Panic Switch

22

The shipwide announcing circuit clicked with the voice of Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev. “All senior officers not actually on watch, report to the captain’s stateroom.”

“You know, sir,” Captain Second Rank Ania Lebedev said, “back in the South Atlantic, you made all the tactical decisions yourself, brushing off all advice from anyone else. Including advice from me.” Lebedev stood a meter away from Alexeyev, who was seated in his command chair at the end of the table.

“I know,” he said quietly. “You want to know what keeps me up at night, Madam First? What if I had taken your advice instead of doing it my way? Would that have turned the battle? I decided, if we fail in this mission, it won’t be from my ignoring advice.”

Lebedev nodded in sympathy. “You’ve changed, Captain. In my way of thinking, for the better.”

“You have too, Ania,” he said, looking up at her. “You were a cold, calculating careerist when we left for the South Atlantic. You have empathy now. You can see into people. Into me, even.”

She smiled. “I hope I remain calculating, Captain. We may need that, with these orders.” Despite her previous brain-storming suggestion that they could preemptively take out the American submarine, her tone now betrayed that she thought these orders were foolish, but then, hadn’t this entire mission been foolish, conceived by politicians who had no idea about the intricacies of operating submarines? Especially submarines under ice?

The officers began to file into the room, Navigator Maksimov first, then Weapons Officer Sobol, Chief Engineer Ausra, then Kovalov and his crew — First Officer Vlasenko, Navigator Dobryvnik, Chief Engineer Chernobrovin and Systems Officer Trusov. When they were all seated, Lebedev shut the door.

“Madam Navigator, would you project your tactical ice plot on the displays for us?” Alexeyev asked.

Maksimov manipulated her pad computer and her display of the nav plot flashed up. “In this scale, the display is roughly fifteen nautical miles wide. You can see the ice wall on the right side — the east side — with the superimposed blast zone at the ice target in the upper right corner of this box of clear water. In orange, I’ve identified the approximate boundary of the polynya created by the blast, which is about two to three miles wide, east-to-west and perhaps half that north-to-south. You can see that the ice wall didn’t open up at the target area but for a thousand or so meters into the ice pressure ridge, so continuing on our previous course is not feasible. To the west on the left side of the screen, you can see the other wall that bounds this rectangle of clear water, approximately seven miles from the ice target. The southern edge of that wall is the passage where we entered into the seven-mile-wide rectangle. Farther to the west, we took a serpentine path around ice ridges to get here. About thirty miles farther west, the ice ridges mostly stopped, and the water depth increased. Average water depth here is between a hundred and three hundred meters, which is probably why we encountered so many ice walls. Our present situation is that we are surfaced here, near the original ice target, at the open water of the polynya, where we transmitted our request for a change of routing, and where we received our new orders.”

Alexeyev stared at the plot on the large display. “Can you show our previous track’s history?”

“Yes, Captain,” Maksimov said, sweeping a lock of raven black hair out of her face. “You can see we entered the seven-mile rectangle here, transited to the southern part of the ice pressure ridge, then ran north until we ran into this corner at the northeast. About fifty meters south of the corner is where we established the ice target. We surfaced at open water, got permission to shoot a Gigantskiy at the ice target, then submerged and ran west until we hit this ice wall. Here, near the west wall, is where we fired the nuclear torpedo, and you can see at this point, I’ve marked the place where the first compartment fire started and we jettisoned weapons. We’ll need that position to be exact, because we’ll need to salvage them to avoid the Americans pulling them off the sea floor and examining our technology.”

Alexeyev waved his hand in dismissal. “The only thing truly secret about those weapons is their AI software, and that’s been compromised by seawater and the liquid nitrogen deluge. Nothing there worth salvaging.”

Lebedev parted her lips. “Fleet command may disagree, Captain, or they may want to play it safe.”

“Safe? Salvaging torpedoes under ice like this? Captain Kovalov, could you salvage these torpedoes?”

Kovalov nodded. “Sure. I’d need something to put them in after plucking each one off the bottom. A big sled or sunken barge with a bladder or ballast system to get them towed out under ice. We can carry two torpedoes in the external cradles. But an operation like that? I’d need a lot more fuel.”

“Fuel? You’re nuclear powered, Sergei,” Alexeyev said.

“I am, but Losharik is at the end of her EFPH and ready for a refuel.” EFPH stood for effective full-power hours, the nuclear equivalent of gallons of diesel or tons of coal. “I doubt I have enough fuel to make a voyage of fifty miles. Or even twenty.”

“That’s cutting it close for our original mission,” Alexeyev observed.

“Not really. Deploying the Status-6 units is fairly quick work. We’d only be critical for a few hours for each deployment.”

“Navigator, can you show us where the American submarine’s track is, and make it correspond to our own? Start at the moment of the Gigantskiy launch.”

“I’ll erase all track data for a moment, sir,” Maksimov said. “We were traveling slowly eastward with our position close to the western wall of the rectangle when we fired, and the American was behind us. We’re fairly certain he was on the bottom. At this point, we lost contact on the American, but then we were busy with the fire in the first compartment and the weapon jettison operation. At the point that the fire was out and the weapon jettison was complete, we were here, about halfway across the rectangle on the way to the original ice target. We picked up the American with a bad shaft rub or mechanical noise with his every shaft revolution. His noise got progressively worse, but he followed us to the ice target and the open water. While we were surfaced at open water, we think he was hovering under us or back on the bottom. I expect we will hear him again as soon as we resume motion.”

“That’s going to be a tactical problem,” Weapons Officer Sobol said in her squeaky voice. Alexeyev consciously kept his face neutral, forcing himself not to look at Kovalov for fear of laughing. “If the American follows us as he has up to now, shaft noise or not, we can’t execute these orders.”

“Let’s talk about the orders,” Alexeyev said. “Item one, we’re ordered to launch the Status-6 torpedoes now rather than deploy them with Losharik.”

“Right. That’s impossible, Captain,” Lebedev said, frowning.

“The Status-6 can only navigate on a great circle route,” Sobol said. “It can’t maneuver through a maze of ice pressure ridges like we’ve done to get here using under-ice sonar. And active sonar.”

“So they aren’t smart enough to be launched now,” Alexeyev said. “So we’re unable to follow that order. We’d need to emerge from the icepack into open water and then launch them, am I correct?”

“That’s right, sir,” Sobol said.

“That brings up the question of whether we retransmit a new message to Northern Fleet that the orders they gave us are impossible to execute?” Alexeyev frowned in frustration.

“Captain, if I may?” Kovalov said. All eyes on the room turned to the Losharik captain.

“By all means,” Alexeyev said.

“I would urge you not to send a message to Northern Fleet saying that they are idiots for ordering the Status-6 launch now. For all we know, by the word ‘now’ they meant ‘as soon as feasible.’ Which means we have full permission to turn back west to leave the icecap and get to where we are able to launch the Status-6 weapons. At that point, we can advise Northern Fleet that we’ve followed their orders.” Kovalov reached for a cigarette. Sobol passed him an ashtray. He lit up, blew a smoke ring into the overhead and looked back at Alexeyev. “The other important point to note is that when we do send the next message to Northern Fleet, we’d better be able to report to them that the American submarine is destroyed.”

“Good points, both, Captain Kovalov,” Alexeyev said. “So unless anyone disagrees, we will interpret these orders to be read that we are to launch Status-6 weapons when feasible, and since they want to fly a straight route to the target, they will need to be launched toward the North Atlantic, and we will go from here back west to open water and the North Atlantic. Do I have a consensus on this?”

All the officers nodded assent or said, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Do I also have agreement that we will wait to radio Northern Fleet HQ until we’ve successfully killed the American?”

Again, nods all around the table.

“Good. So now, let’s turn to the matter of sinking the American,” Alexeyev said. “How do we do that if he’s following us within half a ship length?”

The room was silent for a moment. Finally, Losharik Systems Officer Trusov raised her hand. Alexeyev looked at Trusov, realizing this was the first he’d seen her this mission. She hadn’t taken meals in the officers’ mess with the other Losharik officers, which had seemed strange. She insisted on eating in the tiny Losharik messroom and making her own meals, and sleeping in the crowded bunkroom, despite the special purpose deep-diver submarine being much colder than the spaces of the Belgorod. Trusov’s file had crossed Alexeyev’s desk early in the mission. She’d been elevated in rank to Captain Second Rank as a result of her heroics on the Novosibirsk in the Arabian Sea. According to the file, Trusov had saved the ship when the crew were unconscious and the ship was sinking. In addition to early promotion, she’d been awarded the Medal for Distinction in Combat, one of the highest decorations an officer could receive. But she didn’t behave with any swagger, Alexeyev thought.

Trusov was physically stunning. She was short with a curvy feminine figure. She had shining platinum blonde hair and big, bright blue eyes, but her hair was pulled back in a tight bun and she wore no makeup. Someone meeting her for the first time might arrive at the conclusion that her own beauty annoyed her, and that she wanted to downplay it. But her reclusiveness seemed odd, almost alarming to Alexeyev. He’d meant to ask Kovalev his thoughts, but had never gotten to it.

She had something in common with Alexeyev, he thought. Both had been rescued by the Americans who sank them, in separate incidents, his in the South Atlantic, hers in the Arabian Sea. They’d both been interviewed by the same American officer, a young lieutenant named Pacino, who Alexeyev had later learned was the son of the vice president. Alexeyev had been impressed with the young man, who had shown him a deep respect even in the face of Alexeyev’s defeat. And according to Kovalov, the same lieutenant had seemingly changed Trusov from a rabid anti-American to someone almost sympathetic to them. Alexeyev wondered if that might have something to do with her self-imposed exile on this operation. Could it be that she was a conscientious objector to the Status-6 mission?

“Go ahead, Madam Systems Officer,” Alexeyev said to Trusov.

“Captain, I’m by education a mechanical engineer. I believe the noises we’ve heard from Hostile One are possibly catastrophic for them.” Her voice was smooth, with an almost lilting east-of-the-Urals accent, which was odd for a woman who spent her life on the Kola Peninsula but for education in Moscow. Perhaps the accent came from her mother’s side. Her file had indicated she was the daughter of Volodya Trusov, the storied captain of Alexeyev’s first submarine Tambov. Alexeyev searched his memory of meeting her almost two decades before, when as a junior officer, he’d been invited to the captain’s house for dinner, but he came up blank. Perhaps on those occasions, she’d stayed with relatives.

“The noises are catastrophic for them — why?” Alexeyev asked.

“Sir, when we spun around to face east to launch the Gigantskiy torpedo at the ice target, the American — Hostile One — was behind us, but he had been following us headed west when we launched, which means he was stern-on to the shock wave. And if he were facing away from the shock wave, it would have slammed his propulsor shaft into his engineroom. I believe the noise he’s been making is from his thrust bearing. And I would predict that it is on the verge of failure. Which means the American will lose propulsion.”

“Officer of the Deck,” Lieutenant Anthony Pacino said into the 1JV phone circuit after it buzzed from maneuvering back aft.

“This is the engineer,” Lieutenant Commander Alyssa Kelly said. “We have a serious problem. I want you to send the captain and XO to the aft compartment at the main motor.”

“Captain will want to know why. What’s up?”

“The thrust bearing just shit the bed. Now get the captain and XO.”

“Right away.” Pacino hung up. “Captain, XO, Eng wants you both back aft at the main motor. Eng reports we have a serious problem with the thrust bearing.”

Captain Seagraves and XO Quinnivan left the room in a half run. Pacino looked over at Navigator Lewinsky.

“What do you think is going on back there?” Pacino asked.

“If there’s trouble with the thrust bearing, this mission is over,” Lewinsky said.

“Officer of the Deck, we’re making a bad screeching sound every revolution,” Sonar Senior Chief Albanese said, breaking into the conversation. “And it got worse with every rev. Fairly well screaming that we’re out here. The BUFF has to know we’re here.”

“On the bottom, right underneath him while he’s surfaced at the open water,” Pacino said.

In the aft compartment, Seagraves and Quinnivan found Engineer Kelly at the thrust bearing, a cube of metal a meter on a side. It was glowing dark red and smoking. The chief mechanic, Chief Sammy “Sam-I-Am” MacHinery, supervised as two mechanics held firehoses on the thrust bearing to keep it from melting or setting the nearby equipment on fire.

“What do we have?” Seagraves asked.

“It’s bad, Captain,” Kelly said. “It’s seized. It’s not coming back.”

“Forgive me, Eng,” Quinnivan said. “But I came up through the tactical ranks, not the engineering side. What the hell is a thrust bearing and how does it work?”

Kelly looked at him and said solemnly, “The main motor turns the shaft, which rotates the turbine blades of the propulsor, XO, which generates thrust, a pushing force on the ship. This unit here, the thrust bearing, absorbs that thrust and transfers it to the hull to push the boat forward, and it’s no small task, because the shaft is rotating and the hull isn’t. So the forward part of the thrust bearing, the stationary part mounted to the boat’s frame, is just a flat plate of soft metal held in place by a foundation of hard steel. The aft part on the shaft, the part that rotates, has segments of soft metal — also mounted on a hard steel baseplate — that are tilted. Those soft metal tilted segments — just imagine a pizza with each slice at an angle so as the shaft spins, the leading edge of the moving pizza slice is angled away relative to the stationary flat plate and the trailing edge comes closer to the flat plate. The whole thing is filled with oil, and as the pizza slices rotate, they are actually gliding on a thin film of oil. Pizza slices push on the oil, oil pushes on the forward flat plate, flat plate pushes on the boat. Now, all that makes the oil hot, and the soft metal — over time — slowly disintegrates, putting metal particles into the oil. So we pull the oil out, send it to a purifier, which is just a big centrifuge where we pull the pure oil off the center of the centrifuge and shitcan the metal particles on the outside rim. Then we put the oil into a cooler and send it back to the thrust bearing. This thing will work for years if maintained.

“But when we took that shock wave from the nuke? It slammed the shaft into the forward bearing plate. It essentially flattened out the pizza slices. So instead of gliding on a few molecules of oil? We got metal-to-metal contact, and eventually the soft metals wore off from the friction, and only the harder metals of the retaining plates were left. The heat of the friction welded the rotating plate and the stationary plate together. And then the oil got hot enough to catch fire.” Kelly looked from Seagraves to Quinnivan. “It’s gone, sir. We don’t have propulsion on the main motor any longer.”

Seagraves nodded. “We’ll have to unclutch from the main motor and shift propulsion to the emergency propulsion motor.”

Kelly nodded. “I’ll have the engineering officer of the watch request to control that we shift propulsion to the EPM. But we’ll barely make three knots, Captain. Maybe less.”

“We may not be able to keep up with the Belgorod at that speed,” Seagraves said to Quinnivan.

“Maybe only under the ice, Skipper,” Quinnivan said.

“All that assumes the EPM holds up and that its thrust bearing is okay,” Kelly said.

“Once he reaches open water,” Quinnivan said, “we’ll need another submarine to take over this mission.”

“To get someone to take over?” Seagraves mused. “That’s not easy with no radios.”

“We got off the SLOT buoy message. That’ll have to be how we’d hand off,” Quinnivan said.

“Captain,” the engineroom upper level watchstander said, “the officer of the deck reports the first letter of our call sign has been received aboard on the VLF loop. Also, he requests to shift propulsion to the emergency propulsion motor.”

Seagraves nodded. “Tell the OOD, permission granted to shift propulsion to the EPM.” He looked at Kelly. “Eng, keep a close eye on the EPM. If it fails, we’ll have a very long swim home.” To Quinnivan, he said, “in only two hours we’ll know what the message says.”

“Only two things they could say,” Quinnivan said. “Either break trail and come home to Mommy. Or shoot the fookin’ BUFF out of the ocean and kill his ass.”

“The essential problem of under-ice combat,” Alexeyev said to the room of gathered senior officers, “is to establish enough straight-line distance from the target to be able to shoot at him without sustaining damage to our own submarine.” The words of his dead engineer came to him then—distance. Could this be what she was talking about? “And if Hostile One keeps as close to us as he has been, that won’t be possible. We’ll have to withdraw from the icecap the way we came in, retracing our steps, and monitoring Hostile One. If Madam Trusov is correct that the American has a propulsion problem, he’ll lose the ability to move underwater. If he bottoms out or comes up to a polynya, we would be able to arrange enough distance to shoot him.”

“But if he loses that thrust bearing, Captain,” Trusov said, “he’s not going anywhere. He’ll be dead in the water. Plus, he won’t be making the noise that’s allowed us to track him.”

“If we don’t hear him,” Sobol said, “we can hit that direction with active sonar and get his position. If he’s a few hundred meters out, we can shoot him with the Shkval torpedo.”

“If that fails, all we have left is a nuclear Gigantskiy,” Alexeyev said. “And as we’ve demonstrated, we need more than ten miles range to avoid damage to us. And we won’t get ten miles under ice, not until we’re much closer to the marginal ice zone.”

“Sir?” Trusov said hesitantly.

“Go ahead,” Alexeyev said.

“Sir, if the Americans lose propulsion, they’ll be trapped under the ice.”

There was silence in the room for a long moment. Finally, Lebedev spoke, her voice harsh.

“Trusov, we’re under orders to destroy the American. That means we shoot him no matter what’s going on with his goddamned engineroom.”

“Madam First,” Trusov said, frowning, “the Americans are fellow submariners. We can’t shoot them if they’re helpless. And we can’t leave them to die under the ice.”

Alexeyev stood up abruptly. “This meeting is over,” he said, acid in his voice. “Clear the room except for Madam Lebedev and Captain Kovalov.”

When the more junior of the officers had left, Alexeyev looked at Kovalov. “Your systems officer is out of line. But she’s also correct.”

“Sir,” Lebedev said, “we have clear orders concerning the hostile submarine. Shoot to kill. I recommend we discuss the ‘how’ of those orders, not the ‘why.’”

“Let me humor you, Madam First,” Alexeyev said. He looked at the projection left on-screen by Maksimov. “We’re here, surfaced at the original ice target — open water. The ice walls roughly form a box, seven miles wide east-to-west, perhaps half of that in the north-south direction. Presumably, Hostile One is hovering underneath us or on the bottom, waiting for our next move. Also, I presume he will follow us no matter what we do. So, imagine this. We vertical dive to a hundred meters. Then we follow our course line that got us into this box back to the corner opening into the ice maze farther west of us. But we do that at flank speed.”

“Flank speed?” Lebedev said, color draining from her face. “If we do that, we could hit a pressure ridge and rupture the hull. Or shear off the conning tower — or the rudder.”

“It’s the only way to establish stand-off distance to the American,” Alexeyev said. “When we’re at the entrance to the box, seven miles from open water, we spin the ship, ping active to get a data package on the American and open fire with a Shkval torpedo. Nominal depth, one hundred to two hundred meters. But we fire it whether or not we have reestablished contact on the American.”

“Shooting a Shkval blind means throwing it away,” Kovalov said, shaking his head. “If Hostile One is surfaced at the open water after we leave — probably to get or send radio messages, you won’t get a return on active sonar. And the probability of a hit on a target not acquired by sonar? You would essentially be jettisoning it.”

“So what?” Alexeyev said. “Better to return from this mission with no torpedoes, yes? Which brings me to the next tactic. If we can’t confirm a kill on Hostile One after shooting a Shkval at him, we’ll fire the last Gigantskiy at him.”

Lebedev’s eyes grew wide. Alexeyev could see the whites of her eyes above and below her irises. “Sir, the box — as you described it — is only seven miles wide, and the last time we shot a Gigantskiy, we almost lost the entire first compartment to fire and explosions. That could have sunk us. We’ll be too close, Captain. The next time we may not be as lucky. Plus, we might have latent damage from the first detonation that we haven’t discovered yet. A second explosion could cause a catastrophic failure from a hundred systems.”

“My plan is to shoot the Gigantskiy, then spin the ship and sprint northward back the way we came. We’ll have a thick ice wall between us and the detonation.”

Kovalov looked unhappy. “It’s an awful risk, Captain. And still no guarantee this will kill the American. He survived the first detonation.”

“Do we care?” Alexeyev asked. “We need to return to Zapadnaya Litsa with no weapons, Sergei. Our patrol report will claim a kill unless we absolutely have proof he survived. And even if the American boat does survive, we’ll have no more weapons, so there’s nothing we can do about the hostile submarine.”

“Let me make a suggestion, then, Captain,” Kovalov said. “While you are spinning the ship, my crew and I will undock the Losharik and maneuver away from you.”

“What? Why?” Alexeyev held out his hand for a cigarette, pulled over the ash tray, and sat at one of the seats of the table. Kovalov and Lebedev also sat. Alexeyev lit up and looked at Kovalov through the smoke.

“Just in case, Captain. If something goes wrong and Belgorod lies on the bottom, Losharik would be helpless with your bulk lying on top of us. You’ll be a crushing weight above us. We’ll be useless. But if we’re free of Belgorod, Losharik can rescue your crew from the upper hatch of the escape chamber and drive us all back to open water, where we can call for help. And while we wait, we can keep everyone warm and fed — assuming our reactor survives.”

Alexeyev nodded. “What do you think, Madam First?”

Lebedev exhaled hard, her cheeks blowing out momentarily. “I don’t know, Captain. Losharik isn’t equipped for operation under the ice. I think she’d have trouble finding open water. And what if the nuclear explosion damages her? How well will Losharik survive a shock event?”

“A damned sight better than Belgorod,” Kovalov said. “Our pressure hulls are spherical titanium, good down to twenty-five hundred meters. That’s five times the depth of Belgorod’s test depth. We can stand a shock wave better than Belgorod can. And if we’re under ice without you, I’ll use the side-scan sonar to feel out the ice field. I’ll have to do a lot of thrusting and spinning, but I can find open water.”

“Madam First?” Alexeyev asked.

“I guess it will work, Captain. I’ll feel a lot better when that goddamned Gigantskiy is gone and we’re still okay.”

Alexeyev reached over and clapped Lebedev on the shoulder. “Madam First, we’ll be home safe in two weeks.”

Lebedev and Kovalov stood. “I’d better start up Losharik,” Kovalov said.

“I’ll brief the central command post crew,” Lebedev said. As she left the captain’s stateroom, once Kovalov had walked down the passageway, she unzipped her coveralls slightly and pulled out a small, silver crucifix she secretly wore around her neck. She kissed it, her eyes shut, then put it back in her coveralls, looking around to make sure no one had seen her.

The watch officer’s voice crackled through the ship on the shipwide announcing speakers. “All Losharik personnel, report to the Losharik.”

“Captain, Officer of the Deck, Master One has started back up. I’ve got flooding noises. I think he’s vertical diving from the open water overhead.” Senior Chief Albanese looked over his shoulder. “I recommend we set up to follow him.”

“Bring her off the bottom, Mr. Pacino,” Captain Seagraves said, “and hover at four hundred while we figure out what he’s doing.”

“Pilot, insert a positive rate and hover at depth four hundred,” Pacino ordered Dankleff.

“Insert a positive rate and commence hovering at four hundred feet, Pilot, aye,” Dankleff acknowledged.

“OOD,” Albanese called, “Master One is putting on fast revs. I’m getting him over a hundred RPM on one seven-bladed screw, bearing two five five. One-twenty RPM now and still increasing. One-fifty. One-eighty. Two hundred RPM.”

“Jaysus,” Quinnivan said, leaning over Albanese’s sonar stack. “He’s hauling ass. What the fook is he doing?”

“Two hundred forty RPM, sir, and now steady on two-fifty.”

“He must be going flank on that one screw,” Pacino said to Seagraves and Quinnivan.

“Probably backtracking on his original course on his way here,” Lewinsky said, “so he can avoid hitting an ice wall. He knows his previous path is safe.”

“But what’s the hurry?” Quinnivan mused.

“Put on turns on the EPM,” Seagraves ordered Pacino. “We’ll do what we can to follow him.”

“Pilot, all ahead one third,” Pacino ordered Dankleff. “Steer course two five five.”

“All ahead one third, Pilot, aye, steer two five five, and Maneuvering answers, all ahead one third.” Dankleff paused a moment, listening to his tactical circuit from the maneuvering room. “OOD, Maneuvering reports only three knots possible on the emergency propulsion motor.”

“Very well,” Pacino said. His face suddenly drained of color and he looked at Seagraves. “Something’s up, Captain. Something very bad.”

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Pacino?” Seagraves asked. “You’ve got that ‘someone walked on your grave’ look that Mr. Dankleff told me about on the Panther run.”

“Sir, I can only think of one reason Master One would want to go to flank under ice in a situation like this. He’s trying to establish stand-off distance. He’s about to shoot us.”

“What’s the status of the message on the fookin’ VLF loop?” Quinnivan asked.

Pacino dialed radio on the 1JV and spoke into it, then looked up at the XO. “Three letters aboard, three to go. The first two are our callsign, so it’s definitely a message for us. But it will be another full hour before we can decode the message.” He looked at Captain Seagraves. “Captain, if we’re about to get shot at, we should turn around and head back to the polynya. If we sustain damage, we could vertical surface.”

“Another good thing about Mr. Pacino’s recommendation, Skipper,” Quinnivan said. “We could get our message traffic instantaneously if we pop up the sail from open water. That’ll save us an hour. Plus, we could see if our radios are working.”

“Mr. Pacino,” Seagraves said, “turn us around and bring us to the open water, and write a draft situation report we can try to transmit on the HDR or COMM antenna. Once I approve it, load it into the buffer and into a SLOT buoy — just in case the antennae are broken. And as important, if we can get the sail out of the water, we can get a precise navigation fix and collapse the SINS fix error circle.”

“Understood, Captain,” Pacino said. “Pilot, right full rudder, steady course zero eight zero. Navigator, confirm a course back to the open water. Then get ready to get a satellite fix aboard, then transcribe our exact position for the radio SITREP.”

Captain First Rank Sergei Kovalov climbed into the left-hand commander’s seat in Losharik’s cockpit. To his right, Captain Second Rank Iron Irina Trusov buckled into the pilot-in-command’s seat. Behind Kovalov, the navigator, Captain Third Rank Misha Dobryvnik occupied the navigation console, and to his right, First Officer Ivan Vlasenko manned the mission-control console. In the fourth titanium spherical compartment aft, Chief Engineer Kiril Chernobrovin manned the reactor control room. The sixth spherical compartment contained the reactor and steam equipment, the seventh the main engine.

Kovalov strapped on his wireless headset and keyed the microphone on the tactical circuit. “Reactor Control, Captain, status of reactor startup?”

Chernobrovin’s voice was dull as he answered, disappointment in his tone. “Captain, I’m executing a pull-and-wait startup. We’ve been shut down too long. We’re non-visible, sir, with nothing showing up on startup range neutron level. I have no idea how much reactivity I’ve inserted into the core.”

“Engineer, this is a tactical situation,” Kovalov said sternly. “I need that reactor online and I need it now.”

“Sir, I might put too much reactivity into the core before it reads out on instruments. We could go supercritical. We could go prompt critical. It could run away, explode and rupture the hull.”

Kovalov sighed. “What’s your pull and wait interval?”

“Sir, I’m shimming out for five seconds and waiting for fifty-five.”

“Engineer,” Kovalov said, peeved, “that’ll have us in the power range in a week. I need power now. So I’m ordering you to pull for ten seconds and wait for twenty. You got that?”

“Yes, Captain, pull ten, wait twenty.” Chernobrovin’s voice was just this side of panic, Kovalov thought.

“How many amp-hours do we have on the battery?”

“At present discharge, sir, the battery has six hours, but if you use the thruster, that’ll drain us a lot faster.”

“Fine. Reactor Control, disconnect power umbilical from Belgorod and take us to internal power on the battery. Prepare to undock on Belgorod’s signal.”

Kovalov looked at Trusov. “Hope you can hold your breath,” he said. “No atmospheric controls until the engineer gets this reactor started. Let’s go over the undock checklist.”

As Kovalov and Trusov went over the checklist, the ship began to tremble with the vibrations from Belgorod’s starboard screw taking them up to flank speed. Kovalov turned to look back at Vlasenko. “We’d better hope the ice hasn’t shifted since we covered that ground.”

“If it does, Captain,” Trusov said, “we should be prepared to emergency undock.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Kovalov said, but he had deep doubts.

23

Captain Third Rank Svetlana Anna, the commander of the test wives, peeked out from the doorway of her VIP stateroom suite down the passageway toward the captain’s stateroom. When the last senior officer entered the room, she walked aft to the ladder to the zero two deck, continuing down to the zero three deck, where the weapon control electronics were kept. She arrived at the forward bulkhead, where the door to the electronics room was shut, a primitive push-button lock on the door. With the expertise gained from her recent practice, she withdrew a package from her pocket the size of pack of cigarettes, placed it on the lock’s keypad, and pushed an authorization button, then an activation button.

The keypad sparked and briefly burst into flames. Anna waved her hand at the flames, which died out, leaving it smoking slightly. She operated the door handle and the door opened. She looked around, saw no one, and shut the door behind her. She walked down the rows of weapon control electronics, each a modular part of the larger “second captain” AI system that was woven into the fabric of the entire ship, from ship control to reactor control to battlecontrol to sensors. She found the cabinets that she had been seeking, one that controlled the large-bore tubes for the Gigantskiys, the other two for the 53-centimeter torpedo tube banks. She needed to open all three cabinets, even though one would prove useless since the torpedoes were gone but for the VA-111 Shkval supercavitating torpedo loaded in one of the tubes. But Anna had not been able to find out which torpedo bank the Shkval was in, so she would have to make her modifications to both port and starboard bank small-bore tube controllers.

She opened all three cabinet doors and withdrew her wire-cutting and crimping tool from her other coverall pocket. She knew which circuit she was looking for, but her knowledge came from memorized schematics, not physical drawings. She had to identify the major electronics cards first, then the wires connecting them. She found the first module and its signal wire, cut it, removed the insulation, then prepared it to be terminated on the device she withdrew from her left sock.

The device was a white phosphorus grenade, slightly smaller than the size of a can of sardines. She turned the wire around the first termination lug of the grenade, tightened the termination lug, then wound the other end of the wire at the second lug. She tucked the grenade into a void between racks of computer card modules, then performed the same operation on the other two panels. If this had been correctly implemented, a command to launch a weapon would put a small current through the wire that now included the grenade in the circuit, and when it did, the casing of the grenade would rupture and expose the tetraphosphorus to the air of the ship. The white phosphorus was highly flammable and pyrophoric — that is, self-igniting — upon exposure to air. When the casing was cracked, it would explode into toxic flames and ruin the entire cabinet. There would be no weapons leaving the ship after that.

Or, at least, so Anna hoped. She inserted the next two grenades, then closed the cabinet doors, stepped back to make sure it looked like they hadn’t been tampered with, then cracked the electronics room door. The space was empty. Anna slipped back through the door, wiped soot off the door keypad with her sleeve, then quickly withdrew the way she had come. She shut the door of her stateroom behind her and breathed in a sigh of relief.

“Pilot, vertical surface the ship,” Pacino ordered Dankleff at the ship control station.

“Vertical surface, Pilot, aye.” Dankleff hit the diving alarm, since the rig for ultraquiet had been secured after the thrust bearing failed. The shrill and loud OOOOOO-GAAAAAH roared from the speakers. “Surface, surface, surface!” Dankleff announced on the 1MC. “Three hundred feet. Two-fifty. Two hundred. One-fifty. Easing positive rate to five feet per second. One hundred feet. Eighty. Seventy feet. Sixty, and sail’s broached. Fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty-nine feet. Ship is surfaced, sir. Recommend starting a low-pressure blow on all main ballast tanks.”

“Prepare to low pressure blow all main ballast tanks,” Pacino said.

“Officer of the Deck, I have trouble here,” Dankleff said. Pacino hurried to Dankleff’s seat to look over his shoulder at his flatpanels.

“What’s up, Pilot?”

“Main induction failure. Head valve is stuck shut.”

“Is it possible it’s just an indication problem? A failed instrument?”

Dankleff looked over his shoulder at Pacino. “We’ll need to get on top of the sail to find out.”

“Conn, Radio!” the overhead speaker rasped. “We have flash traffic off of COMM-1.”

“Bring it to control,” Pacino said to the overhead, but the radioman was already there with a pad computer, thrusting it into Captain Seagraves’ hands. Seagraves read it and passed it to Quinnivan, who pulled his reading glasses out of his pocket and read the message. By then, Seagraves had pulled the 1MC shipwide announcing system’s microphone out of the overhead.

“Attention all hands,” Seagraves voice boomed throughout the ship. “This is the captain. We have immediate and urgent orders to fire upon and sink the Belgorod. Man battlestations.”

Pacino traded glances with Lewinsky. This operation had transitioned from surveillance to combat in a single one-sentence radio message.

“Attention in the firecontrol party,” Seagraves said to the room as the additional watchstanders rushed in to take over from the section tracking party’s watchstanders. “My intention is to open torpedo tube door number one to a Mark 48 ADCAP in offense mode and torpedo tube door number four to a Mark 48 in countermeasure torpedo mode. We will dial in an assumed solution for Master One. I believe Master One is withdrawing to the narrow entrance of this closed-in region of ice and he will fire on us from there. Once we’re in position, we will fire the offensive weapon, and if we detect a counterfire, we’ll shoot the CMT weapon.” Seagraves looked at Pacino. “Officer of the Deck, vertical dive to two hundred feet and spin the ship to face west.”

As Pacino executed Seagraves’ order, Quinnivan turned to the captain. “Should we try to detonate the mines, Captain?”

“The SEALs seem to think they didn’t survive the shock wave of the Gigantskiy torpedo,” Seagraves said.

“Can’t hurt to try, sir.”

“It’s an active sonar pulse, XO. It would give away our exact bearing. When we’re hovering, we’re not making enough noise to be detected.”

“We’ll make noise once that torpedo leaves the ship.”

“True, XO. We can try the sonar pulse after we fire tube one.”

“Good plan, Captain.”

“Ship is in position, Captain,” Watch Officer Vilen Shvets announced from his starboard side seat at the command console. “We’ve hovered and spun to heading zero eight seven. Request permission to hit Hostile One with an active sonar ping to identify his range.”

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev was strapped into his portside seat at the command console with his five-point seatbelt cinched up tight.

“Attention in central command,” he said to the room. “My intentions are to fire the Shkval in tube six at Hostile One. We will ping active on him first to get a target data package to insert into the Shkval. We expect only a one-in-three chance of a kill with that weapon. If we are unable to confirm target destruction, we will launch the second Gigantskiy torpedo in ultraslow speed mode, and withdraw rapidly, put distance between us and the detonation point, getting ice walls between us and the point of detonation. Everyone clear?”

The room was silent. He looked at Lebedev, who nodded solemnly. Her reminders on the last mission to announce his intentions — and to seek, and take, advice — had improved his performance, he thought. Perhaps he did live inside his own head a little too much.

“Status of the Shkval in tube six?” he asked.

“Outer door is open, sir,” Captain Lieutenant Katerina Sobol reported. “Weapon is on internal power. We need a target data package to be inserted. Bearing, range and speed, or failing that, simply the bearing.”

“Status of the Gigantskiy?”

“Large bore tube five’s outer door is open. Weapon power is applied from the ship, but all systems are started up and nominal. Gigantskiy unit two also needs a target data package.”

“Very good,” Alexeyev said, glancing to his right, where First Officer Ania Lebedev occupied the command console’s center seat. “You ready?”

“Captain,” Shvets said, “Losharik requests permission to undock and shove off.”

Alexeyev nodded and turned toward Shvets. “Watch Officer, to Losharik, undock and shove off.”

“I’m ready, Captain,” Lebedev said quietly. “I hope we made the right decision about the Losharik. I’d hate to lose her up here.”

“I’m sure it will be fine, Madam First,” Alexeyev said, hoping his voice sounded credible. “Sonar Officer, line up to transmit active sonar and ping at Hostile One’s assumed position.”

Sonar Officer Valerina Palinkova operated the switch-protector on the sonar sphere’s mode selector switch and rotated it from “PASSIVE” to “ACTIVE.” She uncovered a second protective cover over the ping buttons, selected high frequency and pushed it.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, Palinkova put her finger on the low frequency active transmit button and pushed it.

Still nothing.

“Captain, I have a serious malfunction,” Palinkova said. “Active sonar is not responding.” Weapons Officer Sobol jogged to the sonar and sensor console, looking over Palinkova’s shoulder.

“I concur, Captain,” Sobol said in her squeaky high-pitched voice. “Sonar passed all self-checks, but the hydrophones aren’t transmitting.”

Alexeyev shook his head in disgust. This damned mission, he thought. “What do you think, First?” he asked quietly to Lebedev.

“Let’s input an assumed range and bearing to Hostile One at the open water, Captain, but set it to immediate enable in case he’s closer.”

“Weapons Officer, input a target package, bearing zero eight seven, range seven miles, but program in immediate enable.”

“Any depth selection, Captain?”

“Leave it at the default presets,” Alexeyev said, then said to Lebedev. “If he’s surfaced or on the bottom, the Shkval will miss.”

“If he’s hovering under the polynya, we’ll hit him,” she said.

“Procedures for firing the Shkval,” Alexeyev announced loudly to the room.

“Ship is ready, Captain,” Shvets said.

“Weapon is ready, sir,” Sobol reported. “Assumed target data package inserted. Weapon on internal power.”

“Weapons Officer, fire tube six!” Alexeyev barked.

Nothing happened.

“Firing point procedures,” Captain Seagraves announced to the room. “Master One, tube one, offense mode, medium-to-medium active snake, one mile enable.”

“Ship ready, sir,” Pacino said in his boom mike.

“Weapon ready, Captain,” Lieutenant Commander Styxx reported.

“Solution ready,” Quinnivan said.

“Shoot on generated bearing,” Seagraves ordered.

“Set,” Lieutenant Vevera said from the battlecontrol console, sending the final target solution to the torpedo in tube one.

“Stand-by,” Styxx said, taking the large trigger lever on the far aft weapon control console from the twelve o’clock position to the nine o’clock stand-by position, which instructed the weapon that launch would be immediate.

“Shoot!” Seagraves barked.

“Fire!” Styxx said, taking the trigger lever all the way to the three o’clock firing position.

A booming roar sounded in the room, the thunderclap smashing the eardrums of the battlestations crew as the ejection mechanism boomed.

“Tube one fired electrically,” Styxx reported.

“Own-ship’s unit, normal launch,” Senior Chief Albanese called from the sonar stack.

Seagraves shared a glance with Pacino and Quinnivan. “And now we wait.” As if an officer from an old World War II U-boat movie, Quinnivan had clicked an old-fashioned stopwatch.

“Twenty-five knot transit speed for medium speed search,” Quinnivan said. “Seventeen minutes, Captain. Maybe we should have set it to high-speed transit. We could update it through the wire if you want, Skipper,” Quinnivan said.

“Let’s wait and see what happens,” Seagraves said. He looked at Quinnivan. “Did you read Mr. Dankleff’s patrol report from his Panther run?”

“I may have given it a quick read-through, Captain, yeah?” Quinnivan said. “Why do ye ask?”

“And did you ever get access to the top secret codeword patrol report of the first Devilfish?”

“No, sir. ComSubCom wouldn’t release it to me. I’m a Brit, or as you Americans would say, a foreign national, and some secrets have to stay in the house.”

“Navigator,” Seagraves said to Lieutenant Commander Lewinsky, “get over here.”

“Yes, Captain,” Lewinsky said, glancing at the display on the command console, which Pacino had set to the same display as Pos Three of the battlecontrol lineup, a God’s eye view of the battle area, with superimposed lines where the ice walls were estimated to be. A blinking red diamond symbolized Master One, the BUFF, situated just at the western opening of the box-like walled-in area.

“You read the Devilfish report, didn’t you?”

“I did, Captain,” Lewinsky said, raising his eyebrows.

“And Dankleff’s Panther report?”

“I did, sir.”

“Notice any similarities?” Seagraves asked.

Lewinsky shook his head. “No, sir, not at all.”

Seagraves half-smiled and nodded. “Keep thinking about it, Navigator. Let me know your thoughts if you think you’ve solved the riddle.”

“Time to ping active on the mine command detonation signal, yeah, Captain?” Quinnivan prompted.

Seagraves took a deep breath. “Yes, XO. Senior Chief Albanese, line up to ping active with the mine command detonate signal.”

“Aye, Captain,” Albanese said. “Request to replace fuses in the active sonar circuit.”

“Replace fuses as needed, Senior,” Seagraves said, eyeing the repeated display on the command console. He turned toward the weapon control console. “Anything, Weps?”

“Nothing yet, sir,” Styxx said. “I’ve still got wire-guide continuity. Weapon is past point of enable and searching using active pinging.”

“Good,” Seagraves said.

“Sonar is ready, Captain,” Albanese said.

“Sonar, ping active at Master One, signal for the command detonate of the mines.”

From forward, the loud sound could be heard in the room, almost as deafening as the torpedo launch, fifteen seconds of the roaring climax of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, starting with a cannon blast, a wailing trumpet battle call, another cannon blast, the trumpet call repeating, the sequence repeating a second time, ending with a final loud cannon firing.

Seagraves looked at Quinnivan. “What do you think our good friends on the Belgorod will think of that?” he asked.

“Depends if it works,” Quinnivan replied.

“Anything?” Pacino asked Albanese, leaning over his sonar stack’s seatback.

Senior Chief Albanese held his headset to his ear as if listening hard, but he shook his head and looked back at Pacino, then Seagraves. “Nothing, nothing at all. The mines must have either fallen off or went tits-up from the nuke’s shock wave.”

“All that work for nothing,” Pacino said to himself.

“Torpedo run time, eleven minutes, Captain,” Quinnivan said. “Six to go.”

“Makes you miss the old Vortex missiles, doesn’t it, XO?” Seagraves said. “A supercavitating underwater missile would have reached Master One in about two minutes.”

“They just tended to blow up the firing ship until they came up with the Mod Echo,” Quinnivan said. “But you’re right, it would have been nice.”

“Captain,” Styxx said from the weapon control panel, “I’ve lost wire guide continuity on own-ship’s unit.”

“Sonar,” Seagraves called. “Is our torpedo still pinging?”

“Yes, Captain,” Albanese said. “The pinging sounds are rising and falling in volume and pitch. The weapon must be circling, sir.”

“Reattack mode,” Pacino said to Cooper. “It can’t see the target. So it cut its wire and is just circling around, hoping it finds something.”

“How much fuel do you think it has left, Weps?” Quinnivan asked Styxx.

“Somewhere between five minutes and ten,” Styxx replied. “Without wire continuity, I have no data.”

“Master One must be hiding himself behind an ice wall,” Pacino said.

Quinnivan frowned. “We’d better hope that fookin’ weapon finds him and takes him out before he shoots another nuke, this time, with a note on it that says, ‘Dear New Jersey, with love from your good friends aboard the Belgorod.’”

“Captain,” Albanese said from the sonar stack, “own-ship’s unit, pinging has shut down.”

“Ran out of fuel, sir,” Styxx said sadly.

Pacino glanced at Short Hull Cooper, whose eyes were as wide as hard boiled eggs. “You okay?” Pacino asked him.

Cooper swallowed hard. “I’m fine,” he said, but Pacino could tell he was frightened.

“What the hell do you mean, Weapons Officer?” Captain Alexeyev asked harshly.

“I’ve got a weapons control trouble light,” Weapons Officer Sobol said. “I’m showing an open circuit on the weapon control panel, sir.”

“Can we take local control and bypass the panel?”

“Yes, Captain, but I’ll have to program the weapon at the tube control panel station.”

“Well, get down there,” Alexeyev ordered.

“Wait, Captain,” Lebedev interjected. “If we’re having trouble shooting the Shkval, let’s switch to shooting the Gigantskiy. Let’s see if that works. We were planning on launching it anyway.”

Alexeyev nodded. “Stay at your station, Weapons Officer, and line up the Gigantskiy in large bore tube five. Slow speed transit. Enable it at two miles. Active search. Full one megaton yield. Set for proximity detonation with contact detonation as a backup in case it hits the ice wall at open water. Same target data package as for the Shkval, bearing zero eight seven, range seven miles.” Alexeyev paused, then announced to the room’s watchstanders, “Procedures for firing the Gigantskiy.”

“Ship is ready, Captain,” Shvets said.

“Weapon is ready, sir,” Sobol reported. “Assumed target data package inserted. Your presets inserted. Weapon on internal power.”

“Weapons Officer, fire large-bore tube five!” Alexeyev barked.

And again, nothing happened.

“Goddammit, Weapons Officer, what now?”

“Captain, same indications as for the Shkval. I’ve got a weapons control trouble light,” Weapons Officer Sobol said. “Another open circuit on the weapon control panel.”

“Get down there and sort this out with Glavny Starshina Yeger. Insert the presets locally and try to get the tube to fire.”

“Sir,” Sobol said, “do you still want the Shkval first? Then the Gigantskiy?”

“Yes,” Alexeyev said. He rubbed his bad eye, which was itching through the eye patch. This fucking mission, he thought. What the hell else could go wrong?

The sonar ping came through the hull, audible to the naked ear, lasting a long fifteen seconds, which was long for a pulse. Sonar pulses generally tended to be short, so the sender would shut up and listen for a return ping. The surface navy used long pulses that rose and fell in pitch like a police siren, but they had large equipment capable of transmitting and receiving at the same time. Belgorod was not similarly equipped. But the oddest thing about the pulse wasn’t just its length, it was the content.

“Did you hear that, Captain?” Lebedev asked Alexeyev.

“What the hell is it, First?”

“It’s the ending of the 1812 Overture,” Lebedev said. “By Tchaikovsky.”

“A Russian composer,” Alexeyev said. “Why the hell do you think they’re transmitting music from a Russian composer?”

“Maybe they’re trying to communicate with us, sir. Maybe they are saying they’re friendly.”

“Begging us not to shoot them?” Alexeyev shook his head. “No, it can’t be that. Damned if I know what they’re doing.”

Lebedev blew her lips out for a moment. “Who knows what the crazy Americans are thinking at any given time?” she asked. “At best it’s a trick.”

“Yeah,” Alexeyev said, glancing at his watch. “This is taking too long. Madam First, get down to the torpedo control console and see if you can help.”

“Right away, sir,” Lebedev said, unbuckling her seatbelt and vaulting out of her chair to rush to the first compartment.

Lebedev hurried down the steep stairways to the zero three deck, jogged forward through the narrow passageway, emerging into an equipment room. The door to the weapon control electronics room was open and Chief Yeger and Sobol were standing inside staring at the inside of a cabinet. Lebedev entered, noting it was a tight squeeze with all three of them in the space between the racks of electronics.

“What was wrong?”

Three tube bank control cabinets were opened. Two of them were unrecognizable, both ravaged by fire, black fused wires and control panels still emitting thick noxious smoke to the overhead.

“Look at this, Madam First,” Glavny Starshina Semion Yeger said. He pointed to a package slightly smaller than a cigarette pack, the unit nestled into the wiring harness cableway inside the port tube bank’s controller cabinet, which was undamaged.

“What is it?”

“An explosive device,” Yeger said. “Wired to go off when you gave a weapon launch signal. So the large bore cabinet and starboard cabinet are destroyed. The port cabinet survived since we didn’t try to launch anything out of it.”

“Is there a selector switch that would allow us to take manual control of the tubes? Weapons Officer Sobol said we could do a local launch.”

Yeger looked up from the undamaged port tube bank cabinet. “That is correct, we could, but it will be faster to wire the starboard tube bank to the undamaged port tube panel. I’m almost done wiring it, I just need to remove this bomb or whatever it is and jump the wires. When I give you the word, tell the central command post to give a signal to fire tube six, which will actually launch tube five.”

“What about the Gigantskiy?”

“Once the Shkval is away, I’ll do the same thing with the large bore tube cabinet.”

“Hurry up,” Lebedev said.

“Captain, XO?” Pacino said. “If I could make a suggestion?”

“You have an idea, Mr. Pacino?” Seagraves put his chin in his hand, his tell when he was deep in thought.

“Yes, Captain. Let’s do what you did in the Arabian Sea. Fire two nuke SUBROCs at Master One. One set at the other side of the box opening. The other, say, another five miles north — the direction he entered from. We set for maximum yield. Two hundred and fifty kilotons. We’ll set the depth charges to go off at depth zero.”

“Wouldn’t they just bounce on the icepack?” Quinnivan asked. “Especially if it’s thick ice above a pressure ridge?”

“Possibly, XO, but I think it’ll work. If the ice where the depth charge comes down isn’t too thick, maybe one of the depth charges will see something close to depth zero and detonate. Even if we’re not close, it could damage the Omega. Maybe fatally.”

Seagraves looked at Quinnivan and Pacino. “Mr. Pacino, coordinate with the navigator and weapons officer to set presets on the SUBROCs in VPT tubes eleven and twelve, report when ready to open the VPT door.”

Quinnivan grinned and rubbed his hands together. “A couple of nuclear explosions ought to end this mission nicely.”

“For us,” Seagraves said. “Not for them.” He raised his voice. “Attention in the firecontrol party. My intention is to fire two nuclear tipped Tomahawk SUBROCs at positions input by the navigator and weapons officer, intended to bracket Master One, even if he runs from our first-fired unit. We will hover at one hundred feet and when ready, open the aft Virginia Payload Door, spin up tubes eleven and twelve, and launch the SUBROCs.”

“Central,” Watch Officer Shvets said into the phone at his seat at the starboard side of the command console. “Understood,” he said. “Captain, if we select small-bore tube six and fire it from here, the weapons officer has wired it into tube five. That will shoot the Shkval.”

“Very well,” Alexeyev said. “Watch Officer, you man the weapon control station in the absence of the weapons officer.”

“Yes, sir.” Shvets unbuckled and switched seats, to a seat in the center of the starboard side battlecontrol lineup.

“Attention in central command,” Alexeyev said. “Let’s try this again. Procedures for firing the Shkval.”

“Ship is ready, Captain,” Shvets said, then added, “Weapon is ready.”

“Watch Officer, fire large-bore tube six to launch the Shkval in tube five!” Alexeyev barked.

Shvets hit the fixed function key on the weapon control panel.

Finally, Alexeyev thought, something worked, as the sound of the tube firing rumbled the deck for a fraction of a second before the roar of the Shkval’s rocket motor ignition shook the room.

“Captain, I have a rocket motor ignition!” Senior Chief Albanese yelled from the sonar stack. “Possible supercavitating torpedo! Bearing two six five!”

“Captain, we need to get out of this hover,” Pacino said, his voice louder than he’d intended. “We need to emergency blow to open water, we need to surface!”

“We can shoot a CMT at it,” Seagraves said.

“No, Captain, you can’t,” Pacino said, trying mightily to keep his voice even and level despite the adrenaline burst into his system. “It’s going two hundred knots, a torpedo will never acquire it, much less speed up to hit it, and the Russian weapon is searching for something at a depth between fifty meters and a hundred and fifty meters. If we blow to the surface, it won’t see us.”

“How do you know all this, Mr. Pacino?”

“I read the Shkval tech manual,” Pacino said. “Originally in Russian, translated to Farsi, then to English. That missile saved my life.”

Seagraves nodded. “Officer of the Deck, emergency blow to the surface.”

The VA-111 Shkval torpedo lay quietly in small-bore tube five, on internal power, waiting patiently for the acceleration of the tube launch. All self-checks were nominal. The fuel tank pressure was holding, its pressure pressing up against the ball valve that would, when opened, admit the self-oxidizing fuel to the combustion chamber. The rocket engine nozzle gimbals were free and lubricated. The computer control was crawling through its lines of code, going over the target data package, the torpedo instructed to fly off to the east to a target point near the first explosion point of the Gigantskiy torpedo fired earlier. If there were a submarine target in the bracketed depth, the torpedo would aim for it. If not, it would detonate on contact with the ice wall.

Then, suddenly, there it was, the tremendous three-G acceleration as the torpedo tube forced the unit out of the tube like a bullet from a gun. As the acceleration passed 1.5-Gs, the unit checked the input from the blue laser seeker, which — if dark — would indicate a malfunction and that it was still in the torpedo tube, but if were lit, indicated the torpedo was in free water.

The blue laser seeker was lit up. With the acceleration now easing off with the torpedo in open water, the block valve at the fuel tank opened and fuel flowed into the combustion chamber. The spark unit lit off the peroxide fuel and the pressure in the combustion chamber soared to over eleven thousand kilopascal, the super-pressurized combustion gases needing to escape. The gases were routed to the rocket engine nozzle and flew out of the aft end of the torpedo at supersonic speed.

The accelerometer registered the thrust on the unit climbing and the electromagnetic log speed sensor showed the torpedo climbing in speed. Fifty knots, one hundred, one-fifty, one-eighty, finally steadying at two hundred knots. At two hundred knots, the torpedo armed the warhead, a small 250-kilogram conventional high-density explosive in a shaped charge, which, while small, was additive to the tremendous ton-and-a-half mass of the torpedo, which at two hundred knots, would present formidable kinetic energy to blast through a hull even if it were titanium.

The blue laser seeker ahead scanned for a target, but so far, at time-of-flight at thirty seconds, the sea ahead was clear. The fuel would last for a time of flight of a little less than three minutes.

At flight time of one minute, all systems remained nominal. No contact on the sea ahead.

Time of flight, ninety seconds, and all systems were still nominal. No target detected.

Time of flight, two minutes, and all systems remained nominal. Still no target ahead.

Time of flight, two minutes, six seconds. With no target in sight, the unit slammed hard into the ice wall. The contact shut a deceleration activated relay, which sent the signal to the explosive to detonate.

The explosion raged against the ice wall, but did little more than create a cave ten meters deep and five meters wide.

Watch Officer Vilen Shvets looked at Captain Alexeyev. “Captain, Losharik has shoved off per our indications in the docking bay. Losharik is out of communication unless we activate the Bolshoi-Feniks system.”

“Very well. Sonar, do you hold Losharik on sonar?” Losharik, as a deep-diver submarine constructed for deep sea salvage, was not sound-quieted. If she were within a mile or two, she should be detectable on broadband, not just from her screw, but pump and turbine noises from her reactor and machinery space.

“Yes, Captain, she’s moved ahead northward down the ice corridor.”

“Good. Sonar, do you still hold the Shkval engine?”

“Yes, Captain, no, wait, I have a detonation at bearing zero eight seven. The Shkval warhead has exploded. No rocket engine noises.”

“How loud was the impact? Any secondary detonations? Hull creaking noises? Bubbles?”

Senior Lieutenant Valerina Palinkova spun at her seat at the sonar and sensor console to look at the captain. “Sorry, sir, no.”

“Dammit,” Alexeyev breathed to First Officer Lebedev. “Attention in central command, prepare for firing of Gigantskiy unit two.”

24

It was two months ago that Captain Third Rank Svetlana Anna was led by a male secretary into the outer office of the Chief of Staff and First Deputy Commander of the Navy, Vice Admiral Pavel Zhabin. Her heart raced and she imagined that other people could tell that it was about to jump out of her chest. Flustered, she ran her hand through her long chestnut colored hair, hoping it was in place to meet the number three officer in the entire Navy, although the admiral-in-command, Anatoly Stanislav was gravely ill, and his deputy, Mikhail Myshkin, had recently died, leaving Zhabin as the heir apparent.

She’d been flown out from Murmansk to Moscow in a Navy private jet, with her as the only passenger, for this meeting late yesterday, arriving at almost midnight at the hotel, with this morning’s meeting starting before many Muscovites had even awakened. The cryptic orders sending her here had said nothing except where to meet the plane, where to check into the hotel, and what time to meet the driver who would bring her to the Admiralty building.

The large mahogany doors of Zhabin’s office opened with a majestic creak, revealing the admiral himself and another person, a woman in a well-tailored business suit. Zhabin was in his sixties, balding, going to fat, but with a face so fierce that it was rumored in the fleet that he could stare a man to death. His nickname — and it was unknown whether he himself knew it — was Litso Smerti. Death Face. The woman with him was beautiful, tall, slender and elegant, with long legs, a small waist, an expansive chest somewhat disguised by her navy blue business suit. She had dirty blonde hair — probably dyed, Anna thought — cut into a chin-length bob. She looked like she’d stepped out of the society pages of Russkaya Zhizn’ magazine. Her age seemed indeterminate. She could be a mature-looking thirty-eight or a youthful-looking forty-eight. But she carried the same air of authority that Zhabin did.

“Please, Captain Anna,” Admiral Zhabin said, attempting to be gracious, which came off false with his snarling expression. “Have a seat with us here.” He waved Anna to a wing chair that faced a couch across the coffee table, on which was an elaborate sterling silver tea service. “How do you like your tea?”

“One sugar, two creams, sir,” she said. Zhabin poured and sat on the couch next to the elegant woman.

“Allow me to introduce you to SVR Chairman Lana Lilya,” Zhabin said.

Anna rose to stand to greet the director of the foreign intelligence service, but Lilya waved her back to her seat. “Please,” Lilya said in a honey-smooth voice with an elegant central Moscow accent. “Let’s be informal here, Captain. Do you mind if I call you Svetlana?”

“That’s fine, Madam Chairwoman,” Anna said.

“Please call me Lana,” Lilya said, smiling at her with movie-star perfect white teeth.

“And you can call me ‘admiral,’” Zhabin said, chuckling. “But let us proceed to business, Svetlana. I’m sure you have important matters waiting for you up at Northern Fleet.”

Anna adjusted her posture in her chair, taking a sip of tea to be polite, but she had no desire for it. Her pulse had slowed, but she still felt as if she were in deep water.

“Yes, Admiral?”

“We brought you here to brief you on a mission so secret that no one can or will commit it to writing. You and your group of ‘test wives’—that is the proper term, yes?”

Anna nodded.

“We will be ordering you to put to sea with the Belgorod. The submarine will be executing a top-secret mission that will take it around the globe, eventually to the United States east coast, to drop off and activate three Status-6 hydrogen bombs, hidden in the bays and waterways offshore of American Navy ports.”

“Sir, we’ve never deployed on submarines before.”

“Relax, Svetlana. It is not so different than a Navy surface ship sailing at night. No sunshine.” Zhabin smiled at her, or tried to, but his eyes remained cold.

“Understood, then, sir. How long is the mission?”

“Svetlana, it could be months. President Vostov has ordered that the submarine transit to the Pacific by way of the polar icecap to avoid detection by the Americans’ sonar trip wires in the North Atlantic. Then around South America. So it could take as long as four months to get in position.”

“I’ll brief my troops,” Anna said, thinking that now the meeting might end, although she wondered why the head of the foreign intelligence service was here for this somewhat unusual but otherwise straightforward mission.

“There’s more,” Chairman Lilya said. “President Vostov’s intention to hide hydrogen bombs in American territorial waters is no different than if he were to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles at American targets. It’s an act of war. More subtle than ICBMs, certainly, but no less an attack. The senior ranks of the military and intelligence agencies oppose this mission. We have all gone through channels and the chain of command. Our arguments have met President Vostov’s brick wall. So it is our intent to sabotage this mission. And this submarine. And you’re the one who has been chosen to do it.”

Anna sat back in her chair, exhaling as the wind seemed knocked out of her. Her own Navy, intent on sabotaging their own ship?

“I know,” Lilya continued. “This seems incredibly desperate and irresponsible. But we have a multi-pronged set of missions designed to stop this Status-6 deployment from happening. For obvious reasons, I can’t tell you what they are. Well, I can disclose one of them, I suppose. At the highest levels of our intelligence agencies, we’ve reached out to our opposite numbers at the American CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency — we’ve informed them about this mission and the possible date of Belgorod’s departure, and that Belgorod will be transiting under the polar icecap. And that we will place a human ‘asset’ aboard to sabotage the plan from within. That would be you, Svetlana. What the Americans do with that information is up to them, but I imagine they will send an American submarine to follow the Belgorod, quietly, to see what it is doing. In the worst case, the Americans may decide to attack it.”

Lilya filled a teacup and spooned sugar into it and drank a sip, then looked up at Anna.

“As I said, there are other plans in place that will make that eventuality unnecessary. We believe that with our other scenarios, Belgorod will be ordered to abandon the mission and return home. But, as a deep contingency, you will be aboard to stop the deployment of these Status-6 weapons.”

“Svetlana,” Admiral Zhabin said, “are you able to accept this mission? For the good of Mother Russia? And, in fact, for the fate of the world?”

“Admiral, I am an officer in the Russian Republic Navy,” Anna said. “I will follow my orders, no matter how unpleasant or dangerous.”

“Well, Svetlana,” Zhabin said, “we deeply hope that if it comes for you to do your work, it will be something that you will survive — along with the rest of the crew of Belgorod. It may come to it that the situation will degrade, and the only way to accomplish your — and our — aim is to execute progressively more radical means. In the ultimate case, you will have to cause damage so severe to the submarine that it will sink.” Zhabin paused to stare into Anna’s eyes.

“Sir, I’m not eager to die,” Anna said haltingly. “But if that is the only way to fulfil the orders, well, there is always the next life, yes?”

Zhabin smiled, with his eyes also, this time. “Excellent, Svetlana. I will be recommending you for advancement to Captain Second Rank when this is over, and a decoration for bravery in service to the republic.”

Assuming she lived, she thought.

“What are the specifics?” Anna asked.

Lilya leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees, drilling her blue eyes into Anna’s eyes. “There will be a contact waiting for you in Severomorsk at Northern Fleet Headquarters. Over the coming weeks, you’ll meet with her. She will educate you as to each task. The specifics are sensitive, so you will be required to memorize all technical information. You’ll be given various tools to accomplish the work, all disguised as normal items — toiletries — or tools of your trade — sex toys, yes?”

Anna nodded. “What if my baggage is searched?”

“All the items will pass a normal security inspection. No one could find them unless he knew exactly what he was seeking.”

Anna exhaled, blowing out her cheeks. “I understand.”

“Again, Svetlana, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of your mission,” Lilya said. “The placement of these so-called Poseidon torpedoes must be stopped. By any means at our disposal.”

“There’s a driver waiting for you now,” Zhabin said, standing and extending his hand to Anna. She stood up and shook the admiral’s hand. “He’ll take you to the airport. Your plane is waiting for you.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Anna said to Zhabin. She turned to shake Lilya’s hand. “Madam Chairwoman. I’ll not disappoint you.”

“I know you’ll do fine,” Zhabin said, shutting the office door behind her.

The flight in the jet with her, once again, as the only passenger, seemed to take longer than the flight to Moscow. As she stared out the window, holding a rocks glass of vodka, she reflected that her career had started strangely and was progressing even more strangely. She’d been a young psychology student at the prestigious M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, concentrating on human sexuality and sexual dysfunction. It was a field of study that had few students, which was good for her, since it meant less competition for coveted post-graduate assignments. After completing one course concentrating on sex workers, her professor asked her to his office after the final exam. She’d been worried that there might be something wrong, but he was all smiles and poured them drinks as he waved her to a seat opposite his desk. He told her she’d gotten a perfect score on the final exam and that her term paper was the best he’d ever read, and that he wanted to collaborate with her over the summer to write a paper for publication.

As she’d worked with him, he eventually disclosed that as a sideline, he worked for the FSB, the internal security branch of Russia’s intelligence agencies. He recruited her to the Brigade of the Testovaya Zhena, the test wives. She had been repelled and intrigued at the same time. Her professor had said this would be a perfect way to study sex workers in the military and help shape policy for decades to come. For example, he’d said, what about the females in the military? There were no sex workers for them, presumably because they could be satisfied with relations with male members of the military, but didn’t that impede morale and good discipline? And what of people who were homosexual? Would test wives service lesbians? What about male homosexuals? The questions were numerous and the issues heavy, he’d said.

And so it was that Svetlana Anna, after graduate school graduation, had joined the Navy’s test wives. At first, she thought the work would be disgusting. After all, one thing was clear, that in the Navy, in a combat vessel, forward deployed, water was rationed, and people routinely went days without showering. Would this lack of personal hygiene make the work awful? But Anna had always had a strong sex drive, and growing up, it had threatened to get her in trouble numerous times. Could that be harnessed in the service of the country?

The answer was that it indeed could. The first few years were actually pleasant, but as Anna got older, she was less sought out as a companion. But the Navy had seen leadership skills in her, and had promoted her to the rank of captain third rank and put her in command of a group of test wives and requested she keep working.

It had gone well until the meeting with Admiral Zhabin and Chairwoman Lilya.

And now it was time to execute the next plan, since the sabotaging of the torpedo control cabinets had failed, which she’d found out when the ship launched the supercavitating torpedo.

In Anna’s coveralls pocket was a 5.45 mm PSM pistol, a weapon barely bigger than her palm, though it was heavy. In the other pocket was a package of Semtex plastic explosive, over a kilogram of it, the bulk of it making her pocket bulge. This wasn’t the watered-down Semtex of the 2020s, it was the good stuff from the Cold War, 1980s vintage plastic explosive. A kilogram would be sufficient to blow up the entire atmospheric control machinery room, but she wasn’t relying on that alone. The atmospheric controls would assist in this particular task.

Anna made her way down two sets of steep stairs — ladders, the Navy called them — to the zero three deck, until she emerged into the same space where she’d walked forward to the weapon electronics room. Instead, she walked aft down a narrow passageway, passing doors to other electronics rooms — sonar, battlecontrol, the second captain AI system — until at the end of the passageway she reached the machinery room marked with a sign reading, MASHINNOYE OTDELENIYE KONTROLYA ATMOSFERY—atmospheric controls machinery room. This room didn’t have a combination pad lock, she noted. She turned the knob and let herself in.

She’d expected the room to be empty. She’d made her way below easily, unobserved, since the ship was at action stations, and every person on board had a place to stand his or her watch to shoot torpedoes — or evade them. But a watchstander stood next to the oxygen generator, or the bombit’, which meant “bomb.”

From Anna’s studies with her SVR contact in Severomorsk, she’d learned that the “bomb” was so named because it made hydrogen and oxygen in the exact molecular mix to explode with enough power to destroy everything in the machinery room, maybe even breach the hull. The bomb took distilled pure water into its two meter by two meter box of steel and placed it between high voltage direct current anode and cathode, the process called electrolysis, which caused the water to split into hydrogen and oxygen. Separate compressors took the products, the hydrogen put into a high-pressure bank for later discharge, since it was hazardous and there was no use for it, and submarines could be tracked by the stream of hydrogen emitted if it weren’t stored. The oxygen was compressed and put into the oxygen banks, huge high-pressure stainless steel bottles outside the hull that contained all the oxygen the crew would need for two days if the bomb decided to stop working.

An explosive device placed on the large-bore oxygen manifold at the top of the bomb, if detonated, would vent hydrogen and oxygen into the room, adding to the explosive power of the Semtex. Odds were, it would destroy half the zero three deck, she thought.

What gave her pause was that this particular task could lead to her own death. But she’d believed in her mission. For Mother Russia, she told herself, knowing how silly that would sound to a civilian.

The watchstander was surprised to see her. “Captain Anna,” he said, smiling. “What are you doing here?”

“It gets boring when all you boys are at action stations,” she said, smiling seductively. At least she hoped she looked seductive. “I thought maybe you could explain to me how we keep the air breathable down under the water.”

The mechanic smiled. “I’d love to.”

Anna waited through his overly technical explanation until he turned his back to her for a moment to point out the oxygen and hydrogen piping above the unit. As he did, she pulled the PSM pistol out of her right pocket, put the barrel to back of his skull and fired twice. The mechanic was dead before he fell to the deck. The report from the weapon was loud, but she doubted anyone would be near enough to hear it. It was academic anyway, she thought. The next loud sound from here would eliminate any other thoughts from the minds of the crew. And the damage would eradicate the evidence of what happened. The mechanic’s body would only be a vapor of blood and shards of bone by the time Anna’s task was complete.

She climbed up on the steps set into the side of the bomb, found the oxygen manifold, a pipe as big around as her head. She pulled the package from her left pocket — it’s bulge never noticed by the now-dead mechanic — tore the backing from the adhesive on the device and pressed it hard against the warm pipe. From her inner left sleeve, she pulled off a quarter-meter length of fiber-reinforced adhesive tape and wrapped it around the device and the pipe. She pulled another length off her right sleeve, double wrapping the device to the pipe. She uncovered the electronics package, turned the time delay to three minutes and armed the device.

Three minutes, she thought. Would that be enough to get outside the blast radius of the atmospheric controls room?

She knew she didn’t have long to wait. She hurried down the passageway, took the steps of the ladder back to the zero one deck and walked quickly to her room. She’d barely had time to hide the PSM pistol before the Semtex — and the bomb — exploded.

“Sonar, do we still have contact on Master One?” Seagraves asked.

“Master One has faded,” Albanese said. “He might have decided to bug out after firing that supercavitating torpedo.”

Pacino looked at Vevera. “We may have to blow off this mission and limp home. We can only fight the ship as well as McDermott Aerospace and Shipbuilding designed and built it. If they’d hardened that thrust bearing against shock, we’d still be in the fight.”

Vevera nodded, his face downcast. “Maybe mention that to your dad when we get home. He’s got the juice to tune up those goddamned drydock rats.”

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev bit his lip and tugged on his uncomfortable five-point seatbelt. He needed to stand, he thought, but with the nuclear-tipped torpedo to be fired in the coming moments, programmed to detonate only seven or eight nautical miles out, he knew the ship would soon be taking another hard shock. He shifted his display to the navigation plot, with the overlaid ice walls drawn in by the navigator along with their track in and out of the ice wall rectangle where they’d shot the first Gigantskiy and later, the Shkval. Navigator Maksimov had drawn in what she thought the boundaries of the open water were, at the original ice target and the Shkval impact point.

They’d lost contact on the American — Hostile One — but it was a good bet that he was at the open water location, either surfaced or hovering beneath it. There were no longer any of the noises that had accompanied his movement in the water. Perhaps, Alexeyev thought, he’d shifted to an emergency propulsion system, but he could only guess based on what he knew about Russian submarines.

He’d positioned the Belgorod at the opening of the ice wall box, hovering and facing east. According to the chart, he had almost six nautical miles northward clear before he’d have to maneuver once he headed north. There was no doubt, trying to drive a big submarine like Belgorod through these ice obstacles at flank speed would be like driving a city bus though downtown Moscow at 150 clicks while blindfolded. And hitting an ice wall at speed could rupture the hull easily. Alexeyev had decided to withdraw north for the six-mile run at fifteen knots, which would get him to the turning point to proceed due west in a little over twenty minutes, which meant he’d only be halfway to where he could turn west ten minutes after the explosion.

He’d debated with Lebedev the idea of increasing the northward speed, but the risks of impact to ice were just too high. He had to rely on the seven-mile distance from the impact point of the Gigantskiy and the thickness of the ice pressure ridge separating him from the box-shaped area.

“Procedures for Gigantskiy unit two launch,” Alexeyev announced to the central command post watchstanders.

After the litany of readiness reports, Alexeyev ordered the Gigantskiy to launch in swim-away mode, since its diameter was much smaller than the diameter of the Status-6 tube it lay in. After engine start, it would roll out on the chassis with the rollers inserted into the tube. Sonar would be able to monitor it to make sure it had a normal launch.

He realized the room was silent, and that the watchstanders were waiting for him to make the order. “Fire tube five, Gigantskiy unit two,” he called.

“Firing five,” Weapons Officer Sobol replied, hitting her trigger fixed function key.

The sound of the Gigantskiy leaving was faint. Alexeyev wondered if he were really hearing it, or simply imagining it.

“Sonar Officer?” he barked at Senior Lieutenant Palinkova.

“Torpedo is away, Captain, and nominal engine start. Unit is speeding up to approach speed, forty-five knots.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Alexeyev said to Lebedev. “Mark the time. Watch Officer, spin the ship to course north and when on course, put on fifteen knots.”

He got out of his seat — he promised himself, just for a moment, while the Gigantskiy sailed off on its long run to the target — and stood at the navigation chart display and watched while Navigator Maksimov, buckled into her jump seat at the navigation console, traced out the estimated location of the Gigantskiy torpedo, updating its position every fifteen seconds.

“Ship is on heading north,” the boatswain reported from the ship control console.

“All ahead standard, turns for fifteen knots,” Captain Lieutenant Shvets ordered.

Alexeyev looked forward to the under-ice sonar, which Palinkova had started up, leaving her post at the sonar console to Captain Lieutenant Sobol, who was no longer needed at the weapons control console. Alexeyev glanced at Lebedev, who was tugging at her own safety belt. She must have had the same thoughts Alexeyev had, debating standing up from the console.

“Sonar Officer, make sure you are calling out if ice ahead is clear,” Lebedev snapped at Palinkova.

“Yes, Madam First. Ice ahead is clear, five hundred meters, ma’am.”

The violent explosion roared through the compartment. Alexeyev grabbed a safety handhold on the navigation console and managed to keep his feet. The lights went out and the room started to fill with smoke. For thirty long painful seconds, Alexeyev felt an odd paralysis, like in a nightmare when he couldn’t move his arms or legs. Finally his central nervous system seemed to snap out of it. He heard his own voice croak out, “What the hell was that?”

The emergency phone circuit clicked, the emergency phone piped into the ship’s general announcing speakers, although raspy and faint. But it was still unmistakably clear this time. “Central Command, this is Glavny Starshina Yeger, in the zero three deck. There’s been a fire and explosion in the auxiliary machinery room. The entire room is gone and there’s smoke and fire. It’s an oxygen fire!”

“All hands,” Alexeyev barked into the general announcing speakers, “fire in auxiliary machinery room. All personnel, don emergency air breathing masks. Rig ship for fire in the second compartment. Fire-fighting teams, muster in the zero two level with Chief Yeger.”

Alexeyev looked at Lebedev after he’d strapped on his mask. “You know what the procedure calls for,” he said quietly.

She nodded. “We don’t have a choice, Captain.”

“Watch Officer,” Alexeyev said, “set up to jettison oxygen banks overboard.”

“Sir?” Shvets said, astonished. “Captain, if we do that, we’ll not only have no atmo control but no oxygen. And we’re under thick ice, sir!”

“I know, Shvets. Now follow your goddamned orders.”

Alexeyev didn’t blame young Captain Lieutenant Vilen Shvets for his outburst. The younger generation of officers were taught not to take orders blindly, but to think and contribute. Except in emergencies where “immediate actions” were called for. And ice or no ice, the immediate action for an oxygen fire submerged was to dump the oxygen overboard. No oxygen, no fire.

“Sir, we’re set up to blow oxygen overboard,” Shvets said hesitantly.

“Watch Officer, jettison oxygen,” Alexeyev said. He turned to Lebedev and leaned in close to her. “Well, that’s it,” he said quietly. “That’s the end of the mission.”

“Commencing O2 blow overboard, Captain,” Shvets said. The sound of rushing gas could be heard in the room, the sound continuing for half a minute. Alexeyev felt a mourning for all that life-giving oxygen leaving the ship. That meant he’d need to return to open water, where the first Gigantskiy had detonated and opened up a polynya, and where the second one was headed. But making turns toward open water would take him closer to the second Gigantskiy’s detonation point. But it couldn’t be helped. If the hull could hold up to the second detonation and maintain some kind propulsion, he could radio for help and save the crew.

All that assumed, of course, that the American — Hostile One — was on the bottom in pieces.

It was quiet in the control room of the USS New Jersey. It was also crowded, with watchstanders at every console. Captain Seagraves stood between the command console and the navigation plot. Not far from him, XO Quinnivan stood behind the attack center of the BSY-1 battlecontrol system. At the end of the row, the weapon control console was manned by Weapons Officer Styxx. Behind the command console, Officer of the Deck Pacino stood, rotating the display from navigation to weapons control to sonar. On the sonar screen for broadband, there was no sign of Master One. They could no longer hear him on narrowband and there’d been no transients. The Omega had disappeared.

“Attention in the firecontrol party,” Seagraves announced. “Firing point procedures, aim point number one for Master One, VPT door two, tube eleven, Tomahawk SUBROC, depth zero detonation.”

“Ship ready,” Pacino reported.

“Weapon ready,” Styxx called.

“Solution ready and input as aim point number one,” Quinnivan said.

Aim point number one was the opening of the rectangular ice wall area where Master One had withdrawn to, and from where he’d fired the supercavitating torpedo. Odds were, he was no longer there, Pacino thought, and had driven out the way he’d come, on a northward path, but aim point number two was ahead of him by five miles. Between the two detonations, they’d definitely do some damage.

“Shoot on generated aim point,” Seagraves ordered.

“Tube eleven, fire!” Styxx shouted as she rotated the trigger lever from the nine o’clock position to the three o’clock position.

The sound of the tube firing vibrated the deck, but wasn’t the ear-slamming explosion of a torpedo tube firing. A few moments later, the sound of the rocket motor ignition could be heard faintly from above them.

“I have Tomahawk SUBROC normal launch,” Senior Chief Albanese called from the sonar stack.

“Firing point procedures,” Seagraves announced, “aim point number two for Master One, VPT door two, tube twelve, Tomahawk SUBROC, depth zero detonation.”

The launch reports and actions were repeated, until the second Tomahawk SUBROC had lifted off from the open water overhead.

Pacino walked to the navigation chart and joined Navigator Lewinsky. “You have aim points one and two drawn in?”

“Inputting them now,” he said. A red circle appeared at the entrance to the ice-wall box. Lewinsky drew it to be a quarter mile in diameter. The blast damage zone would be bigger, certainly. A second red circle appeared five miles north of aim point one, also a quarter mile in diameter.

“Time of flight, XO?” Seagraves asked.

“Two minutes thirty seconds, Captain,” Quinnivan said. “Two minutes to go for unit eleven.”

“Torpedo in the water! Bearing two six one!” Albanese’s voice cracked as he made the announcement.

Pacino turned his command console display to sonar’s transient module, then to the broadband display. Streaking down the broadband waterfall was a loud trace, at constant bearing 261. Which meant it was coming right for them.

“Classify the torpedo, Sonar,” Seagraves snapped.

“It’s another Magnum, sir. A Gigantskiy.”

“Fuck,” Quinnivan said.

“Snapshot tube three in countermeasure mode, bearing two six one, immediate enable, high-to-medium active snake!” Seagraves ordered.

A snapshot was a quick reaction torpedo launch and usually ejected a torpedo with no firecontrol solution, just shot it out on a bearing line and hoped for the best. Ironically, it was a tactic picked up from the Soviet submarine force in the Cold War.

“Weapon ready!” Styxx said.

“Fire!” Seagraves ordered.

The deck jumped and Pacino’s ears slammed. He glanced at Lewinsky, then at Short Hull Cooper. A one megaton torpedo was inbound, and based on how badly they’d fared from the Gigantskiy detonation six miles away, if this one got closer than that, this mission was definitely over. Hell, the ship itself might be destroyed, he thought. For Pacino, there was no fear of death, not after the Piranha sinking and his near-death experience. He knew down to the marrow of his bones that life and consciousness didn’t end. But still, there was regret, regret at failure. At failing to win in battle against the Belgorod. And sadness at the thought of never seeing his father again. Or Rachel Romanov. Or his friends from the crew. And about Rachel, did she ever come out of the coma? Would she live? And if Pacino died, how would she react to the news?

“Snapshot tube four in countermeasure mode, bearing two six one, immediate enable, high-to-medium passive snake!” Seagraves ordered.

“Weapon ready!” Styxx said.

“Fire!” Seagraves ordered.

The deck jumped again, and again Pacino’s eardrums slammed.

“Line up tube three and four in CMT mode,” Seagraves ordered Styxx.

“Tube three is ready, Captain,” she replied.

“Snapshot tube three!”

The torpedo firing in countermeasure mode continued with tube three fired, then a second torpedo fired from tube four, when the sudden bang sound came from the west, the direction the ship was pointed. It was loud and abrupt, but there was silence afterward. Was it from outside the ship or from their own bow?

Quinnivan looked at Seagraves, his eyes wide. “Was that from us?”

Albanese turned to face the captain. “That was from the west,” he said. “Not our SUBROC, obviously. I’m guessing it was from Master One. Maybe something happened to him.”

“Isn’t it time for the SUBROC detonation, XO?” Seagraves asked Quinnivan.

Gigantskiy unit two experienced the signal from central command to start its engine and proceed on its assigned path to seek out the submarine target.

The engine started and the turbine spun up, the propulsor’s revolutions increasing until the build-up of thrust pushed it forward. The walls of the oversized torpedo tube rolled by the sonar seeker in the nosecone as the unit surged ahead, the open water cooler than the heated up water in the tube. The unit sped up to the ordered transit speed of forty-five knots, headed toward the estimated target’s position seven miles to the east-northeast. A few ship lengths from the launching point, the unit enabled and armed the one megaton nuclear warhead, the safety plate rotated to establish a clear and open channel between the low explosives and the high explosives, which would collapse the segmented plutonium into a dense sphere and start the fission explosion, which was the trigger for the thermonuclear reaction.

The sonar set for the active search went through a self-check, and when it showed all circuits and systems nominal, it lit up the active pinger, seeking forward for the submarine target. In case the target were closer, the weapon would detonate upon driving up to a close range of a hundred meters. If not, and there were no submarine target detected, the unit would proceed to the aim point. If there were no target in the sonar seeker window by the time it approached the far side ice wall, the unit would execute what was called a default detonation, the logic behind it that a one megaton blast didn’t need to get close to destroy a target.

But the sonar seeker, instead of hearing a pulse return from a target, heard a ping at a much higher frequency from something else. It was faint at first, but then louder as it got closer. The weapon was confused. It had no protocol for hearing this oddly insistent pinging sound.

At a distance from launching point of two miles, that pinging sound got extremely loud and a sudden impact cut the Gigantskiy torpedo in two, and an explosion started from aft of the warhead and the computer controls. There was a protocol for something like this happening. When the accelerometers registered over one G in any direction, a default detonation command would be programmed, the thinking that a countermeasure torpedo would not prevent the weapon from exploding. Rather, it would just explode early.

The low explosives lit off as the back half of the Gigantskiy vaporized in the explosion of the Mark 48 ADCAP countermeasure torpedo, and the high explosives detonated, compressing the plutonium fragments into a sphere, and nanoseconds later, the plutonium exploded, its plasma sphere engulfing the heavy water canisters, which started the fusion reaction, and the full one megaton yield of the torpedo lit the previously coal mine darkness under the ice into bright daylight. The explosion blew upward into thick ice, but the ten meter thickness of the ice canopy was unequal to the tremendous force of the explosion, the entire ice canopy blowing into splinters and shards and flying upward for a radius of three hundred meters, the violent expulsion of water vapor of the explosion rising to over a mile over the surface. The pressure wave from the blast hit the bottom and reflected upward, the shock wave becoming a cylinder around the blast zone and traveling away at sonic speed in all directions, until it encountered an ice wall to the west, blowing the ice wall to fragments.

On the other side of the ice wall was the huge hull of the launching ship, the Belgorod, and the deep-diver submarine, the Losharik. Belgorod was at a depth of 150 meters, with Losharik bottomed out at 470 meters. The shock wave slammed into Belgorod like the punch of a fist, but it passed over Losharik, only rolling the deep-diver submarine over. The flooding of the Belgorod started immediately after the impact.

25

Tomahawk SUBROC unit one, in tube eleven of the aft Virginia Payload Tube, lay snug in its waterproof capsule, nestled in the vertical tube. It was connected to the BSY-1 battlecontrol system by a signal wire leading to the flank of the capsule and penetrating it and connected to the weapon’s electronics. The target location was programmed in and accepted, as well as the present position of the weapon. The warhead yield was dialed in at maximum, 250 kilotons of thermonuclear power. The signal wire from the battlecontrol system disconnected. The missile was on its own now, its battery keeping it alive until the turbine could start up in the near future.

The weapon felt the sudden intense acceleration upward as the launching system ejected it, a rocket motor directed into a reservoir of pure water at the base of the tube, flashing the water to high-pressure steam that acted like the gunpowder explosion of a cannon ejecting a cannonball. The cannister flew out of the tube, accelerating more as it rose out of the tube, but as the stern of the capsule cleared the tube, the pressure of the steam eased and the acceleration became negative as the weapon slowed. The steam created a bubble around the capsule and the steam and the cannister rose quickly toward the surface a hundred feet above, to the open water of the polynya formed by the first Gigantskiy detonation.

The weapon continued rising until the nosecone of it broached into the cold arctic air. As it did, a wet-dry sensor at the tip of the cannister detected dry air, and it activated twenty-four explosive bolts around the circumference of the cannister, blowing the nosecone cleanly off, the fiberglass of it tumbling end over end high in the air. As the nosecone reached the apex of its flight and started falling back toward the water, the missile’s first stage rocket engine ignited, and the missile roared out of the waterproof cannister and blasted out of the water, rising vertically up over the icy landscape. Behind it, the polynya grew smaller as the rocket motor roared, lifting the missile to a height of a thousand feet.

As suddenly as it had begun, the rocket thrust stopped, the solid rocket fuel exhausted. By then, an air inlet scoop had popped out, the scoop sucking in air. Another two dozen explosive bolts blew the rocket motor off the aft end of the weapon, the first stage tumbling back down toward the polynya, and as it did, the explosive blast of steam could be seen below as a second missile’s cannister broached into the open water.

The missile’s winglets popped out into the airflow and directed the missile to dive downward straight toward the ice below. As the missile flew downward in a glide, its speed rising as it fell, the air coming in through the scoop spun the turbomachinery, the compressor on the forward end and the turbine on the aft end beginning to spool up to operating speed, and as the compressor blades rotated, they compressed the incoming cold air and the pressure in the combustion chamber rose, as well as the temperature, until the combustion chamber was super-pressurized and red hot. The missile’s computer opened the valve to the pressurized fuel tank and jet fuel flowed into the combustion chamber and the spark plugs lit the atomized fuel and air mixture, the chemical reaction causing temperature and pressure to soar far over what they’d been to start. The hot combustion gases sought the relief of a lower pressure and first blasted through the turbine blades, some of their energy going to spinning the turbine harder and faster, which kept the compressor spinning up forward. The remainder of the hot, high-energy gases flowed aft through the missile’s exhaust nozzle, the thrust of them propelling the missile, but by then, the missile was approaching the solid ice below.

At an altitude of seven meters above the ice, the winglets pulled the missile out of the dive and it flew west-northwest toward the aim point, hugging the terrain of the ice, following the rises and valleys, until it was a mere thousand feet from the aim point.

Behind the missile, the second-launched unit was climbing to the height of its rocket-driven flight, jettisoning the rocket motor stage and diving for the ice canopy. The first-launched unit rotated its winglets and climbed vertically in its pop-up maneuver, until at a thousand feet over the ice, it again arced over and down until the nosecone was pointed straight down at the aim point. The time for powered flight was ended, and explosive bolts blew the payload module away from the missile body, which pulled away, flew on to the north and then self-destructed.

The payload, the hydrogen bomb mounted in a depth charge, armed itself and prepared for detonation. When the altimeter indicated it was at sea level, it would detonate the nuclear warhead.

The aim point got closer and closer as the warhead fell. A drogue parachute blew out one end, stabilizing the depth charge long enough for the main chute to deploy, which slowed the depth charge down to walking speed as it fell lower to the ice.

The ice approached from below and the depth charge impacted against a steep cliff and bounced off it, then came to an abrupt stop in an ice valley. The altimeter read twenty-four feet above sea level. The warhead’s protocol for detonation was unsatisfied. It was programmed to detonate at between twenty and zero feet, not twenty-four. The depth charge rolled to a halt, its computer system kept alive by a small battery, but battery endurance would be measured only in minutes.

As the depth charge’s battery died, the second-fired missile streaked overhead, five nautical miles to the north, its winglets rotating to bring it to the vertical flight path of its pop-up maneuver. It arced downward and the missile body blew off and the second depth charge descended, its descent masked by the ice ridge that the first depth charge had hit.

Thirty seconds after the death of the first-fired depth charge, the second one detonated, the 250-kiloton hydrogen bomb’s explosion sixteen times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion pounded downward into the ice and blew two pressure ridges aside. The ice under the depth charge vaporized, the water below with it.

Five miles to the south, the shock wave of the second-fired depth charge hit the Belgorod and the Losharik, and like the explosion of the second Gigantskiy, the cruel shock wave showed no mercy.

Captain Second Rank Iron Irina Trusov removed her headset and hung it on a hook on the starboard side of her pilot-in-command console in the cockpit of the Losharik. She looked at Captain Sergei Kovalov to her left, in the mission commander’s seat.

“All sonar systems deactivated, Captain,” she said in a dead voice. “We’re bottomed out at four hundred seventy meters, thrusted snug against the west ice wall of the north-south passage. All water-tight doors are shut and ship is prepared for shock impact.”

Kovalov nodded. “Not much we can do now except wait for the Gigantskiy detonation,” he said.

Trusov pursed her lips in annoyance. A combat operation was happening just outside the ship and she was trapped in a research vessel when she should be the one shooting torpedoes in anger. She’d been preparing for undersea combat her entire life.

When Trusov was ten years old, she and her father, Captain First Rank Volodya Trusov, had built a huge model of the submarine he commanded, the Shchuka-class submarine B-448 Tambov, the model carved from a soft wood and fully a meter-and-a-half long. The submarine’s flank could be removed to show the interior, that she and her father had carefully crafted, carving each feature out of wood and painting them, then inserting them into the hull. All three decks of the submarine were shown up forward, with the second compartment’s central command post, electronics rooms, officer berthing, the middle level mess facilities and crew’s berthing, and the lower-level machinery spaces with atmospheric control. The first compartment was shown, with the torpedoes in their cradles, the tubes running forward to the nosecone, even the sonar array below the torpedo tubes. Aft, the model depicted the reactor compartment and the machinery compartments. At a party her father gave for his officers, she had proudly displayed the model, to the astonishment and delight of the guests, who lauded her for her detailed work. They had laughed that other little girls played with dollhouses, but Irina played with nuclear attack submarines. One of the visitors, her father’s second-in-command, had cautioned Captain Trusov against running afoul of the GRU and KGB for a military security violation, so accurate was the model. That had been the happiest day of Irina Trusov’s life.

It was less than a month later that her father lay quietly in his grave, dead of a heart attack at the age of forty-one. Irina’s mother was a classic beauty, with long, shining platinum blonde hair — just as her daughter had — and big, bright blue eyes — also exactly as her daughter had. It came as no surprise to anyone when her mother remarried, but no one could ever replace Daddy. Worse was that Irina’s alcoholic stepfather, Borya Feodor, was a sloppy, bald, fat, supply logistics manager in the closed city of Severomorsk, where they’d lived when Daddy was alive. By then, Irina was thirteen and blooming from girlhood to womanhood, a fact that greatly interested her stepfather, who had taken to sneaking into the bathroom whenever Irina showered. The first time that had happened, Irina pitched a fit to her mother, but her mother ignored the implications and insisted that Father Borya was merely trying to be friendly. Friendly, right, Irina had argued, standing next to her in the shower naked, insisting on touching her to wash her back or her hair, and lately he’d begun to become excited as he did so, his disgusting male organ swelling, sometimes tapping her hip or buttocks as he washed her. Her mother dismissed the allegations, saying that Irina was exaggerating.

Irina tried everything to forestall the bathroom visitations, locking the door and putting a chair against the knob or showering in the middle of the night. She had gone so far as to shorten her shower duration by chopping off her shining platinum hair, cutting it almost as short as a boy’s, thinking it would have the added advantage of making her look less feminine to the boorish Borya, but nothing seemed to stop her stepfather.

No matter her protestations to her mother, the shower invasions continued, and Irina feared that her stepfather would progress to even more overt harassment, perhaps even rape. Finally, Irina had planned to run away from home to get away from the pervert. On a Sunday afternoon, she’d decided to take one last shower before escaping — with all that was going on, she felt constantly dirty and greasy. No amount of soap or shampoo seemed to ease the dirty feeling. She was rubbing shampoo into her hair when Borya, as usual, opened the shower curtain from behind her and slipped into the shower, naked and aroused.

It was all too much and the rage filled her in a tenth of a second, and without even rinsing the shampoo out of her eyes, she grabbed Borya by his head with both her hands and with all her strength, rammed his head into the water fixture as hard as she could. Borya fell to the floor, the warm water washing over him. Irina cleared her eyes of the shampoo and leaned over his prone body. Blood was flooding the floor of the shower, but when she felt his neck, she could feel a pulse. He was only unconscious, and for how long, Irina couldn’t guess. She crouched down over him and clamped one hand over his mouth, sealing it, and with the other, pinched his nostrils. She shut her eyes and counted to two hundred, and by then the water had gone cold, but she didn’t care. When she reached the end of her count, she checked for a pulse again, and there was none. Borya was gone.

She rinsed, then turned off the water and got out, finding her bath sheet and drying herself. She wrapped the towel around herself and left the bathroom to find her mother, who was calmly reading the newspaper in the kitchen.

“I think something’s wrong with Father Borya,” Irina said calmly. “He fell in the shower.”

She could still hear her mother’s plaintive wailing all these years later. Irina had moved in with her father’s former first officer’s family, who were childless and lonely, and they finished raising her with affection, dealing with her lingering anger as best they could. Fortunately for Irina, she was the number one student in her school, and with that and the legacy of her father, she was accepted into the M.V. Frunze Military Academy in Moscow for undergraduate studies, then continuing her education at the Komsomol Submarine Navigation Higher Naval School, graduating first in her class.

At the age of 27, Trusov was still a virgin, the nastiness with her stepfather poisoning any chance of successful dating. At Frunze Academy, when she was a second-year cadet, she’d gone out for drinks with three other female cadets, and a first-year male had tried to slip something into her drink. When he wasn’t looking, she’d dumped it into the bar sink and gotten a fresh one, but she wondered what would have happened if he’d been successful in drugging her. Her mind had danced with the fantasy of dispatching him as she had with Borya, but she had walked away, and never seen a man romantically since. Some of the male cadets labeled her a man-hater, others frigid, and still others insisted she was a lesbian. She wasn’t, she knew, she just wanted to meet a man like her father.

She’d been assigned to the Project 971 Shchuka-B submarine K-154 Tigr as the sonar officer. Three years later, after a successful assignment, she turned down a shore duty teaching assignment at N.G. Kuznetsov Naval Academy to join the crew of the Pacific Fleet’s new Yasen-M class attack submarine K-573 Novosibirsk, reporting aboard as the weapons officer.

On Novosibirsk, she’d avoided the advances of the other officers, who obviously considered her beautiful — she’d grown out her hair again, but usually kept it tied up in a bun or a ponytail. There was not much she could do about her expansive chest or her bright blue eyes, but she avoided makeup and kept her mannerisms all business, shutting down all romantic approaches.

For a time she’d had a romantic admiration for Novosibirsk’s commanding officer, Captain First Rank Yuri Orlov, a trim, tall and handsome officer, but he was on the rebound from another woman, and hadn’t returned her feelings. It didn’t matter, since Novosibirsk’s mission became a horrible maritime disaster in the Arabian Sea in a freak confrontation with an American Virginia-class submarine that was hijacking the Iranian nuclear submarine Panther, which Novosibirsk had been charged with guarding and escorting, and had failed. An American cruise missile had nearly destroyed the ship, knocking out the entire crew, and the vessel was sinking. Trusov had been the first to wake, and had taken action to save the ship, bringing it to the surface, starting the emergency diesel generator, and ventilating out the smoke, but though the ship had limped on for a few hours, it was doomed. Eventually Captain Orlov had ordered the crew to abandon ship, and that was when the mission became surreal.

The escape chamber of the Novosibirsk, big enough to allow rescue of the entire crew, had successfully detached from the hull of the sinking submarine, and had rolled sickeningly in the swells of the Arabian Sea. To Trusov’s terror, the Americans had surfaced the stolen submarine Panther right alongside and taken them aboard, hostages and prisoners. Irina noted that before the sinking of the Novosibirsk, she had been as anti-American as anyone she knew. Captain Orlov had even scolded her for it at one point, saying that rage and hatred were illogical. She wondered how he would see her rage and hatred toward Father Borya, because that was certainly logical in her mind.

But as it turned out, the crew of Novosibirsk weren’t hostages or prisoners of the Americans. The Americans — dreaded and hated for decades — fed and clothed the Russians and repatriated them at the first opportunity, not even interrogating them. There was one officer in particular, an American Navy lieutenant, a stunningly handsome young man named Pacino, who had patiently spoken to Irina and calmed her down, insisting they weren’t taking the Russians prisoner, and who had fed them and escorted each of them to the showers and given them fresh coveralls and called for a hospital ship to treat their radiation-sickened engineering personnel, and to evacuate them.

Counter to their expectations, upon returning to Moscow, the Navy had treated them as heroes, despite losing the battle and the submarine. For her quick thinking and action to save the ship, Trusov had been decorated with the Medal for Distinction in Combat, Type 2 Award. She had inwardly considered it ridiculous. Certainly, she’d saved the ship, but only for an hour or two. If one of the other officers had awakened first, he would have won the award, not Trusov. Other officers considered her humble, but she knew that she’d acted out of instinct and training, not some grand heroics.

From time to time, Irina Trusov’s mind returned to that young man she’d met on the Panther. If she were honest, she thought about Lieutenant Anthony Pacino a lot. He reminded her of her father. Intense, but so very kind. Kind and caring, even though, as American submariners, they had been out to sink and kill the Russians. Trusov’s opinions about the Americans changed that day. If life had been different, and Pacino had been born Russian or Trusov had been born American, she could easily see them being together.

But things were radically different now. Because here they were again, on a mission to deploy President Vostov’s Status-6 torpedoes, when an American attack submarine intervened and intended to stop them. When presidential orders came into the Belgorod to attack and sink the American, Trusov was of two minds. On the one hand, she wanted to win this engagement. The loss to the Americans in the Arabian Sea had been humiliating. On the other, she hoped their adversary weren’t the same Virginia-class sub they’d lost to in the Arabian Sea, not because she feared them, but because their crew had included Anthony Pacino.

As she waited for the detonation of the Gigantskiy torpedo, Captain Second Rank Trusov wondered what Anthony Pacino was doing at that very moment.

The blood had soaked through Anthony Pacino’s shirt. He followed Rachel Dominatrix Navigatrix Romanov into the master bathroom in the upstairs level of Jeremiah Seamus Bullfrog Quinnivan’s Virginia Beach house. The noise of the party roared from the basement, two levels down, the crew raucously celebrating the conclusion of the Panther mission. At the awards ceremony that morning, Pacino had been pinned with the silver star, but far more importantly, awarded his gold dolphins, the coveted emblem indicating that he was qualified in submarines, the dolphins pinned on by Rob Catardi, the commander of the submarine force. In the audience that day, Pacino had seen his father standing tall in a dark suit, sending him a rigid salute. It was the best day of Pacino’s life, and it was only the beginning, he thought.

The officers had all kidded Pacino that his dolphins were a gift, that he hadn’t been onboard the Vermont long enough to have earned them legitimately, but XO Quinnivan had shut down the teasing by promising that anyone who chose to could take a punch at Pacino’s dolphin emblem with the backing tabs removed, so that the sharp pins of it were all that kept them on his shirt. Pacino’s fellow officers and friends lined up to punch his dolphins, the hardest coming from Captain Seagraves. When Rachel came up to take her swing, she had just gently caressed his chest instead, and whispered in his ear that now that he was qualified, she couldn’t torment him anymore about him being a non-qual air-breathing puke, but that she’d find something else to tease him about. Squirt Gun Vevera stepped up to take his turn to punch Pacino’s dolphins, and Rachel had said, laughing, “Be gentle with him, Squirt Gun, he has delicate feelings.”

By then, with all the punches, the pins of the dolphins had made twin deep puncture wounds in Pacino’s chest, and Rachel had taken him by the hand upstairs to clean him up, borrowing a first aid kit and a shirt of Bullfrog’s from Quinnivan’s wife. She shut and locked the bathroom door behind them, pulled off his shirt, sat him down on the toilet lid, found a washcloth, and washed away the blood. She dried him off, then carefully disinfected and bandaged the wounds, putting Quinnivan’s shirt on him when she was done, leaving the long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned. She rinsed Pacino’s bloody shirt in the sink and cleaned the dolphins, handing them to Pacino. She sat on the rim of the bathtub opposite him and told him the news that she and her husband Bruno had broken up, that it had been a long time coming, but that the marriage was finally over. She wiped a tear out of her eye then, and stood from the tub edge and straddled him, her soft thighs warm on Pacino’s.

Her left hand stroked his hair and her right hand touched his cheek, her slim fingers soft and cool on his skin. He looked up at her, and she came close. He shut his eyes as her lips met his, her silky, soft, warm tongue in his mouth, making slow circles around his.

When she finally pulled back, she looked at him, her eyes shining brightly.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Take me to your apartment and make me glad I’m a woman.”

He smiled at her. They stood and she buttoned his shirt. They emerged from the upstairs, and without a word to any of the revelers, walked out to his old Corvette, parked in the driveway next to Feng Lewinsky’s Ferrari. Pacino opened the door for her and Rachel climbed in, folding her long legs into the car. He smiled to himself as he climbed into the driver’s side and clicked the ignition, the supercharger whining as he gunned the engine.

“My place, right?” he said.

She smiled. “Yes, but first — don’t laugh — I am dying for a cheeseburger, with huge steak fries and a regular, old-fashioned, sugary Coca Cola.”

“Hell with Coke,” Pacino said. “After a run like this, I need an ice-cold beer.”

“Take us out of the subdivision and turn right toward the beach,” Rachel said. “I know a place.”

Pacino drove the five miles to a tumbledown diner that had seen better days during the Ford administration.

“Here? You sure?”

“This place has the most amazing cheeseburger you will ever taste.”

At the table, the waitress brought the plates. If she thought it odd that Pacino and Romanov were sitting on the same side of the table, she didn’t show it. Rachel’s hand on his thigh was heaven on earth.

“Coke for the lady. Corona with lime for the gentleman,” the waitress said, handing the drinks to them.

But mysteriously, as Pacino looked up at the server, she flashed in and out of an odd reality for a few fractions of a second. One instant she was simply a waitress in a diner. Then, for just a tenth of a second, she was a skeleton. Then she snapped back to being a waitress. Then, click, she was a skeleton.

He looked at Rachel to see if she’d noticed the strange phenomenon of the waitress. Rachel was wearing a tight red sweater, tight jeans, and tall brown boots. Which was a good thing, he thought. That meant she was real. In his dreams about her, she was always in starched high-collar service dress whites, with full medals. He looked up at the waitress, who still had her hand on his beer bottle, but now there was no sign of her as a normal person. Now she stayed a skeleton. In alarm, he looked over at Rachel, but now Rachel was wearing starched choker whites with her medals, her ceremonial sword, and officers’ cap on the table. He was opening his mouth to speak when she picked up the ketchup bottle and held it over his head while smiling at him. She flipped its lid and started pouring ketchup on his head, and strangely, it wasn’t room temperature, but warm. The skeleton server put down the beer and picked up another bottle of warm ketchup and started pouring it on his head as well.

Pacino spat to get the ketchup out of his nose and mouth, and it was in his eyes. He wiped his eyes and blinked, and he was in the dark. The diner was gone. The skeleton waitress was gone. And Rachel Romanov was gone. He coughed into the silent darkness, wiping what must be blood out of his eyes.

Then he heard Rachel’s voice. Here, baby. You’re gonna need this. And suddenly a heavy weight of a solid object dropped from a height and hit him in the stomach. He flinched, wondering what the object was. It was too dark to see it, but he could tell by feel it was a battle-lantern. If a car battery had a bulb, a lens, and an on-off switch, all wrapped in a rubbery yellow case, it became a Navy battle-lantern. He felt the on switch and clicked it on. By the strong light of the lantern, he could see he was sitting in the dark, silent control room of the submarine New Jersey, leaning against the navigation console. He shone the light around the room. He could see Dankleff in the pilot’s seat, still strapped in, but he was out cold, his head resting on his right shoulder. Pacino looked around the rest of the room. There were bodies piled up forward, some aft, but they were all unconscious, some bloody, one with a compound fracture of the leg.

“Hello?” he called. “Anyone awake?”

He struggled to his feet, feeling a dizziness threatening to toss him back down again, but he grabbed the safety bar of the command console, then noticed that the deck was tilted steeply downhill, and it wasn’t just the dizziness. They were pitched forward, at a crazy thirty-degree angle downward.

He was blinded by a renewed stream of blood in his eyes, and he wiped it away with his sleeve, then felt his forehead. A gash had opened up above his right eye and it hurt when he touched it. He grabbed a box resembling a box of tissues, but filled with paper towels—“Kim Wipes.” He wiped his head and face, dropping the soaking wipe to the deck while he pulled out a fresh one. He stuffed his pockets with the wipes. There was no time to deal with his head wound now. He staggered over to Dankleff’s panel, slipping on a blood trail that he was fairly certain had come from him. He grabbed Dankleff’s shoulder, shaking it.

“U-Boat! Wake up! Dankleff!”

But Dankleff was out cold. Pacino shone the light on the panels, all of them dark. He found the old manual bourdon tube pressure gauge off to the port side of the wrap-around displays, the U-boat era gauge not needing electricity or computers to provide its indication. Pacino squinted at the gauge. The needle pointed to 600 and was rotating toward 650.

The bottom, as Pacino remembered it, was about 700 feet, well above crush depth, but the bottom wasn’t safe. If the ship were sinking, with the reactor shut down and no power, they’d need to surface and get to open water. Otherwise they’d die down here. They’d been directly below a polynya of open water formed by the first Gigantskiy detonation when the second one had exploded. Assuming the boat hadn’t been moved away by the explosion, the open water should still be overhead.

By now, the deck was tilted downward by 35 degrees. Pacino shone his light on the bubble-type inclinometer, another relic of World War II submarining, and it showed the deck going to a 40 degree down angle.

Pacino took a deep breath. “Let’s hope this works,” he muttered to himself. He found the big stainless steel levers of the emergency ballast tank blow system outboard of the copilot’s seat. The one on the right was the forward system. He pulled down the interlock device and rotated the large lever from straight down to straight up.

Immediately a roaring, blasting sound slammed Pacino’s eardrums, and the room filled with thick fog, the condensation from the super-cold emergency blow manifold. He shined the light back up to the inclinometer, which was now showing a twenty-five-degree dive, easing to fifteen. Pacino operated the aft main ballast tank emergency blow lever, and the fog in the room got denser and the blasting noise louder, if that were possible. He checked the depth gauge — now showing 400 feet and trending upward.

Soon the roaring noise got quieter and the fog cleared. Pacino rotated both blow levers back down and watched the depth gauge, the needle climbing up past 200 to 150. Finally it stopped at thirty-five, and the deck rolled to starboard, then port, then steadied. They were on the surface. The inclinometer showed a slight up angle, by two degrees. Pacino hoped that wasn’t bad news. If they were flooding aft, the up angle would increase and the day would end early.

Pacino called out to the room. “Anyone awake? Hello?”

He shone the battle lantern light around the room, slower this time. Everyone was out cold. His light fell onto River Styxx, whose head had impacted the weapon control console, shattering the display and deeply cutting her face. He felt her neck, but there was no pulse and her flesh was cold. At the Pos Two console, Easy Eisenhart sat, his head completely turned around so that it faced backwards, a look of terror frozen on his face. His flesh was also cold, although Pacino knew it was useless to verify it.

Dammit, he cursed to himself. He had to stop worrying about the crew and hurry aft and get the battery online. The nuclear explosion must have opened every electrical breaker onboard. He carefully stepped aft, trying to avoid slipping from the blood on the deck, until he left control and was in the central passageway, then down the ladder to the middle level of the crew’s mess. There were bodies on the deck, none of them conscious. His light shone on the form of Senior Chief Corpsman Grim Thornburg. Pacino tried to shake him awake, but there was no response. He felt his neck for a pulse. The skin was warm and there was a pulse, but he was nonresponsive.

Beside Thornburg was the body of Chief McGuire, the A-gang chief, whose head was only connected to his bloody neck by a few fibers of flesh, the blood puddle surrounding him.

Pacino hurried to the dogged-shut hatch to the shielded tunnel of the reactor compartment. He held the handle of the battle lantern in his teeth while he undogged the hatch, opened it and set it on the latch, then stepped through. He jogged down the tunnel, since there was no blood and no bodies, got to the aft hatch and undogged it and latched it open, then emerged into the aft compartment’s engineroom.

He sniffed the air for smoke, but it just smelled like steam, lube oil, and atmospheric control amines. But the deck seemed to be tilting, just slightly, aft. He forced himself to ignore the deck’s tilt and found what he was looking for in the long rows of cabinets of the motor control center. The battery breaker cabinet was memorized by every sailor onboard as part of qualifying in submarines. Pacino could have found it in the dark, he thought. He put down the battle lantern, reached down to the breaker handle — a large tongue of tough black plastic — and pulled it upward with all his strength. As it came to rest in the closed position, it made a loud thump, and almost instantly the overhead lights flickered on, just for an instant, then went out, then flickered back on, then out again, but the third time they came on and held. In the circle of light between the panels, the electrical division chief, Senior Chief McGraceland, could be seen, face down. Pacino felt for a pulse, but McGraceland’s skin was cold and he was obviously dead. Pacino turned off the battle-lantern and jogged farther aft to maneuvering, the nuclear control room.

He shook his head in dismay. Lieutenant Commander Moose Kelly was on the deck, the body of Ensign Long Hull Cooper on top of her. The electrical and reactor operators were on the deck beneath their panels. Pacino crouched down and verified that none of the prone crewmen had a pulse. So much goddamned death, he thought. He stepped to the right-side console, the electric plant control panel. Now that the battery was online, he could use its electricity to operate the other breakers. He looked at the battery amp-hour meter, which was clicking very slowly.

“Mr. Patch!” a voice from the door to maneuvering called. Pacino turned. It was the mechanical division chief, Chief Sam-I-Am MacHinery, his face covered in grease and blood.

“Help me, Chief!” Pacino said. “I can operate the electric plant but I need help starting up the engineroom.”

“Can you get the reactor restarted?”

Pacino looked at the reactor plant control panel. Unlike the electric plant, it was like the ship-control station — all flatpanel displays driven by computers.

“I don’t know. We may need the diesel if we can get the head valve opened. But let me try.”

Pacino reached to the electric plant control panel and snapped shut the breaker from the battery breaker to the port side motor-generator. The motor-generator was a caveman means of converting DC power to AC power, by having the DC electricity drive a motor, connected by a shaft to an AC generator, which then powered the AC buses in the absence of a steam turbine generator. Pacino scanned the voltage at the DC end, then the AC end and the AC frequency, which had stabilized at 60 Hertz. So far, so good. He snapped shut the MG output breaker, energizing the port AC vital bus. He listened and sniffed. No sound of any electrical explosions and no smoke.

The flatpanels at the reactor control panel flashed to life, going from their default screen to a startup display, finally stabilizing with all the normal reactor control indications. Thank God, Pacino thought. Now, if he could get the inverter breakers shut, they’d be able to restart.

He left maneuvering, MacHinery following him, back to the motor control center, where he found the reactor control rod inverter cabinets.

“Shutting inverter A breaker,” he said, and pulled up a thick black plastic tab much like the battery breaker’s operator. The breaker shut. “No fireballs. It’s a good day, Chief.” He found inverter B. “Shutting the breaker for inverter Bravo.” He pulled it up, the inverter humming with power. “Inverter Charlie now.” He pulled that breaker up and sighed in relief. All three breakers held and there were no electrical shorts.

He stepped out to the row between the cabinets and checked RCP-5, the master reactor control remote cabinet. He opened the plexiglass cover and checked the protection circuits and the instrumentation circuit breakers. Everything was nominal.

“We’re good to go, Chief,” Pacino said. He walked back into maneuvering, found the curled microphone cord for the 1MC general announcing circuit and spoke into it, his voice booming through the ship.

“This is Lieutenant Pacino. Any personnel who are awake and able, report to maneuvering. Commencing fast recovery startup.”

On the touchscreen, he selected the control area for the nuclear instrumentation, selected the source range channel selector switch, and put it into the mode labeled “startup range.” He selected the rod group control function area on the touchscreen and selected group one rods to inverter A. He reached down to the panel for the pistol grip for the control rods. “Latching group one rods,” he said to MacHinery as he pulled out the pistol grip and rotated it to the nine o’clock position. He got a light on the display. He rotated the grip to the three o’clock position to withdraw rods. “Pulling out group one to the top of the core.”

It took thirty seconds to get group one rods out. The last time he’d been in maneuvering, group one was fully withdrawn and the reactor was controlled by group two, with group three halfway withdrawn. He selected inverter C to group three rods, then latched them as before. “Pulling group three to forty inches,” he said, again rotating the pistol grip to three o’clock. Fifteen seconds later, he selected group two rods to inverter B, latched them and started pulling.

“Pulling group two to criticality.” On the display, he monitored the source range nuclear instrument, the power level slowly climbing out of the startup range. He looked at the startup rate meter, which was climbing up from two decades per minute to three. Each decade was an increase in the neutron flux power level by a factor of ten. Startup rate climbed. Seven, eight, nine decades per minute, a rate fast enough to make a civilian nuclear operator faint dead away, and in fact, the procedure was so dangerous that the ship was required to be more than fifty miles from land to execute it.

Pacino released the pistol grip, the rods holding at eighteen inches from the bottom. At nine decades per minute, the reactor power was screaming out of the startup range and headed for the intermediate range. He reached to the touch screen and deactivated the source range nuclear instrument, which would be burned out by the flux of the intermediate range. The intermediate startup rate meter came alive and showed a startup rate of eight decades per minute. Pacino shimmed out until the needle was steady at nine decades per minute.

Thirty seconds later, the reactor power level had reached the power range, that level of neutron flux where additional reactivity insertion into the core could heat up the water of the primary loop.

Pacino clicked the 1MC mike. “The reactor… is critical.”

Pacino pulled rods out and watched reactor average temperature. Normally, the heat-up rate was required to be slow, to avoid blowing up the reactor vessel from thermal stress, but this was an emergency. The core temperature came up from 300 to 350, then 400. Soon average core temperature was 500 degrees. It was time for the reactor to take over from the battery.

“Reactor is in the power range,” he announced on the 1MC. “Your show, Chief,” he shouted to MacHinery. “Start up the engineroom.”

“Give me main seawater pumps one and two, aux feedwater pump one and engineroom freshwater pump two,” he said. Pacino spun around to the aft panel and hit the toggle switches for the pumps. As he did, MacHinery left to start the steam plant.

The faint hiss of steam could be heard in the piping overhead. On the display panel, Pacino watched the steam generator levels. The trick was to get a steam turbine generator online before the boilers went dry, and since the main feed pump to the boilers couldn’t be started on the battery, there was a huge hurry to get a steam turbine on the grid. Failure at this would mean the reactor plant would die.

The steam sound was roaring and screaming now as the steam headers dumped out the condensation and warmed up. Chief MacHinery skidded to a halt at the door to maneuvering.

“I’ve got full vacuum on the port condenser. I’m gonna crank the port SSTG now,” he said, then disappeared. Aft of maneuvering, on the port side, the sound of a turbine rolling could be heard. Soon it was loud in the space, the sound a bass whining, then starting a soprano scream, almost as if a jet engine were roaring up to full throttle right outside the maneuvering room. Finally, the shrieking scream steadied on pitch, and a moment later MacHinery put his head into the room.

“Port turbine generator is on the governor and ready for loading! I’m going to the feed station! Get that SSTG on the bus!”

Pacino selected the ship’s service turbine generator frequency meter and touched the function to parallel it into the AC bus, whose frequency was managed by the motor-generator. It would be disastrous if the steam turbine came online out of synchronization — it could jump right off its steel foundation. But the auto-synch function worked perfectly. Pacino loaded up the turbine generator, taking the load off the battery.

He clicked the 1MC mike. “Electric plant is in a half power lineup on the port SSTG,” he announced. That was MacHinery’s cue to start one of the massive feed pumps to put water into the almost dry boilers.

He saw the pump energized indication and watched as boiler water levels climbed off the bottom.

There was a damage control saying in the submarine force, Pacino thought. First, save the mission. Obviously, that was no longer possible. Second, save the ship. For the moment, the ship was safe, but that deck tilting aft had to be looked into. It had gotten a little worse. Third, save the reactor. Done, Pacino thought. Fourth, save the crew.

“Chief, can you take over here?” Pacino called.

“I got it, L.T.,” MacHinery said. “Good job, sir.”

“Chief, we’re taking on water aft,” Pacino said. “Deck is tilting since I emergency blew. See if you can find where the flooding is. I’ll call you from forward and maybe I can get the drain pump running.”

As Pacino passed through the forward hatch of the reactor compartment tunnel, he almost ran into Senior Chief Corpsman Thornburg.

“Doc,” Pacino said. “How are we doing?”

Thornburg shook his head solemnly. “I’m setting up triage in the crew’s mess,” he said. “Some folks are walking wounded, but we’ve lost some people.”

“Keep working, Doc,” Pacino said, clapping the chief’s shoulder. “I’ll be in control.”

26

Weapons Officer Captain Lieutenant Ballerina Katerina Sobol lay face down in the central command post, unconscious. Her breathing was slow and deep, her pulse likewise slow. She lay like that for a long time until the pool of blood reached the level of her mouth and nostrils, and she began to inhale blood.

She woke suddenly, spitting and coughing. She tried to sit up, but the vertigo of her sudden movement made her fall back down again, back into that bloody pond. She pulled her face out, wiping off the blood with her sleeve, and blinked in the light of the emergency lanterns at the four corners of the room. They were weak and trying to illuminate the space through a light haze of smoke. Sobol took in a breath but couldn’t smell anything burning. She reached up to her head and found the bleeding gash. It hurt, but it was superficial. She reached up to a handhold at the attack center console, where she had been strapped in by a five-point harness to her seat, but the seat had been ripped from the deck and the seatbelts had broken off, dumping her to the deck. She pulled herself up, noticing for the first time the distinct list to starboard. At least an alarming ten degrees, in an environment where even one degree of tilt was noticeable. She looked around the space. The watchstanders, the captain, and the first officer were all still buckled into their seats, but no one seemed awake.

She stepped to the command console and felt Captain Alexeyev’s cheeks. His eyepatch had flown off in the high-G shockwave and it was nowhere to be seen. His skin was warm. She felt his neck for a pulse, and it was strong and slow. She lightly slapped his face.

“Captain. Captain! Captain?”

There was no response. She tried to awaken the first officer. “Madam First! Madam Lebedev! Wake up, madam!”

Nothing. The right-hand seat of the command console was the watch officer’s chair. Captain Lieutenant Vilen Shvets, the communications officer, was out cold. She tried to rouse him, with the same result. She looked down at the console displays, but they were all black. She looked around the room, and every console was dark.

“Second Captain,” she said loudly to the AI system. “Second Captain, respond!”

There was no answer.

She forced herself to recognize the good news. She seemed to be the only one conscious after the nuclear explosion. And no one seemed to be dead, at least not yet. But the ship, she thought. The ship was dying.

She left the central command post by the aft door and hurried aft to the dogged-shut hatch to the third compartment with its shielded deck over the reactor. She realized she was panting like a sprinter. The oxygen level had fallen since the machinery room exploded and with atmo control gone, the carbon dioxide levels were climbing, but it seemed too early to be this winded. Perhaps it was just adrenaline, she thought. She was forced to slow down on her way aft. She opened the hatch and shut it behind her. The emergency lights were out in the space, and it was coal mine black. She felt for a flashlight on the bulkhead, and it was where she’d expected it, hopefully fully charged. She clicked it on, then made her way to the compartment’s aft hatch, going through it to the darkened fourth compartment with its electronic cabinets, and main breaker bank, through its aft hatch to the fifth compartment, the steam machinery room, where far aft, the nuclear control room was situated. Nuclear control was an enclosed space with its own air conditioning, cooling it in the environment with a hundred steam leaks, which even in arctic waters, made the compartment hot and humid. One would erupt in sweat just in the walk from the fourth compartment to nuclear control, but not now. The space was eerily cool, which was a very bad sign. Cool and dark. She stopped just outside nuclear control when she heard something. It was the rush of water flowing. She shone her light aft, to the narrow passageway to the hatch to the sixth compartment.

She went to the hatch with its circular window and shone her light into the window. She could see a water level halfway up the window and climbing. Which meant the sixth compartment was almost completely flooded. The sixth compartment contained the engineering plant’s battery, and if it had flooded, there would be no power without the reactor, but the reactor needed power to start, to run all the pumps and controls for the plant’s systems.

She wondered if there were a way to connect the forward battery in the first compartment to the engineering space’s systems, but she was a tactical officer and not qualified in the propulsion plant systems. She had to find someone who was. She returned to the door to nuclear control and tried to open it, but it would only come open a few centimeters. There was a body lying against the door. She shoved on it mightily, moving the body of the chief engineer out of the way. Sobol stepped over the body of the chief. On the deck the body of Chief Engineer Captain Third Rank Cobalt Ausra was nearly decapitated and lying in a hideous pool of blood, her head connected to her torso by a few blood vessels, a large bloody binder on the deck next to Ausra’s head the probable culprit. The book must have flown off a shelf and hit the chief engineer right in her throat. The book was labeled, RUKOVODSTVO PO REAKTORNOY USTANOVKE—REACTOR PLANT MANUAL. The Sevmash engineers still insisted on paper procedures rather than switching to pad computer documents, and this was the result, Sobol thought.

Sobol stepped away from the dead chief engineer toward the seat of the engineering watch officer, Senior Lieutenant Anatoly Blackbeard Pavlovsky. She felt his throat for a pulse, and it was weak but present. She slapped his cheeks, but there was no response. In a cupholder was a covered cup of tea that had remained in the holder despite the massive shock wave. Sobol picked it up and felt it — the tea was cold. She removed the top and splashed it into Pavlovsky’s face. He sputtered and spit, opening one eye, then the second and peered at Sobol as if he were in a dream. His eyes stared into the distance without focus. Sobol slapped his cheek again, harder this time.

“Pavlovsky! Blackbeard! Wake the hell up!” She shouted into his face and he shook his head, then put his hand on his neck. He must have suffered whiplash, she thought, hoping he hadn’t broken his neck.

“Blackbeard. I know you can hear me. Wake up!”

“What?” he said slowly. “What the hell happened?”

“Nothing,” Sobol said, her voice pitch even higher than normal. “Just a goddamned nuclear explosion. Come on, we’re the only two awake. There’s flooding in the sixth. The aft battery’s gone. We need to see if we can get power from the forward battery and restart the reactor!”

Pavlovsky slowly unbuckled himself from his seat and tried to stand. Sobol helped him stay upright.

“Are you hurt badly?” she asked.

“I think I’m okay,” he said. He sniffed the air. “Smoke,” he said. “And it’s stuffy. Hard to breathe.” He took Sobol’s flashlight from her and shone it toward the door and saw the body of Ausra. “Oh hell,” he said. “Without her, I don’t think we’re coming back from this.”

“Can’t you restart the reactor?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. And there are systems in the sixth we’d need. There’s no training drill for something like this.”

“Well, hell,” Sobol said. “Let’s find anyone still alive from the spaces and get them forward then. Maybe we can evacuate the ship.”

“Evacuate? How are you going to abandon ship under thick ice? The escape chamber will just clunk into the bottom of the ice cover.”

“Maybe the Gigantskiy explosion opened up a polynya overhead.”

“You can’t count on that, Weapons Officer.”

“Maybe we can call for the Losharik to pull us out. That’s why they undocked before we shot the Gigantskiy.”

“They did? I didn’t know,” Pavlovsky said. “But you’ll have to communicate with it.”

“If we can get the central command post power, we can light off the Bolshoi-Feniks sonar communications system.”

“Didn’t the first detonation kill our active sonar?”

“Wow, you are paying attention to goings-on in the central command post. It did, but Bolshoi-Feniks can be switched over to an emergency sonar array with its own hydrophones. If we can connect it to the forward battery, we’ll be in business. Come on.”

Sobol led a limping Pavlovsky through the upper level of the compartment, trying to collect the other engineering watchstanders, pausing to try to wake them up. Three crewmen were able to regain their feet, but four couldn’t get off the deck and another two were dead.

There was no doubt, Sobol thought. This was going to be a very long day.

As she opened the hatch to the fourth compartment, a loud ripping noise slammed her ears, followed by a roaring like a mighty waterfall. Sobol turned around and saw the stream of seawater flooding the space, presumably from the main seawater piping rupturing. She pulled the hatch shut behind her and dogged it, peering through the high-pressure glass window into the space as its lights went out and it filled with seawater.

Goddammit, she thought. This day just kept getting worse.

Georgy Alexeyev sat at a table on the sun swept sidewalk in front of the UDC Café on Moscow’s Kamergersky Lane, a pedestrian-only area decorated year-round with hanging lights, the sounds of a street musician’s guitar playing soulfully a block away. Alexeyev smiled, happily sipping a double espresso, waiting for his wife Natalia to join him after a leisurely Saturday afternoon of shopping. He glanced down at the pad computer’s article he’d been reading, about President Vostov and his five-year program for the Navy. Fortunately, the president was a true believer in the power of the Navy of the Russian Republic. Alexeyev was halfway through the article when his cell phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his sports jacket’s inner pocket. The caller was unidentified, but he decided to answer it.

“Go for Alexeyev,” he said, which was a better and more concise way to answer than Captain First Rank Alexeyev. It worked for strangers, subordinates, and superiors alike.

It’s me, Captain, the unmistakable voice of Chief Engineer Alesya Matveev said. The dead chief engineer.

“Chief,” he said, pulling the phone from his ear and staring at it as if it had turned into a toad. Slowly, he put the phone back to his ear. “How are you calling me?”

Look to the south, she said.

Alexeyev looked to his right, and a few tables over, Chief Engineer Matveev sat, a cup of coffee in front of her. As if in a dream, Alexeyev hung up the phone, placed it in his pocket, stood and walked slowly to her table. She was dressed exactly as she had been on the Kazan — in her powder blue coveralls with high-visibility yellow stripes running across the torso beneath her throat and on her sleeves. Her hair was shining and clean, pulled back into a ponytail. Her face shone with good health, but still bereft of any sort of makeup. In life, she’d seemed plain to Alexeyev, but in death, she had an inner beauty that was reflected in her face. Hesitantly, he sat down opposite her.

“I miss you,” he said, not intending to say it.

I miss you too, Captain, she said without speaking, her voice in his mind. She smiled slightly with that enigmatic unreadable expression. But you didn’t listen to me. She found her pack of rancid cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it with a lighter with the emblem of the sunken K-561 Kazan. The smoke was distinctive, but not entirely unpleasant, Alexeyev thought, because now it reminded him of his dead friend. You didn’t take my advice, her voice said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I told you the one word to bear in mind. Distance. You got too close. Now your ship is dying. If it’s not already dead.

Alexeyev looked down forlornly at the table surface. He picked up her lighter and looked at the Kazan emblem, sad for days gone by. How good had he had it in the time before the South Atlantic run, he thought, when his crew were all alive? And his submarine was in one piece? He looked back up at Matveev, but she wasn’t finished talking.

I blame myself. Perhaps I was too cryptic. So today I shall try to be more… specific. So you can understand. Understand, and live.

“What happens now?”

She half-smiled at him with an air of mystery. You have a long walk ahead of you in your very near future. Bundle up. It will be very cold. Make sure you tell the crew to walk with you or else they’ll die.

“What?” he said. “A long walk? And the crew dies if they don’t come with me?”

Yes, she said. Walk east-northeast for eight kilometers. Remember, Captain. East-northeast. Eight kilometers.

“What do you mean by that?”

She just looked at him, that same half-smile on her face, but then her expression turned serious. She frowned and said suddenly, in a loud voice, You have to wake up.

“Wake up? From what?”

Matveev leaned forward, opened her mouth wider and shouted, Captain, you have to wake up!

He felt a stinging slap on his face and he blinked, and as he did, the Moscow bistro evaporated, and with it, Chief Engineer Matveev, and he was staring into the panicked face of his weapons officer, Katerina Sobol.

“What happened?” he asked weakly, coughing in the darkened room filled with a slight dark haze of smoke, Matveev’s words haunting him even as reality returned. A long walk, he thought. East-northeast. Eight kilometers. Bundle up. Bring the crew.

“I can’t say for sure, sir,” Sobol said in her ridiculously high-pitched voice, “but I think the Gigantskiy blew up too close. We didn’t have enough distance. Or it went off prematurely.”

Alexeyev rubbed his head. He had the worst headache of his life, worse even than during the fire onboard Kazan as that submarine died. He reached for his right eye, since it felt different. His eye patch was gone. Blown off in the shock, he thought.

“Do you know the status of the ship?” he asked.

“It’s bad, Captain. Sixth is flooded and the fifth started flooding, and it looked catastrophic, probably from a double-ended main seawater shear or loss of the hull valve. The aft battery is gone. The reactor is gone. And the explosion in the machinery room blew away our atmo control, and with the oxygen jettisoned, we’re slowly suffocating. I’m so sorry, Captain, but Belgorod is gone and it isn’t coming back. The mission is over. We need to abandon ship, sir, but we’re under thick ice.”

Alexeyev unbuckled from his seat. “We need to energize the Bolshoi-Feniks and call for Losharik,” he said. “Losharik will have to rescue us through the upper hatch of the escape chamber. Prepare the crew to abandon ship. And try to wake up the sonar officer, Palinkova. We’re going to need her, or her senior enlisted.”

“Sir,” Sobol said, “do you think the Losharik came through this okay?”

Alexeyev shook his head. “If it didn’t, this day will end very badly,” he said, wondering how Sergei Kovalov had taken the nuclear detonation.

Irina Trusov was playing in her room when her father came in after smoking his pipe and having his after-dinner drink with Mommy. He habitually spent an hour at the end of the day with Irina, talking, reading stories, teaching her to play chess, or working on the submarine model.

“Daddy, look,” Irina said, “I made a figure of you for when you are driving the boat on the surface.” She showed him the carving she’d made, the size of a fingernail, of a man in a heavy black coat with a fur cap on, the detail of the tiny character exquisite.

This is great work, Irina, he said, the pride in his voice filling her with pleasure. Carefully, he placed the figure in the conning tower of the large submarine model.

“I want to make one of you for the central command post,” she said. “Like you’re standing at the periscope. Show me how you’d stand at the periscope, Daddy.”

He stood from the bed and crouched slightly down, extending his hands out as if holding on to periscope grips. I’d be wearing my blue submarine coveralls, he said. Irina took a mental picture and smiled at him.

But then he stood erect, his smile vanishing, a serious expression crossing his face. Nizkiy uroven’ kisloroda, he said loudly, frowning. Daddy’s alarm clock started blaring from the other room. His face took on a look of fear. He said it again. Nizkiy uroven’ kisloroda… oxygen level… low.

“What?” she said, staring at him. “Why is your alarm clock going off?” The sound of the alarm clock’s blaring alarm got louder, as if it were being held against her head.

There was terror in Daddy’s expression. Oxygen level… LOW!

Captain Second Rank Iron Irina Trusov, the systems officer and pilot-in-command of the deep-diving submarine Losharik, blinked and coughed, realizing she was having trouble getting her breath, then tried to focus her eyes on the console in front of her. The master alarm was blaring and the Second Captain AI system kept repeating, OXYGEN LEVEL… LOW. Trusov silenced the alarm and coughed again, trying to make sense of her surroundings. Something was deeply wrong. Instead of the usual brightly lit panel, it was dark. And the space, the cockpit, usually so well lit, was also dark. Dark and cold. Trusov shivered, exhaling, her breath visible in the space lit only by dual emergency lamps placed aft in the cockpit compartment.

But perhaps the strangest thing was that she hung from her seatbelt. She turned her head, trying to ignore the dizziness. There was something very wrong, in addition to the space being ice cold and dark. The room was completely on its side. Tilted an entire ninety degrees to starboard.

Carefully, Trusov unbuckled her five-point belt and lowered herself to the surface that used to be the bulkhead to her right, but was now a deck below her boots. She climbed away from her seat and console and found a battlelantern on a bracket of the deck — which used to be the bulkhead. She hit the on-switch and shone the light around the compartment. The other three — Captain Kovalov, First Officer Vlasenko and Navigator Dobryvnik — were all still strapped in, but hanging from their seatbelts. She reached up to try to rouse Kovalov, but although he was breathing, he wouldn’t respond. She tried the first officer and navigator, but their skin was cold and neither had a pulse. The shock must have hit them harder, or they weren’t as strong as she and Kovalov, she thought. She headed aft slowly, carefully, climbing over manuals that had fallen from their bookshelves, pad computers, teacups and other gear. She stared at the heavy hatch to the second compartment, but fortunately, the hinge was on the deck — if the boat had tilted to port, she would have been trapped in the cockpit compartment, unable to lift the two-hundred-kilogram hatch. She undogged the hatch, hit the opening lever, and it fell toward her with a loud slam just as she jumped away.

The second compartment was a complete wreck. Normally, the galley compartment, it was littered with cooking implements, pots, pans and stored food. It took a long time for her to reach the hatch to the third compartment, but when she got there, she opened it the same way she had with the last hatch. If the second compartment were messy, the third compartment looked like a huge bomb had detonated there. The hydronauts, the divers, should have been in this compartment, but there was no sign of them. The compartment housed the hotel quarters. Bunks, lockers, and bathrooms. With all the contents heaped up on the deck as high as a mountain, she had no idea how she’d get to the fourth compartment, but after ten minutes of climbing over debris, she made it to the fourth compartment hatch.

Beyond, the fourth compartment housed a large airlock for the hydronauts’ lock-out chamber, plus the atmospheric control equipment. The divers’ gear was strewn all over the deck, but it was less of an obstacle than the third compartment’s mess. She made it to the hatch to the fifth compartment, where nuclear control was situated. The sixth and seventh compartments were unoccupied, housing the nuclear reactor and steam machinery. Trusov opened the hatch, jumped away as it clanged open, and stepped through, a large puddle of blood below her boots. She looked down and saw the body of Starshina Statji Roman Leonty, the engineering senior chief petty officer. On the opposite end of the compartment, the chief engineer, Captain Third Rank Chernobrovin, lay on the deck covered in heavy books and manuals. She pulled the debris off his body and tried to sit him up.

His color was good, there was no blood, and he had a pulse. Trusov slapped him, but he didn’t respond. She considered for a moment that if she were the sole survivor, she would die when the air ran out. Or when the battery died, or the vessel started flooding. Or caught fire.

“Chernobrovin!” she screamed. “Chief! Wake the fuck up!”

She kept that up until, finally, the chief engineer’s left eye opened into a slit.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Yeah, fuck is right,” Trusov said. “Now wake the hell up and help me recover.”

“What happened?”

“The hell you think happened? We took a nuclear explosion. We’re on our side. We need to get the ship on an even keel and restart the reactor.”

The engineer put his head in both hands and moaned.

“No time to whine now, Chief,” Trusov said. “How do we right the ship?”

“Propulsion,” Chernobrovin said.

“What? Talk like it matters, Chief. What did you say?”

“The screw,” he said. “It’s a ducted propulsor but it has a large range of motion, up to forty-five degrees from the long axis of the ship. If I can get propulsion, you can aim the propulsor to get us off the bottom and get the list off the ship.”

“Well, then restart the reactor and do it,” she said.

“I can’t,” Chernobrovin said. “The reactor won’t work unless it’s oriented correctly. Too many gravity systems. Even coolant through the core needs the correct gravity vector, because it’s natural circulation. It won’t work on its side. And the condensers won’t drain so no steam will happen. Hell, the boilers won’t even work on their sides. And the turbine bearings need gravity to drain them.”

Trusov took a deep breath. What was it about engineers, she fumed. Always the thing that had to be done was impossible.

“So connect up the battery and use it to operate the propulsor,” she said, hoping that would be possible.

“Help me,” he said. “We need to get to the compartment’s lower level by this hatch.” He pointed to a hatch that should have been on the deck, but instead was on the bulkhead. “You can take local control there.”

Together they pulled on the hatch opening mechanism until it finally budged and came down, almost hitting her.

“I’ve got to get in there and reset the breakers. Shock makes them open circuit.”

“Well, do it, for God’s sake,” she said. He climbed into the space that was beneath nuclear control but was now a room to port. She climbed in after him and there was barely room for one person. There was a small jump seat at the aft end with a joystick, throttle, and small control panel. Trusov heard thumping as Chernobrovin shut breakers. With one thump, half the lights came back on. With another one, they all lit up. Trusov wasn’t sure what was worse — operating in the darkened hull, or seeing all the crazy damage with the lights on, the disorientation of the ship lying on its side inspiring raw fright.

She took a deep breath and made her way to the jump seat and tried to strap in. She had to stretch and reach up, since the seat was on the ship’s centerline and she was standing on what was the far starboard bulkhead.

“Help me into this seat,” she told the engineer. He pushed while she pulled, and he held her in place long enough for her to fasten the seat belt.

“You should have power to the propulsor,” he said. “If you put on what would be a left turn and backing revolutions, the propulsor should pull us off the bottom into clear water. As you feel it, straighten out, but keep the backing turns on and the propulsor angled upward so it pulls up at an angle off the bottom. Once you get the boat in clear water, it should right itself on its own. At least I hope it does. Just bear in mind, battery amp-hours are a limited resource, so just use enough power to get this done, then stop when we’re level, but don’t be timid, or the suction from the bottom will keep us there.”

“Fine, yes, I have it,” Trusov said impatiently. Goddamned engineers, she thought. She was tempted to let him do it himself, but she was the systems officer and pilot-in-command, and driving the ship was her responsibility. “Turning the prop now,” she said, putting the joystick in her right hand over hard to port. “Backing down now.” Her left hand closed on the throttle and she smoothly but quickly moved it from its central detent to far aft.

The ship vibrated as the propulsor spun up. She monitored RPM on the small control panel. The prop speed went from 30 to 40 to 60, the vessel vibrating harder, but nothing was happening. Trusov pulled the throttle back to full astern. Revolutions climbed to 120, then steadied at 150, and the whole ship shook so hard it jarred her teeth. She clamped her eyes shut for just a half second, hearing her own voice in her mind: help me, Daddy, please help me.

With a sudden jarring motion, the ship angled upward, and slowly the list came off, the wall once again becoming a floor. Trusov pulled the joystick back to rotate the thrust upward to get them off the bottom. A loud scraping noise sounded beneath them, and she could feel it vibrating through the mounting of the joy seat.

“Good,” Chernobrovin said. “Now straighten out the prop and keep backing down. You can ease it to 60 RPM.”

“Wish we had a depth gauge here,” she mumbled.

“That should do it,” the engineer said. “Can you get forward to the cockpit and hover the boat before we sink back to the bottom?”

“On my way.”

By the time Trusov got to the first compartment and the cockpit, she was wheezing and short of breath. She strapped herself into her seat and pulled on her tactical comms headset.

“Chief, once you get the reactor back, you need to restart atmo control, or else we’ll faint before anything else happens.”

Chernobrovin was silent for a long, frightening moment, but then came on, “Pilot, the reactor is back online. You have full propulsion. I am restarting atmo controls.”

“About time,” Trusov said under her breath. Her panel had come back to life. She rotated through the displays, examining ship systems’ status, then putting up the navigation display. She needed to get the boat to open water.

“Pilot, Engineer,” Chernobrovin said as Trusov was flying the boat southward to the entrance to the box-shaped area where Belgorod had fired its torpedoes at the American.

“Go ahead,” Trusov said.

“Be advised,” Chernobrovin said, his voice heavy, “we are severely nuclear fuel-limited.”

“I know,” Trusov said. Losharik had been overdue for a core refueling, but it had been postponed until after this operation. The mission profile had called for it to use minimal power to withdraw the Status-6 torpedoes from Belgorod and place them in the harbor bottoms, so it was judged that they could accomplish the mission with less than a hundred EFPH, or effective full-power hours, which was Sevmash’s estimate of the useable fuel level remaining in the core. “We need to find out what’s going on with Belgorod, then make our way to open water,” she said. “If the second-fired Gigantskiy blew up prematurely, there will be a close polynya in the box-shaped area.”

“Incoming message on Bolshoi-Feniks,” the Second Captain announced in that emotionless female computerized voice everyone hated.

“Read the message,” Trusov said, concentrating on the nav display and on power level to the propulsor. At 150 meters depth, she should avoid the bottom and pressure ridges. The side-scan sonar was no substitute for the under-ice sonar systems of submarines like Belgorod, but it was functional enough to get them through this ice maze back to open water.

“Message reads, ‘Belgorod damaged beyond repair and Belgorod crew requests immediate rescue from upper hatch of the escape chamber. Losharik requested to respond.’ The message is repeated over and over. Do you want me to read it again?”

“No,” Trusov said. “Prepare an outgoing message on Bolshoi-Feniks to Belgorod,” she said.

“Ready,” the Second Captain said.

“Losharik en route to Belgorod’s position. Stand by for rescue.”

“Bolshoi-Feniks fault,” the Second Captain said.

“What do you mean?” Trusov asked. “Specify.”

“Bolshoi-Feniks is not transmitting,” the Second Captain said.

“Are any circuit breakers open in the system?” Trusov asked. If the damned Second Captain were on its game, it would already have reported on the status of the system’s circuit breakers.

“All breakers are nominal,” the Second Captain said, maddeningly emotionless. “All Bolshoi-Feniks system self-checks nominal.”

“Well, obviously not,” Trusov said, “or else the fucking system would work.” But it was futile arguing with AI, she thought. She trained the side scan sonar to the right, then the left, then forward, seeking the hull of the Belgorod.

“Well, Mr. Pacino,” Captain Seagraves said, a bloody bandage on his head, “Good of you to join us. Where have you been?”

“Starting the reactor,” Pacino said.

“Who helped?” Vevera asked.

“Chief MacHinery.”

“You mean the chief started the reactor and steam plants and you watched?” Vevera said, standing near his firecontrol watch station.

“I guess you didn’t hear about what young Patch did at nuclear prototype,” Dankleff said.

“What?”

Dankleff grinned. “The entire place put down hundred-dollar bets young Pacino couldn’t start the reactor and steam plants all by himself. Then he actually did it. Then, no one believed he really succeeded, they all wanted him to do it again, double-or-nothing. So he did. Those hundred-dollar bets? They paid for his new crate engine for the Corvette, the supercharger, the transmission, and the new computer controls, with something left over for tires, since his new engine tended to shred them after a few months.”

“Dear Heavenly Father, was Naval Reactors aware of this?” Vevera said. Short Hull Cooper was staring with his eyes wide. Naval Reactors was the Navy’s version of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, and more than one career had been torpedoed by the safety Nazis.

“Not in real time,” Pacino said, “but they heard about it eventually. I took a slap on the wrist, but the commander of prototype got a severe talking-to.”

“So we’re in the power range,” Quinnivan said, grinning.

“Half-power lineup on the port turbine generator,” Pacino said, “but there’s trouble with the starboard motor-generator. And we have bigger problems.”

“What?” Dankleff asked.

“Chief MacHinery thinks we’re flooding from the shaft seals,” Pacino said. “If that’s true, the aft compartment is going to flood, get heavy and drag us to the bottom. We need to dewater with the drain pump, and we need to do it now.”

Dankleff vaulted back into his pilot seat, brought up his displays, adjusted the valving to the drain pump to take a suction on the aft compartment bilges, then hit the function key to start the drain pump.

Instead of starting, a large blinking red light lit up his panel.

“Drain pump trouble light,” he said. “Dammit, do we have power available? Is the breaker shut?”

Pacino picked up the 1MC general announcing circuit mike. “Chief MacHinery, 1JV,” he said, then reached for the 1JV tactical phone and put the handset to his ear.

“MacHinery,” the chief’s voice said.

“Chief, check the drain pump breaker,” Pacino said. “And while you’re at it, check the trim pump breaker.”

“Stand by,” MacHinery said.

Pacino waited, impatiently. He looked up at the inclinometer mounted over the portside sonar lineup, and the angle had moved from two degrees up to five. The aft end of the ship was sinking.

“Control, MacHinery,” a breathless voice intoned over the phone circuit.

“Go ahead, Chief,” Pacino said.

“Both drain pump and trim pump breakers are shut. They both have power.”

“Thanks, Chief,” Pacino said, hanging up. “Drain pump and trim pump have power,” he said to Dankleff.

“Let’s try again,” Dankleff said, trying again to start the drain pump, but the trouble light flashed red again. “Drain pump trouble light. I’m cross-connecting the trim pump to the drain system.” Dankleff manipulated his panel, opening some valves, shutting others. “Cross-connection complete. Starting the trim pump to drain the aft compartment bilges.” Dankleff mashed the function key. The trim pump’s red pump trouble light lit. “Goddammit,” he said. “The trim pump has shit the bed.”

The 1MC announcing circuit lit up with MacHinery’s panicked voice. “Flooding from aux seawater in the aft compartment! Chicken switches have failed, they’re not shutting the hull or backup valves! I’ve got—“ MacHinery paused, then shouted, “I’ve got a fire in the motor control center and RCP-5 is in flames! Reactor scram! I’m evacuating forward.”

The overhead lights flickered.

Pacino looked at Captain Seagraves. “Captain, we’re going down. We need to evacuate to the ice and get all the arctic gear out of the hull. We only have ten to fifteen minutes, maybe less.”

Seagraves grabbed the 1MC mike. “This is the captain,” his voice boomed throughout the ship. “All hands, listen up. We are going to offload all arctic gear to the ice and set up an ice camp. Once we’ve gotten the crates off the ship, we will be evacuating to the ice camp and abandoning ship. Permission is granted to attempt to open forward and plug trunk hatches. That is all.” He replaced the mike in the overhead cradle and looked at XO Quinnivan. “Let’s get the torpedoman chief up here.”

“Torpedoman? Why, Skipper?”

“We’re losing the boat in shallow water where the Russians can salvage it.” He glanced up at the inclinometer on the port side, which was showing a seven degree up angle. “I’ll need him to rig up some explosive charges.”

A half minute later, Torpedoman Chief Gordon “Fleshy” Fleshman arrived in control. “You wanted me, Captain?”

“Chief,” Seagraves said, “can you pull two warheads out of the Mark 48s to use as demolition charges? With a detonator rigged to a long wire and a switch?”

Fleshman’s eyes widened. He nodded. “I can, sir. I’m not sure how long it will take. Why two?”

“One for the torpedo room. That will take out the forward half of the boat when the other torpedo warheads go off in sympathetic detonation. One for the reactor compartment.”

“I’ll get on it, Captain.”

“Sir, Short Hull and I can help,” Pacino said.

“Go with the chief,” Seagraves said. “XO, make sure we’re organized on the arctic gear offload.”

“Captain,” Quinnivan said, putting down a phone, “A-gang Leading Petty Officer Naughtright opened the plug trunk hatch. He reports the dry-deck shelter has been completely blown off, but the upper hatch is operational. He requests we try to thrust over to port to get closer to the edge of the polynya. Otherwise we can’t cross over to thick ice to offload material — or personnel.”

Dankleff vaulted into his pilot seat. “Rigging out fore and aft thrusters,” he said. “Thrusters trained to two seven zero. Starting thrusters.”

“XO,” Seagraves said, “Go supervise and let us know when we can knock off the thrusters. When the battery goes, we’re going to lose the lights.”

27

Systems Officer and Pilot-in-Command Irina Trusov had driven the Losharik south toward the corner entrance to the box-shaped area where the American hostile submarine had been targeted, but on the side scan sonar, there was no trace of the Belgorod. Nor were their passive broadband sonar systems hearing anything, but they were crude, so that wasn’t news. If there were good news, it was that if Belgorod had been destroyed, the passive broadband would be full of noise. Flooding, crushing bulkheads, water boiling from broken reactor piping.

She was turning the ship back to the north, hoping she could find Belgorod before the boat’s low fuel status turned them to dead cold iron. A minute into the northern run, Captain Kovalov came awake with a tremor, sputtered, coughed, shook his head, winced, and looked over at Trusov.

“What happened?” he said.

Trusov was concentrating too hard to give him much of an answer. “We took a hit from Belgorod’s Gigantskiy going off too soon. They sent a message on secure Bolshoi-Feniks asking for rescue. I’m trying to find them now.”

“Did you reply?”

“Our set is out-of-commission. They don’t know we’re coming for them.”

Kovalov would normally have pelted her with questions, orders, and demands. But today he seemed twenty years older than his biological age, weak, and seemingly resigned. Trusov didn’t have time to worry about his feelings.

“I’ve got something,” she said.

“Energize your bow lamps and camera,” Kovalov said. “We may pick them up that way better than side scan.”

“Hitting the bow lights and camera. Can you put your display on the readout? I’m still on side scan.”

“Bringing it up now,” Kovalov said, trying to concentrate on the camera’s murky field of view forward.

For several tense minutes, Trusov drove the boat toward the Belgorod, its signature getting more distinct on side scan sonar.

“I’ve got Belgorod on visual,” Kovalov said.

“Switching to visual,” Trusov said.

“Energize your lower hatch lamps and camera,” Kovalov said.

“Lower hatch lamps and cam coming on.”

Trusov watched as the colossal hull of Belgorod appeared slowly out of the darkness of the ocean, the vessel seeming intact, but it lay at a ten-degree list on the bottom. If she hadn’t received the Bolshoi-Feniks message, she would be convinced that it was a sunken wreck.

“Can you find the hatch of their escape chamber?”

“Nothing on the lower hatch cam yet,” she said. “Wait, I have the forward edge of the conning tower. I have mast opening hatches visible.”

“A little more aft,” Kovalov said. “Just a few more meters.”

“I think I have it,” Trusov said.

The sound of a banging, clanging noise came through the hull from below.

“They’re pounding on the hull for rescue,” Kovalov said.

“They didn’t get a response to their message,” Trusov said. “Lowering the skirt to their hatch.” She reached into the overhead and hit a toggle switch. “Energizing vacuum pump. Skirt pump-down progressing. Opening high-pressure air to the skirt. Skirt draining, and I have a dry skirt.”

Kovalov unbuckled. “I’ll go to the lower hatch and organize getting the survivors onboard.”

“Phone me with progress, Captain,” Trusov said, glancing at her watch.

It was urgent they got the personnel off the wreck of the Belgorod and made their way to open water before the reactor breathed its last.

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev hoisted the sledgehammer and took a hard swing at the hull at a spot where he’d had the insulation removed. A reverberating clang slammed the eardrums of the survivors in the escape chamber. He hit the hull a second time, then a third, handing the heavy tool to Communications Officer Vilen Shvets, who took over and started banging on the hull.

Alexeyev looked around the escape chamber and counted heads. He had the crew from the central command post and most of the engineering personnel. Two of the test wives had been found and brought to the upper level to climb into the escape chamber, but their commander and first officer, Svetlana Anna and Selena Laura, hadn’t been found — probably dead from the atmospheric control machinery room’s explosion, he thought. The machinery room’s destruction had taken out the entire emergency assistance team that had their action stations in the crew’s messroom, waiting there to be directed to whatever damage control emergency needed them, and then the emergency ended up killing them all, some three dozen crewmen. Alexeyev counted twenty-five survivors including himself, out of a crew of seventy. Forty-one of the crew were confirmed dead, with nine missing. The lead test wife was one of the missing. Other than those nine, they’d identified the dead, with Lebedev noting the names for later, assuming they lived to tell the tale. Alexeyev shook his head. It had been a bad day, he thought, and it would get worse if Losharik didn’t hear them banging on the hull.

Captain Lieutenant Shvets had grown exhausted after a dozen hard slams of the sledgehammer, and he’d sat, sweating, the tool between his knees, when the sound of a banging noise came through the hull at the upper hatch. Alexeyev looked at Lebedev.

“Did you hear that?” he said. “Or am I dreaming?”

Shvets vaulted back to his feet and smacked the hull again with the sledgehammer. He was answered with a bang from outside.

“Open the upper hatch,” Alexeyev said, looking again at Lebedev. “If there’s no one there, he won’t be able to get the hatch opened because of the sea pressure. If the hatch opens? We’re rescued.”

He watched, holding his breath, as Shvets operated the circular hatch opening mechanism and pushed on the hatch.

The hatch came open.

Shvets blinked in the glare of a battlelantern from above.

It was Kovalov.

“Anybody awake in here?” Kovalov asked. “Can I interest anyone in a ride in a deep-diver submarine?”

Alexeyev smiled and laughed with Lebedev. He wiped a tear out of his eye.

They were rescued.

Captain Third Rank Svetlana Anna opened her closet door from the inside and peeked into her stateroom. Three times, crewmembers had opened the door and called for her, searching the room and her bathroom, but had finally given up. The noise of the crew abandoning ship had been loud for some time, as they marshaled heavy weather gear, emergency transmitters and rations and loaded the equipment and themselves into the escape chamber. Captain Alexeyev had called multiple times on the ship’s general announcing circuit for any survivors to muster at the ladder to the escape chamber hatch, which was close to the door to Anna’s stateroom.

When the noise of the crew’s evacuation was finally quiet, she’d waited another ten minutes, finally emerging into her stateroom. There were still lights, although they’d been flickering since the crew’s evacuation. There was probably not much time, Anna thought. The air was stuffy and hazy with smoke. It had been hard to breathe, just sitting in the closet. Anna imagined she’d get severely winded doing the next part of her mission.

The ship had been crippled and abandoned as a wreck. But the Status-6 Poseidon torpedoes had survived, the three of them nestled securely in their two-meter diameter torpedo tubes in the bow. With them intact, Anna’s mission was incomplete. The Navy could send Losharik or another deep-diver sub back here and pull the Status-6 units out of the wreckage and still use them. Her mission could only end, she thought, when those Poseidons were gone.

She stood and reached for the handle to the large rollaway bag. The black bag weighed over fifty kilograms and had taken two men to lug into the hatch and down to her stateroom. Northern Fleet security, on scanning their luggage for this run, had singled the bag out for a visual inspection, just as her FSB contact in Severomorsk had said they would, and she had fed the security inspector a cover story.

“It’s a hydrotherapy rig, Senior Lieutenant,” she’d said with a smile. “For high colonics.”

“Hydrotherapy? High colonics? What is that?” the security officer had asked.

Anna had pulled out a special nozzle connected to a thick black tube that snaked into the guts of the mechanicals inside the suitcase.

“It’s for a special kind of warm water enema. This nozzle gets special lubrication, and when the subject is sufficiently relaxed, this tube goes up into—“

The security officer had stopped her. “Ugh. That’s just disgusting. Please put it away.” He’d waved her on, and two enlisted personnel from Belgorod had muscled the heavy bag into her stateroom. She’d asked them to put it in the closet, hoping she’d never need it. But today, it would fulfil its destiny, she thought. Assuming it would work.

She hoped she’d be able to get it to the torpedo room without falling down the steep stairs. It was probably too delicate to survive a tumble down the stairs.

As she rolled it to the forward stairs, she could hear a banging noise from up above. She paused for a moment, and the noise came again. Probably someone banging on the hull, hoping for rescue, she thought.

She lined the bag up to the top of the stairs, climbing down four steps, pulling the handle of the bag down with her. The bag rotated until it was horizontal, then tilted downward. Anna pulled it slowly and it made a thump as it came down one step. She was breathing heavily, but she nodded to herself. She’d managed to keep control of the bag. Only fifteen more steps to go, she thought. With painstaking caution, she lowered the bag down each step, until finally it came to rest at the middle level landing. She pulled the handle and the bag was vertical again.

Anna was soaked in sweat and becoming exhausted, but there was just a little more to do, she thought. She pulled the bag with determination until she reached the hatchway to the first compartment. She undogged the hatch and opened it on the latch, then with a gigantic effort, pulled the bag up over the hatch coaming and into the first compartment. She pulled the rolling bag down the catwalks between the empty torpedo racks until she finally reached the forward bulkhead, where the door to the electronics room was located, where she’d come before to sabotage the tube launching mechanisms. She leaned the bag against the bulkhead and sank down to sit on the deck next to it, huffing, puffing, and sweating like she’d run a marathon.

The hammering and pounding had continued during her voyage to the forward bulkhead of the first compartment, but it had finally stopped. Either the crew had given up the attempt, she thought, or they’d been rescued by the Losharik. The latter seemed unlikely. A nuclear explosion violent enough to destroy Belgorod had to have been merciless on Losharik, but she imagined that it depended on the deep-diver sub’s distance to the detonation.

Still, she waited, just in case the Losharik was pulling crewmembers out of the escape chamber. After twenty minutes, with the air so unbreathable that Anna knew she was barely clinging to consciousness and could wait no more, she admitted to herself it was time. She unzipped the bag and discarded the hose and nozzle, which had been attached to the plumbing of the mechanism for show. She opened the latches of the door of the unit, exposing the arming controls. She rotated a switch from SAFE to ARMED. She rolled the TIME DELAY selector to its lowest setting, 5 minutes. She pressed the TIMED DETONATE button and watched the timer start rolling downward. Four minutes and fifty seconds.

Anna shut her eyes and tried to breathe deeply. In a few short minutes, the mission would be accomplished.

The bomb, a suitcase nuclear demolition explosive, was a compact hydrogen bomb designed to generate a twelve-kiloton thermonuclear explosion. The plasma from initial detonation would consume the front half of Belgorod, including the Poseidon torpedoes. They would be nothing but atoms after the detonation. The aft half of the boat might still exist, but would be mostly splinters and small pieces. The heavy components like the reactor vessels might survive, and the boilers, maybe the pumps, but the remaining wreckage would be unrecognizable as having belonged to a submarine.

And there would be nothing left of Svetlana Anna.

While she waited for the timer to roll down, the sweat rolling down her forehead, she tried to think about her happiest memory. It was the communal farm where she lived with her aunt and uncle when she was a little girl. They had owned an adorable Siberian Husky puppy named Baku, and Anna had delighted in playing with him. Baku, all his life, had had this unusual and funny bark, sort of a high-pitched rough-raow sound, that she would imitate and bark back at him, which would make him smile and bounce on his front paws and bark even louder at her. She’d been inseparable from Baku all through school and college, but Baku had gotten old and one summer day he stopped eating and just lay on his bed, whining. Anna wouldn’t leave his side, putting blankets down next to him to try to keep him company during the night, and the last night, while she held him, his whining gave way to wheezing, and finally, the wheezing got quieter and shallower, and Baku breathed his last. As Anna remembered, a tear leaked out of her eye.

The timer of the bomb ran out. There was a loud click, and then Anna’s vision was filled with a blindingly bright light that faded to a deep black, but oddly, the blackness had a texture to it, almost as if it were made of dark thunderclouds, and the clouds were rotating around her and seemed to form a sort of tunnel, and a lightness grew at the center of the tunnel, at what seemed a tremendous distance, until the light grew brighter and warmer and then the strangest thing happened.

Svetlana Anna could hear a noise.

It was a happy noise.

Rough-raow, the sound came. Rough-raow!

It was Baku!

The memory of that trip was so vivid, it seemed like it happened yesterday, despite it having been over a month ago.

“Can I get you a drink, ma’am?”

“After a day like this? I think a vodka martini with a twist, chilled and up,” CIA Director Margo Allende said to the steward.

The Gulfstream SS-12A jet had lifted off from Ronald Reagan International at 1800, climbing swiftly east-northeast toward the Atlantic.

She looked across the aisle at Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Rob Catardi, who had asked for an old fashioned. The steward came by with a tray and handed her a drink, then set down Catardi’s.

“Do you think this has any chance of success?” she asked Catardi.

Catardi shrugged. “Who knows what the crazy Russians will do at any moment,” he said. “I’m just surprised they accepted your invitation.”

She nodded, then opened her tablet computer and scanned through the intelligence updates. The Status-6 torpedoes were late being loaded onto Belgorod. The intel brief suspected that there were technical problems with them, and the shipyard at Sevmash had recalled them for modifications. But Allende knew the truth, that CIA’s assets within the shipyard had been sabotaging the torpedoes. Unfortunately, the Status-6 units had been placed under more rigid security — perhaps someone suspecting sabotage — and the units left Sevmash fully functional.

Meanwhile, the submarine USS New Jersey was being prepared for its run north to linger outside the Kola Peninsula submarine bases, to trail the Belgorod, and if need be, put it on the bottom. The raging debate was how to provide the new submarine with a crew, since her crew had spent three years building her, with only a few weeks of sea trials, and were considered incapable of a top-secret special operation.

In other news, the previous project submarine USS Vermont was considered a wreck after a disastrous fire in the forward compartment while in drydock, and plans were being drawn up to mate Vermont’s aft compartment to the new USS Massachusetts’ forward compartment, restoring the Vermont to operational status in six months or less. Vermont would be renamed, according to the article, since it was soon to be half Massachusetts. The Navy announced plans to rename it to be the USS New England, in honor of the two states forming her hull. That left the aft portion of the former Massachusetts, to be mated to a repaired Vermont front end, and which so far hadn’t been renamed. American Party Senator Michaela Everett had floated the idea of naming the submarine the USS Michael A. Pacino. Allende smiled at that, wondering what Pacino would think of that. He’d probably hate it, she thought, smiling to herself.

After the drinks were carried away, she and Catardi were served a light dinner. Allende took a sleeping pill, downing it with a sparkling water, put on a sleeping mask, leaned her leather seat far back, and tried to sleep. It was insane, she thought, how when she needed to sleep, sleep evaded her. But when she needed to stay awake? She could sleep ten hours.

Finally she fell into an uneasy slumber, seeing the imagined scene of the chalet and the Russians they’d be meeting, and in the craziness of the dream, she, Rob and the two Russians were trying to decide how to get rid of a dead body.

She finally woke when shaken gently awake by the steward. “We’re descending into Geneva, ma’am,” he said.

Catardi looked at her with amusement. “You talked in your sleep,” he said, smirking. “Probably not the best thing for the CIA director to be sleep-talking.”

“Oh God, what did I say?” she asked.

“You kept saying ‘Michael, I have the body.’ There are several interpretations one could make of that,” he laughed.

Allende rubbed her forehead. “Now I have a headache.”

They landed gently at Cointrin Geneva Airport, taxied to the general aviation building, and climbed out. On the tarmac, a black SUV waited. The steward loaded their luggage in the back and handed Allende a heavy parka. “May as well have this with you in the car, ma’am. It will be chilly on the way to the chalet.”

The drive to the chalet went quickly, although it was a hundred kilometers from the airport, through a winding mountain road. At the higher altitude, the ground became snow-covered, blinding from the glare of the morning sunshine.

Eventually they arrived at the chalet, a huge log affair overlooking a wide and deep valley. The roof and grounds were under several feet of snow, and the air was crisp and cold. The front door opened and a hostess smiled and invited them in, taking their coats while the driver brought in their luggage. Allende looked at her overnight bag, thinking that if this went the way she hoped, she’d never need it, and they could return to the airport that same day.

“Are the other guests here yet?” Allende asked.

“They phoned from the road, ma’am,” the hostess said. “You can set up in the living room if you’d like. We’ve had a fire built for you, per your request.”

“No conference room?” Catardi asked Allende.

Allende shook her head. “I figured the less formal this meeting, the better.”

The hostess served coffee and set up a tea service on the coffee table for the Russians, with two bottles of Jewel of Russia vodka and four glasses. Allende could hear noise from the foyer, the arrival of the Russians.

They walked into the room then, the tall, slender and well-built figure of the SVR Chairman Lana Lilya and behind her, Vice Admiral Pavel Zhabin, the chief of staff and first deputy commander of the Russian Navy, technically their number three man, but the deputy commander, Mikhail Myshkin, had died the week before and the chief commander of the Navy, Admiral Anatoly Stanislav, was fighting pancreatic cancer — unsuccessfully — and had just been admitted to hospice care in Moscow. With Stanislav sick and Myshkin dead, Zhabin was by default the commanding admiral of the Russian Navy. If Admiral Zhabin was Catardi’s equivalent, SVR Chairman Lana Lilya, as head of the foreign intelligence service, was Allende’s.

They shook hands and introduced themselves, finally sitting around the coffee table. Catardi spoke first.

“Admiral Zhabin, I’m sorry to hear about Admirals Stanislav and Myshkin,” Catardi opened.

Zhabin nodded but smiled. “I’m sorry as well. Admiral Stanislav was brilliant, but a harsh taskmaster. A screamer, as you Americans would say. Many in the fleet are happy to see him go. But to me, he was sort of a second father. And Myshkin, well, Myshkin was just an overgrown aide de camp to Stanislav, and he and I never got along, God rest his soul.”

“Funny how office politics are embedded in all human activity,” Allende said.

“That they are, Madam Allende.”

“Call me Margo, Admiral,” she said.

“And I’m just Rob,” Catardi said.

Zhabin grinned. “Pavel is fine for me. You can always use the nickname the fleet has for me. Litso Smerti. ‘Death Face.’”

“I think Pavel works.” Allende smiled at Zhabin.

“Of course, call me Lana,” Lilya said, not smiling.

“Would you care for tea?” Allende offered. “Coffee?”

Zhabin eyed the vodka bottle, his eyes twinkling. “For a secret covert meeting like this, may I suggest something stronger?”

Catardi grabbed the glasses and filled each with the vodka, handing them out, then sitting again. Zhabin raised his glass. “A toast. To fallen comrades.” They toasted, and then Lilya said, “And a second toast, to cooperation between the intelligence agencies and navies of the world’s superpowers.”

Allende smiled and drank. She knew the business of the meeting was about to start, and she’d debated with herself how to present the matter to the Russians. She opened her pad computer and selected an image of the Status-6 weapon.

“We wanted to talk to you about the Poseidon torpedoes,” she said, changing the image to an overhead view of the east coast of the United States. “Or Status-6 units. We’ve gotten word that your president has ordered them deployed off our Navy bases, here, here, and here.” Red circles glowed at New London, Connecticut; Norfolk, Virginia; and Kings Bay, Georgia. “We know that your special project submarine Belgorod is getting ready to put to sea with three of the Status-6 torpedoes. Meanwhile, one of our own submarines is preparing to go to the Barents Sea and shadow the Belgorod. And as you both know, armed warships in a tense situation like this, well, bad things can happen.”

There was silence in the room for a moment. Allende expected the Russians to deny her assertions, to tell her that she was very much mistaken, but to her surprise, Lana Lilya’s face softened. She put down her glass and looked at Allende, then Catardi.

“There are many of us in the president’s administration who virulently disagree with the invention of this weapon. And with its deployment. We’ve voiced our concerns to President Vostov, but he has turned a deaf ear to us. We have been looking for a way to prevent this disastrous mission. We even had Sevmash engineers sabotage the three weapons earmarked for Belgorod, hoping they would be loaded onto the vessel, and only many weeks later, be shown to be defective and inert. But a self-test audit by the Belgorod’s weapons officer in the factory showed the defect, and Sevmash engineers were forced to fix the weapons under her supervision. There was no further opportunity to sabotage the Poseidons before they were loaded onto Belgorod.”

So that was why the torpedoes were late to be loaded, Allende thought, with the sabotage detected.

“But we have another means of stopping this deployment,” Zhabin said. “We have an agent in place on the submarine.” He withdrew an envelope from his briefcase and pulled out a photo of a beautiful woman in a Navy uniform. “Captain Third Rank Svetlana Anna. She’s a test wife. Previously known as a comfort woman.”

Allende nodded.

“Captain Anna has a number of methods to stop this mission,” Zhabin continued. “We are hoping that we can end this with no loss of life to the Belgorod crew, but that is not assured. We’d ask that you avoid ordering your submarine to attack Belgorod. For one thing, she is armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes, and President Vostov has gotten very permissive with nuclear release authority since your use of them this summer. I guarantee, if your submarine tangles with Belgorod, it will go poorly for them.”

“Which means, your deployment of the Status-6 units would succeed,” Catardi said. “This agent, what is she planning on doing?”

“She’ll monitor the tactical situation,” Lilya said. “She is prepared to take out the torpedo-launching capabilities of the torpedo tubes. If that fails, she can sabotage atmospheric controls, forcing the Belgorod to abandon the mission and return home. In the ultimate case, where nothing succeeds, she is equipped with a nuclear demolition munition. That would destroy these Status-6 torpedoes for good, although it would be deleterious to the crew.”

Deleterious indeed, Allende thought.

“For our part, Admiral and Chairwoman, we’ll insist on rules of engagement for our submarine that will keep them from firing on Belgorod,” Allende said.

“But we can’t guarantee anything if Belgorod fires on our sub first,” Catardi said, frowning, his expression suddenly fierce. “Our submariners are trained to return fire, and they won’t stop until there’s nothing left of Belgorod. Our rules of engagement will specify to only fire when fired upon, but if fired upon, rest assured, our submarine will unleash the fires of Hell itself on the Belgorod.”

“Understood, Admiral,” Zhabin said, smiling. “I would make the same orders in your position.”

“Is there anything we can do on our end to help you?” Allende asked.

Lilya answered. “Tell your president that these weapons are opposed by much of Vostov’s own government. But ask him to let us solve the problem ourselves.”

Allende nodded. “Admiral Catardi? Anything to add?”

“Not from my end. I want to thank you for meeting us,” Catardi said.

Zhabin smiled. “Another toast, Admiral and Madam Director. To success with no loss of life.”

Catardi and Allende drank. By the time the farewells had been said, Allende was getting fuzzy from the vodka. She and Catardi watched as the Russian’s vehicle vanished down the mountain road, then climbed into their SUV for the trip to the airport.

Back in the Gulfstream, as it lined up to take off, Catardi looked over at Allende.

“How’d you know the Russians would be open to a talk about this? How’d you know they didn’t agree with Vostov’s placement of Poseidon torpedoes?”

Margo Allende tilted her head and grinned at Catardi. “I’m CIA. We know everything.”

But since that meeting, the situation had gone to holy hell.

“Margo,” Vice President Pacino said harshly to the Situation Room full of admirals, generals, and intelligence agency senior officers. “What the bloody hell is going on up there?”

“Admiral Sutton, ONI, has an analysis for us, Mr. Vice President,” Allende said.

Frieda Sutton walked to the large display of the chart of the Arctic Ocean. “Our seismic and sonar sensors output their data, that was examined using triangulation from widely separated sensors to come up with this analysis, but be aware, this is by no means definitive. Mr. Vice President, this is our best guess.”

“Skip the goddamned fine print,” Pacino barked. “Just get to it.”

“Yes, sir. Starting yesterday at 1320 Zulu time, the first nuclear detonation was detected here, in the range of one megaton. We believe this was a Russian Magnum torpedo, or, as the Russians call it, a Gigantskiy.” The plot zoomed into a space on the map, at latitude 85 north. “For ninety minutes, there was nothing heard but the aftermath of the explosion, but when that calmed down, there was a very small explosion, probably an impact of a conventional torpedo, which was triangulated to the same place as the Magnum detonation. A few minutes later, at 1458 Zulu, a rocket launch was detected from approximately the same location. We believe this to be a Tomahawk SUBROC lifting off. At 1459, a second rocket launch was registered. Two minutes later, a second Magnum torpedo exploded, this one a few miles west of the original detonation. Very soon after, one of the SUBROCs exploded, perhaps ten or twelve miles north-northwest of the Magnum explosion, registering about 250 kilotons. We only recorded one SUBROC depth charge detonation. The other one must have been a dud.”

“Has there been any communication from the New Jersey?” Pacino asked.

A third-class petty officer in crackerjack blues knocked and was admitted. He rushed a pad computer over to Admiral Sutton, who scanned it quickly, then passed it to Admiral Catardi.

“Sir,” Sutton said, “we just got a detect of an emergency locator beacon, an ELB, coming from the zone of the first Magnum detonation.”

“Is there a situation report?” Pacino asked.

“There was a faint transmission,” Sutton said. “It was garbled. All we have is the ELB, which is just a dumb SOS transmitter that tries to upload its latitude and longitude.”

Pacino turned to Air Force General Abdul Zaka, the chairman of the joint chiefs. “General, what’s the status of search and rescue aircraft being dispatched to this ELB site?”

“Sir,” Zaka started, glancing at the table, a sure sign the news was bad. “SAR was terminated an hour ago. There’s a ‘once in a generation’ storm equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane brewing out of north Canada that’s headed to the pole.” He projected his display, and Sutton’s map disappeared, a weather map taking its place over the north pole, the circulation of the massive storm showing it approaching the pole within the next hour. “Mr. Vice President, we’re grounded, from Alaska to the Baffin Bay.”

“Can we ask the Russians for help?” Pacino asked.

Zaka shook his head. “By the time they put together aircraft and crews, sir, the storm will have overtaken the ELB location. In a few hours, the entire Arctic Ocean will be socked in.”

“How long will this persist?” Pacino demanded.

“At best, three days. At worst, two weeks,” Zaka said.

“Admiral Catardi,” Pacino said, “What’s the status of the rescue submarines?”

“Sir, the Hyman G. Rickover and the Montana left a week ago per your orders. They’ve departed the marginal ice zone north of the Kola Peninsula and have proceeded under total ice cover, but as you know, it’s a slow slog once under ice, and our ability to communicate with them is limited.”

Pacino stood. “Send them the location of the ELB, and tell them to hurry,” he said. He looked at Allende. “I want to see the CIA director and the CNO in my study.”

Allende glanced at Catardi. She’d never seen Pacino this furious before.

28

Captain Seagraves paused outside the plug trunk hatch. “What was that?”

A bright flash suddenly lit the landscape from the west. He climbed out of the hatch to the deck above. On the ice on the ship’s port side, what looked like a thousand packages, parcels and equipment containers were piled, with the crewmen opening them and carrying them up the slight incline to a flat spot a ship length away from the rapidly freezing spot of open water. They’d nailed together half a dozen wood crate lids to form a makeshift gangway between the hull and the thick ice.

A few seconds after the flash, the shock wave hit, knocking Seagraves and the other crewman to the deck or the ice. Far to the west, a bright orange mushroom cloud appeared and rose slowly, angrily toward the sky. The roaring blast was so loud that Seagraves lost all hearing for a moment. He forced himself to look away from the blast.

“Don’t look at the mushroom cloud!” he screamed out, his own voice sounding muted in his ears. He pulled himself to his feet, the ringing loud in his ears. When the flash had darkened, he turned around to glance at the explosion, then back away. His eyes met Quinnivan’s.

“What the hell did that, Captain?” XO Quinnivan said, lifting his goggles up to his forehead. The fur-lined hood of his arctic parka blew in the slight breeze. Seagraves looked over to the west, where the mushroom cloud had bloomed.

“I wonder if that was the position of the Belgorod,” Seagraves wondered aloud.

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino emerged from the hatch after pushing a parcel up to the deck. He stood on the deck and shaded his eyes and looked west. “Maybe a nuclear self-destruct charge, XO,” he said. “That couldn’t be Belgorod’s torpedo room going up. We’re fairly sure they jettisoned all their conventional torpedoes. And that detonation was way more explosive power than a conventional charge.”

“It was too small for a Magnum warhead detonation,” Seagraves said, steadfast in his practice not to call the Russian nuclear-tipped torpedo a Gigantskiy. “A one megaton blast would have knocked us a hundred feet from the boat and likely burned our exposed skin off.”

“Why would they need a demolition charge?” Lieutenant Vevera asked, joining the group.

Lieutenant Commander Lewinsky stepped over. “Maybe trying to create open water,” he said. “When the first Omega went down, their escape chamber detached and got trapped under the ice canopy. Maybe this Omega decided to blow a nice hole of open water overhead before ejecting the escape chamber.”

“How do we even know what happened to the first Omega, if the chamber got trapped under ice?” Pacino asked.

“Because the U.S. sub trailing that Omega — your dad’s boat — emergency blew through the ice and the impact opened up a polynya,” Lewinsky said. “And as it turned out, our guys rescued their guys.”

“Jaysus,” Quinnivan said. “Still, an explosive to open up a polynya wouldn’t be nuclear, or if it were, it wouldn’t be that big. That blast had to be the size of the Hiroshima bomb.”

“We should investigate,” Pacino said. “If that was an attempt to make open water for an escape chamber, the Russians could have survived. They’d be there, on the ice.”

“I doubt an escape chamber would have survived that blast,” Quinnivan said. “The wind’s picking up. The broadcast called for a massive arctic storm, Mr. Pacino. No one’s going out in that.”

“When does it get here?” Pacino asked.

“The storm is two to four hours out, Mr. Pacino,” Quinnivan said. “Even if you started now, you’d get caught in it by the time you got to the detonation location, which, I’d remind you, is a high radiation zone.”

“Maybe it was closer, Captain, XO,” Pacino said. “We could set off that way and turn back when the wind picks up.”

“Absolutely not,” Quinnivan said. “You’d be in a whiteout. Hell, I don’t even know if we have a compass in our survival gear capable of functioning this close to the north pole. Be thankful you just survived the universe’s latest attempt to kill you, young Pacino. So stay put. Help putting up the shelter. We need it urgently, before the storm gets here.”

“Aye, sir,” Pacino said, grimacing and setting off with Vevera, Dankleff, and Lewinsky to lug gear up the hill to the shelter taking shape.

When they’d walked away, Seagraves looked at Quinnivan. “You know, XO, I would have let them go.”

“And lose the son of the vice president in a storm?” Quinnivan said. “Or to radiation? Are you insane?”

“I could have kept him behind and sent Vevera and Dankleff.”

“Good luck with that, Skipper. Pacino would howl like a wolf with his paw cut off if you tried to keep him from a mission like that.”

Seagraves looked over at the damaged hull of the USS New Jersey. The sail had a large dent on the port side, as if a giant fist had hit it, and it was leaking hydraulic fluid, the hull below the sail covered with oil. The hull’s anechoic coating was blown off all over the deck and the towed array fairing was gone. The boat was settling into the water, its up-angle even more alarming than it was ten minutes before from the shaft seal flooding and the flooding from auxiliary seawater in the aft compartment.

“Do you think anyone heard our distress call or our situation report?” Seagraves asked.

“Doubtful, Captain,” Quinnivan replied. “The antennae are, to use the technical term, tits-up. Almost to the point of being, to use another technical term, broke-dick.”

“Yeah,” Seagraves said. “Any luck with the SLOT buoy encoder?” They’d salvaged half a dozen radio buoys, but the laptops used to encode messages into them were hopelessly out-of-commission.

“The encoders are even worse, Skipper. They’ve — to use another technical term — shit the bed.”

“I hate when that happens, XO.” Seagraves sniffed the air. The occasional breeze had picked up, a gentle wind blowing in from the south. “What about the emergency locater beacons?”

“We lit off all three at intervals,” Quinnivan said. “We can’t verify they worked. But they looked okay. Our hopes rest on them, at the moment.”

“Let’s get the strobe beacon going, XO,” Seagraves ordered. “Visible light and infrared, full azimuth and inclination. If the clouds get too thick for aircraft to see us, maybe a satellite can detect our position.”

“You want the strobe programmed to do ‘S.O.S.’ in Morse code?” Quinnivan asked.

Seagraves shook his head. “Do we know today’s call sign for the New Jersey? The two letter group for ELF radio signals?”

“I’ll bet the radio guys know, Skipper, although their chief, Gory Goreliki, didn’t make it. You want that programmed into the strobe?”

“Do this, XO. Have the strobe give off our call sign, then pause and transmit ‘S.O.S.,’ in case someone else can get a visual on us. Drones, satellites, or SAR aircraft.”

“Done, sir. I’ll see to it.”

Chief Torpedoman Fleshy Fleshman climbed out of the hull and approached Seagraves and Quinnivan, stepping carefully on the makeshift wooden gangplank. He froze for a moment, glancing at the smoke that had risen from the mushroom cloud to the west.

Fleshy’s callsign was a misnomer, as he was skinny as a prisoner on a hunger strike. Even in his thick arctic parka, he looked like a waif.

“Captain. XO,” Fleshman said, saluting the two men, who returned the gesture. Submariners rarely saluted when surfaced at the ice, but Fleshman was old school, having been raised by three proud generations of chief petty officers, all torpedomen, his great-grandfather serving on the original Nautilus, his grandfather on the Cold War boat Piranha and his father on the East China Sea War 688-class boat Olympia. “I’ve opened up two torpedo warheads and removed them for use as demolition charges. I’ve got one ready in the reactor compartment’s shielded tunnel and the second nestled in with the Mark 48s in the torpedo room. My guys are rigging up the wires and the detonation triggers now.”

“How is the battery?”

“It’s almost dead, Captain. Battery compartment hasn’t taken on water yet, but it’s just a matter of time. It won’t be long now, sir.”

“Chief, get your men out and bring those triggers. Get on the 1MC and order the ship evacuated, no exceptions.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Fleshman said, saluting again and turning to hurry into the doomed hull.

“The water will reach the plug trunk hatch soon,” Seagraves said sadly. “I’m going to be damned sad to see the great submarine USS New Jersey sink.”

“We didn’t have much time with this old girl,” Quinnivan said. “But in a few short months, the Vermont will be hammered back together. Or I guess I should say, the New England.”

“You think they’ll let us have her back?” Seagraves asked wistfully.

“After losing New Jersey? Probably not, Skipper.”

“Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”

“There’s still time if you want to go back aboard and say good-bye, Captain. Just be quick about it.”

“No, XO. I’ll say good-bye from up here.”

“Prudent decision, sir. Sir, while we wait, perhaps you can read off the names of our dead to honor them.”

Seagraves nodded. “Attention all hands,” he called, his voice projecting out over the ice. “I want to take this moment to commemorate our dead friends and shipmates. Lieutenant Commander Alyssa Kelly. Lieutenant Commander Wanda Styxx. Lieutenant Don Eisenhart.”

Seagraves continued, until all twenty-four names of the dead were read off.

Finally, Fleshy Fleshman climbed out of the plug truck, two engineering watchstanders helping him with the wire coils, another three emerging after Fleshman. They unwound the wire spools along the gangway, which was splintering and disintegrating. Fleshman approached and saluted again. “Everyone’s out of the hull, sir.”

Seagraves and Quinnivan returned the salute. “Very well, Chief,” Seagraves said, his voice cracking. He sniffed, then blew his nose into a handkerchief.

Fleshman took a knee at Seagraves feet, stripped the wires on the spools and terminated them onto the detonation triggers he pulled out of his oversize parka pockets.

“Hurry up, Chief,” Quinnivan said, looking at the New Jersey. The hull had settled to the point that water was about to pour into the open plug trunk hatch. “She’s about to go down.”

Fleshman finished with the wires and handed the two switches to Seagraves. “The T-switch rotates ninety degrees clockwise, Captain. That will detonate the charges. You’ll want to start with this one, which is the reactor compartment. Then, immediately after, the torpedo room.”

The crew had abandoned their chores of hauling equipment and material up the hill to the shelter and assembled in a large group behind Seagraves and Quinnivan. In the front row, Pacino rubbed his fingers together with his gloves half-off, the cold starting to soak into his bones the minute physical activity stopped. A gust of wind blew off his hood. He shivered and pulled it back on, tightening it with the strings on either side.

“You should say some words, Skipper,” Quinnivan said to Seagraves, noting the crowd of the crew behind them, all there to witness the death throes of the New Jersey.

“I’m not much of a man for speeches,” Seagraves said. “But I’ll try.” He cleared his throat and turned toward the crowd, then glanced back at the New Jersey hull, which had begun to ship water into the plug trunk. “Crew,” he said loudly. “At this time, I commit the United States submarine New Jersey to the depths of the Arctic Ocean. I know I speak for all of you when I say to this sacred collection of steel, cables, and electronics, thank you for safeguarding us to this point in our lives. We will all go on with those lives, but none of us will ever forget you, and the immortal spirit of the USS New Jersey will perpetually be in our hearts and in our souls for the rest of our days.”

Seagraves twisted the first T-handle and a resounding thump came from the hull, and the ship seemed to rise slightly from the water for just an instant. Seagraves looked back at the crowd.

“All hands, back up twenty yards,” he ordered as he dropped the first detonator to the ice. “This one’s going to be a bit more violent. You too, XO.”

When the crew had backed up, Seagraves twisted the second detonator, and a similar loud thump sounded, the bow lifting slightly out of the water, and then the secondary detonations started, and a tremendous explosion blew the bow wide open, shrapnel blowing over the ice and what was left of the open water, a huge billowing orange mushroom cloud rising over the ice and into the heavens.

After that, it only took the USS New Jersey four seconds to depart the surface. What was left of her hull hit the bottom seven hundred feet below less than two minutes later.

Seagraves wiped dust and soot off his parka, his hood, and his face, dropping the second detonator to the ice. Twenty yards up the slope of the hill, Pacino could swear he saw a tear streaking down the captain’s sooty face.

“Pilot, Engineer,” Chief Engineer Chernobrovin said in Systems Officer Trusov’s headphones. “We’ve lost the reactor.”

Trusov’s voice was biting over the intercom. “What do you mean, you lost it? Did it wander off somewhere?”

“Pilot, all reactor control rods are fully withdrawn from the core, but reactor coolant temperature is dropping, as is steam pressure to the turbines. We’re thirty seconds from reactor plant shutdown due to fuel exhaustion.”

Trusov looked over at Captain Sergei Kovalov. “Why the hell did they send us out with three percent fuel, Captain? Why?”

Kovalov looked at Trusov, frowning. “Continue on with battery power,” he said, as he vaulted out of his mission commander seat to the space behind his and Trusov’s seats, but in front of Vlasenko’s and Dobryvnik’s seat.

“Engineer, Pilot,” Trusov said over the intercom, “continue propulsion on the battery.”

“I’m raising the periscope,” Kovalov said. “I might be able to find open water from the Gigantskiy detonation from the light filtering down from above.”

The sudden and violent explosion from behind them shook the ship hard, the vessel heeling over thirty degrees, then slowly returning to an even keel. The overhead lights flickered, but mercifully, they stayed lit.

“Captain, what was that?” Trusov asked, even though she knew Kovalov knew as little as she did. “What bearing was it?”

“It was to the west,” Kovalov said, training the periscope to look behind them. “I’ve got nothing visually. No surprise,” he said, training the scope forward again.

Trusov turned her display to the navigation plot, which had been overlaid with ice thicknesses, showing where they’d been and the ice pressure ridges forming walls of this box-shaped area. The position of the Belgorod was plotted as a blood-red dot. The explosion had to have come from Belgorod, four miles aft of them. Perhaps one of the Status-6 units cooking off, but at a partial yield. If it had blown up at full strength of ten megatons, Losharik would have been blown to bits at this distance.

“Pilot, Engineer,” the intercom clicked. “Four percent battery life. I’ve got leakage in the sixth and seventh compartments from whatever that explosion was. I’m not starting the drain pumps since they would draw the battery all the way down.”

“Engineer, Pilot, concur,” Trusov snapped into her boom microphone. “We’re taking on water, Captain,” she said to Kovalov. “I hope you’ve got something on the scope.”

“Nothing yet,” Kovalov said.

“Pilot, Engineer, three percent battery and the boat’s taking on an up-angle from the leakage.”

“More like flooding,” Trusov muttered. “Understood,” she said into the intercom. “Maintain propulsion on the battery.”

It occurred to Trusov then that this was the day. This was the day. The last in her life. She, the Losharik crew and the rescued personnel from Belgorod would all die down here. She couldn’t think of a more desolate place to die than a cold, dark, drifting nuclear submarine trapped under polar ice. Whenever she considered the idea of her own mortality, she figured she would eventually die in some kind of battle, a conflict, perhaps, with the Americans. But never of old age. She’d always felt like a young soul, she thought. If she’d had previous lives, she imagined that she had died young in all of them. And now she would die young in this one.

“Two percent battery,” Engineer Chernobrovin announced on the intercom.

“Captain, it’s now or never,” Trusov said.

“Bring us five degrees to the left,” Kovalov ordered.

“You have something?” Trusov asked, as she pushed the joystick control of the rudder over, changing course by five degrees.

“Pilot, Engineer, one percent battery.”

“Captain, please tell us you have good news,” Trusov said, her voice too loud in the cramped cockpit.

“Pilot, Engineer, circuits are shutting down. Battery power is gone.”

“Blow all ballast!” Kovalov yelled.

Trusov hit the twin toggle switches to open the large-bore valves admitting high-pressure air from the main air banks to the forward and aft ballast tanks.

Two seconds later, the lights went out, the panel displays went out and the Losharik became a derelict, drifting collection of titanium, steel, cables, and electronics.

But in the room, Trusov could hear the sound of high-pressure air blowing into the ballast tanks. She took off her headset and leaned back in her pilot’s seat, pulling her hair out of her eyes. She shut her eyes. When she opened them, the dim light of battle lanterns lit the space in an eerie, shadowy semidarkness.

Maybe today wasn’t the day after all, she thought with relief, and as she did, she realized it seemed almost like a prayer giving thanks.

Captain Second Rank Irina Trusov grabbed her arctic parka and climbed out of the main egress hatch. She reached down and helped up Belgorod Captain Georgy Alexeyev, who looked around at the icescape around them.

Losharik had surfaced through a large polynya. If Trusov’s nav plot had been correct, this was on the path that the second Gigantskiy had taken on the way to the Americans, but it had blown up way too early. Off in the distance, she could see the rise of the pressure ridge that had been the target of the Gigantskiy. It had to be at least five nautical miles out.

She stepped to the aft part of the hull that was closest to thick ice and stepped off. The crew and the Belgorod rescued personnel were offloading whatever supplies they could grab. Battlelanterns, blankets, rations. But the boat’s up-angle had gotten worse and the upper rudder was no longer visible as the hull settled into the sea. There were only minutes left before the boat sank to the point that the water came in the egress hatch.

“Captain,” Trusov said to Kovalov, “should we shut the egress hatch and seal the boat? With the inter-compartment hatches shut, perhaps only the sixth and seventh compartments will be fully flooded. The boat could be salvaged.”

“Possibly,” Kovalov said, “but perhaps not by us. Leave the egress hatch open. We’ll let her flood. The water is too shallow here to crush her hull, but seawater will degrade any systems the Americans could use.”

The survivors of Belgorod and the Losharik crew stood among the offloaded gear and watched as the deep-diver submarine began taking on water through the open egress hatch.

“Good-bye, Losharik,” Captain Kovalov said, his voice trembling, his hand over his heart.

“It was a good boat,” Alexeyev said to Kovalov. “It saved our lives.”

“Imagine if we’d had a full load of nuclear fuel,” Kovalov said. “We could have sailed right into Kola Submarine Base.”

As they watched, the bow angled up, the hatch went under, and eventually the conning tower lowered into the dark water, the boat standing straight up, the bow pointing at the sky, until it settled lower in the water, and after a long moment of the bow hanging there, the hull gave up and sank out of sight, with nothing but a thousand bubbles rising to the surface to mark her departure.

Georgy Alexeyev listened to see if he’d hear the sound of the hull hitting the bottom, but it was no longer quiet on the icecap. The wind had risen steadily and it began to snow. At first, the flakes were almost microscopic, but then began to grow. He looked over at Kovalov.

“We need to walk,” he said. “East-northeast. Eight kilometers.”

“What are you talking about?” Kovalov said.

Alexeyev pulled Kovalov away from the crowd. “Remember the ghost of Matveev?” he said.

“Oh no. Another revelation?”

“She returned. She was more specific this time. She said east-northeast. Eight kilometers. She said we had a long walk in front of us.”

“But, Georgy, there’s nothing to the east-northeast,” Kovalov said.

“Yes, there is,” Alexeyev said. “The Americans have a camp.”

Kovalov shook his head. “Georgy, you are mistaken. The Americans are no more.”

There was the sound of a loud thump from the east-northeast, then the sight of a bright orange flash, the sound of the explosion coming a few seconds later, the force of it shaking the ice beneath their feet. A mushroom cloud of orange flames rose up into the sky, shrouded by dark smoke.

Kovalov stared at the mushroom cloud, which had calmed down and was no longer orange flames, but only dark smoke wafting upward.

“Maybe the Americans were there,” Kovalov said. “But after that, they probably aren’t any longer.”

“They just blew up their weapons to avoid salvage of their submarine,” Alexeyev said. “Just as we would have if we’d had the means.”

“You seem convinced the Americans are still alive,” Kovalov said, looking at Alexeyev as if he’d escaped from a psychiatric hospital.

“I know they are,” Alexeyev said, his hand rubbing his right eye, missing his eye patch. “Engineer Matveev knew they would be. Come on. Let’s get this crowd moving. Walk toward the smoke of that explosion.”

The wind howled and the quarter-sized snowflakes blew horizontally, illuminated by the ghostly strobe light that lit up the polar night, the lamps of it broadcasting at all points of the compass and straight up, the Morse code spelling “D.X…. S.O.S.” and repeating over and over.

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino pulled his fur-lined hood close to his face, the mask beneath it ineffective against the wind and snow. Above the mask, his clear goggles kept fogging up. He’d put them on top of his inner hood beneath the parka hood, but then his eyes felt like they were freezing and he’d have to put the goggles back on.

He paced back and forth in front of the entrance vestibule of the high density polyethylene bubble of the shelter, the bubble round and plump, the shape designed to avoid being blown over by high winds, the shelter’s corners and mid-walls secured into the ice by thirty-six-inch drilled steel foundations. Pacino could hear the rumbling of the diesel heater and diesel generator, barely audible over the roaring noise of the wind.

The vestibule outer door of the shelter opened and shut behind Captain Seagraves. He walked toward Pacino, who stood at attention, cradling his high-powered rifle.

“How are you doing, Mr. Pacino?” Seagraves asked, shouting over the noise of the wind.

“I was colder than I’ve ever been in my life two hours ago,” Pacino said, shouting back. “Now I’m used to it. That or I’m just numb.”

“Can you go on another hour?” Seagraves said, idly looking around the ice beyond the camp, but visibility was less than a hundred feet.

“Yes, Captain. No problem.”

“I brought you this,” Seagraves said, pulling a military helmet out of a fabric bag. “It has night vision and infrared. Strap it on under your parka hood. Use it occasionally.”

“What’s this for, Captain?”

“Polar bears,” Seagraves said. “The people in the shelter would be quite the meal for a hungry polar bear.”

Pacino nodded and pulled on the helmet, trying the night vision and infrared. If he pointed the monocular away from the strobe, he could see much farther. Not that there was anything to see.

“Captain, I’m thinking that if there is a polar bear, we should be eating him. How long will the rations last?”

Seagraves shook his head. “There’s a problem. They should have been good for four days, but anything with chicken in it is contaminated. Probably salmonella. We’ve got forty hands sick of food poisoning. I’m having the bad rations brought out of the shelter.”

“Are the other rations good?” Pacino hadn’t partaken of any of the emergency food supplies. He hadn’t been hungry over the last day. Who could be, he thought, with this shitshow going on?

“So far, the other meals seem okay, but the chicken was over half of our rations.”

“So, we’re down below two days,” Pacino said. “Maybe we could use the bad chicken rations for a polar bear trap.”

“I’ve read about polar bear meat,” Seagraves said. “It’s said to have worms in the flesh that would infect humans, to the point of fatality, that resist cooking unless you burn the hell out of the meat.”

“Well-done bear meat, even if it’s shoe leather, is better than nothing, Captain,” Pacino said.

“That assumes you can get a fire started out here, and with this wind, even if you could get it lit, how would you keep it lit?”

“I’ll work on it, Captain. A wind break, something to burn, some fuel and a lighter. Something to use as a grill or a spit.”

Seagraves clapped Pacino on the shoulder. “Try not to freeze solid out here, Mr. Pacino. I haven’t had much sleep over the last five days, so I’m going to try to shut my eyes in the shelter, but if there’s anything unusual, call for me.”

“Only thing I can think of that would be worth disturbing you is if our good friend Mr. Polar Bear shows up,” Pacino said.

Seagraves smiled. “Have a good remainder of your watch, Mr. Pacino. I’ll send the relieving section out a half-hour early. I’m doubling up on this watch. We need one man to make sure the other doesn’t fall asleep and die in the snow.”

“Good night, sir,” Pacino said, deciding to try the infrared monocular and the night vision. It was no better than regular human vision, he decided. There was just nothing to see.

“Just a little while longer,” Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev said to Captain Second Rank Irina Trusov, who was falling behind the group of people hiking toward the east-northeast, where they’d seen the explosion.

“I’m tired, Captain Alexeyev,” Trusov said over the hurricane wind of the storm. “I’m losing strength.”

“Do you want me to carry you?” Alexeyev asked.

Trusov looked at him in horror. “Dear God, no, sir. I’ll die in my boots before someone carries me.”

Alexeyev laughed, putting his arm around Trusov to help her walk. “Come on, we’re almost there.”

“Captain! What is that!” Trusov pointed out in front of them.

Alexeyev looked up. It was a flashing light, a strobe light. Were they both hallucinating it?

He shouted to the crowd. “Does anyone know Morse code and English letters?”

Captain Third Rank Chernobrovin, the engineer of the Losharik, held up his hand. “I know Morse, but not English letters.”

“What about ‘SOS,’ the international standard for distress?”

Chernobrovin nodded. “Yes, Captain, I know it.”

“Can you see the strobe?”

“I see it. Let me observe it for a moment.” Chernobrovin stared off into the distance. “There is definitely an SOS, but there are other letters I don’t know.”

“Let’s keep walking,” Alexeyev said. “Sergei, join me at the head of the column, we will need to approach the American camp carefully. No sense getting shot by a sentry.”

Pacino supervised as Chief Albanese emptied the tins of chicken entrees onto the ice about fifty feet away from the shelter and the distress strobe light.

“How’s this, Mr. Patch?”

“That should do it, Chief. Keep a weather eye out for polar bears, but if you see one, two to the central mass, then two to the head.”

“L.T., I’m going to empty the entire goddamned magazine into any polar bears happening by,” Albanese said. “But don’t you think they’re sheltering from this storm?”

“Even bears are too smart to be out in this storm,” Pacino said, but just in case, he pulled off his goggles and turned on the night vision, then put the infrared scope to his eye. “I’ll be dipped in shit,” he said in disbelief.

“Polar bear?” Albanese said, training his rifle the direction that Pacino had looked.

Pacino put his arm out to Albanese’s barrel, lowering it.

“It’s people,” Pacino said. “The Russians! Get to the shelter. Get the captain and XO.”

29

Sonarman Chief Albanese bolted for the shelter as the column of people slowly approached. The lead figures looked like two tall men supporting a limping, smaller female.

The captain, XO and navigator hurried out of the shelter, then the other junior officers, until the driving curiosity brought out all the crew but for the three dozen who were still deathly ill from the food poisoning. The New Jersey crew stood there in the driving winds and blinding snow until the approaching people could be made out in the light of the strobe lamp of the emergency beacon.

Pacino looked to his right at the captain. “Do you want the helmet, sir?” The column of people was a hundred yards long, maybe fifty of them. Seagraves took the helmet from Pacino, put it on and adjusted the infrared and night vision scopes. “Can you get a count, Captain?”

“I think so. Looks like twenty-four or twenty-five.”

The leaders of the column came closer, until their features could be made out. Pacino squinted in the blizzard, his mind filling with disbelief.

“Captain… Captain Alexeyev? Irina? Irina Trusov?”

One of the men holding up the near unconscious female was unmistakably Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev.

Alexeyev looked at Pacino, recognition dawning on his face.

“Lieutenant — Lieutenant Pacino, right?” Alexeyev’s voice was a weak croak, barely audible over the wind.

“You two know each other?” Seagraves asked.

“Captain,” Pacino said to Seagraves, “this is Captain Alexeyev of the Yasen-M submarine Kazan. And now presumably, captain of the Belgorod, right? Captain Alexeyev, this my commanding officer, Commander Tim Seagraves and my executive officer, Commander Jeremiah Seamus Quinnivan, Royal Navy. You remember Lieutenant Dankleff? And our SEAL officers?”

Alexeyev dropped to one knee, exhausted, the female kneeling with him, the other burly man looking at Seagraves.

“I’m Captain Kovalov of the submarine Losharik,” Kovalov said over the howling noise of the wind, “the deep-diver submarine assigned on this mission with Belgorod. May I ask if we can join you in your shelter? We are all exhausted and near frozen.”

“Where are my manners?” Seagraves said, smiling. “Come on, please, this way. XO, get everyone inside.” He looked at Senior Chief Thornburg. “Doc, help get these people warmed up, some hot tea all around, and coffee. And see if anyone needs first aid.”

“Yes, Captain.” The corpsman led in the two men and the nearly unconscious female. When all twenty-five of the Russian survivors were inside the shelter, the New Jersey crew followed them in. Pacino handed his rifle to Dankleff, who would stand the next two hours of polar bear watch.

“Now we really need to shoot a polar bear,” Pacino said. “I hear we’re out of rations.”

“With the chicken gone, the rest went fast. So it’s a polar bear or cannibalism,” Dankleff said over the blasting wind.

“I could use some hot coffee right about now,” Pacino said, watching as the last of the crew and the Russians entered the shelter.

Dankleff coughed. “I could use some good scotch right about now. Hell, forget good scotch, I’ll take that rotgut we found in Faslane.”

Pacino pulled open the heavy outer door of the shelter, entered the vestibule, shut the door behind him, then went through the door flap of the inner door. The oppressive, stuffy, dry heat of the shelter hit him like a fist in the chest.

“Oh my God, it’s like Hell in here,” Pacino said, pulling off his parka and hanging it with the others in the corner of the shelter. He looked over at one of the picnic tables, where the hurt female sat, the Russian submarine captains on either side of her. One of them held a cup of hot tea to her lips. She looked up from the tea, saw Pacino, handed her cup to Alexeyev, took two big steps to Pacino and slapped him hard in the face. Both the Russians and Americans stared. Pacino could feel the stinging welt on his cheek, his other cheek feeling hot from blushing in embarrassment.

“You fucking asshole!” she screamed, her accent thicker than he remembered. “You fucking did it again!”

Pacino rubbed his face while Alexeyev and Kovalov pulled Irina Trusov off him.

“What’s she talking about, Georgy?” Kovalov asked, mystified.

“Mr. Pacino here,” Alexeyev said, trying not to smile, “commanded the hijacked Iranian submarine I told you about. In the melee of trying to escape, with us trying to keep him from escaping, he got lucky and sank the Kazan. But then he came back and pulled us out of our escape chamber.”

“I was just the second-in-command of that mission, Captain,” Pacino said, turning to see Seagraves and Quinnivan looking on from over his shoulder.

“Were you here in the same submarine as in that conflict, Lieutenant?” Alexeyev said, having calmed down Trusov and sitting her back down to drink her tea. “What was it, named after one of your provinces—Vermont? Vermont, yes?”

Pacino glanced at the deck. “No. Vermont is in the drydock. There was a bad fire. We drove her replacement up here.” Pacino decided not to name the New Jersey. No sense being accused of giving the Russians intel.

“Well, if I must be shipwrecked in a polar storm with my enemy, I’d prefer it be you, Lieutenant.” Alexeyev looked at Kovalov. “Mr. Pacino not only rescued us, he was very kind to us. I suppose this is two favors I owe you, Lieutenant. Do you have food here?”

“I’m afraid the news is bad, Captain,” Pacino said. “We’re as out of food in this shelter as we were on the Panther. Most of it had gone bad. Half the crew is sick, the other half is starving.”

“This storm will die down soon,” Alexeyev said. “I expect airborne search-and-rescue will come for us soon enough. Both yours and ours. With all the explosions, Northern Fleet Command must have heard all the events.”

“Captain Alexeyev, did you have a radio to call for help?” Seagraves asked. “A distress call?”

Alexeyev shook his head. “Unfortunately no. Belgorod was immobilized by the Gigantskiy explosion. There were many deaths. We survivors were pulled out by Losharik, which we’d undocked before the battle. Also unfortunately, Northern Fleet sent Losharik here with almost no nuclear fuel left. She was barely able to glide to a halt under the polynya formed by the Gigantskiy detonation. By the time Losharik was able to surface, she had no power to use for the radios. That’s why we had to walk from where we surfaced to here.”

“How did you know we were here?” Quinnivan asked.

“We saw an explosion,” Kovalov said. “Your self-destruct charges?”

“Yes. They were improvised,” Seagraves said. “They turned out to be a bit bigger than I’d anticipated. But speaking of self-destruct, is that what that last nuclear explosion was? From the direction to Belgorod? Your self-destruct charge?”

Alexeyev shook his head, accepting a cup of tea from Doc Thornburg and cradling it in his hands. “We don’t know what that was,” he admitted.

“Maybe one of the Status-6 weapons going off?” Pacino asked. “In a partial yield?”

Alexeyev shook his head a second time. “No way. With a Status-6, it is all or nothing. The full ten megatons or zero. We thought that blast was from you.”

Seagraves glanced at Quinnivan, then back at Alexeyev. “We shot a 250 kiloton depth charge at you, but it went wide and long. Too far away from you. It blew up a few seconds after the Magnum. Or, Gigantskiy, as you would say.”

“You did?” Alexeyev said, genuinely surprised. “We didn’t know. The shock wave from it must have hit us about the same time as the Gigantskiy shock wave. The Gigantskiy detonated nearly five miles too close. Was that because of you?”

Seagraves nodded. “We hit it with half a dozen countermeasure torpedoes. They found your torpedo, but I suppose it had some programming to blow up if it thought it would be destroyed.”

“We call it a default detonation,” Alexeyev said. “But all it did was kill us.”

“It sank us as well,” Seagraves said. “It just took a while. We stayed operational long enough to surface here and get the survival gear out. Then the boat — with our dead inside it — went down.”

“I’m sorry, Captain Seagraves,” Alexeyev said. “How many did you lose?”

“We’re still tallying, but about twenty-four or twenty-five. What about you?”

“We lost fifty, Captain.”

“Bad day at sea, Captain Alexeyev. I assume your search-and-rescue planes and ours will be buzzing around here soon. We had three emergency locator beacons. I hope they worked.”

“Everything depends on this storm easing up,” Alexeyev said.

There was silence for a moment, and then Navigator Lewinsky pulled Captain Seagraves aside.

“What is it, Nav?” Seagraves asked.

“I think I figured out your riddle, sir, about what the Panther op and the Devilfish mission had in common.”

“Go ahead, then, Nav,” Seagraves said, an expression of amusement crossing his face.

“In both operations,” Lewinsky said, “the good guys rescued the bad guys. And now a third mission is ending the same way.”

“Let’s hope this doesn’t end up like the Devilfish scenario,” Seagraves said, serious again. “Everyone died. Except for the Russian admiral and Pacino’s dad.”

“Yeah,” Lewinsky said, looking down at the deck.

Anthony Pacino warmed his hands near the diesel heater and looked up to see that Irina Trusov had gotten to her feet and limped to the far end of the shelter, dropping down and leaning against the insulated shelter wall. He left the heater and knelt in front of Trusov.

“Irina. Why did you hit me?”

She looked up at him, her big blue liquid eyes drilling into him, tears suddenly leaking out of them. “You just had to ruin another Russian mission. You just had to sink another Russian submarine.”

“Not my choice, Irina. It wasn’t personal. It was just business. You had your orders. We had ours. We were just following them.”

She shut her eyes and the tears ran down her face. “Two failed missions for me now, Lieutenant Pacino. My career is obviously over. The stink of this won’t leave me, not ever. My poor father is probably rolling in his grave.”

“I’m sorry,” Pacino said. “Do you mind if I sit next to you?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, but sat next to her, leaning against the insulated wall, the dull hum of the diesel heater just slightly louder than the blowing, howling wind outside. He thought Trusov would slide away from him, but she moved closer, until he could feel the warmth of her body touching his arm and thigh, and her touch seemed electric. He shook off the feelings, reminding himself that he hadn’t seen an eligible female in weeks, and that comatose Rachel Romanov waited for him in a hospital bed in Norfolk.

“Coffee, Mr. Pacino?” Short Hull Cooper asked, holding out a fresh cup of coffee. Pacino nodded and took the cup. “For you, ma’am?” Cooper handed a cup to Trusov and took her cold cup, then went back to the coffee pot.

“Have you ever had coffee?” Pacino asked.

She nodded, sipping the broiling hot brew. “In Havana a few years ago. This is weaker, but I think I like it better, Patch. Do you mind if I call you Patch?”

“Yes, please call me Patch.” Pacino said.

She looked at him closely for a moment, and she put her hand on his forehead. “What happened here?” She gently touched the bandage on his forehead and the top of his skull.

“I cut my scalp. I got tossed pretty hard into a bulkhead after the first Gigantskiy explosion.”

“Let me look,” she said, pulling the bandage aside. “Oh, it’s deep. That will leave a red scar on your forehead.”

“Our corpsman says I can have plastic surgery to make it go away.” Pacino shrugged. “I’ll see how it looks after we get home.”

“Patch, what was that sonar signal you pinged at us? It was music. From the 1812 Overture. Why did you do that? Were you trying to say you knew we were Russian? I mean, that was obvious. Or were you trying to say you were friendly?”

Pacino laughed. “That sonar ping was trying to send a detonation command to two mines we’d placed on Belgorod’s hull when it was surfaced at the polynya before you launched the first Gigantskiy. Later, we got orders to fire upon you but I think you got the same orders first. We pinged the command detonate signal, but obviously the mines either failed or were blown off by shock waves and nothing happened. The signal itself was just a happy coincidence — the cannon fire and trumpets make for a lot of acoustic contrast and the sound is unmistakable. No way the mines would hear that particular twelve or fifteen seconds of sound from nature or your own pings. No sense having mines detonating due to some random noise source.”

“You planted mines on Belgorod before there were hostilities ordered? How could you do that?” Trusov sounded hurt, as if she were taking it personally.

Pacino shrugged. “It was just a contingency. Just in case. At the time, our leadership showed no intentions of us engaging with you. Something must have changed or happened. Suddenly our orders became much more aggressive. I don’t know the whole story. Not yet, anyway.”

For a long time she was silent, staring at the deck of the shelter, as if she were pouting. He tried to change the subject.

“So, Irina, how much trouble do you think we’ll both be in with our bosses after we’re rescued?”

She looked at him. Those deep blue eyes again, he thought, blinking and looking away. At least her crying had stopped, but there were still the tracks of her tears on her dirty face. “We need rescue first. For all we know, this is our last stand.”

“Don’t let yourself think like that,” Pacino said. “Think positive thoughts. The universe will listen. At least, that’s what my friend Fishman, a professional bad-ass frogman, says.”

“I’m cold,” she said. “Do you think you could hold my hand?”

Pacino blushed. “Of course,” he said, putting her small, soft, ice-cold hand in his. She squeezed his hand. He could feel his pulse race for a moment.

And suddenly, the sound of the roaring wind stopped.

“Mr. Vice President? The Virginia delegation is here,” President Carlucci’s secretary announced. Eve LaBelle was seventy-two years old and couldn’t weigh more than eighty-five pounds, Michael Pacino thought, with a big head of hairsprayed gray hair.

“Please show them in, Eve,” Pacino said, slapping down the folder he’d been scanning on the huge desk, the label on it reading TOP SECRET / SCI / SPECIAL HANDLNG / RELEASE 12 / OPERATION POSEIDON. As he did, Carlucci’s chief of staff, Remi O’Keefe, scooped up the dossier and left by the door to the presidential study.

Pacino smiled at the two women from Virginia. So far, everyone had learned that Pacino did not have a politician’s smile, and that if he smiled, it was genuine.

“Madame Senator. Madam Governor, please come in. I’m honored by your visit. And a little stunned by your cross-aisle cooperation. Please sit,” he said, waving to the floral-patterned couch facing the coffee table, and taking the wing chair opposite. He looked at the pattern on the couch, thinking that Carlucci’s taste was odd — the couch looked like it had been upholstered using Great Aunt Maude’s curtains from the 1940s. Same décor as Carlucci’s cabin at Camp David, Pacino thought. It probably reminded the president of comforting times in his childhood.

The women seated themselves. Pacino paid attention to how closely they sat — close enough to hold hands if they’d wanted to — and their tense body language, which was formal, both sitting up straight on the couch, on the front five inches of the cushions, their feet on the floor rather than crossed, their hands on their knees. He judged they were here to ask for a favor.

“Can I offer you anything?” Pacino asked. “The coffee here is Navy coffee. Beans grown in Colombia on a Navy-owned plantation outside Bogota. Best cup of coffee you will ever have, with the notable exception of the coffee in a nuclear submarine. I also have some good tea. And, of course, scotch and bourbon. I note the sun isn’t over the yardarm yet, but it must be somewhere.” Pacino smiled, realizing he was babbling. These two women made him nervous, all the more so since they waved off any beverage.

Virginia’s American Party Senator Michaela Everett was a populist and in her first term, and though she was only a freshman senator, she was a media superstar, a firebrand, and a loud party partisan. Which made it all the more odd that she’d come today with Virginia Governor Leann Meadow, a staunch National Party icon, revered and feared both inside and outside her party, and who would be running against Everett in the next election. Both women were in their early fifties, very slender — one could even say slinky — and had long, straight blonde hair, blue eyes, red lips and clear alabaster complexions. Despite their vast political differences, they looked like they could be sisters.

Senator Everett spoke first. “Mr. Vice President—“

“Call me Patch, please,” Pacino said.

Everett smiled. “Patch, then. I’ll get right to business. Paul Carlucci’s term is up soon, and no one knows if he will run again. Or if his health will hold out after the assassination attempt.”

“I heard he was recovering nicely,” Pacino said, frowning.

“What I mean,” Everett said, “is that in the case where Mr. Carlucci decides not to run, we’d like to draft you as the American Party candidate for president. And if he does run, we’d like you to stay on as vice president and focus on running four years later.”

The governor smiled, her eyes crinkling. “And if the American Party doesn’t want you, the National Party certainly does.”

Pacino sat back heavily in his seat. This was unexpected, he thought. In his mind, he was the worst fill-in president in the past 150 years. He was impatient with domestic issues, irritated at partisan politics, erupting at aides and congressman that their issues were ridiculous and not meaningful to the continued survival of the United States. On more than one occasion, he’d scolded powerful members of the opposition, and his own party, for lacking patriotism, and feeding like hogs at the troughs of corrupt Washington. He’d made an impassioned impromptu speech at one of the meetings that they were all Americans, and the political class had lost sight of that vital fact. Someone, an aide, or maybe even Carlucci’s secretary, had secretly filmed the ass-chewing and posted it on the internet, and it had gone viral, making the national news for days. Pacino had been embarrassed, mad at himself for forgetting what a public figure he was. Yelling at politicians was not his job, and probably reflected poorly on Carlucci, but the country — both American Party faithful and National Party devotees — lauded and applauded Pacino’s instinctive, stirring, blazing rhetoric. He was later told that no one since Kennedy or Reagan could speak like he could.

He’d dismissed the hero worship. People loved the idea of an outsider, someone who wasn’t a career politician, taking office. But as time had proved over and over again, those outsiders eventually became insiders, and forgot about the American people, seemingly only caring about their power and continuation of government. They were the politicians he’d hated the most, remembering how his mission to rescue the Tampa had been handcuffed by the then-president’s wife, that bitch who thought she was the power behind the throne.

It occurred to him that Everett and Meadow were looking at him expectantly, waiting for his answer. As he opened his mouth to speak — not knowing what he’d say — he was saved by the main entrance door suddenly opening and Chief of Staff O’Keefe dashing in, coming up to Pacino and whispering in his ear.

“There are developments in Operation Poseidon, sir. We need you in the Situation Room immediately.”

Pacino stood. “Madam Governor, Madam Senator, I’m afraid I have to leave you. But I will consider what you said. Very seriously. Please excuse me.”

Pacino followed O’Keefe out of the Oval Office, the chief of staff nearly jogging, Pacino struggling to keep up while acting calm.

As he and his Secret Service detail entered the already crowded Situation Room, Pacino said a silent prayer that Anthony was okay. How many times had he said that same prayer during Operation Panther, he wondered. Too many to count.

When the wind stopped, everyone who wasn’t sick rose to their feet, grabbed their parkas and walked out into the polar dawn. The thick clouds had cleared, blown south. To the southeast, the sun rose over an ice ridge.

Pacino had grabbed a rifle. It occurred to him that with all the people on the ice, a polar bear might find the gathering too interesting to pass up. He checked the magazine, loaded it into the rifle and shouldered the weapon. As he did, he could hear the powerful roar of jet engines. He looked over at U-Boat Dankleff and smiled.

“I hope whoever that is has food onboard,” Pacino said.

“Whoever that is? They’re probably Russians,” Dankleff said dully. “The weather cleared from the south, the Russian side. The Canadian side is probably still socked in.”

“No matter,” Pacino said. “I’d sooner grab a ride with the Russians than stay here, freezing when the diesel heater runs out of fuel, with no food.”

“Except for polar bears.”

“Polar bears who have been avoiding us,” Pacino said. “Look, it’s visible.” He pointed to the huge four-engine jet that flew overhead, making a low altitude pass, perhaps to determine if it could land.

“I can see a flag on its tail,” Dankleff said. “White over blue over red. It’s Russian.”

“You think it can land on ice?” Pacino asked.

“I think we’re about to find out.”

The jet transport flew over again, turned, flew away, then from the far distance to the east, came lower in altitude and sailed in, its large wingspan sprouting flaps, the jet engine noises escalating, quieting, then rising again.

“It’s got skis,” Pacino said. “Definitely landing.”

The jet transport came closer to the ice and then set down, the ice splintering behind it into a huge fog of ice and snow. The jet’s engines roared with reverse thrust as it slowed, until it came to a stop some fifty feet from the shelter.

“Now that’s some precision flying,” Dankleff said.

Pacino nodded. “Well, the Russians live up here in the arctic, so landing on ice is probably what they call a Tuesday.”

The rear ramp door of the jet transport slowly opened. Pacino noticed that the Russian survivors had moved off to the right side, all of them gathered together. He sidestepped to Captain Seagraves and XO Quinnivan.

“Captain, why am I getting a bad feeling about this?” Pacino asked.

“What do we know?” Vice President Michael Pacino said curtly, taking his seat at the end of the table. The Situation Room was crowded to full capacity with admirals, generals, cabinet secretaries and their aides. On the wall opposite the end seat, an aerial view was projected.

“Sir,” Secretary of War Bret Hogshead said crisply, “we were able to get an Apex drone launched out of Alaska and overhead over the north pole. The distance to the loitering position was great, so we may only have twenty or thirty minutes on-station before we run out of fuel. When the fuel goes, the Apex will self-destruct. The image you’re seeing is the ice near the nuclear explosions detected by our seismologists. You can see four sites of open water where we think the explosions were located. At the far east site, we’ve detected an arctic survival shelter. It correlates to the gear that was loaded onto the USS New Jersey.”

Pacino smiled in relief as he saw the video play out on the screen. He could see the black expanse of open water and the large arctic shelter erected north of it. On the ice, there were what looked like a hundred people standing, looking at a huge four-engine jet transport that had landed and taxied to a halt near the shelter.

“So, the rescue forces arrived,” Pacino said.

“Sir, the news isn’t good,” CIA Director Margo Allende said. Pacino looked at her. She was being completely professional. Their relationship had been suspended by his rising to be the acting president. He hoped she understood. When all this was over, he thought, maybe he could make it up to her.

“What do you mean?” Pacino asked.

“Sir, NSA Director Nickerson should explain this,” she said.

National Security Agency commander General Nick Nickerson cleared his throat and looked over at Pacino. “Mr. Vice President, we’ve been hearing a lot of chatter from the Russians as they launched this particular aircraft. It’s a Russian Ilyushin IL-76, a four-engine cargo jet, capable of arctic operations. And search-and-rescue operations. But this particular plane is run by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence organization.”

“What was the ‘chatter’ you intercepted?”

Nickerson cleared his throat again. “Sir, the Russians have been talking about taking the crew of the New Jersey back to Russia as prisoners of war. And prosecuting them as murderers of the lost crewmen of the Belgorod and the deep-diver submarine.”

The room broke out in muffled conversation.

“Quiet, everyone,” Pacino said. “Secretary Hogshead, is the Apex drone armed?”

“Yes, Mr. Vice President,” Hogshead said. “It has two Brimstone missiles.”

“Are we in range?” Pacino asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Vice President, if you attack that jet,” CIA Director Margo Allende said, her hand out, “you’ll be giving away that our intel agencies were able to determine the Russians’ intentions.”

“I don’t care,” Pacino said. “Mr. Secretary,” Pacino said to Hogshead, pointing at him, “fire both missiles at the Il-76. Do it now.”

“That thing,” Lieutenant Dieter U-Boat Dankleff said, pointing to the huge four-engine jet transport, “is the BUFF of airplanes.”

When the rear loading ramp came all the way down, three men in green arctic parkas walked out, the leader with an automatic rifle in his hands. The second carried a heavy machine gun, the third a device that unfolded into a tripod, a large ammo can in his other hand. The second man put the machine gun on the tripod and the third produced a belt of ammunition from the can and latched it to the feeder mechanism of the large gun. He checked it, then aimed the machine gun at the gathered Americans. The leader walked closer to Seagraves, Quinnivan, and Pacino. Pacino lifted his rifle and aimed at the Russian’s chest, a fact the Russian evidently disapproved of, as evidenced by him lifting and aiming his own rifle at Pacino.

“Lower your rifle, young man,” the leader commanded in English, in a hard, gravelly voice with a thick Russian accent. “Or you will find the consequences severe for yourself and your shipmates.”

“The hell I will,” Pacino said, putting his trigger finger into the trigger guard and sighting in at the Russian. For the moment, the Russian commander decided to ignore the threat.

“Who is in command here?” the leader asked, looking at Seagraves and Quinnivan.

“I am,” Seagraves said in his baritone, no-nonsense command voice. “Commander Tim Seagraves, United States Navy.”

The Russian bowed and smiled, but Pacino noticed the smile didn’t reach the man’s hard eyes. “I am Vanya Nika, Colonel, GRU, and I am in command of this rescue mission.”

“Good of you to come,” Quinnivan quipped. “Perhaps you and your men should lower their weapons. We’re not a threat to you.”

“And you are? You sound English,” Nika said.

“English, my white pimpled Irish ass,” Quinnivan said, an edge in his voice. “I’m fookin’ Irish. The name is Jeremiah Seamus Quinnivan, Commander, Royal Navy.”

“Well, then, Commanders Seagraves and Quinnivan, please be so good as to inform your men — and women — that you are now prisoners of the Russian Federation, and under arrest for the very serious crimes of interfering with an official Russian Navy mission. Your crimes include sinking our submarines Belgorod and Losharik and for murdering many members of those submarines’ crews. So, Commander Seagraves, order your man here—“ he pointed to Pacino—“to put his rifle on the ground.”

“No. I’ll do no such thing,” Seagraves said, crossing his arms, but as he did, a blinding bright streak angled down from the heavens and a sudden violent explosion blew the jet transport apart, the blinding white fireball turning orange and red, with black smoke as the fuel ignited, the explosion sending pieces of the airplane flying. A second after the first explosion, a second streak of light came down from above and hit the already flaming transport.

The explosion blew everyone standing onto the ice, and as Pacino fell, his trigger finger twitched on the trigger and his rifle barked as a single round was fired. Pacino landed flat on his back. He sat up quickly, worried he’d hit one of the Americans with his stray bullet. Once he sat up, he saw a bright red stain growing on the green parka of Colonel Nika, who was prone and raising his own weapon to aim at Pacino. Pacino quickly flipped the rifle’s mode selector switch from semi-automatic to full automatic and pulled the trigger, firehosing Nika with bullets, then the two men who had been standing at the machine gun but who had also been blown to the surface of the ice. Pacino stopped firing when it became clear the three Russians were dead, either from the blast of the missiles hitting the jet, the jet’s exploding jet fuel, or his bullets.

In the next moment the jet’s cockpit door flew open and three of the flight crew jumped out of what was left of the airframe, gained their feet and raised their sidearms at the Americans. Pacino sighted in on the one farthest to the left and, in full automatic, emptied his magazine as he swept right, and the three pilots went down, cut in half by Pacino’s rifle fire.

“That was adequate shooting, Mr. Pacino,” Seagraves said as he regained his feet. “But that’s enough for now.”

“I’m out of ammo anyway, Captain,” Pacino said, standing up, his vision suddenly clouded by a stream of blood from the top of his head. Dankleff pulled off his own inner hood and put it to Pacino’s head and face as a bandage.

“You got another gash, this one from flying airplane debris,” Dankleff said. “This one’s worse. You’re going to have another nasty scar from this — it goes from your hairline to your left eye, then down to your cheekbone. Does it hurt?”

“I’m so pumped with adrenaline I can’t feel anything,” Pacino said. “Not even the cold.”

Quinnivan turned to the captain. “Well, Skipper, unfortunately, that plane was our ticket out of here.”

“Yeah, a ticket to a Russian gulag,” Seagraves said. “No thank you. I’ll wait for the next plane.”

A loud crashing noise came from behind them and down the slope to what used to be open water, but had now frozen over in the storm and the cold. Pacino turned and saw ice bulging, then foot-thick blocks of ice being moved aside. A black shape slowly rose from between the blocks of ice, the shape rectangular. Pacino waited to see if the shape would be that of an American conning tower — or a Russian one. But twenty seconds later the shape could be made out to be the sail of an American Virginia-class nuclear submarine. The comms masts emerged from the sail, extending to the heavens, then both periscopes. Finally a man could be made out emerging from the top of the sail.

“Ahoy there!” he yelled into a megaphone. “Someone call for a rescue?”

Pacino smiled at U-Boat Dankleff and Squirt Gun Vevera, then at Short Hull Cooper. “Well, boys, I imagine we’ll be having steak for dinner tonight.”

A hundred feet farther to the south, a second black sail emerged from the ice, the hump of ice behind the sail revealing an ice-hardened dry-deck shelter. That sail also sprouted communications antennae and periscopes.

Pacino felt a tugging on his sleeve. It was Irina Trusov. Pacino gulped, wondering if she would be angry at him for killing the Russians.

“I’m glad you won’t be prisoners of war, Patch,” she said gently, looking up at him with her liquid blue eyes. “But now I fear we will be.”

Pacino shook his head. “We don’t operate that way, Irina. You know that.” He pointed to the submarine conning towers. “Right now, they’re calling for another Russian arctic transport to come get you guys. We’ll resupply our shelter with fuel and food — and rifles and ammo — and leave it to you while you wait for your second plane.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

“I don’t,” Pacino said. “I have to sell it to the captain first.” He smiled at her and walked down the slope to where Seagraves, Quinnivan, and Lewinsky were conferring with the commanding officers and executive officers of the two rescue submarines. Pacino pulled Seagraves aside and proposed to him what he’d promised Trusov. Seagraves merely nodded and went back to his conversation.

Pacino returned to Trusov’s side. “Captain agrees, Irina. You and your countrymen will remain here, warm, fed, safe and resupplied. But first, let’s go to the shelter. I need to get this second gash bandaged up. And change the dressing on the first one.”

“Thank you, Patch. I will help you.”

Inside the shelter, Irina pulled off Dankleff’s inner hood, which had stuck to Pacino’s forehead from coagulated and frozen blood, tenderly cleaned the wound, then disinfected it and put a gauze bandage on it. She changed the other wound, cleaned it, bandaged it, and wrapped tape around his head to hold both bandages. Pacino was suddenly reminded of Rachel Romanov cleaning his chest wound from when the officers had punched his dolphin emblem, an ancient ritual, that drove the pins of the device deep into his chest and made him bleed. And he thought of River Styxx helping to bandage his first gash. When Trusov was done, she stepped back to look at her handiwork. She nodded, satisfied.

“You know, Patch,” she said, “I am going to miss you. It is a shame you and I never get a normal situation to share.”

“Come to Virginia when you get your next leave,” Pacino smiled. “I’ll show you around.”

“I would love that, Patch.” She looked at the entrance to the shelter. “I should join Captains Alexeyev and Kovalov now.” She came close and hugged him, but before he could wrap his arms around her, she had broken the embrace and rushed out of the shelter to join the Russian crews. Pacino left the shelter, taking a quick look back, then walked down the slope to where the other junior officers were standing.

“What happens now, Mr. Patch?” Short Hull Cooper asked.

Pacino looked toward the closest submarine, where the senior officers were deep in conversation. “The bosses are deciding if we’re riding back with the rescue subs or waiting for one of our own search-and-rescue aircraft to land here. Seagraves or Quinnivan will let us know in the next few minutes. If they give you a choice, Short Hull, I recommend you ride back with a rescue boat and keep working on your qualifications for dolphins.”

“If they give you a choice? What would you do?”

Pacino took a deep breath. “I imagine I’d fly home and check on Rachel Romanov.”

“Yeah,” Cooper said. “And debrief with your dad.”

Quinnivan walked to them, the other junior officers crowding over to see what was going to happen.

“Gents, I have news from home about Commander Romanov,” Quinnivan said, his expression unreadable.

“What’s the latest, XO?” Pacino asked.

“Good news first, lad. Physically, she’s almost fully recovered. The hospital released her last week. She’s resting at Bruno’s house. Bruno’s taking care of her.”

Pacino inwardly winced at the thought of Bruno Romanov, Rachel’s ex-husband, nursing her back to health. “And the bad news, XO?”

“She’s got partial amnesia,” Quinnivan said. “They’re calling it ‘retrograde amnesia’—which usually means the patient loses memory of events before a traumatic brain injury. In Rachel’s case, she’s lost the last six or seven months.”

“Dear God,” U-Boat Dankleff said. “That means she’s lost the entire Panther run.”

“And it means she won’t remember me,” Pacino said, trying to keep his voice level and emotionless, but failing.

“Take heart, laddie,” Quinnivan said, clapping Pacino on the shoulder. “They say familiar sights or aromas can bring the memories crashing back. Maybe if she sees you, it will all return. Or if she smells the inside of a submarine again.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Pacino said. “So, XO, what’s the plan for getting us back to Norfolk?”

“Everyone, gather around,” Quinnivan said in a loud voice. The crew surrounded him, standing close to hear what he had to say, the SEAL officers and enlisted, with their white parkas, among the crowd. “The SEALs will embark aboard the USS Hyman G. Rickover, the sub with the dry-deck shelter. They’ll dive the wreck of the New Jersey and make sure it can’t be salvaged. Then they’ll go out and dive the wrecks of the Russian deep-diver sub and the Belgorod to do a post-action damage assessment. And to see if the Status-6 torpedoes are destroyed. If not, they’ll take care of that little problem.

“The other sub, the USS Montana, has called for a C130 arctic transport out of Joint Base Thule in Greenland. The plane should be in the air as we speak. The Montana will loiter here until we’re all safely embarked and in the air flying back to Thule. However, anyone among the crew who doesn’t have dolphins will be joining the Montana for the trip back, so you can continue to work on qualifications without interruption. And finally, Montana will radio SubCom to dispatch a second Russian rescue aircraft to pick up our good friends from the Belgorod and Losharik.”

Pacino looked at Short Hull Cooper. “Looks like you’re riding home on the Montana,” he said.

Squirt Gun Vevera pulled Pacino aside, away from the crowd. “Patch, if Rachel’s moved back in with Bruno, that leaves her room in the Snake Ranch available. You want to invite Short Hull to join us? We need the rent money. And he seems like a good guy.”

“Let’s wait till Montana pulls into Norfolk,” Pacino said. “There’s still a chance Rachel may regain her memory.”

“I’ll light a candle to that as soon as there’s a convenient church,” Vevera said.

Pacino laughed. “Squirt Gun, if you darkened the door of a church, the roof would cave in.”

“Which is why God will listen,” Vevera smiled back.

The sound of turboprops could be heard in the distance. Pacino shaded his eyes and looked for the plane. Eventually he could make it out. It circled the area, then slowed, made its approach, lowered skids, and landed on the ice, coming to a stop a hundred feet from the shelter. Pacino saw the star and stripes on the tail and the block letters on the fuselage spelling U.S. AIR FORCE and breathed a deep sigh of relief.

“Guys,” Pacino said to his friends. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

30

“Mr. Vice President,” Presidential Secretary Eve LaBelle said from the side entrance door to the Oval Office, “the president and attorney general are here to see you.”

Vice President Michael Pacino stood up from the desk, pushing back the monstrous leather chair and smiling as Paul Carlucci was wheeled in, looking annoyed at being in a wheelchair, but smiling back at Pacino.

“I’m glad you’re back, Mr. President,” Pacino said, reaching out and shaking Carlucci’s hand. Carlucci’s handshake was strong, but nothing like the politician’s grip he’d had before the shooting. “How do you feel?”

“Like hell, Patch. Being shot is not an experience I’d recommend. Zero stars.”

Pacino laughed and looked at the attorney general. Madilynn Campbell was immediately recognizable, her gigantic figure regularly the subject of biting satire on social media. Carlucci had confided to Pacino that he had wanted to replace her, but she was embedded with the party faithful, he’d said, and he couldn’t spend the political capital to fire her. How much damage, he had wondered, could an attorney general really do?

“Good morning, Madam Attorney General,” Pacino said, reaching for her hand, but instead she slapped a folder into his hand.

“I hope you’ll sign this without any drama, Mr. Vice President,” she said, getting straight to business.

Pacino opened the folder. It was a one-page document signed by the president and the cabinet revoking Pacino’s interim appointment as acting president under the 25th Amendment. There was a space at the bottom for him to sign. Campbell handed him a pen, and he signed the document and returned it and the pen to her. Without a word, the beefy attorney general turned and left the room.

“She’s a real sweetheart, isn’t she?” Carlucci quipped.

“I suppose that job would bring out the dark side of anyone, sir,” Pacino said.

“Can you imagine what she would have done if you’d refused to sign that? I might have advised you to do that just to see the look on her face,” Carlucci chuckled. “Anyway, have a seat, Patch,” Carlucci said, waving to the floral-patterned couch. “I need to talk to you.”

“Why do I feel like I did whenever one of my wives used to say, ‘we need to talk’?” Pacino said, taking a seat on the couch so he could face Carlucci’s wheelchair.

“Exactly,” Carlucci said, his expression turning grim. “Patch, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it. You’re fired. I need you out of the building in the next thirty minutes.”

Pacino stood and offered his hand to Carlucci. He smiled and said, “it was an honor working for you, Mr. President.”

“Wait, Patch, what the hell? Sit back down,” Carlucci said in exasperation. “Don’t you want to know why I’m firing you?”

“Reasons for being fired never matter, Mr. President. Only the decision matters. Besides, as to reasons to fire me? I probably know a dozen reasons that haven’t even occurred to you yet.”

“Maybe, Patch, but you’ll need to know in case the media asks. And they will ask. What you will say affects us both. So let’s get our story straight.”

Pacino sat back down. “Go ahead, then, sir,” he said.

“First, you didn’t get fired. You resigned. Getting fired as the VP would stain your reputation. But you’re walking out of here by your own choice. That way, politically, you live to fight another day. And I don’t look like a jerk for firing a popular vice president.”

Carlucci’s chief of staff, Remi O’Keefe stuck his head in the side door. “Should I wait, Mr. President?” he asked.

“No, Remi, come on in.”

Chief of Staff Remi O’Keefe strode in, all six foot four inches of him. He was a African-American attorney who’d been a college basketball star at LSU and almost played for the NBA before a bad knee changed his career to law. He’d recovered nicely, Pacino thought, Harvard Law and a career as a Manhattan prosecutor, even being recruited to run for district attorney, but sometime during his travels, he’d sat on an airplane seat next to Carlucci, who at the time was running for mayor of Cleveland, and the two had become friends. O’Keefe had left Manhattan to become Carlucci’s chief of staff when Carlucci had been elected to the Senate, and had been by his side ever since.

Oddly, O’Keefe had been completely absent during Operation Panther, Pacino thought, as well as this op, Operation Poseidon, until the bitter end. Carlucci had hinted that O’Keefe was a staunch pacifist, hated all things military, and would object to being in any room that had Pacino in it. O’Keefe kept to domestic affairs, leaving international issues and national security to the president and national security advisor. Odds were, Pacino thought, O’Keefe had objected to Carlucci hiring a former admiral-in-command of a war fleet as his national security advisor, but Carlucci kept his own counsel when it came to hiring and firing.

O’Keefe took a seat on the wing chair near Carlucci, facing Pacino. He nodded at Pacino. “Morning, Mr. Vice President,” he said respectfully.

“Anyway, Remi, I was just talking to the vice president about his sudden decision to resign, which is a serious problem.” Carlucci winked at Pacino as he said, “Hell, Patch could run against me in the primaries, and who knows, with his recent popularity, he might knock me out of my party’s nomination.”

“That won’t happen, Mr. President,” Pacino said.

“Never say never, Patch,” Carlucci said. “Anyway, we were speaking about reasons? I thought I’d let Remi fill you in on that on your way to clear out the vice president’s office.”

“Good-bye, Mr. President,” Pacino said, standing and shaking Carlucci’s hand. “I hope you feel better.”

“I hope I can call on you for advice, Patch,” Carlucci said.

Pacino smiled. “Any time, Mr. President,” he said, and turned and walked toward the main Oval Office entrance, the most direct route to the vice president’s office. O’Keefe paused to pick up something in his office, across from Pacino’s. Once in Pacino’s VP office, O’Keefe shut the door.

“Something about reasons?” Pacino asked.

O’Keefe nodded solemnly. “You did something that Carlucci would never have allowed. You attacked that Russian rescue airplane.”

Pacino nodded. “I did. And I’d do it again.”

“Having a son on the ice that day, well, that presents a conflict-of-interest. It could be construed that you attacked that plane just to save your son.”

“I did,” Pacino said. “But I’d still do it if my son were safe at his home in Virginia Beach. Besides, shooting the Russian rescue aircraft that could have saved my son? That’s acting against any conflict of interest.”

“Sir, you gave away to the Russians that we’d successfully spied for the intel, the information that they were planning to take our survivors hostage.”

“For all we know,” Pacino said, “the Russians dangled that in front of us intentionally to see what we would do. If we let them take our survivors as prisoners of war, they’d know we were weak. And that would make dealing with them in the future that much more difficult.”

O’Keefe considered for a moment and nodded. “You make a good point. What did the CIA director think of that idea? Or the director of the NSA?”

“I didn’t ask,” Pacino said.

“See, that’s another of Carlucci’s reasons,” O’Keefe said. “You don’t consult experts. You just act. One day that could get you into trouble.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, Remi,” Pacino said, finding a book that had gotten buried under papers, then putting a framed photo of him and young Anthony on top of the book. There was little else to remove from the office. “But I’m returning to retirement, so I don’t think your advice will get used.”

“I doubt that,” O’Keefe said, smiling.

“Are there any more reasons?” Pacino asked. “I should get going.”

“Chopper isn’t here yet,” O’Keefe said, glancing out the office’s south window. “The president wants you to take Marine One to wherever you want to go. Also, he needs a little time to gather up the press.”

“That’s considerate of the president,” Pacino said. “But he could have arranged a limo. I’m just going back to Annapolis.”

“Listen… Admiral,” O’Keefe said, searching for the proper title to call Pacino, since he was no longer the vice president. “President Carlucci wants you to run against him in the primaries.”

Pacino stopped searching his desk for any other things to bring with him and stared at O’Keefe.

“What?”

“You heard me right. Carlucci wants you to run for the American Party nomination next spring and win it.”

“Why? If he’s done, why doesn’t he just resign? Or announce that he won’t run?”

“He’s definitely done, Admiral, but he believes it’s better to lose to you in the primaries than quit. I think his exact words were, ‘winners never quit and quitters never win, but you can always lose the primaries and go home with your dignity intact.’ He says once he loses, he will endorse you and throw his full political weight in your favor so you win the general election.”

Pacino inhaled. “That’s a lot to take in,” he said after a moment.

O’Keefe smiled. “Can I tell the president you didn’t reject the idea?”

Pacino nodded. “As you said, I need to confer with the experts. So I will consult them.”

“Excellent, Admiral. Here, let me take your photo and book. I’ll have a Marine bring this to the chopper with your briefcase.”

“I don’t have a briefcase here,” Pacino said.

“You do now. It will contain a tablet computer with information Carlucci wants you to have with access to his files and his database. It’s highly classified, so—“

“I’ll take good care of it, Remi,” Pacino said, smiling.

He felt a thousand pounds lighter as he walked out of the office, wondering what he’d say to the reporters gathering on the south lawn.

The rotors and engines of the gigantic helicopter, Marine One, had been shut down, presumably, Pacino thought, so that the crowd of reporters could hear what he had to say.

He stepped to the podium that had been set up and looked out over the crowd. “Good morning, everyone,” he said, the crowd quieting. “You may have already heard that I tendered my resignation as vice president to President Carlucci this morning. I’ll be returning to private life and retirement. Other than that, I have no further comment.”

He walked from the podium but the reporters mobbed him, four Secret Service agents pushing them aside and forming a corridor allowing Pacino to walk to the helicopter, which had started its engines.

“Did you resign, Admiral, or did you get fired?” one reporter shouted.

“Did you have disagreements with Carlucci?” another asked.

“Are you running for president next year?”

“Did the Russians contact the White House about your order to attack their rescue aircraft?”

Pacino frowned at that last question. He’d ordered Operation Poseidon to be classified so highly no one would know about it for a decade, but maybe Carlucci had leaked the information or even declassified it. It would make sense, Pacino thought. Firing on the Russian aircraft would gain Pacino points with a lot of voters, he thought, although it would lose him others.

The helicopter’s jets had spun up to idle, the loud whine of them drowning out the other questions from the crowd. Pacino approached the chopper. A Marine guard in dress blues saluted him. Pacino stopped, turned to face the Marine, and rigidly returned the salute. The Marine couldn’t help smiling as Pacino turned at the top of the steps and waved toward the White House, wondering if Carlucci could see him, and ducked into the helicopter as the rotors started spinning.

“Welcome, sir,” a Marine officer said, saluting him. Pacino saluted back. “Destination, sir? Your Annapolis house?”

“Yes. Annapolis,” Pacino said, and buckled into a seat. He looked up as someone brushed past him and took the seat opposite his.

It was CIA Director Margo Allende, who smiled at him as she buckled in.

“What do I call you now, sir?” she asked. “Mr. Vice President? Or Admiral?”

Pacino smiled back. “How about ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie’?”

“How about babe?” she asked, smiling at him.

He winked at her. “That works.”

The helicopter lifted off the south lawn and flew out toward the Washington Monument, then turned toward the southeast.

The Air Force C130 had landed at Joint Base Thule in northern Greenland. Off to the side of the runway, there had been half a dozen Gulfstream SS-12s at idle, their hatches open. Captain Seagraves and XO Quinnivan had directed that their jet’s passengers should also include Pacino, Lewinsky, Dankleff and Vevera.

As soon as Lieutenant Anthony Pacino climbed out of the cargo turboprop and stepped to the SS-12, he felt exhaustion overtake him. He’d taken his seat behind Quinnivan’s and opposite Dankleff’s, strapped in and shut his eyes. He’d fallen into a deep sleep when an attendant in the blue uniform of an Air Force sergeant nudged him awake and asked if he’d like a drink.

“I’d love a scotch, double, neat, Macallan if you have it,” Pacino said, his hand going up to his head to feel his bandages. The wounds throbbed. He wondered how frightful his face would look when the wounds healed.

“Yes, sir,” she said, returning with drinks on a tray, delivering Seagraves’ and Quinnivan’s drinks first, then Lewinsky’s, then Dankleff’s, then Vevera’s and Pacino’s.

Pacino looked solemnly at Dankleff and Vevera. “A toast, U-Boat and Squirt Gun. To our fallen. To Moose Kelly. To River Styxx. To Easy Eisenhart. To Gangbanger Ganghadharan. And our non-qual, Long Hull Cooper.”

“And to our lost friends in the goat locker,” Dankleff said, referring to the chief petty officers of the submarine. “To the COB, Q-Ball Quartane. Fancy McGraceland, E-div. Drive Shaft McGuire, A-gang. And Gory Goreliki, radio, and K-Squared Kim, firecontrol, both fellow pirates from Operation Panther.”

“All on eternal patrol,” Pacino said, his eyes getting moist as he thought of Lieutenant Commander Wanda River Styxx. What was the last thing she’d said to him before the shitshow started? Next time, don’t drink so much. Hinting that there would be a next time. But not now, Pacino thought. Her body had been placed in the New Jersey’s frozen stores locker with the other dead. Had the locker survived the torpedo room explosion? Did she lie quietly at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean? Or was she blown to smithereens?

Pacino downed half the whisky in one gulp, putting the glass down on the table between his and Dankleff’s seat and looking out the window. There was nothing to see, just sky above and clouds below. The sun was harsh, so Pacino shut the window blind. He drained the glass and the sergeant came back with a second whisky. He was about to take a sip when XO Quinnivan stood up and shouted.

“Lads, take a look at this,” Quinnivan said, then sat back down.

The television flatpanels at the forward and aft bulkheads of the jet, which had previously been showing a projection of their route from Greenland to Washington, and their progress on that route, switched to a Satellite News Network news segment, the reporter standing on the White House south lawn as the Marine One helicopter lifted off and sailed away. The scroll at the bottom of the screen read, …VICE PRESIDENT PACINO RESIGNS AND DEPARTS WHITE HOUSE…

“Vice President Michael Pacino’s resignation leaves the White House with the decision of whom to replace him with, with many suggesting that Secretary of War Bret Hogshead is first in line for the position, since President Carlucci likes having a military expert as his number two person. When asked if he would run for president against Carlucci, Vice President Pacino refused to comment. Back to you in the studio, Freddy. Monica Eddlestien, SNN News, the White House.”

“Wow,” Dankleff said. “Looks like Patch here just lost all his juice.”

Quinnivan turned off the news clip and the screen returned to showing their route progress. The copilot of the flight, an Air Force major with her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, came into the cabin, stepped up to Captain Seagraves and quietly said something in his ear, then turned and returned to the flight deck. Seagraves stood, putting one hand on Dankleff’s seatback and one on Vevera’s across the aisle.

“Gentlemen, our destination has been changed,” Seagraves said. “We’re apparently no longer invited to the White House to meet the vice president and debrief at CIA headquarters. We’ve been rerouted to Norfolk. Our debriefings will be held at ComSubCom headquarters Wednesday morning.” With that, Seagraves sat back down.

Dankleff and Vevera were staring at Pacino.

“What?” Pacino said.

“The hell happened with your dad?” Dankleff asked. “You think he got fired by Carlucci for shooting missiles at that Russian rescue plane? Which, by the way, was an act of war.”

Pacino frowned. “I’ll ask him when I see him,” he said. “As to an act of war, shooting at the Belgorod was an act of war too, I’d remind you.”

Dankleff shrugged. “That happened under the polar icecap,” he said.

“So what?” Pacino asked.

“Patch,” Dankleff said, “every submariner knows that what happens under the ice… never happened.”

Captain Second Rank Iron Irina Trusov carefully carried the long submarine model to the headstone, then kneeled down and laid the model on the ledge of the stone. The black granite stone’s engraved text read:

Trusov stood, taking a mental image of the submarine model laid at her father’s gravestone. She decided to sit on the granite bench a few feet uphill from the headstone and keep her father company for a little while. Her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice from over her shoulder.

“Anything you leave on a grave gets collected for the museum, you know.” The tall man reached into a pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a cigarette and lit it, blowing smoke from his nostrils. He nodded at the gravestone. “He was a good man, your father. I served with him on Tambov. It was my first submarine. I like to think he taught me all he knew about underwater combat.”

Trusov stared. It was Georgy Alexeyev, with a new black eye patch over his right eye, wearing a black uniform greatcoat, but his shoulder boards were new. Gone were the two gold stripes and three gold stars of a captain first rank, replaced with shoulder boards with two gold stars. He was a vice admiral now.

She stood. “Admiral? Admiral Alexeyev? You got promoted?”

He nodded and smiled. “Do you mind if I sit with you here for a little while?”

“Please, sir, go ahead.” Once he took a seat on the bench, she sat next to him, uncomfortable that the bench was only long enough for two people if they sat close together.

“Admiral Zhigunov retired,” Alexeyev said. “He said this operation aged him another five years and he feels he doesn’t have that long left. Meanwhile, Admiral Zhabin was promoted to Chief Commander of the Navy after that asshole Stanislav passed away, and Zhabin and I go way back. Funny thing, Litso Smerti—Death Face — Zhabin was the first officer of Tambov when I reported aboard. He’s an old friend. He insisted I take command of the Northern Fleet.”

“I see,” Trusov said dully. “I’m glad the polar mission of the Belgorod didn’t hurt your career.”

Alexeyev smiled. “It didn’t hurt yours either, Irina. There’s an awards ceremony Wednesday immediately after the memorial service for our fallen comrades. You’re being awarded the Medal for Distinction in Combat, second award. And you’re out of uniform.” Alexeyev reached into his greatcoat pocket and pulled out a clear package containing the shoulder boards of a captain first rank.

Her eyes grew wide. “Really? But I’m so young, Cap — I mean, Admiral.”

“You’re wise and brilliant beyond your years,” Alexeyev said. “And that is not all. I have a project for you. I’m putting you in charge of building a new special-purpose submarine. Not something cobbled together from old spare parts like Belgorod, but planned from the keel up. It will be magnificent.” He smirked. “And hardened against nuclear shock. Once it’s constructed, you will be the captain. Here, let me help you.” She stood to face the admiral, and he removed the new shoulder boards from the packaging, took her captain second rank boards off and replaced them with the new boards of captain first rank. “It looks great on you, Irina.”

He stubbed out the cigarette butt on his shoe, put it in his pocket, and lit a second one. “I want to invite you to my house this weekend to meet my wife Natalia. We’ll cook up something delicious and talk about the new submarine. Just promise not to tell her I’ve started smoking again.” He laughed. “When she smells smoke on me, I tell her it’s from that degenerate, Kovalov.”

“Admiral,” Trusov said, glancing for a moment at the model sub on the gravestone. “This new submarine. Does it have a name yet?”

Alexeyev shook his head. “Only a project number, why?”

“Admiral, I want to be the one to name it.”

Alexeyev smiled. “Do you have anything in mind, Irina?”

She answered immediately. “Mest.”

“Revenge,” Alexeyev said. “I like it already.”

Lieutenant Commander Tiny Tim Fishman slowly and carefully lowered himself through the open plug trunk hatch of the wreck of the USS New Jersey, switched on his helmet camera, then turned to wait for Grip Aquatong, Scooter Tucker-Santos and Swan Oneida to swim in after him. Once his crew were all inside, Fishman swam through the side hatch into what had once been the forward compartment upper level. He accepted the light unit from Aquatong, set it in place, and turned it on, the strong illumination able to show the entire interior of the forward compartment, or what was left of it. The compartment was only partially a compartment — anything forward of Frame 40 had been blown to shards by the weapons explosion, and the middle third of the compartment was almost unrecognizable, just piles of rubble. The aft third of the compartment seemed to be less damaged, its three decks visible and still standing, and might yield what they were seeking.

Fishman swam down to the blown apart middle level, shining his flashlight left and right, eventually finding an intact passageway aft of what had been the control room, which no longer existed. Down the passageway, he found what he was looking for — the safe in the captain’s stateroom. He accepted the torch handed him by Aquatong, lit it and began torching through the metal of the safe. It wouldn’t matter if the torch destroyed the contents — that was the mission, to destroy the top secret and higher material to save it from any Russian salvage.

A few minutes later, Fishman and Aquatong had pulled the contents of the captain’s safe and the XO’s safe into a bag. The control room safe no longer existed, nor did the wardroom’s safe, but there was a double safe in the sonar equipment space and another in radio. It didn’t take long to see that the radio room and SES were blown to splinters by the torpedo room explosion. It was possible the safes had survived and had just been blown out into the surrounding ocean, but finding them would be for a later mission. This dive was for the low hanging fruit of the intact safes, and tablet computers, if any were visible in the rubble of the wreckage. And there was one other reason passed down from Admiral Catardi, the chief of naval operations.

Fishman and Aquatong swam aft into what had been the crew’s mess and the galley. It was pure chaos, debris scattered everywhere. Then they saw what they were looking for. The door to the frozen stores locker, normally a huge space the size of half a railroad boxcar, storing the food for 120 people for four months. Fishman tried the handle, but it was stuck. He called for the torch and torched off the latching mechanism, then opened the door and shined his light inside. The interior had minimal damage, he noted, just a ruptured area at the top port side.

To the right of the door, Fishman found the bodies, neatly stacked, each in a body bag. He counted twenty-four bodies. He pulled out the body on top and floated it over to Aquatong, who in turn passed it to Tucker-Santos and Oneida. It took ten minutes to pull all the bodies out. Oneida and Tucker-Santos lashed the bodies into a long line so they could be withdrawn from the plug trunk hatch without losing anyone or jamming up the hatch.

Tucker-Santos and Oneida left the hull and received the bodies up above as Fishman and Aquatong handed them up. All four SEALs then grabbed their propulsion units, making sure the bodies would stay tethered, and propelled over to the hull of the Hyman G. Rickover for the trip to the next dive site. Assuming good luck in locating the wreck, the next dive would be to the Russian deep-diver Losharik, then on to Belgorod to see if any of the Poseidon torpedoes had survived. If they did, Rickover’s mission was to bring them to AUTEC for dismantlement and study.

There had been debate about whether to bury New Jersey’s dead at sea, but Admiral Catardi’s directives were to bring them home. He didn’t want any of New Jersey’s dead to lie under polar ice, he’d said.

Inside the dry-deck shelter’s decompression chamber, Fishman pulled off his dive mask.

“Tough day at sea,” he said to Aquatong, who just stared glumly at the deck.

“Yeah, boss. Makes you wish you’d never become a diver in the first place.”

Fishman clapped Aquatong on the shoulder. “We did a good thing today. An important thing. The spirits of our dead watch us right now and I know they approve.”

“I hope so, boss. I hope so.”

Anthony Pacino shut off the engine of the old Corvette, the supercharger still emitting a high-pitched whine for a long minute after engine cut-off. Pacino got out and shut the door, pocketing his phone.

He walked up the front walkway to the door of the suburban Virginia Beach house, the two-story center-hall Colonial identical to what seemed ten thousand others in the beachside village. He knocked and waited, and after a short wait, the door opened and Bruno Romanov’s large, shaved head appeared. He smiled in genuine pleasure.

“Patch Pacino. Come in, come in. Can I get you a drink?”

It was Saturday at two in the afternoon. A little early to drink, Pacino thought, but he looked at Bruno and said, “is there any good scotch in the house?”

Bruno laughed. “Of course! Let me go get us a round. Double, right? Three fingers?”

Pacino smiled. “Three fat fingers,” he said.

“Rachel!” Bruno called up the stairs. “There’s a visitor here for you. A certain Lieutenant Patch Pacino.”

Rachel Romanov came down the stairs, her shining and partly curled dirty blonde hair down past her nipples, dressed in a form-fitting red sweater — which Pacino thought might be the same one she’d worn when he first met her at the XO’s party a million years ago — with tight jeans and tall brown boots. She smiled, showing her even, white, perfect teeth, but there was no recognition in her smile.

“Hello. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name. Patch, is it?”

“Anthony Pacino,” he said, taking Rachel’s outstretched hand. “My callsign is Patch, but some people used to call me Lipstick.” He watched her face for any sign of her remembering, but her face was blank.

“Did I know you before?” she asked.

“Yes, Rachel,” Pacino said, as Bruno handed him a rocks glass with three fingers of scotch in it and Rachel a glass of red wine.

“A toast,” Bruno said in his booming, deep voice with his slight eastern European accent. “To old friends, even if we don’t remember who they are.”

Pacino took a sip of the whisky, the liquid burning down his throat. “Dear God, Bruno, what is this?”

Bruno laughed. “I’m told you and your guys in Faslane liked it. Anyway, come over to the living room. Let’s sit down and talk.”

Rachel sat on a wing chair facing the couch. Pacino put his drink down on a coaster on the coffee table and looked at Rachel, but her face was still blank.

“Rachel,” Pacino said, “you and I were in the control room of the Vermont when the fire started. You went aft to take charge at the scene.”

She shook her hair off her shoulders and pursed her lips. “I’m sorry, Patch. Patch, right? I’m sorry, I just don’t remember.”

“Did someone show you the video of the control room before and during the accident?” Pacino asked.

She nodded. “Bruno got it for me. I watched it.” She shrugged. “It was like watching strangers.”

Pacino nodded and took another sip of the whisky. “I get that. What is the last thing you do remember?”

“I was getting off a limo bus and walking up to Quinnivan’s house for a ship’s party.”

Pacino looked down at the carpeting. She had remembered up to ten minutes before the moment when she’d met him for the first time. If her memory had only gone one hour longer, he thought, she’d know who he was.

“I wanted to ask you and Bruno something,” Pacino said.

“Go ahead, Patch,” Bruno said.

“Commander Quinnivan, our XO, made arrangements with the captain and XO of SSN-778, USS New Hampshire, out of Norfolk’s Squadron Six, to give Rachel a classified tour including the control room. The doctors I talked to said the sights, sounds, and smells of the submarine might bring back your memory.”

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t want a tour. I’m not sure I want my memory back,” she said. “I heard the fire on the Vermont was awful. And I’m not sure if I’m staying in the Navy or if I stay, whether I’ll stay in the submarine force.”

“Oh,” Pacino said, his face and tone giving away his disappointment.

“Listen, Patch. Anthony. I’d just as soon forget about my experiences on the Vermont.”

“I should be going,” Pacino said, draining his scotch and standing.

“You sure you won’t stay for dinner?” Rachel said, smiling brightly. “Bruno’s grilling steaks and I’m making salad and sides.”

“No, I’ll leave it to you two,” Pacino said.

The conversation at the front door seemed endless, and Pacino just wanted to go. Finally, they said their last good-bye and he walked out to the Corvette.

He knew what he needed, he thought. He programmed the destination into his phone and followed the app’s turn-by-turn directions toward the north.

Toward Annapolis.

31

It was early evening when Anthony Pacino cut the engine of the Corvette on the wide driveway of his father’s Annapolis house. The house looked like every light had been turned on inside, with the exterior lights making the driveway look like daylight. He’d texted his father that he’d be driving up, but he wasn’t sure if the old man would be there, or still in D.C. — or perhaps at the Sandbridge beach house.

His father had only replied “OK” to the text message, probably worried about the younger Pacino texting and driving. Pacino walked up to the front door, and looked back at the car, wondering if he should pull out his “go bag” of spare clothes and toiletries, but he had kept a week’s worth of clothes at the Annapolis house.

The house was a huge three-story log structure built on an artificial peninsula jutting into the Severn River, with sweeping views of the Maryland Route 2 bridge over the river and the northernmost grounds of the United States Naval Academy, the green-tinted copper dome of the chapel in the background. Back when his father was the admiral-in-command of the Navy, his direct reports had named the estate “Pacino Peninsula.” Pacino looked up to the second floor’s western deck, where he and his father had had happy hour every night in the month after Carrie Alameda died. He shook his head. Carrie’s death had slammed him hard, but losing Rachel to amnesia seemed almost as bad. She walked and talked, yet had no idea who he was or what she’d meant to him. Perhaps his father would have some advice, he thought.

He tried the front door and it was unlocked.

“Anthony?” his father called down the stairs.

“It’s me,” Pacino said, taking the stairs two at a time. He grinned as he saw his father. The old man wore a NAVY 90 sweatshirt, still grease-stained from when he’d wear it to work on his sailboat, which he’d sold after his divorce.

“Damn, it’s so good to see you, Son,” the elder Pacino said, pulling Anthony into a bear hug. He pulled back and looked at Anthony’s bandages.

“We need to change these dressings,” Michael said. “I know a good plastic surgeon, Son. Not to worry.”

“Hey, the scars might look cool.”

Michael shook his head. “I guarantee you they won’t. Anyway, you’re back and safe, finally.”

“Well, it got close a couple times, Dad. Four nuclear explosions, an arctic storm, and the Russian GRU trying to take us all prisoner.” Anthony bit his lip. “We lost five officers and five chiefs. And fourteen of the enlisted, one of them Snowman Mercer, the sonarman who first detected the Panther in the Gulf of Oman.”

“I heard the USS Rickover is bringing their bodies home,” Michael Pacino said solemnly. “There will be a service at Arlington National Cemetery.” The admiral picked up the crystal carafe from the bar. “Let’s grab a drink on the east deck.” He tossed Anthony a black sweatshirt with the emblem of a skull and crossbones. “It’s a little chilly but it’s a nice night.” He handed the scotch carafe to Anthony and grabbed two glasses and strode to the deck’s sliding glass door. He waved Anthony to a chair and poured for them both, then sat.

“A toast,” Michael Pacino said. “To your safe return and knowing that your mission was accomplished.”

“And to our fallen friends,” Anthony said. He drank, then looked at his father. “What did you mean the mission was accomplished?”

“Your SEAL friends did a dive on the Belgorod wreckage. The entire forward two thirds of the boat were blown to atoms. Those Poseidon torpedoes were vaporized.”

“Well, nice to know. I guess. Dad, I wanted to thank you for, you know, blowing up that Russian rescue plane. I really didn’t want to spend the next ten years in a Russian prison.”

“My pleasure,” Michael smiled. “Any time.”

“So, Dad, did you really resign? Or did Carlucci fire you?”

Pacino took a sip of his drink as if weighing his words. “You know, Anthony, when you eventually leave the military and have a job, you’ll realize that there’s the moment in your mind when you resign, and then there’s a later moment when you tell your boss you resigned. As for me, I resigned mentally ten seconds before giving the order to launch Brimstone missiles at that Russian Il-76.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew all of D.C. would have a complete meltdown about it. Carlucci would never have allowed that. ‘An act of war,’ all that pacifist horseshit. Carlucci would have let you get captured, then negotiated for your release as the more prudent, responsible, statesmanlike thing to do. Hell with that. I blasted that goddamned plane to Hell, naysayers be damned. And the intelligence community, the signals intelligence spooks, were outraged that I acted on intel that revealed that we’d broken the Russian codes and were translating their radio traffic in real time. The damage from that, they say, could take years to fix. I even heard that ball-busting attorney general tried to get Carlucci to agree to having the Justice Department put me up on criminal charges. Fortunately for me, he told her to pound sand.”

“Wow,” Anthony said. “Now for the hard question, Dad. If I hadn’t been on the crew of the New Jersey, would you still have fired those missiles?” Anthony expected his father to use his usual explanation, that no man can say what he’d do in any given situation until he was actually in the situation.

But Michael Pacino put down his whisky glass, looked Anthony in the eye and said seriously, “You’re goddamned right I would have.”

Anthony smiled. “I actually came for advice,” he said.

Michael refilled his glass and then Anthony’s. “Go ahead.”

“It’s about my friend Rachel Romanov. My former navigator.”

Michael nodded. “You two were involved.”

“Almost, Dad. Just not quite yet. She wanted to keep it platonic for a while longer, but I could tell that was about to change. I had it bad for her. I still do. Just as I thought she might be ready to agree to a relationship, the fire happened. And now? ‘Retrograde amnesia’? Her memory stops an hour before she met me.”

Michael considered, his hand on his chin. “And you think there’s something meaningful about the timing of that.”

“Yeah. I think she’s blocking my memory out. If she remembers me, she has to remember that she’d gotten a divorce from her husband Bruno.”

“She was living with you junior officers in that Virginia Beach rental house, right?”

“The Snake Ranch. Yeah. She had the big master bedroom after she pulled rank on all of us.” Anthony smiled for a moment at the memory of Rachel strong-arming them all when it came time to pick rooms.

“Where is she living now?”

“She’s back at her former marital residence. She’s with Bruno. Which, I’ve got to tell you, cuts my fucking heart out.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “I could see that.”

“I went to see her hoping it would jog her memory, but nothing.”

“And you want to know if you should keep pushing,” Michael said.

“Yeah. The doctors said familiar sights, sounds and smells might jar the memories loose. I was thinking about taking her down to an operational Virginia-class boat, maybe walking her into the control room, you know, and stand there next to her like I did during Operation Panther.”

“Well, if you don’t do that, you’ll always wonder what would have happened if you did. And if you do take her to the submarine, and she still doesn’t remember you, well, you can move on with no regrets. You did all you could. But you don’t control the situation. Rachel could decide to say ‘no’ to your request to take her down to the boat.”

“She already said no. I pitched the idea to her. She refused. She said she’s not even sure she wants her memory back.”

“Is there anyone else who has influence on her, who could convince her?”

Anthony considered for a moment. “Yeah. Her ex-husband Bruno. They were still friends. But Bruno would have to act against his best interest. If he convinces her to go down to the submarine, he could lose her to me.”

“So talk to Bruno,” Michael said. “Man to man. Tell him that you and he both need to ‘draw the box’ around Rachel — that is, you should both care enough about her to do what’s best for her, not for either of you.”

“And then, if he says no, or if she still says no, I did everything I could.”

“Right. And I know you can live with the loss after that.”

Anthony nodded, pointing to the whisky carafe. “I’ll take one more. Then I’m going to hit the rack. All this has been emotionally exhausting.”

“I can imagine,” Michael said.

“So, Dad, there’s a lot of press speculation about you running in the primaries against Carlucci. Are you really running for president?”

Michael laughed dismissively. “A presidential election campaign costs about seven billion dollars. We could build a Virginia-class submarine for that amount.”

Anthony laughed. “I noticed, Dad, you didn’t answer a yes-or-no question. I think you may have turned into a politician in spite of yourself.”

When Anthony had turned in, Michael Pacino picked up his phone and dialed the number for Captain Scotch Seagraves. Seagraves answered on the first ring.

“Mr. Vice President?” he said.

“It’s just ‘Patch’ now, Captain. Listen, I know it’s late and you’re busy, but I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

“Let’s get these bandages off,” Dr. Gupta said. The plastic surgery had wrapped a week before. Anthony Pacino wondered how the result would look. Would he resemble someone who’d survived a knife fight? Would the scars make him look tough? Or would there be those hideous red streaks on his skin like he’d had before Gupta took the knife to him? It occurred to Pacino that maybe the bandages and scars had made Rachel fail to recognize him. If Gupta had been able to return Pacino to his previous appearance sooner, maybe that might have brought her back.

When Gupta had cut off the bandages, he held a large hand-held mirror up to Pacino’s face.

“It looks the same as it always did, before the… before the thing,” Pacino said, rotating the mirror slightly, hoping his voice sounded happy rather than disappointed. A nice scar would have made his tale of piracy on the high seas more believable.

“You can just see the faintest ghost of the scars, Lieutenant Pacino,” Gupta said, smiling. “In the right light, you can convince a lady that you are indeed a tough guy. Too bad that nightclub lighting won’t do. You may have to carry a bright flashlight with you.”

Pacino laughed. “I’ve already got the lady, Doc, but thanks.”

But did he? Or was Rachel Romanov lost to him forever?

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino leaned on the handrail of the platform overlooking Graving Dock Number One, where the hull of the USS New England was coming together after the aft end of the Vermont had been welded to the forward end of the Massachusetts. The boat was so surrounded by scaffolding, it could barely be made out to be a submarine, the scaffolding extending all the way up the sail. The metal of the hull was a dull anti-rust green from the inorganic zinc primer sprayed on her. The intermediate and final paint coats would wait for the ship to be closer to leaving the drydock.

Despite the boat being far from ready, the crew of the New Jersey had been reassigned to the New England, assisting the shipyard in bringing her back to life. It was Monday, and Pacino was the off-going duty officer. The XO had made a new policy that after standing duty, an officer could take the next day off. Standing duty for a ship in the dock seemed stupid to Pacino, since there was not much for the duty officer to do in the shipyard. He looked at his watch, and it was 1045. He was about to cross the street and get in the car for the ride back to the Snake Ranch when a car glided to a halt behind him.

The driver’s window rolled down. It was Commander Quinnivan in a black Lincoln town car. Quinnivan grinned at Pacino.

“Get in, loser. We have a lunch date at Squadron Six.”

Pacino walked to the passenger side, but Quinnivan waved at him to get into the backseat. As he climbed in, he saw there was another passenger. It was Rachel Romanov, in uniform. She wore oversize sunglasses and her uniform ballcap, the cap featureless rather than the blue one with dolphins and the embroidery spelling USS NEW ENGLAND. Pacino looked at her.

“Hi, Rachel,” he said. He wondered, now that his head wounds were healed, would she recognize him? Would his face return her memory? But so far, she hadn’t reacted.

“Hello Patch,” she said without looking back at him, her voice neutral. Was there a coldness in her voice, he wondered, or was he just being too sensitive?

“What’s going down, XO?” Pacino asked.

“I got a phone call from Balaclava Driscoll, my opposite number on the New Hampshire. He and his captain, Gray Wolf Austin, agreed to bring you and Rachel down for a tour of their boat.”

Pacino stared at Rachel. “Really?”

“Captain Seagraves thinks it’s important that Madam Romanov reacquaint herself with the Virginia-class. I’ll be there to remind her of what’s what. You’re coming, young Pacino, since XO Driscoll and Captain Austin want to talk to you. They’ve got a slot in their wardroom opening up.”

“If it’s all the same to you, XO, I’d prefer to stay with the old Vermont crew on the New England.”

“Ah, but young Pacino, the New England will take months to get out of the dock. I figured you’d be craving action and want to get back to sea pronto.”

“Well, normally, yeah, XO, but I’m still coming down from our most recent action. I could use a nice boring month or two.”

“It may not be up to you, Patch, but let’s see what happens.”

The hull of SSN-778, the USS New Hampshire, looked exactly like the Vermont before the fire, or like the New Jersey before the battle with the Russians. Commander Jeremiah Seamus Quinnivan seemed almost out of place, one of the few people on the crowded pier not wearing the Navy’s two-piece organizational clothing uniform, an ill-conceived, baggy-looking outfit that resembled pajamas tucked into black combat boots. By contrast, Quinnivan wore his sharp Royal Navy-issued blue uniform, his tailored long-sleeved shirt smartly tucked into starched pants, with gleaming leather black shoes, wearing a black beret with the emblem of the Royal Navy’s submarine force, his rank displayed on the center of his chest, the emblem showing three broad gold stripes, the uppermost stripe forming a circular loop at the top.

Quinnivan, Pacino, and Romanov walked up to the topside sentry, who was wearing a set of crisp, dark blue crackerjacks. The sentry came to attention and saluted, and the three officers saluted back.

“Ahoy, lass, I’m Quinnivan, XO of the New England,” the Irishman said to the topside watchstander, his brogue suddenly becoming comically thick. “I’m here to see your XO and Captain.”

“I’ll call down, sir,” the topside petty officer said, reaching into a comms box and dialing a number on the phone inside.

“They’re not using VHF radios with the repeaters anymore?” Romanov asked Quinnivan.

“Nah,” Quinnivan said. “They’re a security risk. A Pentagon ‘red team’ of hackers was able to use the VHF repeaters, in-hull radios and exterior system to eavesdrop on conversations inside the boats. So we’re back to what worked from forty years ago. It may be old, but it works just fine, and it’s secure.”

The topside sentry put the phone back in the box and turned to Quinnivan. “XO will be right up, sir.”

“So, lassie, how long have you been assigned to this bucket o’bolts?” Quinnivan smiled at the sentry.

“A year, Commander,” she replied, obviously uncomfortable with the question.

“No submarine dolphins yet? These qualified lads not taking care of you, gettin’ ya trained?”

“Oh, no, sir, nothing like that. I’m just delinquent in my qualifications.”

“Is it studyin’ ya need to do, or do ya need practical experience at sea?”

“Sea experience, Commander. New Hampshire has been tied to the pier for a month.”

Quinnivan nodded, filing the information away, Pacino noted, probably to use in conversation with the New Hampshire exec.

“Well, Petty Officer Schwarzengruber,” Quinnivan said, stumbling over her name, “as soon as the New England is waterborne, you can join our crew any time and leave these New Hampshire pikers in the rearview mirror.”

The petty officer blushed. “Thank you, sir. I’ll bear that in mind.”

A man wearing the khaki two-piece working uniform emerged from a canvas doghouse that had been erected over the plug trunk hatch. He was extremely tall and thin, with closely cropped black hair showing a receding hairline, his face long, his cheeks hollow. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and his expression was grave, as if he were walking into court as a handcuffed criminal. Pacino stared — he had thought Quinnivan and this officer, Lieutenant Commander Oliver Balaclava Driscoll, were friends. Apparently not.

Driscoll approached, frowned deeply at Quinnivan and snarled, “You’ve got some nerve coming here, Bullfrog.”

“I came to return your mother’s panties, Lurch — at least I was,” Quinnivan said in hostility, “but the stench was just too great, so I tossed them in the Elizabeth River and got written up for causing an environmental disaster.”

Driscoll flushed, his expression murderous. “Oh yeah? Well, your mother smells like a dumpster baking in the August sunshine that hasn’t been emptied in a month and just got vomited on by a homeless guy and shit on by a flock of seagulls.”

“Oh yeah? Well, fuck you, Lurch.”

“Oh yeah? Well, fuck your mother, Bullfrog.”

“Come here, ya skinny-ass fart-breath,” Quinnivan said, bursting into a grin, and Driscoll came up and hugged the Irishman, the two men laughing and smiling. “Goddamn, Lurch, how long has it been?”

“At least a year,” Driscoll said. “I meant to call you when we got back from being forward deployed for six months, but you know how it is. The in-port time is busier than the sea duty.”

“Yeah, I get you. You’ve got to come to the house before I leave for my new assignment,” Quinnivan said. “Shawna will whip up something. And I’ll break out the good scotch.”

“What’s the new assignment, Bullfrog?” Driscoll asked.

“Shh. Top secret, lad,” Quinnivan said, grinning and glancing at Pacino and Romanov. “Not in front of the children.” He turned toward Pacino and Romanov. “Patch, Silky, this is Lieutenant Commander Lurch Driscoll, my old roommate and stateroom mate on the HMS Astute back home. I was the navigator. Lurch isn’t smart enough to navigate, so they put him in charge of the weapons department. He never could figure out that Spearfish torpedo, though. Damn near blew us up doing maintenance one day. Lurch, this is Rachel Silky Romanov — you’ve heard of iron fist, velvet glove? Well, Lieutenant Commander Romanov here has a titanium fist in a silk glove. And this youngster here is Lieutenant Anthony Patch Pacino. We’re particularly proud of this young’un.”

Driscoll shook Rachel’s hand, then Pacino’s.

“The name is actually ‘Balaclava’ Driscoll,’” he said to Pacino. “I convene a captain’s mast for anyone calling me ‘Lurch.’ But some assholes are just too stupid to be retrained,” he said, winking at Quinnivan. “And you, Mister Pacino. I was informed your callsign is actually ‘Death Toll.’ How many Russians have you killed in the last two ops?”

Pacino smirked. Death Toll Pacino. He supposed anything was better than his old callsign, Lipstick.

“Come on down, you three,” Driscoll said, smiling. “Let me introduce you to the captain, and then you can wander around as needed.”

Pacino followed Romanov and Quinnivan down the gangway to the hull, all three of them saluting the American flag mounted aft, then across to the doghouse overlooking the maw of the plug trunk hatch. When Pacino’s turn came to enter the submarine, that unique and powerful smell of the boat filled his nostrils, an unmistakable witch’s brew of atmo control amines, ozone, diesel fuel, diesel exhaust, cooking grease, seasoned with a touch of raw sewage. Wives of submariners often made husbands take off their boat uniforms before entering the house, the smell soaking into fabric and only a strong detergent able to eliminate it. It could get worse on a long run, Pacino thought, especially in the tropics, when stale human sweat was added to the mix, sometimes exacerbated by the laundry being shut down if there were trouble with the evaporators. Clean water was reserved for the oxygen generator, the reactor, the steam plant, and only after that for cooking and drinking, and dead last, for laundry. Pacino realized he hadn’t smelled that scent since climbing out of the New Jersey, and the strong aroma brought him back to the moments before the sub sank.

He wondered if the smell would hit Rachel the same way it was hitting him. Would that crazy smell wake her up? Or would her amnesia persist? The trouble was, the smell had been present in her memories of her year on the Vermont before Pacino had shown up. He followed the other officers down the steep staircase to the middle level and forward to the door to the captain’s stateroom. When Romanov turned to face Pacino at the door, he could tell from her blank stare that nothing had changed for her. The amnesia was continuing, he thought, his stomach dropping a few floors.

The man in the captain’s stateroom stood. He seemed way too young to be a sub captain, Pacino thought. He stood barely over five feet tall, with a shock of red hair and a red five o’clock shadow. His face was open and friendly. He grinned in pleasure at Quinnivan.

“The mad Irishman cometh,” he said, shaking Quinnivan’s hand. “How the hell are ya, Bullfrog?”

“Great, great,” Quinnivan said. “I’m just about done destroying American submarines.”

“Tour coming to an end? Is the exchange program continuing?” The captain looked at Driscoll. “I hope so. Maybe I could get a British XO who would actually be competent instead of this loafer.”

“Fuck you, Skipper,” Driscoll said, smiling. “Gentlemen and lady, this is Captain Grey ‘Gray Wolf’ Austin, commanding officer of the legendary submarine USS New Hampshire. Captain, this is Rachel Silky Romanov, Vermont’s former navigator, and their sonar officer, Anthony Patch Pacino.”

Austin smiled. “Pleased to meet you guys,” he said, reaching out to shake Rachel’s hand, then Pacino’s. “Your XO is correct about this being a legendary submarine. The New Hampshire is here to save Western civilization, as we have done many times already.” He looked sympathetically at Rachel. “I heard there was, as Bullfrog would say, a spot of bother on the Vermont in drydock. You’re all healed up now?”

“Yes, Captain,” Rachel said, her voice neutral, almost dead sounding. She obviously was not happy with this errand. Pacino wondered if Bruno had convinced her to visit the sub or if Quinnivan or Seagraves had demanded the trip. “I’ve just lost a few months of my memory. There is the valid concern that what I do remember is complete enough to return me to submarine duty, or if I need to be retrained. Hopefully I haven’t suffered so much brain trauma that I’ve lost what I know about operating a submarine.”

“Good, good, well, you’ve come to the right place. New Hampshire is the best submarine in the fleet,” Austin said, smiling. “With the finest officers, chiefs and enlisted personnel. Not like those blithering idiots on the New England.”

“Hey now,” Quinnivan said, striking a boxing pose. “Captain, Lieutenant Pacino here, you may have heard stories about him. Disregard them. They’re all lies.”

Austin laughed. “What, are you saying he didn’t machine gun down a platoon of Russians about to take you hostage? Or launch a Russian supercavitating torpedo to sink a Yasen-M class Russian boat? After sneaking aboard an Iranian nuke sub and hijacking it?”

“And not only that,” Quinnivan said, “he’s the son of Admiral Pacino.”

“Wow, that’s your dad? He’s running for president against Carlucci,” Austin said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Pacino said.

“He just announced his candidacy this morning,” Austin said, finding his tablet computer, putting on his reading glasses and handing the unit to Pacino. Pacino squinted at it and scanned it. Austin was right. Dad was running for president. Pacino blinked, feeling disoriented, like he’d stepped into an alternate universe, one where his father had become a politician and his woman had no idea who he was.

“Anyway, you guys go wherever you want,” Austin said. “If you’re going aft, get set up with the engineer first with dosimeters. Eng is in stateroom two. Come to the wardroom at 1145. We’re having an amazing meal today.”

“What’s for lunch, Captain?” Quinnivan asked.

“Sliders,” Austin grinned. “With steak fries and my favorite, cornbread. No one makes cornbread like my mess cooks. They make my old Aunt Martha from Waycross, Georgia, look like an amateur.”

“We’ll be there, Captain,” Quinnivan said. “I’m hungry already.” He looked at Pacino and Romanov. “Come on, let’s go hang out in control first.”

The three of them spent a half hour in the control room, which was cold and quiet, all the electronics shut down when in port, the air conditioning tuned for when every console would be operational and hot. Pacino kept stealing glances at Romanov to see if she’d recognize him, but she just stood there, silent as a statue. He’d moved close to her to get her to move to the space aft of the command console and he took the position to her immediate left, where they had stood for the early parts of Operation Panther, but still nothing seemed to penetrate the fog of her memory loss.

Eventually, the supply chief came for them, announcing that lunch would be dished up in the next few minutes. They all walked aft to the wardroom. Pacino stood behind the seat he used to sit in on the Vermont, on the outboard side, facing Rachel when she sat in the traditional seat of the navigator, to the right of the XO, who would sit to the right of the captain’s seat at the end of the table. As tradition demanded, they stood behind their chairs until the captain’s arrival.

The captain entered the room with Driscoll and they all took their seats. Pacino unfolded a guest linen napkin and placed it in his lap. A messcook came by and put two hamburger buns on each officer’s plate, the buns full size. Submarine sliders weren’t the same as what civilians called sliders. A submarine slider was simply a grilled hamburger, but so greasy that it would slide down one’s throat. The onions, tomatoes, and pickles came next, then the hamburger patties.

“Where are your officers, Captain Austin?” Rachel asked.

“I told them to eat in the crew’s mess today, Madam Romanov,” Austin said. “I wanted to talk to you three without my junior officers misbehaving, those ill-mannered scurvy youngsters.”

Quinnivan, Driscoll and Austin soon became deeply engaged in conversation. Old stories about former senior officers, former junior officers, their exploits on former submarines. The buzz of them talking soon faded in Pacino’s mind, and his focus narrowed to Rachel, looking at her while trying to appear that he wasn’t staring at her.

She slowly assembled a hamburger and took a bite. Pacino waited, hopeful, that the taste of the slider would bring her back, but there was still no recognition.

“So, Patch,” Austin said, his voice penetrating Pacino’s trance. “Or do you prefer ‘Death Toll’? Tell us the whole story of Operation Panther. Now that’s it’s declassified, we want to hear it from you, not some stale patrol report — that’s probably just filled with Bullfrog Quinnivan’s lies.”

Pacino put down his burger and looked to the end of the table toward the senior officers.

“Not much to tell,” he said.

“Come on. Modesty is not allowed at my table,” Austin said. “You’ve heard me bragging all morning about the USS New Hampshire. Let’s give those fighter pilots a run for their money when it comes to cockiness. Tell the whole story, Patch. All the details. Leave out nothing.”

“Well, it all started with us trying to hijack a Colombian narco-sub as a dry run,” Pacino began. He told the tale of the narco-sub being run by AI, then the Vermont’s sprint to AUTEC to get new orders from Admiral Catardi. To provoke Rachel, Pacino decided to throw in the story of how he’d returned from a night of liberty at AUTEC and his face was covered with Wanda River Styxx’s makeup, earning him the embarrassing epithet ‘Lipstick,’ after which Quinnivan told how Pacino had looked walking into the wardroom that morning, Driscoll and Austin howling with laughter at the image of Pacino wearing what had resembled clown makeup.

Pacino mentioned that the incident had enraged Rachel and that all during the flank run to the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, she’d given him the smoldering silent treatment. He told how they had arrived in the Gulf of Oman, slowed down and rigged for ultraquiet. Pacino took small bites of his lunch as Quinnivan would add color commentary or answer questions from Driscoll and Austin. Then Pacino told the long tale of how he’d been part of the boarding party that had taken the sub. He decided to say how, just before it was time to lock out of the Vermont and swim to the Iranian submarine, he’d called Rachel on the conn and apologized for the lipstick incident, and how that seemed to break her stony silence.

Engaged in his story, Pacino went on to describe what happened after they’d captured the Iranian submarine, but a few minutes into it, he was startled to see that Rachel had put down her hamburger and was staring intensely at him, her hands in her lap, and as Pacino reached the end of the story, he could see her eyes flooding with moisture. She wiped her face with her napkin, asked Austin if she could be excused, vaulted out of her chair and ran to the officers’ bathroom at the end of the passageway.

Pacino was at the end of the story, so he asked if he could also be excused and left the wardroom and hurried to the officers’ head to talk to Rachel. The door was shut and locked.

“Rachel? It’s me, Anthony,” he said, knocking. “Can you open the door? I need to talk to you.”

He heard the door unlock and it opened slowly. Rachel’s face was red, her cheeks were wet from tears and her mascara had run down her face. She pulled Pacino into the room, shut the door behind him, locked it and pulled him into a hug. He could feel sparks all along his body where her warm, soft body touched his. He hugged her so hard she pulled back to be able to breathe. She looked at him, her eyes liquid and threatening to leak tears again.

“Oh my God, Pacino,” she said, her voice trembling. “I remember! I remember everything. I’m so sorry, I was gone somewhere, and then suddenly, it all came back! God, I miss you so much!”

Pacino looked at her. Her eyes moved from looking at his left eye to his right. He started to smile at her.

“What was it that brought you back?” he asked. “The slider?”

She shook her head, her blonde hair falling into her face for a moment before she shook her hair back.

“It was your voice. Or your story. Or both. You put me right back in that control room at the moment you apologized to me, and right then, everything just returned.”

Pacino breathed a sigh of relief and hugged her tight again.

“Pacino?” she said, almost in a little girl’s voice.

“Yes, Rachel?”

“You know I love you, don’t you?”

He pulled back and grinned at her. “Actually, no,” he said. “I don’t. Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

He felt the impact of her punching his arm in mock anger and he looked at her and laughed.

“Ow,” he said. “But you already know I love you.”

“I want to thank you, Pacino.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For fighting so hard to bring my memory back. It was your idea to get me on another sub, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I was upset when you said you didn’t want the tour.”

“Seagraves gave me a direct order,” she said. “You must have called him.”

Pacino shook his head. “I didn’t have a chance to bring it up to him. I guess he just decided on his own. You know, great minds think alike.” He looked at the door. “So what happens now?”

“Now,” Rachel said, “we try to act professional and finish lunch, then go back to the New England admin building and finish the work day.”

“And then?”

“And then, you’re taking me to the Snake Ranch and moving your stuff into my master bedroom. And after that? You’re going to make me glad I’m a woman. Preferably, twice.”

“I can do that,” Pacino grinned. “I can definitely do that.”

The officers and chief petty officers of the submarine New England were gathered on the pier, watching the USS Hyman G. Rickover coast to a halt in the Elizabeth River Reach. Two tugboats spun her around so her bow was facing outward, then backed her into the slip so she could tie up, port-side-to.

Once she was tied up, the watchstanders in their informal two-piece working uniforms disappeared below, replaced by sailors wearing dress blues, the crackerjack uniforms made famous by recruiting posters and World War II movies.

The first body bag was lifted out of the hull. The topside sailors put it on a waiting stretcher, covered it with an American flag, and slowly walked it off the deck, up the slope of the gangway and into a waiting black truck. The New England’s officers and chiefs stood at attention, and as the body went by, the captain called for them to render a hand salute, and all of them rigidly saluted until the body was placed in the truck. When the second body came out, the ritual was repeated, until all twenty-four of the dead were placed in the back of the truck.

After the truck drove off, the group on the pier broke up. Anthony Pacino walked down the pier toward officers’ parking, Rachel Romanov by his side.

“It’s hard to believe Styxx and Kelly are gone,” she said. “And Easy Eisy, and Gangbanger.” She sniffed and pulled out a tissue and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“And the COB,” Pacino said. “And Gory Goreliki and K-Squared Kim from the Panther op. And Snowman Mercer, who first found the Panther. And we lost our new nub, Long Hull Cooper. Goddamned bad day at sea.”

Romanov sighed. “Let’s get back to the Snake Ranch and do something fun. Grill out some steaks, maybe. I want a happy memory to replace this one.”

“XO made this a long weekend for us all,” Pacino said. “We have no work duties until the funeral on Tuesday. We’ll have to roll out super early that day. Rush hour traffic out of Norfolk and on the way to D.C. will be murderous.”

“Let’s find a five-star hotel in D.C. and stay over Monday night,” Rachel said. She smiled at Pacino as he opened the Corvette’s door for her. “We’ll stay in bed and have scrumptious room service.”

“And some scrumptious other things?” Pacino smirked at her as he started the car, the supercharger’s high-pitched whine and the deep throbbing notes of the powerful engine making him feel better already.

“Maybe,” she said, jutting out her lower lip as if considering the idea, then shrugging. “Depends on my mood.”

“Oh, no problem. I can get you in the mood in two minutes,” Pacino said, grinning at her.

“You’re just lucky you’re with a hot-blooded girl, Pacino,” she said. “I’m always in the mood when you’re around. With the exception of this hour, today.”

“Yeah,” Pacino said solemnly. “And the entire time that you had amnesia. It was almost like you were robotic, like your soul wasn’t in your body. I gotta tell ya, it was unnerving.”

“It felt like a walking nightmare to me,” she said. “One second it was six months ago, then suddenly I’m in a hospital room with Bruno, painful bandaged burns on my legs and abdomen, with Bruno telling me we were divorced, and that I had a new boyfriend and that the boyfriend was this hot-running hero-slash-pirate from an operation where Vermont stole an Iranian submarine. Can you imagine? The U.S. Navy just walking up and stealing the submarine of another sovereign nation? And now I have a boyfriend? And then I meet you, and you’re all handsome and swashbuckling, enough to make a poor girl swoon, but I was sure I had to stay away from you.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know you. For all I knew, the new Rachel might not even like you.”

“Rachel Romanov not liking me?” Pacino laughed. “Impossible. And did you really think I was, quote, swashbuckling, unquote?”

“You’re a real-life pirate, Pacino,” she said, looking out the window at the industrial side of Norfolk giving way to the bayside high-priced real estate, then to the suburbs of Virginia Beach. “Pacino?” she asked. He noticed that since she came back from her amnesia, she no longer called him ‘Anthony’ or ‘Patch.’ Just ‘Pacino.’ He liked it, he thought. No one else addressed him that way. “Where do you think our dead shipmates are right now?”

“Well, if Tiny Tim Fishman were here, he’d say they all went to the afterlife to contemplate what their lives would have been like had they made different decisions. In some of the multiple universes Fishman believes in, many of them are still alive, so I imagine they watch themselves living out those lives in real time. In essence, they would be haunting themselves.”

“Do you believe all that?”

Pacino shrugged. “In my near-death experience, I only made it into the tunnel, not all the way to the afterlife. But before the tunnel vacuumed me into it, I had the thought that I could just stick around earth and watch things. Maybe haunt people. If that’s true, I think the New Jersey dead are probably still with us, maybe even sitting in this car, listening to us talk. I think they’ll attend the funeral Tuesday. Then they’ll feel free to leave and go on to the next world.”

“You know, that’s kind of freaky, the idea of them in this tiny car with us.”

“We have nothing but fond memories of them,” Pacino said. “I’m sure they find that comforting. I just hope they withdraw when you and I are, you know, in a ‘tactical situation.’”

“Oh man, Pacino, now I’m definitely not in the mood.”

Later, much later, the day would just be a blur of intense images in Pacino’s memory.

The mournful sound of a bugle in the crisp, clean, sunny autumn morning.

The clop of hoofbeats of the horses carrying the twenty-four caissons to the twenty-four freshly dug graves.

The caskets covered with bright American flags.

The color guard firing off three shots for each deceased person.

The solemn announcement of each person’s name, rank and job function on the USS New Jersey.

The chaplain, standing in the middle of the two dozen graves, an open Bible in his hands, reading a passage from the Old Testament—

The inconsolable wives, husbands, and children, all of them crying.

The survivors saluting on cue, all of them dressed in service dress blues with full medals and white gloves.

The honor guard taking American flags off coffins, folding them into triangles and presenting them to widows and widowers, children or parents, or just close friends.

The chaplain’s concluding prayer.

The bugle call at the end of the ceremony.

Pacino’s eyes teared up as he and Rachel Romanov walked back to his car. He sniffed and looked at Rachel, who looked back adoringly at him.

32

“Ahoy there! Attention all hands. Listen up,” XO Quinnivan shouted, “all you rowdy, misfit, criminal pirates, we have a lot to go over, so shut the fook up, yeah?” Quinnivan’s brogue was more pronounced than normal, a sure sign he’d been drinking.

The officers and some of the chiefs of the USS New England stood or sat in the great room of the Snake Ranch, the Virginia Beach rental house occupied by Pacino, Romanov, Dankleff and Vevera. With Quinnivan’s upcoming relocation back to the UK, his house was a wreck from packing. He’d donated his gigantic television, the Sony “Wall,” to the Snake Ranch as a parting gift. Dankleff and Vevera had spent the entire day getting the monstrous TV set up.

Pacino looked around, noting half a dozen new faces. The replacements for the dead officers, he thought. He took a sip of the scotch Quinnivan had brought over, the Irishman showing up with two plastic milk crates full of alcohol that he didn’t want to move back to England. After emptying one of the crates, he now stood on top of it to address the crowded room.

Pacino leaned over and whispered to Rachel, “you think the new captain is here?”

“He could only be that older guy standing next to Seagraves.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.”

“Okay, so first off,” Quinnivan said, “I want to introduce one of Captain Seagraves’ buddies, one Commander Mikey ‘Headlock’ ‘Side-Eye’ Cydice from Pearl Harbor. He’s got temporary duty here at ComSubCom, so I brought him over to see if he could rent the spare room at the Snake Ranch for the next month. Mikey, say a few words to this crowd. Just speak slowly, they’re all mentally challenged.”

Commander Cydice laughed as he stepped up on top of Quinnivan’s milk crate. He was a few inches taller than Quinnivan but several inches shorter than Seagraves. He was of a slight build, a runner perhaps. His black hair was short on the sides, longer on top. He had pronounced cheekbones and a strong jawline. He wore a gray button-down shirt under a black sportscoat over black jeans, with black harness boots. He could almost be a biker, Pacino thought, if he traded out his jacket to a leather vest.

“Thank you, Bullfrog,” Cydice said, his voice deep and sonorous. “And thank you all for allowing me to attend your magnificent party. As Bullfrog says, Scotch Seagraves and I go way back. We were roommates at the Academy and I was constantly bailing him out of trouble. I was his best man back in the day.” He looked at Seagraves solemnly. “I was sad to hear, Scotch. Anyway, I have a month here before I go back to Pearl Harbor. Until recently, I was the executive officer of the Virginia-class battle-E-winning boat USS Mississippi, SSN-782. I have to say, with all the chatter about what’s going on with Red and White China reuniting, it looks like the Pacific theater is going to heat up even more than it is now. You junior officers, I recommend you blow off this sissy east coast shit and come out west, because nothing ever happens on the Atlantic side — you Atlantic guys are a bunch of pussies on vacation compared to us Pacific submariners.”

The room booed the commander, a few empty cups flying his way, which he gleefully ducked.

“I’m just kidding, you guys know that. After your last hairy mission, we all know you did a great job. I do have a message for you from ComSubCom. Admiral Stiletto Patton sends his regards and respectfully requests that you refrain from destroying any more of his submarines.”

“You ever wonder how it would turn out if we did a sub-versus-sub exercise, us against a Pac Fleet boat?” Pacino said to Rachel. “We could put money on the outcome.”

“Or a couple of milk crates of alcohol,” she said.

“Back to you, Commander Quinnivan,” Cydice said. “But you Snake Ranch guys, what do you say? Can I bunk in with you pirates?”

“You have to buy all the beer for that month!” Vevera shouted.

Cydice grinned. “Done!”

“Okay, next,” Quinnivan announced. “We all know our beloved commanding officer is moving on to bigger and better things, but we’re all fortunate that he will still be local. Captain, can you tell us what’s in your future?”

Seagraves nodded and stepped up on the milk crate. “Well, everyone, first, tonight I will have the honor of drinking my eagles.” He was referring to the time-honored and strictly prohibited practice of an officer dropping new collar devices in a tall glass of whiskey and drinking his way down to the emblems. That was how the whole lipstick incident had happened, Pacino thought, when he drank down to his lieutenant bars. And by “eagles,” it meant Commander Seagraves was being promoted from the rank of commander to the rank of captain. “I’d like Commander Quinnivan and Commander Cydice to pin them on me now, so I can unpin them, put them into the whiskey, and get started.”

The junior officers applauded. “Congratulations, Skipper,” Romanov shouted.

“Just don’t fuck up, Scotch,” Cydice said to Seagraves, smiling. Cydice and Quinnivan pinned eagle captain emblems on Seagraves shirt and handed him a nearly full tumbler of bourbon. Seagraves removed the eagles and dropped them into the whiskey. He took a sip, then looked up at the crowd.

“There’s more news, ladies and gents,” he said. “My new orders call for me to report as the new commodore of Squadron Six.”

“Nice,” Lewinsky said. “You’ll still be the boss. Make sure the New England gets the best of squadron resources!” Navigator Lewinsky stood next to his clingy girlfriend, Redhead, who had her arms wrapped around his arm as if he’d wander off. The woman was a caricature of a crooning nightclub singer, wearing a tight red pencil skirt, slit up the sides showing her long legs, the dress clinging to her narrow waist, then expanding greatly in an attempt to restrain her melon-sized round breasts, the dress’ neckline plunging daringly between them. Her copper auburn hair cascaded in gentle curls down to her nipples.

“What is it with that goddamned Redhead,” Rachel commented quietly to Pacino, her tone acid.

“She’s like a fourteen-year-old boy’s fantasy,” Pacino whispered. “Just like Lewinsky’s car. I mean, really, who the hell drives a V-12 Ferrari?”

Rachel laughed. “Every one of you boys just wishes you could wake up and be Elvis Lewinsky.”

“No way,” Pacino said. “I’ve heard his midrats stories of how crazy Redhead is. I half expected Elvis to show up with a black eye.” He looked at Romanov. “Makes me feel lucky I know you.”

She smirked. “You are lucky. Make sure you treat me right.”

“Not to worry, Elvis,” Seagraves said. “I’ll make sure the USS New England gets the best of the best. Just try to keep an eye on Pacino, that he doesn’t set it on fire.”

“Oh hell,” Pacino said. “I was hoping people would forget that.”

“So, XO,” Seagraves said to Quinnivan while stepping down from the crate, “why don’t you tell the room what your next assignment is?”

“Wait a minute, Skipper,” Lewinsky said. “Who is going to be the new captain?”

Seagraves shrugged. “A first round draft pick to be named later. Sometime before New England leaves the drydock. Until then, the new XO will be acting captain. And don’t ask who the new XO is yet. We’ll have that info for you in a minute. So, Commander Quinnivan, your next assignment?” Seagraves prompted.

Quinnivan took his spot on the crate and smiled. “Well, first I’m going to do some house hunting. Shawna over there, say hello, babe.” His wife smiled and waved. “My wife is impossible to please when it comes to houses, so that phase could take a while. I’m going to the next Perisher course, which is what you lads and lassies would call Prospective Commanding Officer School. No guarantee that I’ll pass, but if I do, I’ll be taking command of the Astute-class submarine S120 Ambush. See, the Brits know how to name a submarine, yeah? None of this sissy New England crap. New England, isn’t that a football team that wanted more market share than just Boston?”

“He makes a good point,” Pacino said.

“Now I’d like to introduce a new officer reportin’ aboard, Lieutenant Commander Christopher Prettyboy Byrehind, who will be our new chief engineer. Step on up here, Eng,” Quinnivan said.

Byrehind was short with a mop of fine dirty blonde hair and a baby face, looking far too young to be a department head. He smiled at the crowd.

“Good to be aboard your — our — fine submarine,” he said, smiling. “I look forward to getting to know all of you,” he said.

“Tell the crowd something about yourself, lad, yeah?” Quinnivan said.

“Well, like Commander Cydice over there, I’m also from Pearl Harbor, from the USS Texas, where I was main propulsion assistant. Where’s my MPA in this crowd?”

“That would be me!” Vevera shouted from the rear of the room.

“What’s his name?” he asked Quinnivan.

“That there be Squirt Gun Vevera.”

“Ah, yes, the one for whom Commander Cydice has to buy all that beer. Squirt Gun — I’m sure your handle has a story behind it?”

Vevera blushed. Quinnivan said something in Byrehind’s ear, who grinned and laughed.

“Oh, okay, the XO informs me that the story is unsuitable for mixed company. My callsign, Prettyboy, was given to me by my older brother when I was three and it stuck hard. He’s pushing fighter jets off the USS Ronald Reagan somewhere. Anyway, I went to Dartmouth and Northwestern for physics, I’m married to lovely Linda — where are you, Linda? There she is, wave to the boys and girls, honey. We have two kids and I plan to spend long hours on the boat to keep away from them, they are absolute terrors. Linda’s genes, you know. Anyway, that’s about it.”

“Is that true, Linda?” Quinnivan asked.

A female voice from the rear answered. “It’s a lie, XO,” she said, smiling. “Those boys are just Prettyboy clones. There’s nothing of me in them at all.”

“For our next guest,” Quinnivan said, “I’d like to have our new weapons officer step up.”

A tall, slender woman with streaky blonde hair stepped up to the crate. She was pretty, wearing light makeup, with a long-sleeved silk blouse and bell-bottom jeans, which had inexplicably come back into fashion.

“I’m Lieutenant Commander Alexis D’Assault. My callsign? The original one was ‘Allen Wrench,’ since I was good at working on engines.”

“You’ll enjoy working with Pacino, then,” Quinnivan said, pointing to Pacino. “That young man replaced a Corvette engine and transmission himself, put in computer control and a supercharger. How many horses does that beast have, Patch?”

“Six hundred and forty,” Pacino called. “But who’s counting?”

“But there’s a more recent callsign, isn’t there, Madam Weapons Officer?” Quinnivan said, prompting her.

She sighed and smiled, her face flushing red. “I graduated from Kings Point, the Merchant Marine Academy, and I was a merchant marine sailor, third mate on a container ship and in the Navy reserve. We were off Yemen when a fairly large pirate raider boat came out of nowhere and zoomed up and started tossing grappling hooks up to the deck. I had one of the AR-15 rifles. They were really just for show and the captain wanted us to keep them unloaded and just wave them at any pirates, like that would do anything. I was about to do some recreational shooting, but when I saw the pirates, I just started blasting. Four of the raiders died, four more were wounded, and we had to call a medical helicopter. And yes, that incident got me fired. And it earned me the other callsign, ‘Pirate Killer Girl.’ Thank God for the Navy,” she said. “I doubt I would get hired anywhere, but my dad knew Admiral Patton and made a phone call, and here I am.”

“Dear God,” Romanov said. “Now the boat has pirates and a pirate killer girl. You’d better watch out for her. Do you think she’s pretty?”

Pacino stared at Romanov. “All women are ugly compared to you, Silky,” he said, deadpan, trying not to smile.

“I’d punch you right now if we were alone,” she growled. “Tell me the truth.”

“Yeah, she’s a cute-ass babe,” Pacino said. “But Lewinsky should watch out. Redhead will claw his eyes out if he looks at her twice.”

“Well, Pirate Killer Girl,” Quinnivan said, “there are three no-shit actual pirates in this crowd. You should have fun comparing notes. One of them, Mr. Pacino — that lad over there — he’s as trigger-happy as you are. You should all get along famously. Thank you, Madam Weps. Now, Mr. Elvis Lewinsky, come on up here.” Lewinsky stepped to the front of the room. “Elvis only found this out an hour ago. He’s leaving the New England and taking over as the XO of the USS Montana, also in Squadron Six.”

“Congrats, Elvis!” Pacino shouted. The crowd clapped and shot sarcastic remarks at the former navigator.

“Don’t be strangers, you guys,” Lewinsky said. “Come over to my boat for lunch whenever you want.”

“Thank you, Elvis, and now the junior officers. You three get up here.”

A tall, slim blonde kid walked up, a stormy look on his face. The second officer was a short, well-built black man. The third was a petite blonde woman with pale skin and hair so fine it looked like a comb would fall through it.

“This tall guy is Ensign Adam ‘Cool Hand’ Farina. Say a few words for us, Cool Hand.”

“Hi everyone,” the youth said in a baritone voice, obviously not happy to be speaking publicly. “I was a mechanical engineer out of the University of Vermont. I played baseball. I almost flunked out of nuclear power school, a little bit of trouble with a girlfriend, so I’m trying to make a comeback. I have to tell you, I had to fight to get assigned to this crew. I asked the recruiter for the New England specifically, and there was a waiting list, but I got lucky. So it’s good to be here.”

“Mr. Cool Hand here will be the new communications officer, yeah?” Quinnivan said. “Welcome to the New England, lad. Next is Ensign Rupert ‘Three Round’ Harrington. What say you, Three Round?”

“Hi folks,” Harrington said in a gentle, almost feminine soprano voice. “I’m from Louisiana and an electrical engineer from Tulane and Georgia Tech. I boxed in college and had some luck in the third round, so that explains the name. Now I’m into mixed martial arts.”

“Mr. Three Round will be our new supply officer,” Quinnivan said. “So, Three Round, do you have any experience in felony grand larceny?”

Harrington laughed. “No, sir, sorry.”

“Not to worry, lad, we’ll teach you. You’ll be stealin’ parts by dark o’night from the supply depot in no time. And now for our third J.O., Ensign Regina ‘Suction Cup’ Ingersol. How about sayin’ a few words for us, yeah?”

“Hello,” Ingersol said, blushing. “I’m from California and a math and physics major from Stanford, master’s in political science from Berkeley.”

“She almost looks like an albino,” Rachel whispered to Pacino.

“Nah, she’s just fair.”

“Do you think she’s pretty?”

“Oh my God, would you stop?”

“Poly sci, eh?” Quinnivan said. “Maybe Pacino’s da’ could use ya. He’s runnin’ for president, don’t ya know? And your callsign?”

She blushed deeper. “Also not suitable for mixed company,” she said. “I run marathons and I do ballet. At least I did. I have a knee injury, so I’m nursing it for a few months.”

“Madam Ingersol will be our reactor controls division officer. So, okay then, thank you, you new nubs. I want you all qualified in ten months,” Quinnivan said. “Or at least the new XO will, maybe even sooner.”

“Who is the new XO?” Pacino shouted.

“I’m glad you asked that question,” Quinnivan said, winking at Seagraves. “Captain?”

Seagraves took the post on the milk crate. “We have an unusual situation,” he began. “First of all, we’re replacing three officers with no turnover from the previous holders of each position due to their deaths. We have a gapped position of commanding officer with the new XO becoming acting captain. So, with all the turnover and lack of continuity of leadership, ComSubCom had to make some tough decisions. Either to delay my departure — and that of Commander Quinnivan — or propose a flea-flicker play. So here’s the deal, guys. You all already know and love your new XO and acting captain. Could I have Lieutenant Commander Rachel Silky Romanov step up to the front of the room?”

Romanov’s jaw dropped. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she hissed to Pacino. The room broke out in applause and cheers, Pacino clapping, smiling at her, and patting her on the back. Romanov went to the front of the room and smiled back at the crowd.

“You know,” she said, “I think my amnesia is back. Who the hell are all you people and why are you in my house?”

“Speech!” Quinnivan said, clapping.

“What do I say,” Romanov began. “Well, Captain and XO, it’s an honor to be named to this position. I won’t let you down.”

“We know,” Seagraves said, shaking Romanov’s hand, then Quinnivan shook her hand and clapped her on the shoulder.

“Can I ask,” Romanov said. “If I’m XO — and acting captain — who is the navigator?”

“Ah,” Quinnivan said, “that’s the other part of the flea-flicker.” He looked at Seagraves. “Should I tell him?”

“I’ll tell him,” Seagraves said. “Lieutenant Pacino, come on up. You are the new navigator of the USS New England.”

Pacino stared. The crowd grabbed him and pulled him to the front of the room. “Thanks, Captain, XO,” he said.

“This will extend your tour on the submarine, Patch,” Seagraves said. “It’s an extra year. But somehow I think you’ll be okay with that.”

“I’m okay with that, Skipper,” Pacino said, barely believing how many things had changed in the hour of the party.

“Before we get to the important part of the day, the partying,” Seagraves said, “I have one final surprise.”

The room grew suddenly quiet.

“Some of you may not know this, but the secretary of the Navy, Jeremy Shingles, was at grad school at Yale and was friends and roommates with a man named Philip Dean Sievers III. Does anyone here know who Sievers is?”

The silence in the room continued.

“Well, I’ll tell you who Philip Dean Sievers III is,” Seagraves continued. “He’s the governor of the great state of Vermont.”

“Oh my God,” Rachel whispered to Pacino. “They’re renaming the boat.”

“There was a phone call,” Seagraves continued, “and, reportedly, a box of cigars and a case of whisky changed hands, and you’ve all guessed it. Now hull number SSN-792 will be renamed the USS Vermont. The re-christening ceremony is next week. Get your dress blues cleaned and pressed, gang. And that’s all I have. Now, let’s get this party started.”

Captain Seagraves and Commanders Quinnivan and Cydice stood on the back yard deck of the Snake Ranch at sunset, all of them leaning against the deck railing and staring at the pink sky.

“Red sky at night,” Quinnivan said. “Sailor’s delight. A good omen, yeah?”

Quinnivan passed out cigars, a cutter, and a torch, and they all lit up and blew smoke into the sky for a long moment.

“So, Mikey,” Seagraves said to Commander Cydice. “You didn’t want us to disclose to the boys and girls that you’re nominated to be the Vermont’s new commanding officer. Why is that?”

Cydice blew out a cloud of smoke and looked at Seagraves. “It’s not official until I pass Prospective Commanding Officer School, which is not a given, since the failure rate is, what, thirty percent? And Admiral Patton at SubCom has been ominously quiet about confirming the assignment. There was a slight incident in Hawaii I need to explain away. So I don’t want to jinx it.”

“Incident?” Seagraves asked.

Cydice nodded. “I punched out the squadron engineer. While I was submerged, he was diddling my wife and posting sex videos on the internet with him and her in action.”

Seagraves shook his head in shock and sympathy. “Man, I would have killed that guy. What’s going to happen to him?”

“He’s already been given a dishonorable discharge. Fitting, actually, for all his dishonorable discharging into my wife. My soon-to-be ex-wife.”

“I’m sorry to hear, Mikey.”

“Yeah.”

The three men were silent for a moment.

Quinnivan blew a smoke ring and looked at Cydice. “So anyway, in the meantime, you’re playin’ undercover boss at the Snake Ranch, peekin’ in on our scurvy junior officer pirates, yeah?”

Cydice nodded. “I need to wait here for interviews about the thing. I may as well wait while drinking beers with the boys. I have a feeling they’ll cheer me up.”

“Well,” Quinnivan laughed. “Just don’t be doin’ anything those cutthroats can blackmail ye with, yeah? That would make for a very long tour once Admiral Patton comes to his senses and gives you the Vermont.”

Cydice grinned. “Me? I’m a Boy Scout, Bullfrog.”

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino stopped on the way to the parking lot to lean over the observation platform overlooking Graving Dock Number One. He was usually alone when he visited the platform, but this afternoon, the tall, gaunt figure of Ensign Adam Cool Hand Farina was there, looking at the submarine. The sounds from the dock, though muted by distance, were still loud. Grinding, rail mounted cranes’ backing alarms, the shouts of shipyard workers.

Pacino walked up next to Farina and leaned on the rail. For a moment Pacino didn’t say anything. Then he spoke first.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said.

Farina snickered. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this. People will talk.”

Pacino smiled. “You know, Cool Hand, I’m surprised you asked to join this crew.”

“You are? Why? This is the hottest-running submarine in the fleet.”

“No, it’s not,” Pacino said, his voice solemn. “We’ve lost the captain. We lost the XO. The navigator’s gone. The engineer is dead. The weapons officer is dead. The communicator is dead. Supply officer? Dead. Reactor controls officer? Dead. So are the COB, the E-div chief, radio chief, AI chief and A-gang chief. And a dozen more. The sub we sailed lies on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Did you notice that NavPersCom didn’t assign a commanding officer to this boat? That’s because nobody wants the fuckin’ job. And you, after your trouble at nuke school? You got assigned here, not because you fought to get the billet, but because this is a hardship tour. A punishment tour. And meanwhile, the boat is being Frankensteined together from the halves of two other boats, and God knows if that will work, and the shipyard’s rushing it, trying to beat an arbitrary deadline thought up by a pissed-off admiral, and shipyard mistakes cause subs to sink. Don’t believe me, ask our good friends on the Thresher. Not to mention, it’ll be months before this thing gets its hull wet. And all that time will be lost to you for the purpose of qualification progress. It would have been better if you had requested an operating boat where you could work on quals and stand watches instead of waiting here while our boat sits high and dry on the drydock blocks.”

Farina looked at Pacino, the color draining from his face. “I’d always heard you were an optimist. That’s a pretty downer view of things.”

“A military funeral for two dozen of your friends will do that to you. That’s another thing. Despite all the levity at the Snake Ranch party, the crew from the old wardroom, before you new guys showed up, all feel the same. The loss. The sadness. The hopelessness of it all. The dead all died for a cause, I suppose. The mission got accomplished, but not by us. Sure, we tossed weapons at the bad guys, but in the end, those Poseidons were destroyed by the Russians themselves, and they sank themselves with their own goddamned nuclear-tipped torpedo. We were just along for the ride.”

“I know I’m just a non-qual nub,” Farina said. “But I see it differently. After all, there’s Silky Romanov. Squirt Gun Vevera. U-Boat Dankleff. Boozy Varney. And you. The revered-and-feared Death Toll Pacino. You guys are all storied heroes. Combat tested bad-asses. Real life pirates. You’ve all sailed into harm’s way and fired torpedoes in anger. You’ve all gotten medals for valor that the rest of the Navy just dreams of. You? The silver star, second award. The goddamned Navy Cross? And one of my nuke school buddies sent me a picture of the brass plaque in the Naval Academy’s Memorial Hall on the wall right next to your father’s plaque. It reads, ‘If I have to die on this mission, I intend to die with an empty torpedo room.’ Lieutenant Anthony Pacino, USS Vermont, Operation Panther. So, in what universe would I not want to join this crew?”

Pacino smiled, perhaps for the first time that day. “You know, for a non-qual air-breathing puke, you make a good point. Tell you what. Monday, you and I will walk over to the New Hampshire at Squadron Six and I’ll give you a sonar walkthrough. I’ll ask their skipper, Gray Wolf Austin, if he can take you for a few weeks or a month on their next op so you can get some sea time under your belt. And I’ll threaten his life if he tries to steal you. Then XO and the yeoman will get temporary duty orders cut for you. You’ll come back in a couple months halfway to your dolphins.”

“You’d do that for me?” Farina looked at Pacino in gratitude. “Thank you, Patch.”

“Any time, Cool Hand. Have a good weekend. Oh, and Cool Hand? Text the photo of that plaque to me. I want to send it to my dad.”

Pacino walked slowly to his car, hearing his own words again in his mind that he’d said to Farina. He was reminded of his father, who used to get in dark moods, sitting in his office with the lights out, staring into space, drinking alone, especially after the sinking of the cruise ship. It could take the old man a year to snap out of a funk, Pacino thought. He hoped this heavy hopeless feeling wouldn’t last a goddamned year.

He got to the car, tossed his bag in the back, and moved slowly through the lot and wheeled the car to the door of the admin building, where an annoyed Lieutenant Commander Rachel Romanov waited for him. He rolled down the window.

“Get in, loser,” he said, grinning in spite of his mood. “We’re going to Annapolis.”

“Where have you been?” she said. “I’ve been out here waiting for you for ten minutes.”

“I stopped to yell at one of our new nubs. Cool Hand Farina.”

“What do you think of him?” she asked, tossing a bag in the back, shutting the passenger door and strapping in.

Pacino tilted his head, considering his answer. “I think we can make him into a submariner.”

He drove in silence until they’d left the military complex and headed through Norfolk toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Pacino figuring that a transit up the eastern shore would be faster than battling I-64 traffic toward D.C.

“You’re awfully quiet, Pacino,” Rachel said.

“Yeah,” he said dejectedly. “I’m sad. All the loss just sort of hit me all at once. I think I was in shock until now.”

“Pull over here at the diner,” she told him.

“You already changed out of your uniform,” he said. “Did you want me to change?”

“That’s not why I asked,” she said. “Park way over there, where the parking lot is deserted. Underneath the tree.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pacino said, wheeling the Corvette where she’d pointed.

“Cut the engine and stay there.” She got out of the car and walked around to his side and opened his door. Carefully, she climbed on top of him, straddling him in the close confines of the cockpit, then shut the door.

“What are you doing?” Pacino asked.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, came close, and kissed him, the kiss starting slow but building in passion. He could feel one of her soft hands stroking his face, the other’s fingers going through his hair and he got an electric charge from it, and in spite of his mood, he could feel himself getting aroused. Finally, as Rachel was starting to disconnect from the kiss, the Corvette’s horn honked, loud and long.

“Oh my God,” she said, blushing in embarrassment. “Did my fat ass just honk your horn?”

Pacino laughed. “No, your slender, shapely, feminine ass just honked my horn. And I think you honked my horn metaphorically as well.”

“Good,” she smiled. “Now we can go.”

“You’re just going to start my engine and leave me hot and bothered?”

“Yup,” she said, smirking. “Why don’t you go inside the diner and change? I’ll wait here.” She climbed out of the car, got back in the passenger side, pulled her tablet computer from her bag, and switched it on.

Pacino could feel a bounce in his step as he walked toward the diner with his go-bag. Somehow, Rachel had managed to change his mood in just minutes. There was no doubt. She was definitely a keeper.

Unlike the last time Pacino approached his father’s Annapolis house, there was a security fence erected at the entrance to the long driveway, the part of the yard both inside and outside the fence acting as parking lots. A small metal security building had been placed to the left of the new gate, the roof of it sprouting multiple dish antennae. A man in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie, wearing dark shades, came up to the car. He wore a comm unit in his ear, the coiled wire from it snaking into his shirt collar. He looked like a caricature of a Secret Service agent.

“May I help you, sir?” he said formally.

“I’m Lieutenant Pacino,” Pacino said, handing the agent his military ID, then passing him Rachel’s. “That’s Lieutenant Commander Romanov. We’re here to see Admiral Pacino. My dad.”

The agent scowled at the identifications, then went into the security building. He was still frowning as he came out, then handed Pacino the military IDs.

“Have a nice visit, Lieutenant,” he said. “You can drive up to the front door, but leave your keys with an agent there. He’ll park your car and another one will go through your things before you enter the house.”

Pacino wheeled the car to the house, left the engine running, got his bags and walked to the front door with Rachel. A Secret Service agent got in the Corvette and drove it back to the security building. A second asked him to turn over his bags for a search, then patted Pacino down. A female agent did the same to Rachel. Finally the unsmiling agents waved them into the house, where yet another agent waited inside.

Pacino could see into the great room on the main floor, where what seemed like thirty people in suits were gathered around Admiral Pacino, a spirited debate going on there.

“You can wait in the admiral’s office,” the inside door agent said.

Pacino took Rachel to his father’s office, a large space with heavy wood furniture and leather seating gathered around a huge stone fireplace. The walls were covered with painted scenes of the older Pacino’s submarine commands, a painting of the old man as a youth standing by his father in front of the submarine Stingray. The corners of the room were taken up with glass encased submarine models. The first Devilfish, the Seawolf, the SSNX. There were other photos on the bookshelves, showing Michael Pacino shaking the hands of several presidents. A large oil painting of his father’s mentor, Admiral Dick Donchez. Anthony Pacino’s Academy graduation photo had a central place of honor, as did a large framed photo of Anthony as a child standing next to his father in front of the hull of the Seawolf.

“This is the ultimate man-cave,” Rachel said. “It’s like a shrine to the submarine force. And to you. Not a single photo of a woman in here.”

Pacino shrugged. “Two divorces and one wife lost to a drunk driver,” Pacino said. “I think my dad is done with romance.”

“I heard he has been seen forehead-to-forehead with that pretty head of the CIA,” Romanov said.

Admiral Michael Pacino picked that moment to enter the office, and Rachel blushed crimson.

“Dad!” Pacino said. “What’s going on out there?”

“Hi, Son.” Michael Pacino hugged Anthony, then looked at Rachel. He smiled and shook her hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Rachel. And I’m particularly pleased you healed from that drydock incident. And that you’re friends with my boy. Maybe you can keep him out of trouble.”

She smiled back. “I doubt even I can keep him out of trouble, sir. Anthony talks about you every chance he can get,” she said. “I feel like I know your whole life story.”

The elder Pacino smiled and said, “He doesn’t know the classified parts.”

“So Dad, how is your campaign going? And who are all those people?”

The admiral rolled his eyes. “Advisors. Press consultants. Representatives of big donors. It’s a circus.”

“Part of that seven billion dollars, right, Dad?”

“Exactly. Look, this thing has another hour to go, and my lead press consultant wants to talk to you. Rachel can come out and see the craziness with me in the den.”

“Your guy wants to talk? To me? Why?”

“You’re a big press draw, Anthony. You seem to make the news as often as I do. Reporters, bloggers, and podcasters will want to interview you. And it matters not just what you’ll say, but how you’ll say it.”

“Fine,” Anthony said. “Bring him in.”

“Her,” the admiral said. “Diane Palmer.” He opened the door a crack and said something to the agent waiting outside the door.

A thirty-something-year-old woman walked in, so slender her collarbones jutted out. Maybe she was anorexic, Anthony thought. Her hair was a lush mop of blonde curling locks which she swept off her shoulder. She wore a silk beige suit and carried a tablet computer. She smiled at Anthony and Rachel. Introductions over, the admiral and Rachel left and Anthony sat on a club chair opposite the press consultant.

“Anthony, I’ll get right to business,” she said, her tablet computer in her lap. “About a hundred different people will be asking to interview you. I want to conduct a mock interview and ask the hard questions they’ll throw at you and see how you’ll answer.”

“You’re prepping me?”

“No. At least, not yet. I’ll listen to your answers first and see what I think. Let’s start with a softball. Tell me about yourself.”

“I don’t really like talking about myself,” Pacino said, frowning.

“Look, that question will come at you a few times. Once you answer it, you can go on to other things. Go ahead and try. Hit the high points.”

Anthony took a breath and started, mentioning his childhood with his father, the Naval Academy, his disastrous midshipman cruise on the ill-fated Piranha, then grad school, his assignment to the Vermont, and the mission of Operation Panther, then the New Jersey and Operation Poseidon. When he finished, Palmer was frowning at him.

“No,” she said. “No. Not like that. You spoke as if all that happened to someone else. It’s too deadpan. And there’s none of the drama. You didn’t even mention what you did to win the Panther operation or that you rescued the Russians. We need the kind of details that will make people like you.”

“Why?” Pacino said. “I don’t give a damn if people like me.”

“It’s important to your father’s campaign.”

“He’s running for president. Not me.”

The admiral opened the door and walked in with Rachel. He grinned. “I was listening for a bit of that. I told you exactly how he’d be, Diane.”

Palmer sighed. “You two are both hopeless.”

“We’re patriots, not politicians,” Michael Pacino said, smiling. “Diane, let’s reconvene the team tomorrow. I want to take these two cool kids to dinner out in town.”

“Will the Secret Service let you do that?” Palmer asked.

“Do you think for a moment I care what the Secret Service wants?”

Palmer sighed and shook her head. She imitated someone saying, “Join Michael Pacino’s campaign, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Dear God. You’re going to destroy my career.”

She left, exasperated.

Anthony smiled at his father. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

Michael Pacino smiled back. “Son, you have no idea.”

Prime Minister and Acting President Platon Melnik sat at the gigantic desk and read the article on the tablet computer, his half-frame reading glasses perched on his nose. It was an intelligence summary from the SVR about resurgent China, with it now seeming a certainty that Red China and White China would reunite. They had debated for weeks about what to name the new nation, finally settling on, “the Federated States of the Middle Kingdom,” or FSMK.

Melnik detected motion in the room. Two of his SBP security guards put their hands to their ears as if they were listening, then suddenly wordlessly walked out of the room.

“What the hell?”

The door they’d left from remained open and four burly men in black tactical uniforms stormed in, with automatic weapons, full-face helmets and body armor. Their weapons were raised and aimed at Melnik. He stood from his desk, the tablet computer crashing to the carpeting. As he opened his mouth to speak, a man in a suit came into the room, wearing a black suit and red tie, exactly like Melnik’s. He was Melnik’s height and build and had the same baldness pattern. And as he grew closer, Melnik felt like he was looking into a mirror. The stranger was an exact duplicate of him.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

Another figure walked slowly into the room and shut the door. It was President Dmitri Vostov, in a sweater and jeans, limping in on crutches. He answered Melnik’s question, gesturing at the imposter.

“Why, this is Prime Minister and Acting President Platon Melnik. Say hello, Mr. Prime Minister.”

The imposter opened his mouth to speak, and Melnik’s voice came out. He said, “who is this man, Mr. President?”

“That man, Platon, is a man who violated my trust and almost started a war. He ordered our submarine to attack and destroy an American submarine. He ordered the Status-6 units be launched knowing that their navigation systems would be, at best, approximate, losing us control of the weapons, perhaps placing them in American hands. I do not know if he is incompetent, a traitor, or both.” Vostov looked at the tactical team. “Take him away.”

“Where am I going?” Melnik asked, watching the imposter calmly pick the computer back up and sit at the desk.

“To a dacha out of town,” Vostov said. “Don’t worry, it is luxurious. Fully stocked with food and alcohol. Fully staffed by beautiful hostesses. With news and internet and everything you could want, with the exception of a phone or the ability to send emails or digital information. You’ll remain under house arrest until I say you can return to society.”

Melnik swallowed hard and tried to resist the tactical team manhandling him out the door. They rushed him to the elevator, down the hall and out the building entrance doors. A waiting black panel van waited and he was loaded in the back. The van doors shut, and he was handcuffed into restraint hardware on the van wall. The van drove for hours, until it must have been hundreds of kilometers outside Moscow.

The van finally parked. The engine stopped. The back door opened. It was dark outside. Melnik was marched into a clearing of the woods.

“What’s happening?” he asked. “Where are you taking me?”

He felt the pistol barrel on the back of his head.

After that, there was nothing.

The tactical SBP officer behind the body of Melnik picked up his legs and his deputy picked up the body’s shoulders. They rolled him into a deep grave. A concrete truck’s engine started and it backed up to the grave. A chute came out and the truck driver pulled a lever and cubic meter after cubic meter of concrete flowed down the chute and into the grave. The truck drove off, and the SBP officers scattered topsoil and brush over the concrete, then returned to the van. The van’s engine started, and it turned back toward Moscow.

Captain First Rank Sergei Kovalov walked down the jet ramp into the Murmansk terminal and through the doors from the secured area. The terminal waiting hall was filled with people.

He recognized the teenage girl running toward him, her mother smiling behind her.

“Daddy!” Magna Kovalov squealed. “You’re alive!”

She ran to him, almost knocking him down, and threw her arms around him. He hugged her back and kissed the top of her head. By then, Kovalov’s wife, Ivana, came up to him and hugged both Kovalov and his daughter.

“The news said your boat and Belgorod sank under the icecap,” Ivana said, sobbing. “They said there were no survivors. What took you so long to come here? Where were you?”

“We had to debrief with President Vostov in Moscow,” Kovalov said. “It took longer than anticipated. Vostov had a thousand questions.”

“What happens now?” his wife asked. “Your Losharik sank, so you don’t have a boat.”

“We have a meeting with Admiral Alexeyev tomorrow morning. I suppose he will let me know then. I’m hoping he’ll put me in command of one of the Yasen-M attack boats coming out of the drydock after atmospheric control modifications.”

“I’d be happy if you just had a nice, safe, boring shore duty,” Ivana said.

He smiled at her and his daughter, thinking that if there were anything good about this horrible mission, it was that it had returned his daughter to him. And his wife.