Panic Switch

16

Lieutenant Commander Ebenezer Fishman knocked gently on Executive Officer Quinnivan’s stateroom door, then opened it and stood back in the passageway.

“Come on in, Tiny Tim,” Quinnivan said, taking off his half-frame reading glasses. He was stationed as command duty officer while Captain Seagraves slept in the neighboring stateroom. He glanced at Fishman, who was wearing blue latex gloves.

“I’d better keep my distance for the moment, XO,” Fishman said quietly. “We have a problem. A medical problem.”

Fishman was joined by the ship’s hospital corpsman, a senior chief named Thornburg, who was also wearing blue gloves. Thornburg was an odd individual, Quinnivan thought. He never wore submarine coveralls, preferring to wear the more formal working khaki uniform. He was short and stocky, his arms muscular from hours of weightlifting in the torpedo room. He was old for submarine service, perhaps forty-five, and as such the oldest man of ship’s company. His gray hair was cut into a severe-looking flattop haircut. Thornburg interacted minimally with the crew. A serious sailor, he had never been known to smile, not that Quinnivan recalled. The crew had aptly nicknamed him “Grim,” and only the yeomen knew his real first name. He was a board-certified internal medicine physician, but had refused the officer accession program and insisted on enlisting, since, according to him, that would allow him to serve in submarines.

“Doc,” Quinnivan said. “Are you going to stand out there too? What’s going on? And what’s with the rubber gloves?”

“XO, we have an outbreak of viral gastroenteritis,” Senior Chief Thornburg said quietly. “Three of the SEALs are affected. I’ve put them in quarantine in the SEALs’ quarters.”

“Viral what?” Quinnivan narrowed his eyes at the corpsman.

“Stomach flu, XO,” Thornburg said. “Senior Chief Tucker-Santos, the SEALs’ corpsman, called me to their quarters and told me what he believed was the diagnosis. I’ve confirmed it. I have the three running IVs for hydration. They all have fevers over a hundred and four, sir. They barely have the strength to make it to their bathroom.”

“It’s coming out of both ends,” Fishman said. “So far, I seem to be okay, but I should self-quarantine just in case.”

Quinnivan consulted his pad computer. “Mr. Fishman, move your accommodations to the aft half-sixpack berthing. It’s empty. Meanwhile, we’ll have your meals brought to you, until we’re more sure of what we’re facing.” He looked at Thornburg. “Doc, tell me what symptoms they have.”

“As Lieutenant Commander Fishman said, sir, severe diarrhea, complicated by losing blood in the watery stool. Weakness, nausea, vomiting. Cramps. Whole body pain. Inability to keep down any liquids. That’s why they’re on intravenous fluids.”

“It’s bad, XO,” Fishman added.

“This is contagious, right?” Quinnivan frowned. “How contagious? How is it transmitted?”

“Well, sir, by sharing liquids or direct touch on a wet surface touched by one of the infected. It’s not airborne. But the quarantine is a precaution just in case.”

“How did they get it in the first fookin’ place?” Quinnivan asked.

“Contaminated food or water,” Thornburg said.

“For fook’s sake, Doc, are you saying our potable water could be contaminated? Or our food?”

Thornburg looked at Fishman, who nodded and said, “Since no else in the crew is affected, Doc and Tucker-Santos think it’s something brought onboard by my people. We brought protein bars and a case of some of those energy drinks with protein.”

“The cans of that shit that Aquatong is always slamming down?” Quinnivan asked. “What is that stuff, ‘Vulcan Werewolf?’”

“‘Vulcan Vampire,’” Fishman said. “I’ve confiscated the protein bars and cans of energy drinks. We should dispose of them all at the next opportunity to dump trash.”

“Make sure that stuff is wrapped up and taped so no one in the TDU room is tempted to try an energy drink or a protein bar.” The TDU was the trash disposal unit, a vertical torpedo tube to eject trash. With the rig for ultraquiet, the trash compactor was secured, but the trash room was filling up to overflowing and Quinnivan planned to suggest to the captain that they fade back from the Omega and dispose of their trash. Probably the same time they did a steam generator blowdown, an even louder evolution, but without it, the boiler level detectors would eventually go berserk and they could lose the reactor, and a reactor scram under ice would place the entire crew — and mission — in mortal peril. With total ice coverage overhead, there was no way to run the emergency diesel, and the battery could only stay alive for half a day before there would be a total loss of power.

“How long till the boys get over this stomach bug?” Quinnivan asked.

“Three days is the usual duration, XO,” Thornburg said. “But the illness has been known to go on for up to two weeks.”

“Well, Mr. Fishman,” Quinnivan said, “Looks like your men are out of commission for the time being. Fortunately for you, you won’t be called on to do anything.”

Quinnivan’s tactical 1JV phone circuit buzzed. He held up a finger to interrupt the discussion, put the handset to his ear and said, “Command Duty Officer.” He listened for a moment, nodded and said, “Very well, Officer of the Deck.”

“Well lads,” Quinnivan said, “I need to get to the radio room. We’re getting a signal on the VLF loop. Odds are, our overlords are trying to send us a preformatted message. Doc, see to it that Mr. Fishman gets a meal sent to his berthing, and bottles of water.”

“Thank you, XO,” Fishman said, and he and Thornburg left down the passageway.

Quinnivan debated with himself whether to wake the captain. If they were receiving a signal on the VLF loop, it would take two hours to get it onboard, and the stomach flu situation wouldn’t change in that time. But Seagraves was a light sleeper and he’d probably want to know. Quinnivan went to the head between his stateroom and the captain’s and knocked on the door to Seagraves’ stateroom.

Captain Seagraves and XO Quinnivan stood in the crowded radio room. Seagraves yawned, then frowned at Communications Officer Eisenhart.

“Communicator, what do we have so far?”

“Two letters, Captain,” Lieutenant Don Easy Eisenhart said to Seagraves. He stood behind the console that was occupied by Chief Bernadette Goreliki, the radio chief. “They’re our call sign for today, letters alpha delta.”

“Let me see the codebook,” Quinnivan said, accepting the red binder from Eisenhart. He looked at the column with the date. For today, New Jersey’s call sign was the letters A D. He looked at Seagraves. “They’re talking to us, Captain.”

“Well, nothing to do but wait for the word,” Seagraves said. “Care to join me in the wardroom? Fresh coffee would go down nicely about now.”

The senior officers walked aft to the wardroom, where Navigator Lewinsky, Engineer Kelly, and Weapons Officer Styxx were playing cards. When they saw the captain and the XO, they dropped their cards and stood.

“At ease,” Seagraves said. “We’re just here for coffee and conversation.”

“Something going on, Captain?” Styxx asked.

“We just got a hit from the VLF loop,” Seagraves said. “Pentagon is calling our name.”

“Whoa,” Kelly said. “That could mean we’re in for action.”

“Or orders to break trail and come home,” Lewinsky said. He looked at Styxx and Kelly. “We have time to make a betting pool on what the message will be.”

“That could be bad luck, yeah?” Quinnivan said. “No betting pool.”

On the conn, Ensign Eli Short Hull Cooper stared over Chief Albanese’s shoulder at the number one sonar stack displays, which were crowded with indications of the Omega II. It had a strong trace on broadband, bearing 045, directly ahead of them, with several tonals tracking from its 50 Hz electrical generators. On the transient plot, the Omega’s under-ice sonar high frequency pings showed up on a graph of intensity versus time, the.75 second pulses going up like a square wave, then the sound going to zero, then sounding again, making another rectangular shape on the plot. A second plot, identical to it, showed the low frequency pulses, which alternated in time with the high frequency graph bars.

Lieutenant Pacino walked up to Albanese’s stack. “Can I listen?” Pacino asked the sonar chief. Albanese handed him a headset without taking his eyes away from the complex screen displays. Pacino handed his tactical headset to Cooper and put on the sonar headset. The sonar pulses from Master One’s under-ice sonar were loud in his ears, but there was more than just the high and low frequency pulses now. A faint sound began in the bass register and slowly ramped up to a high-pitched shriek, then descended suddenly to the lower note. “You’ve got a new sonar signal on that under-ice sonar,” Pacino said.

Albanese nodded. “They turn that on every few minutes with no repeating pattern. Seems to be activated randomly.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Probably a three-dimensional sonar enhancement of what’s in front of them.”

“Damn,” Pacino said. “I’d like to stand a watch at their under-ice console. What’s that?” The indications showed a pulse unlike the others, at a different frequency, pinging for a shorter time and happening only once.

“That’s their secure bottom-sounder. Fathometer. They’ve been steady at thirty RPM,” Albanese said. “No trouble so far and they haven’t had to change course more than five degrees this entire watch.”

“Icepack is at minimum,” Pacino said. As if answering his comment, a groaning shriek came through the hull as the ice shifted overhead. He glanced at Cooper, but the junior officer of the deck had stepped over to the command console. Pacino looked up at the periscope display flatpanel in the forward overhead, which still showed the heat blooms from the Omega’s reactor compartment and engineroom. He became aware of Lieutenant Vevera standing next to him. Without a word, Pacino handed him the sonar headset and put his own tactical headset back on. After listening for a minute, Vevera handed the sonar headset to his oncoming junior officer of the deck, Long Hull Cooper.

At the command console, the periscope view was trained on the Omega. Vevera joined him. “You think the laser range finder would work underwater?” he asked Pacino.

“No way. You’d probably break it,” Pacino said.

“You think the BUFF has an optronic scope like ours? If he does, and he’s running infrared, he might see us.”

“Doubt it. The intel on the Belgorod shows it with conventional optical units. The old fashioned kind.”

Vevera smiled. “I always think of U-Boat captains spinning their officer caps backward as they peer through the scope.”

“It was kind of cool using an old-fashioned optical scope. Panther had one. It’s actually tough to go back to just looking at a damned TV screen.”

“I can imagine. So, what do you have for us?” Vevera asked.

Pacino gave him the briefing on what had gone on for the previous six hours.

“When will the message be onboard?” Vevera asked.

“About an hour after midrats,” Pacino said. “Captain and XO will probably convene an op-brief in the wardroom soon after.”

“I can’t wait to see what the brass has to say,” Vevera said. “Pretty strange to think we can’t talk back to them.”

“Yeah,” Pacino said. “You ready to relieve me?”

“I relieve you as officer of the deck, sir,” Vevera said formally.

“I stand relieved,” Pacino said, then announced to the room, “Lieutenant Vevera has the deck and the conn.” He looked at Short Hull Cooper. “JOOD relief?”

Short Hull nodded. “I’ve been relieved by Mr. Cooper.”

“Awesome. What’s for midrats, Squirt Gun?”

Vevera smiled. “Pizza,” he said, rubbing his belly.

“It don’t get no better than this,” Pacino said. “Have a good watch.”

Pacino and Cooper walked aft to the wardroom. The captain was in his command chair seat with XO Quinnivan on his right side. The navigator, weapons officer and engineer were there, munching on pizza.

Pacino walked near the captain, came to attention, and said, “Captain, I’ve been properly relieved of the deck and the conn by Mr. Vevera. Master One still bears zero four five and is operating his under-ice sonar. We have strong contact on him on broadband and narrowband, and on the optronic unit in IR. Message traffic on the VLF loops should be received by zero one thirty.”

“Very well, Mr. Pacino,” Seagraves said seriously. “I have to say, you’re doing a barely adequate job up there.”

Pacino smiled. “Why, thank you, sir.” He sat in his seat and took the platter from Styxx and took a slice of pizza, famished for hot food after a day of cold cuts and peanut butter.

The central command post of the Belgorod was whisper quiet except for the pinging and groaning from the under-ice sonar and the occasional sound of the ice shifting overhead. Senior Watch Officer Captain Third Rank Svetka Maksimov, the navigator, was seated at the command console in the captain’s seat, the far left seat of the three-seat console where the senior officers of the submarine would guide the actions of the submarine during tactical action stations. During normal under-ice steaming, a department head like Maksimov would be stationed as senior watch officer, her duties mostly supervising the actions of the watch officer, who on this watch was Communications Officer Captain Lieutenant Vilen Shvets. Shvets took the far starboard seat of the command console, but he would often walk around the room or sit at the attack center console. Also stationed was the under-ice sonar operator, which on this watch was Sonar Officer Senior Lieutenant Valerina Palinkova.

On the forward starboard ship control console, two senior enlisted men, the boatswains, manned the panel that controlled the movement of the ship — its ballast systems, the operation of the bow planes and stern planes and rudder, and the engine order telegraph that communicated the ordered speed to the reactor control room watchstanders aft.

On the starboard side of the command console, the attack center console was a long row of four operator stations, each with three display screens with a tabletop with a keyboard and trackball. The attack center was manned by a senior enlisted firecontrol technician. The attack center was designed to program and fire weapons at targets based on information coming from the sonar and sensor consoles.

Forward in the room, on the centerline, was the under-ice sonar, a large one-person console with three display screens and a joystick, with its displays projected to the large flatpanel screens mounted on the bulkhead on either side of the console. The display showed a three-dimensional look at the ice ahead. So far, other than a few deep pressure ridges, the ice overhead had been well-behaved.

“Ice thickness overhead?” Maksimov called to the under-ice operator, Palinkova.

“Eleven meters, madam, and steady,” Palinkova replied.

“Sounding?” What was the depth below them to the bottom, Maksimov wanted to know.

“Four hundred seventy meters, madam.”

Maksimov decided to stretch her legs and got up to go to the navigation plot table on the aft port side of the room. She saw their position in the center of the display, a bright red dot in a field of blue. Their past path was lit up in a dimmer red, their intended course ahead plotted in bright blue. Maksimov put two fingers on the display and shrank the view, the scale of the plot changing to show a greater area of the sea around them. She continued to adjust the scale until the entire Arctic Ocean was shown on the plot, the blue intended course continuing northeast, then passing south of the pole and continuing in a great circle route to the Bering Strait. She took a deep breath. This transit was going to take months at this speed. What the hell were the bosses thinking, sending them this way into the Pacific, and the all the way around North America and South America to reach the American east coast? There had to be some logic to this, she thought. But whatever it was, the bosses were keeping quiet about it.

Maksimov walked forward to the port side of the room, where the long four-position console was the sonar and sensor center, manned by another senior enlisted petty officer.

“Any detects on anything hostile?” she asked.

“We’re alone in the sea, madam,” the watchstander said, pulling off one headset ear and turning to look up at her.

“Remain vigilant,” she said.

Although what they’d do if they detected another submarine following them had never been made clear by Captain Alexeyev. There was no way to perform evasive maneuvers here under ice without risking a collision with a pressure ridge. And Maksimov seriously doubted they’d ever shoot at another submarine even if they did detect one.

She glanced at the chronometer. Five hours until watch relief. And breakfast. She was hungry and contemplated having some bread and butter brought up from the galley.

Michael Pacino lay in bed next to the warm, naked body of Margo Allende and stared at the ceiling. He checked his phone for the time. It was one in the morning. He’d gotten back from the White House after ten and had arrived to find a note from Margo that she’d gone to bed, but had brought him a shepherd’s pie from the Irish pub. He’d heated up the dish and poked at it in her vast shining kitchen while scanning his phone for new emails or texts. It was too early for communications to come in for his new role as vice president, but by week’s end, he thought, he’d be buried in administrative business. And he’d have to set up shop in his new West Wing office and establish residence at the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of the vice president. Finally he’d poured a scotch and drank it while watching the SNN news on Margo’s big flatpanel in the media room. There were a few reports on the Russian Kremlin attack on President Vostov, but no other news out of Russia.

Pacino decided to try to sleep, but as he lay next to Margo, who was snoring quietly next to him, all he could think about was Anthony on the New Jersey. Was he safe? Pacino tried to convince himself that New Jersey was just on a milk run. A simple operation to trail the mammoth Russian submarine. After all, what could possibly go wrong? And then his mind listed the thousand things that could go wrong on a nuclear submarine under the polar icecap a football field away from an Omega II carrying tactical nuclear torpedoes on a mission to deliver death.

He shut his eyes and tried to relax enough to fall asleep. His swearing-in ceremony was thirteen hours from now. He had to sleep. He needed to sleep. There’d be no time for a nap after the ceremony. He wondered for a moment about the Belgorod, the Omega II submarine. What was the captain of that submarine thinking? Had he detected the submarine trailing him? And if he did, what would he do?

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev sat in his oversized, high-backed leather command chair at his desk in his stateroom. He spun his pen in his hand, an expensive piece given to him by his wife Natalia. He glanced at her photograph bolted to the bulkhead. Damn, he missed her. She belonged to a very small group of people on this earth who understood him. It was an exclusive club he thought, the other members only Sergei Kovalov and his first officer, Ania Lebedev. It was late and Sergei was probably asleep. No sense waking him up to come to the stateroom and just talk. But Alexeyev was worried about his old friend. Kovalov’s depression seemed to be getting worse.

On impulse, Alexeyev picked up his inter-ship phone circuit and dialed up the VIP stateroom, where the commander of the test wives was berthed, Captain Third Rank Svetlana Anna. She answered on the first ring.

“Yes, Captain,” she said, her silky feminine voice alert.

“Madam Anna, I know it’s late. But I wondered if you might have a few minutes for me in my stateroom.”

“Of course, Captain. I’ll be right there.”

While he waited, he called the central command post on the tactical phone circuit. Captain Third Rank Maksimov answered.

“Central,” she said. “Senior Watch Officer.”

“Status?” he asked.

“Same as before, Captain.”

“Ice thickness and sounding?”

“Ice is at eleven meters. Sounding is over four hundred meters, sir. No pressure ridges. Steaming as before.”

“Very well. Do you need tea service for the central watchstanders?”

“I’ve already called for it, Captain,” Maksimov said.

“Have a good watch, Navigator,” he said, and hung up just as a knock sounded on his door.

“Come in,” he called.

Svetlana Anna came in and shut the door behind her. She was wearing regulation blue submarine coveralls and black sneakers, her shining long hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“Have a seat and relax,” he said.

She settled into a seat across his desk and looked up expectantly into his eyes. “Yes, Captain?”

“This is about Captain Kovalov. I’m concerned about him. I’m aware he spent time with you recently.”

Svetlana Anna met his eyes, but her expression was unreadable. Neither surprise nor indignation. Finally she spoke.

“Relations and conversations between test wives and crewmembers are confidential, Captain, as I’m sure you’re aware, by fleet regulations.” Her tone was neutral as she said it.

“Not on a combat vessel on a combat mission,” Alexeyev said. “You might want to read this.” He slid his pad computer across the desk to her. She scanned it for a moment. It stated, in military legalese, that on a combat mission, discussions between a crewman and a test wife could be disclosed to the unit commander.

“Can you send this to me?”

“Certainly,” Alexeyev said.

“One thing, Captain, this isn’t a combat mission.”

“Perhaps you should read this as well,” Alexeyev said, taking the pad computer back, finding the operation order from Admiral Zhigunov and sliding it back to Anna. She read it for a long moment. Through all the dry military language, replete with acronyms, abbreviations, and coordinates, the central theme was that the voyage of the Belgorod was a combat mission. She sat back and stared at Alexeyev.

“Does this mean that the Status-6 weapons are to be detonated? We’re starting a war?”

“No,” Alexeyev said, waving his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Think of it as being similar to a mission on enemy territory to stockpile weaponry in a secret cache, just in case of future need. Placing these Status-6 weapons gives the Kremlin options and perhaps bargaining strength later. Perhaps much later.”

Anna nodded. “So, fine, it’s a combat mission. Why do you need to know about Kovalov?”

“Captain Kovalov is a vital part of the mission. He and his Losharik will place the Poseidons.”

“Do you have a specific question about my sessions with Captain Kovalov?” she asked.

“Very specific,” Alexeyev said, feeling a cold discomfort that he was looking into the life of his best friend. It was a betrayal, certainly, but Alexeyev’s loyalty had to be to Russia first, the mission second, the submarine and crew third, and then and only then, to his friendship with Kovalov. Moreover, he knew Kovalov understood that. Kovalov had once commented, “Where in this Navy-mandated hierarchy of loyalty is loyalty to God? And family?” Alexeyev was a committed agnostic. Who, really, knew anything about God? Those who claimed to speak to Him seemed insane, no matter how reasonable they might sound. No matter how ornate the cathedrals built to honor God, he thought, no one in them had any better idea about God than he himself did.

His thoughts wandered for a moment to that terrifying instant in the central command post of the doomed Kazan as she was busy bursting into flames, exploding and sinking at the hands of the Americans. Had he prayed to God then? When he remembered those moments, whether in daylight or dreams, he knew all he thought about was getting the crew to abandon ship before it became too late. Time had expanded so that every second was an hour, and in all that time, there had been no thought of God or praying. Nor of death. Because death was an idea much like God — who could really say what happened after one died? Better to keep one’s concentration on the present moment, on the present mission. He looked at Svetlana Anna, who was looking back at him expectantly. He realized in his reverie she’d asked a question. Perhaps Ania Lebedev was right about him, he thought, that he lived deep inside his head, almost as if he were somewhere on the autistic scale more than a few clicks away from normal.

“You were saying, Captain, that you had a specific question about Captain Kovalov?”

He nodded, remembering. “Has Sergei ever made any indications that he is thinking about harming himself? Any suicidal ideation?” The psychological screening that submarine captains were subjected to by Northern Fleet command, with occasional update sessions, habitually asked these questions. A suicidal sub commander with nuclear weapons under his control was a nightmare scenario.

“No, Captain,” Anna said, seeming sincere. Alexeyev looked into her eyes, seeking any “tell” of her lying, but she impressed him as being forthright. Of course, he barely knew her, and perhaps the inventory of talents test wives had been selected for, beyond the obvious ones, might include training that would allow them to prevaricate while passing a lie-detector test.

“Was there any expression by Captain Kovalov of doubt about the mission?” Did Kovalov think this mission was as stupid as Alexeyev himself thought it was?

“No, Captain. None.”

Alexeyev stared at Anna’s eyes again, wondering for a moment if he’d have been more perceptive if he hadn’t lost one eye.

“Any hint at all that he would sabotage the mission?”

“Why, no, Captain, not at all.”

Alexeyev nodded. “Very well, then, Madam Anna.”

“Anything else, sir?” she asked.

“That’s all.”

She stood to go, obviously uncomfortable, and moved toward the door to the passageway.

“And Madam Anna?”

“Yes, Captain?” She turned at the door before opening it.

“I expect you to come to me if you hear any such sentiments expressed to you. That also goes to all your team, if coming from anyone they service during this trip.”

Anna frowned. “Of course, Captain,” she said, then vanished from the room.

When she was gone, he wondered, if he had the sympathetic ear of a comfort woman, would he confess his own feelings about this odd mission?

He reopened the operation order, going back over the contingency rules of engagement, looking up the directive for the event that they detected an enemy submarine following them. The rules were clear. Evade and escape. Take no hostile actions unless fired upon. Which was nonsensical, he thought. There could be no evading a trailing submarine under the ice, in these restricted passages, with pressure ridges diving down to the sea floor all around them. As if to emphasize the danger of the ice above, a moaning, shrieking groan came through the hull.

“Goddamned ice,” Alexeyev said aloud, and closed the file. “Goddamned Vostov.”

There was light applause scattered through the sunswept Rose Garden as Vice President Michael Pacino’s swearing-in completed. A phalanx of reporters crowded around him, all shouting questions, some about Chushi and what happened to her, and what his new role entailed, and would there be a replacement national security advisor, and if so, did he have a say in who he or she might be, and would he still be involved in the forging of military and national security policy.

He was trying to walk back into the West Wing, promising he’d be available for questions at a later time, when he saw on the other side of the crowd President Carlucci taking CIA Director Margo Allende aside, with Deputy Director of Operations Angel Menendez at Allende’s side. He saw Margo shoot a look back at him and nod to the president.

Allende hurried up to him as he stepped into the West Wing. He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Lower level SCIF,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They walked to the lower level and past the Situation Room to the secure conference room next door to it. Pacino found the coffee machine and brewed a cup, loaded it with cream and sugar and handed it to Allende, then made a black-and-bitter for himself. He was taking a seat opposite the CIA director when Angel Menendez joined them and shut the door behind him.

“Air Force Two is waiting for you at Joint Base Andrews,” Allende said. “A Secret Service motorcade will take you there. Carlucci decided against loading you into the presidential helicopter. It would raise questions.”

“Okay,” Pacino said. “Where am I going?”

“Moscow,” Allende said. “I’m having a bag packed for you from my townhouse and having it delivered to the aircraft now.”

“You’re sending me to Russia? What’s going on?”

“Carlucci wants you to warn Vostov.” Allende produced a shiny gold object and pressed it into Pacino’s palm. “Make him review this.”

Pacino looked at what appeared to be an exact duplicate of his Naval Academy class ring. “What’s this?”

“Give me your real ring,” Allende said. “I’ll hold on to it for you. You’ll wear this ring instead. When you meet Vostov, give it to him. It’s a flash drive. Put it on now and give me your real ring.”

Pacino pulled off his Annapolis ring and handed it to Allende and put on the duplicate. It felt the same weight as his authentic ring. “What’s on this drive?”

“Details of the next assassination plot,” Menendez said.

“Are you going to tell me what that plot entails?”

Allende and Menendez shook their heads at the same time.

“Patch, Carlucci wants this to be strictly between him and Vostov. But I’m authorized to tell you to tell Vostov to delay any speeches he’s planning on making in public.”

“I assume this drive has a password? Are you going to let me know what that is?”

“Tell him the password is the last name of the Russian admiral who was embarked on the Omega submarine you fought under the polar icecap. He’ll know.”

Pacino nodded and looked down into his cooling coffee cup. “Is there a pretext for this meeting? Vostov will include me in his schedule?”

“It’s labeled as a purely diplomatic gesture. The world sees you as militarily confrontational. And anti-Russian. Chushi had a good relationship with Vostov. Carlucci sent her to Moscow several times.”

Yeah, Pacino thought, mostly to get her out of Carlucci’s hair on meaningless diplomatic errands.

“Vostov will see you, if only to satisfy his curiosity.”

“Did Carlucci give any indication of how friendly — or hostile — I’m supposed to appear to Vostov? Does he want a confrontation about these Poseidons?”

“He wants you to make friends with Vostov, and don’t mention the Poseidons. Do you think you can do that?”

Pacino laughed. “Margo, I may be a straight shooter, but in the service of my country, I could have dinner with the Devil himself and convince him I’m his friend.”

She smiled. “Imagine — Michael Pacino, a diplomat.”

“I’m a man of many talents,” he remarked, then hoped that didn’t sound to Allende like a double meaning. But she just stood up and walked to the door with Menendez.

“Good luck, Patch,” she said.

On the ride to Andrews, Pacino thought about all the questions he should have asked. Wouldn’t Vostov think this flash drive might be another virus to attack their systems? Or might explode in his face? But then he considered he was being paranoid and anxious. He wondered whether he’d be able to sleep on the plane.

But as Air Force Two climbed out of the lush Maryland countryside, he decided to lie down on the couch in the presidential office. Before the jet had reached cruising altitude, Pacino was asleep.

17

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino poured fresh coffee and passed the carafe down the table. Despite it being in the midwatch an hour after midrats, the wardroom was filled to capacity with all the officers not on watch. Executive Officer Quinnivan had ordered Long Hull Cooper to take the watch as engineering officer of the watch with Supply Officer Ganghadharan on the conn. The air was thick with expectation, since the communications officer would be arriving with the decoded message they’d received on the VLF loop antenna.

Lieutenant Eisenhart hurried into the room and handed the message pad to Captain Seagraves, who wordlessly passed it to Quinnivan, who put on his reading glasses and read the message over twice, then passed it to Navigator Lewinsky.

“Share the message with the room, Nav,” Quinnivan said.

Lewinsky looked up from the message pad and said, “We’re ordered to deploy the two swimmer-delivered mines to the hull of the Omega and place them on either side of their torpedo room with acoustic detonation orders programmed in. That is, they’ll only go off if we ping at them with an active sonar signal that we should program in now.”

“Weps, you’ll need to tag out and lock out the active sonar gear,” Quinnivan said.

“Understood, sir,” Styxx said. “I’ll lay to control now and see to it personally.”

“Good idea.”

Styxx got up and rushed out of the room through the forward door.

“Captain? XO?” Pacino said, looking at the senior officers. “This is going to be a problem. The SEALS are sick as dogs.”

“My thoughts exactly, Mr. Pacino. XO, get the doc in here,” Seagraves said to Quinnivan. The XO grabbed the inter-ship phone and dialed the chiefs’ quarters, speaking quietly into it.

There was a subdued buzz of conversation while they waited. Dankleff leaned over to Pacino. “Patch,” he said quietly, “the Panther team could place these on the BUFF’s hull while the SEALs are puking and shitting their brains out.”

“No way, U-Boat,” Pacino replied. “That’s a mixed-gas tech dive in twenty-eight degree water. Using propulsion equipment we’ve never even seen. We’d have to train for six months to do that.” That, and the fact that the idea was terrifying, Pacino thought. He thought about the panic attack he’d suffered just before they’d locked out of the Vermont hatch to go invade the Panther. Dankleff, who had been officer-in-charge of the boarding party, had almost pulled Pacino off the detail when he saw Pacino freaking out in the airlock.

The aft door cracked open and Senior Chief Grim Thornburg poked his head in. “You called for me, XO?”

“Come on in, Doc,” Seagraves said, and when the senior chief entered and stood at rigid attention, Seagraves said, “Stand easy, Doc. We’ve got a few questions for you.”

Thornburg came to a military parade-rest position. “Yes, Captain.”

“First, doc, how are the three sick SEALs? Any idea of when they can return to full duty?”

“The news is not good, Captain, XO. They’re still in the midst of this. I doubt they’ll be up and walking three days from now.”

“Will they be cleared for duty then?”

“Unfortunately, Captain, there’s no telling. They could be well tomorrow, or day-after-tomorrow, but they might still be sick a week from today or even two weeks.”

“How is Lieutenant Commander Fishman?” Quinnivan asked.

“He seems to be unaffected, XO. I was going to ask you if we can release him from his self-quarantine in the half-sixpack room. He should still sleep there, but he should be fine to eat meals in the wardroom.”

Quinnivan looked at Seagraves, who nodded.

“Release him now, Doc,” Quinnivan said. “And send him here.”

“By your leave, Captain, XO?” Thornburg asked formally.

“Dismissed, Doc,” Quinnivan said.

Thornburg withdrew out the aft door as Quinnivan whispered something to Seagraves.

“Well, people,” Seagraves said, addressing the officers, “it looks like we may have to wait some days before we can execute this order. Unless there’s a contingency plan.”

Dankleff spoke up. “Captain, if Fishman’s okay with the idea, the Panther team can deploy these mines under his supervision. Pacino, Varney, and I could do it.”

Seagraves frowned. “I don’t think there’s any way in hell that would work, Mr. Dankleff, but thank you for volunteering. And for volunteering Mr. Pacino and Mr. Varney without their input.”

Fishman knocked on the aft door and came into the room.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Fishman?” Seagraves asked. “And please, have a seat.”

Fishman sat opposite Pacino and put his water bottle on the table. “I’m fine, Captain,” he said simply, his jaw muscles clenching slightly as if he were trying to look tough.

“Commander Fishman,” Quinnivan said formally, looking into Fishman’s eyes, “we’ve been ordered to deploy the swimmer-delivered mines to the hull of the Omega.”

Fishman, as if to delay his response, took a long pull from his water bottle. “Captain, XO, we’ll have to wait until my team is over this bug.”

“There was a suggestion that you might be able to deputize the Panther boarding party officers and use them to help you deliver this payload,” Seagraves said.

Fishman shook his head. “That’s a terrible idea, Captain. We’ve trained for years on dives like this. It’s a mixed gas dive, sir, to depths down to as low as three hundred feet in freezing water, maneuvering a heavy propulsion unit and carrying the mines. We have to decompress afterwards, and that takes some extreme physical conditioning. No offense to you guys,” he said, looking at Dankleff and Pacino, then at Varney. “If we tried this, we’d likely not only lose the mines but the divers as well.”

“You’re certain of that, Commander?” Seagraves said.

“Absolutely, Captain. This dive is for professionals. I recommend we wait, sir, until my guys are released for duty.”

Seagraves put his chin in his hand and looked down at the table. When he looked up, he said, “I want to see the XO, navigator, and Mr. Fishman in my stateroom.”

The three officers filed out of the wardroom. Pacino turned to Dankleff and Varney. “He’s right, you know.”

“Any idea how urgent this order is?” Dankleff asked Eisenhart.

The communicator shrugged. “Nothing in the message saying how long we have to execute it. I can only imagine the bosses wouldn’t want any delays. But taking the three of you slugs out of the dry-deck shelter to deploy mines? Hell, you should leave behind your last will and testament before you do. And a check made out to the Navy for the cost of the mines.”

Dankleff considered, then nodded. “You’re probably right.” He poured more coffee and looked up at the other officers. “Still, we’ve proved we can accomplish the impossible mission. Maybe we can do it again.”

“I fucking hope not,” Varney said. “Dying under the polar icecap in a drysuit ain’t my idea of how I want my career to go.”

“What about you, Patch?” Dankleff said.

Pacino smiled. “I’m with Boozy Varney on this one, U-Boat.”

“So, Commander Fishman,” Seagraves began when he, the XO, the navigator and the SEAL commander were all seated at the conference table in his stateroom. “Let me ask you a hypothetical question.”

“Go ahead, Captain,” Fishman replied, frowning.

“If this were a do-or-die combat situation, could you conduct enough training over, say, two days, to bring the Panther officers up to speed on the intricacies of this dive?”

Fishman crossed his arms over his chest. “Do-or-die, Skipper? The answer is yes. If you were to ask the next question, what the probability of success would be? I’d have to say maybe one chance in twenty that we get it done. The odds say we’ll all die out there and drop the mines. It’s a complex evolution, sir.”

“Walk us through it, if you wouldn’t mind,” Seagraves said.

“We start with your torpedo room loading two torpedo tubes, each with a Mark 80 swimmer-delivered mine, pre-programmed for sonar signal detonation. Each mine will be outfitted with cables that will allow it to be towed. Both torpedo tube muzzle doors would be opened. A four-man diver team would lock out of the dry-deck shelter with Mark 76 swimmer-propulsion units, each one powerful enough to bring the diver and the mine to the intended target. The divers would break up into two-man teams and each would maneuver to the bow to retrieve the Mark 80 mines. The divers in each team would have a communication wire between them so they can talk. Ideally, there would be a wire between each team leader, which presents problems, since the mine cables and communication wires can get fouled.”

Fishman took another pull of his water bottle, then continued. “The diver teams would swim to the target. Towing a heavy mine like the Mark 80 is extremely taxing — if it’s too heavy, it will drag a swimmer to the bottom. Too light, it’ll pop to the bottom of the ice overhead or to the bottom of the Omega. So managing the ballast bladder of the mine is a full-time job, and it’s a constant adjustment for water temperature and salinity. The mine can be heavy one minute and a balloon the next.

“So, getting to the Omega. Already there’s a problem, because you’d have to drive the New Jersey very close to the Omega — and we all know there are tactical problems doing that. You could bump into the Omega or your closer noise could alert him, revealing that you’re trailing him. If he took evasive action, it could kill the divers. A mine cable could get fouled in his sail and the team could be helpless if he dives deep. Or worse, a cable could get fouled in one of his screws and pull the divers into it, chopping them into fish food. Assuming that the divers can find the Omega, they’d have to maneuver close enough to place the mines in the right place. An exploding mine in the wrong location would do nothing except blow a harmless hole in the Omega’s ballast tank. They have to be placed at the point in the Omega’s hull where his weapons are stowed.”

“Go on, Mr. Fishman,” Quinnivan encouraged.

“Bear in mind, during this whole time, the divers are fighting the relative current of the Omega’s motion. If he’s going three knots, that’s a three-knot current that they will have to fight. Not easy even if there’s no payload to tow. It takes extreme training. We’ve practiced this with submerged submarines, over and over. Anyway, let’s say that problem is overcome. We’d then have to attach the mines to a hull covered in rubber coating. The mine is opened up at that point. It’s a cylinder for stowage in a torpedo tube, but here we’d open it up on its longitudinal axis. Like slicing a banana in half lengthwise. That exposes the vacuum pump of the mine. Fighting the current the whole time, one diver uses the propulsion unit to keep the mine at the right location while the other opens the mine, places it against the target’s hull and engages the vacuum pump. If that works, all is well. The mine will cut through the anechoic coating and light off an electromagnet for a temporary connection to the hull. At that point, the mine will weld itself to the Omega hull. If the coating is too thick and the vacuum pump can’t keep the mine attached, a diver will have to cut through the coating and expose enough steel that the vacuum pump can get attached. Once the divers are satisfied that the mine is safely attached, they’ll activate the mine’s electronics, then they have to connect the two mines with a communication cable, wrapping it under the hull and gluing it to the hull surface so it won’t flap in the current of the submarine’s passage. Then, finally, they have to do a system check and make sure the mines are okay and programmed correctly and talking to each other.

“Then there’s the next problem — making it back to the New Jersey. And that presents the same issues as finding the Omega in the first place. Very easy to get lost underwater, but under ice? Assuming they find their way back. Based on the depth shown on the diver’s wrist computers, they’ll decompress in the dry-deck shelter.”

Quinnivan smiled. “Is that all? It’s a walk in the park.”

“Very funny, XO.” Fishman frowned.

“Based on what Mr. Fishman has said, gentlemen,” Seagraves said, “I think it’s safe to say we’ll wait for the SEAL team members to heal.”

“There is one exception to what I said, Captain,” Fishman said haltingly, as if he were regretting what he was about to say. “If the Omega, for whatever reason, decides to surface through the ice, this becomes much easier. No trouble finding him. He’d be visible. The water would be shallow. You could bring New Jersey up right under him. And there’d be no relative current. In that event, even if one team had trouble, the other could swim around the Omega hull and help the first team. It wouldn’t be a milk run, but I could do it with your men. That assumes I can conduct training with them for a day or two.”

Seagraves looked at Quinnivan, then Lewinsky. “What do you think, XO?”

“I doubt the Omega will surface, but we could have Mr. Fishman conduct the training anyway, just in case,” the XO said.

“So ordered,” Seagraves said. “Mr. Fishman, over the next four or five watches, I want you in the wardroom with Varney, Dankleff and Pacino conducting training.”

“I’ll need to make an entry into the dry-deck shelter to familiarize them with the Mark 76 propulsion systems,” Fishman said. “And your torpedo room will need to move weapons so I can familiarize them with the Mark 80 mines.”

“We can accommodate you, Mr. Fishman,” Quinnivan said.

“By your leave, Captain?” Fishman said.

“Thanks for educating us,” Seagraves said. “You can go. XO, Nav, stay behind if you would.”

When Fishman was gone, Seagraves said, “Well, men, what do you think?”

Quinnivan shrugged. “I sincerely doubt the Omega will surface. It can’t hurt to train the boys for the possibility. And in the time we get them trained, hopefully by then the SEALs will be well again.”

“What about you, Nav?” Seagraves looked at Lewinsky. “You’ve been awful quiet through this whole discussion. Care to grace us with your thoughts?”

Lewinsky pursed his lips. “No way this will work, Captain. Odds are, we lose the mines and the divers. I wouldn’t want to be at the board of inquiry for that mission failure.”

“I worry about it working even if the SEALs are healthy,” Quinnivan said. “Fishman’s description? Jaysus, I’d rather just fire a fookin’ torpedo at the bloke and be done with it. This whole mine scheme was thought up by an academic in a Pentagon basement cubicle. It’s nuts.”

“He said they’d practiced it on submerged submarines,” Lewinsky said.

“He didn’t tell us how many times they failed in practice,” Quinnivan noted. “I’m going to call the Panther lads to my stateroom and break the news to them, that they’re a backup contingency.”

“Dankleff will be happy to hear that,” Seagraves said. “Mr. Pacino and Mr. Varney? Not so much.”

“Hey, Skipper,” Quinnivan said, grinning, “what does your American Coast Guard say? You have to go out. You don’t have to come back.”

Seagraves laughed. “I’m sure that expression will be a great comfort to Pacino and Varney.”

Vice President Michael Pacino climbed down the stairs from the forward hatch of the massive 747, Air Force Two. The bright sunshine of Moscow in September at noon was blinding. One of the Secret Service agents asked if Pacino wanted sunglasses, but he shook his head. There was a minimal greeting party at the airstrip. The American ambassador, Alphonse Captiva, was there to shake Pacino’s hand. Captiva was a holdover from the previous administration whom Carlucci kept on because the Russians liked him. He was a former senator from New York who always had been surrounded by whispered rumors of his connection to the New York City mob families, but there had never been any solid evidence of any wrongdoing. The Russian prime minister turned out, a dull functionary named Platon Melnik, who had been briefly president of Russia when Vostov’s first two terms ended, the constitution at the time mandating that he step down. During Melnik’s four years as president, Vostov had had the constitution amended to allow for longer presidential terms. When Vostov had won the next election, he’d put his crony Melnik into the prime minister seat and used him as a mouthpiece for Vostov’s policies.

Pacino shook Melnik’s hand, and Melnik told him in accented English that Vostov was waiting for him at the Kremlin. The motorcade consisted of the armored and bulletproof limousines the U.S. president used, flown in alongside Air Force Two in the cargo hold of a C17 Globemaster II Air Force freighter. Pacino climbed into the presidential limo and looked out the window at the scenery of Moscow from the airport Vostov had recently commissioned. The ride was short. Pacino yawned, the ride from D.C. to Moscow exhausting despite the luxury of the jet, his jetlag not helping.

The journey from the entrance to the Kremlin gates to Vostov’s temporary office was a blur. To Pacino, it felt like he was falling down a tunnel of dark paneled high-ceilinged hallways, some walls painted hunter green, massive paintings of former Russian officials on the walls, dozens of curious suit-clad aides greeting him. He nodded and smiled as he passed. Be a diplomat, he reminded himself. Finally, the procession of Pacino, his Secret Service guards and the Kremlin’s SBP guards, arrived at Vostov’s office suite. Pacino had read that Vostov had commandeered it from Melnik, the offices belonging to the prime minister, but Vostov’s office would be under construction for the next year to repair the damage from the assassin’s bomb, and to upgrade its security and make it invulnerable to electronic eavesdropping.

Finally, the last heavy mahogany door opened and Pacino found himself in Vostov’s office, face-to-face with the Russian president. Vostov was nondescript, neither handsome nor ugly, Pacino thought. He could have been cast by Hollywood as an aging accountant. He was slightly shorter than Pacino, but outweighed him by at least fifty pounds, much of it gathered around his middle. He was jowly, mostly balding, but had an expressive face that had curled into an appearance of bright happiness. Of course his face was expressive, Pacino thought — he was, after all, a politician at the top rung of a superpower.

“Mr. President,” Pacino said, smiling and stretching out his hand, “thank you for meeting me. It’s a pleasure to meet you in person.”

Vostov smiled even wider and gripped Pacino’s hand in a firm, dry handshake. “Vice President Pacino, the pleasure is all mine. Please forgive my English if I stumble or search for words.” Vostov’s English was perfect, Pacino noted. “I arranged for us to meet alone, one-on-one, man-to-man. I thought we could achieve an understanding this way. Normally my chief of staff would be in here with us, but she unfortunately died in the explosion. Not a week after my wife passed away in the terrorist incident.” Vostov’s face fell as he said the last remarks.

Pacino looked solemnly at Vostov. “I came to convey my — and President Carlucci’s — deep condolences on the loss of your wife, sir, and your chief of staff. I sympathize, Mr. President. My late wife Eileen was suddenly killed in an interstate accident. I felt like I was in a walking coma for a year afterward.”

“Please, Mr. Vice President, have a seat,” Vostov said, gesturing to a grouping of deep leather club chairs near a fireplace. “May I offer you a drink? We have the best vodka on the planet, but also the best scotch outside Scotland, and the finest bourbon outside your province of Kentucky.”

“Sir, I’ll have what you’re having,” Pacino said, smiling as he sat. Vostov poured two glasses of vodka and handed one to Pacino.

“A toast,” Vostov said, “to fallen comrades.”

Pacino and Vostov drank. Vostov refilled the glasses. “And another toast, to new friendships, yes?”

“Yes, Mr. President, absolutely,” Pacino said, taking a second sip.

“When we’re here together, alone, please call me Dimmi,” Vostov said.

“As for me, please call me Patch,” Pacino replied.

Vostov smiled. “So be it, Patch. Your wife Eileen, I’m sorry for your loss. That happened just before your East China Sea war, didn’t it? I was made to believe you were in supreme command of United States forces for that conflict, yes?”

“That’s correct, Dimmi. I was.”

“Well, one thing about losing your wife in a sudden accident, Patch. At least you didn’t find yourself in the situation of having to make decisions that would lead to her death. With Lorena? I had to decide whether to send in my counterterrorist troops and risk her dying in the crossfire, or trying to negotiate with the terrorists who took her. I lie awake at night and wonder what would have happened if I’d made the second decision. Maybe my Lorena would still be with me.”

“You know, Dimmi, my son Anthony told me a story that might give you some consolation. I wonder if I could take a moment to tell it.”

“Your boy is quite a hero, if I remember my briefing,” Vostov said. “Won the Navy Cross in that nasty Piranha sinking. I imagine you’re very proud of him.”

Interesting, Pacino thought, that Vostov left out mention of Anthony’s role in the Panther operation. Certainly, the Russian president must know about that. “Yes, sir, I am,” Pacino said. “He’s quite an officer.”

“Well, please, tell me the story he had.” Vostov refilled their glasses again. Pacino wondered if he’d get so drunk he’d be on the floor after an hour.

“This story was told to my son by this tough-guy commando, a man named Fishman. According to Fishman, our lives change dramatically with every major decision. Whether to go to college. Whether to join the military. To marry this woman or that. To take this job or that. In Fishman’s view, when a decision is made, a new universe is created with the new reality formed by the aftermath of the decision. But also, a second universe is created at the same time, where the other decision is made. And both lives continue on in those separate worlds. And over a lifetime, there might be a hundred thousand separate worlds formed by different major decisions. Fishman told my son to imagine what he called a ‘base life.’ In that base life, the person makes very safe decisions with no risk, and the person lives to a ripe old age, dies and goes on to the afterlife. And in Fishman’s version of the afterlife, that man who lived the base life wonders what would have happened to his life if he had made different decisions, and he looks over the results of all the other life realities and he sees which life turned out to be the best. And by seeing all those other lives, all those other realities, he learns everything to be learned by the experiences arising from all those other decisions, and he comes to know peace and to grow. The person’s soul is reunited with all the personalities who made different decisions. In the view of Fishman, the very universe you are living in right now is only one universe out of thousands in the story of your lifetime. So in another reality, a reality that is happening right now, there is another you that made the other decision. You can’t know how that turned out until you find yourself in the afterlife, but at that point you will know. And for all we know, that reality could have turned out much worse.”

Vostov thought for a minute, taking a pull of his vodka. “Patch, that’s the most profound thing anyone has said to me in ten years. That gives me great comfort at a difficult time. I thank you for telling me that. And please thank your son as well. And ask him to thank his friend, this commando Fishman.”

Pacino smiled. “I’ll see to it, Dimmi. Sir, I know you’re extremely busy and, as for me, I have to get back to Washington. But before I go, there’s a second thing I’ve been asked to tell you. And something to give you.”

Vostov looked at him attentively. “Yes, Patch, please go on.”

Pacino pulled off his gold Annapolis class ring and handed it to Vostov, who took it, withdrew reading glasses from his inner jacket pocket and examined the ring under the light of a side lamp. “Your Naval Academy class ring?”

“It’s a copy of my ring, sir. It’s actually a computer flash drive. It has information on it that President Carlucci is convinced is important and that you need to know. Most urgently, sir. It will synch up to any computer you tie it to. I know we both had problems with our computer networks being infected by combatant viruses, so you may want to connect it to a disposable air-gapped computer, one that isn’t tied into the internet or to your network. But I guarantee you, it isn’t a virus, just information.”

Vostov turned the ring in his hand, then looked up at Pacino.

“What is it? What’s the information about?”

Pacino shook his head. “President Carlucci wanted this to be for your eyes only. He did authorize me to tell you to avoid making any speeches in public until you can digest the information in that drive.” Pacino gave Vostov a significant look.

Vostov stared at Pacino. “Information about another assassination attempt?”

“I think that’s a reasonable guess, sir. It has a password.”

“What’s the password?”

“The last name of the admiral who was embarked aboard your first Omega submarine that was lost under the polar icecap. I believe your Navy called it the Project 949 Granit submarine.” Pacino wondered if Vostov knew that Pacino had been the captain of the submarine that sank it.

Vostov seemed startled and at a loss for words for a moment. “The Kaliningrad.” He paused, thinking. “I’m not much good at computers, Patch,” he said. “I’ll have to find someone who can help me open the files.”

“Just please make sure whoever you enlist to help you is someone you have absolute trust in, Mr. President,” Pacino said, standing. Vostov stood as well and walked with Pacino to the door to his office, turning and shaking Pacino’s hand.

“Thank you for this,” Vostov said. “And please relay my thanks to President Carlucci. Oh, and thanks again for that story. I shall think about what you said for a long time.”

“Goodbye, Mr. President, and thank you for seeing me.”

“Anytime, Mr. Vice President. Please stay in touch. And come back soon.”

Pacino nodded solemnly as Vostov opened the door. Pacino was immediately surrounded by the Secret Service men and Vostov’s SBP security guards. Within twenty minutes, the vice president was strapped into a leather seat in the presidential office of Air Force Two as the 747 climbed out of Moscow and headed westward back to Washington.

Major Grigory Arkov, a GRU sniper assigned to President Vostov’s SBP security detail, tried to fall asleep next to the redheaded call girl he’d invited to sleep over. But as it had been for the last two weeks, the insomnia held him in its grip, leaving him staring at the ceiling, thinking and remembering.

Arkov was — or more accurately, had been — a loyal and committed GRU officer with excellent prospects for advancement. He’d been assigned for the last year to the platoon of snipers who took the high ground around any speech to be given by the president, their mission to shoot any threat to the president. During that year, the platoon had only experienced one incident requiring deadly force: a man from a crowd who had broken through the throng of Vostov supporters during a presidential speech in St. Petersburg. As the man was raising his gun to shoot Vostov, two sniper bullets hit the would-be assassin and killed him instantly. One bullet had been from Arkov’s rifle, the second from one of the other platoon members. They’d never been told whose bullet had been the kill shot, since one had gone wide and hit the gunman’s shoulder, but the other round pierced the man’s heart. Arkov maintained that it was his bullet that had been the heart shot, but it was an ongoing good-natured argument.

After the killing of the gunman threatening Vostov, Arkov had been told he would be promoted to lieutenant colonel early as a reward for his skillful protection of the president.

But then two weeks ago, Arkov’s younger brother Anatoliy, a GRU cadet, had been killed in a training accident. Anatoliy had gone down in a fiery helicopter crash and the human remains were burned beyond recognition and comingled. There was a memorial service, but no caskets, since there were no bodies. A large urn that contained the combined ashes of the cadets and helicopter pilots was all that remained, and it was consigned to a grave honoring the men who had died.

But that had turned out to be a lie, as the FSB officer, Roza Elizaveta, had told him in the bar where she’d found him drinking to try to bury his grief. She’d told him the hard truth that there had been no helicopter crash, but that Anatoliy had been a crisis actor in the GUM department store terrorist incident, playing the role of a terrorist, and had been deliberately killed by the SBP. Of course, Arkov hadn’t believed her. But she’d convinced him to take her to his apartment, where she showed him the helmet-cam footage from all the SBP troops who’d invaded the boutique and shot the terrorists. From multiple cameras and multiple angles, he saw the hood removed from the corpse of his brother Anatoliy. The SBP invading men had used lethal force, despite the “terrorists” acting under orders of the GRU, and Cadet Anatoliy Arkov had been gunned down, taking two bullets, one to his chest and one to his head. Elizaveta told him that the SBP troops had orders to shoot to kill, and that it had been no mistake, but part of their operation order, so that none of the actors playing terrorists could ever tell the real story. That Vostov had used the cadets to cover up a staged and fake terrorist plot as a way to liquidate his own wife.

Then Elizaveta had pointed out the obvious. As one of Vostov’s trusted snipers, Arkov had a unique opportunity to avenge the death of his brother at the hands of the president. It had an elegant simplicity. As a sniper, at Vostov’s next public speaking engagement, Arkov would be stationed in position where he could shoot anyone threatening the president, but he would also be in a position to shoot the president himself. One shot, and Vostov would lie in a pool of his own blood.

He’d looked into the eyes of the pretty FSB officer and asked what her motivation was. She said she had her own sad story of Vostov’s betrayal and was part of a cell of people dedicated to assassinating Vostov.

“You know that one second after I shoot Vostov,” he’d said, “either I’ll be shot or taken for interrogation. They’ll ask how I came to know about the GUM department store plot. They’ll torture me until they get me to tell them about you.”

“Are you ready to die for what you believe in, Grigory?” she’d asked. “For vengeance for what Vostov did to your brother?”

“Yes,” he’d said simply. “I’d rather they kill me on the spot. But being interrogated and tortured? I don’t want that. I won’t take the chance.”

She’d pressed a card into his hand. “This is a dentist’s business card,” he said, confused.

“The dentist will fit you with a false tooth containing a suicide pill,” she’d offered. “He’ll train you on how to open it to get the pill. You bite it. It’s a cyanide capsule with about five times the dose required to kill you in ten seconds. It won’t be an easy death, Grigory, but it will only last a few heartbeats.”

He’d looked at her and said, “I sincerely hope they just shoot me on the spot. But if not, I guarantee I’ll take the pill.”

She’d left him then and he’d kept the dentist appointment. The tooth felt odd in his mouth, a smooth plastic feel to it. Whenever his tongue ran over the capsule, he thought about how it would feel to die from its poison, but then he turned his mind to memories of growing up with Anatoliy.

There was a noise coming from the entrance hall to his apartment. Arkov threw off the covers and was standing up from the bed when the front door crashed open and a dozen black-clad commandos in tactical gear and rifles burst in. Before he could react they grabbed him and put on zip-ties over his wrists and his ankles, duct-taped his mouth and roughly rushed him to his apartment door, down the apartment stairs to a waiting black van.

This was it, he thought, the moment he’d confessed he feared to the FSB turncoat officer. He had told her the truth that he feared capture, interrogation and torture far more than death, and he found the tooth with his tongue, praying to God that it would work. He felt the capsule released from the tooth just as he hit the floor of the van. He bit the capsule hard, the bitter taste in his mouth, and then the horrible pain of the poison killing him.

As his vision got darker, he consoled himself that there would be no torture in his future, only the end. In his last seconds, he thought of Anatoliy, and one thought of regret, that he’d never been able to kill Vostov.

After that, there was nothing.

18

Weapons Officer Captain Lieutenant Katerina Sobol, the senior watch officer in the central command post, stood behind the under-ice sonar console, which was manned by Sonar Officer Senior Lieutenant Valerina Palinkova. Sobol frowned, her arms crossed across her chest.

“Watch Officer, get over here,” Sobol called to Captain Lieutenant Vilen Shvets, the communications officer. Shvets bolted up from the seat he’d occupied on the starboard side attack console and joined Sobol at the under-ice station, glancing up at the large flatpanel screen that displayed the output of the under-ice sonar.

“Oh, that’s not good,” he said.

On the display, a looming wall of ice was coming closer.

“Order all stop,” Sobol said.

“Boatswain,” Shvets barked, “all stop!”

“All stop, Boatswain, aye, and engineroom answers all stop.”

“Report speed zero knots,” Shvets called.

“Aye, sir, ship’s speed one knot,” the boatswain at the ship control console called. “Ship’s speed, zero, sir.”

“Engage the hovering system,” Shvets ordered, “and rig out forward and aft thrusters.”

Sobol picked up the tactical phone circuit handset from her station back at the command console and pushed the button for the captain’s stateroom. It took the captain a long moment to pick up.

“Captain,” Alexeyev’s voice buzzed in Sobol’s ear.

“Sir, I think you need to come to central.”

“On my way.”

A few seconds later Alexeyev stood next to Sobol and Shvets behind the under-ice sonar console.

“Looks like pressure ridges have collided here, Captain,” Shvets said. “We’ve got a brick wall dead ahead.”

“Train the under-ice view to the port beam,” Alexeyev said.

Palinkova turned her joystick to the port side. The view darkened as the wall of ice receded into the distance.

“Twist the ship to the port side,” Alexeyev ordered. “Let’s see if there’s a passage on the north side of this wall. If not, we can look to starboard.”

“Boatswain,” Shvets ordered, “take charge of your thrusters and twist the ship to the left to heading three five zero.”

Lieutenant Duke Squirt Gun Vevera leaned over the number one sonar stack manned by Sonarman First Class Jay Snowman Mercer. Vevera wore his Indian Motorcycle leather jacket over his coveralls, with the control room temperature in the low 60s. He wore his customary wrap-around sunglasses, which he claimed helped him see the displays, and which Captain Seagraves had ordered him to throw away. Mercer shook his head and turned back to look at Vevera, alarm on his face.

“Master One’s screws have stopped and his signal-to-noise ratio is climbing. He’s stopped.”

“Pilot, all stop!” Vevera shouted to Chief McGuire at the ship control station.

“Too close, you need to back down,” Mercer said.

“Pilot, all back two thirds.” Vevera stepped to stand behind the ship control station. “Mark speed zero.”

Vevera turned to the command console and grabbed the 7MC phone and buzzed the captain.

“Speed zero, sir!” McGuire called.

“All stop,” Vevera ordered. “Hover at present depth.”

“Depth two one zero feet, sir, and engaging hovering.”

“Captain,” Seagraves baritone crackled in Vevera’s ear. “I’m on my way.” The captain must have heard Vevera’s frantic orders.

Back at the command console, Vevera looked down at the display from the periscope. Master One was alarmingly close. If they’d steamed on for too much longer, they would have driven right into his screws.

“Officer of the Deck, I’ve got a detect on a new sound signature,” Mercer said. “Sounds like small screws.”

Seagraves arrived, zipping up his coveralls, his hair wet from the shower. “That could be thrusters,” he said. “OOD, get a sounding, fast.”

“Nav-E.T., take a sounding,” Vevera shouted at the navigation electronics technician.

“Aye, sir, and sounding is one seven eight fathoms. One thousand seventy feet, sir.”

“Captain, are you thinking of taking us to the bottom?” Vevera asked.

Seagraves nodded, squinting at the periscope view, but it was too crude to determine the angle of the Omega. “If the Omega turns to look backwards at his past path, his under-ice sonar will be pointing straight at us, and depending on its resolution, he’s going to see us. I can’t have us be counterdetected.”

“Sir, that would take us slightly below test depth. We’re at two hundred feet now.”

“It should be fine, Mr. Vevera,” Seagraves said. “And if it’s not, McDermott Aerospace and Shipbuilding will get a very harsh letter. Take us down to the bottom as quietly as possible.”

“Bottom us out, aye, sir. Pilot, insert a negative twenty feet per second depth rate.”

“Faster than that, Officer of the Deck,” Seagraves said as Quinnivan entered the room.

“Pilot,” Vevera said, “negative depth rate four zero.”

“Trouble?” the XO asked Seagraves.

“Master One is turning to look around. He might see us,” Seagraves said.

“Oh, fuck,” Quinnivan muttered to himself, looking at the periscope display.

“Negative depth rate, forty feet per second,” the pilot announced. “Depth four eight zero feet, passing five hundred.”

The hull above groaned suddenly, then emitted several sharp pops like shotgun blasts as the increasing pressure of the deep caused the hull to compress. As if in sympathy, the ice above them joined the cacophony.

“Hopefully the ice noise masks our hull pops. OOD, ease your negative rate as you get closer to the bottom,” Seagraves said. “No sense slamming us down on the rocks. Could be bad for business. And make noise.”

“Aye, sir, understood. Pilot, mark depth!”

“Nine hundred feet, OOD.”

“Ease your depth rate to negative twenty,” Vevera ordered.

“Depth, eleven hundred.”

“Ease depth rate to negative five,” Vevera said.

There was complete silence in the control room as the watchstanders and senior officers waited for the hull to hit the bottom.

“Steady on three five zero, Watch Officer,” the boatswain called.

“What do we have?” Alexeyev asked, staring at the under-ice sonar display.

“Sir, the pressure ridge wall continues on, fairly straight,” Palinkova said. “I’m not seeing an opening in that wall.”

“Watch Officer,” Alexeyev said to Shvets, “spin us to the reciprocal bearing.”

“Boatswain, turn the ship to the right to bearing one seven zero,” Shvets ordered.

A slight vibration came through the deck as the thrusters engaged. The pressure ridge wall scrolled slowly by on the under-ice sonar as the ship turned. As it had on the other heading, the pressure ridge wall continued fairly straight but ended at a corner, where a second wall intersected with it.

“Captain, going south isn’t an option,” Sobol said to Alexeyev. “It’s just another wall.”

The shifting ice overhead picked that moment to shriek and groan, the noise continuing for a good thirty seconds.

“Fucking ice,” Alexeyev said, looking over and seeing that First Officer Ania Lebedev had joined them behind the under-ice console.

“I recommend we spin back to three five zero and follow the wall that way, Captain,” Lebedev said.

“I concur,” Alexeyev said. “Watch Officer, take us to three five zero and put on revolutions to take us dead slow, parallel to the wall.”

“Boatswain, twist the ship to the left and steady on heading three five zero,” Shvets ordered.

The central command post was quiet but for the low roar of the ventilation ducts and shrill whine of the electronics feeding the consoles.

“Watch Officer, turning past heading north, now heading three five zero.”

“All ahead one third,” Shvets commanded. “Make revolutions for two knots. Maintain present depth.”

The officers waited tensely, watching the wall of ice, looking for an opening that would allow them to continue northeastward.

“Sir, the wall continues,” Palinkova reported.

For endless minutes, the ship moved along the ice wall, the pressure ridge showing no openings.

After half an hour, Palinkova looked back to Alexeyev. “Captain, I have something to the left. I have thin ice.”

The deck jumped as New Jersey’s hull hit the rocky bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The deck heeled over five degrees in a port list and tilted upward by ten degrees.

“Bottomed out, Officer of the Deck,” McGuire reported from the ship control console. “Depth, thirteen hundred and five feet.”

“What is Master One doing?” Seagraves asked Sonarman Mercer.

“Looks he was spinning around to check out the ice, Captain.”

“Good thing we got out of the way of his under-ice sonar,” Vevera said.

“Ask yourself, Mr. Vevera, would we even know if he counterdetected us on his under-ice unit?”

“He’d probably have hit us with his active sonar, Captain,” Quinnivan said. “Just to distinguish us from a chunk of ice or a near-field sonar blur.”

Seagraves nodded. “Still, you should put yourself into the shoes of the Omega captain. Always be thinking about what he’s thinking.”

“Master One has started back up,” Mercer said. “He’s making twenty-five RPM on both screws. I have bearing rate left and diminishing SNR. Bearing three five one.”

“We still have him on the scope?” Seagraves asked Vevera.

“He’s fading, Captain.”

“Get us off the bottom and put on turns to follow him,” Seagraves ordered. “And close the range. We can’t lose him amid all this ice noise.”

“Pilot, insert a positive depth rate, forty feet per second and mark depth twelve hundred.”

The list and incline came off the deck as the ship lifted off.

“Twelve hundred feet, sir,” McGuire called.

“All ahead one third, turns for six knots, steer course three five one, and make your depth two hundred feet,” Vevera ordered. To himself he muttered, “Follow that fuckin’ BUFF.”

“Watch Officer, stop here and spin us left to three zero zero,” Alexeyev ordered.

Alexeyev looked at Lebedev. “Pressure ridge must have shifted and opened up the ice canopy.”

“Sonar Officer, what’s the ice thickness at the thin ice?” Alexeyev asked.

“Less than one meter, Captain.”

Lebedev murmured in Alexeyev’s ear. “Sir, if that ice wall continues, we could hit it with a Gigantskiy torpedo. We don’t know how thick it is. There might be a passage on the other side of it.”

“We don’t have nuclear release authority on the Gigantskiy units,” Alexeyev said. God alone knew why they’d been sent with the nuclear units, if not to break through an ice wall like the one they faced. But that was in keeping with the rest of the stupidity of this mission, he thought.

“I know, but that’s the reason they loaded us up with them,” Lebedev said. “I suppose we could try a Futlyar torpedo or two. See if that does anything.”

“I have another idea,” Alexeyev said. “Watch Officer, drive us to the thin ice and prepare to vertical surface. Sonar Officer, light up the upward-looking under-ice sonar and chart the size of the thin ice. Let’s make sure it’s big enough to allow us to surface.” Alexeyev stepped back to the command console and motioned Lebedev to join him there. In a quiet voice, he said to her, “Let’s call home and see if we can get nuclear weapon release authority. If they say no, we can throw Futlyar units at the wall. But that pressure ridge? I’m guessing we could toss the whole torpedo room at it and it would just laugh at us. One megaton blast on direct contact? It will open up like a door.”

“We could still backtrack, Captain,” Lebedev said. “Turn around and find another way through the ice.”

“I’m not interested in going backwards,” Alexeyev said, a tone of annoyance in his voice. “Besides, if we radio Northern Fleet HQ, maybe they’ve got new orders for us.” Maybe, he thought, they might have called off this fool’s errand.

“Master One is shut down again, Officer of the Deck,” Mercer reported from the number one sonar stack. “Turn count zero.”

“All stop,” Vevera ordered. “Now what the hell is he doing? Sonar, do you have thruster noises again?”

“No, sir, but he’s stopped. He’s dead in the water. Wait. Wait. Officer of the Deck, I have blowing noises. He’s blowing variable ballast or even main ballast. I’m showing D/E getting higher.” D/E was deflection / elevation, the angle to the contact. Mercer was seeing the Omega rising out of the sea. “I’ve got a loud collision noise. Master One has hit the ice overhead.”

“He’s surfacing,” Seagraves said, glancing at the periscope view. “We’re under thin ice. Mr. Vevera, close Master One slowly. Mind your periscope. See if you can drive us underneath him, but take us down to three hundred.” He looked at Quinnivan. “This is it, XO. Mobilize Mr. Fishman and the Panther team and prepare to place the mines on the hull of the Omega. Officer of the Deck, man silent battlestations.”

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino climbed into the dry-deck shelter, waiting to put on his mask over his drysuit hood. The Mark 16 Draeger closed circuit mixed gas rebreather was heavy, heavier than the twin-80 bottles he’d used to invade the Panther. He glanced at U-Boat Dankleff, who shot him a thumbs-up gesture. This was the worst part, Pacino thought, remembering his panic attack when the Vermont’s escape trunk was flooded before that mission. This time, he intended to keep his eyes clamped shut when the flooding started. Once he’d been completely under water last time, four or five breaths in, he’d been fine.

The shelter was crowded with all four of them inside with the Mark 76 propulsion units, which were also a lot fatter and longer than the ones they’d used on Panther, and reduced the space inside available for human occupation. Pacino’s earpiece crackled with Dankleff’s voice.

“Let’s gear up, Patch. Time to flood. Your favorite part of the dive.”

Pacino nodded and put on his mask over his drysuit hood, then clamped his double-fed regulator into his mouth and took an experimental breath. The air was dry, but not as dry as the conventional SCUBA air he’d breathed before. Or like the emergency air mask during the Vermont fire, he thought. His mind drifted momentarily to Rachel, and he wondered how she was. Maybe the captain would pop up the comms mast at the thin ice after the Omega dived again, and they could get an update on her. He bit his lip and commanded himself to get his head into the mission. This would not be an easy dive.

“Commencing flooding,” Dankleff said. For the dive, Pacino and Dankleff were teamed up. Fishman would be diving with Muhammad Varney as his partner. Each team had a communication wire between them, but not between the separate teams. It would have been better if all four of them could be on the same comm circuit. Pacino and Dankleff were amateurs.

The water level rose past Pacino’s waist. Even in the drysuit, he could feel the coldness of the water. When the water came up to Pacino’s chest, he turned away from Dankleff and clamped his eyes shut. The vision of water rising over his mask was too frightening to bear. But he could feel through his gloved hand that the water level was over his head, and he opened his eyes and turned back to Dankleff and shot him a thumbs-up.

“Opening the shelter door now,” Dankleff said. Pacino nodded.

The shelter door opened, the door the diameter of the shelter, almost twelve feet wide. Fishman grabbed his Mark 76 and motored out of the shelter, Varney holding on to a handhold bar on its flank. Pacino clipped his safety harness to the Mark 76 and tested it. No sense falling off the damned thing at depth. Dankleff started their Mark 76 and Pacino grabbed onto the passenger handhold.

As they maneuvered out of the shelter, Pacino looked up to see if the target were visible. The water was much clearer than he’d expected, and as he looked up he could see the dark underside of the Omega, and it was simply enormous.

“Dear God,” he said aloud involuntarily.

“Yeah. Big, ugly and fat,” Dankleff said. “Fishman’s headed to the port side. I’m driving us to starboard. Watch for the torpedo tube door opening.”

As Dankleff drove them down the New Jersey hull, its curvature changing from horizontal to vertical, Pacino looked down, but below the hull of the New Jersey, the water was black. He looked up again to see the ice above and the surfaced Omega. He could make out its bow and could see far back to its aft end, but the rudder, scoops and screws weren’t visible, vanishing in a blue blur.

The faint buzzing feeling of the Mark 76’s motor stopped as Dankleff piloted them to the New Jersey’s starboard side torpedo tube muzzle doors, the elliptical shape of them caused by the cylinder of the tube meeting the curving hull near the bow. Pacino touched the opening of the open upper tube, the steel of the hull cold to the touch. His job was to pull the Mark 80 mine out of the tube by its nose cable. He grabbed the cable with both gloved hands and pulled, using his flipper-clad feet for leverage. The mine moved smoothly and easily out of the tube, as if the torpedo room crew had greased it. Pacino attached the mine’s cable to the Mark 76 propulsion unit and continued to pull out the mine, until finally the mine was fully out of the tube. Pacino hurried to its operator panel, ready to adjust its buoyancy. He tested to see if it would sink or pop upward, but the mine was fairly trimmed to neutral buoyancy.

“I’ve got good trim on the mine,” Pacino said to Dankleff. “The mine is secured to the Mark 76. Let’s go.”

“We’ve got the BUFF’s starboard side,” Dankleff said. “Let’s get this thing next to the BUFF and get shallow. If we can see its sail, we mount the mine at a position of its trailing edge. If not, we’ll have to feel for the torpedo tube door and move aft by twenty feet or so.”

“Okay, let’s hurry.”

Dankleff piloted them upward to the flank of the Omega, perhaps eighty feet over their heads. As he approached the hull, Pacino could see the deep-diver submarine docked to the underside of the Omega’s hull. It was much bigger than in his imagination. It had to be over 250 feet long, he thought. He could see it had small but thick portholes in its bow. He hoped no one was in there peering out at them. No one had thought that could be a problem. Pacino kept his eyes on the Russian submarine’s exterior where it had curved to be vertical.

“Hey, U-Boat, I think I have the torpedo tube door, drive us aft.”

In the shallower water, with the pressure less on the mine, it had begun to get buoyant. Pacino hit the fixed function key on its operator panel to flood its variable ballast bladder until it behaved again. He wondered if there were some way to automate this, but the control system would add volume and weight — taking away payload for explosives. Still, it seemed a risk that the mine could get away from them.

“I don’t see it, Patch.”

“There, above you about five feet. There’s three of them. See them?”

“Oh, yeah, you’re right. Let me drive us about twenty or twenty-five feet farther aft.”

“Position us at the elevation of the middle tube.”

“We’re here. Now’s the hard part of the day. Open up the mine,” Dankleff said.

Pacino manipulated the operator panel’s fixed function key for opening up the mine, the software asking him if he were sure he wanted to do that. He hit the “YES” button and the mine slowly opened up so that its cylindrical shape became two half-cylinders. He maneuvered the mine to touch the rubbery coating of the hull, hoping it would be able to attach. While Pacino operated the mine, Dankleff’s job was to keep control of the propulsion unit. Pacino could hear the Mark 76 engine occasionally buzz as Dankleff kept it at their depth. Pacino touched the control panel’s “ATTACH” protocol section, and energized the “AUTO ATTACH” button. If the unit were able to cut through the rubber hull coating and weld itself to the hull, it would be an easy day.

The mine vibrated as the vacuum pump came on and the unit seemed stuck to the hull. It groaned as the mechanicals tried to cut through the anechoic coating. The sound changed as the welding rig went to work. The status panel read “COMMENCING WELD OP.” Eventually the noise quieted and the panel read “ELECTROMAGNET ON” and “VACUUM PUMP OFF.” Pacino tried gently budging the mine, and fortunately, it seemed to be holding fast to the Omega hull. The status panel changed to read, “ELECTROMAGNET OFF.” The mine still seemed to be holding.

“Arm it, Patch,” Dankleff said from behind Pacino. Pacino went to the control panel’s arming section and selected “ARM FOR SONAR SIGNAL.” He pressed the “YES” key and the unit again asked whether he were sure he wanted to do that, and again he pressed “YES.” In a moment the panel flashed green, the text reading “ARMED FOR SONAR SIGNAL.”

“Well, U-Boat, our work here is done. I’m disconnecting the mine’s cable from the Mark 76. Fishman should be showing up by now,” Pacino said. “Maybe he and Boozy ran into trouble. Think we should swim over to them and see how they’re doing?”

“May as well. You sure this thing is attached well enough?”

“Yeah. This thing ain’t going anywhere,” Pacino said. “Take us under the hull to the port side, and watch out for any seawater suction grates.”

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev motioned First Officer Ania Lebedev to a seat at his stateroom’s conference table.

“I’m thinking we get the Losharik captain and first officer in here as well,” he said. “And send for the navigator and communications officer. We’ll dictate the message to them.”

“Yes, sir.”

While Lebedev called in the other officers, Alexeyev’s tactical circuit phone buzzed. He answered it. “Captain.”

“Sir, Watch Officer. The engineer requests to conduct a steam generator blowdown and the supply officer requests permission to dump trash.”

“Very well. Conduct steam generator blowdowns and dump trash. Any other shallow operations you need?”

“No, sir. We have a good navigation fix and we’ve downloaded our intel files. No messages for us.”

“Fine. We’ll be generating the message to Northern Fleet Command in the next few minutes. Have the radiomen ready to transmit it.”

“Aye, sir, understood.”

Alexeyev looked up to find Sergei Kovalov and his second-in-command Vlasenko coming into the room. Alexeyev waved them to seats as Navigator Maksimov and Communications Officer Shvets came in. Shvets shut the stateroom door.

“Shvets, you get our position from central?” Alexeyev asked the comms officer.

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“Have a seat, people, and let’s get this message drafted.” Alexeyev reached for the ash tray and found his last pack of cigarettes and lit up, wondering if anyone on board had cigarettes for sale. He looked at Lebedev, who was preparing to write onto the message pad. Alexeyev dictated, “From K-329 Belgorod to Commander, Northern Fleet. Item one. Belgorod surfaced-at-ice at position—“ Alexeyev looked expectantly at Shvets.

“Longitude one zero two degrees thirty minutes east, latitude eighty-five degrees forty-five minutes north.”

“You got that, Madam First?”

“Yes, Captain. Continue.” Lebedev was typing on a detached keyboard paired to the electronic pad computer for the message. She looked up at Alexeyev.

“Item two,” he dictated. “Belgorod has encountered ice obstructions over many nautical miles that impede movement along the intended track on great circle route to the Bering Strait. The ice walls were mapped and Belgorod commanding officer believes there is no viable path to continue.”

“Say ‘severe ice obstructions consisting of multiple pressure ridges extending from icecap to ocean bottom,’” Kovalov said.

Alexeyev noticed that Kovalov seemed annoyed. Obviously something was bothering him.

“Yes, put that in. It must read that we did everything possible to get by the ice wall,” Alexeyev said. Add that after the words ‘Bering Strait.’”

“Got it, sir,” Lebedev said.

“Item three,” Alexeyev continued, “Belgorod requests nuclear release authority to employ Gigantskiy torpedoes one and two to attempt to break through ice walls.” He paused. “They’re never going to grant us that,” he said. Damned fool’s errand, he thought.

Through the hull, the blasting noise of the steam generator blowdowns roared, going on for half a minute, then quieting. There would be four of those noises, Alexeyev thought, as they blew out the contaminants from the steam generators and adjusted their chemistry. Suddenly five-hundred-degree boiler water was ejected into twenty-eight-degree seawater, and it made a hell of a racket. It was a shame they didn’t have the sound quieting technology for blowdowns that the new Yasen-M submarines had, like his Kazan. But that was an expensive retrofit, and Sevmash had decided to postpone it. Or cancel it altogether. Budget problems, he thought.

“Item four. Alternative to use conventional torpedoes against the ice walls rejected based on ice thickness. Conventional torpedo use will only deplete Belgorod’s weapons loadout.”

He puffed the cigarette and put it out. “Everyone okay with that? On to the next. Item five. One possible alternative is to attempt to drive south to the Russian northern coastline in the marginal ice zone. This option is considered to have the potential for more ice obstacles until more open water is reached, and the path will consume time and ship’s resources.” Food, he thought. Running out of it was a non-starter.

“Add that any delay on the southern route will require mid-mission replenishment,” Kovalov said. “No way our food supplies last if we spend an additional month or two fucking about on the southern route.”

Alexeyev nodded. “Add that in. Item six. Belgorod believes backtracking westward toward the Kola Peninsula and the entrance to the North Atlantic presents a better option than continuing eastward. Belgorod requests Northern Fleet Command consider the westward route and advise.” He looked around the room. “Anything else to add? No? Okay, Madam First, read back what we have.”

When Lebedev finished, Alexeyev said, “Add item seven, that Belgorod will wait at this polynya until a response is received from Northern Fleet Command or until the open water is closed in by pressure ridge movement.”

“Add in, Northern Fleet Command is requested to reply most urgently,” Kovalov said. “Just in case a duty officer lets it sit in his in-basket.”

“Add it, and make the message priority coded as ‘immediate.’”

“Yes, Captain,” Lebedev said.

“Read it back again,” Alexeyev ordered. When she was done, he said to the room, “everyone in agreement? Good. Mr. Shvets, send the message immediately. You’re all dismissed. Captain Kovalov, can you remain behind?”

Dankleff drove them under the hull and up the opposite side, aiming for where Fishman and Varney were working with the port side mine. When they arrived, Dankleff took a communication cable and handed it to Fishman so all four could be tied into the same circuit.

“What’s holding you slugs up?” Dankleff asked. “Patch and I had ours done in record time.”

“Coating gave us trouble,” Varney said.

“I’m only now arming the unit,” Fishman said. “It’s time to deploy the inter-mine comms cable. Dankleff, you and Pacino get back to New Jersey. Varney and I will join you in the shelter when we’ve connected the comms cable.”

“Yes? You wanted to talk to me?” Sergei Kovalov said in an annoyed tone.

“Yes, Sergei,” Alexeyev said. “What is going on with you? You’ve disappeared from sight for over a week. You’re not in the guest stateroom but sleeping in your cramped and smelly group sleeping quarters on Losharik. And when we were collaborating on the message to fleet headquarters, you were openly hostile to me. I want to know why.”

“I’m surprised,” Kovalov said, his tone pugnacious. “Smart officer like you, given command of the super-secret special project submarine Belgorod, can’t figure it out.”

Alexeyev smirked. “First, this boat is a pile of junk, rescued from a 1990s drydock and refurbished ten times, the refurbs stopping every time the Navy ran out of money. It’s 1980s design. Hell, 1970s, modified in the 1980s. We’re probably louder than a freight train with its last car derailed. The combat control system? Patched together with the old unit overlaid with the new Second Captain AI. This boat has never tested its combat systems with any success. Sergei, I promise you. My assignment to this boat is not a promotion. It’s a punishment tour. Punishment for losing Kazan and a third of her crew. So just cut the attitude, will you? Now, look me in the eye and tell me what the hell is bothering you.”

“You really don’t know?”

Alexeyev shook his head. “I really don’t know.”

Kovalov sighed heavily and got out of the table’s seat four down from Alexeyev’s end and moved to the seat to Alexeyev’s immediate right. He withdrew a cigarette pack and offered one to Alexeyev, who smiled and took it. Alexeyev pulled over the ash tray and lit up with Kovalov.

“You asked Svetlana Anna about my private conversations with her.”

Alexeyev nodded. “Did she tell you what my inquiry was limited to?”

“No,” Kovalov said, looking down at the table.

“I only asked her specifically if you were suicidal. If you’d said anything about hurting yourself.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Kovalov said. He seemed genuinely surprised, Alexeyev noted.

Alexeyev shrugged. “You don’t talk to me anymore. Just to your comfort woman.”

“Test wife,” Kovalov said, peeved.

“Fine. Test wife. Forgive my political incorrectness. I also asked Anna if you’d said anything about this mission. Specifically, any opposition to it.”

Kovalov started to smile slowly. “I leave those sentiments to my conversations with you only, comrade.”

Alexeyev smiled back at him. They lit two more cigarettes in silence, when Alexeyev’s tactical phone circuit buzzed.

“Captain,” he said and listened. “Very well. Send the message pad to my stateroom.” He looked up at Kovalov. “Fleet headquarters wrote us back.”

“Already?”

“Yes. They must have reflexively said ‘no’ to our request,” Alexeyev said.

A soft knock came at the door. “Enter,” Alexeyev said. Captain Lieutenant Shvets stood in the doorway and handed Alexeyev the radio message pad computer. “Mr. Shvets,” Alexeyev said as the communications officer was about to shut the door behind him, “please have the watch officer send in Madam Lebedev and Mr. Vlasenko. You should also get Navigator Maksimov and bring her, and come yourself.”

“Right away, Captain,” Shvets said and left.

“He’s a quiet lad,” Kovalov observed.

“Keeps to himself. People who do that make me nervous. As our talk today demonstrated,” Alexeyev said to Kovalov, smiling at him.

Alexeyev read the message, his eyebrows lifting. He slid the pad over to Kovalov, who inhaled, his hand over his mouth.

“Yebena mat’,” Kovalev said. “Holy shit.”

19

“Excuse me, Captain?” Lieutenant Commander Ebenezer Fishman said, knocking on the door jamb of the captain’s stateroom.

“Come on in,” Captain Seagraves said. “Wait, before you do, could you grab the XO from his stateroom?”

A moment later, Seagraves, Quinnivan, and Fishman were seated at the captain’s stateroom table.

“Your report, Mr. Fishman?” Seagraves asked.

Fishman pursed his lips. “It went smoothly, Captain, XO. Mines were both deployed and programmed. Inter-mine comms cable installed and glued to Belgorod’s hull. All self-checks performed. Tested, tested sat. We’re good to go.”

“How did the officers perform?” Seagraves asked.

“Flawlessly. I can’t believe I’m saying this, Captain, XO, but it was a textbook operation. I’m actually thinking of recruiting them into the SEAL program.”

“Bite your tongue, Tiny Tim,” Seagraves said, chuckling. “Those officers belong to me until I release them.”

“I suppose that’s the only duty we’ll have on this run,” Fishman said, sounding disappointed.

“Not necessarily,” Seagraves said. “There’s some discussion about using you guys to interfere with the Status-6 placement. Nothing definite. Just a message back when we were in open water to think about what we could do.”

“I’ll tell ye what ya can fookin’ do, Skipper,” Quinnivan said, leaning back in his chair. “You can torpedo the fookin’ BUFF right here, right now.”

“Why stoop to such a brutal, ungentlemanly, impolite way to neutralize the Belgorod, XO?” Seagraves asked, smiling. “When we could just elegantly play the sonar signal to light off the mines?”

“Just out of curiosity, Captain,” Fishman asked. “What is the sonar signal to command detonate? Some random combination of tones and chords?”

“Don’t laugh, Mr. Fishman,” Seagraves said. “It’s twelve seconds of the climactic ending of the 1812 Overture by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with the cannons firing and the trumpets wailing. At the final cannon blast, the mines explode.”

“Fitting, I suppose,” Fishman said. “A Russian composer for an attack on a Russian sub. And cannons blasting just as we’re busting open his hull.”

“My thoughts as well. How are your men now?” Seagraves looked expectantly at Fishman.

“They’re coming out of it, sir. Oddly, Grip Aquatong is the strongest at the moment, which is strange, since he had much more of the energy drink we think caused all this.”

“He developed some limited immunity, I suppose,” Quinnivan said.

The 7MC circuit from the conn buzzed. Seagraves picked up the handset and put it to his ear. “Captain.” He listened, then said, “Very well, pass the word to station silent battlestations.” Seagraves looked at Quinnivan. “The Omega is doing some strange maneuvers. I’m manning battlestations just in case.”

“Good move, Captain,” Quinnivan said. “After all, why does an armadillo have armor? Just. In. Case.”

“That joke got old in the War of 1812,” Seagraves chuckled.

“You know, we Brits almost won that one,” Quinnivan smiled.

“What do you make of this, Madam First?” Alexeyev asked Ania Lebedev, leaning back in his command chair at the end of the table in his stateroom. Lebedev looked vaguely disturbed. Sergei Kovalov was absorbed in reading and rereading the reply message from Northern Fleet HQ.

She looked up at Alexeyev. “We’re to employ Gigantskiy unit one against the ice wall. They gave us the unlock codes. Then they said to reserve unit two in case of tactical contingencies and they gave us unit two’s unlock codes. And they authorized use of unit two as required by Belgorod’s commanding officer. What the hell does HQ mean by, quote, tactical contingencies, unquote?”

“Sergei?” Alexeyev said. “What do you think?”

Kovalov nodded. “They think we may have to shoot at someone,” he said.

“I notice they said nothing about the alternative course to hug the Russian coastline,” Lebedev said. “Or about reversing course to the west.”

“I imagine Zhigunov wants to see how we do with the assault on the ice wall,” Alexeyev said. “Madam First, pass the word for action stations for tactical launch. I’ll meet you in central.”

When the officers left but for Kovalov, Alexeyev put out his cigarette and said, “How far do you think safe standoff is for shooting a nuke at the ice?”

“Did Northern Fleet and Sevmash ever figure out how far Voronezh and Novosibirsk were from the ground zero of the American nuclear detonations?”

“No, they didn’t,” Alexeyev said. “They guessed the blast was probably five kilometers from Novosibirsk. Less for Voronezh—she was vaporized. One of the depth charges must have gone off right on top of her. But the depth of the blast was different and the yield of the weapon different. Our ice target is shallower but our nuclear yield is four or five times bigger than the American tactical nukes. So we’re going to have to guess.”

“The weapon safety settings for standoff are ten nautical miles,” Kovalov said. “Any closer and we’ll have to switch off that safety. So I guess I’d say anything less than ten miles is risky.”

“You actually read the Gigantskiy torpedo operation manual, Sergei?”

“I was bored.”

Alexeyev laughed. “Our standoff distance is going to have to depend on the maximum straight-line distance we can get from the ice wall target point. The torpedo will have to go straight. It can’t be maneuvered around ice obstacles on the way. And it’s not smart enough to navigate itself through an ice maze.”

“Are you setting it up for a contact detonation or a command detonate at a point in space?”

“Both. Whichever comes first.”

“You know, to find the best and longest straight-line path from the ice target point,” Kovalov said. “You will have to survey the sea with active sonar. The under-ice unit is for close-in obstacles.”

“Agreed. Will you come to central for this war shot launch?”

“I wouldn’t miss it, Georgy,” Kovalov said.

“Master One is shut down again,” Sonarman Senior Chief Albanese reported. “I’ve got thruster noise, Officer of the Deck.”

“Very well, Sonar,” Lieutenant Anthony Pacino replied from the command console. “Pilot, all stop. Hover at present depth.”

“All stop, Pilot, aye,” Dankleff said. “Speed two knots, depth two one zero, speed one knot.”

Pacino squinted at the command console display. Master One, the BUFF, was visible on IR on the periscope display — or more accurately, his reactor and engineroom components were. The rest of his outline was a blurry cloud generated by the slight difference in his skin temperature from the surrounding icy waters.

“Speed zero, hovering, depth two one zero feet,” Dankleff called.

“What the hell is he doing?” Seagraves asked Pacino and Quinnivan. Lieutenant Commander Lewinsky joined them as they crowded the command console. Lieutenant Commander Styxx at the weapon control console to starboard was listening intently to their conversation.

“He’s spinning, sir,” Pacino said. “I’d say to his left. He’ll be seeing us soon on his under-ice sonar.”

“Range guess, Coordinator?” Seagraves asked Quinnivan, who at battlestations was the firecontrol coordinator.

“Close, Captain. Inside five hundred yards.”

“Do you want to take her to the bottom again, Captain?” Pacino asked.

“Sounding?” Seagraves seemed deep in thought.

“Nav-E.T., take a secure sounding,” Pacino called.

“Sir, ninety fathoms. Five hundred forty feet,” the navigation electronics technician reported.

“Take us down slowly, Officer of the Deck,” Seagraves said. “I want to minimize our transients from the depth excursion.”

“Pilot, negative rate, twenty feet per second,” Pacino ordered.

“Negative twenty, Pilot, aye.”

“Sonar, is he still thrusting?” Pacino asked Albanese. He stared at his periscope display, trying to make sense of the red shapes of the hotspots of the Belgorod’s interior.

“Thrusters still on, OOD.”

“Report the second his thrusters shut down,” Pacino said.

“Depth four hundred,” Dankleff reported.

“OOD, thrusters have stopped. Master One may be hovering,” Albanese reported.

It was then the piercing shriek blasted through the hull.

“Captain, ship’s heading now two seven zero, west,” the boatswain reported from the ship control console.

“Boatswain, secure thrusters and hover,” Alexeyev said. “Sonar, do you have any obstructions directly in front of us on this bearing?”

“No, Captain,” Sonar Officer Palinkova said, still intensely staring at her under-ice sonar display.

“Weapons Officer,” Alexeyev said to Captain Lieutenant Sobol at the port side sonar console, “are you lined up for an active sonar ping?” With the sonar officer at the under-ice sonar set, it fell to the weapons officer to run the active sonar suite with her senior enlisted technician.

“Active sonar is ready, Captain,” Sobol said in her high-pitched cartoon character voice. Alexeyev shared a momentary glance with Kovalov, who smirked. Behind closed doors, they’d both marveled at that odd voice.

“Transmit active,” Alexeyev ordered. “High frequency first, then low.”

“Ping active, aye, sir, high frequency first, then low.”

Sobol lifted a protective cover over the sonar mode selector switch for the spherical array and twisted it to the “ACTIVE” position. She lifted a second protective cover over the transmit button for high frequency, then one over the low frequency button. She mashed the high frequency button, and a piercing high-pitched scream reverberated through the room. The high frequency radar-style circular plot of bearing versus range glowed green, a bright green circle growing outward from the center. She hit the low frequency key, and a roaring low-pitched growl shook the room. As she released her finger, the noise stopped. A similar plot for the low frequency sonar lit up, a blue circle growing from the center and moving outward.

“Captain!” Sobol squealed. “I have a submerged contact! Bearing west, range close, a quarter nautical mile!”

“What?” Alexeyev said, hurrying to the active sonar display in front of Sobol. The contact flashed in both high frequency and low frequency plots. “Do you have broadband contact?”

“No, Captain, but we’ve been searching all through the azimuth. I can train the spherical array beam to center on west with a narrow search cone.”

“Do it. Do you have narrowband contact?”

“No tonals, Captain.”

“Focus your narrowband search in the westward cone,” Alexeyev said.

“Weapons Officer, line up your transient module,” Lebedev said, standing to Alexeyev’s right.

“Understood, Madam First, and the transient module is engaged, also narrow cone at bearing two seven zero.”

“Weapons Officer, send the contact bearing and range to the navigation plot and battlecontrol. Navigator,” Lebedev said, glancing at Navigator Maksimov. “Plot the contact on your nav plot and show our past course and the target ice position.”

“I’ve got transients,” Sobol reported. “Sounds like his hull is compressing. He must be going deep. Hull pops and water noise, maybe flooding a tank. I have a thump, Captain. Water noise stopped, hull popping is stopped. He may have hit the bottom.”

“Depth here?” Lebedev asked.

“Shallow. Two hundred fifteen meters, Madam First,” Maksimov said.

“He’s got to be hiding on the bottom,” Alexeyev said to Lebedev. Alexeyev glanced over Lebedev’s shoulder at Kovalov, who had crossed his arms over his chest, frowning deeply. “How long do you think he’s been following us?” he asked.

“He had to have picked us up as we left Zapadnaya Litsa,” Lebedev said quietly. “No way he’s just randomly patrolling the Arctic Ocean just in case he finds a Russian submarine.”

“Any chance it’s one of our own? Maybe Zhigunov sent a Yasen-M sub to escort us out?” Alexeyev tapped his wedding ring on the back of Sobol’s seat.

“And make sure we perform the mission?” Lebedev seemed deep in thought. “There’s no way to tell without narrowband contact on him. Or until he transmits active. Or we hear a torpedo sonar that allows us to classify him.”

“If he were Russian, after hearing that sonar ping, he’d reply on Bolshoi-Feniks and identify himself,” Alexeyev said. “Not sneak to the bottom to hide.”

“Sonar Officer, you have any contact on Bolshoi-Feniks?” Lebedev asked Palinkova. The Bolshoi unit functioned as an underwater communication device between them and other Russian submarines. It transmitted pulses that would resemble the sound version of a bar code, unable to be interpreted by a foreign sub.

“No contact on Bolshoi-Feniks, sir,” Palinkova reported.

“So, here’s what we know,” Alexeyev said to Lebedev and Kovalov. “He’s under ice. That means he’s nuclear powered. So, American or British or French. Or Russian, but without contact on Bolshoi, and with him evading us, I suggest we drop the idea he’s Russian. I think we can safely rule out the Red Chinese. And the Indians.”

“I think the odds favor this sub being an American, Captain,” Lebedev said. “They have many more nuclear attack subs than the British or French. Plus, unlike the British or French, they have a stake in keeping an eye on this mission. What is their expression? Yes, they would say they have a dog in this fight. Plus, he’s so ghostly quiet, we didn’t detect him until we pinged at him. He’s state-of-the-art, late flight. I think it’s reasonable to assume this is an American sub. Virginia-class.”

“I agree,” Alexeyev said, his mind drifting back to the last time he had faced an American Virginia-class. That episode had ended very badly, he thought. He forced the memory from his mind and looked at the central command posts’ watchstanders. “Attention in central command. Designate this contact as ‘Hostile One.’ Now, Madam First, what do you suggest we do about this?” Alexeyev stared at the sonar plot.

Lebedev bit her lip and glanced at the active display, the contact still lit from the returned sonar ping. “We won’t see him on active sonar with him on the bottom, Captain. We have his position charted. So one option is to keep going with the plan to open up the ice with a Gigantskiy. The other option, Captain,” she paused and looked into Alexeyev’s eyes, “is to use the Gigantskiy in command detonate mode and shoot him.”

Senior Chief Sonarman Albanese dropped his headphones to the deck and clamped his hands over his ears, muttering, “Oh fuck.” He looked up at Seagraves. “I’m okay, sir, just got my bell rung by Master One’s first sonar ping.”

Pacino looked at Seagraves. “He’s lit us up with active,” he said. “It’s a fair bet he knows we’re out here.”

“Depth seven hundred,” Dankleff called.

“Ease your depth rate to negative three,” Pacino replied.

“Negative three, aye.”

“Coordinator, Navigator, recommendations?” Seagraves said.

Quinnivan shook his head. “We’re awfully close to him, Captain. We might be inside minimum range. If his sonar is like ours, it will screen out anything closer than a few hundred yards to avoid near field reverberations.” An active pulse could actually boil water at the sonar dome, and the rising bubbles could interfere with interpreting an active signal, and even if there were no bubbles, the near-field effect of the impurities in the water close to the transmitting sonar would make interpreting a close contact unlikely. “He might not have seen us.”

The hull settled on the bottom with a lurch, the deck inclining slowly to a slight starboard list.

“Bottomed out, OOD,” Dankleff said. “Depth seven one five feet.”

“I say we play possum and just hide here on the bottom,” Lewinsky said. “If he snapped us up, he’ll hit us with active again.”

“Or shoot at us,” Quinnivan said.

“No,” Seagraves said. “No way he has rules of engagement to fire on a trailing submarine. And if he transmits active again, we’re invisible. He won’t make us out down here. He can’t distinguish us from a bounce off the bottom.”

“He’s on a war mission, Captain,” Quinnivan said. “Based on a good sonar detect, he wouldn’t have to hear us on active again. He could just shoot with a command detonate at our position. If he used a Gigantskiy torpedo, a one megaton blast wouldn’t have to be accurate. We should spin up two torpedoes in countermeasure mode and open outer doors. And spin up two in offensive mode.”

“Opening a muzzle door — if he hears that — is like drawing down on him,” Seagraves said, looking down at the deck, his chin in his hand. “That might justify him shooting at us. Let’s not provoke him.”

“Can we at least spin up the torpedoes?” Quinnivan asked.

Seagraves nodded. “Spin up Mark 48 ADCAPs in countermeasure mode in tubes three and four and flood down and equalize. Spin up Mark 48 ADCAPs in offense mode in tubes one and two, and flood them down and equalize.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t pick up transients from us doing that,” Pacino said. “He’s still hovering in place, barely four or five hundred yards out. It’s been a couple of minutes since he pinged.”

“Recommend firing point procedures,” Quinnivan said. “Just in case.”

“Wait on that, XO.” Seagraves shook his head. “If he decided to launch a Magnum torpedo — I can’t bring myself to call it a ‘Gigantskiy’—he’d have to clear datum by miles before firing. Let’s just stand pat and wait here on the bottom. Everybody just calm down. No need to hit the panic switch. Let’s just hold our breath and see what he does.”

Lewinsky looked at Seagraves. “We could go to absolute sound quieting, Captain. We could scram the reactor.”

“Scramming the fookin’ reactor? Under ice? Have you lost your mind, Nav?” Quinnivan said, his eyebrows raised.

Seagraves shook his head, deep in thought. “What is he doing?” he asked, more to himself than to his officers.

“No further contact on Hostile One, Captain,” Sobol said to Alexeyev.

“What now, Captain?” Lebedev asked. “Are we still going to target the ice with a Gigantskiy?”

Alexeyev shrugged. “We pretty much have to. We got the order from Northern Fleet.”

“It’s not safe now, Captain,” Lebedev said. “Shooting that torpedo, if Hostile One is between us and the ice target, he could interpret that as us shooting at him. And then he’d have cause to shoot at us. Or the blast could destroy him unintentionally. If the American sinks, it should be because we targeted him.”

“Captain Alexeyev,” Sergei Kovalov said, speaking up for the first time since the sonar detection. “If I may be so bold as to make an observation.”

“Go ahead, Captain Kovalov,” Alexeyev said formally.

“It occurs to me,” Kovalov said, “that if we’ve been detected and trailed by a hostile American submarine, our stealth is gone. And evading American knowledge of our mission was the reason to go to the Pacific by way of the Arctic Ocean, yes? And if our secrecy is compromised, we no longer have to go all around North America and South America to get to the Status-6 placement points on the American east coast, right? Which means we can abandon this whole eastward path and just go westward past Great Britain and Iceland into the North Atlantic, their sonar trip wires be damned. It would shorten the mission by months.”

“He makes a good point, Captain,” Lebedev said.

Alexeyev thought for a long moment. “We could still lose him in the sonar blue-out from the nuclear detonation. He might lose contact on us.”

“And we’ll lose contact on him for the same reason, Captain,” Kovalov said. “Once you blow a one megaton hole in the ice, sonar will be useless for hours. We’ll have to wait hours for it to calm down enough to see if there’s a viable path through the ice, if we made a hole big enough.”

“True. Let’s do this for now,” Alexeyev said. “Let’s put on revolutions and keep driving west to establish a maximum straight line path to the ice target. Odds are, Hostile One will come off the bottom and follow us. When we’re at the maximum straight line distance from the ice target or ten miles, whichever comes first, we’ll hover and spin back to the east and prepare to fire the Gigantskiy at the ice wall. We’ll pulse active again and see if we can pick up Hostile One. We’ll attempt to get him to bottom out again. When he does, we’ll drive farther east until he’s behind us. Once we’re fairly certain he’s behind us, we can shoot the Gigantskiy at the ice target, and Hostile One won’t interpret it as an incoming torpedo. It’ll be outbound from both of us.”

“It will work if he behaves the way you think, Captain,” Lebedev said. “Why do you think he’ll do that?”

Alexeyev shrugged. “It’s what I’d do.”

“Master One has started up again,” Albanese reported from the sonar stack. “Increasing revolutions, speeding up.”

Pacino looked at the periscope display. It was at maximum elevation and the optronics could only look up to an eighty-degree angle from horizontal. He rotated the view, but Master One was not visible. He must be directly overhead, Pacino thought.

“Master One is at three zero RPM,” Albanese said. “I hold him at maximum D/E but D/E is decreasing. SNR is fading. I hold Master One at bearing two seven five.”

“Captain, I recommend we come off the bottom and follow him,” Pacino said.

“He could be messing with us,” Quinnivan said. “Seeing if we come back up. Then he spins around and hits us with active again.”

“Signal-to-noise is fading,” Albanese said.

“I hold Master One on the scope,” Pacino said. “He’s bugging out heading west. But my image is fading. We follow him now or lose him, Captain,” Pacino said.

“Officer of the Deck,” Seagraves said. “Take us up and get back in trail of Master One.”

“Pilot,” Pacino commanded, “take us up, forty feet per second positive rate, report depth six five zero feet.”

As Dankleff acknowledged, Pacino looked at the periscope display. He could barely make out the hot spot of the Omega.

“Depth six five zero feet, sir,” Dankleff said.

“Pilot, all ahead two thirds, turns for six, steer course two seven five.”

For ten long minutes the New Jersey pursued the receding contact on the Omega. Finally, Master One was back on the periscope’s display, though still distant.

“Sonar Officer, what’s the path ahead westward look like?” Alexeyev asked.

“I have a clear path ahead,” Palinkova reported.

“Calculated range to the ice target?” Alexeyev asked the Navigator Maksimov at the chart.

“Four point six nautical miles behind us, Captain.”

“Keep going west, Watch Officer,” Alexeyev said to Captain Lieutenant Shvets.

They waited tensely, the range to the ice pressure ridge opening up as they steamed away from it.

“Five nautical miles from ice target, Captain,” Maksimov said.

“Do you think we’re good at this range?” Alexeyev said quietly to Kovalov.

Kovalov shook his head. “The hull might survive, but we’d be in bad shape.”

“At least the explosion will open up a polynya overhead. There’d be open water. We could surface if we had to,” Alexeyev said. “Ping active, Weapons Officer. Let’s see how much room we have ahead.”

The dual blasting active sonar pings sounded.

“I’ve got pressure ridges ahead, Captain,” Sobol said, sounding disappointed.

“Range to the pressure ridges?” Alexeyev was annoyed. Sobol should have reported that automatically.

“Two nautical miles, Captain.”

“Watch Officer, slow to two knots and approach the pressure ridge ahead of us,” Alexeyev said. The room was silent for several minutes as the ice ridge became closer.

“Pressure ridge ahead is at half a nautical mile,” Palinkova finally said.

“Watch Officer, when under-ice sonar has us three hundred meters from the ice wall, stop, hover and spin us back to the east.” Alexeyev looked at Kovalov, who was frowning over the navigation display.

“Boatswain, all stop. Slowing, Captain,” Shvets said. “Boatswain, hover at this depth, take control of your thrusters and twist the ship to the right to heading zero nine zero.”

After a long moment, the boatswain reported the ship hovering at the new heading of due east.

“Range to the ice target, Navigator?” Alexeyev asked.

“Six point nine nautical miles, Captain,” Maksimov reported.

Alexeyev looked at Kovalov and Lebedev. “Almost seven miles. Do you two think this is safe standoff?”

Lebedev took a deep breath. “It’s close, sir. It’s a risk.”

“Captain Kovalov?”

“I don’t like it, Captain,” Kovalov said. “The shock is going to be severe.”

“I guess we’ll find out how well Sevmash Shipbuilding did their job,” Alexeyev said. “Weapons Officer, ping active.”

Back on the bottom for the third time, the USS New Jersey’s control room crew waited tensely for what would happen next.

Albanese spoke up from the sonar stack. “Master One’s hovering and his thrusters are back. He’s spinning. Definite aspect change.”

“What’s your interpretation of the periscope image, OOD?” Seagraves asked Pacino.

“He’s turning to face us again. This time we got to the bottom before he could catch us with a sonar ping.”

“This is turning into a PCO waltz,” Seagraves said to Quinnivan.

“What’s that, Captain?” Quinnivan said.

“I forget, you haven’t attended the U.S. Navy’s Prospective Commanding Officer school. A ‘PCO waltz’ is when two submarines are engaged, both know the other guy is out there, and the simulated battle turns into a chaotic melee. There’s no such thing as a dogfight between submarines — too much information on the opposition’s location, course and speed is unknown, and it changes too fast to get a hit with a torpedo. You shoot a torpedo into that fog of war? Odds are, the weapon will come back to hit you. So, in technical terms, a PCO waltz is a cluster fuck.”

Quinnivan smiled. “Why, Captain, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you swear. It sounds good coming from you.”

Seagraves smirked and nodded.

The high-pitched sonar ping shrieked again, followed seconds later by a low frequency ping. Pacino’s ears were still ringing when Albanese said, “Master One’s thrusters are shut down, and he’s started back up. Revolutions increasing, Captain. He’s at two zero RPM.”

“Bearing?” Pacino asked.

“Two seven zero but I’ve got near-field effect. He must be right on top of us. Bearing is shifting rapidly. Contact is in our baffles now, Captain. I only have him on the rear-facing sonar on the rudder and he’s faint. He’s now bearing… zero eight five.”

“He’s going east again,” Pacino said.

“But why?” Seagraves asked.

“Captain, OOD, I have a torpedo tube door opening transient and a high frequency tonal that wasn’t present before,” Albanese said, his voice half an octave higher than usual.

“He’s going east, drives right past us and opens up a tube door,” Quinnivan said. “He’s going to shoot at an ice wall.”

“With a Gigantskiy torpedo?” Seagraves stepped to the navigation plot. “How far are we from when he stopped and spun around to the west in the first place, Navigator?”

“About thirteen thousand yards, Captain,” Lewinsky said, measuring on the electronic surface of the chart.

“That’s way too close to shoot a nuke, Skipper,” Quinnivan said.

“I have a torpedo in the water!” Albanese shouted. “Torpedo in the water, rough bearing from rear-facing, zero eight five!”

Pacino looked at Seagraves and Quinnivan. “We’re on the bottom, facing away from him. If he’s launching at an ice wall thirteen thousand yards out, we’re about to be next door to a hell of a shock wave. Is it safe to be on the bottom? Is it safe to have the shock wave hit our stern first?”

Seagraves bit his lip. “Which do you want more, Mr. Pacino? Propulsion or sonar?”

“One’s pretty much useless without the other, sir.”

“Let’s stay put,” Seagraves said. “But pass the word in all spaces, rig for shock.”

“Aye, sir,” Pacino said. “Pilot, pass the word to all spaces, rig ship for collision.”

“Torpedo is receding,” Albanese said, regaining his calm, his voice normal again. “I’ve lost the signal to Master One and torpedo is faint on the rear-facing.”

“Very well, Sonar,” Pacino said. “Any idea the speed that Gigantskiy goes?”

“Sixty knots,” Quinnivan said. “In about four minutes, we’re going to know how our day is going to end.”

“Or our week or month,” Seagraves said.

“Safety settings?” Alexeyev asked Weapons Officer Sobol, who had left the sonar and sensor console lineup and returned to the starboard side’s battlecontrol console.

“Anti-circular run is in. Standoff range is out,” she said. “We’re closer than ten miles, so I’ve defeated the interlock.”

“Unlock codes inserted?”

“Yes, Captain. Weapon status on nuclear arming is green.”

“Attention in central,” Alexeyev said. “Prepare to fire on the ice wall, large bore tube one, Gigantskiy unit one, weapon course zero eight five, weapon departure in swim-out mode, direct contact mode enabled, command detonate at six point five nautical miles enabled, run-to-enable one thousand meters.”

“Ship is ready, Captain,” Shvets said.

“Weapon is ready, Captain,” Sobol said.

“Battlecontrol targeting ready,” Senior Lieutenant Pavlovsky said from the battlecontrol console.

“Fire Gigantskiy unit one,” Alexeyev ordered.

“Fire Gigantskiy unit one, aye, Captain, and I have torpedo engine ignition,” Sobol said. “I have torpedo rollout. And torpedo is clear of the tube, Captain.”

“Sonar?”

“Weapon is steady on course zero eight five, Captain,” Palinkova reported from the sonar and sensor console, where she’d taken over for Sobol. “It’s a good shoot.”

“It’s not good till we see if it gets all the way there and detonates as it’s supposed to,” Alexeyev said, glancing at Kovalov, who shook his head slowly.

“Attention in central command,” Alexeyev said. “All hands strap in. Seat belts on and tight.”

20

The fission bomb explosion of Gigantskiy unit one formed a plasma that expanded from the close confines of the weapon’s plutonium compartment into the heavy water compartment. Up to that point, the nuclear explosion was generating energy from the elimination of mass from the heavy plutonium nuclei splitting into two lighter atoms, with the product atoms weighing less than the original plutonium. The missing mass was converted to energy in the form of explosive heat. As the plasma blew outward, it enveloped the heavy water cans, the heavy water able to fuse together to form helium atoms, and again, the resulting products were lighter than the heavy water at the start of the reaction, the difference in mass converted to pure energy, and the fission bomb became a fusion bomb, also known as a hydrogen bomb.

The plasma expanded outward from the central point and quickly devoured the weapon. Fifty meters to the east, a monolithic ice wall extended from the sea floor to an ice ridge range above. The plasma expanded and reached out to the wall. The surface of the ice wall began to vaporize and become a plasma itself, the electrons of the water molecules flying off into space.

One second after detonation, a half mile hole was blown into the ice wall and the ice overhead opened up into open water, the explosion blowing high into the atmosphere. On the other side of the explosion from the ice wall, the detonation caused a pressure wave to extend outward, at first spherically, but when it hit the shallow bottom and the ice overhead, it reinforced itself into a solid wave spreading out cylindrically.

Six-and-a-half nautical miles from the torpedo explosion, the shock wave hit the Russian submarine Belgorod. A half mile farther out to the west, the shock wave encountered the bottomed hull of the American submarine New Jersey.

The shock wave was violent and merciless to both submarines.

One moment, Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev was strapped into his seat at the port side of Belgorod’s command console, his seat belt tight, a five-point harness clamped into a central point on his chest.

The next moment the central command post was hit by a high speed freight train and the compartment was thrown to the left until the deck became a wall, and Alexeyev lost consciousness.

In the long moments before he came to, there was nothing but darkness. But then, when he did emerge from unconsciousness, he was still in darkness. Darkness with the smell of smoke.

That same instant, Lieutenant Anthony Pacino was standing at the USS New Jersey’s command console. The next, he was flying through space until he hit the aft bulkhead. He faded out into unconsciousness before his body slid down the wall and onto the deck. As he lay in a heap on the deck, blood from a head wound ran down his face.

Midshipman Third Class Anthony Pacino felt himself becoming drowsy in the huge amphitheater in Michelson Hall, the physics lecture not only boring, but exactly repeating what was in chapter seven. Why couldn’t they just let him read the book and take the exams, he thought. It was his last thought before he fell into a light slumber.

Until he felt a hand shaking him awake by his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see a full lieutenant in service dress blues waking him. Pacino bolted upright in his chair. At the Naval Academy, first class midshipmen were like gods, but if they were gods, the officers appointed over them were some celestial beings from even higher above. Pacino reminded himself that his own father was an admiral, and not just any admiral, but the CNO, the admiral in command of the entire Navy, and he told himself that officers were not beings to be feared, and yet, here, in this cloistered enclave, they were. An officer could put him on report, confine him to Bancroft Hall for ninety days, force him into formal uniform inspections daily, and the conduct report could snowball. A deficiency in a uniform inspection could add demerits to the original batch. And too many demerits and he’d be automatically kicked out of the Academy. Separated from the naval service.

Pacino was already perilously close to being kicked out. He’d been caught “going over the wall” last month. It was really just a rite of passage, to get up from his room at two in the morning, sneak out of Bancroft Hall, skulk out to the closest wall of the Academy, vault over it, and walk to a diner named Chicks that served breakfast around the clock. It was discouraged to graduate without going over the wall, and yet, getting caught was a major conduct violation. The insane cops-and-robbers game at the Academy was woven into its very fabric, and everyone who attended had played it, but play it poorly? That midshipman would find himself a civilian.

So it was that when he felt the hand shake him awake, Pacino’s heart slammed in his chest, his pulse instantly racing. He gasped for breath as if he were running hundred-yard dashes. He looked up at the lieutenant. Sleeping in class, he thought. How many demerits was that? Then the lieutenant spoke.

“Midshipman Pacino? The superintendent wants to see you in his office.”

Those words had to be the most terrifying of Pacino’s life. The only reason the superintendent — the admiral-in-command of the Academy — would want to see him would be to discharge Pacino from the Navy. Dear God, Pacino thought, how the hell would he explain this to his father? Dad was going to kill him.

The walk to the superintendent’s office in Leahy Hall seemed like a walk to the gallows. Pacino’s knees felt so weak it was like they’d turned to liquid. The passage through the door of Leahy Hall to the admiral’s office was like falling through a blurry tunnel, all luxurious walls and fixtures, paintings of past commanding admirals on the walls, elaborate models of ships in glass display cases, until finally the double door of Admiral Murphy’s inner office was opened.

Murphy came up to Pacino, but his expression wasn’t what Pacino had expected. Instead of harshness, the admiral’s face was a mask of pain and sympathy.

“Sit down, Mr. Pacino, please,” Murphy said, pointing to a chair in front of his desk. Murphy leaned on his desk in front of Pacino. “Anthony, I hate to be the one to bring this news to you. But your father’s cruise ship, the Princess Dragon, was torpedoed eighty miles outside of Norfolk harbor and went down with all hands. Your father is presumed to be among the dead. I’m so sorry, Anthony.”

Pacino felt the hot tears wet his eyes and trace their way down his face. He put his face in his hands, the tears, unwelcome and unbidden, shaking his entire upper body.

He felt a soft washcloth on his forehead and strong fingers touching the back of his skull. He decided to risk opening his eyes and when he did, he was no longer in Admiral Murphy’s office but seated at a table in the crew’s mess. A crew’s mess completely black but for the uneven lights of several battle lanterns, one of them shining on the back of his head. Even in the dimness, he could see over his left shoulder a large framed photo depicting the World War II battleship New Jersey firing all her guns at once, flames and billowing smoke blowing out over the seascape.

Pacino blinked and saw that the hands on his skull belonged to Chief Grim Thornburg, the hospital corpsman assigned to the submarine New Jersey. He looked over, his neck shooting pain as he did, and he saw that next to him sat River Styxx in her dark blue coveralls. The damp washcloth was in her hands, wiping away what must have been blood. And the tears on his cheeks. Her eyes were liquid with sympathy.

Dieter U-Boat Dankleff stood behind him, shining the battle lantern on Pacino’s head. Pacino felt a sharp stab and he flinched involuntarily.

“Easy, Lieutenant,” Thornburg said. “You need twenty stitches at least. A scalp wound bleeds profusely. And the cut went an inch below your hairline toward your right eye. You took a pretty hard hit to your skull.”

“Does he have a concussion, Doc?” Styxx asked.

Thornburg shined a penlight into Pacino’s right eye, then his left. “He seems to be okay, but keep an eye on him, and don’t let him sleep. Mr. Patch, you’ll need to consult a plastic surgeon to see about that scar.”

“What happened?” Pacino croaked. “I can’t be the only one hurt.”

“What’s the count, Doc?” Dankleff asked, setting down the battle lantern.

“Three crewmen with broken bones,” Thornburg said seriously. “Lacerations and contusions affecting another thirty. Mr. Pacino is the only one who lost consciousness, though.”

“That’s because he’s a lazy slacker,” Dankleff grinned.

“Fuck you, U-Boat,” Pacino managed to say. “How’s the boat? Are we damaged? How bad is it?”

“You might tell by the lack of lights, the reactor scrammed,” Dankleff said. “Shock opened every electrical breaker aboard.”

From aft in the space, the voice of the compartment phone talker spoke. “From Maneuvering, the reactor is critical!”

Dankleff half shook his head once. “We should be self-sustaining and in the power range in sixty seconds and back in a normal full-power lineup in two minutes.”

“What’s going on with the BUFF?”

“No idea. Until we get sonar back and come off the bottom, we’re in the dark.”

After another minute of being stitched and bandaged by Thornburg, the phone talker aft called out again. “The electric plant is in a normal full-power lineup. Secure rig for reduced electrical.”

The overhead lamps of the space, all of them red for the rig-for-ultraquiet, clicked on.

Pacino waved away Thornburg and Styxx. “Let me up. I need to get to control.”

“Reactor trip! Both reactors tripped,” the phone circuit rasped with the voice of the chief engineer, Captain Third Rank Virve “Cobalt” Ausra, whose excited voice was an octave higher than her normal mezzo soprano.

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev blinked, momentarily stunned by the jarring impact of the nuclear shock wave. His shoulders and hips ached where the safety belt had kept him tight in his command seat. He tried to shake his head, a stabbing headache making his vision blur. It was completely dark in the space. The usual sound of ventilation ducts was quiet, and the other customary sound in the room, whining hum of the electronic consoles was also gone, which meant the electrical grid in the entire submarine was a casualty of the blast.

“Engineer,” Alexeyev said into his boom microphone on the tactical circuit, “report status of reactor and electric plant recovery!”

There was a pause, which would be bad news, he thought. But the chief engineer’s voice finally answered.

“Central, Nuclear Control, we are closing the battery breakers. Expect reactor fast recovery in five minutes. Stand by.”

The lights in the overhead flashed for a moment, then went out, then flashed again, the third time holding. The ventilation ducts started blowing again, but at a third speed. The ship control consoles came back to life first, then the command consoles, the sonar and sensor lineup and finally the battlecontrol consoles.

“Watch Officer,” Alexeyev said to a stunned Captain Lieutenant Vilen Shvets, “get to ship control and attempt to hover, and keep us level.”

The engineer’s voice returned. “Reactor number one is critical.”

The smell of smoke in the room made Alexeyev cough. He looked at First Officer Lebedev. “Do you smell that?”

She sniffed the air. “It’s not electrical, Captain. That’s not burning insulation. It’s something else.”

“All spaces, report status,” Alexeyev said into the announcing microphone.

“Reactor number one is in the power range,” Ausra’s voice rasped. “Reactor number two is critical. Recovering the electric plant, but we have steam coming out of the port propulsion turbine casing—“ Ausra’s announcement was interrupted.

“Fire in the first compartment! Fire in the torpedo room!” the safety announcing circuit blared in Alexeyev’s headset.

Alexeyev found the general announcing circuit microphone and toggled the circuit breaker to make it operational again. It had been disengaged for sound quieting, but this was a ship-threatening emergency.

“Fire in the first compartment, fire in the torpedo room,” he said into the mike as he consciously tried to keep his voice calm despite his rising panic. His voice was broadcast through the ship like the voice of God. “Emergency support team, report to the second compartment upper level door to the first compartment. All hands, rig ship for fire.” He put the microphone back in its cradle, found his emergency air breathing mask, pulled it over his head and looked through its facemask at Lebedev. “Madam First, I want you on-scene. That is the worst place to have a fire.”

The sound of the ventilation ducts died again as ventilation systems were shut down for the rig for fire.

Kovalov looked at Alexeyev. “I’ll go with her.”

“No, Captain Kovalov, you stay in central with me,” Alexeyev barked.

“Electric plant is nominal,” Ausra reported on the phone circuit. “Reactor number two is in the power range. Ready to answer bells on the starboard propulsion turbine, propulsion limited to ahead standard.”

Alexeyev unbuckled from his seat. Kovalov released his own seatbelt at the battlecontrol console and walked to Alexeyev.

“If that’s a weapon fuel fire,” Kovalov said quietly to Alexeyev, “we have a real problem.”

“We need to get back to open water,” Alexeyev took the three steps to the navigation console. “Navigator, plot a course to the ice target. The Gigantskiy must have opened up a large polynya there. We can surface and ventilate there.”

Maksimov was already ready with the answer. “Course zero eight seven, Captain.”

“Watch Officer, proceed at four knots to the open water at the ice target, course zero eight seven,” Alexeyev ordered.

The smell of the smoke was stronger now, and central command was getting hazy. With the ventilation systems shut down with the rig for fire, the fact he could smell smoke through his mask was very bad news.

Captain Second Rank Ania Lebedev arrived at the compartment door to the first compartment, which was open. It should have been dogged shut, she thought, for the rig for fire. She unplugged her emergency mask’s air hose and stepped over the hatch coaming into the first compartment, which was black with smoke. She plugged her air hose into the manifold in the overhead of the first compartment and saw the senior enlisted weapons chief, Glavny Starshina Semion Yeger, who looked at her through his mask, his expression one of panic.

“Chief, what’s the status?” Lebedev shouted through her mask.

“There’s a ruptured weapon, middle rack, farthest to starboard,” Yeger shouted back. “We’re attempting a patch with a high-pressure hose on it, but the fire is in the bilges now.”

“Evacuate the compartment, Chief,” Lebedev yelled. “I’m activating the liquid nitrogen.”

“But Madam First, that will put out the fire but likely rupture more weapons!”

“I don’t care, Chief, I intend to auto-jettison.”

“All hands, evacuate the first compartment,” Yeger ordered in the phone’s tactical circuit.

Three enlisted men and one enlisted woman came hurriedly through the smoke, stepped through the hatch and plugged in their air hoses at the second compartment upper-level manifold. Lebedev pushed Yeger out of the first compartment, then stepped through the hatch herself.

“Help me shut it,” she yelled to the gathered weapons technicians.

The hatch shut and Lebedev dogged it and locked it. “Chief, call central and inform them I’m activating liquid nitrogen and that I’ll auto-jettison afterward.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Yeger said. He spoke into the circuit for a moment while Lebedev lifted a large warning cover off the emergency liquid nitrogen deluge system. She latched the cover open, exposing a large red mushroom button. She pressed the button, saying a silent prayer that the system would work. If she survived this, she thought, she’d find the Sevmash Shipyard supervisor whose people installed and tested the system and present him with the most expensive bottle of vodka she could get her hands on.

For a long, endless second, nothing happened. Then the sound of flow noise came from above and became deafeningly loud. For a long minute, the liquid nitrogen deluge sprayed into the room on the other side of the hatch, finally exhausting the nitrogen tanks.

“Chief, commence auto-jettison of all weapons,” she ordered Yeger.

“Understood, Madam First,” he said. “We have a tube-loaded VA-111 Shkval in tube six. It’s probably undamaged. Can we keep that?”

“Yes, for now, Chief. I’ll advise the captain and see if he wants it jettisoned. Report to central as each weapon leaves the ship.” She looked at the weapons technicians. “You’re all contaminated with weapon fuel — get to the safety showers, dump your clothes in the sealed hoppers and decontaminate. Chief, I’m going back to central.”

As Lebedev hurried aft, Yeger looked at his senior technician. “I don’t know if she saved the ship or doomed it. Without weapons? We’re helpless.”

“We still have the Shkval and a Gigantskiy left,” she said.

“Mr. Pacino, nice of you to return to your watch,” Quinnivan said.

“How are you, Lieutenant?” Seagraves asked.

“I’m okay, Captain. A few stitches is all. I’m ready to relieve Mr. Vevera.”

“Very well, relieve Mr. Vevera.”

Pacino looked at Vevera. “What’s the latest?”

“We’re back in a normal full-power lineup, main motor ready to answer all bells. Sonar and battlecontrol are restarted with self-checks ongoing for battlecontrol. I’ve come off the bottom and hovered at three hundred feet. Master One bears zero eight five and he’s hovering also. Sonar reported sounds of him starting up his engineroom. He must have scrammed out like we did.”

“Damage reports?” Pacino asked.

“No flooding,” Vevera said. “So that’s good news. Engineer says some of her steam leaks have returned, but all systems are nominal otherwise.”

“Torpedo room?”

“All nominal also, as far as we can tell. Short Hull Cooper, the COB and Chief Fleshman are checking all weapons for any fuel leaks. Fleshman will start on torpedo self-checks after he’s sure the fish are physically okay.”

“Sonar self-checks okay?”

“Albanese says the wide-app arrays are good, the conformal array is good, sphere is good on passive with a few hydrophones out. The active self-check is ongoing. No report on that yet. But the number one scope is tits-up. And we haven’t been able to get number two to come out of the sail, so it’s broke-dick as well. Gone are the days we could count on seeing Master One on infrared.”

“What about the radio circuits?” Pacino asked.

“Radio says their self-checks are okay, but we haven’t tried to raise any comms masts. It’s a fair bet that if the number two scope won’t bump up, there may be hydraulic problems in the sail.”

“We good on the VLF loop?” If the VLF loop were a casualty, Pacino thought, the Pentagon and White House couldn’t give them any under-ice orders.

“VLF loop checks out. But we won’t really know unless we pick up another message on it.”

“Good, I’m ready to relieve you, sir,” Pacino said formally.

“I’m ready to be relieved.”

“I relieve you, sir,” Pacino said.

“I stand relieved,” Vevera said. “Captain, I’ve been relieved of the deck and the conn by Mr. Pacino.”

“Very well,” Seagraves said, not looking up from the navigation plot.

“Captain,” Senior Chief Albanese said, “Master One screw noises at low revolutions, increasing, but he’s only making way on one screw. The other one seems to be idle.”

“Maybe he had a wee bit more trouble than we did,” Quinnivan said.

“I have a loud transient from Master One,” Albanese called. “Very loud flow noise. Almost like a steam generator blowdown, but it’s muted. Maybe inside his hull.”

“He could be flooding,” Quinnivan said.

“If he were flooding, we would have had the flow noise right after the shock wave,” Seagraves said.

“The flow noise transient is dying down, Captain, but now I’ve got torpedo tube doors opening,” Albanese said, his voice excited. “I’ve got torpedo tube ejection transients, multiple doors opening. Multiple torpedo ejections.”

“Recommend firing point procedures, Captain,” Quinnivan said, looking at Seagraves. “We need to open tube doors one and two.”

Seagraves nodded. “Attention in the firecontrol party. Master One is opening doors and firing torpedoes. Firing point procedures, Master One, tubes one through four, three and four in countermeasure mode, tubes one and two in offensive mode. Coordinator, open doors to tubes one and two. Sonar, are you calling ‘torpedo in the water’?”

Albanese held his headphones to his ears as if he were straining to hear. “No, Captain, I hold no torpedo engines. But more door operations and more torpedo ejections.”

“What the hell is he doing?” Seagraves asked.

“He must be jettisoning torpedoes,” Pacino said. “Maybe he had a weapon fuel fire.”

“I didn’t think the Omega II-class had an auto-jettison capability,” Quinnivan said. “Nothing in the intel literature about that.”

“They must have retrofitted that. Nice little feature,” Seagraves mused. “The flow noise transient could have been a fire suppression system. Sonar, you’re sure none of these weapons have engine starts?”

“No engine noises, Captain. Just tube noises and ejection mechanisms.”

“Let’s get back in trail, Mr. Pacino.”

“You might have asked central command permission to deluge and eject all my weapons, Madam First,” Alexeyev said to Lebedev as she rejoined the crew in the central command post.

“I’m sorry, Captain. I honestly thought I was saving the ship.”

“Fortunately, I agree with you, Madam First,” Alexeyev said. “But our lack of weapons is going to impact this mission. As is our loss of the number two screw.”

“What happened to the number two screw, Captain?”

“Ausra’s working on it,” Alexeyev replied. “But the number two propulsion turbine may have thrown a turbine blade, and if it did, it’s dead until we can get into a drydock.”

“As to weapons, sir, we still have a Shkval loaded in tube six, Captain, but you might want to consider jettisoning it as well. Shkval’s are notorious for fuel leaks, and they’re catastrophic.”

“Leave it for now,” Alexeyev said. “Watch Officer, recover from the rig for fire and get ventilation restarted.”

“Yes, sir,” Shvets said, his voice sounding shaky.

“Madam First,” Alexeyev said, “please stop me if I ever want to fire a Gigantskiy at something closer than ten miles out. Preferably twenty. We got lucky this time.”

“Do we have any contact on Hostile One?” Lebedev asked. “The American submarine?”

“Sonar, status of Hostile One?” Alexeyev asked.

“We hold Hostile One on rudder pod sonar behind us, broadband, sir, a repeating transient,” Sobol reported from the port side sonar lineup. “Seems to be a screw noise every revolution.”

Alexeyev looked at Kovalov. “A screw rub? Virginia-class doesn’t have a screw. He has a water turbine propulsor.”

“Could be a bearing problem inside his hull or the shaft seals,” Kovalov said. “Just accept the good news. Now we have the American even on the weak beam of the rear-facing rudder pod sonar. Which means if we’re facing him, we’ll have him on the conformal and the sphere. We no longer need to ping active at him.”

“We won’t have a range on him, though,” Lebedev said. “Not without a passive parallax maneuver. Which isn’t easy under ice.”

“We’ll have to judge his range by his signal strength on the shaft rub, or whatever that noise is,” Alexeyev said. “If I have to fire on him, I’ll hit him with an active sonar pulse to confirm range.”

“If he’s outside ten miles, sir,” Lebedev said, smirking.

“As you said, Madam First, we still have a Shkval. I know from experience, they are quiet effective,” Alexeyev said absently, leaning over the navigation plot. “Navigator, distance to the ice target?”

Vice President Michael Pacino arrived at the secure SCIF conference room adjacent to the White House Situation Room. He placed his pad computer on the table and grabbed a coffee cup from the sideboard and filled it up and glanced at CIA Director Margo Allende, raising an eyebrow.

“No coffee for me, Mr. Vice President,” she said formally. “I’ve had about six cups by now.”

“Let’s start,” Pacino said, taking his seat. He took his presidential daily briefing from CIA alone, rather than with Carlucci, who liked to rush through it, usually multitasking by reading memoranda when CIA was trying to brief him on overnight developments, but Pacino wanted all the details and the opportunity to ask questions. “Any news from up north since the nuclear explosion?” He’d been startled to learn that a nuclear detonation had been detected near the north pole. Startled and filled with a sudden anxiety about Anthony. Was he okay? Had the Omega fired at the New Jersey?

“It happened four hours ago, Mr. Vice President,” Allende said.

“Call me Patch down here,” Pacino said.

“Yes, sir,” Allende replied. “Anyway, the blast created a complete loss of sonar at its target point. A million bubbles from the explosion, so no submarine can approach it using active sonar to feel their way. They call it a ‘blue-out.’ Navy thinks the Omega was probably firing at the ice, trying to break through an ice pressure ridge, but they won’t be able to see if they can get through for another few hours. Admiral Catardi says the explosion also opened up the ice above it to open water, and if that’s the case, the New Jersey can be expected to send us a situation report by a secure radio buoy when they follow the Omega toward the impact point.”

Pacino took a sip of his coffee, wondering what they could do if there were silence from the New Jersey.

“Okay, we’ll revisit this at the Poseidon committee meeting at sixteen hundred,” he said. “What else is in the news?”

“Most of today’s briefing is about the rapprochement of Red China and White China. After the civil wars, Red China became a commercial colossus, with a positive trade balance with every nation it trades with. At the same time, White China developed some of the world’s foremost technology. The White Chinese semiconductor industry is in high gear, and their advancements in AI rival what our Silicon Valley can do. With a new generation of leadership on both sides, much of the memory of the bloody fighting of their civil wars is largely faded. Diplomatic initiatives began in earnest two years ago, and there are rumors coming out of Shanghai and Beijing of a conference on the idea of reunification. They’re setting up a monthlong set of meetings in Geneva, to start next week.”

“Good God,” Pacino said. “That’s all we need, a reunited and monolithic China. But how will they reconcile the communists in Red China with the democracy of White China?”

“Decades later? The communists became less ideological and more capitalistic. Meanwhile, the democracy of the White Chinese became more socialistic. They’re not as far apart as they were twenty years ago. With the Red’s commercial prowess and the White’s technology, they decided they had deep mutual interests.”

“Okay,” Pacino said. “I want the daily brief to highlight any developments. And I want weekly special sessions with me, CIA, and the State Department to go over this. Our diplomacy needs to be in front of this. And invite the Secretary of War as well. A rising unified China will be formidable.”

“Yes, sir,” Allende said.

“What’s next?”

“The Iranians, Patch. That submarine we stole this summer with the fast reactor, the Panther? The Iranians have it in a drydock. They’re fitting it out with a new compartment. We think they’re turning it into a ballistic missile submarine.”

“That’s bad news,” Pacino said, finishing his coffee and putting the mug back on the sideboard. “But that boat, according to Admiral Catardi, was loud as a garbage truck dragging chains. We’d have no problem keeping tabs on it.”

“You’re not going to like this, Mr. Vice — I mean, Patch. There are a swarm of Russian technicians there. From what we can tell, they’re tearing apart the machinery spaces for sound quieting with the latest technology. It’ll be quiet. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Pacino smirked. “Maybe we should have kept it.”

“We tried to convince the president. But he would hear none of it,” she said.

“So, what’s next on your list?”

“North Korea,” Allende said. “Guess who’s started to build an aircraft carrier?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Pacino said. “It would take them ten years to pull that off.”

Allende shook her head. “They built modules, Patch, and assembled them inside buildings away from prying satellite eyes. They built a very large covered drydock where they’re assembling the modules. We and Defense Intelligence agree, and so does ONI, that we’re less than a year away from a North Korean super-carrier.”

The door to the room burst open and six Secret Service agents rushed in and pulled Pacino to his feet.

“Sir, please come with us to the Situation Room,” the senior man said.

“Margo, come with us,” Pacino said to Allende, and when it looked like the agents would object, Pacino glared at the senior man who waved her along with them. “What’s going on?” Pacino asked as they hustled him into the neighboring room.

“President Carlucci’s been shot, sir.”

21

The fund-raising luncheon for American Party Senator Michaela Everett, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, broke up later than scheduled. Everett was under challenge from Governor Leann Meadow of the National Party, and the polls showed them in a near tie. President Carlucci’s speech in support of Everett had been legendary, or at least he thought it had been. His outpouring of support for Everett had surprised the pundits, since he and Everett had clashed several times during his term, most recently over what Everett considered an irresponsible stunt of Carlucci to hijack and steal the Iranian nuclear submarine Panther, but apparently they had had several private sessions and horse-traded, and to the outside world, were now fast friends.

Everett walked with Carlucci as the event broke up, intending to walk him to his presidential limo, nicknamed “The Beast” by the Secret Service. They took a back service entrance to the Watergate Hotel, surrounded by Carlucci’s Secret Service agents, and despite trying to keep their exit point a secret, the press and political supporters lined the sidewalks. The D.C. police had set up a barricade, but it was barely a car length on the other side of The Beast.

As Carlucci emerged into the September sunshine, the crowd erupted in applause and shouts of greeting. Carlucci smiled his brilliant politician’s smile and lifted his arm high over his head to wave at the crowd. It was then the gunshots rang out from Carlucci’s right, and two Secret Service agents tackled the president and threw him into the open doorway of The Beast while two other agents targeted the shooter and fired into his chest. The assassin was dead before he hit the concrete of the sidewalk and by then, The Beast was accelerating toward George Washington University Hospital.

The agents placed Carlucci carefully up on the bench seat, examining him to see how badly he was hit.

“How bad is it?” Carlucci asked.

“Mr. President, you’re shot twice, both chest shots,” the agent said. “Stay with us.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think of going anywhere,” Carlucci said, trying to smile.

The Beast screeched to a halt at the emergency portico of the hospital, sirens wailing and beacons flashing from the escort motorcycles and police cars. A gurney waited for him and the doctors and nurses quickly pulled Carlucci out of the limo and onto the gurney. Once in the elevator, an ER nurse initiated an intravenous feed, puncturing the flesh of his right hand and hanging the bottle on a post above the president’s body. The nurse looked at him with deep concern.

“We’re taking you to surgery now, sir,” she said. The elevator rose on the ride to the surgical suite. When the doors opened, Carlucci found himself in the outer chamber of the operating room, surrounded by doctors.

One of them leaned over him. “I’m Dr. Dan Evans,” he said. “I’ll be doing the operation, Mr. President. Hang on, we’re going to get you through this, sir.”

Carlucci smiled. “Dr. Evans, I hope you’re a member of the American Party.”

The surgeon looked seriously at the president. “Mr. President, today we are all members of the American Party.”

Deputy Chairman of the FSB, Colonel General Avdey Ozols, glumly surveyed the large crowd in the courtyard of the Kremlin, the afternoon shadows of the Annunciation Cathedral and the Cathedral of the Archangel growing across the sand-colored bricks. Against Ozols’ emphatic warning, and the warning of the SBP security detail chief, President Vostov insisted on giving his traditional state of the union speech outside. Vostov insisted that the danger was gone now that the traitorous SBP sniper had been dispatched to the next world, and he desperately wanted to show his strength to the Russian people. What better way, he’d asked, than to give the speech outside in a large supportive crowd? Of course, the members of that crowd were vetted, a large number of them working for FSB and SBP, some of them armed, others not, but all wearing discreet communications gear with tiny, flesh-colored earpieces and microphones on their collars with battery packs worn in the small of their backs.

Suddenly there was a loud chopping and buzzing sound.

What—

Ozols lunged his right hand into his jacket to expose the holster of his MP-443 Grach, the weapon small enough to avoid bulging out of his jacket, but in 9 mm caliber for stopping power. His fingers closed on the grip.

the fuck—

Ozols pulled the weapon out of its holster and cleared the fabric of his suit coat and began to bring it to point upward.

is that fucking —

Ozols brought his left hand to the grip to meet the right, his right index finger inside the trigger guard. He aimed.

thing?

Ozols pulled the trigger once, then a second time, the weapon recoil making it jump in his hands.

And where the hell did it come from?

As he began to pull the trigger on his third round, the SBP sniper rifles joined his attack, their bullets slamming into the thing.

Is that thing down yet?

It fell to the bricks, its rotors smashing into fragments, its right-side gun still firing. Ozols ran toward it, continuing to shoot at it until his magazine was empty, and the thing lay there on the courtyard bricks, smoking, its right-side gun finally stopping.

What the fuck is this thing?

Ozols reached the helicopter drone, the unit’s bulbous front end two meters long and a meter tall. It had a tail rotor and tail boom like a normal helicopter, but was miniaturized and robotically driven. Where a helicopter would have skids to land on, this had struts that held the right-side and left-side rifles. The right-side weapon was a 9 mm automatic rifle, fed by a large magazine. The left-side unit lay under the wreckage, but Ozols could see it was a belt-fed machine gun. By the look of it, it must have jammed before it could get any rounds off.

Get the fuck away from it before it—

The helicopter drone’s self-destruct explosives lit off, scattering pieces of the drone in an orange ball of flames that turned to billowing black smoke. Ozols had been blown backward into the crowd, several bodies breaking his fall. He regained his feet, checking that he had no broken bones, but there was a piece of shrapnel that had penetrated his left cheek and he was pouring blood onto his suit and shirt.

He turned toward President Vostov’s lectern to see what damage the drone had managed to do. A crowd was bending over a place a few meters away from the lectern. It had to be Vostov, Ozols thought. He made his way through the crowd and got to Vostov just as the sirens of the ambulances wailed from their staging area at the Ivanovskaya Square. The president had been hit, what looked like twice in the chest, but he was still alive, grimacing and putting his hands to his bloody chest’s right side. Three of Vostov’s aides were hit as well, one of them taking a bullet in the forehead.

Ozols looked back at the wreckage of the helicopter drone. It must have flown in from the Moskva River side and hidden itself in the glare of the sun, obscured by Taymitskaya Tower until the last second of its flight. He shook his head. It was damned lucky only the magazine-fed rifle had functioned. If the belt-fed machine gun had fired, it would likely have torn Vostov’s body in half.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to pass in slow motion, then blur to a fast-forwarded film, then slow to a crawl again. Ozols found himself in the prime minister’s conference room, his cheek bandaged and stitched, a new suit and shirt replacing the bloody garments. He was seated with the council of ministers and other senior members of Vostov’s staff.

Prime Minister Platon Melnik called for quiet in the room. As Vostov’s nominal second-in-command, Melnik would step in as the Russian president until such a time as they knew Vostov’s medical condition. Melnik wasted no time in barraging the men in the room with questions.

“What’s the president’s status?” he barked.

“Sir, President Vostov is in the VIP facility of Moscow Central Clinical Hospital,” FSB Chairman, General Gennadi Sevastyan, said quickly. “He’s been shot twice. Nine millimeter rounds. One in his upper right lung, the other just below his heart. He’ll be in surgery for hours.”

“What was this thing, Sevastyan?” Melnik asked, annoyed.

“Our Science Directorate believes this is a Chinese-designed and manufactured drone.”

“Red China or White China?”

“Sir, that’s the thing. We and SVR’s Science Directorate both think it was designed by the White Chinese and fabricated by the Reds. They cooperated on this unholy thing.”

“How the hell did it penetrate Moscow airspace? And get over the Kremlin wall without being detected?”

Sevastyan took a deep breath. “Our radars are tuned for bigger and faster things, sir. Remember when that kid landed a Cessna in Red Square in the 80s? Since then we screen for slower aircraft — and lower altitude aircraft — but this is even smaller than our radars would seek. Plus, it was assembled somewhere close. We think its entire flight was only a few hundred meters.”

The door to the room swung open and an FSB aide to Sevastyan hurried into the room, to Sevastyan’s seat. She handed him a pad computer, whispered something in his ear and rushed back out of the room.

“Mr. Prime Minister,” Sevastyan said, “we have captured an individual who had in her possession a controller. It looks like it could be the one that controlled the flight of this drone.”

“Did you get her alive?”

“Yes, sir. We’re bringing her to the Lubyanka now. Her name is Jingmai Lin.”

“Is she from White China or Red?”

“She had Shanghai identification on her, making her from White China,” Sevastyan said, putting on his reading glasses and peering at the pad computer. “But she has identification to enter Zhongnanhai, the central headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council of Red China.”

Melnik sat back in his seat for a moment. “The Reds and Whites are really cooperating? To assassinate the president of a superpower?”

“That would seem to be the case, sir,” Sevastyan said.

Melnik turned to Lana Lilya, the acerbic head of the SVR, the foreign intelligence branch of what used to be the KGB. Lilya was in her mid-forties, with straight, sleek, dirty blonde hair cut in a chin-length bob. She had a pretty oval face with piercing blue eyes, and she was unusually tall, often towering over the other ministers. She crossed her arms over her chest and pursed her lips, her expression a deep intimidating scowl.

“Mr. Prime Minister, we at SVR are becoming convinced the Red Chinese and White Chinese are making moves toward reunification. We have no timeline on this, but conferences are scheduled in Geneva in the upcoming weeks.”

“I’m surprised,” Melnik said. “How many millions of people died in their first civil war? How many tens of millions in their second one?”

“That was a generation ago, sir,” Lilya said. “Those wars were fought by the fathers and grandfathers of those in power now. Their senior government officials are liaising with each other. And we know their intelligence agencies have begun to collaborate. As can be seen with today’s problem.”

Melnik nodded. He looked at Kuzma Zima, the former prime minister before Melnik, who was now the foreign minister.

“Minister Zima,” Melnik said, “I want to see the ambassadors of Red China and White China in my office in three hours. And I want an emergency session convened in front of the U.N. Security Council by the end of the week.” He looked back at Lana Lilya. “Madam Lilya, I want a special meeting convened this evening to go over covert options for a counterstrike at both Beijing and Shanghai.”

“Yes, sir,” Lilya said. “We’ll be prepared.”

“Now, I want to go over where we are with the Omega submarine and the Poseidon torpedoes. Minister Konstantinov, what can you tell me?”

Defense Minister Marshal Radoslav Mikhail Konstantinov sat up straight in his chair. “Mr. Prime Minister,” he said, his voice gravelly, his hand shaking as he poured tea for himself, “The Belgorod fired a Gigantskiy nuclear torpedo at the ice wall obstructing her progress eastward toward the Bering Strait.”

“That was six hours ago,” Melnik said, anger in his voice. “What’s happened since then?”

“The nuclear detonation created a very large bubble field, sir, which is impenetrable to Belgorod’s onboard sonars. She had to wait for it all to calm down. She then proceeded to the ice wall and found open water on the near side from the explosion. The target of the torpedo was blown up, but the ice structure continues, perhaps for miles. So continuing on the previous path is not possible. Her captain surfaced at the open water and transmitted a status report. Apparently, the explosion caused some ship damage. Only one side of his engineroom is working, so he’s maneuvering on one screw. He reported a fire in his torpedo room compartment, requiring him to jettison all his conventional torpedoes. He still has one supercavitating Shkval torpedo and one Gigantskiy nuclear torpedo, but that is all he has left. He said he sees no viability in continuing his present track. He requested to take a path south to the Russian coast, outside the icecap and marginal ice zones, and proceed east that way, or preferably, to abandon the eastward passage and simply turn around and return west to the Arctic Circle of the North Atlantic Ocean and go to the American east coast that way.”

Melnik glared at the defense minister. “I thought the Navy was worried that going that way into the North Atlantic would alert the Americans with their sonar tripwires laid on the ocean floor between Iceland and England.”

“They were, sir, but Belgorod reported that they have been followed into the Arctic Ocean by an American submarine. So their stealth is already lost. The secrecy of the mission is compromised.”

“This whole scheme was ridiculous,” Melnik said. He shook his head in disgust. “If President Vostov asks, I never said that. Minister Konstantinov, aren’t these Poseidon torpedoes self-guided? They’re autonomous? Isn’t that why we spent billions on the program?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct.”

“So why do we need our giant sub and its mini-sub to deploy them?”

“Well, sir, they are autonomous, but not all that smart. They may deploy themselves in locations that won’t have optimal results.”

“No one is talking about blowing up American harbors,” Melnik said sharply. “This was all sold to us on the basis of it just being a bargaining chip with the Americans, and to show strength domestically. So who the hell cares if they are in the quote, non-optimal, unquote locations?”

“There’s another factor, sir, which is, if they self-deploy, we won’t know their exact location if we need to withdraw them. Or God help us all if we have to detonate them.”

“You’re telling me you might lose these things?”

“Well, they do have a way to respond to a sonar signal that is seeking their location. If hit with a particular sonar signal, they can ping back to indicate their location. We’d use that module if we needed to withdraw them. If we needed to detonate them, we’d just broadcast the command detonate sonar signal until the Poseidon heard it. Not very reliable, and the commandos pinging the weapon could be apprehended by the American Coast Guard or Navy.”

“Gentlemen, it’s time to end this madness,” Melnik said. “Transmit a message to the Belgorod to launch the Poseidons from where they are now.”

“What about the American submarine following them?”

“Didn’t the Americans just sink three of our submarines this summer? They wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on, diplomatically, if we were to sink their submarine. Tell the Belgorod captain to sink the goddamned American. Then transmit a message when the Poseidons are launched at their targets and the American submarine is destroyed, and when he does, tell him to return to base.” Melnik looked at Lana Lilya. “I’m so tired of this stupid operation. God alone knows what Vostov was thinking.” He looked at Defense Minister Konstantinov. “You got that directive, Minister?”

“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister,” Mikhail Konstantinov said, frowning. “But I am not sure now is the time to hit this panica knopka—this panic switch. I believe we can continue the mission without engaging in the act of war of sinking an American submarine. All they have done is snoop on us. They show no hostile intentions. The Belgorod can turn to the west and prepare to enter the North Atlantic to shoot their Status-6 torpedoes. The Status-6 transit speed is much higher than any American or NATO sub. So, there is no need to engage the American submarine.”

Melnik’s face got beet red. He stood, pointed at the defense minister and he raised his voice. “Minister Konstantinov, as acting president of the Russian Federation, I gave you a direct goddamned order. You will follow my order or I will have you placed under arrest and give the order to your deputy. Am I fully understood?”

“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister,” Konstantinov said, his face suddenly red. “I will be calling Admiral Zhigunov as soon as we adjourn here.”

“Very well. This meeting is adjourned,” Melnik said. “I’d like the foreign minister to stay behind.”

Vice President Michael Pacino frowned at the gathered military and civilian officials in the Situation Room. Four hours before, the twenty-fifth amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been invoked. The attorney general had handed him the official document that officially installed Pacino as head of state until Carlucci was well enough to take over, and the chief justice had sworn him in as president, but he’d be damned if anyone would address him as “Mr. President.” The first time that had happened, he had glared and said that he was only keeping Carlucci’s seat warm and ordered the staffer to call him the vice president. After that, he’d convened what Carlucci called the “Poseidon Committee,” but he’d added the secretary of state to the attendance list.

“What’s new since the nuclear explosion?” he asked. He looked at Margo Allende, who had deep, dark circles under her eyes. It was likely she hadn’t slept in two days, he thought, but then, neither had he.

“We received a situation report from the New Jersey,” Allende said, “which she transmitted by secure radio buoy at the open water formed by the explosion.”

“Let me see it,” Pacino said, glancing down at his pad computer. He read the message, then reread it. “So the Omega shot a nuke at the ice, then jettisoned his weapons, at least the ones inside his hull. He surfaced in open water. Probably to radio home to report on his damage. Maybe to ask if he should continue on with this odd mission. New Jersey says their periscopes are out of commission and the radio masts won’t come out of the sail. They think their VLF receiver is still functional. But they reported they themselves are making noise now with every shaft revolution. Damage from the explosion. Their own-ship noise reportedly got worse with time.” He paused, thinking some unpleasant and dark thoughts. New Jersey must have taken a bad hit to their thrust bearing, and not only was that something that couldn’t be fixed at sea, it could prove catastrophic by immobilizing the sub under thick ice. “Admiral Catardi, let’s consider options. One is to order the New Jersey to break trail and return to the UK base at Faslane.”

“Mr. Vice President,” Rob Catardi said, “if we do that, we lose sight of the position of the Belgorod. If New Jersey can manage, I’d like her to try to stay in trail of the Omega until we can get her relieved on-station by one or more relief submarines. We no longer can count on President Carlucci’s — and your — relationship with Vostov. This new guy, Melnik, he’s a hotheaded hawk. He could order Belgorod to turn around and take the short route to the east coast and deploy these Poseidons much sooner than we’ve previously estimated.”

“Admiral,” Pacino said, frowning, “seeing as how these Poseidons are vicious weapons of war, on their way to American shores, a second option is if I were to order the Navy to just shoot down the Omega. How would that scenario play out?”

Catardi’s jaw clenched. “Mr. Vice President, before the Magnum explosion, I would have advised you to make the order to shoot down Belgorod, but that nuclear bomb changes everything. Sir, my worry is for the safety of the New Jersey. Shooting torpedoes under ice is risky business on a good day, and we don’t know if all New Jersey’s systems are fully functional. We’re not even sure her VLF loop radio will receive an ELF order to shoot the Omega. And we don’t even know if New Jersey’s torpedoes are okay — the Magnum detonation could have damaged them, in a way the crew can’t detect, and one of them could blow up in the torpedo tube or in the torpedo room, or even circle back on the New Jersey. Those scenarios are catastrophic. And even if we’re successful shooting a torpedo at Belgorod, the Russians will hear it and react with a Magnum counterfire. We’re fairly certain the weapon jettison operation only ejected conventional torpedoes, so we believe the Omega has one more Magnum. After the damage of the first Magnum, New Jersey simply can’t survive a second detonation. It would be a ship-killer. I’m sorry, Mr. Vice President.” Catardi looked down at the table, obviously miserable. “I know we were all gung-ho to sink the Belgorod, but with the New Jersey so damaged, it’s too risky. We need to dispatch other submarines to the ice to sink the Omega.”

“Admiral, what do you think about the idea to have New Jersey send the sonar signal to detonate the mines that the SEALs placed?”

“Those mines probably fell off and are on the bottom, sir,” Catardi said. “I doubt the shock wave from a nuke was something they could survive.”

“We could try.”

“Sir, if New Jersey pings on the Belgorod with the mine detonation signal, the Belgorod would definitely counterdetect her. Same problem as if New Jersey shoots a torpedo.”

“New Jersey’s shaft rub problem has probably already given them away. You remember what a ‘PCO waltz’ is, Rob?”

“Yes, Mr. Vice President.”

Pacino cursed to himself. If only President Carlucci had accepted his recommendation to sink the Omega before, they wouldn’t be in this situation. He was still tempted to force the Navy to order New Jersey to fire on and sink the Omega, but Admiral Catardi’s words rang in his ears. New Jersey was limping and barely alive. She couldn’t be counted on to survive an attack on Belgorod. At least, he thought, he’d be saving Anthony by holding back on ordering a torpedo attack on the Russians.

“Okay, people let’s reconvene this meeting in four hours,” Pacino said. “Between now and then, Admiral Catardi, I want you to equip and mobilize two attack submarines and send them to the Arctic Ocean, to the last known position of the New Jersey. And get Navy and Air Force search-and-rescue aircraft overflying the area of the Belgorod and New Jersey positions twenty-four hours a day until further notice. That’s all people. I’d like the CIA director to remain behind.”

As the crowd left the room, Pacino buzzed the wardroom for a carafe of fresh coffee. When the coffee came, he looked across the table at Allende.

“Do we know anything about Carlucci’s would-be assassin?”

“Red Chinese national,” Allende said. “It’s unfortunate he died, but even if we hadn’t hit him with bullets, he’d be dead. We found a broken ampule of potassium cyanide in his mouth.”

“I’ll be talking to Red China’s ambassador with Klugendorf tomorrow,” Pacino said, but he had doubts about the secretary of state, who seemed too conciliatory.

“My people are working on options for something to even up the score on the Red Chinese. When would you like that presented to you?”

“Any time tomorrow,” Pacino said. “But a tit-for-tat on this is a waste of time. I know, we have to do something. Let’s just see what your options look like. Meanwhile, what do you know about the hit attempt on Vostov?”

“It’s not good, Patch. A helicopter drone was employed, engineered by Shanghai and manufactured by Beijing, also operated by a White Chinese national whom the Russians captured — alive, if our intel is correct.”

“That’s not good.”

“The drone’s AI system was driven by human brain cells,” Allende continued. “Organic AI. Didn’t you try doing that with that Tigershark torpedo?”

Pacino shook his head. “We didn’t use human brain cells. We used canine neurons. The resulting Tigershark brain couldn’t be controlled. A Tigershark torpedo just tries to kill anything in its seeker window. It was a suicide weapon.”

“Probably the Chinese drone was controlled with conventional AI to get it in position, or just by human control, and then the organic system kicked in to target Vostov and kill him. But one of the two guns on the drone jammed. If it had worked, we’d be living in a different reality.”

“Talk about a different reality. Tell me what you think about the idea of attacking the Omega, even with the New Jersey damaged.”

“Patch,” Allende said, putting her hand on his forearm, “if it were my decision and my son were on the New Jersey, I’d go with Catardi’s recommendation. Let the New Jersey linger there and keep an eye on what the Omega is doing until a relief submarine arrives on-station. I know you want that Russian sub on the bottom, but the cost is too high. He’s far away from where he’d need to be to deploy the Poseidons. We have time. We can get other subs there before this crisis gets any worse. We just need to hope the New Jersey can hold out until the cavalry arrives.”

“Yeah,” Pacino said. “You’re probably right.” His stomach growled. “Crisis or no crisis, I’m hungry. Are you?”

“Too bad we can’t go to the Irish pub,” Allende said.

“But we can order takeout,” he said.

Colonel Vanya Nika, GRU, on detached duty to the FSB, the officer who’d been in tactical command of the raid on the GUM mall hostage situation, cinched up his red tie and examined himself in the full-length mirror. He decided it looked good with the dark gray suit. He glanced at his shoes, and they were flawlessly gleaming and shiny.

He walked from the bedroom to the loud sounds of the kitchen at breakfast. His son was arguing with his older sister, and the baby babbled in her highchair. He smiled at his wife Katyusha and kissed her on her cheek. She gave him a flustered smile in return.

“Will you be on time tonight?” she asked.

“It will probably be late,” Nika said. “The boys want to meet out for a drink, which will lead to food, and more drink.”

“Be careful, darling,” Katy said. “I don’t like you out on the streets late at night.”

“It’ll be fine,” Nika said. “I’ll have my driver standing by.”

“I’ll wait up for you,” she said. “You can tell me all the awful things you and your boys said and did.”

Nika knew there was no sense arguing with her, that she was a tired young mother who needed her sleep. She always told him she’d rather talk to him than sleep. And she was enthusiastic for more than just conversation, he thought, with the three children as proof.

He kissed his older daughter, ruffled his son’s hair, and waved a kiss at his messy infant daughter, who would have ruined his suit had he gotten within kissing range. He left the apartment by the front door, descended the steps from the second floor, and left the building by the front entrance. A black town car was parked at the curb, his driver, a young junior sergeant, standing at the door handle, waiting for him.

The driver came to attention and saluted. “Good morning, Colonel.”

“Good morning, Sasha,” Nika said, smiling at the youth. “Lubyanka, please.”

It was a pleasant ride through the city, the warmth of September not yet giving way to the coming cold of October in Moscow. The traffic was light, and they arrived at the Lubyanka before 0750.

Nika left the car, entered the wide entrance doors and submitted his identification to the biometric scan of his index finger’s fingerprint and his right retina. He was waved on to an elevator lobby, where he entered an elevator car to the subbasement. Once there, he walked down a cinderblock walled corridor to a door to the locker room, where he carefully removed his suit, stripping down to his underwear and socks, and donned the freshly washed and pressed coveralls left in his locker for him. He put on his heavy black boots, zipped up the coveralls and checked his reflection at the sinks, nodding at himself.

He left the locker room and walked down a long hallway until he reached Room 101, where again he put his index finger on the print reader and stared into the retinal scanner. The door clicked and whooshed open. Nika walked into the anteroom of the interrogation facility, past rows of tools and implements. He could already hear the screaming from the other side of what was supposed to be a sound-proof door twenty feet away. He opened the door and quickly shut it behind him.

A Chinese woman was in the center of the room, strapped into a heavy wooden chair. The arms of the chair flattened to small tables, where her hands were immobilized by finger-holds. He could see that all her fingernails had been removed. The screaming was intense, he thought, reaching to a bin on a sideboard and finding ear plugs. He put them in and looked up to see the night watch officer, Major Yevgeny Borislav.

“Good morning, Yevgeny,” Nika said, speaking loudly to be heard over the screaming. “Any progress?”

“Nothing yet,” Borislav said. “We finally stopped asking questions. We let her marinate in her pain. She should be closer to breaking soon.”

“I’ve got it from here, Yevgeny. Thanks.”

Nika made tea for himself while he waited for his technician to arrive. GRU Senior Sergeant Felix Sanya arrived a few minutes later. Nika asked about how things were at home for the younger man, whose wife had just given birth, and neither one of them had had more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep for the last month. Nika sympathized, laughing at the craziness of parenting. Finally they were ready to get to business.

“Let’s try dunking her,” Nika said.

The seat Jingmai Lin was strapped into was multifunctional. It could be lifted up by a small bridge crane and the mechanism could turn the chair completely upside down. The crane would then bring Lin to a large sink where the chair could be lowered, immersing Lin in the water up to her chest.

Sergeant Sanya operated the chair and brought the inverted chair over the water. Nika leaned in close to her, but rather than make eye contact, she clamped her eyes shut.

“Who is your controller?” Nika asked. “Who is your contact in Russia? Or contacts?”

Jingmai Lin kept her eyes clamped shut.

“Take her down, Sergeant,” Nika said, glancing at his watch, figuring thirty seconds should be a good starting point.

The chair lowered and Lin’s head submerged into the water up to her waist. Nika looked at his watch, and at thirty seconds after he’d ordered her dunked, he gave Sanya a thumbs-up signal. Sanya hauled the chair out of the water.

Nika looked at Lin’s face, dismayed to find her unconscious. Usually, losing consciousness wouldn’t happen until the dunking lasted ninety seconds, or two minutes. He felt her throat for a pulse, but there was none.

“What the hell?” he shouted to Sanya, who brought the chair back to its starting position. Nika slapped Lin several times, but she didn’t respond. He checked her mouth, and a broken glass ampule fell out.

“I’ll be goddamned, she took a suicide dose. Didn’t the night shift check her mouth for suicide pills in her teeth?”

“We thought they did, Colonel,” Sanya said. “It could have been back in her cheek or under her tongue. Can we revive her?”

Nika sniffed at Lin’s mouth. “It’s cyanide. So no. It’s over. I’ll make the report to the third floor,” he said. “Take her to the morgue and have her cleaned up. There might be some value in her body. The White Chinese might give us some concession in exchange for it.”

It had been a long shot, Nika thought, as he discarded his coveralls in the laundry bin and dressed himself in his suit. Still, it would have been career enhancing to have gotten a confession from the White Chinese woman. They could have broken open the Chinese cell operating in Moscow. But at least her attempt to kill Vostov had failed. The news was that Vostov had come through surgery and was resting comfortably. Nika approved. He wasn’t much of a fan of that creep Melnik, he thought.

President Dmitri Vostov operated the switch to raise his hospital bed to sit up straighter. His new staffer, Irina Kovak, handed him the phone.

“The White House switchboard is putting you through to President Carlucci,” she said.

He waited a moment, the line clicking softly for some time. “What time is it in Washington?” he asked.

“It’s 1930 there, sir. 0330 here.”

“Let’s hope he’s awake and not taking a nap,” Vostov said.

“Mr. President?” Vito Paul Carlucci’s voice came over the connection. He sounded tired and weak, Vostov thought.

“Mr. President,” Vostov said. “I was glad to hear you survived and that your surgery went well.”

“Thank you, Dimmi. And I was greatly encouraged that you came through your own surgery.”

“In a manner of speaking, Paul, we both dodged a bullet. Although in a literal sense, we didn’t dodge them at all.”

“I think we have a mutual problem, Dimmi,” Carlucci said.

“Yes, we do, Paul. When things return to normal,” Vostov said, “we should talk about our good friends in White and Red China.” Vostov coughed, and waved over his aide to give him water.

“We will, Dimmi. We definitely will.”

“But Paul, I wasn’t calling about China. I was calling to give you, what do you Americans call it, a ‘head’s up,’ I believe.”

“Yes? Go ahead, Dimmi.”

“I heard from my defense minister that Prime Minister Melnik just gave an order to the Navy to relay to our Omega class submarine Belgorod under the polar icecap. Belgorod reported that they were being followed by an American submarine. Melnik ordered Belgorod to attack and sink the American submarine.”

There was silence on the connection for a moment. When Carlucci spoke, his voice was choked with emotion. “Mr. President, I thank you will all my heart for this information.”

“Paul, I owed you a favor. You saved my life.” Vostov chuckled. “That was an assassination attempt ago. Plus, your vice president — I heard his son is on the American submarine that followed my Belgorod under the ice. I don’t want the vice president’s son hurt or killed.”

“I guarantee I am conveying Vice President Pacino’s deepest thanks as well,” Carlucci said. “I should let you rest, Dimmi.”

“It has been a pleasure to speak to you, Mr. President,” Vostov concluded formally. “Good-bye and I leave you with my best wishes for your return to full health.”

“And my wishes for your health, Mr. President,” Carlucci said. “Good-bye.”

The connection ended and Vostov handed the phone back to Irina, wondering if he had just doomed his own submarine Belgorod with this phone call. He shook his head. Probably not, he thought. Belgorod was armed with a one-megaton Gigantskiy torpedo. The American submarine would just turn tail and run home, he thought. It was, after all, the only logical thing to do.

Vice President Michael Pacino paced the Oval Office as the early evening’s emergent domestic policy session continued, becoming impatient with the agenda of internal problems that were paraded in front of him. He had developed a newfound respect for Carlucci and his ability to deal with the minutiae of domestic policy. The infighting between cabinet members was akin to kindergarten, Pacino mused. The office politics were intense. In the middle of a debate about funding for an education initiative, a senior military aide entered the room and hurried up to Pacino.

“Secure phone call from President Carlucci,” he said, handing Pacino a secure phone.

Pacino took the phone and left the Oval Office, shutting the door to the president’s study.

“Sir,” Pacino said. “Mr. President. How are you feeling?”

“Good, Patch, on the mend, but I called you urgently because I just got off with Vostov.”

Pacino listened for a moment, his expression a deepening fury. “I understand, Mr. President. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get to the joint chiefs and the Navy.” He hung up on Carlucci and lunged for the phone on the massive desk.

“White House operator, sir,” the female voice said instantly.

“Get me Admiral Catardi immediately, and if you can, patch General Zaka in with us, but don’t delay getting me with Catardi while you look for Zaka.”

“Please stand by, sir,” the operator said.

Pacino leaned on the desk, his eyes shut, thinking of Anthony.

“Admiral Catardi,” Rob Catardi said into the phone.

“Admiral Catardi, it’s Pacino.”

“General Zaka is here with you both,” Zaka’s voice rasped.

“Yes, Mr. Vice President,” Catardi said.

“Admiral, Vostov just told Carlucci that Belgorod got orders to sink the New Jersey. I know what we discussed before, but now we have no choice but to take the risk. Now we have to hope that New Jersey can survive shooting torpedoes at the Omega. Admiral, I’m ordering you to radio the New Jersey to attack and sink the Belgorod by any means necessary. That includes employment of nuclear weapons, if there’s a situation that can make good use of them. Does New Jersey already have nuclear release authority?”

There was a second’s silence as Catardi wrapped his mind around what the vice president had ordered.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “New Jersey was sent from Faslane with full nuclear release authority. I will radio New Jersey immediately with orders to sink the Belgorod.”

“Once that’s done, you and General Zaka report to the Situation Room. We’re going to watch this operation from there.”