Nimitz Class - Страница 5

Доступ к книге ограничен фрагменом по требованию правообладателя.

Most people expected that the forty-year-old Jack would become a rear admiral. Naval warfare was his life, and he was the outstanding commander in the entire Battle Group, shouldering significant responsibility as the Group Admiral’s right-hand man. His kid brother Bill, however, who looked like a cowboy, rode a horse like a cowboy, and was apt to drive Navy staff cars like a cowboy, had gone as far as he was going. He was not a natural commander, but his scientific achievements in the field of nuclear physics and weaponry were so impressive the Navy Chiefs had felt obliged to award him with senior rank. Bill was a natural crisis man, a cool thoughtful Naval scientist, who often came up with solutions no one had previously considered. There were several elderly admirals who did not care for him because of his unorthodox methods, but Bill Baldridge had many supporters.

Where Jack was a solidly married, down-to-earth Navy captain of the highest possible quality, no one quite knew where Bill would end up, except in a variety of different beds all over Washington. At thirty-six he showed no signs of giving up his bachelor lifestyle and the trail of romantic havoc he had left from Dodge City to Arlington, Virginia. Jack regarded his brother with immense benevolence.

Down in electronic operations, Captain Baldridge was moving on several fronts. Captain Rheinegen, in overall command of the ship, had just ordered a minor change of course as they steamed over the Ninety East Ridge which runs north-south, east of the mid-Indian basin. Here the ocean is only about a mile deep, but as the carrier pushed on along its northwesterly course the depth fell away to almost four miles below the keel. Captain Baldridge had already calculated that the Tomcat probably hit the ridge as it sank and settled about five thousand feet below the surface.

He verified the positions of all the ships in the group, agreed with his ASW that four underwater “contacts” were spurious; he talked briefly to the Sonar Controller and the Link Operators; checking in with the Surface Picture Compiler. He could hear the Missile/Gun Director in conference with the Surface Detector, and he took a call on a coded line from Captain Art Barry, the New Yorker who commanded the eleven-thousand-ton guided missile cruiser Arkansas, which was currently steaming about eight miles off their starboard bow. The message was cryptic: “Kansas City Royals 2 Yankees 8. Five bucks. Art.”

“Sonofagun,” said Baldridge. “Guess he thinks that’s cute. We’ve just dropped a $35 million aircraft on the floor of this godforsaken ocean, and he’s getting the baseball results on the satellite.” Of course it would have been an entirely different matter if the message had been Royals 8 Yankees 2. “Beautiful guy, Art. Gets his priorities straight.”

Baldridge glanced at his watch, and began to write in his notebook without thinking, not for the official record, just the result of a lifetime in the U.S. Navy. He wrote the date and time in Naval fashion—“221700APR02” (the day, the time, 5 P.M., then month and year). Then he wrote the ship’s position — mid-Indian Ocean, 9S (nine degrees latitude South), 91E (ninety-one degrees longitude East). Then, “Bitch of a day. Royals 2 Yankees 8. Tomcat lost. Billy-Ray and Freddie hurt, but safe.” He, too, had a soft spot for Billy-Ray Howell.

221700APR02. 41 30N, 29E.

Course 180. Speed 4.

“Possible on 030, ten miles. Come and look, Ben. Maybe okay?”

“Thank you…yes…plot him, Georgy. He’s a coal-burner, and probably slow enough. If he keeps going for the hole, and his speed suits our timetable, we’ll take him. Get in…but well behind him, Georgy.”

“Take two hours.”

221852.

“They start to look for us. Time expired one hour. First submarine accident signal just in, Ben.”

“Good. What have you told the chaps?”

“What we agree. Cover for special covert exercise. We answer nothing. Soon they stop. We not exist anymore.”

“Okay. It’ll be dark inside an hour. Now let’s get organized for the transit. Watch for the light on Rumineleferi Fortress up there on the northwest headland, then go right in…follow the target as close as you possibly can.”

“Fine. Even though no one ever done it, right? Eh, Ben?”

“My Teacher once told me it could be done.”

“Ben, I do not speak your language, and my English not asgood as yours. But I know this is fucking tricky. Very bad cross-currents in there. Shoals on the right bank, in the narrows near the big bridge. Shit! What if we hit and get stuck. We never get out of jail.”

“If, Georgy, you do precisely as we discussed, we will not hit anything.”

“But you still say we go right through the middle of port at nine knots with fucking big white wake behind us. They see it, Ben. They can’t fucking miss it.”

“Do I have to tell you again? They will not see it, if you keep really close, right in the middle of the Greek’s wake. He won’t want to run aground any more than you do. He won’t push his luck in the shallow spots. Let’s go, Georgy.”

“I still not like it much.”

“I am not telling you to like it. DO IT!”

“Remember it is your fault if this goes wrong.”

“If it goes wrong, that won’t matter.”

222004.

“I want to be in our spot early, and get settled before we reach the entrance. We want a good visual night ranging mark on him. His overtaking light will do fine.”

“Slack Greek prick, leave them on all day.”

“I noticed. Use height ten meters on stern light.”

“What about his radar, Ben?”

“He won’t see us in his ground wave, and if he does, he’ll think it’s his own wake. This chap is no Gorschkov. He can’t even remember to turn his lights off.”

“What about other ships in channel?”

“Anyone overtaking will stay well to one side. Oncoming ships will keep to the other. My only real worry is the cross-ferries. That’s why we want to be going through the narrowest bits between 0200 and 0500, when I hope not to meet any of them. Bloody dreary if one of them slipped across our Greek leader’s bum and we rammed him.”

“How come, Ben, you know much more about everything than I do?”

“Mainly because I cannot afford mistakes. Also because I had a brilliant Teacher…bright, impatient, clever, arrogant…Stay calm, Georgy. And do as I say. It’s dark enough now. Let’s range his light, and close right in.”

281400APR02. 9S, 74E.

Course 010. Speed 12.

Eight miles off Diego Garcia the weather had worsened, the warm wind, rising and falling, making life endlessly difficult for the aviators. On the flight deck of the U.S. carrier Thomas Jefferson the LSO’s were in their usual huddle, taking advantage of the comparative quiet, talking to the pilots of the seven incoming flights from the day’s combat air patrol, four of them circling in a stack at eight thousand feet, twenty miles out.

The day-long exercises had demanded supersonic speed tests, and many landings and takeoffs. There had already been two burst tires, one of which had caused an incoming F/A-18 Hornet strike-fighter to slew left on the wire, and damn near hit a parked A-6E Intruder bomber.

Gas was now low all around. Tensions were fairly high. And before the six fighters came in, the entire flight deck staff was preparing to bring down the quarterback, Hawkeye, the much bigger radar early warning and control aircraft, unmistakable because of its great electronic dome set above the fuselage.

Jim Adams was calling the shots. Earphones on, yellow jacket visible for miles, he was racing through his mental checklist, yelling down the phone to the team below on the hydraulics. “Stand by for Hawkeye, two minutes.” He knew the hydraulic system was set properly, and now his eyes were sweeping the deck for even the smallest speck of litter. No one gets a second chance out here. One particle of rubbish sucked into a jet engine can blow it out. The whiplash from a broken arrester wire could kill a dozen people and send an aircraft straight over the bow.

Jim looked up, downwind. The Hawkeye was screaming in, the arresting wires spread-eagled on the deck, ready for the grab of the hook. Down below the giant hydraulic piston was in position, set to withstand, and stop, a seventy-five-thousand-pound aircraft in a controlled collision of plane and deck.

“Groove!!” bellowed Jim down to the hydraulic crew. This was the code word for “she’s close, stand by.”

Seconds pass. “Short!”—the key command, everyone away from the machinery.

And now, as Hawkeye thundered in toward the stern, Jim Adams bellowed:“Ramp!”

Every eye on the deck was steeled on the hook stretched out behind. Speech was inconceivable above the howl of the engines. The blast from the jets made the sky shimmer. At 160 knots the wheels slammed down onto the landing surface, and, right behind them, the hook grabbed, the cable rising starkly from the deck in a geometric V. One second later the Hawkeye stopped a few yards from the end of the flight deck, the sound of her engines dying quickly away.

Suddenly there was pandemonium, as the deck crews raced out to haul the Hawkeye into its parking place. Jim Adams shouted into the phone to change the settings on the hydraulics, the LSO’s were getting into position, one of them talking to the first Tomcat pilot, very carefully: “Okay one-zero-six, come on in — winds gusting at thirty-five, check your approach line, looks fine from here…flaps down…hook down…gotcha…you’re all set.”