Executive orders - Tom Clancy [258]
Don't touch that, he said mildly. He next took the child's blood pressure. It was low, confirming an internal bleed. Sohaila, I'm afraid you will be spending the night with us so that we can make you well again.
It could have been many things, but the doctor had been in Africa long enough to know that you acted as though it were the worst. The young physician consoled himself with the belief that it couldn't be all that bad.
IT WASN'T QUITE like the old days-what was?-but Mancuso enjoyed the work. He'd had a good war-he thought of it as a war; his submarines had done exactly what they'd been designed to do. After losing Asheville and Charlotte-those before the known commencement of hostilities-he'd lost no more. His boats had delivered on every mission assigned, savaging the enemy submarine force in a carefully planned ambush, supporting a brilliant special operation, conducting deep-strike missile launches, and, as always, gathering vital tactical intelligence. His best play, COMSUBPAC judged, had been in recalling the boomers from retirement. They were too big and too unwieldy to be fast-attack boats, but God damn if they hadn't done the job for him. Enough so that they were all down the hill from his headquarters, tied alongside, their crews swaggering around town a bit, with brooms still prominent on their sails. Okay, so he wasn't Charlie Lockwood exactly, modesty told him. He'd done the job he'd been paid to do. And now he had another.
So what are they supposed to be up to? he asked his immediate boss, Admiral Dave Seaton.
Nobody seems to know. Seaton had come over to look around. Like any good officer, he tried to get the hell out of his office as much as possible, even if it only meant visiting another. Maybe just a FleetEx, but with a new President, maybe they want to flex their muscles and see what happens. People in uniform did not like such international examinations, since they were usually the ones whose lives were part of the grading procedure.
I know this guy, boss, Bart said soberly.
Oh?
Not all that well, but you know about Red October.
Seaton grinned. Bart, if you ever tell me that story, one of us has to kill the other, and I'm bigger. The story, one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Navy's history, still was not widely known, though the rumors-one could never stop those-were many and diverse.
You need to know, Admiral. You need to know what National Command Authority has hanging between his legs. I've been shipmates with the guy.
That earned Mancuso a hard blink from CINCPAC. You're kidding.
Ryan was aboard the boomer with me. Matter of fact, he got aboard before I did. Mancuso closed his eyes, delighted that he could finally tell this sea story and get away with it. Dave Seaton was a theater commander-in-chief, and he had a right to know what sort of man was sending the orders down from Washington.
I heard he was involved in the operation, even that he got aboard, but I thought that was at Norfolk, when they parked her at the Eight-Ten Dock. I mean, he's a spook, right, an intel weenie
Not hardly. He killed a guy-shot him, right in the missile room-before I got aboard. He was on the helm when we clobbered the Alfa. He was scared shitless, but he didn't cave. This President we've got's been there and done that. Anyway, if they want to test our President, my money's on him. Two big brass ones, Dave, that's what he's got hangin'. He may not look like it on TV, but I'll follow that son of a bitch anywhere. Mancuso surprised himself with the conclusion. It was the first time he'd thought it all the way through.
Good to know, Seaton thought.
So what's the mission? CINPAC asked.
J-3 wants us to shadow.
You