best fighter jock in the Air Force or the Navy, and even then it would take months for them to understand what he’d done on Dallas. Hell, just getting them to understand the importance of reactor safety would take a year—about what it had taken him to learn all those things once upon a time, and Mancuso wasn’t a “nuc” by training. He’d always been a front-end guy. The services were all different in their feel for the mission, and that was because the missions were all as different in nature as a sheepdog was from a pit bull.
But he had to command them all, and do so effectively, lest he make a mistake that resulted in a telegram coming to Mrs. Smith’s home to announce the untimely death of her son or husband because some senior officer had fucked up. Well, Admiral Bart Mancuso told himself, that was why he had such a wide collection of staff officers, including a surface guy to explain what that sort of target did (to Mancuso any sort of surface ship was a target), an Airedale to explain what naval aircraft did, a Marine and some soldiers to explain life in the mud, and some Air Force wing-wipers to tell him what their birds were capable of. All of them offered advice, which, as soon as he took it, became his idea alone, because he was in command, and command meant being responsible for everything that happened in or near the Pacific Ocean, including when some newly promoted E- 4 petty officer commented lustily on the tits of another E-4 who happened to have them—a recent development in the Navy, and one which Mancuso would just as soon have put off for another decade. They were even letting women on submarines now, and the admiral didn’t regret having missed that one little bit. What the hell would Mush Morton and his crop of WWII submarines have made of that?
He figured he knew how to set up a naval exercise, one of those grand training evolutions in which half of 7th Fleet would administratively attack and destroy the other half, followed by the simulated forced-entry landing of a Marine battalion. Navy fighters would tangle with Air Force ones, and after it was all over, computer records would show who’d won and who’d lost, and bets of various sorts would be paid off in various bars—and there’d be some hard feelings, because fitness reports (and with them, careers) could ride on outcomes of simulated engagements.
Of all his services, Mancuso figured his submarine force was in the best shape, which made sense, since his previous job had been COMSUBPAC, and he’d ruthlessly whipped his boats into shape. And, besides, the little shooting war they’d engaged in two years before had given everyone the proper sense of mission, to the point that the crews of the boomers who’d laid on a submarine ambush worthy of Charlie Lockwood’s best day still swaggered around when on the beach. The boomers remained in service as auxiliary fast-attacks because Mancuso had made his case to the CNO, who was his friend, Dave Seaton, and Seaton had made his case to Congress to get some additional funding, and Congress was nice and tame, what with two recent conflicts to show them that people in uniform did have more purposes than opening and closing doors for the people’s elected representatives. Besides, the Ohio-class boats were just too expensive to throw away, and they were mainly off doing valuable oceanographic missions in the North Pacific, which appealed to the tree- (actually fish- and dolphin- in this case) huggers, who had far too much political power in the eyes of this white-suited warrior.
With every new day came his official morning briefing, usually run by Brigadier General Mike Lahr, his J-2 Intelligence Officer. This was particularly good news. On the morning of 7 December, 1941, the United States had learned the advantage of providing senior area commanders with the intelligence they might need, and so this CINCPAC, unlike Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, got to hear a lot.
“Morning, Mike,” Mancuso said in greeting, while a chief steward’s mate set up morning coffee.
“Good morning, sir,” the one-star replied.
“What’s new in the Pacific?”
“Well, top of the news this morning, the Russians have appointed a new guy to head their Far Eastern Military District. His name is Gennady Bondarenko. His last job was J-3 operations officer for the Russian army. His background’s pretty interesting. He started off in signals, not