Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [417]
"Welcome aboard, sir," Bud Sanchez said with a grin, looking very natty in his flight suit. "Captain's on the bridge, sir."
"Then let's get to work."
"How's the leg, Robby?" the CAG asked halfway up the third ladder.
"Stiff as hell after all the sitting." It had taken time. The briefing at Pearl Harbor, the Air Force flight to Eniwetok, then waiting for the C-2A to show up to bring him to his command. Jackson was beyond jet lag, but for all that, eager now, about noon, he thought, according to where the sun was.
"Is the cover story holding?" Sanchez asked next.
"No telling, Bud. Until we get there." Jackson allowed a Marine to open the door to the wheelhouse. His leg really was stiff, just one more reminder that flight operations were over for him.
"Welcome aboard, sir," the CO said, looking up from a sheaf of dispatches.
The roar of afterburners told Jackson that Johnnie Reb was conducting flight operations, and he looked quickly forward to see a Tomcat leap off the port-forward cat. The carrier was about halfway between the Carolines and Wake. The latter island was somewhat closer to the Marianas, and for that reason was not being used for anything. Wake had a fine airfield, still supported by the Air Force. Eniwetok was just a recovery field, known to be such, and therefore made a more covert base for staging aircraft, if a far less convenient one for maintaining them.
"Okay, what's been happening since I left Pearl?" Jackson asked.
"Some good news." The CO handed over one of the dispatches.
"It's definite as hell." Jones said, leaning over the sonar traces.
"They sure are in a hurry," Mancuso agreed, his eyes plotting speed and distance and not liking what they saw, further confirming what Jones suspected.
"Who's waiting for them?"
"Ron, we can't—"
"Sir, I can't be much help to you if I don't know," Jones observed reasonably. "You think I'm a security risk or something?"
Mancuso thought for a few seconds before answering. "Tennessee's lying right overtop the Eshunadaoki Seamount, supporting a special operation that goes off in the next twenty-four hours."
"And the rest of the Ohios?"
"Just off Ulithi Atoll, heading north a little slower now. The SSN force will lead the carrier in. The Ohios are tasked to get inside early." Which all made sense, Jones thought. The boomers were too slow to operate effectively with a carrier task force, which he'd also been tracking on SOSUS, but they were ideal for getting inside a patrol line of SSKs…so long as the skippers were smart about it. There was always that consideration.
"The Jap 'cans will be about on top ol' Tennessee right about—"
"I know."
"What else do you have for me?" ComSubPac asked briskly.
Jones led him over to the wall chart. There were now seven SSK-silhouettes circled on the display, with only one "?"-marked. That one, they saw, was in the passage between the northernmost of the Marianas, called Moug, and the Bonins, the most famous of which was Iwo Jima.
"We've been trying to concentrate on this passage," Jones said. "I've gotten a few twitches, but nothing firm enough to plot. If I were them, though, I'd cover that area."
"So would I," Chambers confirmed. One likely move for the Americans would be to put a submarine patrol line astride the Luzon Strait, to attempt to interdict oil traffic to the Japanese mainland. That was a political decision, however. Pacific