Nimitz Class - Страница 2

К оглавлению

Доступ к книге ограничен фрагменом по требованию правообладателя.

Admiral Scott F. Dunsmore (Chief of Naval Operations)

Admiral Freddy Roberts (Vice CNO)

Admiral Gene Sadowski (C-in-C Pacific Command)

Admiral Albie Lambert (C-in-C Pacific Fleet)

Admiral Schnider (Head of Naval Intelligence)

Vice Admiral Archie Carter (Commander, Fifth Fleet)

U.S. Navy Personnel

Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge (Naval Intelligence)

Lieutenant Commander Jay Bamberg (Assistant to the CNO)

USS Columbia

Commander Cale “Boomer” Dunning (Commanding Officer)

Lieutenant Commander Jerry Curran (Combat Systems Officer)

Lieutenant Commander Lee O’Brien (Marine Engineering Officer)

Lieutenant Commander Mike Krause (Executive Officer)

Lieutenant David Wingate (Navigation Officer)

U.S. Navy SEALS

Admiral John Bergstrom (Commander, Special War Command, SPECWARCOM)

Commander Ray Banford (SEAL Mission Controller)

Lieutenant Commander Russell Bennett (Platoon Leader, SEAL Number Three Team)

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) David Mills (SEAL SDV driver)

Political and Presidential Staff

Robert MacPherson (Secretary of Defense)

Harcourt Travis (Secretary of State)

Dick Stafford (White House Press Secretary)

Sam Haynes (National Security Adviser)

Louis Fallon (White House Chief of Staff)

CIA Officers

Jeff Zepeda (expert on Iran)

Major Ted Lynch (Middle East financial specialist)

Family Members

Grace Dunsmore (wife of CNO)

Elizabeth Dunsmore (daughter of CNO)

Emily Baldridge (mother of Jack and Bill)

Ray Baldridge (brother of Jack and Bill)

Margaret Baldridge (Jack’s wife)

Royal Navy Personnel

Admiral Sir Peter Elliott (Flag Officer Submarines)

Captain Dick Greenwood (FOSM’s Chief of Staff)

Lieutenant Andrew Waites (Flag Lieutenant)

Admiral Sir Iain MacLean (Retired FOSM)

Lieutenant Commander Jeremy Shaw (Commanding Officer HMS Unseen)

Family Members

Lady MacLean (“Annie,” wife of Sir Iain)

Laura Anderson (daughter of Sir Iain and Lady MacLean)

Senior Foreign Officers

General David Gavron (Military Attaché, Israeli Embassy, Washington)

Vice Admiral Vitaly Rankov (Head of Russian Naval Intelligence)

Foreign Navy Personnel

Leading Seaman Karim Aila (Dock Sentry, Iranian Navy)

Prologue

Deep in the Mediterranean Sea, halfway between the Greek mainland and the long western headland of Crete, lies the rough and rugged island of Kithira. It is a coarse rock, twenty miles long at most, set in the middle of a shining and be jeweled sea.

Along the eastern end of the Mediterranean there is a pure, transparent light which seems to flood the depths of the water. This is a paradise for visiting scuba divers, but for local fishermen, the azure ocean which surrounds them is a harsh and unforgiving place. There are not enough fish anymore. And life is as hard as it has ever been.

It was 5 A.M. on a hot morning early in July. The sun was just rising, and the fishing boat was sailing close to the rocky shore on the south side. Up on the portside of the bow, his feet trailing over the side, sat sixteen-year-old Dimitrios Morakis. He was in deep trouble.

On the previous afternoon he had managed to lose the only good net his family owned, and now his father Stephanos sat, unshaven and grumpy, on the tiller. The man was secretly proud of his golden-skinned son. And he stared at the boy’s Etruscan nose, a mirror image of his own, and the large hands, too powerful for the slender, youthful body; the boy’s genetic bounty from a long line of Kithiran fishermen.

Nonetheless, Stephanos was still peevish. “We’d better find it,” he said, unnecessarily. And in a light morning breeze, they slapped along, against the wavelets, while out to the east, for a few translucent moments, the earth seemed to rise up through veils of scarlet and violet.

The net showed up more or less where Stephanos thought it would be, driven into a curved outcrop of rock by the unvarying Aegean currents. Lost nets had been washing up against those particular rocks for centuries.

The problem was, it was jammed. Working in the water for almost half an hour, Dimitrios was unable to free it. “It’s caught up way below the surface,” he yelled to his father. “I’ll get back on the boat and then dive deep with a fishing knife.”

Three minutes later the boy split the water, headfirst, kicking his way downward. In the crystal clear depths, he found the bottom of the net, entwined and stuck in a crevasse between two rocks. There was no option but to cut it.

He stuck out his left hand to give himself purchase, and slashed the knife sideways. The net came free, and as it did so, Dimitrios tugged the twisted cord from the V-shaped gap in the rocks. He had been underwater for twenty-four seconds now, and he needed to surface.

But he was kicking against a weight on his shoulders. He twisted left and saw, still resting on his arm, two large black boots. Dimitrios pushed away and even in the water the weight was considerable, because these boots contained one full-sized, very drowned, human body, trapped by one arm in the ancient rocks of Kithira.

The other arm flapped free, skeletal. It had been eaten by fish and was swaying in the morning tide. Dimitrios stared at the white, bloated head, the eye sockets empty, the flesh on one side stripped from the skull, the teeth still there, the half-mouth grinning grotesquely in the clear water. It was a phantasm, straight from the imagination of the devil himself.

Choking with disgust, Dimitrios stared at the grisly cadaver as it continued performing its hideous slow-motion ballet just beneath the surface, the one arm and both legs rising and falling in the gentle swell, the body spot-lit by the finely focused underwater rays of the clear Aegean sun.

Then he turned and kicked with the frenzy of the truly terrified, desperate for air, driven by the ludicrous thought that somehow the specter would find a way to pursue him. He glanced down as he went, and as he did so, he noticed the sun creating a bright light on the dark blue jersey which covered the hideous white balloon of the waterlogged body — the light glistened upward, reflecting thinly, from a tiny, two-inch-long silver submarine badge, inlaid with a five-pointed red star.

1

April 22, 2002.

The Indian Ocean.

On board the United States Aircraft Carrier Thomas Jefferson. 9S, 92E. Speed 30.

They had waved him off twice now. And each time lieutenant William R. Howell had eased open the throttle of his big F-14 interceptor/attack Tomcat and climbed away to starboard, watching the speed needle slide smoothly from 150 knots to 280 knots. The acceleration was almost imperceptible, but in seconds the lieutenant saw the six-story island of the carrier turn into a half-inch-high black thimble against the blue sky.

The deep Utah drawl of the Landing Signal Officer standing on the carrier stern was still calm: “Tomcat two-zero-one, we still have a fouled deck — gotta wave you off one more time — just an oil leak — this is not an emergency, repeat not an emergency.”

Lieutenant Howell spoke quietly and slowly: “Tomcat two-zero-one. Roger that. I’m taking a turn around. Will approach again from twelve miles.” He eased the fighter plane’s nose up, just a fraction, and he felt his stomach tighten. It was never more than a fleeting feeling, but it always brought home the truth, that landing any aircraft at sea on the narrow, angled, 750-foot-long, pitching landing area remained a life-or-death test of skill and nerve for any pilot. It took most rookies a couple of months to stop their knees shaking after each landing. Pilots short of skill, or nerve, were normally found working on the ground, driving freight planes, or dead. He knew that there were around twenty plane-wrecking crashes on U.S. carriers each year.

From the rear seat, the radar-intercept officer (RIO), Lieutenant Freddie Larsen, muttered, “Shit. There’s about a hundred of ’em down there, been clearing up an oil spill for a half hour — what the hell’s going on?” Neither aviator was a day over twenty-eight years old, but already they had perfected the Navy flier’s nonchalance in the face of instant death at supersonic speed. Especially Howell.

“Dunno,” he said, gunning the Tomcat like a bullet through the scattered low clouds whipping past this monster twin-tailed warplane, now moving at almost five miles every minute. “Did y’ever see a big fighter jet hit an oil pool on a carrier deck?”

“Uh-uh.”

“It ain’t pretty. If she slews out off a true line you gotta real good chance of killing a lot of guys. ’Specially if she hits something and burns, which she’s damn near certain to do.”

“Try to avoid that, willya?”

Freddie felt the Tomcat throttle down as Howell banked away to the left. He felt the familiar pull of the slowing engines, worked his shoulders against the yaw of the aircraft, like the motorcycle rider he once had been.

The F-14 is not much more than a motorbike with a sixty-four-foot wingspan anyway. Unexpectedly sensitive to the wind at low speed, two rock-hard seats, no comfort, and an engine with the power to turn her into a mach-2 rocketship—1,400 knots, no sweat, out there on the edge of the U.S. fighter pilot’s personal survival envelope.