Terminal Run - Страница 3

Доступ к книге ограничен фрагменом по требованию правообладателя.

He joined McKee but waved off the inevitable questions until they landed at the bunker. Once in the underground conference room he greeted Ericcson with a handshake, the taller man’s big hand crushing his palm.

“Vie,” Patton said, “meet Vice Admiral Kelly McKee, Commander Unified Submarine Command and my acting Vice Chief of Naval Operations for Submarine Warfare. The paramedic outfit is part of the ruse to get him here. Kelly, this is Vice Admiral Egon ’The Viking’ Ericcson, Supreme Commander-in-Chief U.S. Naval Forces Pacific—”

Ericcson shook his head and growled, “Former commander, Admiral Patton. I’ve been demoted to be the commander of the NavForcePac Fleet. And call me Vie,” he said, pumping McKee’s hand. “It’s less formal than ’The Viking.’”

Patton grimaced in exasperation. “Admiral Ericcson has been demoted by request to Commander NavForcePac Fleet, but he’s still the acting Super-CinCPac. Until I appoint his replacement.”

“You know, Admiral, it’s not really a demotion until you take away the responsibilities and put someone in the Super CinCPac job.”

Admiral John Patton, the Chief of Naval Operations and the commanding admiral of the U.S. Navy, ignored the comment, the crow’s-feet at his eyes wrinkling in a serious expression.

“I know you guys have a hundred questions about how and why you were brought here. But let’s put all that on the back burner until the briefing is over. Agreed?” Both of his admirals nodded. Patton pointed to the conference table. “Gentlemen, take a seat.”

Patton glanced over at his subordinates, unable to avoid the thought that they made a damned odd couple. On his right sat Ericcson with his imposing physique. On Patton’s left sat the far slighter form of Kelly McKee, the youthful-looking submarine chief a head shorter than Patton and towered over by Ericcson.

The two admirals began and ended worlds apart. Ericcson was a supersonic naval aviator who’d earned a Purple Heart and the Silver Star over the Sea of Japan in a dogfight that nearly killed him, and had moved on to command fighter squadrons, deep draft ships, two aircraft carriers, and finally a carrier battle group. McKee had spent his life underwater in the operational isolation of a nuclear submarine, his reputation that of an easygoing sailor’s commander, but he had proved vicious and cunning and aggressive in a desperate undersea battle, the crisis earning him the Navy Cross and command of the submarine force. To Patton’s knowledge, the two starkly different admirals had never met before this moment.

“I hope neither of you thinks this will be a high-tech briefing with floating three-dimensional displays and animated national borders,” Patton began, his jaw clenching. “With me you get a paper map and a number two pencil. I’ll get to the point fast and get you both moving. We don’t have much time.” He produced a map of Asia from his pocket, spread it out on the end of the conference table, and stood to lean over it, his subordinates standing with him. “Gentlemen, in two weeks you’ll both be fighting a war.” Patton stabbed the map with his finger. “A war over this.”

2

Midshipman First Class Anthony Michael Pacino slammed the door of the classic Corvette and looked uncertainly at the lower security area of Groton’s U.S. Submarine Base. His mouth filled with battery acid, the way it always did when he was nervous. He had wanted to stay as far away from the submarine force as humanly possible, but a sudden series of fleet exercises had made all the fighter squadrons and SEAL teams unavailable for midshipman cruises. His entire class had been assigned to surface ships except for a half dozen ordered to submarines. There was no possible way he could ever follow in his father’s footsteps, he thought — the old man was idolized by the Submarine Force, and Pacino could only be a bitter disappointment by comparison. There would be no inherited talent in this area — he was too much his mother’s son. He had planned to be a naval aviator, and now found himself in the absurd position of reporting as an apprentice to his father’s Silent Service. One more thing to endure before he flew the jet, he told himself.

He checked the reflection of himself in the car window, adjusting his uniform shirt’s tuck after the long drive up from Annapolis. The midshipman in the reflection was tall and slim with an athlete’s efficiently muscled physique. He wore a starched tropical uniform with its white shirt, pants, belt, shoes, and hat, the uniform contrasting with his tanned skin. A pair of black shoulder boards each carried a thin gold braid stripe and a gold fouled anchor. Above the youth’s breast pocket was a national service ribbon and, above that, silver airborne wings, the eagle’s wings forming a closed oval around the ice-cream cone of the parachute canopy. His black name tag was the only other color on the uniform. He ran his hand through his light brown hair, which fell toward his eyebrows in a wave and swooped low over his ears, the hair longer than regulations allowed, then clamped his cover onto his head, hiding the offending locks. He sneered into the window, hating the face he’d inherited from his mother with its soft, almost-feminine features, his eyes almond-shaped and cobalt-blue, looking out from under long eyelashes, his nose a delicate curve, his cheekbones pronounced, his lips full.

Finally satisfied that his military appearance wouldn’t result in angry phone calls back to the Academy, Pacino shouldered his seabag and walked down to the security building at the barbed-wire fence line to the lower base, where the piers pointed into the Thames River. A petty officer escorted Pacino into the high-security piers to an odd-looking, colossal submarine. A banner on its gangway read USS PIRANHA SSN-23. He had seen the vessel before, in person and in the news, but the thing tied to the peer bore no resemblance to the ship of his memory.

For one thing, the Seawolf-class was distinguished by its gigantic diameter, a fat forty-two feet compared to every other sub’s thirty-two. The width of the hull made the Seawolf-class look stubby, because they were only 326 feet long, shorter than the old 688s. But this boat’s length made her seem slender as a pencil, stretching far beyond the end of the pier. She had to be over four hundred feet long, Pacino thought.

And just as strange, the sail was all wrong. The Seawolf class subs were all built with a vertical slab-sided fin rising starkly to the sky from the deck. But this sail was a teardrop of streamlined curves rising steeply from the forward bullet nose of the ship and extending far aft, then tapering gently to the midpoint of the hull. And further aft at the rudder, the fin that protruded from the murky water of the Thames River was not the usual unadorned vertical surface but was topped by a horizontal teardrop-shaped pod. For a moment Pacino wondered if there was some mistake, that he’d been brought to a giant Russian attack sub. But American it had to be. U.S. Navy khaki-clad chief petty officers and a dungaree-wearing enlisted gang were working frantically at the forward stores loading hatch, bringing on pallets of food and spare parts.

While he’d been looking at the vessel, the topside sentry had been glaring at him. Pacino walked up to him and traded salutes.

“Midshipman Pacino, reporting aboard for temporary duty.”

“Stay there,” the crackerjack uniformed sentry ordered, speaking into his radio.

From the mid-hull hatch an officer in a working khaki uniform leaped to the deck and hurried down the gangway. Pacino stared at the officer, startled that he was looking at a woman. She was short and petite, her gleaming black hair pulled back in a ponytail. The rank insignia on her open collars was a silver double bar. She wore a blue baseball cap with the gold embroidered letters spelling USS PIRANHA SSN-23 with a gold dolphin symbol above the brim. Beneath the brim, her dark almond-shaped eyes glared at Pacino below arching brows. Her nose was slightly upturned, with a small constellation of freckles on it. She had strong cheekbones and a model’s chin, her sole physical flaw, on a first glance, her jug handled ears protruding below the ball cap and her ponytail. Above her left shirt pocket she wore a gold dolphin pin, the emblem of a submarine-qualified officer, resembling pilot’s wings, but up close consisting of two scaly fish facing a diesel boat conning tower. The woman moved jerkily, practically jumping out of her skin. It was easy to imagine she’d downed an entire pot of coffee. Pacino came to attention and saluted. He looked into her narrowed eyes, the woman’s face hard and unfriendly, her jaw clenched.

“You must be Pacino,” she said, her throaty voice pouring out the firehose stream of words. “Welcome to the Black Pig. I’m Lieutenant Alameda, Piranha’s chief engineer. Captain Catardi wanted me to meet you and introduce you to the ship, then bring you to his stateroom.” She turned toward the vessel. “Follow me.”

Pacino stepped off the gangway onto the hull. The black surface was smooth and rubbery like a shark’s skin, the anechoic coating covering the entire hull for sonar quieting. The lieutenant vanished down the mid-hull hatch. From his childhood memories of submarine etiquette, he leaned over the hatch opening and shouted, “Down ladder!” then tossed down his bag, lowered himself into the hatch ring feeling its oiled, shiny, cool steel surface as his feet found the rungs of the ladder. He put his feet outside the ladder rails and slid all the way down to the deck in one smooth motion, his shoes hitting the deckplates with a thump.