loaded the boats up with trash and debris, both headed together back to shore. He was watching them cross the harbor when he saw a third boat coming toward the ship at high speed.
Mooney wondered at first why it was coming toward Cole so fast, but as it got closer, it slowed to make a steady approach about forty-five degrees off the port bow. He could see it was white, about thirty feet long, with red on the interior. There was an open well in the boat with a center console for the controls and although it looked clean, almost new, it also didnât look so different from the previous two trash boats. The security team member who was watching its approach with him also seemed unconcerned, Mooney said. From when they first saw it, it took about thirty-five seconds to come alongside. The two men in the boat then looked up at Mooney, waved, and smiled. He was surprised, and hesitated before waving back. The boat bumped solidly into the side of the ship and drifted slightly away from the side.
Then, Armageddon.
A huge red fireball vaporized the boat and both of the men. Mooneyâs vision went black, and a quick flash of intense heat blew by him. He raised
his hands to his face and pulled them away, seeing what appeared to be only a few spots of blood.
Tearing off his headset, he jumped the eight feet down onto the deck from the refueling station. He ran across the front of the ship toward the starboard side and then down the starboard brake past the shipâs small boats, past injured sailors lying on the deck, and back onto the flight deck. Two engineers he came across told him he looked in bad shape and should get to medical immediately.
Chris told two sailors to grab Mooney and get his wounds treated. Reaching a large medical box near the entrance to number 3 gas turbine generator room, they let Mooney sit down with a slump, and suddenly he was overcome with the most intense pain had ever felt in his life. His eyes were burning and he could barely see. The fireball from the explosion had caused flash burns to his face and eyes, now quickly swelling shut.
Chris relayed Mooneyâs account of the attack to the security team. One of the teamâs members found me within less than a minute, and corrected my misinterpretation of the rafts. âCaptain, it wasnât those rafts alongside the ship that blew us up. It was another boat that came out from shore. We thought it was the third garbage barge. Those rafts are our rafts, look.â He pointed to the now empty twenty-five-man life raft racks on the port side of the ship. Almost every one of the life rafts had been blown out of its fiberglass container.
So: we had been attacked by kamikaze terrorists. One of the most modern twenty-first-century destroyers of the worldâs most powerful navy had been successfully attacked by a technologically primitive, explosive-laden suicide boat. We might as well have been in 1945.
Chris had been below the flight deck, well aft of the explosionâs epicenter, when it had happened. The force of it almost blew him off his feet. He set off toward the forward part of the ship to see what had happened, but was quickly overcome by smoke and ordered the watertight door leading forward closed to keep it from spreading aft.
Crossing over to the starboard side to try to continue forward, he saw crew members streaming back, fleeing the blast zone. Though he knew
almost everybody aboard by name or by face, he was unable to recognize many of them, so much blood was streaming down their faces, arms, and hands. Some had been on the mess decks or standing in the mess line picking up their meals. There, at the focal point of the blast, the force of the explosion had shattered the plastic coating that kept the steel decks of the ship from rusting and blown it into the sailors like flechettes from a grenade. Chris also found sailors who had been outside at the moment of the attack almost unrecognizable because they were covered from
Mooney wondered at first why it was coming toward Cole so fast, but as it got closer, it slowed to make a steady approach about forty-five degrees off the port bow. He could see it was white, about thirty feet long, with red on the interior. There was an open well in the boat with a center console for the controls and although it looked clean, almost new, it also didnât look so different from the previous two trash boats. The security team member who was watching its approach with him also seemed unconcerned, Mooney said. From when they first saw it, it took about thirty-five seconds to come alongside. The two men in the boat then looked up at Mooney, waved, and smiled. He was surprised, and hesitated before waving back. The boat bumped solidly into the side of the ship and drifted slightly away from the side.
Then, Armageddon.
A huge red fireball vaporized the boat and both of the men. Mooneyâs vision went black, and a quick flash of intense heat blew by him. He raised
his hands to his face and pulled them away, seeing what appeared to be only a few spots of blood.
Tearing off his headset, he jumped the eight feet down onto the deck from the refueling station. He ran across the front of the ship toward the starboard side and then down the starboard brake past the shipâs small boats, past injured sailors lying on the deck, and back onto the flight deck. Two engineers he came across told him he looked in bad shape and should get to medical immediately.
Chris told two sailors to grab Mooney and get his wounds treated. Reaching a large medical box near the entrance to number 3 gas turbine generator room, they let Mooney sit down with a slump, and suddenly he was overcome with the most intense pain had ever felt in his life. His eyes were burning and he could barely see. The fireball from the explosion had caused flash burns to his face and eyes, now quickly swelling shut.
Chris relayed Mooneyâs account of the attack to the security team. One of the teamâs members found me within less than a minute, and corrected my misinterpretation of the rafts. âCaptain, it wasnât those rafts alongside the ship that blew us up. It was another boat that came out from shore. We thought it was the third garbage barge. Those rafts are our rafts, look.â He pointed to the now empty twenty-five-man life raft racks on the port side of the ship. Almost every one of the life rafts had been blown out of its fiberglass container.
So: we had been attacked by kamikaze terrorists. One of the most modern twenty-first-century destroyers of the worldâs most powerful navy had been successfully attacked by a technologically primitive, explosive-laden suicide boat. We might as well have been in 1945.
Chris had been below the flight deck, well aft of the explosionâs epicenter, when it had happened. The force of it almost blew him off his feet. He set off toward the forward part of the ship to see what had happened, but was quickly overcome by smoke and ordered the watertight door leading forward closed to keep it from spreading aft.
Crossing over to the starboard side to try to continue forward, he saw crew members streaming back, fleeing the blast zone. Though he knew
almost everybody aboard by name or by face, he was unable to recognize many of them, so much blood was streaming down their faces, arms, and hands. Some had been on the mess decks or standing in the mess line picking up their meals. There, at the focal point of the blast, the force of the explosion had shattered the plastic coating that kept the steel decks of the ship from rusting and blown it into the sailors like flechettes from a grenade. Chris also found sailors who had been outside at the moment of the attack almost unrecognizable because they were covered from
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