“I’ll tell them to program coded SLOTS with prewritten messages. Then at midnight and noon they’ll put them up, and on the Barracuda we’ll know what’s going on.”
“Coded slots?”
“Code 1 means ’no contact,’ code 2 means ’pursuing contact,’ code 3 means ‘I’m under attack’ and code 4 means ’we sank a Destiny’.”
“Not much meat there, Admiral.”
“We can’t micromanage the skippers. We just need to know if they’re still alive.” Pacino modified the message, then attached the electronic file depicting his marked-up chart. “Too bad we lost the USUBCOM authenticators when the Reagan sank. Now our people will just have to trust it’s us sending the message.”
“No, sir. We’ll have access to Barracuda’s authenticators. They’ll have everything we had on the Reagan.”
Pacino nodded, sent the order. The Writepad transmitted the files to the megaserver in orbit, which relayed the data to the Navy’s western Pacific Comstar communications satellite and from there to the subs nearing the Oparea. “Time to go, Paully. You got everything?”
“I’m loaded. The chopper is waiting on the aft deck. You want to say goodbye to the ship’s captain? He asked me to tell you he sends his luck. Hugs and kisses, all that good shit.”
“No time.”
Pacino pulled out his waterproof bag, which was a carbon fiber canister with a gasketed screw top. He rolled up and stowed the chart pad and the Writepad inside, along with the uniform he’d come with and some new ones. He still had his solid gold dolphin pin and his admiral’s stars from the uniform he’d been wearing when the battle group was attacked.
“Let’s go.”
They walked down the crowded passageways of the Mount Whitney, their wet suits creaking and squeaking. The ship’s halls were busy with cables and junction boxes and pipes, but nowhere near as crowded as a nuclear submarine. The surface ships wasted space and volume everywhere, so much so that it was hard for Pacino to walk their passageways without thinking of the waste, but soon he would be aboard the Barracuda and it would all fall into place — But would it? He felt a dread come into him then, settling onto his spirit like a carrion bird on a carcass. Suddenly the war seemed to become sinister and alive, a beast too big for him, and for the first time in memory he felt unequal to the task.
In the past he’d taken his abilities to the limit. On the Devilfish he had once been faced with sinking under the polar icecap with a dying nuclear submarine or trying to emergency blow through ice a hundred feet thick. He had had nothing to lose in aiming for the ice — either his crew would have died if he did nothing, or they had a chance, however slight, to live if he took a huge risk. It hadn’t been a choice. Now, his decisions would affect several thousand men with several thousand families, and maybe even the nation. If he prevailed, America would again be the big kid on the block. If he lost, the US would go the way of Napoleon’s France or Hitler’s Germany or Sihoud’s United Islamic Front of God. The pressure was too much, he could feel it crawling down his throat, a cold claw on his heart. Every decision would inevitably send men to their deaths.
He tried to tell himself to stop such thoughts and calm down, but the battle coming up in the next hours would determine a judgment of his entire life. Before, at sea, in command, he had coped with the pressure by simply telling himself that he knew his crew had taken risks to come to sea with him and that they trusted him. And that if he lost, he lost his ship and his men and that was it. But there were other ships, other captains, other days for them to fight. Here now, in the Pacific outside of Japan, there was only himself and his fleet, two-thirds of it late, the other third already committed by an overly aggressive commander-in-chief who might relent when he confronted her — but who might not. And this battle was not just for his life, his crew’s, his ship, it was for a whole fleet of ships, his country’s future. If he blew this… Pacino knew he would be sailing into darkness, not only blind but dumb, not able to tell his ships his orders unless they came out of the depths to hear him—
Paully’s voice interrupted, his words focused on the irrelevant, the nurse who had attended Pacino when he was injured, Paully, of course, unaware of Pacino’s thoughts. “Admiral, you really should take a few minutes with Nurse Eileen. She tended to you when you were out of it!”
Pacino kept walking. His headache was pounding harder. “Admiral, I think she’d feel real bad if you just jumped into a helicopter without thanking her.”
“You’re right,” Pacino said finally. As they walked by sick bay Pacino stopped. “I have a migraine. I’m going to grab some aspirin or something before we get in the chopper. You wait here.”
Pacino walked into the door to sickbay. Lt. Eileen Constance was doing computerwork in her office. She wore her regulation whites, her face tanned with no makeup, her hair long and blonde. She had been a nurse for eight years, most of it on the hospital ships, but she had wanted to be a flight surgeon and had put in for medical school. Her application to the University of Florida had been accepted and she was only waiting here on the Mount Whitney as a nurse until med school commenced in the fall. Pacino had learned about her career ambitions while flat on his back in sickbay after recovering from the eye surgery. When they had removed his bandages he had seen her for the first time and felt his heart sink. She was too beautiful, out of his league. It hurt just to look at her.
“Hi, Eileen, thought I’d stop by and say thanks. I appreciated…”
She looked up, apparently surprised. “Admiral.” She stood up. “How is the eye? You look like you’re in pain.” She put her hand on his forehead.
“Headache.”
She gave him two pills and a bottle of spring water.
He swallowed, his eyes on her. He moved closer to her, knowing he shouldn’t. She smiled up at him.
“Well, since you just came to say goodbye, I’ll say good luck. Be careful on the personnel transfer… and give them hell.”
“Thanks.”
“And come back in one piece, okay?” She paused. “Do you think we’ll ever see each other again?”
Paully’s knock came at the door. “Time to go, Admiral.”
“Tell them to start the engines,” Pacino shouted through the door.
“I’ve got to go,” Pacino said.
“Please be careful, Michael.” His first name from her lips, when no one called him anything but “sir” or “admiral” or “Patch” or Donchez’s “Mikey” sounded strange but wonderful.
The sound of the helicopter’s jet engines spooling up could be heard dimly through the bulkheads, the noise swelling as the turbines whined, moaned, screamed. The sounds of the rotors came next, the chopper starting the main rotor.
Paully knocked again. “Chopper’s ready, sir.”
Pacino turned back to Eileen, grabbed her shoulders, pulled her close and kissed her. In a way it seemed absurd, a cliche, the warrior off to war, kissing his woman goodbye. Well, hell, so be it.
He pulled away. “Bet on it, I’ll see you again.”
He stepped out the door to the passageway, shutting it behind him. Paully followed him to the aft helodeck, and as they opened the watertight door to the helodeck Pacino noticed his headache was gone.
He stepped into the Sea King helicopter and sat by the hatch, looking at the ship. Paully waved orders at the pilots and the rotor outside roared, the chopper shaking with the power of the rotating blades. The helicopter lifted off the deck, climbed to the southeast and then turned and sped away, the Mount Whitney vanishing far below.
CHAPTER 26