The Cruiser: A Dan Lenson Novel
Page 35
I write from a complex braiding of memory, imagination, and research. For this book, I used maps, charts, and advice from a meeting with the very helpful Port Ops crew in Naples. Aegis facts and intercept scenarios were spliced from articles in the January 2012 Proceedings by Kevin Eyer and Jim Kilby, interviews aboard USS San Jacinto, and input from Mark “Dusty” Durstewitz and Mark Moore, who both commented on several drafts. They put a great deal of time into helping me! On cracks in the superstructure, see Christopher P. Cavas, Navy Times, December 9, 2010. The information about infections and the death scene were developed with the help of Dr. Frances Williams. The discussion of EMI is from OPNAVINST 3120.32C. That of TLE download difficulty is from an unclassified BMD 3.6 Bulletin article. The fire in the VLS scene began with a tour and briefing by Pablo Yepez.
The data on jammers is from open sources, mainly an Air Power Australia open posting by Dr. Carlo Kopp, April 2012. The power-out figure is from mostlymissiledefense.com.
Chapter 15 is mostly from my San Jacinto embark, plus a 2003 article in Lifeline magazine. Insight into a sometimes prickly relationship is from “US-Israeli Missile Defense,” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/missile_defense.html. Bill Hunteman helped with the Tomahawk launch scene. The info on force levels is from “CRS Report for Congress, Iraq: US Military Operations,” July 2007. The discussion of ROEs is based on Rules of Engagement Handbook, U.S. Naval War College. Missile specifications are from various open sources.
Joe Leonard read large parts of the book and supplied invaluable perspective from the points of view of a cruiser captain and a squadron commander.
Let’s emphasize that all these sources were consulted for the purposes of fiction. I’m not saying that anything in these references leads to the conclusions my characters reach or voice. Likewise, the specifics of personalities, tactics, and procedures, and the units and locales described, are employed as the materials of fiction, not as reportage. Some details have been altered to protect classified capabilities and procedures.
My most grateful thanks to George Witte, editor and friend of long standing, without whom this series would not exist; to Sally Richardson, Matt Shear, Kenneth J. Silver, Kate Ottaviano, and Sara Thwaite at St. Martin’s; and to Lenore Hart, anchor on lee shores and my North Star when skies are clear.
As always, all errors and deficiencies are my own.
Previous Books by David Poyer
Tales of the Modern Navy
The Towers
The Crisis
The Weapon
Korea Strait
The Threat
The Command
Black Storm
China Sea
Tomahawk
The Passage
The Circle
The Gulf
The Med
Tiller Galloway
Down to a Sunless Sea
Louisiana Blue
Bahamas Blue
Hatteras Blue
The Civil War at Sea
That Anvil of Our Souls
A Country of Our Own
Fire on the Waters
Hemlock County
Thunder on the Mountain
As the Wolf Loves Winter
Winter in the Heart
The Dead of Winter
Other Books
The Whiteness of the Whale
Happier Than This Day and Time
Ghosting
The Only Thing to Fear
Stepfather Bank
The Return of Philo T. McGiffin
Star Seed
The Shiloh Project
White Continent
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID POYER’S military career included service in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, Pacific, and Middle East. The Cruiser is the fourteenth novel in his continuing Dan Lenson series. His work has been required reading in the Literature of the Sea course at the U.S. Naval Academy, along with that of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE CRUISER. Copyright © 2014 by David Poyer. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Young Jin Lim
Cover illustrations by Steve Gardner/PixelWorks Studios, Inc.
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-02058-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-02059-8 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250020598
First Edition: December 2014