Clear and present danger - Tom Clancy [358]
"CLAW, this is CAESAR. We are heading for Alternate One."
"Are you out of your skull?" Francie Montaigne replied.
"I don't like it, sir," Willis said.
"Fine. You can testify to that effect someday. It's only a hundred miles off the coast, and if it doesn't work, we'll use the winds to slingshot us around. CLAW, I need a position check on Alternate One."
"You crazy fucker," Montaigne breathed. To her communications people: "Call up Alternate One. I need a position check and I need it now."
Murray was not having any fun at all. Though Adele wasn't really a major hurricane, Wegener had told him, it was more than he had ever expected to see. The seas had been forty feet, and though once Panache had looked like a white steel cliff alongside the dock, she now rode like a child's toy in a bathtub. The FBI agent had a scopolamine patch stuck to his head below and behind his ear to combat motion-sickness, but it wasn't fighting hard enough at the moment. But Wegener was just sitting in his bridge chair, smoking his pipe like the Old Man of the Sea while Murray held on to the grab-bar over his head, feeling like the man on the flying trapeze.
They were not in their programmed position. Wegener had explained to his visitor that there was only one place they could be. It moved, but that's where they had to be, and Murray was distantly thankful that the seas weren't quite as bad as they had been. He worked his way over to the door and looked out at the towering cylinder of cloud.
"Panache, this is CLAW, over," the speaker said. Wegener rose to take the mike.
"CLAW, this is Panache. Your signal is weak but readable, over."
"Position check, over."
Wegener gave it to the pilot, who sounded like a girl, he thought. Christ, they were everywhere now.
"CAESAR is inbound yours."
"Roger. Please advise CAESAR that conditions are below margins. I say again, it is not good down here at the moment." :
"Roger, copy. Stand by." The voice came back two minutes later. "Panache, this is CLAW. CAESAR says he wants to try it. If he can't do it, he plans to HIFR. Can you handle that, over."
"That's affirmative, we can sure as hell try. Give me an ETA, over."
"Estimate six-zero minutes."
"Roger, we'll be ready. Keep us posted. Out." Wegener looked across his bridge. "Miss Walters, I have the conn. I want chiefs Oreza and Riley on the bridge, now."
"Captain has the conn," Ensign Walters said. She was disappointed. Here she was in the middle of a goddamned tropical storm and having the time of her young life. She wasn't even ill from it, though many of the crew were. So why couldn't the skipper let her keep the goddamned conn?
"Left standard rudder," Wegener ordered. "Come to new course three-three-five. All ahead two-thirds."
"Left standard rudder, aye, coming to new course three-three-five." The helmsman turned the wheel, then reached for the throttle controls. "Two thirds, sir."
"Very well. How you feel, Obrecki?" the skipper asked.
"Hell of a coaster, but I'm wondering when the ride is going to stop, sir." The youngster grinned, but didn't take his eyes off the compass.
"You're doing just fine. Let me know if you get tired, though."
"Aye aye, sir."
Oreza and Riley appeared a minute later. "What gives?" the former asked.
"We go to flight quarters in thirty minutes," the captain told them.
"Oh, fuck!" Riley observed. "Excuse me, Red, but… shit!"
"Okay, Master Chief, now that we've gotten that behind us, I'm depending on you to get it done," Wegener said sternly. Riley accepted the rebuke like the pro he was.
"Beg pardon, Cap'n, you'll get my best shot. Put the XO in the tower?"
Wegener nodded. The executive officer was the best man to command the evolution from the flight-control station. "Go get him." Riley left and Wegener turned to his quartermaster.