Barracuda- Final Bearing

by Michael Dimercurio

  And I suggest history will remember the men in this room—and in our videolink—as cowards and failures.”

  There was a shocked silence in the room. Wadsworth heard Pacino on a two-second delay. As the words registered a storm came over his face. Pacino no longer cared, and ignored the video display and the recording camera. Donchez’s face was a study in mixed emotions.

  Pacino didn’t care about that either. He began packing his notes in his briefcase.

  “Admiral Pacino,” President Warner said, her tone neutral, “I think perhaps it would be best if you got yourself back to your office. The rest of us need to talk to Admiral Wadsworth. Thank you for your time. And your outspoken and candid opinion.” Pacino stood and nodded to Donchez, then followed one of Warner’s staffers out of the Oval Office. He doubted he’d ever see the inside of it again. BOOK TWO (HAPTEII washington, D.C.

  Pacino walked swiftly from the first floor of the White House east wing through the door held open by a Marine guard, who snapped to attention and saluted. Pacino ignored him. He could hear the clicking sounds of his aide’s footsteps behind him. He ducked into the back of the borrowed staff car and waited for Lieutenant Stoddard to climb into the front.

  He was stonily silent all the way to Andrews Air Force Base, where the car was ushered past the fencing and guards to a gray-painted swept-wing jet, a twelve-passenger Grumman SS-12. Pacino left the staff car behind and rushed into the aircraft, dumping himself into the midcabin executive seat. Joanna Stoddard scurried up the ladder. He could hear her muttering to the pilots and stealing an anxious look at Pacino. The sounds of the jets whining didn’t soothe him as they usually did. He stared out the window, furious, mostly at himself for being so tactless. As a submarine commander he had been known for brash action, but that was a different world, he told himself. He had just spoken up before the president of the United States to say that his commanding officer, the Chief of Naval Operations, was so wrong that his recommendations would be against the best interests of the country. Way to go, he thought.

  After a statement like that Admiral Wadsworth would have no choice but to fire him. There was no way that Pacino’s insubordination could be allowed.

  The jet neared the runway’s end and throttled up, the turbines spooling up to full power. Usually Pacino liked to sit in the cockpit for the takeoff, to watch the runway hurtling at the windshield. Not today. He continued to stare off into the distance as the runway vanished underneath the plane, the beltway rushed by below, then the city as Washington faded away to the northwest, the aircraft bound for Norfolk. The jet would never climb above 10,000 feet on this trip, since the two cities were so close, but by car it would be three or four hours in rush-hour traffic to get back to the Norfolk base, and by jet it was perhaps a half-hour door to door. As the jet flew on, Pacino considered his now limited options.

  He had at most ten days. Wadsworth had every right to fire him on the phone or send a written message relieving him of command. But he had come to know Tony Wadsworth’s style, and the man seemed to enjoy personal confrontation—hell, he’d once been a boxer.

  Wadsworth had fired several subordinates before, the stories legendary, and every time he did, he had done it in person, his face millimeters from his subordinate’s nose. Which meant that Pacino had until Wadsworth returned from his African tour, maybe ten days from now.

  Except there was always the possibility that Wadsworth would return early after the meeting with the president, which could cut Pacino’s time down. The president might take him out of the office of Commander Unified Submarine Command, putting him behind a desk somewhere in the Navy’s bureaucracy. But somehow his gut feel was that he had enough rope to hang himself, and that would amount to ten days. And there was a lot he could get done in ten days. He waved at his aide Joanna Stoddard, who came over and sat next to him.

  “Call Norfolk,” he said without preamble, “and get Captain Murphy and Commander McDonne to the office.”

  Murphy was the deputy USUBCOM commander for operations, and McDonne was the deputy for administration.

  “I want them waiting for me when we get in. And make sure the car is standing by at the airfield.”

  “Yes sir,” and fairly vaulted herself forward to take care of the orders.

  Pacino returned to looking glumly out the window.

  Richard Donchez cleared his throat and tugged at his collar. It had been painful to watch the self-destruction of a career he had hand-built over twenty years. Pacino had been stupid. Stupid at sea was one thing—even the sea was more forgiving than the politicians—but stupid in the Oval Office was fatal. And it made no sense, because Pacino, despite his brashness, was still attuned to the way the world worked. Donchez had witnessed him biting his lip a hundred times when he’d had other opportunities to be less than tactful. Pacino had never stepped out of line, over the line, like this. Which made him wonder whether it might have been intentional.

  Maybe Mikey didn’t want to play with the big dogs anymore.

  Donchez resolved to talk to Pacino as soon as the meeting ended. There might be some things he could do, but holding back Tony Wadsworth would be a Herculean task. Donchez had heard that Tony, in the boxing ring, had gone undefeated his senior year at Annapolis.

  “Well,” President Warner said after the door slammed on Pacino, “that has to be the most up-front statement by a military officer I’ve ever heard. In the meantime,” she said, turning back to the group, “we are left with the decision on what we will do regarding Japan.” She paced from one side of the office to the other, then stood behind Alex Addison’s seat. “Here is what I want done.

  First, Admiral Wadsworth, and Generals Sverdlov and Clough. The aircraft carrier battle group that is closest to Japan—I want it to keep going at top speed to get ready to set up a blockade. When that force is closer, say five hundred miles, I want to be notified. The other groups, with the other two carriers, should be sent to sea as fast as possible. I want an update every six hours on where we stand with those forces. Clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the senior officers in the room said at once, Wadsworth’s acknowledgment delayed by the video lag.

  “Mr. Gordon, get with our ambassador to Japan. His name is—”

  “Pulcanson. Chesty Pulcanson.”

  “Oh, I remember him. Good.” Pulcanson was six feet five inches tall and weighed at least 250, a ruddy-faced Texan who had a presence imposing enough to fill a ballroom. “Get Pulcanson to request a meeting with Kurita. Have him tell Kurita to accept the UN resolution—which I’m sure will be passed by then—allowing for inspectors to dismantle the Hiroshima missiles and to take control of the Japanese air force and navy, because if he does not. the US will enforce the embargo by military means.” “Yes, ma’am,” Gordon said.

  “That’s it. I want this group ready to come back and continue this meeting at a moment’s notice. Don’t anybody leave town. Admiral Wadsworth, I’d like you to remain a moment, please.”

  unified submarine command headquarters norfolk naval base, norfolk, virginia Pacino crashed into his office and slammed his body into his leather chair. The oak desk, a relic from John Paul Jones’s command Bonhomme Richard, was covered with papers laid out for Pacino’s signature, the gasoline that fueled the fleet’s bureaucracy. Pacino hated to see the desk like that. He wanted to see an ocean of bare wood in front of him, uncluttered by blotters, pen sets, staplers and, most of all, papers. He had lectured the staff that with the new computer systems, with the four-year-old Writepad computer, there should never be a need for hardcopies. The Writepad Systems were radio-networked to a national megafile server in earth orbit, so that any newspaper or magazine could be accessed with a click of a finger on the flat paper-thin surface.

  With the support of officers like Pacino, the Writepads were linked into a defense megafile server, so that messages that before were sent on radio circuits and printed down were now sent by electronic mail to individual Writepads. Paper was mostly obso
lete. So why was it still everywhere? With a quick motion of his hands he swept the pile off the desk and looked up at Joanna.

  “Where the hell are Murphy and McDonne?”

  “Sir, they just arrived. They were out inspecting Eighth Squadron until—”

  “Just get them in here.” Pacino bit his lip, wishing he had some bad habit like smoking that could calm him down. He couldn’t remember ever losing his control like this. He had been on the business end of half a dozen warshot torpedoes and twice as many more Chinese depth charges. Now, after having words with his boss he was acting like a plebe being hazed at the academy. Hell, he had served under psychotic Rocket Ron for two years, knowing there were at least five times he had almost punched him out, knowing also that Rocket Ron had been trying to provoke exactly that in order to find Pacino’s limit, one time succeeding as Pacino had left the submarine in the middle of the day and gone home to drink half a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. But now, with the end of his career imminent, he found that he wanted that career. Death was all in a day’s work, but facing ignominious demotion or retirement was not something he could deal with. He fought for control. He owed Joanna an apology.

  “Admiral,” Murphy’s gravelly voice called, at the entrance to the office. As soon as Pacino saw Capt. Sean Murphy, his tension evaporated. He and Murphy went back decades. They’d been roommates at Annapolis from sophomore year on. They had doubledated when Pacino had first met Janice, who had introduced Sean to Katrina. Now, twenty-five years later, Katrina and Sean had two children, Janice and Pacino had one, although Katrina and Sean were inseparable while Janice and Pacino were filing for divorce. But their professional lives had been just as close. They had been aboard the same subs during their junior officer and department head tours, both men teaching at the academy during the shore tour in between. Six years before, Murphy had been in command of the USS Tampa, then the newest Improved 688class attack sub, which had been taken hostage in the Go Hai Bay outside of Beijing by the Red Chinese. Pacino had been commissioned by Admiral Donchez to take the then untested Seawolf into restricted waters and rescue the crew of the Tampa in a mission so classified that only the president’s inner circle were aware of it. Murphy had taken two bullets and almost died, but after two years of physical therapy he had regained his strength. Murphy was tall and lanky, blond and tan, his skin wrinkled around his eyes, his voice a deep growl from an old smoking habit. He looked good, a slight smile haunting his lips, his blue eyes dancing with the same mischief they had held when he and Pacino had pulled pranks on the first-class midshipmen when they had been lowly plebes.

  “Murph,” Pacino said, feeling like hugging his ops officer.

  He reached out and grabbed Murphy’s hand and gripped it hard. Murphy’s own grip painful, their old ritual. “Have I got a deal for you.”

  “Oh? Where are you sending me now?”

  “That’s the deal—you’re staying home. Where’s CB McDonne?”

  “Sir!” McDonne called from the door.

  “You’re late,” Pacino said goodnaturedly. “Get your butt in here.”

  Carl B. “CB” McDonne waddled into the office and shut the door. CB was the deputy commander for administration, the workhorse who made the trains run on time, kept the orders flowing to the ships of the fleet, tended to the requests coming up from below and the orders going down from above. CB loved it, every paperwork nightmare of it. If Pacino’s personality were a photograph, CB McDonne would be its negative, yet they got along as if they were brothers. CB had come to the admin post as a “hard labor” tour, done to improve his fitness report, to rehabilitate him for problems he had had in the past trying to get command of his own sub. Part of CB’s problem was his weight. He defined obese, and the Navy doctors disqualified him for sea duty until he could lose over a hundred pounds. It would be a challenge to find a McDonne body part, at least one that was visible, that was not fat. The man was nearly spherical, and bald. The absurdly generous flesh, however, covered a razor sharp intelligence, a steel-trap mind that remembered everything. He could quote whole paragraphs from the Reactor Plant Manual like southern Baptist preachers could quote scripture. He had once memorized operating instruction 27, “Normal Reactor Startup,” a procedure that was over forty pages long, and had recited it to his wardroom while they tallied up his errors. He had promised the junior officers that he would buy them each one beer for every mistake.

  The bet had cost him quite a party, but it had come to only two sixpacks each. Twelve errors from a memorization forty pages long.

  Not surprisingly, there was something of an edge to McDonne’s sense of humor, which seemed to be easing now that he had been with Pacino for a year. In addition, his daily six-mile walks were beginning to melt off the bulk. Although still ponderously huge, McDonne’s uniforms were starting to hang on him. “About time you got in here,” Pacino said, shaking McDonne’s huge hand. “Sit down, gentlemen.” For the next twenty minutes Pacino outlined the debate with the president and her men, including some of what Wadsworth had said. He finished with: “Listen up. I’m going to sea. CB, I want a call put in for transportation to the aircraft carrier Reagan.”

  “What’s on your mind? We need you here. Or in Pearl. At sea you’ll be tied up by the other officers in the battle group. You’ll need to get permission to transmit, and your radio messages will be scanned by the surface pukes.”

  “Hold on, Murph. I’ll get off the carrier as soon as they can helicopter me to one of the battle group’s escort submarines.”

  “We won’t be able to transmit to the fleet, and—”

  “It’s not we, it’s me. You both are staying here at HQ. You’ll be running the operation from here. Here’s your big chance to show that you’ve got what it takes to wear an admiral’s stars. And as usual, you get the job description first, much later the rank and the title. CB, I want you to help out Captain Murphy with this to-do list.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the men said, puzzled. It was not to be part of the briefing why Pacino intended to send his orders from the radio room of a forward deployed submarine, as Donchez had suggested. With Wadsworth coming back, the only way Pacino figured he could remain in command was by staying away from the man. Wadsworth could only relieve him at sea if he could prove Pacino was doing something flagrantly wrong. In an office, Wadsworth could unseat him for having a’ messy desk. “Guys, we have a very unusual situation here. You’re both going to have to live outside your comfort levels. We’ll all be very uncomfortable in the coming weeks.

  Particularly if the president orders us to blockade Japan. Now here’s the deal—CB gets me something to take me to the USS Reagan as soon as we leave this meeting. I’ll put together a message to the force commander saying that I need to get out to one of his attack subs. I’ll put the draft of that on the megaserver in your admin directory, CB. You get it in the right format and throw it out to the Rfagan with immediate priority. Now, which subs are assigned to that battle group?” McDonne, who had been scribbling, his finger whirling across his Writepad, stopped and tapped a fingernail at a software button displayed at the top of the notepage display. A menu flashed onto his page, and he selected another button, until finally the information he sought blinked on the display. “Pasadena and Cheyenne.”

  “Who are the commanding officers?”

  “Pasadena is run by a Jackson Vaughn—”

  “Lube Oil Vaughn,” Pacino said, grinning. “Murph, Lube Oil was with you on the Tampa, right?”

  “Good man,” Murphy said, looking at the far wall, but lost for a moment in a memory. “He was my XO on the Seawolf.” Lube Oil Vaughn was damned good, Pacino thought, feeling some guilt for not keeping up with him. “Cheyenne is commanded by one Gregory Keebes. I think he was also on the Seawolf with you. Admiral.”

  “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. N
o 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.”