Читаем Barracuda: Final Bearing полностью

Kane was taller than average, slim, with a full head of dark hair and a tan. When the ship was in port, he would be on the beach, running, walking his dogs or hanging out with his wife Becky and his daughters. He was famous for being the Pacific Fleet captain who worked smarter, not harder. His face was chiseled, the high cheekbones set above thin cheeks and a strong square chin. When he had been at Annapolis he had been the six-striper, the brigade commander. He had met his wife while a first-class midshipman, when he and his friends had written to a Playboy centerfold model, the letter written as a prank, but after two months she had written him back. After they corresponded for a few weeks they decided to meet, choosing a Georgetown bar. After that it had been all over for Kane. He had proposed to her on that first date, and she had just laughed. During their spring break they had flown to Bermuda, and on the beach one twilight he had popped the biggest ring he could finance into her hands, and this time she didn’t laugh. In fact, she had cried. They had been engaged for two months when Kane had been interviewed for the nuclear-power program by Admiral Rickover, the famed father of the nuclear navy. Rickover had managed to shoehorn a nuclear reactor into a submarine, an engineering task that should have taken fifteen years, but Rickover had done it in three at a fraction of the cost of the estimates, and with an impeccable safety record.

When his USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, went under the polar icecap, his nuclear navy had been the envy of the world. He had pledged to Congress that not a single naval officer would be admitted to his program unless he personally approved of him. Every single candidate would be interviewed personally. Once Rickover flunked someone, there was no appeal.

Rickover had called a very nervous Kane into the office.

Submarine duty was all he wanted to do in the Navy. Airplanes held no fascination, and surface ships made him seasick, many of them stinking of diesel fuel, the amphibious fleet a flotilla of rustbucket ships that carried unwashed Marine troops into combat. Aircraft carriers particularly irritated him, since it was the worst of two worlds, a surface ship that acted as a bus for a bunch of arrogant pilots. He had gone into Annapolis for the free education and the status, but as graduation approached he could only see himself being a sub driver.

Now that he was finally in Rickover’s office, it sank in that Rickover could easily say no to him, as he had done with 40 percent of the applicants. The man who had the interview two before Kane had left the office with glazed eyes.

“What happened?” Kane had asked him.

“Rickover told me I’m too shy,” the midshipman had said. “He told me I had thirty seconds to piss him off.”

“What did you do?”

“I stood on a chair. I was going to piss on his desk but he looked at me like I was an idiot, and I couldn’t even do that. I couldn’t get the piss to come out. Rickover said that even my cock was too shy, and he told me to get the hell out.”

“That was it?”

“No. He has this four-foot-long shiny model of the Nautilus on his desk.

I picked it up and smashed it into a thousand pieces. One of the fragments broke and nicked his hand. He was bleeding onto his shirt.”

“Holy shit! You broke the admiral’s ship model? What did he do?” “He said, ‘Get the hell out of here,’ but then he stopped me. I turned around and he looked at me like he was going to kill me, and he says, ‘Goddamnit, you’re hired!’ I guess I pissed him off enough.” Kane had wondered what test Rickover would have for him. He was ushered into the office and told to sit in a wooden chair in front of the admiral’s desk.

He found it was true — the front legs were truly shorter than the back legs. Kane had felt the bile of nerves rise in his stomach. Rickover was short, slight, wrinkled and old. He mumbled over at Kane something Kane didn’t understand. “Excuse me, sir?” “Why, did you fart?” the admiral said. “I said, your class standing sucks. Your grades suck. You’ve been showing a flat or declining trend since your youngster year. Yet they appoint you brigade commander second set. And I notice that you’re ever so pretty. That must be why. It certainly isn’t your wits, is it, Mr. Kane?”

“I think I—”

“Oh, you don’t fucking think at all, that’s your problem. Look at this. Look at it! Would you accept you into my program?”

“Sir, yes, I have a 3.78 grade point average in ocean engineering—”

“Ocean engineering. What do you study, fishies? Good Lord, what’s the academy coming to? Okay, Kane, I’ll just make this easy on both of us. I don’t like jocks and I don’t like stripers. You sit in your admin offices and drink coffee and put midshipmen on report and carry a sword and get the girls, yessir. You have a girlfriend, Kane?”

“Yes sir.”

“Are you engaged to her?”

“Yes sir, we’re supposed to get married the week after graduation.”