Black Sea Affair Read Online Free

exactly what you're supposed to do. You were supposed to sink the carrier. But, Pete, this was a war game."
    Pete glanced at Captain Gaylord again. The gray-haired Navy captain was subtly nodding his head, as if agreeing with Pete. "I understand that it was a war game, sir, " Pete said. "And the purpose of the game, as I understand it, was to practice the implementation of General Order 009-001 under realistic conditions. We practiced implementation of the order. We executed the maneuvers that I ordered and frankly, we won. So I ask again, sir, with all due respect, what's AIRPAC's problem?"
    "Look, Pete, here's the problem." Getman leaned forward. "As you know, our submarines war-game against our aircraft carriers all the time. It's the same ole story. You know it. The sub versus the carrier. In these war games -- which we try to make as realistic as possible -- sometimes the sub wins. Sometimes the carrier wins.
    "Most of our sub commanders bat about .500 in these war games with our carriers. AIRPAC can live with that, because that means that their carrier captains are also winning about half the time. But there's a political problem here. It costs a lot more money to sink an aircraft carrier than to sink a submarine. AIRPAC wants to go to Congress to ask for more money to build these new Gerald R. Ford- class supercarriers to replace the current Nimitz -class ships.
    "Congressional critics say that the carriers are way too expensive. You know the argument -- too vulnerable to being sunk by a submarine. Frankly, I agree. I'd rather have a hundred new Virginia- class attack subs than one new supercarrier."
    Pete nodded his head in agreement.
    "But AIRPAC's problem is that these liberal congressmen want to know war-games statistics as ammunition to argue against carrier spending. It's politics, Pete. The problem with you, Commander, is that you don't lose."
    Pete shook his head and took a sip of the coffee, which was as disappointing as the direction of this conversation. "What am I supposed to do, sir? Let the carrier win?"
    Getman pulled open his drawer and extracted a six-inch, hand-wrapped Dominican cigar. "Gentlemen, care for a smoke?" Though federal regulations prohibited smoking in government buildings, Getman smoked his stogies whenever and wherever he pleased.
    "No, thank you, sir, " Pete said. Captain Gaylord likewise declined.
    "See, Pete, here's the problem, " Getman said, lighting the stogie and drawing from it, then releasing a concentric smoke ring which wafted to the ceiling, "AIRPAC says you cheat."
    "Sir?"
    "Look, I didn't say you cheat. Admiral Hopkins at AIRPAC did." Another smoke ring. "Politics, my boy. You pop up behind USS Carl Vinson , playing the role of an enemy aircraft carrier, launch your torps before they know you're there, and the skipper of the Vinson , who just so happens to be under consideration for flag rank, by the way, gets embarrassed.
    "If fact, he's double embarrassed because it's not the first time you've done it to him. On top of that, neither he nor his escort ships can find you or sink you as you slither off into the deep. Can't be his fault, can it?" A rhetorical smoke ring followed the question.
    Pete watched the smoke ring vaporize into the twirling ceiling fan. "May I ask just how AIRPAC claims I cheated, sir?"
    "They claim you violated the rules of engagement by not simulating realistic combat conditions."
    "Sir?"
    "You popped up on the carrier's tail and chapped his rear with your torps at point-blank range."
    "Yes, sir, we did. So what? They neither caught us, nor spotted us, nor sank us."
    It appeared for a second that the admiral wanted to grin. Instead, he remained poker-faced. "AIRPAC says in real life it's unrealistic that you'd pop up right in the middle of a carrier battle group for a point-blank shot at a carrier like that. They claim that would be a suicide maneuver that would not be tried if we were using live fire, and that you only took the risk because you