“Yes sir. That’s my recommendation.” For the first time since Pacino came in with the eyepatch he smiled at Paully, then held out his hand. “Good. It’s a great idea. I’m going to call it Tactical Plan White. If it works I’ll make sure you get the credit for it.”
“And if it fails, you’ll get to take the heat.” Pacino looked up.
“If it fails it won’t matter.” He pushed the chart over to Paully. “Show me where you’d put the boats.”
“Nine boats, eight with Pasadena holding down the Sea of Japan. That’s four packs of two, call them A, B, C and D. A and B start here in the southwest Oparea. C and D begin farther north. A and B move north and C and D come south down the coastline, linking up outside Tokyo Bay. By that time the Oparea is secured.”
“There’s no D. Remember, we’re keeping Barracuda out of the wolfpacks. I want her center stage, right here. We’re going to be at periscope depth trying to run the show.”
“That almost works out, sir. We could put the Buffalo, Albany and Boston up in the north, and Atlanta, Jacksonville, Charleston and Birmingham down south.”
“The Yankees against the Rebs.”
“Easy to remember, anyway.” Pacino grabbed the Writepad and began a tactical employment message. Each ship was given a position and a time to be there. The subs were to link up with their wolfpack partner in the Pacific, then enter the Oparea. Pacino wrote that each ship was to report to him using SLOT buoys, the one-way radio buoys that could be launched from a signal ejector at depth and would then rise to the surface and transmit, allowing the subs to stay deep. “What do you think?” Pacino asked Paully. “Transmitting, even SLOT buoys, is dangerous. The Japanese will be onto us.”
“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 ypu 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.
