Without remorse - Tom Clancy [193]
At Subic Bay Naval Base, the commanding officer of USS Newport News, along with his executive officer and gunnery officer, looked over their missions for the coming month. His command was one of the last true cruisers in the world, with eight-inch guns like few others. They were semiautomatic, and loaded their powder charges not in loose bags but in brass cartridge cases different only in scale from the kind any deer hunter might jack into his Winchester .30-30. Able to reach almost twenty miles, Newport News could deliver a stunning volume of fire, as an NVA battalion had learned only two weeks earlier, much to its misfortune. Fifty rounds per gun tube per minute. The center gun of the number-two turret was damaged, and so the cruiser could be counted on to put only four hundred rounds per minute on target, but that was the equivalent of one hundred thousand-pound bombs. The cruiser's task for the next deployment, the Captain learned, was to go after selected triple-A batteries on the Vietnamese coast. That was fine with him, though the mission he really lusted for was to enter Haiphong harbor one night.
'Your lad seems to know his business - till now, anyway,' General Young observed about quarter of two.
'It's a lot to ask him to do something like this the first night, Marty,' Dutch Maxwell countered.
'Well, hell, Dutch, if he wants to play with my Marines ...' That's how Young was. They were all 'his' Marines. He'd flown with Foss off Guadalcanal, covered Chesty Puller's regiment in Korea, and was one of the men who'd perfected close-air support into the art form it now was.
They stood on the hilltop overlooking the site Young had recently erected. Fifteen of the Recon Marines were on the slopes, and their job was to detect and eliminate Clark as he climbed to his notional perch. Even General Young thought it an overly harsh test on Clark's first day with the team, but Jim Greer had made a very big deal of telling them how impressive the lad was, and spooks needed to be put in their place. Even Dutch Maxwell had agreed with that.
'What a crummy way to earn a living,' said the admiral with seventeen hundred carrier landings under his belt.
'Lions and tigers and bears.' Young chuckled. 'Oh, my! I don't really expect him to make it here the first time. We have some fine people in this team, don't we, Irvin?'
'Yes, sir,' the master gunnery sergeant agreed at once.
'So what do you think of Clark?' Young asked next.
'Seems like he knows a thing or two,' Irvin allowed. 'Pretty decent shape for a civilian - and I like his eyes.'
'Oh?'
'You notice, sir? He's got cold eyes. He's been around the block.' They spoke in low murmurs. Kelly was supposed to get here, but they didn't want their voices to make it too easy for him, nor to add any extraneous noise that might mask the sounds of the woods. 'But not tonight. I told the people what would happen if this guy gets through the line on his first try.'
'Don't you Marines know how to play fair?' Maxwell objected with an unseen smile. Irvin handled the answer.
'Sir, "fair" means all my Marines get back home alive. Fuck the others, beg your pardon, sir.'
'Funny thing, Sergeant, that's always been my definition of "fair," too.' This guy would have made one hell of a command master chief, Maxwell thought to himself.
'Been following baseball, Marty?' The men relaxed. No way Clark would make it.
'I think the Orioles look pretty tough.'
'Gentlemen, we're losing our concentration, like,' Irvin suggested diplomatically.
'Quite right. Please excuse us,' General Young replied. The two flag officers settled back into stillness, watching the illuminated hands of their watches turn to three o'clock, the operation's agreed stop-time. They didn't hear Irvin speak, or even breathe, for all that time. That took an hour. It was a comfortable one for the Marine general, but the Admiral just didn't like being in the woods, with all the bloodsucking