Читаем Barracuda: Final Bearing полностью

On the other side of the world the early morning winter sun competed with scattered clouds, trying to light the landscape of the Connecticut countryside. Bruce Phillips took a breath of the northern air as he moved down the stair ramp from the Grumman twelve-passenger jet. The bare branches of the trees and weeks-old grimy snow might normally make for a gloomy scene, but to Phillips they added to the charm of this trip. He felt like a kid going with his father to pick out a Christmas present.

Admiral Pacino walked three steps ahead of him to the waiting staff car, where an aide stood by the open door. Phillips climbed in next to Pacino. The car drove toward the fence gate, the idling jet shrinking behind.

For some minutes neither man said a word. Phillips looked out the window at the thick trees, their frozen branches waving in a cold wind.

“You ever heard about the Vortex missile?” Pacino asked, looking out his own window.

“Excuse me, sir?” Phillips moistened his lips, wanting a cigar but knowing it would not be proper unless his superior offered to let him smoke. All the more reason to be away from the top brass, he thought.

“The Vortex antisubmarine missile, invented four years ago for the Seawolf class,” Pacino said. “The program was abandoned last year.”

“I haven’t heard the term, sir.”

Pacino nodded. “I was involved early in the program, I keep forgetting its classification. When I worked on it the Vortex name alone was classified secret. The program was compartmented, limited distribution, codeword stuff. Anyway, Admiral Donchez came up with the concept — an underwater weapon that’s a hybrid rocket and torpedo. It’s solid-rocket fueled, blue-laser guided.

Warhead is seven tons of Plasticpac explosive with a plasma yield equivalent to the effect of a small battlefield nuclear device.”

“An underwater rocket? With seven tons of Plasticpac?”

Pacino paused, looking at Phillips. “You wouldn’t happen to have any cigars, would you?”

Phillips grinned and pulled out two long Honduran cigars from his jacket pocket. “Sorry they aren’t Cuban,” he said, and passed the cigar cutter to Pacino, then his lighter, the emblem of the USS Greeneville worn by use. The back of the limo filled with mellow smoke. “Anyway, the missile worked well. I was at a Bahamas test-range exercise when the Vortex made its preop trial. The firing ship was an instrumented 637-class attack sub, gutted of equipment with the Vortex launcher installed. The target sub was an old diesel boat similarly instrumented.” Phillips glanced at Pacino, squinting through the smoke. Pacino seemed sad, or nostalgic, or both. “What happened?”

“The missile worked perfectly. Blew the target sub to iron filings. The blast made a water-vapor mushroom cloud that rained down on us for five minutes. I was deaf for three days.”

“So why haven’t we in the fleet heard about this miracle missile? It sounds like a silver bullet.”

“Because the Vortex blew up the firing ship as well. There was nothing left of her. The solid-rocket fuel over-pressurized the tube and the launcher burst open. The rocket exhaust blew the firing platform in half.”

“Bad day after all.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“So why don’t you launch this beast like a ballistic missile — propel it out the tube and then light off the rocket motor?”

“It’s unstable. Spins around, the rocket motor goes off and water forces tear it apart. It needs the whole tube length for guidance.” Phillips looked at Pacino, wondering why the admiral was going on about a dead-end weapon program. When Phillips tamped out his cigar in the ashtray, the car had pulled up to a fenced-in gate. A large sign read dynacorp INTERNATIONAL — ELECTRIC BOAT DIVISION. Pacino put down his window and passed out a bar-coded identification card to the guard, and Phillips reached into his wallet and handed over his own ID. “State your business please,” the guard said.

Pacino did and the car drove through the gate and around several small buildings, approaching a wide tall structure that was blue in the haze of distance. As they drew closer to the building a large sign loomed overhead: NUCLEAR SUBMARINE MANUFACTURING FACILITY— fast attack boat department. The car stopped a final time. Pacino grabbed his white hat and climbed out of the car. Phillips got out, pulling his black overcoat collar up against the wind. From a door in the monolithic wall a short man in a double-breasted suit walked out, a uniformed naval officer following behind him. The man in civilian clothes had a goatee and mustache, his jowly face hanging down below the knot of a blue-patterned tie. The officer behind him wore a black reefer jacket with the four-striped shoulder boards of a navy captain. He was tall with graying cropped hair, an expression of distaste carved into the wrinkles of his face. “Gentlemen,” the civilian called heartily from forty feet away.

“Glad you could make it!”

“Who’s this guy?” Phillips mouthed to Pacino.