“Well, if Wells were still USUBCOM commander I’d be relieved of Greeneville and driving a desk at the office of base security and car stickers.”

“Congratulations, honey. Why don’t you ditch the admiral and we’ll celebrate tonight, just us?”

“You know I’d love that, but I better not. I’ll be home early.”

“I’ll be waiting, Captain.”

Phillips pressed the END button and dropped the phone in the console, stared at the rain washing the windshield and thought about how it would feel to command the newest submarine in the fleet. And suddenly it hit him that he’d be leaving his officers and crew behind, which dampened his mood. Well, perhaps he could convince Pacino to allow him to take Roger Whatney with him. Roger was now Phillips-trained. The two of them were a team, and Phillips didn’t look forward to breaking in a new XO.

He turned his mind to the things that needed to be done to turn his present ship over to her new skipper, put the car in gear and pulled out, heading for the O-club. It had turned out to be a good day, after all.

WIN YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE

YOKOSUKA, JAPAN

Comdr. Toshumi Tanaka gripped the carved wooden handrails mounted on the edge of the clearing situated on the ridge overlooking the submarine piers of the Yokosuka Maritime Self Defense Force Base some 200 meters below the rocky ledge. The clearing at this spot had been groomed as a garden and meditation site. Below Tanaka’s feet rounded stones were placed to form a cobbled area up to the handrails looking down the ledge. The spot was beautiful in the spring and summer, but in the fall the gloomy aura of it made it unpopular, which fitted Tanaka’s mood. He glared out at the vista. Today he could only view the world through a haze of anger and frustration.

He thought of better times. When he was a small boy he had lived in a house by the sea, a house filled with laughter and love. His father had been a stern but caring naval officer, his mother happy to take care of him and his younger sister Onu. The elder Tanaka, then a junior officer, had been at sea much of the time, but when he was there the family was joyful. Toshumi and Onu spent happy hours playing and reading with their mother, waiting for the times when their father would return. All this until his eighth year when his father Akagi was asked to go on a foreign assignment in the United States and the Tanaka family had left Japan for America.

Akagi Tanaka, a commander then, was sent to a small seacoast town in Maryland to teach navigation to the students at the U.S. Naval Academy.