Barracuda- Final Bearing by Michael Dimercurio

Author:Michael Dimercurio
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780451407429
Publisher: Onyx
Published: 1996-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

northwest pacific USS Barracuda The deck trembled with the power of the main engines at flank speed. Capt. David Kane walked into the wardroom, crowded with officers waiting for his briefing.

Kane was taller than average, slim, with a full head of dark hair and a tan. When the ship was in port, he would be on the beach, running, walking his dogs or hanging out with his wife Becky and his daughters. He was famous for being the Pacific Fleet captain who worked smarter, not harder. His face was chiseled, the high cheekbones set above thin cheeks and a strong square chin. When he had been at Annapolis he had been the six-striper, the brigade commander. He had met his wife while a first-class midshipman, when he and his friends had written to a Playboy centerfold model, the letter written as a prank, but after two months she had written him back. After they corresponded for a few weeks they decided to meet, choosing a Georgetown bar. After that it had been all over for Kane. He had proposed to her on that first date, and she had just laughed. During their spring break they had flown to Bermuda, and on the beach one twilight he had popped the biggest ring he could finance into her hands, and this time she didn’t laugh. In fact, she had cried. They had been engaged for two months when Kane had been interviewed for the nuclear-power program by Admiral Rickover, the famed father of the nuclear navy. Rickover had managed to shoehorn a nuclear reactor into a submarine, an engineering task that should have taken fifteen years, but Rickover had done it in three at a fraction of the cost of the estimates, and with an impeccable safety record.

When his USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, went under the polar icecap, his nuclear navy had been the envy of the world. He had pledged to Congress that not a single naval officer would be admitted to his program unless he personally approved of him. Every single candidate would be interviewed personally. Once Rickover flunked someone, there was no appeal.

Rickover had called a very nervous Kane into the office.

Submarine duty was all he wanted to do in the Navy. Airplanes held no fascination, and surface ships made him seasick, many of them stinking of diesel fuel, the amphibious fleet a flotilla of rustbucket ships that carried unwashed Marine troops into combat. Aircraft carriers particularly irritated him, since it was the worst of two worlds, a surface ship that acted as a bus for a bunch of arrogant pilots. He had gone into Annapolis for the free education and the status, but as graduation approached he could only see himself being a sub driver.

Now that he was finally in Rickover’s office, it sank in that Rickover could easily say no to him, as he had done with 40 percent of the applicants. The man who had the interview two before Kane had left the office with glazed eyes.

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