Tomahawk (55 page)

“And it was granted.”

“Yessir.”

“And now you want to withdraw it.” Niles shook his massive head slowly. “We don't go about our lives that way. It's not professional. More than that. It's not fair to the rest of us.”

Dan straightened, sucking a breath with ribs that still hurt from the beating. He'd figured this wouldn't be easy. That was why it had taken him so long to make up his mind. That, and going through the relevant personnel pubs to see if what he was trying to do could by regulation be done. He'd been nervous just calling Carol to set up the appointment. Now he was on the hot seat, and guess what: It was turning out to be just as humiliating as he'd feared.

Niles rumbled on like a cart over cobblestones, outlining how badly Dan had damaged his career. How this was exactly the kind of thing a promotion board read as instability, wavering, lack of dedication, lack of professionalism. How his Silver Star and his performance at Joint Cruise Missiles had pointed him toward increased responsibilities
—until this. Dan sat feeling miserable, but he was determined not to scuttle before he got the word.

“And I have to add, this raises doubts in my mind, too. I know this hasn't been an easy time for you. But a professional doesn't let his personal problems spill over into his performance.”

“No, sir.”

Niles paused. He slowly unwrapped an Atomic Fireball. Dan noted he didn't get offered one—not a good sign. “You've changed your mind about wanting out. Have you changed your mind about working on nuclear weapons, too?”

“I still can't say I like them, sir. It'd be nice to find a way to get rid of them for good.”

“Hunph. But the conventional Navy's good enough for you?”

“It's not that it's ‘good enough,' sir. I've just gone through a period of doubt.”

“How do you know you've come out of it? Are we going to see another letter from you next year?”

“I don't know, sir.” He was trying to be as honest as he could with this man. “But I think that if we're not thinking about what we're doing, we're not doing what we ought to do.”

Niles eyed the ceiling. “If you ever get command, Mr. Lenson, you can't put your doubts on display. In fact, you'd better not have any, as far as the men below you can see.”

“I'll remember that advice, sir.”

“I don't want to sound cynical, but I've noticed that all most people want is just to be told what to do by somebody who acts like he knows. And I'm not just talking about the military side of things, either.”

“I'll remember that, too, sir.”

Niles grunted again. He sucked at the candy for some time as Dan sat there sweating. From far below, the sounds of machines tearing at the earth penetrated the office.

Finally, the admiral said, “You've done a good job for me here. If you hadn't, you'd have been out the minute you opened your mouth about this issue. They tell me you
were a material help on breaking this Chinese thing, too. I know you've been carrying Dale while he's been … sick. For a while, I was considering fleeting you up to his , job.” Niles looked out the window again. “Do you know about his illness?”

“He's discussed it with me, sir. I know he's dying.”

“He's a dedicated man. I probably kept him on duty too long. But I can't any longer. His relief'll be here in a couple of weeks. I want you to help break him in, get him oriented.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Anyway, here's my answer to your request. I'll look into it. What it would take to withdraw a letter of resignation.”

That was his cue, and he laid the correspondence folder on the admiral's desk. “Sir, I did a little research on that. There isn't really any reg dealing with the situation. The consensus is that if I submit another letter, withdrawing my request, it will be considered. But it has to have the commanding officer's endorsement, recommending I be retained in the service.”

Niles nodded, eyes hooded.

“I would appreciate anything you can do, sir,” Dan said. Niles nodded coldly again, and Dan took that to mean he was dismissed.

After which he didn't hear anything. He called Carol two days later, asking if the letter had been forwarded. She said that it had. He didn't have any right asking what Niles's endorsement had been, so he didn't. He resigned himself and started getting his files in order for turnover. He told Westerhouse and his own guys what was going on, that he'd be history come June.

He kept going to meetings. He couldn't really say how, but it seemed to be working. The craving for a drink came now and then, but he could postpone it. That wasn't the whole program—there were steps to do, meetings, things to work through—but it seemed to be taking hold.

He kept calling Bepko, and Ogen, too. Asking how the
investigations were going. Neither was very forthcoming, though Ogen said that Hickey was cooperating. And then one day, Bepko told him both Zhang and Li had suddenly left the country. There wasn't anything the authorities had been able to do to stop or detain them, although neither, of course, would be accredited to a NATO country again.

Dan had asked if Tallinger was being investigated. Bepko said they were working several angles, checking out the analyst and his company, checking out a lot of things; this was turning out to be a real complicated case. “His company?” Dan said. “Yeah,” Bepko had said. “Kinetic Solutions, a consulting outfit out on the Beltway.”

“I know somebody who used to work there. She didn't seem to like it much, quit right away. Maybe she saw something.” Bepko had sounded interested, and Dan gave him Sandy's number.

He hadn't gotten anything more out of the NIS agent than that, but he'd reviewed the conversation in his mind several times since.

He thought about starting classes again. With everything that had been going on, he'd had to cancel the spring semester. There were summer classes, but he didn't know whether he'd still be here this summer. He still didn't have any plans for what he'd do, or where he'd go, if they decided not to let him pull his resignation.

A couple of weeks went by. Westerhouse's relief reported aboard and started getting read in. Meanwhile, Dan got sucked into the all-up-round competition. McDonnell Douglas had finished setting up the production line in Florida, and now the Navy had to decide how to split the buy between them and General Dynamics. There were yield-rate analyses to prepare, quality control and reliability projections to do. On top of that, he had the normal plethora of meetings to attend, reports to vet, documents to approve.

He was standing in line at Roy Rogers with Burdette, grabbing a quick lunch before going to a vertical-launch progress review, when Sparky stuck his head in the door. He saw them and pushed through the crowd. “Admiral wants you.”

“Who? Vic or me?”

“Both of you.”

“Have we got time to grab a sandwich? We're almost to the counter.”

Sakai shook his head but didn't say why not.

Niles was standing in his office. “Shut the door,” he said. Sakai turned back and closed it as the admiral held out the message.

It was from COMSIXTHFLEET. Dan ran his eyes down it, noting the “Flash” priority.

Prime Needle was being reactivated. He looked at the final date for the attack, then looked again.

“They want us aboard.”

“Yes, sir. But this strike date—it's twelve days from today.”

“That's right.” Niles looked grim. “Where did you leave the planning process? Was Norfolk still working it? Once they called the raid off?”

“I don't think so. Not as far as I know.”

“You're going to have to go down there, walk it through personally.” Niles looked away. “I don't like to task you with this, since you're practically out the door. But even if we had a relief on board, he wouldn't know what to do. Unless you have a problem with that.”

“Sir, I've never not done my duty. And I retracted that resignation.”

Niles gave the impression he didn't want to h#ar any more. He just said, “Your clearances should still be on file at EUCOM and so forth. Where do you need to go first?”

Dan thought fast. The first thing he had to do was check on the mission planning. “Norfolk.”

“Who else, with you?”

“Sparky.”

“Commander Burdette?”

“Vic's more of a hardware guy. He can hold the office down while we're gone.”

“Okay. What's the fastest you can get to Norfolk?”

“Probably best just to drive. If the Beltway's clear.”

Sakai said his car was over on Eads Street. The admiral nodded. “Carol will get orders to you en route.”

Dan read the message again, noting the addressees, then asked for a copy to take along.

Twelve days to strike date. He didn't think it was possible. But he owed the Navy that—to give it a try—even if he was on his way out forever.

35

 

 

 

Hampton Boulevard was packed, six lanes of traffic streaming out of the biggest naval base in the world as the workday ended. At a fenced compound, a marine glanced at Sakai's bumper decal and waved them through, pivoting his arm in a whip-crack salute as he caught sight of Lenson.

FICLANT—Fleet Intelligence Center, Atlantic—was three windowless stories of red brick. Niles had called ahead, so it wasn't long till they were sitting in an office, listening to a GS-14 civil servant named Bill Powell explain why he couldn't do what they wanted.

“I don't think you want to tell me that,” Dan interrupted at last.

Powell shrugged. “You want to go over my head, be my guest. Yeah, I see you waving that tasker. As soon as it slid under the door, I told my guys to dig out the tapes and see where we stopped the effort. But we just aren't going to be able to get you what you want by the time you want it.”

“You're the designated support activity.”

“That's right, but it's not all we do. Even for this raid. We've got to provide the photo intel and so forth. But talking cruise, our primary responsibility right now is TLAM.”

“So what's the problem? That's what we need.”

“Our direction is that first priority is TLAM-N. Kola and Siberia, to support the Maritime Strategy.”

Dan tried to keep his temper under control. What Powell
was telling him was that they were so busy doing programming for nuclear Tomahawk, they didn't have time to work out routes for the conventional version.

“Look, Bill, I know you want to support the fleet as much as any other shore command does. If the hitch is that somebody at CINCLANT gave you a priority and you can't change it without their permission, tell me who. I'll put them in touch with Admiral Kidder's staff and we'll get that priority changed. But the way I read this tasker, I shouldn't have to do that. Emergent operational requirements take precedence.”

Powell considered that. Then he picked up the phone and asked somebody named Alix to come to his office.

When she arrived, he introduced her as Alix Honners, in charge of mission development for TLAM. She was a civilian, but she got down to business as fast as if she were wearing a uniform. “What kind of targets are you talking about hitting, Commander?”

“Comm links. Missile batteries. Radar sites. And a chemical factory.”

“This way,” said Honners, and got up. Dan, Sparky, and Powell followed her down corridors and through a vault-style door into a windowless room. They signed in.

“This is the SCIF,” Powell said.

SCIF meant Special Compartmented Information Facility. Past the access controls, it looked like a combination between a stockbroker's office and a mainframe service facility. Lots of little cubicles, lots of computers, men and women in blues and khakis and a few Army greens and Air Force blues. The air was cold and smelled of ozone.

The Tomahawk Mission Planning Facility was a separate section in back, two rooms of consoles and. light tables, scanners and computers. The floor plates were still up, showing newly installed cables and grounding straps. “I don't know just how much you know about the mission-planning system,” Honners started.

He decided to play along. “Well, I know it's terrain comparison. You guys make up the flight profile; then the missile flies it.”

“Right, but go back to the flight-profile part. This is a
very
deliberate
weapon. That means everything the missile does—
everything
—we have to do first, right here,” Powell said. “This isn't something, where we sit down at a personal computer and point and click. The system gives the planning officer access to the various data files— terrain-comparison matrix data, weather, target information—
accurate
maps from satellite measurements, intelligence on air defense, radar coverage zones, et cetera. You can't put them all on one screen yet, but give us a year. We're sort of breadboarding it now; this is Block One hardware kluged together.