Читаем Barracuda: Final Bearing полностью

“Navigator. Smart guy, cool as they come. Unflappable. While I’m out, Sean, you’re in command. We’ve got some new priorities. Everything you were doing before this meeting, I want you to forget. Drop it. No reports, no paperwork, no wives’ bake sales. You need to stay absolutely focused.” Pacino’s intensity was getting through to Murphy, who on the outside looked calm but his finger tapping his thigh gave him away. “Here are the priorities. Number one.

Get the USS Piranha to sea.”

“She’s ready now, sir,” Murphy said, puzzled. “No. We just put her into the Electric Boat manufacturing barn to be fitted out with Vortex missiles.”

“Has someone figured out a way to keep them from blowing up their own tubes?” McDonne asked. “Yes, but EB has a month of work to do and I gave them a week. You have to get that down to five days, six max. I want Bruce Phillips at sea yesterday.”

“Where’s he going?”

“Get him to the Japan surrounding waters. Which reminds me, we’re going to start calling that chunk of ocean the Japan Oparea. And for the submarine force, we need an operation name for this… blockade.” McDonne pinched the flesh around his throat, his habit when thinking hard. “How about Operation Steel Trap or Operation Stranglehold or Operation Airtight?”

“No,” Pacino said. “I want something that sounds almost Japanese. Let’s call it Operation Enlightened Curtain. This blockade is a curtain around Japan that will give her leaders something to think about, a curtain of enlightenment.” He didn’t wait for their approval. “Okay, next priority.

Get the rest of the sub force to sea. Send a flash message, sub force to Defcon three. CB, what’s that mean to you?”

“All repair availabilities are canceled. Tenders and shipyards stop all work. Crews button up any systems they’re repairing. All leaves are canceled. All personnel to be within an hour of their ships. All ships are to be ready to get underway within two hours. Every submarine loaded with torpedoes and cruise missiles. The ready-status ships are already fully loaded out.”

“Send the order. Defcon three, all submarines in the Unified Submarine Command.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

McDonne scribbled on his Writepad. He stroked a software button and the scribbled handwritten notes became block letters, machine typed. Pacino scanned the message.

“Start an authenticator system.”

“That normally doesn’t happen until Defcon two—”

“Start it anyway.”

McDonne wrote on the message, Pacino read it.

FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH

FM COMUSUBCOM TO ALL FAST ATTACK SUBMARINE UNITS USUBCOM

SUBJ READINESS CONDITION/OPERATION ENLIGHTENED CURTAIN SECRET

AUTHENTICATOR BRAVO FIVE ECHO

BT//

1. (S) SET DEFENSE READINESS CONDITION (DEFCON) THREE.

2. (S) AUTHENTICATION: 3. ADMIRAL M. PACINO SENDS.

//BT//

Pacino looked at the message and nodded.

“All we need is the authenticator,” he said. “Break it out.”

The two men in front of him suddenly became serious and formal, standing up at attention.

“Break out the authenticator, aye, sir. Commander?”

“Aye, sir.”

They left the room briskly, shutting the door behind them. While they went to the safe-within-a-safe, locked inside a vault that held top-secret material, compartmentalized material and codeword material, Pacino waited.

War, he thought, hadn’t happened yet, but the ball was rolling and picking up speed. (HATO 12 oval office washington, D.C.

President Jaisal Warner frowned at Admiral Wadsworth on the videolink screen.

“Tony, what about Admiral Pacino’s statement?”

“Madam President,” Wadsworth said slowly, quietly, his accent flat and Midwestern now that he addressed the president, although he had a tendency to slip into a dialect of Mississippi African-American when addressing subordinates. “I think Pacino is out of line. I want a USUBCOM commander I can work with. Pacino, frankly, is too parochial. All he sees are submarines. I’m coming back right now to begin the selection process for Pacino’s replacement.”

“Tony, about Pacino being too focused on enemy subs… he did mention the Firestar fighter squadrons.”

“Yes, but he has overlooked the power of our surface fleet. I have major antisubmarine equipment at sea right now, all at the command of the Reagan battle-force commander.

Just because Pacino’s power base is a bunch of sewer pipes doesn’t mean the rest of the world’s navies have lethal submarines that should make us tremble.”

“Admiral, Pacino pointed out the specifics of what he’s worried about. The Destiny III robotic submarines, the Destiny II-class—”

“Ma’am, the Destiny classes are more often than not at their piers. We don’t believe they’re threats to us.”