons, flares with them. Their mission: to move around, look active and await twelve helicopters coming on board. Eliot signed off by saying he would explain it all later.

The
Lexington
was about to take part in a very strange charade. Inside of five minutes, the skeleton crew had to make the old bird farm look like it was an active, working,
powerful
super-carrier.

The lives of the people on the Special Ops helicopters depended on it.

IT WAS NOW 0115 HOURS. BY THE TIME ELIOT REACHED
the bridge, all of the
Lex
’s exterior lights had been turned on. This in addition to the three hundred or so crew members who had appeared on deck with flashlights, trouble lanterns, flares and even green luminescent break sticks. It was an amazing sight. The collection of lights created a glow that reflected off the warm waters of the western Caribbean and bounced back up at the ship again. Never did Eliot think the old
Lex
would look this good again.

But there was little time to admire the light show. Off to the south, he saw another light. At turns yellow and orange, it was coming straight for them. Eliot stood transfixed for a moment, eyes glued to this thing. It was getting bigger, brighter by the second.

It took a few moments before he realized that this was a helicopter heading their way. A large two-rotor Chinook.

And it was on fire.

Jeesuz Christ…

Though the
Lex
was sailing bare bones, it did have a fire team. Eliot blew his air horn into the intercom a second time, then ordered the ship’s fire fighters to start laying foam from the mid-deck to the bow. But even as the words were coming out of his mouth, he knew there would not be enough time for this. The burning copter was just seconds away from crashing into them.

The sailors on the deck had spotted it by now too. At least the lights on the
Lex
were glowing bright enough for the copters’ pilots to see where they were going. The question was, could they make it to the deck before the flames caused their copter to explode?

Damn,
Eliot whispered.
This is going to be close
.

The Chinook seemed to be moving at an incredible speed, for a large double-bladed heavy lifter, that is. But just as it reached a point about a hundred feet off the carrier’s bow, its pilots performed a maneuver equivalent to slamming on the brakes. The helicopter’s chin suddenly went nearly straight up in the air, yet the aircraft continued moving forward. Once its rear wheels were over the bow, the pilots pushed the actuator down and the big Chinook slammed onto the deck. It bounced once, then came down hard again, blowing all of its tires, exactly what the pilots wanted to do. Flat tires made it more unlikely the copter would roll off the side of the ship.

The crew of the
Lex
didn’t need an air-horn message this time. They ran en masse toward the fiery crash. Regular sailors, officers, the guys in fire gear—they all reached the copter’s wreckage at the same time and began pulling people out. Wisely, someone aboard the Chinook had doused the passengers with the aircraft’s fire extinguishers before it slammed in. People were coming out of the wreckage stunned, wet with foam and sizzling but still alive.

Eliot was down on the deck by this time, out of breath but aiding in the rescue. Just because people were actually getting out of the wreck didn’t mean the fire had gone out. Flames had fully engulfed the rear of the big copter by now and were quickly moving toward its midsection. When a team of sailors in fire gear arrived with water hoses, Eliot directed them to the rear of the copter, ordering them to lay water on it until they got everyone out of the burning craft.

Then Eliot returned to the front hatch of the Chinook and resumed helping pull people out. One of his NCOs used his head and drove the ship’s only deck tractor up to the front of the copter, smashing the Chinook’s cockpit windows, and allowing the flight crew to crawl out to safety through the broken glass.

“Sixteen!” both pilots were yelling as they came out headfirst, their boots on fire. “Sixteen onboard besides us!”

Eliot heard the pilots’ cry down on the deck. The process of people escaping the copter had taken on an almost surreal turn: For every person to crawl out of the wreck, another appeared, like circus performers endlessly climbing out of a compact car.

And what strange characters they were! They didn’t look like soldiers, and certainly not Special Ops forces. Almost all of them had longer-than-regulation hair and all of them were sporting unshaven faces. Not beards—simply unshaven. Their uniforms were torn and ragged.

They look more like rock stars,
Eliot thought.

Finally the strange parade ended. The sixteen passengers were all accounted for, plus the two pilots. Some of the survivors had severe burns, but none looked life threatening.

At that point in the confusion, a member of the fire team ran up to Eliot and literally pulled him to the back of the wrecked helicopter. The Chinook’s hindquarters were fully engulfed by flames, and the heat was growing tremendous. The crewman pointed to what was left of the rear end of the copter.

There was a line of massive holes torn right through the copter’s skin. Each one was large enough to put a fist through.

“Cannon shells?” Eliot thought aloud.

“That’s my guess,” the crewman replied.

But both knew what this meant: the Chinook didn’t crash on the
Lex
due to mechanical problems.

It had been shot down.

As this was sinking in, Eliot saw another fire fighter pointing up into the sky, off the rear of the boat. Another Chinook was up there, coming right for the deck. It was on fire too.

Only those who saw it would believe what happened next. The second Chinook came in right over the first, cleared the last of the burning wreckage and slammed onto the deck just as the first one had, blowing out all four tires and intentionally sticking itself into the carrier’s landing surface.