Forced Landing by Thomas Block

Author:Thomas Block
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: airline hijacking aircraft carrier hijacking gold hostages ransome submarine navy pilot flying aviation sea
Publisher: Thomas Block

CHAPTER TEN

Drew O’Brien stood in the center of the hangar deck of the Yorktown. "We might as well relax, they've got us penned in." O'Brien gestured broadly, the sweep of his arm taking in the sealed hatchways that surrounded them. Those hatchways against the sidewalls of the cavernous hangar deck were, apparently, the only alternate ways to get out of the area they had been imprisoned in.

"I hate to give up so easily. It's not good for morale." Janet Holbrook allowed her eyes to wander across the group of passengers around her.

"I know." O'Brien shrugged, then joined her as the two of them looked at the faces of the people from Flight 255. Now that the excitement had died down — the close brush with death during the landing, the presence of armed terrorists with weapons pointed at them, the discovery that this ship was the Yorktown out of Charleston, a historic relic that had obviously somehow been stolen — most of the passengers now sat listlessly on the hangar floor. They had scattered themselves into groups of a dozen or so across the entire area, which was the size of a few tennis courts laid side to side. "This whole damn thing is unbelievable," O'Brien said as he looked around the section of the hangar deck they had been sequestered in.

"I read somewhere that hostages always say that."

"I'm glad that I'm predictable." O'Brien tried to smile, but found that he couldn't.

"I'm being serious," Janet answered. She edged slightly closer to O'Brien. "Think about most of the big hijackings. Think about the Entebbe rescue that the Israelis pulled off. It seemed unbelievable until someone managed to do it."

"I guess so." O'Brien nodded in agreement, then began to examine the hangar deck more carefully. This area of the Yorktown had been used as exhibition space for historic military displays. The well-preserved airframe of an old Grumman torpedo bomber occupied one corner of the area, the airplane's fresh coat of shiny blue paint making it appear lustrous in the reflected glow from the ceiling lights. The two-seat Grumman looked as if it were ready to fly, but O'Brien could tell from even this distance that the aircraft's engine was a fake. It was the bare skeleton of an airplane, no more.

O'Brien glanced down at the exhibition pieces that surrounded the old Grumman. Four bright-green torpedoes were lined end to end, the first torpedo with half its exterior skin cut away so that visitors could examine its insides. O'Brien let his eyes wander toward the forward end of the ship, where gangs of signs, plaques and mementos lined the walls. "They've stuck us away in a floating museum."

"What's that thing?" Janet asked. She gestured toward the turret-looking structure in the upper left-hand corner of the hangar deck. It stood approximately seven feet high and ten feet across, and it contained several small, thick windows. It appeared formidable and menacing. "Is it a gun emplacement?" she asked, but at the same time she wondered why anyone would design a warship with a gun emplacement facing the inside of the hangar.

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