"James P. Hogan - The Proteus Operation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

PROLOGUE

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1974, dawned sullenly over the Virginia coast, with raindrops
spitting from a wet, overcast sky, and ill tempered squalls scuffing white the wavetops of a
choppy, gunmetal sea. Looking like a flecked carpet unrolled upon the surface, a straight, foamy
wake extended out of the eastern mists to mark the course of the nuclear-driven attack submarine
USS Narwhal, now within sight of its home base at Norfolk and being escorted over the last few
miles by a flock of lazily wheeling seagulls, filling the air with their raucous lament. From the
sinister black of the submarine's hull to the dirty off-whites of the seagulls and the spray, the
world was a composition of soggy grays.

The grayness seemed fitting, Commander Gerald Bowden thought as he stood with the first
navigation officer and a signalman, looking out from the bridge atop the Narwhal's twenty-foot-
high "sail." Color came with babies and flowers, sunny mornings and springtimes: new things
beginning. But corpses were pale; the sick, "ashen-faced"; the ailing, "gray with exhaustion."


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Along with strength and life, color drained from things that were nearing their end. It seemed
fitting that a world without a future should be a world without color also.

At least, barring some kind of miracle, the free world of the West that he was committed
to defend -- what was left of it -- had
no future. The latest Japanese provocations in the Pacific were clearly the long-expected
prelude to a move against the Hawaiian Islands, aimed at the final strategic isolation of
Australia. There was no possibility of the U.S. 's meekly acquiescing again to such an aggression,
as had happened with the annexing of the Philippines to the Japanese Empire five years previously.
War would automatically mean taking on the might of Nazi Europe plus its Asian and African
colonies, too, with the Fascist South American states doubtless joining in at the last moment to
pick up their share of the spoils. Against such odds there could be little doubt of the outcome.
But the nation and its few remaining allies were grimly resigned to go down fighting if they had
to. President John F. Kennedy had spoken for all when he pledged America to a policy of "No more
surrenders."

Bowden shifted his gaze from the harbor entrance ahead to the fourth figure on the bridge,
whose Russian-style, fur cap with backflap turned down against the wind, and paratrooper's
jumpsmock worn over Army fatigues contrasted with the Navy garb of the ship's officers. The dress
was an assortment of oddments from the ship's stores that the soldier had changed into from the
workman's clothes he'd been wearing when the Narwhal picked him and his party up. Captain Harry
Ferracini, from one of the Army's Special Operations units, commanded the four-man squad and its
accompanying group of civilians that had come aboard several days previously at a rendezvous with
a fishing boat off the southwest English coast. What their mission had been, who the civilians
were, and why they were being brought back to the U.S., Bowden had known better than to ask; but
clearly, for some branches of the U.S. military, an undeclared, undercover war against the Third
Reich and its dominions had already begun.