Panic Switch

1

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino waited impatiently on the wood bench outside the hearing room, wearing his starched dress white uniform — the outfit given the name “choker whites” due to the stiff, high collar. The formal uniform made it even more uncomfortable in the hot, airless corridor. Per Navy regulations, Pacino wore full medals with the uniform, feeling his usual discomfort at the Navy Cross, but at least proud to wear the Silver Star — that at least he knew he had earned without people claiming that he’d only acted mindlessly on animal instinct like they alleged after the Piranha incident. Above his ribbons were the polished, solid gold dolphins awarded him by the commander of the submarine force, Vice Admiral Catardi. Anthony felt his father’s palm on his shoulderboard, the old man attempting to comfort him.

“I can’t come into the room with you, Son,” the older Pacino said quietly in his baritone voice.

Anthony looked over at his father, who was wearing a dark suit and dark black tie. It still felt strange not seeing him in his Navy uniform. Even though the senior Pacino was older now, in his mid-sixties, he still looked the same as he always had. Tall and gaunt, with a deeply tanned face, crow’s feet at the corners of his bright green eyes. His white hair had started to thin just a little, but it would take a close look to confirm.

“I know, Dad.” Anthony’s voice was still just a hoarse croak from the damage from the smoke inhalation.

“Look, it’s not for me to tell you your business,” Michael Pacino said gently, “but I’ve been through four of these boards of inquiry. One for the original Devilfish, one for Seawolf, one for the War of the East China Sea and one for the SSNX. And if there’s one thing that seems to work best in this situation, it’s this — just look them in the eye, leave all feelings of guilt aside, and tell them the straight, honest damned truth. Make them understand you’ll take whatever judgment is coming to you. Take responsibility, but never condemn your own actions. Make them see that at all times, you did what you thought was right.”

“I know, Dad,” Anthony said, his croaking voice dull and dead. “But people got hurt. Torpedoman Chief Blacky Nygard got third degree burns. And my friend Rachel — the navigator — is still in a coma, on life support, with some serious burns. They don’t even know whether she’ll come out of it. And on the conn open mike video they showed me, one of my last orders was directing her right into the goddamned fire.” Anthony clamped his eyes shut, sniffing back his emotions.

“Has any of your memory returned?”

The younger Pacino shook his head sullenly. “The last thing I remember was the underhull. Looking into the Omega’s giant cold water scoops.”

Michael Pacino nodded. “Son, the physicians testified that smoke inhalation — particularly toxic smoke from cable insulation, hull insulation, paint, laminate wall coverings, amines, lube oil, and a thousand other chemical compounds that caught fire in that hull — combined with the low oxygen levels and the high concentration of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide — could have led to severe changes in the crew’s mental states. Confusion, fainting, seizures, and coma, I’m afraid, are all on the menu. I have to believe partial memory loss is possible as well, and especially hallucinations.”

“They have the video, Dad. They don’t need me to testify to what I remembered.”

“Son, your mental state at that time is important. They’re going to ask you that one question that’s on everyone’s mind.”

“Yeah, I know,” Anthony said, staring at the deck as he twirled his hat in his hands, “when the fire started, why didn’t I just terminate the exercise and evacuate the hull, get everyone out of there and let the shipyard fire brigade fight the fire?”

“Right. But given the altered mental state that the toxic smoke caused, leading to hallucinations,” the older Pacino said, “it’s possible you no longer recognized you were in a training drill. In your mind, you could have actually been in the Zapadnaya Litsa Fjord with a raging oxygen fire and the emergency air system failing. Hell, Anthony, the doctors said that cocktail of smoke may as well have been a super-dose of LSD. You weren’t responsible for your actions from the moment you had to dump your EAB.”

“I guess it’s possible,” Anthony said. “I don’t know if they’ll accept that answer, though. And if they do, they’re saying that they believe I was crazy at the time.”

“Don’t think like that. Keep your thoughts positive. Now, assuming you get through that, they might ask the follow-up question.”

“What’s that?” Anthony looked up at his father. No follow-up question had occurred to him. The main question was difficult enough to consider.

“Simple. Had it been a real fire while you were trailing the Omega, what would you have done? Surface the boat, admitting to the Russians you were illegally trespassing in their territorial waters and surrendering to capture, or scuttling the ship with the loss of all hands aboard, including yourself?”

“God, Dad, what a question. How the hell should I know? What would you have done?”

“Anthony, despite what people think, no man can truly say what he would do in any given situation until he’s actually in it. That decision, coming at that particular time, could be influenced by a thousand things. If they ask that question, I recommend you stick with that answer. But I want to share something relevant with you. It’s still codeword top secret, so this stays between us.”

Anthony looked up from the cap he was twirling and sat up straight on the wooden bench and looked at his father.

“The situation we’re discussing, getting caught deep in enemy waters, actually happened to my Academy roommate, Sean Murphy. You knew Sean.”

Anthony nodded, thinking sadly that Murphy had been the Superintendent of the Naval Academy when Pacino had attended, but who was now gone from lung cancer.

“I remember Admiral Murphy. He called me into his office when your cruise ship went down.” Anthony remembered the moment that the Supe had told him his father was missing and presumed dead in the terrorist attack on the Navy’s stand-down cruise. “But you said Murphy was in hostile waters — and caught?”

The elder Pacino nodded. “His submarine Tampa was captured by the Red Chinese spying in the Bo Hai Bay during their civil war. The crew was impounded aboard, tied up at a Chinese PLA Navy pier at Tianjin outside Beijing, with destroyers tied up on either side.”

“Wow,” Anthony said. “What happened?”

“You remember Uncle Dick Donchez?” Donchez had commanded the submarine force back in the day. “Dick pulled me out of retirement to command the rescue mission. I took over Seawolf and went in with a platoon of SEALs. My dad used to talk about projects around the house, grumbling that a particular chore took every tool in the toolbox. Well, this particular chore used every SEAL, torpedo, and cruise missile in the inventory and we still came up short.”

Anthony looked at his father, his eyes wide. “Is this where your cryptic ‘famous naval saying’ comes from, the one engraved in brass on the wall of the Naval Academy’s Memorial Hall? I still have one torpedo and two main engines. I always wondered what that was all about.”

Admiral Pacino nodded. “There were multiple Chinese frigates and destroyers attacking us. They had our position nailed down and were depth charging us to Hell. I was preparing to surface the boat and wave a white flag, and that’s when the SEAL commander put a loaded .45 to my temple and threatened to blow my brains all over the periscope if I surrendered. Gun to my head, I looked him in the eye and said, ‘I still have one torpedo and two main engines.’ I surfaced and sent a junior officer to the bridge to wave that white flag, and while the Chinese surface task force prepared to board us, I shot my last torpedo and sank one destroyer and rammed the other with the sail while half re-submerged, and I cut it cleanly in half and it sank on the spot, but the other surface forces gathered around us like angry hornets. If not for the fighter wing aboard the Ronald Reagan, which shot that surface force into splinters, Seawolf would have been lost. The fighter that blew away the destroyer that was sending down depth charges right over my head was flown by one Lieutenant Commander Paul Carlucci. I don’t know your politics, Son, but at the next election, you might want to consider voting for him.”

Anthony stared at his father, not knowing what to say or how to react. Finally he managed to croak, in his hoarse voice, “What happened to Tampa? Did she make it out?”

“Tampa made it out. They lost most of her officers and chiefs to Chinese executions or torture, but we got her out. And made it out ourselves. So I guess the moral of the story, Son, is even if you and your ship get captured in enemy waters, you will never be forgotten. America will come for you. Guns blazing.”

Anthony shook his head. He’d heard his father’s career was a storied one, but he’d never heard about any of this.

The door to the hearing room opened and a female lieutenant in tropical whites motioned to Anthony.

“They’re ready for you, Lieutenant Pacino.”

“Good luck, Son.”

Anthony stood, looked into his father’s eyes, and nodded dejectedly.

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino nodded a solemn farewell at his father after begging off the old man’s offer of dinner. The elder Pacino would undoubtedly want to talk more about the accident and the inquest, but that was the last thing the younger man wanted. He walked slowly out to his old ‘69 Corvette, climbed in, tossed his officer’s cap onto the passenger seat and turned over the engine, the more modern LS-2 power plant he’d installed himself with the low profile supercharger. The engine throbbed with power, but Pacino’s mind was too far away to enjoy it.

The words of the inquest commander still rang in his mind.

We find Lieutenant Pacino blameless in the fire that broke out on the middle level of the USS Vermont’s forward compartment due to the extenuating circumstances arising from him and his crew being immersed in a completely realistic training drill scenario, so real, in fact, that none of the participants recognized the fire as being a separate event from the drill’s script, and as the fire progressed, with no rescue coming from the shipyard’s force, and with smoke blowing mind-altering chemicals into the control room, the drill participants all came to truly believe that the drill’s simulated reality was the actual reality, and they acted accordingly until such point as the shipyard rescue forces finally entered the hull. In fact, up to the point of his losing consciousness, this Board of Inquiry finds Lieutenant Pacino’s actions to be in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Submarine Force and the U.S. Navy. Accordingly, this Board of Inquiry is concluded with no punitive findings for Lieutenant Pacino or any member of ship’s force. Mr. Pacino, you’re free to go, with my best regards to you, sir, and please convey our very best wishes to Navigator Romanov and Senior Chief Nygard, with this board’s hopes that they both make a full recovery.

Of course, the question was, did the board’s findings arise from them being leaned on by Pacino’s father, or Vice Admiral Catardi, or even the president himself? And even if not, in his own mind, was he truly blameless for what had happened? When he had screened the conn open mike video, he’d searched for signs of incompetence or wrongful action, and although he still had no memory of anything that happened after the underhull of the cold water scoops, the actions taken by the figure of himself in the control room all seemed appropriate, although having unfortunate consequences for Rachel Romanov and Senior Chief Nygard. The answer to his father’s second question nagged at him, though—if it had been a real fire in that scenario, what would you have done? Surface the boat, admitting to the Russians you were illegally trespassing in their territorial waters and surrendering to capture, or scuttling the ship with the loss of all hands aboard? Including yourself?

He couldn’t answer the question without regaining his memory, but the fact that he’d demanded to know propulsion plant status from the reactor plant watchstanders made him think he had been getting ready to sail the boat down below crush depth. And that would make him a suicidal mass murderer, certainly one with exigent circumstances — to keep the top secret, front line attack submarine and crew out of Russian hands — but could he really have given orders that would kill the whole crew? And himself? To avoid capture by the Russians? Thinking about this was madness, he thought.

Without conscious thought, he realized he’d driven to the parking lot of Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, the hospital that was part of Norfolk Naval Station. He cut the engine, engaged the parking brake, grabbed his cap and walked slowly toward the entrance, realizing he must look absolutely foolish still wearing his starched choker whites with full medals, but he honestly didn’t care. Almost as if in a dream he watched himself ride the elevator to the eighth floor, the burn unit ICU. Pacino found himself in the hospital room and saw Rachel lying there, completely helpless, with burn dressings on her abdomen and legs. She was fed oxygen by a ventilator, multiple IVs snaking into her forearms. He became aware of a second person in the room, the man solid and at least four inches taller than Pacino, dressed in jeans and a golf shirt, with a shaved head and a square jaw, looking like a middle-aged boxer. Slowly Pacino realized he was staring into the face of Commander Bruno Romanov, Rachel’s soon-to-be ex-husband.

“Bruno,” he stammered in his hoarse voice, not knowing what else to say. “Commander Romanov.” An intense stab of guilt sliced into him then as he glanced at Rachel, then at Bruno. He was forming the words to apologize to Bruno for almost getting Rachel killed.

But Bruno smiled down on him kindly, almost in a fatherly way, and put his arm around Pacino’s shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault, Patch,” he said in a gentle but booming deep voice with a slight Eastern European accent. “You did what you thought was right. I heard about the Board of Inquiry. They cleared you, so you’re cleared in my book.”

Pacino looked at Commander Romanov. Was Bruno here to reclaim his relationship with Rachel? Then more guilt came, because that assumed she’d wake up, and no one knew whether she would.

“How is she?” Pacino asked. “What are the doctors saying?”

Bruno Romanov’s expression fell. “Physically, the doctors are not worried about her burns or the skin grafts, but her lungs and heart were damaged by the smoke inhalation. But what’s worse is that her brain activity is not good, Patch. There’s not a lot the staff will share with me, but the fact they look away when I ask? I don’t like it.”

Pacino shook his head sadly, looking at Rachel. He’d wanted to spend a moment with her alone, but the guilt came through him like a blast of cold water. Perhaps, he thought, it would be best to leave.

“Well,” Bruno said, “I’d like to stay with her, but you know — you must know by now — we’re not married any longer. The divorce was final the day of the accident. Keep that to yourself, or the hospital will kick me out of most of the visiting hours. Even with this, though, I’ve got ship’s business to attend to. Time, tide, formation and Big Navy wait for no man. Or no family emergency. I’ll leave you to sit with Rachel.”

“Thanks, Bruno,” Pacino said, unsure what else he could say.

Romanov clapped Pacino on the shoulderboard and walked out. Pacino stared after him, then turned to look at Rachel. Her long shining hair was spread smoothly over the pillow, as if someone had lovingly brushed it — Bruno, maybe? Pacino sat on her bed and took her hand in his, and when he spoke, emphatic words came from somewhere deep inside him, without conscious thought.

“Rachel, it’s me, Patch. Listen, when you get better — and you will get better, I swear you will — I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I don’t care what you say. I’m in love with you and I know you have feelings for me. So we’re starting a relationship, dammit. You read me, Madam Navigator?” He felt her hand carefully to see if she’d squeeze his, but her hand was as asleep as when he’d first held it. But he looked over at the vital signs monitor.

Was it his imagination, or had Rachel’s pulse rate suddenly jumped?

2

National Security Director Michael Pacino stepped quickly into the large jet helicopter with the presidential seal on the outside flank. The president’s rig, he thought. President Carlucci had called shortly after the younger Pacino left the base, asking the admiral to come to D.C., adding that the presidential helicopter would be waiting. Pacino strapped himself into the plush leather seat and looked across the row at CIA Director Margo Allende.

Allende was in her mid-forties and had a habit of dressing frumpy, keeping her sleek copper auburn hair in a bun, avoiding makeup and hiding her deep blue eyes behind large-lensed red-framed 80s glasses, as if doing that would make men take her more seriously, or perhaps keep them from finding and expressing interest in her, but today Director Allende wore her gleaming hair straight and down below her shoulders, the glasses gone, her face and eyes made up, and she wore a tight cashmere dress hugging her almost perfect figure. Pacino looked at her appreciatively, winked and said, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Why, Admiral Pacino,” she said in her honey-smooth Atlanta Southern accent, smiling brightly at him, “if I didn’t know better I’d swear you were hitting on me.”

Pacino smiled back. “Guilty as charged.”

He and Allende had been dating since the end of the Panther mission. He spent at least three nights a week at her Georgetown townhouse, but they were careful to take separate cars to the West Wing to avoid interoffice gossip. Pacino never said it aloud, but sometimes he thought being with her was like a wartime romance, all the drama and intrigue of their jobs making them comrades as well as paramours, and he hated to think about it, but he knew that eventually he’d retire from Carlucci’s administration and she’d still be in the thick of the intelligence business, and it wouldn’t be the same. But if he ever made any noises like that, Allende became possessive and swore that the only way she’d ever let him leave her would be in a box. She smiled when she said it, probably realizing it sounded psychopathic, but he had to admit he liked how fierce and passionate her feelings were for him. He had to admit, when he thought about it, his affair with Allende was the best relationship of his life.

“Patch,” she said, her expression serious, “how did Anthony do? Is he okay?”

“The inquest acquitted him, or more accurately, found him without fault, but he’s pretty badly rattled. His navigator and buddy, a pretty young thing named Rachel Romanov, got burned and is in a coma. The Vermont’s torpedoman chief got badly burned fighting the fire. Anthony feels tremendous guilt about what happened to them.”

“I saw the video, Patch. He did nothing wrong.”

“I know. But now he has to know.”

Allende looked out the window. “God, life absolutely sucks sometimes.”

The two were quiet for some time as the lush Virginia countryside sped by out the windows.

“What were you doing down in Norfolk, Margo? I didn’t expect you on this ride.”

She gave him a half smile. “I wanted to see you. I made up an excuse that I needed to prepare you for the Situation Room briefing.”

“Okay, so what’s up?”

“There’s a Russian super sub, called the Belgorod. An old and refurbished Omega-II class.”

Pacino puffed out his lips. “I know the Omega class,” he said, barely audible over the roar of the helicopter’s rotors and engines. “You’ll remember, Omega unit one and my Devilfish had it out under the polar icecap. It didn’t end well, for either of us.”

Pacino knew Allende knew the story. He’d shown her the top secret file in her office SCIF conference room. His attack sub, back when he was a Navy commander, had been sent under the icecap to counter the original Omega when the Russian super sub had been tasked with being a command platform for the launch of a tactical nuclear strike on the U.S. east coast. His Devilfish and the Omega had fought it out to a draw, killing most of their crews.

“This Omega, Patch, is modernized far beyond the old Omega’s technology. It carries multiple very large torpedoes called ‘Status-6’ weapons. They’re really more like autonomous mini-subs than torpedoes. The Russians renamed them ‘Poseidon’ torpedoes. They can swim to a programmed area and loiter on station for months — they’re nuclear powered. And they pack a ten megaton punch. We think the Russians are either going to use Belgorod to deploy these Poseidons or their ride-along deep-diving sub will deploy them.”

“That isn’t good, Margo, but it doesn’t sound particularly urgent. After all, they aren’t on the way now, are they?”

Allende shook her head.

“So, why the sudden call to Washington?”

“We think the Belgorod is preparing to leave port with orders to deploy these weapons. Think of this as the launch of a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile — or three or four — but with the missile speed slowed down to ten knots.”

“When will the Belgorod sail?”

“Unknown, but they may be waiting for President Vostov’s visit. He’s got tentative plans to visit the Sevmash Shipyard to tour the Poseidon factory and the Belgorod. And you know from experience how presidential plans constantly change. Scheduling something a month out? It could move ninety days further out. Or it could happen tomorrow.”

“We’ll need the submarine force to get a unit in position to trail Belgorod out,” Pacino said.

“They’ve already deployed two subs. But they’ve been on station about eighty days and are running out of food and spare parts.”

Food, Pacino thought. The seemingly inconsequential thing that almost lost Operation Panther.

The stairs of the helicopter were flanked by uniformed Marines, and both saluted Pacino, who returned the gesture. He and Allende walked quickly to the West Wing entrance, the president’s chief of staff’s aides escorting them. Pacino’s own deputy should have been here, he thought, glancing at his Rolex.

At the West Wing portal entrance, a Navy official staff truck pulled up, and out emerged Vice Admiral Rob Catardi, the head of the Submarine Force, but Pacino noticed something immediately. Catardi was no longer a vice admiral. He sported a new star on his shoulderboards, apparently having been promoted to full admiral, a four-star position.

Pacino smiled at his old friend. Rob Catardi had been one of then-Commander Pacino’s junior officers on the original Devilfish, having temporarily detached from the submarine to go to chief engineer school just before the boat’s orders to the polar icecap. Years later, as captain of the Seawolf-class submarine Piranha, Catardi had played host to young Anthony on his first class midshipman cruise, when a nuclear-powered, unmanned U.S. Navy drone submarine — having been hijacked and hacked — came after Piranha and put her on the bottom. If not for Anthony Pacino’s instinctive and brave action, Catardi would have died in the wreck of the Piranha. Two years later, Pacino and Catardi had suffered through the two month mission of the Vermont when she sailed into the Gulf of Oman to commandeer the Iranian submarine Panther, both of them watching in disbelief and horror as Vermont’s skipper Scotch Seagraves had assigned young and inexperienced Anthony Pacino to the Panther boarding party as assistant-officer-in-charge. But despite terrible odds, Anthony and the boarding party had prevailed and the older Pacino and Catardi had celebrated with a steak dinner and thirty year old scotch.

“Four stars, now, Rob?” Pacino said, shaking Catardi’s hand and pulling the younger man into a bear hug.

Catardi nodded. “They made me Vice CNO. And as of now, I’m acting CNO.” The admiral-in-command of the U.S. Navy was called the chief of naval operations, so Catardi was now the deputy to Admiral Grayson Rand, but if Catardi had been appointed “acting CNO,” something was wrong with Rand.

“What’s up with Admiral Rand?” Pacino asked. “And who’s minding the shop at SubForce?”

Catardi followed Pacino into the double doors of the West Wing entrance. As he produced his identification, he looked over sadly. “Rand was diagnosed with a glioblastoma. The kind of brain cancer that takes you in two or three or four months and has you screaming at your family and urinating in your desk drawers. Inoperable. He was trying stem cell therapy and a newfangled vaccine but he got complications. Water on the brain. They took him to surgery to ease the pressure, but it was just a band-aid. Looks like he’s retired to spend his last weeks with his people. I’m filling in for him until the SecNav and the president decide on the appointment of Rand’s replacement.”

Pacino shook his head. “Goddamned hard to hear that, Robby. Grayson Rand is a good man and doesn’t deserve all that. But who stepped in for you at SubCom?”

“You remember John Patton?”

“Sure. He took over for me as CNO after I was out after the Princess Dragon incident. Amazing guy. He put me in charge of the mission to avenge the sinking of the Piranha. But Patton left the Navy years ago.”

“His younger brother, Wally ‘Stiletto’ Patton, came up through the ranks and now he’s got the baton. He should be in our little conference today.”

“Small world, ain’t it, Rob?”

The security forces cleared them, and Catardi, Allende and Pacino walked down to the lower level and the Situation Room. It only had a few aides sitting in wall chairs, but there were pad computers and notepads on the table.

“Looks like the crew is in the mess,” Allende said. “Buy you boys a cup of coffee?”

In the mess, a group of people were gathered around Allende’s deputy director for operations, Angel Menendez. Menendez was a compact, shorter man, wearing a sport jacket over a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt, a black fedora in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. He saw Allende and burst into a smile.

“Boss,” he said, nodding and smiling at Allende. He looked at Pacino and shook his hand. “Admiral Pacino, good to see you again, sir, although the circumstances aren’t ideal.”

Pacino nodded, looking over at three general officers he didn’t know.

“This is the new head of NSA,” Menendez said to Pacino, indicating an Army general with a chest full of medals and airborne wings with a combat star. “General Foster ‘Nick’ Nickerson. He’s an old paratrooper from West Point, but we don’t hold that against him.”

The National Security Agency chief grinned with a mouth stuffed with white teeth, his mustache bushy for a general officer. “Never listen to CIA,” Nickerson said to Pacino, shaking his hand. “They lie. Just ask Ms. Allende’s predecessor.”

Allende smirked. “Just because the Chinese accused him of lying, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Nickerson laughed. “Hey, sometimes lying is our business. Just not within the family, right?”

Menendez pulled over an Air Force general, a stocky older officer with grey hair cut into a flattop, a similar bouquet of ribbons on his chest, with pilot’s wings with a combat star above them. “Admiral Pacino, this is Lieutenant General George ‘Buck’ Rogers. The recently appointed boss of the Defense Intelligence Agency. We pretend to like him, but he’s actually a son of a bitch.”

Rogers guffawed and shook Pacino’s hand. “Don’t listen to ‘Fedora’ Menendez. I and my boys know the real no-shit intelligence. Fedora’s just mad because we don’t always share it with him.”

A solidly built man came into the room, flanked by two of his aides. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Air Force General Abdul Zaka, was the senior statesman of the military, older by far than any general officer Pacino had met, surviving in active duty well into his late sixties. He’d come to the Pentagon after commanding the strategic command that controlled the country’s nuclear weapons, and before that, several bomber groups. Despite his background being vastly different than Pacino’s, they’d gotten along famously since they’d met at a seminar fifteen years before. Zaka had invited Pacino to his hunting compound a few years later, an impressive lodge far from civilization in the deep woods of western Virginia, and they’d stayed up late into the night discussing military strategy. Zaka was perpetually curious about naval strategy and tactics, a parallel universe to him, and he considered Pacino the world’s expert after the end of the War of the East China Sea. Pacino always scoffed at that, telling Zaka that in a thousand ways, he and his fleet had gotten very lucky.

Zaka came up to greet Pacino first, grinning his characteristic smile, with what seemed two dozen straight white teeth. He was gray-haired, his hair cut into a crewcut, his face still retaining its youthful shape, although rumors abounded that he’d had plastic surgery several times. He gripped Pacino’s hand in an iron grip. The general outweighed Pacino by at least fifty pounds, all of it seemingly muscle.

“I heard about Little Patch getting exonerated by the board,” Zaka said. “I was glad to hear. Damned shame what happened.”

“I’m just glad he’s okay, but his friends are hospitalized, one with burns, the other in a coma that she may not come out of.”

Zaka shook his head in sympathy.

Pacino looked over at a shorter, slender officer who wore the shoulderboards of a two-star admiral, who seemed too young for his rank and appeared almost lost in this crowd. He wore submarine dolphins over his ribbons, so he must be the head of the sub force, Pacino guessed.

“You must be Wally Patton,” Pacino said, scanning the man’s face for signs of resemblance to John “Blood-and-Guts” Patton, but there were none. Patton nodded respectfully and shook Pacino’s hand.

“Your brother and I go way back,” Pacino said, regretting that he hadn’t stayed in touch with the older Patton. “But he never mentioned you, or maybe I wasn’t listening.”

“I was just the humble chief engineer on the new construction Bunker Hill when John was CNO,” Patton said. “We’d had some words between us back then, but we’re okay now.”

Pacino nodded as a slender blonde woman walked up, wearing Navy tropical whites with a skirt, her hair pulled back into a severe bun, wearing black-framed glasses, her shoulderboards indicating her rank as a rear admiral. She came up confidently to the group and addressed the male generals and admirals. “Gentlemen, as usual, wonderful to see you.”

Pacino reached out to shake her hand. “I’m Pacino, the new National Security Advisor.”

“Frieda Sutton, head of ONI. And it’s great to meet you, Admiral. Your predecessor was — well, none of us thought she understood military force.”

“Do any of us?” Pacino quipped. ONI was the Office of Naval Intelligence.

He saw Allende with her phone to her ear. She hung up and addressed the crowd. “Everyone, the president is on his way. Let’s get to the room.”

Pacino took his seat, two chairs down from the end seat of the president, the other seats reserved for the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy. To his right sat General Zaka, Admiral Catardi, and next to him, Admiral Patton. Across from them sat Allende, Menendez next to her, then NSA Director Nickerson, with Defense Intelligence chief Rogers on Nickerson’s left, and to his left, ONI’s Admiral Sutton. The seats at the periphery of the room were occupied by various military and civilian aides.

They waited expectantly for the arrival of the president. Pacino checked his phone, scanning for any new texts or news files alerts, but everything seemed routine. He looked up to see Secretary of War Bret Hogshead walking in, his face flushed, whether from exertion or emotion, Pacino couldn’t tell. Hogshead was one of the cabinet members whom VP Karen Chushi had labeled a “silver spoon,” the super-rich who controlled much of the world. Hogshead’s people had come over on the Mayflower and owned most of Massachusetts.

Behind Hogshead was the Secretary of the Navy, former test pilot and Space Shuttle astronaut Jeremy Shingles, who Pacino considered an ally and friend. And walking in behind Shingles was Vice President Karen Chushi, the former Senator from Texas with the grating west Texas accent to go with it. This seemed odd, Pacino thought, since Chushi and President Carlucci did not come anywhere close to getting along, and Carlucci had broken precedent by briefing her into the Panther operation, but then shutting her out of his day-to-day administration immediately after, yet here she was, a dark frown on her face. Pacino looked at Chushi, who looked like she’d aged ten years since he’d seen her last — perhaps some difficult crisis in her life weighing heavily on her.

While the occupants awaited the arrival of the president, Pacino shivered despite it being one of the hotter late summer days in Washington. The air conditioning was blowing intensely in the Situation Room at the president’s insistence. Despite being a career politician, and while he enjoyed being surrounded by his subordinates in the Oval Office, he hated gatherings in stuffy confined quarters like his office on Air Force One or down here in the Situation Room. In fact, he’d taken the PEOC — the Presidential Emergency Operations Center — out of service for a long construction overhaul, the complex buried deep beneath the East Wing of the White House, equipped for use as a nuclear bunker in the event of a full-scale nuclear attack, but by virtue of being carved out of the bedrock, it was small, cramped and nearly airless. Carlucci had insisted on a dramatic expansion of it. Pacino wondered whether that were the real reason for the construction, or if Carlucci just wanted it out of commission for the rest of his term so he’d never have to go down there. Odds were, Pacino thought, no one would be able to convince Carlucci to descend into any of half a dozen other presidential evacuation bunkers within six hours of Washington.

Pacino heard President Carlucci’s smooth tenor voice greeting them all. Carlucci stepped into the room and flashed his usual politician’s smile as he took his seat at the end of the table, his Secret Service agents behind him. Pacino knew the president well enough to know he was anxious despite his confident expression. Carlucci was in his fifties, a tall, slender, athletic man almost never seen out of a several-thousand dollar suit, with a swooping head of salt-and-pepper hair. Pacino and the president went back to the days when Carlucci was running for the U.S. Senate seat for the state of Ohio after being the mayor of Cleveland.

Carlucci had called on Pacino to be his National Security Advisor at the start of the Panther operation, and Pacino had almost quit when the operation wrapped, but Margo Allende had talked him into staying. At the time, Pacino had felt resentment that Carlucci had played fast and loose with the submarine force — and with Anthony’s life — risking their lives over an objective that seemingly had limited utility. But in the month since, he and Carlucci had gotten along well, the younger man leaning heavily on Pacino for advice.

Rear Admiral Frieda Sutton, head of Naval Intelligence, stood in front of a large display screen at the end of the room. Carlucci frowned at it, his arms crossed over his chest. On the display was a torpedo-shaped object. The figure of a man stood near it for scale. The torpedo was gigantic.

“Sir,” Sutton began, “you’ve heard before from us on the Russian 2M39 Ocean Multipurpose System that NATO code-named ‘Kanyon,’ before we heard that the Russians called it the ‘Status-6.’ President Vostov put it out to the public in a press release and asked for the Russian population to give it a name. The Russians operate much differently now than in the Soviet era, when we had no idea what they called their weapon systems, leaving us and NATO to name things. The weapon was renamed ‘Poseidon.’ Regardless of the name, the unit is a deadly weapon designed to get nuclear warheads on target while circumventing our ballistic missile defenses.

“The unit is launched from a large host submarine such as the modified Omega-II class Belgorod, which we think can hold three of these, or from Belgorod’s deep-diving submarine, Losharik.” Sutton clicked her slide deck and a 3D cutaway view appeared of the Omega-II submarine Belgorod. To show its scale, the right side of the slide showed the sub oriented vertically next to an image of the Empire State Building, the sub climbing to three-quarters of the skyscraper’s height, the point being that Belgorod was enormous.

“What is this?” Karen Chushi asked impatiently. “Why are we worried about a torpedo? You worried about our aircraft carriers?”

“No, ma’am,” Sutton said. “This is an autonomous weapon with a nuclear power plant and a range of up to seven thousand nautical miles. It can travel at up to fifty-four knots. It’s two meters in diameter and twenty-four meters long and can dive to a thousand meters. It has enough nuclear fuel to loiter on station — that is, lie on the bottom — for years. It has a nuclear payload of between two and ten megatons, with some sources claiming it could be as big as a hundred megatons. We’ve refined our estimates in the last months to put its yield at ten megatons, one of the biggest hydrogen bombs in military use. As you know, most of our nukes are now in the hundreds or mere tens of kilotons. It’s been years since we used yields in the megaton range.”

“Why is that?” the VP asked.

“Our weapons have dramatically improved in accuracy,” Sutton said. “The smaller yields get to all those hard-to-reach places despite being kilotons rather than megatons. The other reason is that our revised targeting is almost all military targets. And by and large, we no longer target civilian cities, which is the only thing a megaton-range nuke does for you now, which is city-killing.

“The NATO name ‘Kanyon,’” Sutton continued, “was appropriate, because this weapon was designed to drive itself into a coastal port and wait. At the time to detonate, this unit would make a crater that would form a brand new bay. The displaced water would form a tsunami that would cause even more damage inland. Worse, there is speculation these bombs might have warheads doped with Cobalt-60, which would leave the radioactive areas downwind uninhabitable for a hundred years or more. So we modeled what a ten megaton blast would do to the Port of New York—“ Sutton moved to click to the next slide, but Carlucci cut her off.

“Don’t show that slide, Admiral,” he snapped. “It’s inflammatory. We get it. A ten megaton nuke would be bad for business. But big deal. So the Russians have a big scary torpedo. So what?”

Sutton glanced at CIA Director Margo Allende and sat down. Margo looked over at the president, glanced at the heads of NSA and DIA and then back at Carlucci.

“Sir, Russian President Vostov and his staff have been sending memoranda about the possibility of deploying Poseidons from the Belgorod at several target harbors on the U.S. east coast. Then yesterday Vostov’s calendar was changed, inserting in the upcoming month a tour of the shipyard factory that assembles these weapons, and of the Belgorod itself. This and other intercepts hint that Vostov’s actually committing to sending these to American shores.”

For a long moment, Carlucci leaned back in his seat, his face hard, his arms crossed. “Well,” he finally said, his voice deep and furious. “Obviously that’s goddamned unacceptable. Ms. Allende, I want a meeting with you and your deputy ops director in my study in one hour.” Carlucci looked at Pacino. “You too, Admiral Pacino.” There was no doubt. Carlucci had definite ideas about how to respond to the Russian president.

3

Monday mornings were always brutal, Anthony Pacino thought, but never so much as when it was Monday in the shipyard. He rolled up to an empty parking space at Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s Admin Building 1182 just as the sun rose over the horizon, the old red brick building a short walk from Graving Dock Number One, where the burned-out hulk of the USS Vermont lay helplessly on the blocks, black smoke still wafting out of her hatches while shipyard engineers and technicians swarmed over her, trying to assess when she’d be seaworthy again, if ever. And what the plan would be to repair her. Odds were they would have to rip out most of the forward compartment and start over at the bare hoop steel. It could be years before the boat would be refloated. And what, in the meantime, Pacino thought, would he and the crew do until then? Babysit the shipyard shitcanning the interior structures?

He cut the Corvette’s engine and grabbed his briefcase and cover from the passenger seat, got out and locked the door, putting on his Vermont ball cap. He wore the shapeless, baggy, awful khaki two-piece fire-resistant working uniform that resembled pajamas, hating the uniform. He swore, if he ever rose to a high enough rank in the Navy, he’d bring back the uniforms that made the enlisted and officers proud to wear them. Goddamned Big Navy, he thought, out of touch, more concerned with political correctness than warfighting. If it ever came to combat, he thought, they’d be in sad shape indeed. He clenched his jaw, forced himself to stand up straight and walked to the entrance to the admin building, wondering if the crew would be blaming him for the fire on the submarine.

He climbed the stairs to the second deck, already starting to sweat from the sweltering August morning in a building with substandard air conditioning. Down the hallway, he stuck his head into the department head bullpen, where the engineer, navigator, weapons officer and supply officer had desks, each pushed against the outer wall of the room. He glanced mournfully at Rachel’s desk, which had been piled high with “get well” cards. The weapons officer and supply officer were absent this early, but the chief engineer sat at his desk, reading glasses perched on his nose.

The engineer, Lieutenant Commander Elvis “Feng” Lewinsky peered at his tablet computer, reading some memo from the shipyard about the health of his reactor plant. The engineer had no problems, Pacino thought, with the exception of his auxiliary machinery room forward of the reactor compartment, which had experienced some measure of fire damage. The emergency diesel engine, rumor had it, had been unscathed.

Pacino stepped all the way into the room.

“Hey, Feng,” Pacino said to his old friend. The “Feng” callsign acknowledged that Lewinsky wasn’t just the engineer, he was the fucking engineer.

Lewinsky looked over, tossed his tablet and reading glasses to the desk, and stood up, an expression of deep sympathy coming to his face. He walked up, shook Pacino’s hand, and clapped his shoulder. Lewinsky was Pacino’s height, but muscle-bound, taking his frustrations out on a heavy bag and his bench press rig. He had a close-cropped blonde crewcut, a strong jawline, and usually an intimidating expression unless he were smiling, or like now, when he looked concerned.

“Patch. How are you bearing up?”

Pacino found himself blinking back moisture in his eyes, embarrassed at his show of weakness.

“I’m okay, Feng. I just got back from the hospital.”

“The Nav — any change?”

Pacino shook his head. “She’s not good. Doctors won’t say she’s brain dead, but her brain activity is not good and the coma continues. I suppose her burns are healing. They used this new artificial skin for a skin graft and it’s looking good. But I’m worried for her.”

“Yeah,” Lewinsky said.

Pacino supposed there was nothing more to say about Rachel. “Are you hearing anything from the yard birds about the boat? Repair schedules?”

Lewinsky glanced back at his pad computer and turned to Pacino. “It’s not good. In fact, it’s so bad that they’re thinking about cutting off the forward compartment of the Vermont and replacing it with the bow of the new construction boat, the 798 Massachusetts, then rebuilding Vermont’s forward compartment and welding it onto the ass end of the 798. But a maneuver like that — imagine a head transplant on a human being. Every single cable, fiber optic line, duct and pipe has to be cut off at frame one-oh-seven and then re-spliced into place in the new location, and then you’d have to sprinkle holy water on it and pray that it will all work when things are said and done.”

“You’re kidding.”

“That’s the easy part. The Vermont forward compartment has to be moved to a floating drydock while they move the 798 from Electric Boat in Groton down here into Graving Dock Number Two and rip off its forward compartment, then float the 798’s forward compartment over to Dock Number One to weld onto Vermont’s reactor compartment bulkhead, then Frankenstein the 798’s hull together with our old forward compartment while they try to bring it back to life.”

“Fuck’s sake, Feng, you’re talking about a year of work.”

“More like two, Patch. Maybe three.”

“That’s insane. What the hell are we going to do while all that’s going on?”

“I heard the XO has plans for you junior officers. I don’t want to steal his thunder, though. You’ll hear the news soon enough.”

“Thanks, Feng. I guess I’d better report to my goddamned desk for a day of paper-pushing.”

“Hey Patch,” Lewinsky said, “Chin up. It’ll be okay.”

“I hope you’re right, Feng,” Pacino said, and walked farther down the passageway to the junior officers’ bullpen office. He found his desk and dejectedly tossed his bag and cap onto it. He was alone in the room. He pulled out his laptop and plugged it into the docking station and scanned his email, but it was all routine.

Lieutenant Duke “Squirt Gun” Vevera entered the room, tossing his backpack onto his seat. He looked at Pacino sadly and shook his hand, looking into Pacino’s eyes. “You okay? Any of that smoke stuff cause permanent damage?”

Pacino shook his head. “I coughed all through the nights the first week, but I think I coughed it all up.”

Vevera was, like Pacino, an Academy grad, Pacino later learning that Vevera had been a classmate, although Pacino hadn’t known him at Annapolis. He was stocky, barrel-chested and built like a refrigerator, his physique earning him the initial nickname of “Man Mountain.” The “Squirt Gun” nickname came later, from him ill-advisedly remarking to the executive officer at midnight rations one night that his pretty young girlfriend was a “squirter,” and ever since the crew would regularly greet Vevera by tossing towels at him. Vevera had missed the Panther run to fight off a rabidly aggressive form of cancer, and against the odds he’d beaten the disease with an experimental treatment when everyone was certain they would be burying him when the Vermont returned, but he seemed as healthy as before the cancer struck. He owned an enormous motorcycle, an Indian Chieftain, in a turquoise and beige two-tone paint scheme with brown leather and leather tassels sprouting out everywhere, which earned him even more teasing from the enlisted men, who jokingly insisted no straight male would ever drive a motorcycle like that. Vevera was perhaps most famous for attempting to pull Vermont out of Norfolk when she’d been tied up bow-in, and during the reversal the stern had gone north instead of south, and to line up the boat to point northward, Vevera had just kept going in a backward circle, making a 270 degree turn instead of a simple 90.

Vevera had taken over for former mechanical officer Lieutenant Kyle Lomax, who’d left the ship to go to shore duty after the Panther mission. Vevera regularly complained about working for Lewinsky, but Pacino knew he secretly loved his job and revered the chief engineer.

“So, Patch, any news about the Nav?”

Pacino filled Vevera in, as he had the engineer.

Vevera just shook his head sadly. It was then Don “Easy” Eisenhart walked into the room. Another Academy grad, Easy was the ship’s communications officer, and Pacino was still getting to know him. He looked at Pacino with a half-smile.

“I hear you royally fucked up the boat, Lipstick,” he said.

Pacino’s other callsign, “Lipstick,” had arisen from an unfortunate drunken night of liberty in a foreign port when he’d awakened in the bed of a woman he barely knew, then reported to the ship with his lower face completely smeared in her lipstick, his appearance causing paroxysms of laughter from both officers and enlisted alike. Pacino waited for the memory of that morning to fade, but regrettably, it still lived on.

“Actually, it wasn’t—“

“I know, Lipstick,” Eisenhart said quickly, sensing Pacino’s sore spot. “Tough break. So, let me ask. How realistic was the simulation when it was done in-hull?”

“Easy, you have no idea how fucking realistic it was. When the fire broke out, I thought it was part of the scenario, and then when the smoke came in something happened. It must have fucked me up and I totally lost the bubble — I forgot it was a drill. I was so convinced I was actually at Zapadnaya Litsa that the Board of Inquiry must have thought I’d gone around the bend. It’s safe to say, they’ll never train that way again.”

“Wow. Well, better you than me. I’d have never survived that Board of Inquiry. You, with your admiral father working for the president and all, hell, one phone call and you were off the hook.”

“I thought that too, but Dad swears no one said anything.”

“Still, they did know they were dealing with a Pacino.”

“The thing I love about you, Easy? You definitely keep me humble.”

Eisenhart laughed. “Hey, someone has to.” He pointed his thumb at Pacino. “Fuckin’ guy gets the Navy Cross and steals an enemy nuclear submarine to earn the Silver Star — how you gonna keep his feet on the ground?”

Pacino laughed. “Fuck you, Easy.”

Eisenhart returned the verbal salute with, “And your mother too.”

Lieutenant Dieter “U-Boat” Dankleff, the damage control assistant, slouched into the room, his eyes still half shut, a coffee cup in one hand and his backpack in the other. He looked up and grunted at Vevera, Eisenhart and Pacino. The DCA was half a head shorter than Pacino, stocky, going bald, with a pockmarked face from adolescent acne, his thick black glasses his trademark. Despite his ordinary looks, Dankleff had always been almost irresistible to women, a fact he had always been cocky about. But today he seemed deflated, his usual laughing and joking replaced by a dour depression.

“Morning, U-Boat,” Vevera said loudly, suspecting that Dankleff might be hungover.

“Quiet, please,” Dankleff said, his voice a croak.

“Good weekend?”

Dankleff waved off the grinning mechanical officer and made his way to his desk and plugged in. He wandered off to get a coffee refill, then came back in again, quiet at his desk. Pacino could almost tell the moment the DCA’s coffee kicked in. Dankleff’s eyes opened wider and he swiveled in his chair and seemed only then to recognize that Vevera and Pacino were there.

“Well, fuck, Lipstick,” he said to Pacino. “I heard you burned the boat down all the way to the drydock blocks and we’re fucked for two years.”

“I didn’t start the—“

“Two years?” Vevera said in shock.

“Yeah,” Pacino said. “They’re going to Frankenstein the ship’s ass end with the 798 Massachusetts’ forward end and take our burned-up bow and stitch it up to the aft end of 798. Eng says at least two years. Or more.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Vevera said. “Two years in this goddamned shipyard?”

“Another good deal from Big Navy,” Dankleff said, sipping his coffee.

U-Boat Dankleff got his callsign from his great grandfather, who’d commanded the Nazi U-boat U-767 that went down in the English Channel in World War II, but not before taking down thousands of tons of allied shipping. Dankleff had been the OIC, officer-in-charge, of the Operation Panther hijacking mission, with Pacino as his second-in-command. The two of them had privately admitted that they were certain they were going to die on that mission, but had put on a brave face for their small crew. Somehow fortune had favored them, and they’d survived against astronomical odds. But now this, Pacino thought. Two years of his life would go down the drain, this drydock disaster putting them all in the miserable boring routine of shipyard life.

While the four junior officers sat there in silence, a procession of enlisted men walked down the corridor outside the room, each one ceremoniously sticking his hand through the door and lighting a disposable lighter, then moving on, the next hand coming in and lighting a lighter, then the next. Vevera and Eisenhart started laughing and Dankleff clapped, both glancing at Pacino’s red face.

“For fuck’s sake, dammit,” Pacino said quietly, “I didn’t start the—“

After the last enlisted man walked on, the executive officer stuck his head in the doorway. Commander Jeremiah Seamus “Bullfrog” Quinnivan was on loan from the Royal Navy as part of a U.S. Navy / Royal Navy exchange program, and had been second-in-command to Captain Seagraves during the Panther run. Quinnivan was an Irishman with the thick-as-Irish-stew brogue to go with it. A medium-height, slightly built officer, Quinnivan sported a tightly trimmed beard streaked with gray, his ultra-short haircut attempting to hide the fact that he was half bald. In contrast to the American officers’ shapeless working uniforms, Quinnivan wore a tailored dark blue shirt tucked into dark blue pants, his rank worn in the center of his chest, the dark emblem showing three horizontal gold stripes, the top one making a loop in the middle. He grinned at the junior officers with unnaturally white teeth, who some said had been capped after he’d been in a bar brawl that he insisted he’d won.

“Pacino! You arsehole! You fookin’ burned my boat!” Quinnivan’s voice rattled the windows.

“Sir, I—“

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all watched the fookin’ video, yeah? And we all know you only had seconds before the EAB system shit the bed, so I’m not really blamin’ ye, lad, but you coulda given us better luck, don’t ya know? Like some of that fookin’ Operation Panther luck, yeah?”

“Sir, um…” Pacino’s voice trailed off.

Quinnivan addressed the room. “Now listen, all you half-witted scurvy junior officers, I want you all early to officers’ call. Your United States Navy has new plans of all of ye.”

The four lieutenants glanced at each other, then back at Quinnivan.

“Sir, may I ask,” Pacino started, but Quinnivan had just waved and disappeared down the corridor.

“New plans?” Dankleff asked.

“Sounds like TDY to some other boat,” Vevera said. TDY meant temporary duty. Maybe sea duty, Pacino thought, thinking maybe they’d augment another attack submarine’s crew.

Ten minutes later the four junior officers were joined by the rest of the boat’s officer cadre, the other younger officers showing up directly to the conference room, placing their briefcases and backpacks against the outside wall. The seat at the end of the long table would be reserved for the captain, but he almost never attended officers’ call, leaving that to the XO. The executive officer would hold court from the seat immediately to the right of the captain’s chair. Next to him, the seat was empty, reserved for the navigator. Across from the navigator’s seat sat the engineer, and next to the navigator’s seat, the engineer’s direct reports would sit so they could look across the table at their boss. Damage Control Assistant Dankleff sat next to the navigator’s seat, since he was the senior officer of the engineering department — and in fact, he was also the “Bull Lieutenant,” the most senior of the junior officers aboard, although that title remained disputed by Vevera — and next to him sat Main Propulsion Assistant Vevera. The seat to Vevera’s right was taken by Electrical Officer Muhammad “Boozy” Varney. On the other side of the table, next to Lewinsky, sat Weapons Officer Al Spichovich, then Eisenhart, then Pacino, then Torpedo Officer Li No. Finally, at the other end of the table from the captain’s chair sat Supply Officer Anik “Gangbanger” Ganghadharan.

Quinnivan frowned at the assembled officers. “Well, lads, I suppose you’ve all heard the bad news that our beloved navigator is hurt and in hospital and in a deep coma. And that Senior Chief Nygard is still in the burn unit and will be for some time. Since Lipstick here burned up the entire forward compartment to the ground and hosed the Vermont, she’ll be stuck here for at least two years while the shipyard tries to figure out what to do to fix it.”

Pacino bit his lip, realizing that for the next week, at least, every crewmember he’d run into would be casually mentioning that he’d burned the ship to the ground. They all knew, of course, that he didn’t, but in keeping with submariners’ tradition, any weak spot would be pounded away at. It would seem ruthlessly cruel to outsiders, but it was actually a twisted form of showing affection, as strange as that sounded.

Just then the captain stuck his head in the door. Captain Seagraves was tall, with a full head of what Quinnivan called “politician hair,” his chiseled face looking like it belonged to a soap opera actor or a senator. He frowned as he said, in his booming baritone voice, “Good going, Mr. Pacino, for burning my boat down. Nice work.” Before Pacino could react, he disappeared down the passageway.

Pacino looked dejectedly down at the table. “Fuck me,” he said quietly. He felt Eisenhart’s hand clapping him on the shoulder, as if to encourage him to take heart.

“Don’t worry,” Eisenhart whispered. “In two years, she’ll be good as new.”

“Okay, next order of business,” the XO said, opening a folder and tossing papers across to the officers. “All of you junior officers are going TDY to another boat until the shipyard un-fucks the Vermont. I’m passing out your orders now.”

“What boat, XO?” Dankleff asked as Quinnivan slid a sheaf of papers to him.

“The 796 New Jersey, newest Block IV Virginia-class attack sub coming freshly out of new construction. Her alpha sea trials and commissioning shakedown runs are complete, and there’s a long laundry list of things that are hosed on the boat, but she’s putting to sea anyway. All repairs and post-repair sea trials are postponed for an urgent spec-op. She’s being officially placed in commission today, as I speak.”

Pacino scanned his orders. The 796 New Jersey was moored at DynaCorp Electric Boat Division in Groton, Connecticut.

Vevera caught it first, having consulted his pad computer. “XO, New Jersey was built at the McDermott Aerospace and Shipbuilding facility at Newport News, a half mile from where we sit. Why is it at Electric Boat in Groton?”

“Ah,” Quinnivan said. “The post-sea-trials list of shit to fix, yeah? The deal is the Electric Boat ships are repaired by the McDermott shop and vice versa. The cost of repairs is backcharged from one shop to the other, as an incentive to build in quality the first time. It’s also more efficient. But I’m guessing. Maybe there’s another reason.”

“Sir,” Pacino asked, “if the Jersey is in Groton — maybe she’s going to go to ComSubDevRon Twelve up there instead of SubRon Six down here.”

“Jersey was originally destined to be a DevRon Twelve boat,” Quinnivan replied, “but since she’s the direct replacement for Vermont, she’ll be in-chopping to Squadron Six here in Norfolk. When Vermont is repaired, the bosses will make a decision then whether to have the rebuilt Vermont go to Groton and leave Jersey in Norfolk. That decision is TBD, people.”

“XO,” Dankleff asked, “What about the chiefs? Are they staying here with the Vermont or going with us to the New Jersey?”

“We’re handling that on a case-by-case basis. Tactical divisions will probably take their chief petty officers and leading petty officers with you junior officers to the New Jersey. Obviously, torpedo division will need a new chief, since Blacky Nygard is laid up for some time. Supply and engineering chiefs will most likely stay with Vermont to aid in her rebuild. But that’s still to be determined.”

Quinnivan concluded officers’ call, telling them to pack their seabags and report to the pier at Groton Submarine Base in forty-eight hours, and to be ready to disappear for a while. A long while.

Back in the junior officer bullpen, Vevera whispered to Pacino. “A spec-op? What do you think is going on?”

A “spec-op” was short for special operation, the kind that the USS Vermont had done before going into the drydock. The kind that couldn’t be spoken of outside of a SCIF, a special compartmented information facility, or inside the hull of the submarine.

“Who knows?” Pacino said. “Are we all keeping our present jobs? Am I still sonar officer and you main propulsion assistant?”

“It would seem logical,” Vevera said. “The fastest way to staff the new boat with minimal disruptions.”

“What about the present crew and officers of the New Jersey? What happens to them?”

Vevera shrugged. “They’re a bunch of drydock rats and have been building the Jersey for four years. I suppose they’ll cross-deck them onto the Vermont so they can fix her.”

“And what about our department heads? And the XO and captain?”

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” Vevera said as he packed his backpack and headed for the door. “I’ll see you at the Snake Ranch.”

Commander Jeremiah Quinnivan, Royal Navy, knocked on the open door jamb of Commander Seagraves’ temporary office on the admin building’s third floor.

“Come on in, XO,” Seagraves said, rolling his high-backed chair away from the desk and putting his steel-toed boots on the spread-out printouts on top. “Have a seat. Something on your mind?”

Quinnivan settled into one of the chairs in front of the captain’s desk, leaning forward, his tense body language a contrast to Seagrave’s relaxed pose.

“I’m a bit worried about that wee lad, Lipstick Pacino, yeah? All this seems to have taken the wind from the boy’s sails, if you know what I mean, Skipper. And I’m still convinced he’s our good luck charm. So, frankly, sir, we need him cocky and full of himself again, ya know?”

Seagraves shrugged. “That should come soon enough, XO.” Seagraves never called Jeremiah Seamus Quinnivan by his given names or his “Bullfrog” callsign — taken from some forgotten 1960s rock and roll song lyric — but always simply “XO,” perhaps to keep reminding the Irishman that while they were friends, good friends, they still were in command of a high-stakes weapon system and the people who ran it. Seagraves had seen excessive informality hurt military discipline in the past, and he swore it wouldn’t happen on his command.

“You think we’ll be able to bring him back to life in the next assignment?”

“Let’s hope so, XO. All we can do is give the young man time.”

Quinnivan stroked his beard, the way he did when weighing his words carefully.

“I suppose so, Cap’n. Did you decide yet whether to tell the lads about where we’re going?”

Seagraves looked for a moment out the window, frowning to himself. “I’m thinking we should let that be a surprise to the boys,” he finally said.

“Yeah, a big surprise, sir.”

“Hopefully, they’ll see it as a good sign.”

“I don’t know, Skip. They may see it as the gravestone for the USS Vermont.”

“Don’t say that, XO. The spirit of the project submarine Vermont is immortal. She shall return in all her glory, and when she does, we and our wardroom and goat locker of pirates, misfits and cutthroats will be right there with her.”

“I don’t know, sir. Two years in a dock? A lot can happen in two years.”

Seagraves smiled, took his boots off the desk and rifled through a pile of disorganized papers until he found what he was looking for. He handed the stapled package over to Quinnivan and waited for the exec to skim it. Quinnivan looked up, stunned.

“Six months? They’ll repair her in six months?”

“Crash program. Admiral Stiletto Patton came down hard on the Navy shipyard personnel and on McDermott Aerospace and Shipbuilding. He told both organizations that heads will roll unless Vermont sails the seven seas on her own power by the first of March.”

“Wow. I suppose, sir, it’s nice that we command a project boat. President needs her back in service.”

“Nothing like a phone call from the White House to get things rolling,” Seagraves said, taking back the sheave of papers from Quinnivan. “Now we just have to get through our own TDY assignment.”

“That we do, Cap’n, that we do.”

4

Mid-August, and the weather in Murmansk, Russia, was only a few degrees above freezing, a cold rain beating down, making a drum-beat noise on the metal roof over the bar’s outside porch. Georgy Alexeyev looked up at the lit sign above the door, the sign showing a graphic of a wolf ripping off the head of a sheep, blood splashing onto the face of the wolf. The Lamb’s Valhalla had been a popular hangout for the officers of the Northern Fleet before the brass came down and blackballed it for the practice of a backroom filled with friendly hookers. Ridiculous, Alexeyev thought, wondering if one of the senior female officers had insisted on the bar being made off limits.

Inside the solid wood door, the bar’s atmosphere was steaming hot, the wave of heat a welcome feeling. Alexeyev pulled off his heavy sheepskin coat and hung it on one of the many hooks by the door. A smiling, large-breasted, tall blonde waved him to his usual booth. After he settled in, she returned with a bottle of Glenfiddich scotch and two glasses. She asked if he would want any food, but he waved her off. Tonight was for drinking, he thought.

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev had a thick, full head of gray-streaked hair swooping over his forehead and ears, the mirror reminding him that he needed a haircut. He wore a black eyepatch over his right eye. He really didn’t need the patch anymore, now that the surgery had been done to put in a glass eye, but he was self-conscious that the glass eye didn’t look realistic, and he’d rather people just realize he was half blind rather than try to guess why his face looked odd.

Alexeyev was tall, a bit over 185 centimeters, and he’d always been thin — even gaunt — although since the disaster in the South Atlantic, he’d gained a few kilograms he could stand to lose. But the weight was largely unnoticeable at his waist, his jawline still ruler straight.

Tonight he’d decided to dress in jeans and a denim shirt under an olive-drab submarine service pullover, forgoing his usual uniform. After all, showing up to an off-limits bar in uniform would seem to tempt the bosses. He was halfway into a glass of the scotch, which was cold despite being unrefrigerated, when his friend walked in, still wearing his coat, which was dripping wet.

“Take your coat off, Sergei,” Alexeyev said.

“Oh,” Sergei Kovalov said, shaking his head. “My mind is elsewhere. Pour one for me, will you?” Kovalov went back to the door, took off his jacket and returned as Alexeyev was corking the bottle. He slid over into the seat opposite Alexeyev. Captain First Rank Sergei Kovalov was a shorter man, built like a bear, everything about the man thick and hairy. He had a fleshy face with wide penetrating eyes, red hair, and a thick mustache. He was the son of a high-ranking government official, although Alexeyev had no idea what Kovalov’s father had been, since Kovalov refused to speak about him. Alexeyev and Kovalov had been friends ever since their junior officer tours on the Tambov a million years ago. Kovalov had nursed many a drink with Alexeyev during the troubled times of Kovalov’s divorce, the two of them convinced they could find the answers to life’s problems at the bottom of a bottle. And while they’d proved that theory wrong on multiple occasions, that didn’t stop them from continuing to try.

Kovalov raised his glass, and Alexeyev joined him. “To fallen comrades,” Kovalov said, and Alexeyev thought for a sad moment about the personnel he’d lost in the South Atlantic when his K-561 Kazan went down, at the wrong end of a damned Russian supercavitating torpedo. Alexeyev shut his eyes and drank, saying a momentary prayer that wherever the souls he’d lost were, they were okay. When he opened his eyes, he noticed his friend was staring down at the table, seeming lost.

“Are you okay, Sergei?” Alexeyev asked.

“Wife and daughter are driving me crazy,” Kovalov said, blinking. “Tonight they were screaming at each other so loud that not one, but two neighbors pounded on the apartment door to demand quiet. And then Ivana insisted that I remove Magna’s door from her room. Somehow, Mommy thinks that destroying the girl’s privacy is the cure to the trouble. And through all this, Magna’s still not speaking to me. After, you know, the thing. So at home? Pure chaos.”

“Removing a teenage girl’s door? You’d be throwing gasoline onto a fire already burning,” Alexeyev said.

“I know. So, Georgy, enough about my problems. You wanted to talk. Are there new sorrows to drown?”

Alexeyev poured more scotch for both of them. “You know, Sergei, the trouble with the attempt to drown sorrows in alcohol is that sorrows are such good swimmers.”

Kovalov smiled and tilted his glass back, drained it, and called for more.

“My sorrows are the usual, I suppose,” Alexeyev said. “Natalia was upset at living close to the base and insisted on us moving to Murmansk City. At least I’m close to your apartment now. But is she happy now? No. Now she’s throwing a fit about my being away on the next mission. And I can’t even tell her if we sail in a week or a month.”

Kovalov waved his friend’s complaint aside. “Please, Georgy, you have no problems. That woman loves you more than her next breath. It’s obvious for anyone to see when they see you together. Count your blessings. You have a gorgeous female who thinks the sun rises and sets over your head. Of course she’s going to bitch about you disappearing to the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean for two months, maybe more.”

“That’s not all that’s on my mind, Sergei. It’s the new mission profile. It’s not like anything we’ve seen before.”

Kovalov nodded. He looked around the bar, but it was mostly empty and no one was near. “I know,” he said quietly. “Deploying Status-6 units in enemy harbors. It’s a terrible idea. If any of this stupid plan leaks out, well, it will be a disaster.”

“If the American defenses are waiting for us, it might be a bad day.”

“Yes, exactly,” Kovalov replied. “Being depth-charged to death could ruin your entire week.”

“Natalia doesn’t know that she could have even bigger things to complain about.”

Kovalov looked at his drink. “If we’re lucky, the depth charges could be nuclear. I imagine dying in a nuclear explosion is a good way to go. It’s over before you even realize something is wrong.”

“No way I want to go out that way,” Alexeyev said. “I’d like a minute or two to consider my own mortality. I always figured an airplane accident from high altitude would be the way to die. A short time of contemplation, then lights out in an instant.”

“Either way,” Kovalov said, “it beats dying in a flooding submarine.”

Or one on fire, Alexeyev thought. “I’ll drink to that.”

In the morning, Georgy Alexeyev awakened to an empty bed. His wife Natalia was up early, presumably to make breakfast for him.

As he sat up in bed, he realized that what woke him up was a smell. A bad smell. It was a Belomorkanal cigarette, a bastard child of cigars and cigarettes, a papirosa with a cardboard tube instead of a filter, with cigar-type tobacco stuffed into it, the foul-smelling cigarette that had the characteristic stench of a dead wet dog tossed into a bonfire. The kind of cigarette that only one person in his life had ever smoked — Captain Third Rank Alesya Matveev, his dead chief engineer on K-561 Kazan.

He looked over at the table and chairs on the window side of the bedroom, and there Matveev was, sitting there at the table, her legs crossed, calmly smoking the cigarette, her big brown eyes fixed on him. She wore the powder-blue coveralls with the high-vis stripes on the sleeves, upper torso and ankles, the color she’d picked out for her engineering department. He’d never known her to wear makeup, and in life she would have had to strive to become plain, but as she sat there, her face radiated a tranquil, serene beauty. Alexeyev wasn’t sure if it were the light from the low-on-the-horizon sun shining through the blinds or something from within her, but she seemed to be backlit by a kind of aura made of white light.

Twenty emotions ran through him like the current from a high voltage short circuit, and instinctively he backed away from the apparition, slinking back against the headboard, his mouth open. An acidic witch’s brew of abject terror, intense sadness and dark guilt pumped through his veins. He tried to speak, but his voice wouldn’t come. He felt like a fish dying on a pier, his lips moving, but no sound coming out, and he realized he couldn’t breathe, a uncontrollable panic starting to bubble up in his mind.

It was then she spoke to him. It was Matveev’s scratchy voice, but it came to him in his mind. Her lips never moved.

Hello, Captain. She smiled at him mysteriously, not showing her teeth, but her eyes making happy horizontal commas the way they did the rare times she’d smile when she was alive. The voice seemed to soothe his terrified and guilty spirit, and the fear drained from him, replaced with an odd, calm, intense focus.

Alexeyev finally found his voice. “Chief,” he said, calling her by her former shipboard title, short for chief engineer, then thinking that sounded too formal. “Alesya.”

She dipped her head in a half nod of respect, tamped out her cigarette in a large K-561 ashtray, reached for another, and lit it with a lighter with the colorful coat-of-arms of the K-561, the smoke curling toward the ceiling.

“Why are you here?” he asked. When she just looked at him, he got the feeling she would only answer if he asked her the right question. “Ty v poryadke, gde ty? Are you okay where you are? Are you safe there? Are the others okay?” He meant the other engineering watchstanders who’d perished with her on that awful day. But Chief Engineer Matveev just kept looking at him, a seeming amusement in her eyes.

It occurred to Alexeyev that when a man saw dead relatives or friends, that was an omen that he was near his own death, and that the dead ones were there waiting to escort him to the next world. That thought made some of the fear return, and he became aware of his heart hammering in his chest.

Perhaps there was an exception to the appearance of the dead foreshadowing his own death, he thought. If the spirit were here to warn him, he might well live on. That is, if he heeded the warning.

“Did you come to warn me?” he asked Matveev.

She took a last puff of her foul-smelling cigarette and put it out in the ashtray, then looked over at him and nodded solemnly.

Distance, she said seriously without speaking, her thought coming into his mind, her lips not moving, her expression a frown of worry.

“Distance,” he repeated dully. What did she mean? “Do you mean—?“

But before he could finish his thought, Matveev became transparent, then turned to mist, the mist turning to smoke that wafted toward the ceiling with the dying smoke of her cigarette, and then all traces of her were gone but for the smell of her smoke.

As he stared at the chair near the table, his mouth dropped open, and just then Natalia walked in, her face crumpled into disgust, fanning her face.

“Georgy, what’s wrong? Dear man, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. And what have you been smoking? That is truly foul. Did you pick up a bad habit?”

What should he tell her, he wondered. That he had just seen a ghost, the apparition of his dead chief engineer, and it had been she who had been smoking? He felt his pulse still racing and his lungs bursting, trying to get in air, hoping Natalia wouldn’t notice and suddenly make a fuss over him.

“It’s Kovalov,” he said haltingly, trying to bring his breathing back under control. “Sergei was trying a new cigarette brand, but it was even more foul than he could tolerate. It must have gotten on my clothes from when we were drinking at the Lamb’s Valhalla.”

“That awful place. But it’s odd,” she said, picking up clothing from the floor. “I didn’t smell it last night when you came to bed late.”

“You were fast asleep,” he said. “I don’t think you would have smelled a dead skunk the way you were snoring.”

She smiled at him. “I don’t snore,” she said, smiling, their running joke since he’d spent his first night with her, the noise of her at first keeping him awake, but now it was somehow comforting. The first night aboard ship was always difficult without that sound.

“Woman, you snore loud enough to shatter windows,” he said, reaching out to slap her hindquarters. He was starting to feel normal again, and the fact that Natalia hadn’t noticed him turning blue from lack of oxygen, or noticed his trembling hands, encouraged him.

“Save my spanking for later and come eat your breakfast, smelly man,” she laughed. “Hurry up, you’ll be late for your conference with the admiral.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, trying to smile at her and wondering if she would see through him to his inner turmoil, but Natalia had already hurried back to the kitchen, her mind on preparing the food. He found his black eyepatch and put it on, then strapped on his submariner’s watch.

As he got up to go to the kitchen, he noticed that there was no ashtray on the table, no K-561 lighter, nor any sign of a cigarette butt. But the smell lingered on.

As Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev waited for the admiral to arrive, his mind kept returning to Matveev. What the hell did her appearance mean? And what had she meant by saying distance?

He looked over at Kovalov, wondering if he dared tell his old friend about Matveev’s manifestation.

Finally the secure conference room’s inner door opened and Admiral Gennady Zhigunov hurried into the room, nodding at Alexeyev and Kovalov, who had stood and snapped to rigid attention.

“Seats, please, gentlemen,” Zhigunov said. The admiral was in his sixties, a grizzled tall figure, still considered handsome by Alexeyev’s female officers. He had a full head of completely gray hair and a chiseled face, time worn and beginning to sag. He took his seat at the end of the table opposite the large flatpanel display. He dropped his pad computer on the stainless steel table’s surface and reached into his inner tunic pocket, withdrawing a blue pack of cigarettes and his lighter with the emblem of Northern Fleet Command. The unfiltered French brand Zhigunov favored, Gauloises Brunes, made noxious smoke, but nothing like Matveev’s, Alexeyev thought. He offered the submarine commanders cigarettes. Alexeyev waved him off, but Kovalov took one, taking the admiral’s lighter when he’d lit up. Kovalov smoked a different brand and had a general contempt for Western cigarettes, but he acted as if he smoked Gauloises every day.

“Have you both read the mission profile?” Zhigunov puffed hard on his cigarette, tapping out his ash on a tray he’d pulled over from the center of the table. When the officers nodded, he reached for a remote and projected on the screen, the display showing a detailed map of the globe taken from high over the north pole.

“So. The mission, then. At the time to be determined, Captain Alexeyev, your Belgorod will sortie from Zapadnaya Litsa Submarine Base and make your way north to the Barents Sea, where you will rendezvous with Captain Kovalov’s Losharik, which will leave port from Olenya Guba and rendezvous with Belgorod here.” A bright red dot lit up north of the Kola Peninsula. “You will take aboard Losharik while submerged.”

“Admiral?” Kovalov said, hesitantly interrupting while stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette in the ash tray. “We’ve never docked Losharik to Belgorod at sea, and never while both units are submerged.”

Zhigunov nodded, seeming distracted, while he put out his cigarette and lit a second. The room was becoming filled with smoke. Alexeyev had a momentary thought about his conversation with Kovalov the night before, about dying in a depth-charged submarine, and unbidden, a flash memory came to him, of the upper level of Kazan when the first compartment exploded and the passageway leading to the escape chamber had filled with flames and smoke. With a conscious effort, Alexeyev blinked away the waking nightmare.

“Something wrong, Georgy?” Zhigunov asked, flashing Alexeyev a penetrating gaze.

“No, sir,” Alexeyev said, trying to keep his facial expression hard. “Please continue, Admiral.”

“When Belgorod departs, you will be loaded with three Status-6 weapons. When you arrive on-station, you’ll transfer them one at a time to Losharik, which will place them in their mission-determined locations.”

Alexeyev bit his lip. Firing an exercise-shot Status-6, which his Belgorod had done a dozen times, was routine. Transferring a dummy mockup of a Status-6 to the deep-diver Losharik he’d only done once, and it had been a disaster. He was still smarting from the post-exercise critique of that endeavor.

“Sir, if I may,” Alexeyev said slowly, “transferring a Status-6 to Losharik is problematic. We’ve never managed to do that well. Our only attempt—“

“I know, Captain Alexeyev,” Zhigunov said. “I’m well aware of the exercise failure, but I am confident that this time you will be successful. Unlike the exercise you participated in, you will be in shallow water. A dropped weapon can easily be recovered by Losharik and the mission will continue.”

“So, sir, the mission? We’re actually deploying Status-6 weapons?”

Zhigunov nodded. Alexeyev could tell the admiral was passing along orders he didn’t agree with. Zhigunov manipulated the display and the image of the globe turned to focus on the east coast of the United States. Three red dots appeared. The southern-most dot flashed brighter than the other two.

“The first unit will be placed here off the border between their provinces of Florida and Georgia, where their main strategic missile submarines are based.” The red dot flashed for a moment and Zhigunov zoomed the display far in, the aerial view looking down on the Saint Marys Channel. “The weapon must be placed in the mid-point of the deep channel leading out of the submarine base. The water is too shallow for Belgorod, but not for Losharik. The weapons must be placed with absolute precision, which is why we are not relying on their internal navigation systems. The weapons will be in stand-by mode and asleep when you drop them.

“The second unit will be placed at the exit of Hampton Roads, the place where their naval ships leave their main base in Norfolk in the province of Virginia.” Zhigunov zoomed the display image far out, then zoomed into the Virginia Beach area. “Weapon placement will be inside the channel exit of the bay near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Also in waters too shallow for Belgorod but not for Losharik.”

“The third unit will go into the Long Island Sound, outside the submarine base the Americans use in their province of Connecticut, not far from New York City, at the mouth of the Thames River. Zhigunov navigated the display back to a vantage point above the north pole.

“Questions?”

Both captains began to speak at once. Zhigunov waved them to silence and pointed at Alexeyev.

“Yes, Admiral. Why are we doing this?”

“Orders from the president,” Zhigunov said, as if it were obvious.

“Does he intend to detonate these?”

“I doubt it,” Zhigunov said. “I imagine it is a demonstration of capability. For all I know, after these units are deployed, he may tell the Americans, then generously offer to remove them. But who can say what politicians think at any given moment?” There was silence in the room for a moment. “Speaking of the president, I know you’ll enjoy this next part. President Vostov is traveling north to tour Sevmash Shipyard and the Status-6 factory. He will then tour the Belgorod, then the Losharik. I suggest you both prepare your ships and crews for a presidential visit.”

Zhigunov glanced at each submarine captain. Alexeyev tried to keep his expression neutral, but Kovalov looked like he’d just swallowed rotten caviar.

“I know a VIP visit is counterproductive to combat readiness,” Zhigunov said, “but think of this as a way to show your crews just how important they are. It will raise their morale.”

Fat chance of that, Alexeyev thought. They’d be scrubbing and polishing the boat for weeks until Vostov showed up, all the while cursing him for their unnecessary labor.

“When is he coming?” Kovalov asked.

“Next week or next month,” Zhigunov said with a shrug. “To be determined. Exact itinerary to follow. Meanwhile, Belgorod will be loading out the weapons and stores for the voyage. You’ll need enough for a four-month deployment.”

“Four months?” Kovalov’s eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets.

Alexeyev looked at Zhigunov. “Admiral, I think I will take that smoke now.”

Zhigunov smiled and shook out a cigarette for Alexeyev. The smoke was strong but satisfying.

“There’s still more good news, gentlemen. Your route to your destinations.” With a few clicks, Zhigunov changed the display from a globe to a Mercator projection, showing all the continents. A flashing red dotted line emerged from the naval bases at Russia’s Kola Peninsula, extending deep into the Arctic Ocean, not far from the pole, then descending between Siberia and Alaska into the Pacific, and from there around South America’s Cape Horn and up the South American coast, traveling northward in the South Atlantic, past the equator and into the North Atlantic, finally arriving at the east coast of the United States.

Alexeyev glanced at Kovalov, whose face had turned as red as his hair. Zhigunov, anticipating their reaction, held up his palms.

“I know, I know. This is the long way.”

“Long?” Kovalov said, his voice too loud for a briefing with a flag officer. “Instead of a five thousand nautical mile trip, you’re sending us on a twenty-thousand-mile route.”

“Twenty-one thousand five hundred, to be precise,” Zhigunov said. “For several reasons. One of them is the NATO trip wire sonar systems set up between the United Kingdom, Greenland and Iceland. And because there may be waiting American or British submarines lurking outside our Kola bases. When you enter the Barents and turn east instead of west, any NATO submarine will assume you’re going out to do exercises rather than going on an offensive mission. Third, you’ll lose any trailing submarines in the polar icecap. The pressure ridges and icepack will make your sound signature indistinct. The noises of the icepack itself will be far louder than Belgorod.”

Alexeyev frowned. The icepack shifting, creaking and grinding was transient noise, loud certainly, but nuclear submarines emitted bell tones — tonals — that could easily be picked up by sensitive sonars coupled to mighty computers with vast data-filtering power, able to discern needles from hay in the acoustic haystack. But he decided to move on to the next objection.

“Sir,” Alexeyev said, “there is still the chokepoint between Russia and Alaska. The Bering Strait is, what, only fifty miles wide? If you think the GI-UK gap is problematic, it’s nothing compared to the Bering Strait.”

“No one will suspect you’re coming,” Zhigunov said, waving off the objection.

“But Admiral,” Kovalov said, “Belgorod, with Losharik docked, is gigantic. We could get stuck in a thousand places under polar ice.”

“It’s summertime,” Zhigunov said, as if that solved the problem. “The ice won’t be a problem. And if it is, Losharik can undock until you can free yourself from whatever pressure ridge is troubling you, then re-dock on the other side of the obstacle. In the worst case, you can always fire a torpedo to clear the path. I know,” Zhigunov said, anticipating yet another objection. “That would be loud. But again, no one is following you. And even if they are, they will believe the detonation of your torpedo to be part of an exercise.”

Alexeyev glanced quickly at Kovalov, who was biting his lip as if trying to contain a further outburst.

“Sir, this route will take forever.” Alexeyev looked at Zhigunov, but knew this issue would be ignored as the previous ones had.

“We’re in no particular hurry, gentlemen,” Zhigunov said.

“If I may be so bold to ask,” Kovalov said, “whose idea was it to go this route?”

Zhigunov hesitated, but finally shook out another cigarette and lit it. “Our orders come directly from President Vostov himself.”

So, there could be no further argument, Alexeyev thought.

“Any other questions?” Zhigunov asked. “Any other thoughts about your orders?”

“Not from me,” Alexeyev said.

“Sergei?”

“None from me, Admiral,” Kovalov said slowly. Alexeyev could tell his friend was furious.

“Normally I’d invite you both to dinner, but I’ve been called to Moscow to go over our plans with the president,” Zhigunov said, standing and picking up his pad computer, then stubbing out his cigarette.

The meeting, obviously, was over, Alexeyev thought, standing and shaking Zhigunov’s hand. The admiral shook Kovalov’s hand and made a hasty exit from the room after turning off the display screen.

“Georgy,” Kovalov began. Alexeyev waved him off.

“Not here. Not now.”

“Lamb’s Valhalla then,” Kovalov said. Alexeyev nodded, then reached for his officers’ cap and coat.

Alexeyev and Kovalov smoked in silence in the Northern Fleet staff car, then climbed out at the club, instructing the driver to wait for them.

Once comfortable in their booth, the customary toast to fallen comrades complete, Kovalov looked at Alexeyev and said, “Even before we talk about this madness, I have to ask you, Georgy. There’s something wrong, perhaps even more troubling than these orders. Someone’s walked on your grave, yes? There’s something you’re not telling me. What is it?”

Alexeyev looked at Kovalov and nodded solemnly. “Something happened this morning, but I’m not sure I have the courage to tell you about it.”

“Courage? You? You were awarded the Medal for Military Valor First Class for the South Atlantic run.”

Alexeyev scoffed. “That award is for those who are victorious, not those who lose their ships in battle. To this day, I still don’t know the motivations of the admirals for giving me that.”

“Perhaps to communicate into your thick one-eyed skull that you are a courageous hero, not the failure you think you are. So what if your sub went down? If you’d had two more torpedoes, you would have prevailed.”

“Maybe I wasted two torpedoes early in the fight,” he said.

“In countermeasure mode? Surely, had you not fired them, you would have gone down sooner. Georgy, what can I say to break your mood? This is a dangerous line of thinking.”

“Wait until you hear what I’m about to tell you,” Alexeyev said, draining his scotch and pouring more. Over the next few minutes, he told the tale of seeing Matveev in his apartment when he woke and the smell of her cigarettes. He tried to keep his voice level and even, but he could hear his voice trembling and his hands had started to shake, and by the end of the story he had that same shortness of breath he’d felt when Natalia came in. He concentrated on breathing deeply, trying to disguise his emotions by taking a deep pull of the scotch and refilling his glass, but his hand trembled and some of the liquid spilled on the table. Kovalov pretended not to notice.

The two men were silent for a long moment, Kovalov pouring out the remains of the bottle, then calling for the server to bring them a fresh one, two packs of his favorite cigarettes, and a new lighter. When she returned, Kovalov handed one pack and the lighter to Alexeyev. “Your bad habit is back, my friend. You’d best lay in a few cases of cigarettes before departure.” He hadn’t yet commented about the ghost from this morning.

“Sergei, do you think I’m crazy?”

Kovalov shook his head. “Crazy men have no self-doubts. The crazy ones are those who never question their own sanity. But let me tell you something, Georgy. My grandmother used to say, never trust the first half hour after waking or the last half hour before sleeping, for that is the witching hour, when uninvited spirits and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night appear. Most likely, you were having a dream that just seemed too real, and Matveev’s mysterious warning about ‘distance’ could mean anything.”

“Sergei, I would see things your way, but what about Natalia smelling the cigarette?”

Kovalov looked at him and shrugged. “Odds are, Natalia smelled the smoke on your clothes from one of your crew from your workday on the ship, and her emotions about not wanting you to smoke made that smell worse than it would smell to us.”

Alexeyev narrowed his good eye at Kovalov. “Yes,” he eventually said slowly, “I’m sure you are correct, Sergei,” the doubt apparent in his speech. He’d not been around anyone who’d smoked the previous day.

As if trying to close the discussion about the dead engineer, Kovalov raised his glass. “A toast to Captain Third Rank Alesya Matveev, that wherever she is, it is warm and safe and beautiful.”

Alexeyev raised his glass, shut his eyes, blinking back moisture, and drank.

5

He woke with a headache and a dry mouth. He sat up on the edge of the bed and forced himself to stand and walk to the ornate bedroom’s enormous bathroom. Usually he was up at least four times during the night to urinate. Advancing years, and doctors who were idiots, no doubt contributed to that problem. But last night had been somewhat uninterrupted. It was the dreams that woke him up this time, not his bladder.

After washing his hands and drying them on a fresh white towel, he stared at himself for a moment, preparing to shave before showering, running his fingers over his face. For a sixty-four-year-old face, it was almost youthful, but certainly not good-looking. But then, he had never been what anyone would call handsome. His hair had been a rat’s nest since he’d been a child, leading him to crop it all off since grade school. The short hair had helped, giving him a military air, which had gone a long way to helping his career, he thought. There was not much left of that military bearing now, nor the hair, for that matter. He’d added kilograms, most around his waist. He was told by people who sought his favor that he carried the weight well, that it made him resemble a bear, but in his own mind he was an older, overweight ghost of his former vigorous self.

He thought for a moment about the dreams. In the first, he was on a cross-continental train. His mother was in the window seat and she was old and sick, as she had been in her final year of life, some twenty years ago. He and his mother had stopped getting along after he had followed in his father’s footsteps. But in the dream, his mother leaned against him, seeming affectionate. Her eyes were shut. Her forehead was deeply lined. Feeling regret for their angry words of the past, he put his forehead against hers, and her skin was warm at first, but then rapidly and alarmingly cooled. He had blinked, wondering if she had passed, but before he could do anything, he was standing at a podium in the amphitheater of the Lubyanka, the gigantic emblem of the KGB behind him. It was a blue and red shield with a vertical sword behind a red star emblazoned with the gold hammer-and-sickle. He was again a low-ranking officer, there to give a presentation to the entire leadership of the KGB and representatives of the Central Committee, and he had lost his slides. The projectionist shrugged, not knowing where the slides were. He felt a stabbing anxiety, bile rising into his throat. He was lost without the slides, and he began to babble about what little he remembered of the subject of his speech until his old boss pulled him off the stage. Before the old man could say a word, the dream dissolved into the pre-dawn bedroom.

As he lathered up his face and grabbed his razor, the image of his wife standing behind him appeared in the mirror. He looked up at her and nodded a solemn greeting, wondering what mood she would pick to start the day. For two weeks, her mood had been either stormy or disturbingly quiet. He much preferred her anger. God alone knew what she was thinking when she descended into a cold silence.

“You’re up early,” she said, her tone neutral.

He turned to look at her, trying to remember the night before. As usual, when he’d had too much to drink, the memories of the hour before he retired seemed to vanish.

“Are you okay?” he asked, not knowing what else to say to her.

She frowned. “Dimmi, do you realize it has been three months since you hate-fucked me?”

He blinked. Larisa Vostov’s colorful expression for the rough sex she loved had always seemed shocking to him. A good Saturday night for her would involve him throwing her around the room, slapping her, choking her almost to the point of her losing consciousness, and finishing off with a simulated — but damned realistic — sexual assault. Afterward, she’d smile blissfully at him through her new bruises. She had always worn heavy makeup, but he had worried that one day he’d break her jaw or cheekbone, and the world would think he was abusing his wife.

And that was the thing about marriage, he thought. A man marries the woman who suits him when they marry, but what if the man changes? When he’d met Larisa ten years ago, he was full of anger and bitterness about his divorce and hatred for his first wife. On the advice of friends, he’d taken up martial arts and had tried to exorcise his demons on a heavy bag or in the cage, but it hadn’t helped. Then Larisa came, and what she wanted in bed exactly suited what he’d needed then. With her, back then, he’d been a raging animal, breaking furniture, ripping curtains, ruining the bed. Once, as Larisa showered after a particularly violent sex session, he’d found her bleeding in the shower. Panicked, he’d looked her over, but there were no visible wounds. And what had Larisa said? She’d smiled at him adoringly, her soft hand on his cheek, and said, Don’t worry, Dimmi, it’s just blood from my anus, and you know what they say, if there’s no blood, the orgasm wasn’t strong enough. She’d pulled him into the shower and kissed him, the blood wetting the shower floor, seeming not to stop until the water got cold.

A decade ago, he was the man for her and she was the woman for him. But today? The pressures of his advancing career took up more and more of his energy and time. And Father Time did his part, the lessening of testosterone and the physical changes of age had made him much less of a sexual beast. The rapprochement with his first wife and reconciliation with his older children had contributed to ease the former rage within his heart. Life had changed him, he thought. He was a kinder version of his former self.

Perhaps too kind, he thought. His political opponents had begun to point out what they considered weakness in his leadership. Their first bullet point was his so-called failure to retaliate against the American president when the U.S. Navy, in broad daylight, had stolen the Iranian submarine testing the new Russian fast reactor, then gone on to sink three of his frontline attack submarines in their escape with the test vessel. But there were damned good reasons for what he’d done — risking an escalated war with the Americans and NATO made no sense, not over an old Iranian sub with a reactor that was certainly revolutionary but nowhere near disclosing the deep secrets of the Russian Republic. And the three Russian subs lost, hell, one of them blew itself up from a design flaw, the second crew escaped, and the third had been taken down by, of all things, a Russian-designed torpedo, but with limited loss of life. He should attack the Americans for that? Plus, President Carlucci had made secret concessions to Russia that none of his opposition knew about, including a transfer of thirty billion Euro for the cost of the Russian submarines lost. So, while the Americans sank them, they paid for them, including the one they hadn’t directly destroyed. It had ended up being a better deal for Russia than they’d started with before the whole Iranian fiasco. However, perception was reality. Which was one of the reasons for the upcoming deployment of the Status-6 weapons. Once they were in place, no one would accuse Dmitri Vostov of weakness before the Americans.

But even if that political problem got solved, his present personal problem was starting to become a more pressing crisis. He remembered the divorce, when his first wife, Evelina, had broadcast lies about him in order to gain advantage in the court system, and to ease her rage over his affair with Anastasia Inessa, his former aide. If Larisa decided to go down the road that Evelina had, it would not end well for him. Larisa would certainly out him for all that rough sex, omitting that she’d instigated it and loved it. He considered his options. He was at a rank and station now that with a few words and hand gestures, he could make Larisa disappear. He smirked — if only he’d had that power ten years ago. Evelina would lie in a forlorn, cold grave where no one would ever find her. But he couldn’t do that to Larisa — Larisa was the mother of his six-year-old daughter Anya, and he would do nothing that would hurt Anya, no matter what. Of course, thinking like that is what gave women so much power in the combat theater of divorce, but so be it.

“Dimmi, what is it? Do you not find me attractive anymore? Don’t you love me anymore?” She sounded pathetic for just a moment. She looked at him plaintively with her big brown eyes, tears forming in them. Vostov put down his towel and looked at her, opening his mouth to reassure her, but her mood changed instantly, from insecurity to accusing. “You’re fucking someone else, that’s what it is, isn’t it? All your sexual energy, which you used to reserve exclusively for me, now you’re giving it to someone else. Who is it? Is it that whore Tonya?”

Here we go, Vostov thought. Tonya Pasternak was his chief of staff, and had an impressive but cold beauty. For the last five years, Tonya had offered herself to him, and for five years he’d kept her at a distance. But saying that out loud would not help here. After all, what woman accusing her husband of infidelity would drop the matter on the mere basis of the husband’s denial?

“Larisa, calm the fuck down,” he said, his voice commanding. “I’m not fucking anyone else!” He made the denial despite his earlier thought. Perhaps it was a husband’s reflex.

“Oh, calm down, is that it? You want me to calm down? Why don’t you make me, you pussy?” And with that she slapped his cheek hard, shaving cream flying and hitting the mirror.

There was something about that slap that ignited a hot fury in Vostov. He dropped his towel and grabbed Larisa’s wrists. “Shut up!” he roared at her.

“Make me!” she screamed at him. It made him even angrier, and to his surprise, he realized he had grown an erection unlike what he’d had for half a decade. He grabbed Larisa by the throat so hard he lifted her off her feet, threw her against the wall by the shower, the slightest awareness entering his mind of the small blood stain that appeared where Larisa’s head had been, but it seemed to feed his fury anew. He picked her up under his arm, carried her into the bedroom, tossed her on the bed, slapped her face hard, and ripped off her nightgown. Without conscious thought, he climbed on top of her and entered her as hard as he could, and she was soaking wet. He drilled into her hard, his thrusts violent and fast, his hand still on her throat, choking her hard, only releasing his grip when he saw her eyes roll up, then continued for what had to be a quarter hour. When he saw tears start to stream out of her eyes and fall down her temples onto the bedsheets, he finally finished hard inside her, his orgasm seeming to roll through his entire body for more than a minute.

He rolled off, covered in sweat, breathing like he’d just sprinted two miles. He could feel his wet body soaking the sheets. He chanced a look over at Larisa, and she was giving him a languid happy look, the smile spreading slowly over her face.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, “that was great. My big angry bear, you took me like the champion you are.” Slowly she shut her eyes, and within a minute, she was fast asleep, snoring softly, a half-smile of contentment on her face.

Vostov clamped his fist against his forehead for a moment, thinking that he hated himself when sex was like this. Perhaps that was an alternate meaning of the term, hate-fuck. It occurred to him that this was the last time he would have sex with her. He made the decision in that split second. This marriage was over. And there was no telling what Larisa would do when she realized he would be leaving her. The only thing to do was to go away on business, he thought. Suddenly.

He kissed her cheek, rolled off the bed, finished shaving, showered quickly, and donned his dark brown suit with the dark red tie. He grabbed his phone and left the suite as fast as he could. He unlocked his phone and sent a quick text while he hurried down the hall to Anya’s room and opened the door just as the first beams of sunshine streamed in. He’d tried to be quiet, but the six-year-old opened her eyes and sat up in bed in her pajamas with the pattern of the brave little girl cartoon character staring down a ferocious tiger. She smiled brightly at him.

“Daddy!”

He sat on her bed and hugged her, feeling a wetness rising in his eyes. What would Larisa do, he wondered. Keep little Anya from him as punishment for his filing for divorce? He released her and sat back to look at her, running his hands through her tousled brown hair.

“You’re going away, Daddy?”

He was, he thought, but he couldn’t tell Anya that, or she’d tell the news to Larisa.

“What makes you say that, little angel?”

“You’re wearing a brown suit, Daddy. You always wear one of your brown suits when you’re about to go.”

“Well, we’ll see,” he said. “Daddy’s schedule is very busy this week.”

“Can you take me to school today?”

“Sorry, little one. I have a car waiting for me. I have to get going. I just came to give you a good morning kiss.”

She wrapped her small arms around him again and kissed his cheek. He stroked her hair, trying mightily to keep his eyes dry. He sniffed and tried to smile at her.

“I’ll see you soon, baby,” he said.

“Tonight, Daddy?”

“We’ll see. It might be late, after your bedtime. Now listen to Mommy and be good for Daddy, yes?”

She smiled and nodded. He stood and waved at her and she waved back.

He hurried from her room and down the hallway to the elevator. As he left her room, he was joined by two of his SBP Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Presidential Security Service guards.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” the senior man said.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Vostov replied without thinking. He hit the speed dial for his chief of staff, Tonya Pasternak. She answered on the first ring.

“Good morning, sir,” she said alertly and formally.

“Tonya. Call off all the week’s meetings. The trip we’d discussed, to Murmansk? Make it happen. Now. I’m having my driver bring me to the airstrip. Pack for a week and send a detail to my suite to get a week’s worth of suits, plus clothes suitable for touring a factory and going into a submarine. Get the plane fueled, loaded, and staffed. We’re leaving immediately.”

Most aides, Vostov thought, would sputter and object to such a radical change in the schedule, especially with the itinerary the upcoming week held, but not Pasternak.

“I’m on it, sir. Who do you want to accompany us?”

Vostov thought for a minute as the elevator descended. “Get Sevastyan and his deputy, Ozols, and Mikhail and his deputy, Prokopiy.” General Gennadi Sevastyan was head of the FSB — the internal security organization and half of what had been the KGB before its breakup in the 90s — and Colonel General Advey Ozols was his second-in-command. “Mikhail” was the nickname they called Marshal Radoslav Konstantinov, the minister of defense. General Osip Prokopiy was his deputy.

“No one from SVR, sir?” The SVR was the other half of the former KGB, the group responsible for foreign intelligence and covert operations.

“Not for this trip, Tonya.”

“Understood, sir. I will see you at the jet.”

The presidential motorcade was perhaps the riskiest portion of the trip. Tonya Pasternak always fretted that the opposition party would attempt an assassination or kidnapping. Vostov had no such fears. His opponents had a small but key portion of the journalists in their pockets and some foreign support. They’d most likely come at him head-on, he thought, in the upcoming election. It would be more dangerous for him after he won another term, he thought.

The motorcade arrived at the secure base, recently constructed close to the Kremlin after the condemnation and demolition of a dozen western hotels, to the protests of the corporations involved. The sleek supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 waited at the end of the 3000-meter runway, its loud jets already at idle. The previous Russian president had used a Sukhoi Superjet 100, a twin-engine subsonic passenger jet upgrade, but Vostov had had a Tu-144 rebuilt from scratch, the magnificent Russian-designed supersonic transport brought to the market even before the Concorde. The TU-144s had all been warehoused in 1999, but Vostov had commissioned the construction of a new, improved version based on the original plans, with more powerful jets, the interior modified for presidential use. It was louder and less comfortable than the Superjet, but much faster. Vostov used it for travel internal to the country — overseas trips were for the Superjet, the latter more civilized, not breaking the windows of a host country’s buildings.

Vostov’s limo rolled to the access stairs to the forward hatch. He ducked inside and greeted the two Air Force pilots, moved back through the communication and tactical compartment, which was able to conduct a nuclear war remotely, to the more luxurious staff accommodations and the galley. At the end of the plane was the soundproofed and heavily secured outer and inner office Vostov used for meetings and for when he wanted to be alone, with a small desk, conference table seating six, a private bathroom and a small bunk with a reading light. Computer flatpanel displays lined the bulkheads, leaving only one small window on either side of the office.

Vostov was accustomed to boarding his plane before the staff. As he waited, he and Pasternak took seats at the conference table, with Pasternak opening a pad computer for her to present to Vostov the daily briefing. He could see out the window as an Air Force staff car disgorged the four-person tactical and communications team, who would take their positions in the first compartment, ready for any emergency involving wartime operations. He could see the disgusted look on the face of the commanding colonel as he emerged from the car. Obviously, the Air Force staff disliked the supersonic transport, much preferring the Superjet, which allowed twice the number of officers and more redundant comms equipment.

Pasternak was almost done giving the daily brief when a gleaming black limo arrived and two men emerged, both wearing suits, both hurrying up the stairway, then a second staff SUV pull up, with another two men egressing and going to the stairs. The second pair were also wearing suits, but seemed to move much slower — both were much older.

The phone on the table trilled and Pasternak answered it. She said, “very well, send them back. You have permission to depart,” and hung up. “Everyone’s on board, sir.”

“Anything else in the briefing?” Vostov asked.

“Two things, sir,” Pasternak said, flashing up a satellite photo taken of a drydock with a submarine in it, the sub surrounded by scaffolding. “The GRU military intelligence people reported that a key U.S. Navy project submarine, the USS Vermont, has been destroyed in its drydock by a raging fire, injuring two crewmembers. If you’ll remember, sir, the Vermont was the American submarine involved in stealing the Iranian sub with our test reactor earlier in the summer.”

“Good,” Vostov said, a tone of bitterness in his voice. “It was too bad their crew all survived. What was the second thing?”

“The GRU reports that they’ve picked up intelligence that American frogmen have placed nuclear mines in our major ports. They claim that the mines are two megaton hydrogen bombs. At least two dozen of them.”

“Yeah, right,” Vostov said, shaking his head. “Remind me to order Mikhail to find one of these and dredge it up as proof. This all has the ring of pipelined disinformation to me. Something to make us afraid, not something real.”

Vostov looked up as a knock came at the door and four men entered the room, the first the defense minister, Marshal Radoslav Mikhail Konstantinov, the elder statesman of the military. He walked in slowly, with a quiet dignity. The man had to be in his late seventies, Vostov thought, his full head of hair completely gray, his face ruddy. Mikhail’s hand shook with palsy as he reached to shake hands with Vostov, who stood to greet him. Rumor had it that Mikhail had Parkinson’s disease, and that his treatments were starting to fail. Pasternak had wondered aloud about Vostov appointing a replacement for him, and they’d both toyed with the idea of Mikhail nominating his own successor, but the rising opposition to Vostov’s governance made them both cautious, and they’d postponed the decision.

“Good morning, Mikhail,” Vostov said, his voice deep and gravelly. “Sorry to roust you out so suddenly for this trip.”

Konstantinov just smiled, his face lighting up when he smiled, his eyes shrinking to horizontal slits. “I’m glad to be with you on this trip, Mr. President. I was going to suggest we move this up in the schedule anyway, since the mission is vital.”

The room grew louder as the aircraft’s jets spooled up to full power. Vostov waved the men to their seats. Outside the windows, the runway and the Moscow surroundings blurred by, the plane shaking with vibrations as the aircraft sped up on the runway, but in a few seconds the cabin inclined upward and the vibrations disappeared, the groan of the landing gear retracting loud for a moment. When the cabin quieted, the deck seemed to get steeper for a few minutes with the engine noise easing somewhat as the plane flew over Moscow’s center city and then over the outskirts, the jet throttling back up as it flew over Moscow Ring Road.

Vostov looked over at Mikhail’s deputy, short and barrel-chested General Osip Prokopiy. Vostov had never approved of Prokopiy. He insisted on keeping his hair too long, a thick beard gracing his face, obscuring the knot of his necktie. He was an Orthodox Christian and insisted the beard and hairstyle were part of his religious practice. He was a quiet man, diffident and reserved, but — according to Mikhail — the smartest mind in the ministry. Vostov had his doubts, but he’d pay attention to what Prokopiy had to say on this voyage.

Vostov nodded over at the pair from FSB, Gennadi Sevastyan and Avdey Ozols. When the Soviet Union fell, the magnificent and successful KGB, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti or Committee for State Security, was split in two. The mostly domestic functions of watching the population, tracking diplomats and foreign spies on Russian soil, and interior counterintelligence became those of the FSB, the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti or Federal Security Service. The foreign mission of spying abroad and black operations, formerly those of KGB’s First Chief Directorate, became the tasks of the SVR, Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii, or the Foreign Intelligence Service.

Tonya Pasternak had once proposed the idea of reuniting the SVR and FSB back into a combined organization and giving it the traditional name of the KGB, but Vostov opposed the idea. That would concentrate entirely too much power in one organization. Many of the old Soviet bosses after Stalin had risen to prominence in the KGB, to the point that it could be inferred that the intelligence community ran the country. Despite Vostov being a former KGB officer in the decade before its split into the SVR and FSB, he deeply distrusted a reunited and integrated KGB. He’d prefer to deal with internal security separately from foreign operations. From a pragmatic aspect, each organization was jealous of the other and routinely devoted resources to spying on their opposite numbers, which could keep a coup from happening. And in the abstract, Vostov was convinced that an integrated KGB would be bad for the country and would be unpopular with the citizens, and anything unpopular with them could cause him to lose an election.

The Chairman of the FSB, General Gennadi Sevastyan, was tall and slender, with a handsome open face graced with bushy eyebrows and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. His age was indeterminate, either late forties or mid-fifties. In working with Sevastyan over the past decade, Vostov had grown to trust the man, inviting him to the presidential offices for after-work drinks of the vodka that only politicians and diplomats could obtain. Sevastyan was a family man, like Vostov, with two children in grade school, with a pretty and friendly wife. His hobbies were rowing, his dacha on a river where he would row a one-man scull for hours while dictating memoranda on a waterproof recorder, his deputy the recipient of all of Sevastyan’s memos and random thoughts.

“Gennadi,” Vostov said, smiling at Sevastyan. “Good to have you with us.”

Sevastyan smiled and nodded. “We almost lost Avdey from this trip. I caught him just as he was climbing into a plane.”

“Oh?” Vostov looked at the FSB Deputy Chairman, Colonel General Avdey Ozols. Ozols was much older than Sevastyan by at least a decade, a trim man of medium height who had a rigid posture and a military bearing. He was a storied FSB operative, having been involved in the hostage rescue from the Chechen takeover of the Moscow Dubrovka Theater in 2002, when 850 hostages were taken. Most were rescued, with the forty terrorists killed, and despite the loss of 131 hostages during the counter-assault, Ozols had been credited with the public relations win. Ozols had gone on to half a dozen more high-profile successes, and was considered a viable successor to Sevastyan. As head of the presidential security detail in addition to his normal duties, he was a man Vostov trusted as deeply as Sevastyan. If only, Vostov thought, his trust for their opposite numbers in the SVR were as deep.

“I was headed to a trouble spot, but as it turned out,” Ozols said, “my people took care of things before the door could shut on the plane.”

“Well, I’m glad we got you here in any case,” Vostov said. “So, Tonya, can you go over what our itinerary is for this trip one more time?”

For the next ninety minutes, Pasternak briefed the five men, the room’s displays lit up with her presentation on the Status-6 torpedoes, the Belgorod and the Losharik. Early in her briefing, the Mach number indicator showed the Tu-144 reaching Mach 1.95. As she wrapped up, the plane slowed and the cabin tilted downward as the jet made its approach to Murmansk Airport. A few minutes later, the jet touched down and taxied to the military terminal. The FSB and defense officials stood. Vostov waved to Pasternak to stay.

“Gentlemen, go ahead. We will meet you at the Sevmash Shipyard. I have something to go over with my chief of staff.”

Once the engines were shut down, the jet became ghostly quiet and the air inside cooled.

“You wanted to talk to me, sir?” Pasternak prompted.

“Yes, Tonya. Something serious is happening in my personal life.”

“It’s Larisa, isn’t it?”

Vostov knew Pasternak had never liked Larisa, thinking her entitled and immature. Her dislike might have been fueled by her thinly disguised desire to have a more personal relationship with Vostov.

Vostov looked at his chief aide. She was tall, only a few centimeters shorter than he, slender, with long legs, a thin waist, and large breasts. She had long gleaming raven-black hair, puffy red lips in a model’s face with high cheekbones and large almond-shaped dark eyes. She dressed professionally, but her beauty shone through any outfit she’d wear that attempted to mute her femme-fatale appearance. Her voice was deep for a woman, which helped in this mostly all-male group of officials, giving her a more authoritative air.

Vostov pursed his lips. “It’s Larisa. The marriage is over. But you know Larisa. She’s volatile and has a volcanic temper. Divorce proceedings will be a disaster. This could destroy my candidacy and the campaign.”

Pasternak nodded solemnly. “Can your divorce wait until after the election?”

Vostov shook his head. “Larisa can see right through me that I’m done with her. I had to have a — well — emphatic ‘session’ with her this morning just to hold her off for a week. But she knows. What she’ll trumpet to the press will be devastating. And if I know Larisa, she’ll take off with little Anya and it could be a long time before I see my daughter again. It’s like my first divorce, but with what Larisa will paint as misconduct on my part. She’ll say I’m abusive.”

Pasternak blew out her lips. “She’s the one who’s addicted to rough and violent sex, not you.” She paused. “Sir, you should let me take care of this. I’ve gone through contingency plans for this with Ozols.”

Vostov raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t want to know, sir. You’ll need deniability. But there will be, let’s say, an incident. Larisa will no longer be a problem.”

“Tonya, nothing can happen to Anya. I don’t want her embroiled in any, let’s call it a ‘scenario.’ I don’t want her in any kind of harm’s way. I don’t want her to see anything that will scar her for life.”

“Leave it in my hands, sir. Just do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Promise me you’ll stay with the staff in Murmansk for at least a week. If we wrap up these tours of the factory and submarines too early, that will cause complications. Try to linger here. Perhaps tour other military facilities in the region.”

“A week?”

“A week, sir. If possible, it will happen sooner. But no later than a week. By the time we fly back, things will be well in hand. And I promise the result will paint you in a sympathetic light. And Anya will be fine. Well, as fine as she can be with her mother, you know.” Her voice trailed off.

Vostov nodded. “Let’s get to the motorcade. I don’t want to keep the boys waiting.”

6

President Dmitri Vostov felt self-conscious for the first time in five years, but that probably made sense, as he was walking through a world as foreign to him as the surface of the Moon, clad in ridiculous-looking avocado green coveralls, which were a half size too small for him, his girth stretching the fabric at his stomach.

He was in a group with the ship’s commanding officer, a hard-looking tough man with black hair streaked with gray and an eye patch over his right eye, giving him the air of a eighteenth century pirate. With them was the Sevmash Shipyard’s head of the engineering and design directorate, a slender and slight man in blue coveralls who had been introduced as Anatoly Voronin. The Defense Minister had decided to skip the tour, but his deputy, Prokopiy, was with them, as was the FSB deputy, Avdey Ozols. There was no sign of Pasternak, who had asked to do some work in the ship’s crew’s messroom.

They stood in what Captain Alexeyev had described as the first compartment, or the torpedo room. It was dimly lit, despite dozens of overhead LED lamps, which seemed only to cast shadows from all the space’s tightly packed weapons on a triple-deck rack, with piping and cables and valves and junction boxes occupying seemingly every cubic centimeter of the volume of the room.

Alexeyev walked Vostov forward — although by this time, Vostov had lost all sense of direction — to the forward bulkhead of the room. To the left was a wall with an opened door, and inside, the space was jammed with control panels with glowing buttons and blinking lights, one cabinet door opened to reveal a rat’s nest of wires and computer cards. To the right of this tight room were the torpedo tube doors. The tube’s doors were wide enough to allow a man skinnier than Vostov to squeeze in.

Perhaps sensing Vostov was partly overwhelmed and partly bored, his guide, Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev, asked if Vostov were in the mood for the mid-day meal. Normally, on a tour of this kind, Vostov would look at his watch and beg off, citing schedule pressure, but Pasternak’s words about extending the trip still rang in his ears. He smiled with what he hoped looked like genuine happiness and told Alexeyev that he was, indeed, famished. The smell of the meal cooking had been wafting through the entire ship, and if Vostov were honest with himself, it had been making him hungry ever since he’d stepped through the access hatch in the conning tower and descended the steep stairs to the submarine’s central command post.

Alexeyev’s tour of the central command post revealed a bafflingly complex space, looking like what a fighter jet cockpit would look like if it were expanded to the size of a house. Consoles, displays, lights, buttons, valves, switches, cables and panels everywhere. How any sane man could stay in this horrible, incomprehensible environment was beyond Vostov. No doubt, his nation owed these seafaring heroes a deep debt of gratitude.

That made him think about what Pasternak had read to him from Alexeyev’s file, about the mission of the ill-fated Kazan and the battle the ship had had with that Iranian submarine. Usually Vostov could read people like a book, but Alexeyev was a mystery to him. Vostov couldn’t tell whether mentioning the Kazan sinking would be negative or positive. As for negative, obviously, his ship sank. But for the positive — Captain Alexeyev and his crew had fought against impossible odds, fighting both that damned Virginia-class American sub, the Vermont, and the stolen Iranian. In what had to be some sort of freak accident, the boarding party of Americans on the Iranian sub had somehow figured out how to deploy a Russian supercavitating torpedo at the Kazan, and taken it down in seconds. Kazan had battled bravely, and most of the crew had lived to tell the tale, reality again becoming freakish when the very Americans who sank them came to their rescue.

But if Alexeyev were embarrassed about the incident, he gave nothing away. It was as if the Kazan incident had never happened. He toured Vostov through the spaces of his gigantic submarine Belgorod as if the president were a freshly minted officer from the Marshal Grechko School of Underwater Navigation. The other sub skipper, Sergei Kovalov, was nowhere near as steely-eyed as Alexeyev. Kovalov’s tour of his boat, the Losharik, earlier that day, had been short and intense, and all through it, Vostov could sense Kovalov’s extreme discomfort at having a VIP to take aboard that tiny sub. Quite a contrast between Losharik and Belgorod, Vostov thought. Losharik was an overgrown mini-sub, with seven small titanium spheres contained inside the outer hull, each capable of withstanding her 2500 meter dive depth, and of the seven, the rear four were all propulsion plant, ship controls, electronics, and atmospheric controls. The forward sphere could accommodate perhaps five crewmen in the control space. The two spheres farther aft were for hotel spaces, firefighting equipment, and spare parts. Touring Losharik was like going into a space capsule, Vostov thought. That tour had only taken an hour, since there was so little to see. Then the entourage had come to Belgorod. And the super-sub, though cramped inside, was absolutely vast compared to the mini-sub.

Alexeyev led them through the galley to the officers’ mess, where Vostov spent twenty minutes shaking hands and chatting with the officers. It was a bit strange to Vostov, since Alexeyev’s second-in-command and three department heads were women. The younger officers, who reported to the department heads, were mostly men, but they seemed so young. Perhaps that was just Vostov’s impression from his getting older, but still, they all seemed like pimple-faced teenagers.

Alexeyev motioned them to seats at the large officers’ messroom table, with him at the end seat. Vostov sat immediately to his right, apparently the seat-of-honor, with the other dignitaries at Alexeyev’s end of the table, the more junior officers on the other end. The mess attendants served tea first, then what they called Kamchatka crab salad, which was amazing. The main course came out soon, a grilled zucchini with shrimp and sea scallops with broccoli, a side of poussin with vegetables. Despite his vow to eat little, Vostov found himself digging in, the food excellent. He was engrossed in conversation with Alexeyev, Voronin and Prokopiy, who were talking about how the Losharik could be docked to the underbelly of the Belgorod and how they would link up in the Barents Sea, and how Losharik would carry two of the Status-6 torpedoes if it had to. Alexeyev’s officers were quiet but listening intently. Evidently, not many mission details had been discussed at their level.

“Have you seen the Status-6 factory floor yet, Mr. President?” Alexeyev said as he waved off the main course’s dishes.

Vostov shook his head. “We revised the schedule to move that to later today if there’s time. We’ll need an hour or two to do some routine things. I have a teleconference with the Council of Ministers. I thought I’d take it in Mr. Voronin’s offices at the shipyard.”

Alexeyev nodded. “The Status-6 is quite a weapon,” he said, his voice neutral.

“Some people consider it destabilizing, that it could lead to war. Perhaps even nuclear war.” Vostov said. He looked at Alexeyev. “Do you agree with that, Captain?”

Alexeyev came as close to a smile as he had all day. “Sir, that’s not for me to say. This is, after all, a combat submarine, not a think tank. We don’t make policy, we simply execute it.”

“Well said, Captain,” Vostov said, smiling at Alexeyev.

The mess attendants brought in dessert, a berry and cream concoction over vanilla ice cream. Despite his watering mouth, Vostov waved off the dessert, wiping his mouth with a linen napkin.

“Mr. President,” Alexeyev said, “we have a 2015 Chardonnay and a 2015 Western Slope Merlot.” He winked at his officers. “We usually don’t get a treat like that, whether in-port or at-sea, sir. Shall we pour some?”

Vostov considered and nodded. “How can I say no to that, Captain? As for me, the white wine, but just half a glass.”

Once the meal was done, Vostov looked over at Captain Alexeyev. “Captain, why don’t you and I go to your room — your sea cabin? — and talk for a moment, privately. I would ask my chief of staff to come with us, and naturally one of the SBP detail will come, but obviously won’t listen or contribute.”

“My pleasure, Mr. President. Please follow me.” Alexeyev left the large officers’ messroom through the forward door, down a wide passageway with walls laminated with a light birchwood pattern. At the end of the passageway were two doors, one with a small window at eye level, its glass red. Alexeyev opened the other door and motioned in the president, Tonya Pasternak, and the suit-clad SBP guard. Alexeyev sat at the end seat of the large conference table, which adjoined his large wooden desk, the table and the desk forming a “T” shape. Vostov took a seat next to him in a seat facing the door they’d entered, with Pasternak seated opposite him. The SBP man stood in the corner near the door.

The stateroom was large, the bulkheads lined with large flatpanel displays, the conference table and desk dominating the room otherwise. The captain’s bed was tucked against the long wall of the room in an alcove. At the end of the bed was a large storage closet and next to that, the wall of the captain’s head. At the aft end, where Alexeyev’s end seat was, a door led aft, labeled “FOSR,” which Alexeyev explained meant “first officer’s stateroom.”

“So, Captain,” Vostov opened, “I assume you have questions about this upcoming operation. I figured you might want to air them out now, but away from your men.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. My first question is, why are we doing this? Parking ten megaton hydrogen bombs in American ports? Understood, they are military ports, but still. This seems extremely aggressive.”

“Yes. I understand that point of view,” Vostov said. “Do you think you could call for some more of that white wine? That was pretty good.”

Alexeyev reached under the table for a phone handset, pressed a button on it, and muttered a few words into it. Not a full minute from the call, the mess steward knocked and came in with a tray with the wine bottle in an ice bucket and three glasses. Pasternak waved off a glass. The steward poured for Vostov and Alexeyev, replaced the wine bottle and disappeared out the forward door.

“The defense minister would tend to agree with you, Captain,” Vostov said. “In his words, we’re launching three ICBMs, just missiles that travel at ten knots, not two thousand. My head of the SVR feels the same way, and even the top ranks of the Navy itself have objected to this idea. But I simply don’t see it that way. These weapons are sleepers. They’ll just sit on the bay bottom, inert. They won’t even be in communication with antennae, so they can’t be activated by remote.”

“What? I’m confused,” Alexeyev said. “What good is a loitering weapon if it can’t be awakened in a, well, let’s call it a ‘tactical situation’?”

“It’s not the same thing as an ICBM at all, you see. It’s just a deep contingency. Back during the Cold War, the Spetsnaz GRU used to construct weapons caches and survival bunkers on enemy soil, for use, well, just in case. This is somewhat similar. If a world war were to break out against NATO and the Americans, we’d send diver commandos to activate the weapons. For that reason, it’s important that you report back the exact location of these Status-6 units. They must be placed with precision and their positions noted with extreme accuracy, which is why your ship and Losharik are deploying them manually rather than simply firing them from the North Atlantic and letting them find their own way. I’m told their onboard navigation systems can lack accuracy. It would do no good for a ten megaton sleeper weapon to get confused and be lost to us. Or even worse, broach somewhere on a sandbar and be recovered by the Americans.”

“If you say so, Mr. President. Let’s leave the purpose of the Status-6 placement aside for a moment. Why the polar transit? And the months-long passage under the ice, through the Bering Strait around South America to get to the U.S. Atlantic coast? We could make that voyage from here at a patrol quiet speed of ten knots in a little over three weeks. The polar path will be much slower, due to the ice, and will take at least three-and-a-half months.”

Vostov nodded. “This boat is old. Laid down in, what, 1993? It has only been modernized to be able to dock with the Losharik and carry Status-6 weapons. It’s still as loud as a third-generation attack sub. If you transit past the U.K., Greenland, and Iceland, the sonar trip wire of NATO will pick you up. And odds are, there’s an American or British attack submarine loitering off Severodvinsk waiting for you and Losharik to leave port, and they’d follow you all the way to your destination. If they see you headed north to the pole, they will assume you are simply conducting an exercise. Even if they follow you northward, it’s not guaranteed they’d keep up with you. And say they do. You are loaded out for a four-month journey — you have food in almost every compartment and space — and any following enemy sub could never stay out that long without resupply, which means they’d have to surface. By then, you’d be long gone.”

Alexeyev frowned. “Sir, the icecap, even in the summer, is treacherous. Deep pressure ridges close off what would seem a viable path. We might have to back up, retrace our path, and take another route. Our average speed might be near zero. It could take a month or even two just to clear the icecap. A smaller submarine could get by, but Belgorod, sir, this vessel is huge, and even bigger with Losharik docked.”

“If it gets to be a problem, Captain, perhaps undock the Losharik and keep trying. It’s been done before, with the first Omega submarine, the Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad surfaced at the North Pole.”

“Sir, Kaliningrad didn’t make it back from that mission.”

“I know, Captain Alexeyev, but neither did the American sub hunting her.”

“Understood, sir. How urgent is the delivery of these weapons?”

“We’re in no hurry, Captain. If you can get them there by Christmas, it will be a nice present all around.”

Alexeyev nodded and poured more wine for the president, then more for himself.

“One thing, though, Captain,” Vostov said.

“What’s that, Mr. President?”

Vostov sighed. “Evidently the Poseidon torpedoes are not quite ready. Engineer Voronin has requested another week to prepare them. Between you and me, I think it will take longer. I believe our comrades at Sevmash have over-promised on these weapons. But let us think in a positive frame of mind, yes?”

Vostov drained his wine and stood. “Perhaps we could return to your officers’ messroom? I enjoy spending time with the troops. Maybe you could bring in some of the non-commissioned officers as well. We could have a sort of miniature town hall meeting.”

“Absolutely, sir.” Alexeyev grabbed the phone handset from under the table again and spoke into it, then motioned the entourage out of his stateroom.

Ten minutes later, Vostov was answering a question asked by a mechanical petty officer when the door to the room was suddenly smashed open by the chief of the SBP security detail, who waved a hand signal to his troops. Up until that moment, four of the SBP guards had been posted in the officers’ messroom, standing calmly and almost invisibly in the corners, but then suddenly sprang into action and forcibly grabbed Vostov under his arms and dragged him out of the room and down the passageway. Vostov could barely feel his feet touching the deck plates as he was rushed to the central command post and forward to the ladderway to the access hatch. His heart was pounding in his throat. He had the slightest impression of the officers in the room staring at him with their eyes bulging out.

Outside the hatch, six more SBP agents waited, hustling Vostov into an idling utility truck, the other men of the entourage climbing into the trucks ahead of his and behind it. The convoy of trucks roared off down the long and wide concrete jetty, turning hard at the road at the end, speeding up to what had to be 120 kilometers per hour as they made a short trip to a huge military helicopter. Vostov looked at the SBP agents on either side of him in the back seat.

“What the hell is going on?”

“You’ll be informed soon, sir,” one said. “Let’s just concentrate on getting you to your jet.”

“Where’s Pasternak? And Konstantinov? And Sevastyan?”

“They’re being rushed to your aircraft, sir. But that’s all I know.”

The truck screeched to a halt at the helicopter, the rotors already beating loudly, the dust underneath the huge machine blowing in the wind it generated. Vostov climbed the steps to the chopper and was strapped in. He was handed a helmet with an intercom on it.

“Who’s the senior man aboard?” he asked, trying to make his voice hard and demanding.

A man in olive drab coveralls up front, with the emblems of an Air Force lieutenant colonel raised his hand. “I am, sir,” he said, his voice in Vostov’s helmet’s earphones.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“We don’t know, sir. We got the orders from General Sevastyan just moments ago. It must be serious. All we know is this is not an exercise.”

Vostov sat back in his seat, waiting impatiently. Eventually the chopper descended and settled at the airstrip near the Tu-144. The SBP agents rushed him into the plane. He was barely inside when the hatch shut and the jet’s engines roared, the jet at full power on the runway before he could make his way into the back inner office.

He strapped himself into his chair at the desk and looked up at Pasternak. At the table’s chairs were the same officials he’d arrived with. As the deck inclined for takeoff, he glared at Defense Minister Konstantinov and FSB Chairman Sevastyan. “One of you people care to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Mr. President,” Sevastyan said, “we have a live feed from the GUM shopping mall.” Pasternak helped the FSB chairman project his pad computer on the large flatpanels on the forward bulkhead.

The view showed the plate glass windows fronting the Brunello Cucinelli shop, but the inside was obscured by smoke. A crowd of tactically-outfitted SBP agents and police were crowded in front of the store.

“Maybe the news,” Pasternak said, switching on a flatpanel display to the RT Moscow local affiliate. The announcer was a woman standing somewhere in front of the black-clad police.

“Turn it up,” Vostov said.

The announcer seemed to stumble through her words, seeming shaken by what was happening.

“…in front of the Brunello Cucinelli boutique, where we believe sixteen shoppers and four staff are being held hostage inside by elements of the United Islamic Front of God, who are — who are, apparently, terrorists. We have preliminary word that among the hostages is Larisa Vostov, the wife of the president. The UIF have communicated to the commander of the hostage rescue team that their demands are the release of six prisoners held in Tomsk Prison, each of them in maximum security, serving sentences for murder and terrorism. They have stated that they require an escort from the mall and a helicopter to a private jet, plus ten million Euro, failing which they will execute a hostage every hour until their demands are met.”

“Mute it,” Vostov barked. “Is Anya okay?”

The FSB deputy, Ozols, was speaking on a phone, one hand covering his ear. He looked up at Vostov. “Anya is safe, Mr. President. She’s under SBP guard. She was removed from her school and is arriving at your north dacha now, sir. We have agents inside and outside with roadblocks set up on all roads in the vicinity, and the anti-aircraft units are stationed and ready. Any move against Anya will be met with deadly force.”

Vostov breathed a sigh of relief.

“Mr. President, you have to make the decision,” Deputy FSB Chairman Ozols said, looking at him expectantly.

Vostov looked at Ozols. “What decision?”

“Do we promise to release the prisoners and get the chopper, money and plane? Or do we storm the store and try to rescue the hostages?”

“Everyone leave this office except for Pasternak,” Vostov ordered.

The staff bolted to their feet and hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind them.

“Can I get you a bottle of water, sir? You look white as a ghost.”

“Tonya, what is this? Is this related to what we spoke about before?”

Pasternak didn’t say anything, but just gave him a solemn half nod.

“So, how do the options break down?”

She took a deep breath. “We have to consider the right thing to do given the political situation and our opposition. If we accommodate the terrorists, we look weak to our constituents and the opposition. And to the world.”

“But if I give the order to rush those criminals, it could result in all twenty of the hostages being killed,” Vostov said.

“Correct, sir.”

“I want the ages of every one of the hostages,” Vostov said. “I want to know if children are inside.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Pasternak hurried forward to consult with the FSB officers. While he waited, Vostov unmuted the news channel. There was not much new coming from RT. They were approaching the time when the first hostage would be executed, failing word on the prisoner release, the money, the helicopter and the private jet. Pasternak hurried back in, brushing her hair out of her face.

“Sir, of the sixteen people who aren’t staff, fifteen of them are women between the ages of twenty-one and forty-seven. There is one male, a nineteen-year-old who is the son of the older woman. FSB thinks he will be the first hostage to be executed.”

Vostov leaned back for a moment. “Call for the flight attendant to bring back a bottle of vodka and glasses. Get Sevastyan and Ozols back here. Then put me in touch with the man in tactical command at the scene.”

It took a moment for Pasternak to set up the call. The FSB chairman and his deputy stepped back in and took seats at the conference table. Vostov stood from his desk and joined them at the table.

“The tactical commander is on the speaker phone, sir,” Pasternak said.

“This is the president,” Vostov said to the speaker on the center of the table. “Who am I speaking with?”

“Sir, this Colonel Vanya Nika, GRU, assigned on duty to FSB.”

The hostess arrived with the vodka and half a dozen glasses. Vostov motioned for her to pour four glasses. He grabbed one and downed it in one go. Pasternak refilled his glass.

“Colonel, what’s your assessment of the scene? What are the chances you can get these hostages out? With minimal loss of innocent lives?”

“Sir, we have a good tactical plan,” Nika said, his voice clipped and tough sounding. “We’ll breach the ventilation system and deploy concentrated carfentanil gas. It’s similar to the one we used in the Moscow Theater attack, but improved. It might cause one or two deaths of the twenty, but we believe within a minute, the terrorists will be unconscious. Then we’ll use explosives on the plate glass and go in with a full platoon. We’ll put a bullet in the heads of every terrorist. It will be over in five minutes. But sir?”

“Yes, Colonel?”

“Sir, I can’t guarantee we won’t have casualties or collateral damage. Mr. President, I can’t guarantee your wife’s safety.”

“Colonel, give me two minutes. Stay on the line. I will mute my end.”

Pasternak clicked the mute button and looked over at him.

“Well, Gennadi, what do you think?” Vostov asked.

“Sir, I say we go in,” the FSB chairman said.

“And you, Avdey?”

The FSB deputy glanced at the vodka glass in front of him, then at Vostov. “I agree with General Sevastyan, sir. We can’t give in to these people or else this will happen a dozen more times.”

“We could promise to release the prisoners they want, or even release them,” Vostov suggested. “That would buy time.”

“Time is our enemy, Mr. President. The longer we wait, the more hostages they will execute. Perhaps one of them, your wife,” Ozols said.

“No,” Sevastyan said. “They’d save Larisa for last. She’s their biggest bargaining chip.”

“That assumes they know one of the women they hold is Larisa Vostov,” Pasternak said.

“Of course they know,” Sevastyan replied. “That’s why they targeted this shop. And even if they didn’t know, they know now.” Sevastyan pointed to the RT news screen.

“Where the hell is her SBP detail?” Vostov asked sharply.

Sevastyan looked down at the table. “She’s shaken off her detail twice before, Mr. President, intentionally. She doesn’t like being followed around by men in suits holding guns. I sincerely apologize for the failure of my men on this, sir.”

Vostov waved his apology away. “Recriminations are for later, people. Let’s just get through this and do the right thing. The right thing, not just for me, but for Russia. So I’ll ask again, do we storm the store or buy time? Sevastyan?”

“Breach the store, sir. It’s our best option.”

“Ozols? What do you say?”

“Rush the store, sir.”

“Tonya?”

“I agree with the chairman and deputy, sir. Rush the store.”

Vostov downed the second vodka and unmuted the speaker phone.

“Colonel? You there?”

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Nika’s voice said from the speaker.

“Colonel, I am ordering you to storm the store,” Vostov said. “Keep this circuit open. I want a status report as soon as you have it.”

“Understood, sir. We will commence the operation forthwith.”

Vostov muted the phone and noticed that the other three finally drank their own vodkas. Vostov unmuted the news.

“…something is happening here,” the announcer said. A tremendous explosion happened behind her and she fell to the floor, the camera shaking, the view tumbling. “The police have — there seems to be — the police have breached the store and are running into—“ Vostov muted the news. There was nothing but confusion on the screen.

The next minutes seemed to last an hour. Finally the speaker phone squawked.

“Mr. President, we’ve secured the scene. The terrorists are dead, all except one from our bullets. One shot himself before we could get to him.”

“The hostages?”

“None of them took any rounds from us or the terrorists, but they’re all unconscious from the gas, sir. We’re getting emergency medical teams in here immediately and evacuating the civilians.”

“My wife?”

“Can’t tell yet, Mr. President. It’s in the hands of the medevac team now.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Vostov said. “And good job.” He clicked off the speaker phone.

“I guess now we wait, sir,” Pasternak said.

7

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino climbed out of his car service’s sleek, new electric sedan, missing his Corvette. He looked up at the huge building, a few blocks from State Pier, New London, Connecticut. It was called “The Power House,” a refurbished power plant from 1897 that had been abandoned in 1955, then reclaimed in 2012 to be a brewery, pub, and pasta and steak joint. He half-smiled to himself — it might seem an odd business plan to reclaim an old power plant for this, but he liked the atmosphere already.

As he entered the antique wood entrance doors, he had a sense of stepping a hundred years into the past. The lighting looked exactly like old gas lamps — done with modern and safe LEDs, of course — but everything else within view was antique, with nineteenth century furnishings, even large ceiling fans turned by belts and pulleys. He saw the wrap-around bar, formed of timbers taken from upper floor supports when they’d been removed to allow a high ceiling and space for the brewery vessels. The bar was huge, tended by a half dozen bartenders and had multiple tap setups and a tall set of glass shelves displaying what seemed every alcoholic drink known to modern man. For a moment, Pacino regretted that Commander Bullfrog Quinnivan—Vermont’s exec — couldn’t see this, as it would have put him in heaven. Over the shelves of bottles were huge flatpanel television screens displaying every sports game happening at that moment, except for the one screen tuned to a news channel. On the far side of the bar, Pacino could see Squirt Gun Vevera and U-Boat Dankleff waving him over.

Pacino had checked into the “Q” the night before with the rest of the boat’s junior officers when their airport shuttle had arrived. “Q” was short for “BOQ,” which itself was short for bachelor officer quarters. Now that there were almost as many female officers as there were males, he thought, the term “bachelor” seemed outdated, but he’d leave it to Big Navy to correct any politically incorrect nomenclature. At the Q, he’d slept fitfully, rising late on this Sunday morning to run a few miles around the hilly Groton Navy base overlooking the wide Thames River. After a shower, he logged in and went through his unclassified electronic mail, then tried to relax by reading a novel, but couldn’t concentrate. He considered calling Vevera or Dankleff to see what they were up to, but odds were, they were sleeping off the previous evening’s beer and tequila.

Around five o’clock, he got separate texts from Vevera and Dankleff instructing him to show up for a “command performance” at The Power House, where the attack sub New Jersey’s captain, executive officer, and department heads demanded to meet their new junior officers. Since Commander Quinnivan had given the Vermont junior officers their new orders, there had been no word, not even a whispered rumor, of who the New Jersey’s captain or exec would be. All anyone knew was that the “PCU” captain and XO would not be commanding New Jersey. PCU stood for “pre-commissioning unit,” the designation for a ship not yet accepted by the Navy for combat service. The PCU crew were “drydock rats,” experts at assisting in giving birth to the ship from the millions of components brought to McDermott Aerospace and Shipbuilding’s Newport News assembly plant, but they weren’t combat operators like the officers of Vermont. It was recognized throughout the fleet that Vermont’s crew were the most recent to fire torpedoes and depth charges in anger, and there was a definite prestige that went with that. It was natural that the PCU New Jersey crew wouldn’t take her out on this upcoming special operation, but rather the Vermont-ers, as they began to call themselves. But the success of the crew depended on the success of the wardroom of officers, which was entirely dependent on who the captain and second-in-command were. Great junior officers and department heads were nothing with poor leadership from the skipper and the XO, Pacino thought.

He approached the crowded bar, where Vevera and Dankleff had saved him a barstool. Dankleff clapped Pacino on the shoulder.

“I see you’re twenty minutes early, Lipstick,” Dankleff said, beaming. “Good job.”

Pacino grinned back at him while shaking Vevera’s hand. “That was the first thing you taught me onboard Vermont, U-Boat,” he said to Dankleff. He slumped to give an impression of Dankleff and made his voice sound deep and imbecilic and said, “if you’re early, you’re on time, if you’re on time, you’re late and if you’re late you’re off the team.”

“Fuck you, Lipstick,” Dankleff snorted. “Anyway, Squirt Gun, as I was saying, I’m the bull lieutenant.”

“No way,” Vevera replied. “I got to Vermont two, maybe three months before you showed up as a nub non-qual. So I’m the bull lieutenant.”

The “bull lieutenant” of the boat was the most senior of the junior officers assigned, a title which Pacino had assumed had gone to U-Boat Dankleff.

“Yeah, but you took, what, three? four? entire months off fighting your, well, your diagnosis. So when it comes to time served? I’m the fuckin’ bull lieutenant.”

“What do you say, Lipstick?” Vevera asked. This would not be a dogfight Pacino would involve himself in, he thought, since Vevera and Dankleff were his two best friends, but he and U-Boat had survived Operation Panther, and that counted for something. Pacino just laughed at them and waved over the bartender and ordered a double McAllen 12.

“So Lipstick, looks like you’re not the junior man of the wardroom anymore,” Dankleff said. “We have two new nub officers showing up here. They’re the only hold-overs from the PCU New Jersey crew.”

“We’re keeping some of the drydock rats?” Vevera’s face showed contempt. “So not only are they non-qual nubs, they’ve never been to sea?”

“Well, they must have been aboard to conduct sea trials,” Pacino said, “without dying. There’s something to be said for that.” The bartender placed Pacino’s scotch on a coaster in front of him. Pacino held his glass up for a toast. “Well, gents, to victory at sea.”

Vevera hoisted his on-premises-made beer and Dankleff raised his Jack Daniels.

“So, guys, any word on who the skipper or exec will be?” Pacino asked.

“Nothing at all,” Dankleff said.

“Department heads?”

“No word on that either.”

“Damn,” Pacino breathed. As sonar officer, he would report to the weapons officer. His upcoming life would depend greatly on who that officer would be, and on the XO, since the XO ran the wardroom and could easily make life miserable for all of them.

“The bar’s getting full,” Pacino observed, calling the bartender over for a refill. “All we have are these three stools. We’ve got all the other J.O.s coming.”

“We have that big table over there,” Dankleff waved with this glass, then traded the empty one for a refill from the bartender. Five tables had been pushed together in the center of the high-bay area to form a single large table.

“Let’s go over there now before someone else decides to take it,” Vevera said, dropping his credit card on the bar. “I’ll meet you after I close out.”

“Wait, hold on,” Pacino said, noticing something on one of the large television screens over the bar, the only one not devoted to sports. It was tuned to SNN, Satellite News Network, a 24 — hour news channel, where a female announcer was making a report while standing in front of the Kremlin. The banner at the bottom of the screen read, “MOSCOW TERRORIST HOSTAGE RESCUE SAVES ALL BUT 2… RUSSIAN PRESIDENT’S WIFE DIES AFTER POLICE RAID….”

“Jimmy, turn that up, will you?” Dankleff shouted at the barman, who grabbed a remote and raised the volume.

“…police and elements of the FSB — the follow-on to the KGB — stormed the boutique shop inside Moscow’s famous GUM shopping mall, the giant architectural wonder situated in Red Square itself. President Vostov’s wife was one of the hostages taken, and reports have been received that Mrs. Vostov routinely evaded her SBP security detail, as she did on this occasion. A statement released by the police commander onsite indicated that Larisa Vostov was alive and unharmed by the barrage of gunfire during the raid, but the paralyzing gas used by the police and FSB led to her death and the death of a nineteen-year-old man who was one of the hostages. All of the terrorists were reportedly killed by the police units, and the other hostages were all rescued and are in stable condition in Moscow hospitals. The Kremlin released a short statement from President Vostov, which only indicated that a state funeral will be held for Larisa Vostov and the young man who died today. Meanwhile, there has been no sign of President Vostov, who is believed to have been whisked by his security detail to an undisclosed location. It’s speculated that he is in one of the hardened presidential bunkers outside Moscow. I’m Monica Eddlestein reporting live from Red Square, Moscow, SNN News—”

“You can turn it back down now, Jimmy,” Dankleff said. “Dear God. Well, come on, boys, let’s hit the table.”

Pacino stared at the now muted screen. “Man, the balls on those guys, taking the president’s wife hostage. No wonder the Rooskies went in, guns blazing.”

“Them Russians don’t fuck around,” Vevera said.

“I happen to know that from personal experience,” Pacino said, walking toward the table.