Without remorse - Tom Clancy [105]
'We can suppress the flak,' Maxwell thought.
'You're not talking about -52s again, are you?' Greer asked.
'Newport News goes back on the gunline in a few weeks. John, ever see her shoot?'
Kelly nodded. 'Sure did. She supported us twice when we were working close to the coast. It's impressive what those eight-inchers can do. Sir, the problem is, how many things do you need to go right for the mission to succeed? The more complicated things get, the easier it is for things to go wrong, and even one thing can be real complicated.' Kelly leaned back on the couch, and reminded himself that what he had just said wasn't only for the admirals to consider.
'Dutch, we have a meeting in five minutes,' Podulski said reluctantly. This meeting had not been a successful one, he thought. Greer and Maxwell weren't so sure of that. They had learned a few things. That counted for something.
'Can I ask why you're keeping this so tight?' Kelly asked.
'You guessed it before.' Maxwell looked over at the junior flag officer and nodded.
'The Song Tay job was compromised,' Greer said. 'We don't know how, but we found out later through one of our sources that they knew - at least suspected - something was coming. They expected it later, and we ended up hitting the place right after they evacuated the prisoners, but before they had their ambush set up. Good luck, bad luck. They didn't expect Operation kingpin for another month.'
'Dear God,' Kelly breathed. 'Somebody over here deliberately betrayed them?'
'Welcome to the real world of intelligence operations, Chief,' Greer said with a grim smile.
'But why?'
'If I ever meet the gentleman, I will be sure to ask.' Greer looked at the others. 'That's a good hook for us to use. Check the records of the operation, real low-key like?'
'Where are they?'
'Eglin Air Force base, where the kingpin people trained.'
'Whom do we send?' Podulski asked.
Kelly could feel the eyes turn in his direction. 'Gentlemen, I was just a chief, remember?'
'Mr Kelly, where's your car parked?'
'In the city, sir. I took the bus over here.'
'Come with me. There's a shuttle bus you can take back later.'
They walked out of the building in silence. Greer's car, a Mercury, was parked in a visitor slot by the river entrance. He waved for Kelly to get in and headed towards the George Washington Parkway.
'Dutch pulled your package. I got to read it. I'm impressed, son.' What Greer didn't say was that on his battery of enlistment tests, Kelly had scored an average of 147 on three separately formatted IQ tests. 'Every commander you had sang your praises.'
'I worked for some good ones, sir.'
'So it appears, and three of them tried to get you into OCS, but Dutch asked you about that. I also want to know why you didn't take the college scholarship.'
'I was tired of schools.. And the scholarship was for swimming. Admiral.'
'That's a big deal at Indiana, I know, but your marks were plenty good enough to get an academic scholarship. You attended a pretty nice prep school -'
'That was a scholarship, too.' Kelly shrugged. 'Nobody in my family ever went to college. Dad served a hitch in the Navy during the war. I guess it just seemed like something to do.' That it had been a major disappointment to his father was something he'd never told anyone.
Greer pondered that. It still didn't answer things. 'The last ship I commanded was a submarine, Daniel Webster. My chief of the boat, senior chief sonarman, the guy had a doctorate in physics. Good man, knew his job better then I knew mine, but not a leader, shied away from it some. You didn't, Kelly. You tried to, but you didn't.'
'Look, sir, when you're out there and things happen, somebody has to get it done.'
'Not everybody sees things that way. Kelly, there's two kinds of people in the world, the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out