Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger Read Online Free

back up the inexperienced wardroom.
    His arrival at the shipyard gate had been delayed by the picket line of disgruntled workers, and by the time he'd gotten through that, he was sure things couldn't get worse.  Then he'd seen what was supposed to have been a ship.  It was a steel artifact, pointed at one end and blunt at the other, half painted, draped with cables, piled with crates, and generally looking like a surgical patient who'd died on the table and been left there to rot.  If that hadn't been bad enough, Panache couldn't even be towed from her berth—the last thing a worker had done was to burn out the motor on a crane, which blocked the way.
    The previous captain had already left in disgrace.  The commissioning crew, assembled on the helicopter deck to receive him, looked like children forced to attend the funeral of a disliked uncle, and when Wegener tried to address them, the microphone didn't work.  Somehow that broke the evil spell.  He waved them toward himself with a smile and a chuckle.
    “People,” he'd said, “I'm Red Wegener.  In six months this will be the best ship in the United States Coast Guard.  In six months you will be the best crew in the United States Coast Guard.  I'm not the one who's going to make that happen.  You will—and I'll help a little.  For right now, I'm cutting everybody as much liberty as we can stand while I get a handle on what we have to do.  Have yourselves a great time.  When you get back, we all go to work.  Dismissed.”
    There was a collective “oh” from the assembled multitude, which had expected shouts and screams.  The newly arrived chiefs regarded one another with raised eyebrows, and the young officers who'd been contemplating the abortion of their service careers retired to the wardroom in a state of bemused shock.  Before meeting with them, Wegener took his three leading chiefs aside.
    “Engines first,” Wegener said.
    “I can give you fifty-percent power all day long, but when you try to use the turbochargers, everything goes to hell in fifteen minutes,” Chief Owens announced. “An' I don't know why.” Mark Owens had been working with marine diesels for sixteen years.
    “Can you get us to
    
    
     Curtis
    
    
    
    
     Bay
    
    
    ?”
    “As long as you don't mind taking an extra day, Cap'n.”
    Wegener dropped the first bomb. “Good—'cause we're leaving in two weeks, and we'll finish the fitting-out up there.”
    “It'll be a month till the new motor's ready for that crane, sir,” Chief Boatswain's Mate Bob Riley observed.
    “Can the crane turn?”
    “Motor's burned out, Cap'n.”
    “When the time comes, we'll snake a line from the bow to the back end of the crane.  We have seventy-five feet of water in front of us.  We set the clutch on the crane and pull forward real gentle-like, and turn the crane ourselves, then back out,” the captain announced.  Eyes narrowed.
    “Might break it,” Riley observed after a moment.
    “That's not my crane, but, by God, this is my ship.”
    Riley let out a laugh. “Goddamn, it's good to see you again, Red—excuse me, Captain Wegener!”
    “Mission Number One is to get her to
    
    
     Baltimore
    
    
     for fitting-out.  Let's figure out what we have to do, and take it one job at a time.  I'll see you oh-seven-hundred tomorrow.  Still make your own coffee, Portagee?”
    “Bet your ass, sir,” Chief Quartermaster Oreza replied. “I'll bring a pot.”
    And Wegener had been right.  Twelve days later, Panache had indeed been ready for sea, though not much else, with crates and fittings lashed down all over the ship.  Moving the crane out of the way was accomplished before dawn, lest anyone notice, and when the picket line showed up that day, it had taken a few minutes to notice that the ship was gone.  Impossible, they'd all thought.  She hadn't even been fully painted yet.
    The painting was accomplished in the
    
     Florida Strait
    
    , as was something even more important.  Wegener