Read Online Tomahawk by David Poyer - Free Book Online Page A

went on in there? He didn’t have a clue.
    He’d had to face admirals before. But this was the first time he’d worked with one. It was true: They were different. As if those broad golden stripes lifted them to adifferent plane of evolution. They seemed to think in a different way, knowing instantly and intuitively what junior officers had to grope toward. Did it happen suddenly, when they were selected? Or were those the ones the board anointed, bestowing on them only the acknowledgment they were superior beings? If it was the latter, he ought to have met people like that at the lower ranks. And he hadn’t. He’d known effective leaders. But none of them had been guided by some perfectly isolated and frictionless internal gyro, like the man in front of him seemed to have.
    When they got to the airport, he started to help Niles with his bag. The admiral grunted something and took it away from him. He headed off without a backward glance.
    â€œWhew,” said Burdette. “Fun guy.”
    â€œYeah, a real teddy bear,” Dan said. “Well, you ready to head north?”
    â€œLight the burners; let’s launch.”

    The Pacific Coast Highway took them past rugged cliffs, dramatic views out over the gleaming sea. He wished they could stop at San Juan Capistrano. Maybe next time…. The ocean spread below him out to the world’s edge, charged with the silver waning light like high voltage. It looked different from the Atlantic—a dark, heatless, somehow threatening hue. The hydrography was abrupt here. The bottom plunged deep just offshore. One reason, of course, why the initial tests had been flown from the Pacific. A sub could launch only a few miles offshore; then the missile could head for the deserted fastnesses of the federal reservations in Southern California and Nevada.
    He asked Burdette, “Hey, you been out here before, right?”
    â€œSure, back when we were launching from
Guitarro.
Postshot, we’re en route to Mare Island when the impulse tank in the torpedo tube blows up. Shorts out a bank of batteries, then starts a fire in the torpedo room. We were all jumping through our grommets there for a while. Anyway…this new engineer, he’s gonna meet us at the ship, right?”
    â€œHe’s supposed to’ve been there a couple days now. Name’s Sakai. ME in electrical engineering out of Rensselaer. Dahlgren lent him to us for a year.”
    â€œSounds good. What you want to do about dinner? Want to pull off here, or wait till we get to Long Beach?”

    The next morning, he stood looking up at one of the last four battleships on earth.
    USS
New Jersey
lay in a dry dock huge enough to swallow a small town. Beneath its massive hull, the concrete floor was dotted with pools of water that reflected the clouds and the sky. He stared into the leveled gaze of sixteen-inch guns in slab-sided turrets. Above them poked out a bristle of five-inch dual-purpose batteries. Then bridge levels, more guns, directors, yet-more levels, yet more guns, a mountain range of steel tapering into heaven. At its crest, a lacework of radars and radio antennae fretted the air, as if the ship were an enormous plant, thrusting metal as high as possible toward the sun.
    He lowered his eyes again, noticing this time huge canvas screens and construction staging. Only then did his eye pick up human figures, clambering tiny as gnats about the immense fabric as compressors and paint strippers buzzed and clattered. He eased his breath out. She was from another world, another time, and encountering her here amid the hissing steam and grinding of engines was like coming suddenly upon a live tyrannosaur in its lair.
    As they stepped off the steel-ringing brow, Dan looked around for the quarterdeck watch, lifting his hand to salute, then remembered she wasn’t in commission yet. “There’s our escort,” Burdette said. “Hey! Dan, this is Perry Kyriakou, the