“I’m just a phone call away, Nav.” Phillips opened the door in the aft bulkhead of control and stepped into his stateroom. He sank into the high-backed leather swivel chair and stared at his Writepad. He turned it on and reread the message about the sinking of the battle groups. He went to his locker and pulled out an old-fashioned paper chart of Japan, and taped it to his conference table. He stood over it for a long time, firing up a fresh cigar. After a while he got a pencil and marked in the boundary of the exclusion zone, the Japan Oparea. He stood over it, continuing to stare down at it. What would he do if he were the fleet commander? There must be some two dozen 688 ships he could coordinate and deploy into the Oparea. Coordination was the key. He would hit the Japanese with everything he had, all at once. It would be the only way to survive, especially since the Destiny IIs had the tactical and acoustical advantage. The tactical advantage was theirs because they knew where the intruder subs would be coming from and when. The acoustic advantage belonged to them because they were three to seven decibels quieter than the Improved Los Angeles-class ships. The quietest sub heard the intruder first and could set up to put a torpedo in the water before the intruder knew what was happening. So how could the American force beat that? Maybe by entering in superior numbers, two US boats for every Japanese boat, so that if a Destiny fired at one submarine, the noise of the torpedo launch would alert the other American ship. Hell of a way to win a war, Phillips thought. Maybe the Destiny ships would need to reload torpedoes and would go back into port, and the US force could catch them coming out. Still, the chances looked slim. The only hope was the stealth of the Seawolfclass subs and the power of the Vortex missiles. But there were two dozen Destiny submarines and only nine Vortex missiles.

NORTHWEST PACIFIC

USS MOUNT WHITNEY

Adm. Michael Pacino lingered in the door of sick bay, saying goodbye to the doctor, then spending a few moments more with Lt. Eileen Constance, the nurse who had attended to him during the ten days he had spent recovering from the Reagan sinking. Finally he checked his watch, blinking as he realized it was hard to see anything with his left eye obscured by the patch. The Mount Whitney doctor had given him the black eyepatch until the eye healed. “I’ve got to go,” Pacino said. Eileen asked if he would come by before he got on the helicopter for the personnel transfer to the Barracuda. “We’ll see,” he said. Pacino struggled down the passageways, the eyepatch making navigation difficult, finally arriving at his temporary stateroom that he and Paully White were assigned. He opened the door, saw Paully, whose jaw dropped just before he erupted into laughter. “It’s not funny. The bad eye hurts,” Pacino said. “Sorry, boss, but I just couldn’t help it.

You need a spyglass and a hook for a hand, a tricornered cap, and you’re ready.”

“What I’m ready for is to get out of here.” Pacino went to the locker and took out the wet suit, took off his uniform and struggled into the wet suit. Paully White cursed getting into his. By the time Pacino was suited up he was sweating and seasick. The suit was tight and constricting and hot. As long as it had taken to get into it, it would probably take longer to get out of it once he was aboard the Barracuda.

Pacino glanced at his watch again. It wasn’t quite time yet — the Barracuda and the Mount Whitney needed to close the range between them or else the chopper wouldn’t have enough fuel. Pacino sat at the temporary stateroom’s conference table and unrolled his large chart-sized electronic display, which was a Writepad blown up to ten times the regular size. The chart display was selected to a large area view of the Japan Oparea. Pacino had made half a dozen marks on it, showing the present positions of his eight Los Angeles-class submarines.

Going through each position was a line segment indicating his idea of where he wanted that ship to go. Pacino glanced at the chart from a few feet away, frowned and erased the arrows through the ship’s present positions. “Trouble?” Paully asked. “It’s not making sense,” Pacino said. The heat of the wet suit, the strain of putting it on in the stuffy stateroom while the ship rolled in the swells, the stress of being ordered to win a war that might not be winnable were all building into a world-class migraine headache. “Look, Paully, trying to attack the MSDF sub force with eight subs is a mistake. And geography is killing us too.

The backside, the Sea of Japan, is too remote, yet that’s where the Russian resupply ships would be. Warner wants results in one day—”

“Typical.”

“—so I’d have to put something together for the Pacific side. That would leave the Sea of Japan with no US submarines. Which means that the Russians could run out the so-called blockade and Warner gets mud on her face.”