Piranha: Firing Point

Chapter 3 Wednesday October 27

Vice Admiral Michael Pacino lifted his eyes upward, past the flank of the submarine to the structure of the ship’s tail towering over his head. The top of the rudder rose over seven stories high relative to the floating drydock’s deck. The ship was huge and graceful from this angle, the clean lines of her hull and the sharp edges of her tail section making her seem to lunge forward to the sea, even suspended motionlessly on the dock’s blocks.

The new ship was beautiful, much of her Pacino’s own design. Yet somehow today that thought held no magic for the admiral.

Pacino stood over six feet tall, thin and gaunt in his lightweight khakis and black shipyard boots. His white hardhat was painted with the crossed anchors and eagle of a Navy officer, three stars of his rank posted above, the legend below reading commander unified submarine command. He wore the three silver stars of flag rank on his collars, with a gold dolphin submariner’s pin above his left pocket. He wore a white gold Annapolis ring on his left ring finger, a scratched and worn Rolex diving watch on his wrist. The skin of his arms and face looked tanned, but actually had been damaged from a frostbite injury during an Arctic mission that had gone wrong.

His face would have been handsome had he weighed ten or twenty more pounds. As it was, his cheekbones seemed overly pronounced, making his large green eyes seem startling, his lips too full, his nose too straight. His hair was white, contrasting with his black eyebrows and dark skin, and his otherwise young appearance. Adding to the effect were the deep lines around Pacino’s eyes, as if he had spent decades at sea — perhaps on the windblown deck of a square-rigged sailing vessel. When people met him for the first time, they invariably stared at him, trying to read the conflicting signals of his age. His tall, wiry frame, the shape of his face, and the tone of his voice were those of a vigorous man in his late thirties, while his hair and skin brought to mind a fisherman in his sixties.

Not that it mattered, he thought. He tried to force the next thought from his mind, but it was impossible. He was forty-five years old and he felt like he was ninety-five. Today marked the one-year anniversary since the phone call. His new bride, Eileen, had been driving up from Florida to meet him in Virginia Beach. Sometime after midnight on a deserted section of Interstate 95 in North Carolina, a drunk heading the wrong direction in the fast lane had struck Eileen’s car at 105 miles an hour. She had been rushed by helicopter to an emergency room in Rocky Mount, but by the time the chopper landed on the roof she was gone. The phone call had come ten minutes later, finding Pacino at his desk at USUBCOM Headquarters, plowing through his Email so he could take some time off with Eileen. He had heard the video phone buzzing and had clicked in, assuming that it. was her. Instead the concerned face of a North Carolina state trooper appeared on the other end.

Somehow Pacino knew what had happened the moment he saw the man’s face.

Since then Pacino had been sleepwalking through his life and through his job. He had been the commander of the Unified Submarine Force for three years when the call had come, barely a year after the Japanese blockade. After Eileen’s funeral in Boca Raton, Pacino began to spend his days and nights at work, in the office, in meetings, on his commanders’ submarines, in training centers, inspecting ships, giving briefings on the new NSSN attack-submarine program, testifying before Congress.

But he was conscious of none of it. He would wake up at three in the morning and run on the beach— seven, ten, twelve miles, until his chest was tight and his legs burned with pain. Then he would come back to the Sandbridge beach house and pump weights for two hours, then do a treadmill for an hour. His aide wondered aloud if he was trying to kill himself with exercise, but he waved the idea off.

He had met Eileen when he was in a hospital ship cot, blinded in the sinking of the USS Reagan. She had been the nurse aboard the Mount Whitney, and had spent her shifts and her off-shifts talking to him, bringing him back. He had been going through the most terrible time in his life to date, after his divorce from Janice and separation from his son. Tony, and he was certain that a relationship was not in his future. Yet he realized he had feelings for her long before he had set eyes on her.

She was intelligent, funny, and warm, and he felt like he knew her — she seemed familiar to him after he had talked to her for only a few minutes. Best of all, she seemed to feel the same about him.

They were married at the U.S. Naval Academy chapel under the crossed swords of twelve of his closest friends.

Life seemed perfect — he commanded the most advanced submarine force in the world, and he shared it with the great love of his life.

Now that she was gone, he couldn’t seem to get on with his life. Eileen was his last thought before going to sleep, on the nights he could sleep, and she was his first thought when he woke in the morning. It felt like he had a case of walking pneumonia or the flu, a case he couldn’t shake.

The only solution he could think of to make her fade from his life was to work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. Today was Sunday. Pacino had spent the entire day at the floating drydock, working, trying not to think.

Pacino looked away from the vessel and over at the walls of the drydock. The floating drydock was normally an open-box structure, with no top or walls on the fore and aft ends, but for this work the shipyard had installed lightweight fiberglass panels on the drydock roof and end walls. The panels did keep out the rain, but they had been installed for one reason only — security. He did not want any pictures taken of this vessel, not by the press, not by photographers in small aircraft, not by spy satellites. This ship was the SSNX, SSN for submersible ship nuclear, X for experimental. The SSNX was the first ship of the NSSN-class, in which the N stood for new, the U.S. Navy’s uninspired name for both the new attack submarine herself and the multi-trillion-dollar program for several dozen of them that would take the fleet well into the century.

The terms NSSN and SSNX had never been replaced with the name of the class — as previous classes had. Usually the initial ship name would label this family of identical ships, as had the Seawolf for the Seawolf class. But this ship would remain simply SSNX, as Pacino had insisted, resisting the urgings of his staff and the brass to lend the program a flashy name that would capture the imagination of voters and Congress alike. Pacino had continued to hold out, telling the Navy hierarchy that this ship was too important to rush to a name that was wrong. Names were vital, he argued — just ask the men who had named the Titanic or the Hindenburg. So, like a baby that went nameless until his parents could look at him, so did the new construction ship remain, as the banners and signs read, simply the USS SSNX.

But even without a real name, SSNX was breathtaking, from her smooth bullet nose forward past her sleek, tapered conning tower “sail” aft to the raked-back tail fin with the teardrop-shaped pod on top, the tail fin rising up over the hull as high as the thirty-foot sail. As the ship progressed in her construction Pacino began to feel a longing to take her to sea himself, although command at sea was in his past. He was a fleet commander now. Yet the feeling of wanting to return to the sea was the only positive emotion he had felt in these terrible days.

He checked his watch, not surprised to find that it was nearing eight at night. He had been there since early morning, and with the frantic schedule of Monday meetings, it made no sense for him to stay. But then, given the choice of pacing the dock or lying awake staring at the ceiling, perhaps this was the best option. Slowly Pacino climbed a steep steel staircase to the high wall of the dock and stood at the highest platform to see the ship from above. The shape of the hull seemed comforting, the smooth bullet of the ship seeming to glide through the water even as she lay there, high and dry.

That was another reason he was here at the Pearl Harbor facility, fitting out the SSNX rather than completing it on the East Coast. There were too many memories of Eileen in Norfolk and Groton, Connecticut— where the hull of the SSNX had been laid down. He had insisted that the ship be completed in Hawaii, and since he was now the bureaucracy’s equivalent of an eight-hundred-pound gorilla, the hull had been shifted to the portable floating drydock and towed here for its completion. The hull and mechanical systems were now complete; the remaining work centered around the electronics, the combat control system, and the weapons tubes. Once the latter construction was finished, the ship would be lowered into the water of the harbor, the interior work continuing for the next year. That gave him a year to try to rebuild his life before he would have to return East. Maybe by then he would be strong enough, but for now he would stay and finish this submarine. He told himself that when it was done, commissioned, and turned over to the fleet, he would step down as the admiral-in-command of the submarine force, and turn command over to Rear Admiral David Kane, the former commander of the Barracuda.

Looking out over the SSNX submarine, he wondered if he really should relinquish command of the fleet.

There was no doubt that Kane could command the force. Perhaps it was time for Pacino to leave the Navy altogether and turn his back on this part of his life. But as he beheld the submarine, he had the undefinable feeling that he would be leaving something undone. It was a thread to cling to, and though it made no sense, he would continue on until this undone thing was finished.

Maybe, he thought, finishing it would give him the peace he sought.

He was barely conscious of returning to the admiral’s quarters and falling asleep, perhaps even less of waking up and performing all the rituals of showering and donning his tropical white uniform. In his office, he found himself trying to concentrate on the Writepad computer display on his oak desk, another meaningless memo describing a critical problem with the Cyclops command-and-control system of the SSNX.

He swiveled his chair away from the desk and looked out the window. The shades were partially open, the glass polarization adjusted so that the bright sunlight wouldn’t cause too much glare to see the computer display.

It was just after six in the morning, and the sun was rising over the Pacific. Another hectic Monday would soon start. There would be a seven-thirty staff meeting, an eight-fifteen videoconference with the Norfolk staff, a nine-thirty videoconference with the Pentagon, a ten forty-five shipyard meeting, two meetings overscheduled at noon, and another five meetings in the afternoon. There were at least six hours of work Pacino needed to do himself when the day quieted down, and his personal assistant had requested the evening off.

The early meetings slipped by routinely. It was as if this were a slow news day, little going on in the world.

The videoconference with the Pentagon seemed to confirm the torpor of the defense community. The Chief of Naval Operations, the admiral-in-command of the U.S. Navy, Dick O’Shaughnessy, glared at the screen, watching wordlessly as Pacino reported. The next admiral started up, O’Shaughnessy barely nodded, then the next.

The reports were dry and boring. Finally Admiral O’Shaughnessy, in his baritone voice, closed the meeting, wishing them all the best.

Pacino had been dropped off at the shipyard in front of the Dynacorp New Construction Facility, the NEW-CON building. He went up the elevator and down the hallway to the dock-side conference room, where the shipyard meeting was already in progress. The hull and mechanical engineers were standing to leave, all of them nodding respectfully at Pacino. The shipyard’s traditional “crisis football” was placed at the end of the table. It was an old-fashioned leather football with the words crisis painted on it in white block letters, passed gleefully on by a department solving the problem du your to the one presently obstructing progress. The ball was being passed from the weapons engineers to the electronic types, the engineers responsible for the Cyclops battlecontrol system, which so far was a dismal failure.

The Dynacorp vice president of developmental computer systems, Colleen O’Shaughnessy, was absent from the room when the weapons engineers left. As soon as she entered, she saw the ball, pursed her lips, and dumped it unceremoniously into the trash can.

O’Shaughnessy was young to be a full vice president, Pacino thought, but that seemed more the rule than the exception with the computer types. She was at most thirty. Her looks were also unusual, in fact startling for the shipyard environment. Her passage routinely stopped conversations and shipyard work, though she seemed oblivious. She had black, shining hair, falling smoothly to her shoulders. Her pronounced cheekbones and arched eyebrows framed large, dark, direct eyes.

Though she was of medium height, her legs were long, the muscles toned by workouts. This morning she was dressed in a dark suit with a beige blouse, a simple gold chain at her throat.

Toward Pacino she had at first come off as charming, smiling at him with a set of movie star teeth, shaking his hand firmly and asking after the progress of the SSNX.

For a moment Pacino felt like he was shaking hands with a senator or a judge. Her manner was so natural and confident, comfortable around authority. Not sure who he was dealing with, he had been somewhat curt with her, waving off the pleasantries and asking her bluntly what the status of the Cyclops system was. She had immediately shifted from charming to businesslike, outlining the problems and the proposed solutions. Her words were crisp, her thoughts expressed in complete sentences, her eyes probing his for understanding.

Within five minutes Pacino had known he was in the presence of a competent professional, and had left O’Shaughnessy to her work. Occasionally he’d see her in the hallways of the barge or on the weld-splattered decks of the submarine. He had worked with her for several months before the new Chief of Naval Operations had taken command of the Navy from the outgoing Tony Wadsworth. On Pacino’s first report. Admiral Richard O’Shaughnessy had come up on the videolink.

The handsome older Irishman’s features were oddly familiar, and then Pacino realized that his common name with the Dynacorp vice president was no coincidence.

He had expected Colleen to mention her father, Pacino’s boss, but she had said nothing. Finally, after a shipyard briefing Pacino asked her, “Are you Dick’s daughter?” She smiled shyly, said yes, and asked him about a shipyard problem, as if the fact had no lingering significance.

After that he had expected some awkwardness in their relationship, but Colleen O’Shaughnessy was the same solid professional every day, a reassuring presence in the face of a computer system that refused to work. Eventually her connection to the Navy brass was forgotten, or at least pushed to the background.

This morning she breezed into the conference room, shot him a quick smile and a “Good morning. Admiral,” nodded at the other shipyard officials, frowned at the crisis football, swept it into the trash, sat down, and arranged her papers and Writepad on the table, all in one swift, graceful motion. She scanned her computer display, then looked up at him as she began her briefing.

“The Cyclops hardware and software both failed the C-l hull insertion tests. We’re at a decision point now,” she said, getting right to the point.

The news was so bad that Pacino dropped his jaw.

“I’d never heard it was this serious,” he said. “Schedule delays, maybe. Cost overruns, sure. Some loss of function, possibly. Capability restrictions in the first operational year, okay. But failing C-l? With the damned hardware too? What the hell happened?”

“Even I was surprised. Admiral,” she said, her voice level, her eyes drilling into his own, unintimidated. “The hardware problems are major, but the correction strategies are straightforward. We’re much more worried about software.”

“You said you were at a decision point,” Pacino prodded.

“Exactly. The decision is between scrapping the entire code and starting fresh or trying to patch it up. That decision is mine. Since we failed C-l, there have been other decisions, made by my management.” She looked at him, one eyebrow rising.

“And?”

“I’m no longer a temporarily visiting executive. I’m permanently assigned to SSNX until the software commission is done at C-9. I’ll be doing the coding myself.”

Pacino stared at her, startled. He had thought her a business type, an exec. He’d never thought she’d be one to sit at a display and troubleshoot the equipment, much less write the code herself.

“You’ll be coding?”

“Exactly,” she said again, her favorite phrase. “I used to own the company that came up with the Cyclops computer system. The system is called Cyclops for a reason — that was my company’s name before Dynacorp bought us out. Bought us and brought in their programmers. Now they — I mean, we — are going back to basics.”

“How long to get this back on track?”

“Good expression” she said, standing and gathering her papers. “Because that’s what this is, a train wreck. Admiral, you’ll be the second to know.”

“And who’ll be first?”

Her smile flashed at him. He found himself looking at her appreciatively in spite of himself.

“I will.” She put her bag on her shoulder. “By the way, I won’t be attending any more shipyard meetings. No more admiral’s briefings, no Dynacorp videoconferences. The only thing I’ll be doing is entering code, eating, and sleeping.”

“Where can I find you?”

“In the hull,” she said, pointing out the window overlooking the dock. “Until Cyclops works, the SSNX is home.”

As she swept out of the room, the wind of her passage lifted several fliers tacked to a bulletin board near the door.

Pacino drummed his fingers on the table. Then he stood and walked to the trash can. Pulling out the crisis football, he set it on the window ledge. He was gathering his own things when the yeoman came into the room.

“Admiral? Sir? There’s an urgent videolink on your Writepad, sir, a Captain White?”

“I’ll take it here,” Pacino said. “Shut the door.”

He clicked into the video connection, wondering what Paully White needed that was so urgent that he couldn’t wait till this afternoon’s scheduled videolink.

The Lincoln staff car was not a car at all, but a huge four-door sport-utility vehicle painted a glossy black.

The emblem of the Unified Submarine Command graced the doors and the rear hatch. The logo featured the sail of a surfaced nuclear submarine flying a Jolly Roger pirate flag and, below, three gold stars.

The Lincoln made its way north at one hundred ten miles per hour, hurtling past Monday late-afternoon traffic on 1-95 outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, heading for Bethesda Naval Hospital in the northern suburbs of Washington. The beacons of the Virginia state police cruiser ahead flashed into the cabin through the windshield, and the escort’s siren blared intermittently to warn traffic out of the left lane. The windows in the back half of the car were polarized dark black, keeping out the sinking afternoon sun and enabling better visibility for the video screen mounted on the headrest of the right front seat.

Captain Paul “Paully” White sat in the rear. His service dress blues were not blue at all but a dark black.

His three rows of ribbons on his left breast pocket were mounted below a gold submariner’s dolphin pin, and a gold rope hanging from his left shoulder indicated he was a flag officer’s aide, along with four gold braid stripes on his sleeves indicating his rank. His face was set in a dark frown as he watched the video screen, waiting for Admiral Pacino to appear.

Paully White had just turned forty-eight, a subject that grew more sore each year. Despite a chain-smoking habit he had recently gained ten pounds at the belt line, and was not used to seeing a mirror reflection that was other than thin. White had become Pacino’s aide in the blockade of Japan by default, when White’s position as the submarine operations officer of the aircraft carrier Reagan had made him the only fellow submariner aboard. The two of them were on the carrier’s bridge when the Japanese torpedoes had hit. The sixth and seventh torpedoes exploded beneath the keel amidships, breaking the back of the giant aircraft carrier, beginning the list to port that would end in the vessel’s capsizing.

The eighth torpedo had detonated under the control island, slamming Pacino into a bulkhead. Pacino slid down to the deck, leaving a smear of blood on the bulkhead.

As the deck began to incline. White lunged for the admiral, and pulled him into his arms. Without conscious thought, White carried Pacino to the hatch and down four ladders to the main-deck level.

Pacino’s eighty-five-kilogram frame felt feather light in the wash of the adrenaline coursing through White’s veins. He emerged onto the main deck as the carrier listed far to port, and for a horrible moment he was sure he’d lose his footing and slide to the edge and plunge the twenty meters to the sea below, but he steadied up.

The noise of helicopter rotors suddenly roared from his rear, and he turned to see a Sea King chopper descend madly for the listing deck. White half ran, half limped to the open doorway, flinging Pacino into the opening as hard as he could, then leaping in himself. As the helicopter lurched sickeningly upward, the deck of the carrier rolled to full vertical. The huge control island splashed into the sea and vanished. In the end nothing but Reagan’s hull was visible, a deep crack extending from one side to the other.

The war had come then, Pacino commanding the fleet that eventually prevailed, returning him to the States, to peacetime.

A year later Pacino married Eileen and things had been as smooth as they would ever be at the Unified Submarine Command. Pacino worked constantly trying to get funding for the new attack submarine, the NSSN, and finally the unnamed prototype, the SSNX, was approved by Congress. The keel was laid at Dynacorp’s Electric Boat yard in Groton, Connecticut, and Pacino was in his glory.

As if he had tempted the gods, his good fortune soon gave way to tragedy. White was one room over from Pacino’s office when the awful phone call came late on a Thursday night. That call essentially put an end to the Pacino White had known.

White went with Pacino to the funeral parlor. An hour before the church service, Pacino insisted on seeing Eileen’s body. The funeral director took one look at Pacino and without a word lifted the coffin lid. Eileen’s body was unrecognizable, her only intact feature her hair. Pacino leaned tenderly over her, giving her remains one last kiss. White held Pacino’s right arm as they walked through the rows of tombstones, his young son, Tony, holding his left, and White swore that had Pacino not been physically supported, he would have fallen flat on his face.

The next few months dragged on as Pacino sank deeply within himself. Each day found him worse instead of better, until White suggested a change of scenery.

Pacino scoffed at first, but finally set up Admiral Kane as the deputy force commander in Norfolk so that Pacino could take the SSNX hull to Pearl Harbor naval Shipyard for its fit-out. White went with him, appointing himself the liaison between Pacino’s temporary command post at Pearl and Kane’s headquarters in Norfolk.

White was the glue that had kept this together, but even with all the shuttling between the two commands, the force was beginning to suffer a lack of leadership. Kane was too loyal to Pacino to fill the gap, and Pacino insisted on spending his time with SSNX, refusing to come back to Norfolk and retake his command.

Then the call had come in this morning from Fort Meade, the home of the National Security Agency, one of the remaining intelligence organizations. In the reorganization of intelligence seven years before, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had been merged into the Combined Intelligence Agency. The National Security Agency had been tasked with eavesdropping of any kind, whether intercepting enemy radio signals or phone calls or computer network E-mails. Their tools were as varied as spy satellites and nuclear submarines sneaked into harbors with thin-wire radio antennae, even starting communications companies overseas. NSA had been targeted to come under the same reorganizational ax, to vanish with its functions subsumed by the CIA, but in the last instant the Director Mason Daniels had called in favors from Capitol Hill, and NSA had survived, even flourished, the budget meaty, the gadgets state-of-the-art. NSA was even considered a watchdog, an independent check, on the CIA. Mason Daniels had stepped down and turned over directorship to the former Chief of Naval Operations, Richard Donchez.

Donchez was the subject of this phone call to Pacino.

White had been on the way to the Pentagon for an afternoon meeting when he’d received the call a few minutes ago. Donchez had been found facedown on the carpeting of his office, in a coma. He’d been immediately helicopter-evacuated to Bethesda Naval Hospital. White heard about it before anyone else. His first call was to the Virginia state police barracks, to get the cruiser escort up I-95. His second was to Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, to Admiral Pacino, whose closest friend on earth was none other than Richard Donchez.

“Bad news. Admiral,” White said to the video image when Pacino’s face appeared, the sunshine of the Hawaiian afternoon shining in the windows behind him.

“What, Paully, you heard about the Cyclops system failing Cl?”

White blinked. He hadn’t heard, and it was incredibly serious, something that could derail the SSNX program for a year, maybe more.

“No, sir, that isn’t it. I’m calling because a few minutes ago I got a call from Fort Meade.”

Pacino looked up uncertainly.

“It’s Admiral Donchez, sir. He’s in a coma. They say it’s late-stage lung cancer.”

Pacino’s jaw clenched. “How much time are they giving him?”

“They ain’t sayin’,” White said, his Philadelphia accent infecting his speech. “Maybe days. Could be hours. The attending at Bethesda came up when I videoed him. Said any family members should get to the hospital now. He could fade out at any moment.”

“Have a car waiting at Andrews Air Force Base. I’ll be there by the wee hours.”

“But the SS-12 isn’t back yet,” White said, referring to the supersonic twelve-passenger staff jet. He’d just flown it back from Pearl, and it needed maintenance at Norfolk Naval Air Station before they flew it back.

“I’ll grab an F-22 fighter. UAIRCOM owes me a favor.”

Pacino’s shoulders seemed to sink, his head to grow heavy. White bit his lip.

“I’ll meet you at Andrews myself, sir.”

“No, Paully, you stay by Dick Donchez. Tell him I’m on my way. Even if he’s unconscious, you tell him.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The video image clicked out, Pacino hanging up on him. White leaned into the front seat. “Why are we going so goddamned slow? Tell the trooper ahead to kick it or we’re passing him,” he ordered the driver.

“Yessir.”

The car, usually whisper quiet, rumbled with the sound of the engine and the road and the wind noise.

Paully White sat back, deep in thought.

Chapter 4 Tuesday October 29

Admiral Richard O’Shaughnessy answered the video phone when his aide, Lieutenant Doreen O’Connell, looked up at him and indicated it was the director of the Combined Intelligence Agency.

“Hi, Chris,” O’Shaughnessy said, his deep baritone voice commanding yet matter-of-fact.

“Hi, Dick. We need to be on for three o’clock. My DDO has me scheduled later.”

O’Shaughnessy looked at his watch. It was quarter to three. Chris Osgood, the DCIA, never gave him less than two hours’ notice. And that stuff about the DDO— short for Deputy Director for Operations, Chris’ number two at the agency — was their code that the CIA director had something that couldn’t wait.

“Where are you calling from?”

“Car. I’m well on the way.”

“You’re not dressed,” O’Shaughnessy said, amusement in his voice, noticing Osgood’s pressed shirt collar and striped tie.

“What am I supposed to do, give you a show? And see myself on the evening news strip teasing when some idiot with a microwave interceptor grabs the cell call and peddles it to the evening news?” Osgood smiled over his half-frame reading glasses.

“Three it is,” O’Shaughnessy said, clicking off. Standing up he said to his aide, “Doreen, I’m going running early.”

O’Shaughnessy was tall, over six feet three inches, yet weighed in at less than eighty-five kilograms. He didn’t look thin, but like the decathlon athlete he once was.

He was fifty-eight years old, used to being told he looked ten years younger. His hairline was healthy, showing more forehead now than he had a decade ago, but the increased real estate was barely noticeable. His skin was taut, his chin strong, his cheekbones prominent, his eyes dark brown under thick brows. But, of all his features, the most striking were his ears. They protruded impossibly out into space. He had commonly been referred to as “monkey ears” in his days as a midshipman and later as a junior officer, though predictably they were never mentioned now that he was the Big Boss. He had once hired a new aide because, as he had told Deanna that night, “Know why I hired him? Only one reason. He has big ears. Nothing shows good character like big ears.”

He was a natural-born speaker. His voice was fully an octave deeper than most large male voices, the boom of it full and musical. He spoke with his hands, surveying his crowd, his delivery able to set up the most hilarious jokes, his expressions animated yet natural.

But when Dick O’Shaughnessy was the listener, his charm seemed to vanish. Those who had suffered briefing him had described his blank, penetrating stare, always accompanied by extended silences; sometimes lasting so long that grizzled war veterans lost their nerve in front of him. O’Shaughnessy had even become afraid of being lied to by his inner circle, so intimidated were they. He had tried to work on that aspect of himself, trying hard to interject warm words or sounds of encouragement when he listened, but more often than not he was listening too intently to remember to do that.

To lessen the intimidating effect of his stare, he’d taken to wearing half-frame reading glasses. For some reason, peering over the rims of the half-frames gave him a fatherly quality. He didn’t use them just as a prop, however, since he genuinely needed the reading glasses now, the Writepad displays having gotten harder and harder to read with each passing year. Yet they illustrated another problem he had. He had difficulty hanging on to the glasses. They managed to disappear every time he needed them. Deanna found them in all his service jackets, briefcases, lying around the house, yet they were never around when he needed them. Finally, Deanna had ordered forty-five of them and distributed them to his aides, his personal assistant, his driver, placing five of them at his favorite chair, five in his staff car, three in his briefcase, two in his workout bag, five in his desk, and one in each jacket pocket. And still he mislaid his glasses.

After his aide left the office, O’Shaughnessy quickly undressed, pulling on the worn but comfortable jersey reading navy ‘80 and a pair of Seal running shorts. He made his way to the VIP entrance, then stopped to return to the office to pick up his bar-coded ID — absentmindedness kicking in again. He had been stretching out for a few minutes when Osgood’s black limo pulled up.

Christopher Osgood IV was young for the position of director of the CIA. Osgood was in his late forties, his hair slightly thinning, not enough to detract from his near-perfect good looks. Osgood shared little in common with O’Shaughnessy save his slimness and good nature.

Osgood was an Anglo Protestant from Boston, his father prominent in Massachusetts politics.

O’Shaughnessy had met Osgood four years ago at the Marine Corps Marathon, run annually in the city in the springtime. At the time, O’Shaughnessy was one of Donchez’s dozens of deputies. Osgood said he was a mid-grade CIA employee. He’d asked O’Shaughnessy to train with him, since he was frequently in the city at lunchtime or after work. O’Shaughnessy had agreed, and on their thrice-weekly runs he’d ask Osgood about work.

Osgood would say a few words, mostly shrugging it off.

O’Shaughnessy had eventually learned that he worked in intelligence, but had not gotten Osgood to open up about it beyond that. They contented themselves to run, commenting on the weather, letting their friendship grow.

Osgood’s and O’Shaughnessy’s runs in the last two years had begun to be more than workouts. Since O’Shaughnessy had taken over the Navy and Osgood the CIA, the runs had become intelligence briefings for O’Shaughnessy, and gossip mills for Osgood on Capitol Hill office politics. Occasionally, when something was up, Osgood would schedule a run early, like today. Calling O’Shaughnessy with only fifteen minutes’ notice was breaking new ground, though. Something had to be up, O’Shaughnessy thought.

As usual, they started out slowly, picking up the pace only when they crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge.

Once they were past the Lincoln Memorial, no one near them, Osgood started talking.

“Something’s brewing in Red China,” he said without preamble, talking between deep breaths.

“What?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

“Armies are mobilizing all across the border. Seventy armored divisions, one hundred forty infantry divisions, support units all across the western border of White China. Four million uniformed men, all strung out along the border.”

O’Shaughnessy said nothing, not wanting to break the flow of the CIA man’s monologue. When Osgood had paused long enough, making it clear he had stopped talking, O’Shaughnessy said, “Sounds like the entire People’s Liberation Army.”

“It is.”

“They calling this an exercise?”

“Nope. Nothing published.” Osgood pointed to the right. “Long way? Around the Tidal Basin?”

“Yeah. I’ve been missing miles. They don’t refer to their real exercises as exercises, do they?”

“Nope.”

“So maybe it is just an exercise.”

“They’ve pulled the divisions manning the Mongolian frontier. Airlifted most of them.”

“Fuel for that must have cost millions.”

“Yup. They pulled their divisions off the Indian border too.”

“That was gutsy. Nipun in India’s not the nicest guy, and he’s spoiling to grab territory.”

“We found out that all PLA military leaves are canceled.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“Leg’s cramping,” Osgood said, which is what he always said when O’Shaughnessy asked a question that went too far. The Navy man smiled, saying nothing, waiting for the spook to continue. But he didn’t.

“All leaves?”

“Every man.”

“I hate when it gets cold early,” O’Shaughnessy said as two pretty young women came jogging by from the other direction. Osgood smiled at them. They smiled back, then shot quick glances of appreciation at O’Shaughnessy. “Getting dark earlier now.” The women were out of earshot behind them. “Every goddamned man?”

“Yup.”

“What else?”

“All the airwing fighter aircraft have left the western and central bases. All of the jets have been moved east. All within a few hundred kilometers of the White China frontier.”

“Another couple million in fuel. They flying around or staying on the ground?”

“Ground. Under camouflage tarps. In bunkers built within the last few days. In tents. In barns. Wherever they can be hidden.”

“And other than that, all’s normal?”

“Nope,” Osgood said, his Harvard education sometimes undetectable amidst his yups and nopes.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial loomed ahead, looking gloomy in the fading fall light and the overcast of the day.

“So what else?”

“This is Release 24.” Osgood referred to the top-secret classification designating information that could be shared only with the president and cabinet members and a few select agency heads, such as the director of NSA. The only classification higher was Release 12, the president’s own classification.

“Okay.”

“The Red Chinese leadership has been evacuated from Beijing, lock, stock, and barrel. Beijing, governmentally speaking, is a ghost town.”

O’Shaughnessy paused to think this over. The Washington Monument was coming up ahead as the path verged away from the Tidal Basin.

“This is no exercise,” O’Shaughnessy finally said.

“Bingo. And you didn’t even go to Harvard.”

“Fuck you, Osgood.”

As another group of runners came toward them, the two men fell silent. When they were alone again, Osgood started in.

“President’s been briefed. She’ll be calling for Pink’s opinion.”

Bill Pinkenson, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was an Army four-star general, a cavalryman, a tank guy.

Pinkenson was of medium height, tanned, good looking in a baby-faced way, an amazingly gregarious officer, quick with a joke. He didn’t have the kind of statuesque appearance that O’Shaughnessy had, yet once people met Pinkenson, they never forgot him. He was the consummate politician, and had been maneuvering through the Pentagon for decades, loving every minute of it. He and O’Shaughnessy had been close since the naval officer had first reported to duty in D.C., the Army officer having shaken O’Shaughnessy’s hand at their first meeting.

He’d insisted that he and Deanna tailgate with Pinkenson and his wife, Jackie, at the Army-Navy game the next weekend.

“And Pink’ll probably want your opinion,” Osgood said.

“Mine? Why?”

“Because the Navy’s going to have to weigh in on this thing.”

“Back up there. You’ve got the balloon going up in eastern Red China, the Reds preparing to jump over the line and retake White China. Civil War, round two. Except this time they mean to win.” The runners turned and headed east, along the mall, the Capitol Building a mile ahead of them. “Doesn’t sound like the Navy’s got much to do with this. Oh, sure, hopefully President Warner will decide to support the White Chinese, and we may even invade at Shanghai or anywhere else we get a beachhead. My special forces will be involved, the Marine Corps will be saddled up and put on the ground, and we’ll start up the ships of the Navforcepacfleet, get the transports fueled up and ready. We’ll even escort the Merchant Marine boys into the East China Sea. And of course, the carrier guys will get into this, flying air support for the beach landings. We’ll have ourselves a busy time of it, with a war like this. But compared to the Army, the Navy’s got an easy day. So why did you mention I’d have to render an opinion?”

“Think again. Something’s wrong.”

O’Shaughnessy paused, looking over at the Smithsonian as they ran by, the Air and Space Museum coming up on the right.

“Okay, I thought again. I don’t see anything wrong.”

“How about this? Why would the Reds begin to think they could get away with this? With your fleet and an Army rapid deployment force all ready to go next door in Japan, and the Reds are going to jump across the line and duke it out, force the Whites into the East China Sea? Just like that? What about Uncle Sam? Don’t they think we’ll do something? We’ll bring our fleet up to the White Chinese shoreline, offload a bunch of Marines and Army infantry and cavalry and artillery boys, with our jets pounding the sand with all kinds of smart bombs, and the Reds will be smashed. Why would they waste the effort? And if they didn’t see us as a threat, why are they doing this now? They would have done this ages ago. Your western Pacific fleet was all beefed up for this contingency, and the Reds knew that. So why, all of a sudden, is our fleet and RDF no big deal?”

Had Osgood been looking at O’Shaughnessy, he would have seen the admiral’s blank, piercing glare. For now, O’Shaughnessy just stared straight ahead at the Reflecting Pool in front of the Capitol.

“Far side?” he asked Osgood, indicating they should either turn back now or continue to the other side of the Capitol block by the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court.

“Yeah.”

O’Shaughnessy spoke. “Maybe the Reds believe they would overwhelm us with people — four million men to our half million. Their force is overwhelming.”

“You don’t believe that. Admiral. We disproved theories like that twenty-five years ago. Look at the war with the UIF — they outnumbered the allies ten to one during the Cha Bahar invasion. But our smart weapons and equipment gave us a force multiplier. Same thing here—”

O’Shaughnessy interrupted. “I know. I know. I learned the lesson. I just wondered if the Reds did.”

“Sure, they did. That’s why they’ve behaved all this time. Until now.”

They ran in silence for a half mile, all the way around the Capitol, passing the Reflecting Pool on the way back, running this time on the north side of the mall.

“Maybe it’s a bluff,” O’Shaughnessy finally said. “Maybe there’s a negotiation going on with the Whites. Maybe they wanted the Whites to see all this maneuvering.”

“It’s not that visible, Dick. We know about it because we worked like hell to know about it. I guarantee you this, it will be a hell of a surprise to the Whites when the balloon goes up. The Whites haven’t mobilized anybody. It might as well be Christmas Day for all the lack of activity in White China. So this is no saber-rattling. And there’s another compelling reason they aren’t doing this for show.”

“Why?”

“The Reds are taking too many risks. They’ve left their borders unprotected so they can mass on the eastern border. Deserting Mongolia’s border maybe. But India’s? After all the threats by Nipun? The Reds are blowing it off. Dick, Nipun could strike now and take half of goddamned Red China.”

“Which means they’re in a hurry, Chris. They’ll attack White China and get their land back and execute all the New Kuomintang Chinese, and we’ll have a reunited China to deal with. Not a pretty picture. And the Reds will do it fast. They’ll take the Whites, or try to, in a week or a month, then get back to business as usual at the Indian frontier.”

“You’re missing something, Dick. The East China Sea. No way can the Reds dive across the border without you guys pounding them into the pavement. So why are they doing this?”

“Maybe they just think that President Warner won’t go to war over this. They’re betting that the U.N., the U.S., and Europe don’t want to get bloodied in this thing. They’ll say, it’s a Chinese problem. Too close to Christmas. Too close to the next election. Too much risk.”

“After Warner stationed all the ships and troops in Yokosuka? She’s got enough troops and equipment over there to win a war, even without resupply from the mainland or Hawaii. I happen to know she’s more worried about China than anywhere else, as much today as she was when she stationed the Pacific rapid deployment force there. Plus, Warner saw her only good results in the Japan blockade happen when she stopped delaying and got to business with the Navy. She’s convinced now that if there’s a Chinese scrape, there won’t be any extended decision-making sessions, no encounter groups like before Japan. She’s going in shooting with the prewritten contingency plan. She’s going in immediately, and she’ll fucking hammer Red China.”

“I won’t ask how you know that,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Wouldn’t want your leg to cramp or anything.”

Though he was smiling, he knew Osgood didn’t curse like that unless he was at the edge.

“So, Admiral, same question, for the fifth time, to my slowest pupil. Why do the Reds think they can get away with this?”

“Okay, Mr. Director. I’m stumped. You say President Warner will go ballistic when the Reds jump across the line. I’ll believe you. You say she’ll immediately commit the forces to help the Whites. I’ll believe that. You say the Reds aren’t doing a maneuver or a negotiation with the Whites. I’ll believe that. And I’m saying the Reds aren’t dumb, never have been. They have their problems, but they’re goddamned sharp. So here’s my answer — I don’t know. The Chief of Naval Operations has taken your little quiz today and flunked it. The Department of the Navy gives up here, Chris. What’s the damned answer? Why do the Reds think they can get away with this?”

In the following long silence they passed the American History Museum, then the Washington Monument.

“Well, Dick, the Combined Intelligence Agency gets the same score you got on that test. We have no goddamned idea why the Reds think this is something they can win.”

Suddenly O’Shaughnessy felt tired. “Let’s skip the Ellipse run and head back,” he puffed.

“I’m with you, Dick. I may even just walk back on the bridge.”

As O’Shaughnessy showered in his office suite, all of the details tumbling through his mind, it just didn’t make sense. He and Osgood were missing something. Something important.

Pacino hurried to the door of the hospital room and pushed the door slowly open to a dim room with a single bed.

The decor was standard twenty-first-century hospital, a nondescript wallpaper pattern framing a window with shut Venetian blinds, the bed against the wall, the man in the bed resting on top of a white sheet. The patient looked small and frail, his coloring not much different from the white of the sheet. The room had enough machinery to be an intensive-care-unit facility, but was located in one of the nameless floors of the cancer ward.

A thought came to Pacino that this was where the hopeless, the inoperable, were carted off to die, but he dismissed it from his mind and concentrated on the face of the man in the bed.

The patient had not stirred. For a long moment Pacino squinted through the gloom at the prone man, trying to confirm his identity, then with disappointment realized that he was indeed Richard Donchez. Pacino advanced to the bed and looked down. This close, Donchez’s breathing could barely be made out in the quiet of the room, the only other sound a faint beep of a heart monitor.

Pacino put his hand on the old man’s sleeve, then touched Donchez’s hand. The flesh was cold and limp.

“Uncle Dick,” Pacino said softly, and when he heard the tremble in his voice, his eyes blurred with moisture.

He bit his lip and swore to himself he would not lose control, not where Donchez could see him. He checked behind him, glad that Captain White had remained in the corridor. “It’s me. Mikey.”

The breathing continued, slow and peaceful. Pacino sniffed, standing over the admiral, his head bent. Pacino stared down, his eyes open but his mind registering nothing.

He was lost in the long past he’d had with this man.

Pacino’s association with Donchez had started even before Pacino was born. Donchez had been Pacino’s father’s roommate at the Naval Academy. The two men had progressed through a parallel submarine career, Donchez commanding the old Piranha and Anthony Pacino the skipper of the Stingray. When the younger Pacino was a plebe at Annapolis, he was called from his room by the main office to see a visiting officer. The visitor was Commander Donchez. Pacino was eighteen years old, his hair shorn, so skinny his ribs protruded, standing at attention in the presence of the commander.

His father’s friend had a haunted expression, and his voice was gravelly as he croaked out the words: Mikey, the Stingray sank off the Azores in the mid-Atlantic about a week ago. We couldn’t confirm it until she was due in. She failed to show up at the pier today. I’m afraid we have to presume your father is dead.

Once Pacino recovered enough to absorb the information, Donchez told him that Stingray had gone down as the result of a freak accident. One of her own torpedoes had detonated in the torpedo room and breached the hull. There had been no survivors.

Two decades later, Donchez was commanding the Atlantic Fleet’s submarine force when young Commander Michael Pacino rose to command the USS Devilfish. It was Donchez who sent Pacino under the polar icecap to find the Russian Republic’s Omega-class attack submarine after showing him that the Stingray had not perished from an accident, as the cover story had maintained, but had been intentionally taken down by a Soviet Victor III attack sub, whose captain was now the admiral-in-command of the Northern Fleet and aboard the Omega.

The loss of the Devilfish in that mission remained information so highly classified that only a half dozen men in the upper ranks of the Navy were briefed on it.

After that mission Pacino resigned from the Navy, disappearing to teach engineering at the Naval Academy.

There he was vaguely ill at ease, a void having formed in his life. Something vital was missing. He denied it to Janice, his first wife, but what was missing was the feeling of the deck of a nuclear submarine under his feet.

He was at his worst when Admiral Donchez appeared in his lab one afternoon and asked him to take command of the USS Seawolf for a rescue mission. The submarine Tampa had been captured spying in Go Hai Bay outside Beijing, and Donchez wanted Pacino to bring her out.

When Pacino heard that his own academy roommate, Sean Murphy, was being held at gunpoint by the Red Chinese, he went with Donchez to Yokosuka, Japan, climbed into Seawolf, and took three Seal commando platoons into the bay to liberate the Tampa.

The Tampa escaped the piers, but the mission had just begun, for the entire Red Chinese Northern Fleet awaited the subs at the bottleneck mouth of Go Hai Bay.

He’d fired every weapon aboard, and Seawolf was almost lost, but eventually after the sinking of several dozen Red Chinese PLA Navy warships, Tampa sailed out into international waters. Some thirty Americans had died while under Red Chinese hands, but the remainder fully recovered.

As a reward, Donchez gave Pacino permanent command of the Seawolf. He loved every minute of it, until the ship went down in the Labrador Sea in a confrontation with an Islamic supersub. After Pacino recovered, Donchez recommended he be given command of the newly formed Unified Submarine Command, and ever since Donchez had been Pacino’s mentor and adviser.

When the blockade around Japan was ordered by President Warner, Donchez counseled Pacino to run the operation from one of his forward-deployed submarines.

That had given him the independence he needed to make the operation work.

Without Donchez, Pacino would never have risen to flag rank. But it had been Donchez the man who was important to Pacino. When young Pacino had heard of his father’s death, he had been set adrift in a hostile world. Donchez had stepped in to be Pacino’s surrogate father. Hell, Pacino thought, Donchez had become his father. Pacino had not thought of him that way at the time, because their relationship had not always been smooth, but that was what proved how close they were— the essence of a father-son relationship was the struggle of the old to educate the young and the young to fight for independence. In hindsight, Pacino saw, Richard Donchez was more his father than Anthony Pacino could ever have been.

Pacino sat there on the bed, remembering, for what seemed like hours. Finally he pulled one of the chairs next to the bed and sat in it, eventually yielding to sleep.

In his dreams, he sweated and twitched, the memories rolling by. As he dozed, the man in the bed remained motionless.

Pacino awoke suddenly, in strange surroundings. The only light in the dark room came from a single fluorescent fixture above a hospital bed.

He sat up, his muscles cramped. Rubbing his eyes, he looked at his old Rolex, but the watch’s luminescent numeral dashes were no longer visible in darkness. He held it to the light, the timepiece showing a few minutes past four in the morning. He yawned, and when he looked down, he found himself still wearing the Nomex jumpsuit he’d flown in on the F-22 fighter, the suit sweat-stained and stale. At his feet was his flight bag, probably left there for him by Paully White. After a quick glance at Donchez, who still lay motionless, Pacino stood and carted the bag to the room’s small bathroom. It took him less than ten minutes to shower and change into his working khaki uniform, then return to Donchez’s bed.

The only indication that the old man was still alive were barely discernible sounds of his breathing and the faint beeps of the heart monitor. Pacino sat on the bed to wait.

He must have dozed off, for when he looked again at Donchez, he was startled to find his eyes open, looking up at him. Pacino said, in a rusty, croaking voice, “Dick, you’re awake!”

Donchez didn’t respond at first. His dim blue eyes were rimmed with bloodshot lines. His eyebrows — barely discernible dashes of light gray hair — were drawn down over his eyes in a frown. Still, Pacino grabbed his hand and smiled.

“The Reds,” Donchez said. Pacino barely heard him, the voice of an old man, all traces of his former vigor gone.

“What? Dick, don’t try to talk—”

“You’re up against the Reds, Mikey. Get in quick— ohhh,” Donchez groaned.

“Dick, please—”

“They’re getting subs.”

“What? Dick, come on, why don’t you—”

“Why don’t you listen to me. Admiral?” Donchez said, his old voice returning, a deep strength to it, his bald head beading with drops of sweat.

“Okay, Uncle Dick, I’m listening.” Pacino looked down with concern, both of Donchez’s hands in his. The old man began coughing, a wet, rattling sound. His eyes shut in pain. When the coughing attack was over, his face had turned beet red. He gasped for breath. “Dick, please take it easy. What is it?”

“Reds… have… will have… nuke subs. Plasma… torpedoes. East—” More coughing. Pacino tried to pull the old man up so the fluid would drain out of his lungs.

He finally stopped coughing, obviously an effort of great will. The heart monitor in the corner beeped insistently, faster and faster. “Chinasee.”

“What, what did you say?”

“East… China… Sea. Reds. Subs. Get in. Fast.”

“Dick, I don’t—”

“See… see… enn… oh…”

Pacino shook his head helplessly.

“Ohhh… shawn… ess… zee… chief… naval… opera—”

“Chief of Naval Operations? O’Shaughnessy?”

“Yes… you… talk… CNO…” Donchez’s eyes were shut in the effort to talk, deep lines inscribed around them, tears leaking, streaming down his face. He started to cough, then caught himself. He took a deep breath. “Red subs. Get in… fast.”

“Dick, try to rest. Try to cough.”

Donchez looked up, his eyes no longer even a dull blue but clouded over, milky, so wet Pacino could barely see the irises. “Take care… Mikey… my… son—”

A wet cough, and his body relaxed. He slumped in Pacino’s grasp, and he laid his head back on the pillow.

The heart monitor was faintly whistling through the room, the beeps gone.

“Uncle Dick. Dick! Dick! Goddamn it, nurse—” Pacino lunged for the call button by the bedside, smashing his fingers against it. Three people, he couldn’t tell if they were men or women, rushed into the room. A stethoscope was applied to Donchez’s chest, a hand to his wrist, a quick look at a chart at the foot of the bed.

After a few moments the doctor stood and backed away from the bed. “What? Aren’t you going to try to revive him?”

“Can’t, sir. Orders from the patient. No extraordinary means. No CPR, no code blue, no respirator. You can see yourself.”

Pacino blindly waved them out. He couldn’t tell if they left. He didn’t care. He bent over the bed, holding Donchez by his shoulders, saying his name over and over.

He was dimly aware that the front of Donchez’s hospital gown was now soaked.

He never felt Paully White’s strong hands around his arms, pulling him up and away from the corpse.

Chapter 5 Saturday November 2

The early morning sun was just hitting the copper-roofed buildings of the Naval Academy complex. Admiral Michael Pacino stared unblinkingly across the calm water of the Severn River from the deck of his waterfront house. He’d stood there most of the night, looking across the black, glassy water of the river at the lights of the academy, watching as the rooms lit up one by one in Bancroft Hall, the dorm building, the plebes rising for their Saturday classes. Pacino hadn’t seen the inside of this house since he and Janice were married, back when he taught fluid mechanics.

Balanced precariously on the rail of the deck, was a faded photograph in a carved wood frame. In the background was the tall, streamlined sail of a Piranha-C nuclear submarine. The sailplanes mounted on the sail gave away how old the ship was, but in the photo it looked brand-new, the paint sleek and black. White letters were painted on the sail, reading DEVILFISH SSN-666.

Red, white, and blue bunting decorated white-painted wood handrails erected on the deck. Two men stood in the foreground, both wearing starched high-collar dress whites, black and gold ceremonial swords, both uniforms decorated with ribbons and gold submariner’s dolphin pins. On the right was a young Pacino, his hair thick and jet black, his smile untouched by cares, his shoulder boards showing a rank far in the past, the three gold stripes perpendicular to the line of his shoulders. Next to him stood a shorter, bald man, his arm tightly around young Pacino, rumpling the younger man’s uniform.

Donchez’s smile was broad and proud, a Cuban cigar jutting from his mouth. The photo had captured Pacino’s change-of-command ceremony when he had taken command of the old Devilfish over fifteen years ago.

The dust on the picture had been removed by fingers, the marks still clear on the smudged glass. A half-smoked Cuban cigar, long cold, lay alongside the photo, next to a highball glass, the residue of bourbon stale at the bottom. Pacino wore the blue baseball cap he’d found in his dusty office, the gold scrambled eggs on the brim, a gold dolphin emblem in the center of the cap’s patch. The words USS DEVILFISH were written above the dolphins, and the ship’s old hull number SSN-666 was embroidered below.

He had buried Dick Donchez the day before. The funeral had been a crowded affair, blurred in his mind.

Disconnected images were all he’d retained: the unseasonably green grass of Arlington National Cemetery, the colors of the flag on the black casket, the stiffness of the honor guard folding the flag, the crack of the rifles saluting the admiral, the television cameras, the president and cabinet members, staff members everywhere, aides scurrying around. Secret Service agents trying to look nondescript but standing out anyway. Pacino’s friends were all there, flanking him, Paully White, David Kane, C.B. McDonne, Sean Murphy, Jackson Vaughn, Bruce Phillips, a dozen others. His ex-wife, Janice, stood on the other side of the casket wearing a simple black dress, her blond hair cropped short and worn straight, the kinkiness ironed out of it. Young Tony, his son, stood next to him, an awkward teenager in an ill-fitting black suit.

As the bugle wailed taps mournfully, Pacino’s eyes were downcast. Tony held him up on the right, Paully White on the left.

Afterward, a hand grasped his shoulder. A deep bass voice said in his ear, “We’re terribly sorry about your loss. Patch. We knew he was like a father to you. I knew Dick Donchez for years in the Pentagon. Listen, Deanna and I thought you could come over tomorrow. I’ve got some stories about Dick I thought you might want to hear. You okay? I’ll get with Captain White about it. You’ll be okay. Patch. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The hand clapped his shoulder twice, and Pacino turned to the tall man next to him, connected to the deep voice, O’Shaughnessy. He’d called Pacino by his father’s old nickname. He nodded, unable to speak.

The dignitaries and staffers and officers and enlisted men evaporated, slowly at first, then clearing out as the sun drifted toward the horizon, until he sat alone on one of the folding chairs in front of the coffin.

He’d awakened in another strange room, the master bedroom of the Annapolis house. An unease gripped him. He’d dressed quickly, walked through his office on the way to the deck, grabbing the hat and cigar and photograph on the way. The bourbon had come on the second trip, and the third and fourth.

He felt a sudden urge to type a resignation letter. Why not? he thought. Sell the houses, take the sailboat to the Caribbean, be close to the sea, maybe feel closer to the wife and the two fathers and the shipmates he’d lost.

The idea started to make sense. Then he swore he heard a voice in his head. A gravelly, cigar-smoke-laden voice, strong and certain and steely, saying only four angry words: Like hell you will.

The house was painted yellow with red shutters. A bronze plaque was hung by the carved wood framing the doorway, pronouncing the house a historical building, erected in 1817. Before it was a wide brick walkway, the cobblestone street beyond winding through Old Town.

The house was tucked in with a row of other houses built the same year, fronting another similar row on the other side of the street. In the door hung an oval white pottery plaque with a single shamrock above green script reading o’shaughnessy.

The door opened to reveal a smiling woman in her mid-forties, attractive and graceful, her straight blond hair falling to her shoulders in a chin-length bob. She swung her arm around his back, pulling him into the house.

“Admiral Pacino,” she said warmly, “it’s so good to meet you finally. I’m Deanna. I’ve heard so much about you. That article about you in March in the Washington Post was just amazing. Did you read it?”

A glass of single malt scotch was pressed into his hand. Then he was swept on a tour of the house, seeing pictures of their children on every shelf, every table. His eyes seemed to find Colleen O’Shaughnessy everywhere.

In one picture she was laughing, her black hair was windblown around a close-up of her face, her dark eyes filled with mischief. In another shot she was an awkward pre-teen, her hair penned and cut strangely, her hand up to the camera in protest. He stopped at a prom photo, her gown flowing to the door, the movie star teeth shining. Deanna remarked lightly, “Colleen is beautiful, isn’t she?”

He found himself agreeing, adding that she was extremely intelligent. Admiral Dick O’Shaughnessy came into the room then, wearing a sweater and chinos, seeming imposing, one of the few men Pacino had to look up to, despite his being taller by only an inch. He smiled at Pacino, his hand outstretched, his handshake firm. In his face Pacino saw Colleen’s nose and eyebrows. He forced himself to smile back, to engage in the small talk as O’Shaughnessy led him back to a study in back.

The window behind a big cherry desk looked out onto a yard overwhelmed by a single large oak, towering over the houses. Autumn leaves blew aimlessly in the fading daylight. Pacino sat in one of two overstuffed leather seats in front of a fireplace, O’Shaughnessy taking the seat beside him. In the fireplace several logs were snapping.

O’Shaughnessy tipped back his scotch, then put it on a cherry lamp stand between the chairs.

“You know. Patch,” he said. “I worked for Dick Donchez for years. I was his deputy for special warfare before the Islamic War. You know, he used to talk about you all the time.”

Pacino looked into his drink, now empty.

“One time Donchez said you were the best submarine captain ever born, bar none.”

Pacino made a sound in his throat, a noise of dismissal.

“He told me about your Arctic mission. I read the entire patrol report, the real one, not the cover story. I also read the patrol report from Go Hai Bay and the Labrador Sea when the Seawolf was lost. I read the debrief from Operation Enlightened Curtain after the Japanese blockade. I couldn’t wait to meet this great Michael Pacino, winner of three Navy Crosses, one of which should have been a Medal of Honor, according to Donchez. But there’s something bothering me. Maybe you can help me with it.”

Pacino looked up.

“The man I’ve read about, this modern-day Admiral Nelson, maybe you can tell me. Patch. Where the hell is he?”

“Sir?”

O’Shaughnessy stared at Pacino, his brows low over his eyes, the irises black in the dimness of the room.

“A year ago, maybe more, Donchez came to my office. Said he’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Said he had only a few weeks to live. Goes to show you what doctor’s time lines are worth — he beat the hell out of that estimate. But he asked me if I’d do something for him. He called it one of his last two requests to me, said I’d been a great staffer for him, and needed two last favors. And here I am, I mean, what the hell am I gonna say?” O’Shaughnessy’s big hands spread apart in a comical gesture of helplessness. “I ask him what he wants. He looks at me and says, ‘Richard, you gotta take care of Mikey Pacino for me.’ I bite my tongue and say, ‘Look, from what I can see, that guy doesn’t need anybody to take care of him.’ He gets pissed off, throws a spaz attack, just like the classic Donchez of old, and just like the days when I used to bring him coffee, I back up and say, ‘Okay, okay, yessir.’ So then I asked him what he meant, what he wanted me to do, how he wanted me to do it, and Jesus, you know that crusty old bastard Dick Donchez, he just looks at me, fires up a cigar and says, ‘O’Shaughnessy, you’re a grown-up, a bright SOB, tough-guy Navy Seal, made CNO, four-star admiral, you figure it out.’ I’m not biting. I mean, what the hell is he talking about?”

O’Shaughnessy got up to poke the fire, threw two more logs on. He went to the desk and poured more scotch from a crystal decanter, gestured at Pacino, who nodded. The Irishman carried the glasses over, handed one to Pacino, and sat back down.

“All he says is, ‘Look, Richard, Mikey’s not just like my son, he is my son. But I’m not gonna be here anymore, so I want you to protect him.’ He points the cigar at me, and I say, ‘Fine.’ He gets up to leave, go back to his NSA headquarters, and I say, ‘Listen, you said there were two requests. What’s the other?’ He stops at the door and hands me an envelope. ‘Don’t open that till I’m gone,’ he says, then slams the door behind him.”

“What was it?” Pacino asked.

“I’m getting to that. But before I do, I have to go back to my original question. Where did Patch Pacino go? What happened to him?”

“I’m not sure—”

“Yeah, you do. Patch,” O’Shaughnessy said, looking at Pacino with his trademark stare. An uncomfortable silence lingered in the room, the logs popping in the fireplace the only sound.

Finally Pacino grew tired of the look.

“Sir, I don’t know what you want. Maybe I should just go,” he said, standing.

“Sit the fuck down,” O’Shaughnessy said, cold steel in his voice. Pacino sat. O’Shaughnessy continued, “Two years ago, after the blockade was over. President Warner decides to push the SSNX submarine program, you’re in charge of it, and it’s kicking ass. Now, a year after that, the ship is pulled out of Electric Boat and taken to Hawaii, a zillion miles from the experts, progress is crappy, your reports don’t say why, in fact, they don’t say anything at all. You’ve deserted your command, your staff is doing your job for you out in Norfolk, the Unified Submarine Command is a shambles, and the entire Navy, Congress, and the White House want to know why. I want to know why.”

“Sir—”

“Shut up, I’m not finished. Now I find out that SS/WS Cyclops computer battlecontrol system failed its Cl test. Which, as I understand it, puts the ship a year behind schedule. And I don’t find that out from you. I don’t find it out from your staff, I don’t find it out from the Dynacorp ship superintendent.”

“How did you find out?” Colleen, Pacino figured.

O’Shaughnessy reached below the lamp stand and pulled out his Writepad. He clicked the software until the on-line version of the Washington Post came up on the screen. He handed the computer to Pacino. The headline read:

Pacino scanned the article. Senator Eve Trachea, the National Party leading member of the Armed Services Committee and Warner’s opponent in the coming election, had blown the whistle on the SSNX, saying that its computer system was hopelessly fouled up, that the submarine would likely never sail, that the trillion-dollar weapon system was a hopeless failure, indicative of the Warner administration’s wasteful and unwise defense spending during a time of peace.

“I don’t get it, Pacino. You blow off your command, you decide to work on your new sub program as your only duty, and you screw that up. Hell, from what I’ve seen, the only thing that’s kept you in office is that President Warner liked you. I say that in the past tense, by the way, because she also liked the SSNX program, and it’s not exaggerating to say that that submarine may cost her the next election. So I’ll ask again. Patch, what’s going on with you?”

Pacino looked at him, wondering why he was taking this approach. If he was to be fired, why didn’t the admiral just get on with it? Then the older man’s voice mellowed.

“Look, Patch, I know about your wife, Eileen. I was at the funeral. And I know you loved her and your life came apart when she passed away. I also know you tried to leave the Navy when she died, and that Donchez wouldn’t hear of it. But he’s gone now, and honoring his dying request, you’re my responsibility now, besides which, I’m your boss. And listen, I know what it’s like to lose your wife. Colleen’s mother, Mary, passed away when Colleen was just eighteen. It was a horrible time for her. It was a horrible time for me. I never thought I’d shake it. I thought I’d live the rest of my life lonely and hurting.” He leaned forward. “And you know something? It still hurts, I’m still not over her. I say her name in my sleep. But you keep living, and one day it gets easier. None of the pain goes away, it doesn’t even ease, but you get stronger, you become able to carry a heavier load. And when that happens, you can move on. What I need to know is, for Admiral Pacino, when is that going to be? I can’t let an entire fleet rust away while you pick up the pieces, Patch. So, are you going to get out of the Navy or are you going to be in it?”

“Well, sir,” Pacino said slowly, “I think I’m leaving. I’ll have my resignation on your desk Monday.” He stood for the second time.

“Maybe you’d better look at this first,” O’Shaughnessy said, a mysterious note in his voice.

“What is it?”

“Damn, I knew I had it here somewhere.” O’Shaughnessy cursed under his breath, rifling his briefcase, his desk drawers, the cabinets opposite the fireplace. Pacino stood behind him, embarrassed.

“Hold on. Deanna? Deanna! Have you seen that letter?”

“What letter, honey?”

“The one from Donchez, the one he wanted me to save.”

“Sir, what letter is this?”

O’Shaughnessy was half out of the door of the study, waiting for his wife. He looked back for an instant and said, “Donchez’s second dying wish. Deanna!”

She came into the office, smiling mischievously at Pacino. “Honestly,” she said, going straight to a small side table, in matching cherry to the desk and lamp stand, “Dick, you’d lose your head if I didn’t keep an eye on it for you.” She shot a look at Pacino, smiling again. In spite of himself, he smiled back. “Here,” she said, handing O’Shaughnessy an envelope. “Don’t be in here too long, guys. Dinner’s almost ready.”

The door shut behind her. O’Shaughnessy handed the envelope to Pacino, who sat back down. The letter had been opened neatly along the top by a letter opener.

The printing was unmistakable, Donchez’s handwriting, cramped and untidy with his age.

Pacino looked up at O’Shaughnessy. “I was thinking we could name the SSNX the USS Richard Donchez.,” he said. “Not that it matters. But I’d still like to see it that way.”

“Just read the damned letter.”

Pacino looked back to the page.

Pacino coughed, then looked up at O’Shaughnessy, handing the letter back.

“Well?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

“Well, what?”

“What do you think?”

Pacino took a deep breath, thinking of an answer for O’Shaughnessy, then realized he didn’t have an answer.

That Donchez would want to name the submarine after Pacino’s first command seemed at first a cheap gimmick, something Donchez would pull at the last minute, but then something clicked.

As he pictured the hull of the SSNX towering over him in the floating dock, he imagined that she was christened the USS Devilfish. He could see the banners, reading USS Devilfish, SSNX-1, he could hear the shipyard workers talking about “Hull X-1, the Devilfish,” and he could see the documents, the procedures, one of them in his mind labeled USS DEVILFISH INST 5510.1B, and he could see the radio messages reading from: COMUSUBCOM, TO: USS DEVILFISH SSNX-1, SUBJ: OPORDER 13-001 …

And as he saw all that, something inside him began to move, to change shape. It was a feeling he’d had years ago, the first time he’d read the orders from the commander of Naval Personnel ordering him to report for duty and take command of the old Devilfish, for the first time linking his name with the name of that submarine, and for just a moment he could feel again how he had been back then, long before any of this had happened to him. He had a certain something back then, an attitude, a self-confidence, a cockiness. That was the word. Cockiness. And as he imagined the SSNX under the name of his old command, he felt some of that flow back into him, just a shadow of what he had once possessed, that old certainty, this time not coming from his genes or his upbringing, but as a gift from Richard Donchez. He felt it fill his chest as he looked at O’Shaughnessy.

“Boss, we’ll name the SSNX the USS Devilfish. And we’ll tell Warner that she’ll go to sea, one way or the other, on schedule. Trachea will have to eat that goddamned headline. And don’t worry about me or the Unified Submarine Command. I’m on the case.”

O’Shaughnessy smiled, clapped him on the shoulder, and the two men abandoned the study for the dinner table. The smell of the filet made Pacino hungry for the first time he could remember in almost a year.

But as the staff car drove Pacino back to the Annapolis house, he felt the cockiness leave him again, the emptiness filling him back up. Eileen was gone, Donchez was gone, and now, again, it felt like he himself was gone.

Maybe it had been the scotch talking when he’d told O’Shaughnessy he’d stay, he thought. He wondered whether he’d been right the first time, whether he should resign.

He looked down at the gold embroidered ball cap.

How would it look if instead of reading USS DEVILFISH SSN-666 it read USS DEVILFISH SSNX–I? Would it change anything in a life that had seen too many changes?