Читаем Barracuda: Final Bearing полностью

“Jesus, we’ve got to get moving! What’s the deal with the battle group?”

“Sit back down there. Admiral. I’m afraid the blockade is history.”

“Any orders from Warner?”

“She made a statement that the Japanese sank our surface ships but she said that the force commander in the Pacific had a fleet of American submarines headed for Japanese waters to neutralize the threat.”

“Donner. Where is he?”

“Admiral, you’re the Pacforcecom now. Donner never made it out of the Reagan. In fact, everyone in ASW Control bought it. One of the torpedoes detonated right against the hull there. We were just damned lucky we made it out.”

“How did we do that?”

“Just lucky I guess.”

“Don’t listen to him, sir,” a female voice said.

“That’s Eileen, your nurse.” “Admiral,” the nurse said, “Commander White pulled you out of the bridge, down four levels to the flight deck and out to the port side, then flagged down one of the helicopters that was waiting to get survivors.”

“Sir, I just did it because you were the only other guy on the stinking carrier wearing submarine dolphins. I couldn’t let you go down.”

“We lost Donner. What else?”

“Sir, they got every single ship. Every one in the battle group except Mount Whitney, and we’re hightailing it out of here at flank. No one knows when they’ll hit us but everyone is wearing lifejackets.”

“How many survivors?”

“Couple hundred.”

“Paully, there were six, seven thousand men in the battle group.”

“I know, sir.”

Pacino’s mind tumbled with the news. He had been right, but he hadn’t thought they’d try to sink the whole battle group.

“It’s worse, sir.”

“Worse?”

“The two other carrier groups that sailed out of Pearl last week. Abraham Lincoln and United States. The two Nimitz-class carriers. They sent Destiny III’s out into a Pacific deep penetration. The robot subs had the carrier groups targeted—”

“Wait, slow down. Where are the Abe Lincoln and US battle groups?”

“Same place the Reagan battle group is. Admiral.”

“What about their submarine escorts?”

“That’s the only silver lining. And also the reason Warner hasn’t thrown her hands up yet. The two subs, the Tucson and the Santa Fe, did well. Tucson was as signed to the Lincoln. When the fighting started her captain vectored in on the source of the torpedo shots and determined that there were four submarines sent in to get the battle group. Not one of them seemed to care, they just fired away, oblivious to the Tucson.”

“Her captain, John Patton, right?”

“Right. Patton unloaded a torpedo bank into the first Destiny sub and blew it to the bottom. Then he had to drive fifteen miles to get to the next, and four torpedoes later the next sub was down. By then the Lincoln was dead in the water, listing, internal explosions going off, not a pretty picture. The third took an hour to find and put down, and by the time he zeroed in on the fourth it was out of torpedoes.”

“How did we know those were Destiny III robot subs?”

“The fourth Destiny just hung out at periscope depth watching the show. Patton and the Tucson fired a single Mark 50 at it and it came to the surface. By this time Patton was pissed. He wanted some prisoners. The whole force was sinking, and the Lincoln went down right then. Patton surfaced and took a Zodiac boat to the Destiny. He and ten guys went over there with MAC-1 Is and 9-millimeter automatics and some acetylene torches and he cut into the hull, fired a magazine into the ship and went inside. By now you’ve figured out what he found — a computer. The forward space was all of ten or twelve feet long, three decks tall. The space was just a place for the computer consoles. There wasn’t a human aboard. He checked out the other compartments, all but the reactor compartment. The core was still at power, so no one in there would have made it anyway. The robo-sub apparently works shooting at surface ships, but not so good against other submarines. I think we can count on the Oparea having only Destiny IIs, which might be good news since there are fewer of them.”

“Maybe. Or maybe bad news since the Destiny IIs will be much more capable against our subs than the Destiny Ills.”

“Anyway, Patton radioed Pearl and had an oceangoing tug get underway to meet him to pick it up. He went and picked up survivors, about seventy-five men, and had to meet the tug halfway to drop them and the Destiny off, so he’ll be late getting to the Oparea.”

“I take it the same thing happened to the United States and the Santa Fe?”

“Joe Cosworth, the skipper, did okay. He actually sniffed out one of the Destinys before it started firing. He engaged it, shot at it and it put a torpedo in the water, but aimed in the opposite direction. Joe fired at the Destiny, but the Destiny just fired at the United States.

The Destiny didn’t even know he was there. Or if it did, it didn’t care.