I should have told you when you were up on the bridge last night but I figured once you talked to Paully White, the sub-operations officer, you’d come back up here to the bridge to scream about it. But you were down until now.”
Pacino realized he should have checked in and met the submarine-operations officer, the man aboard the carrier who was responsible for the tasking of the two submarines traveling with the battle group. But he had been too exhausted and sick to go below and had left it for today. Once again Pacino cursed the fact that he wasn’t in command of a submarine anymore. On the sub, his information network surrounded him. Now here he was, his information screened by Donner, who kept him in the dark to avoid his anger, hiding behind an operations officer when he was supposed to be as heavy in planning the operation as Donner was. He would have to work on Donner, Pacino thought, deciding to get in touch with Sean Murphy as soon as he left the bridge.
The Hawaii subs, the Pacific Fleet submarine force, should be well on its way by now, he thought.
“You detached my submarines without informing me, Admiral. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me in the god damned loop. Sir.”
“Sorry, Patch, but don’t forget, technically those submarines are under the operational control of the battle group, and since I’m the force commander they report in to me.”
“No, Admiral, those ships were to out-chop to my command. I’m the USUBCOM force commander, and as of last night those ships are under my op-comm.” The jargon meant the ships left the battle group and got a new boss, Pacino, the evening he arrived on the carrier.
“Okay, Patch, fine. They’re your boats and under your command. Okay? It’s just that you had a hell of a night with the accident and the sedative, and the doc thought you might be down for a while, which you were, and we were steaming as before.”
“Where are my ships?”
“The Pasadena and Cheyenne have been running at flank all night. They’ll be in the western Oparea, in the Sea of Japan, by the time the blockade starts.”
“Mac, we may be in a hurry to play this ball game, but why would we agree to kick off with only two players on the god damned field? The whole point of a blockade is to be visible. That takes surface ships. No blockade is credible with subs alone. And the Japan Oparea is crawling with their Destiny-class ships. With our boats running in there at flank speed, they’ll be eaten alive.”
“Those are the orders.”
“Admiral, my subs need release to sink the Destiny subs in the Oparea. You’ve given that order, I assume, sir.” Pacino braced for the worst.
“Those aren’t the rules of engagement. Patch, and you know it. The blockade setup is that, first, Tokyo and the world is notified that as of nineteen hundred hours today, no merchant shipping is to cross the boundary of the Oparea, or as Warner’s calling it in public, the Exclusion Zone. Then, as of seven o’clock tonight local time, we sink anything crossing the boundary, going in or out. There’s nothing authorizing us to attack the military of Japan.”
“Let’s ask, Admiral. We’ve got to get that request on the wire now. If my boats are out there, they could be targeted by Destiny subs. And since you sent them in at maximum speed, they made a hell of a racket getting there. The whole Japanese Fleet knows exactly where they are. They won’t last after the first torpedo.”
“What do you want this to say?”
“That we want to be released to strike at any Destiny submarine the minute we detect it, and that Tokyo should be told to withdraw their submarines or we’ll attack.”
Donner scribbled on the Writepad, and Pacino read.
“Fine.”
“I’ll send it as a joint message from Pacforcecom and USUBCOM/Pacforce. How’s that?”
“Great.” Pacino was still angry but he tried to keep it from showing. northwest pacific USS Barracuda The phone buzzed by the side of the rack. Capt. David Kane lifted a mucous-encrusted eyelid, found the phone, pulled it out of its cradle and dragged it to his ear.
“Captain,” he croaked. He felt older than his forty-five years, the forty-fifth birthday hitting him much harder than he had anticipated. He had been having another nightmare about it, the room filled with black balloons labeled “over the hill” while he looked in a mirror and saw deep wrinkles, bald head, gray mustache, himself bent over a cane. He was glad that the phone had interrupted the dream. He glanced at his watch, the face reading 3:15, trying to remember if it was set for Hawaii time, local time, Greenwich Mean or Tokyo time. He managed to recall ordering the ship’s clocks set to Tokyo time so that when they got to the Japan Oparea their bodies would be adjusted to the light cycles outside.
There was nothing worse than coming to periscope depth in a dark submarine with your body thinking it was two in the morning only to find that when the scope cleared the sun was shining from high in the sky.
“Captain,” he said again, wondering if he’d dreamt the phone had buzzed.
