By the time they reached the bow section, Phillips could see the racks with the stacked cylinders on them, the stenciling clear from fifty feet away reading mod bravo vortex. The men stopped near a weapon-loading tractor bed.

“Let’s roll one of the missiles out,” Pacino said.

One of the weapon-handling crewmen assembled two men to roll out the nearest Vortex. It took a few minutes, and during the wait Phillips saw the giant door of the facility begin to close, plunging the interior into gloom until his eyes adjusted to the overhead halogen lamps. Finally the weapon dolly pulled out one of the Vortex canisters. It was huge, almost four feet in diameter and fifty feet long.

“And how do you plan on putting ten of these things on the outside of the Piranhat’ Phillips asked.

“You’re going to look like you’re wearing a bandoleer,” Pacino said.

“Amazing.”

“Admiral Pacino?” a young civilian asked, winded from trotting across the facility floor.

“I’m Pacino.”

“Sir, an Admiral Donchez called and said he needed to see you at the White House within the hour.”

Pacino looked startled. “Thanks. Emmitt, how soon can you be, done with the alterations to the Piranhat’ “It’s a month of work. Admiral.”

“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you,

Emmitt?”

Capt. Emmitt Stephens smiled, resigned. “Yes, sir.

You want the work done in a week with Piranha out of here on her own power. I’ll see to it.”

Pacino shook his hand, then Rebman’s and waved Phillips to walk with him.

“What was that about a week, sir?” Phillips asked.

“Emmitt Stephens can work miracles. There’s no reason you should have to wait a month to get your boat ready. I want you on the way to the Pacific by this time next week.”

“Why, sir? What’s going down?”

“Let’s just say I have a bad feeling.”

“One week. I can’t believe it.” “Neither can I,” Pacino said. “I was just going to ask him to get it done in two. Good thing I kept my mouth shut.”

“What’s this White House business about. Admiral?”

“I’ll find out in an hour. Bruce, don’t be a stranger. I consider you my first line commander. Don’t let me down out there.”

Pacino clapped him on the shoulder and vanished out the corner door into the winter air. Phillips looked back up at the tail of the Piranha looming over his head, thinking about the admiral who had called him the best.

He let his gaze roam over the Piranha’s massive hull, and felt a mix of awe and near-sensual pleasure.

WASHINGTON, D.C. THE WHITE HOUSE

Pacino was ushered into the Oval Office and led to a seat on a wide sofa next to Richard Donchez.

The room seemed much smaller than it had appeared on television. The desk was the same, the couch and chair arrangement the same, even the fireplace looked familiar, but the combination in reality was so close as to seem claustrophobic, although that could have come from the crowd in the room.

Pacino recognized Vice President Al Meckstar, the dark-haired Hispanic-looking boy of politics, his looks deceptively youthful. Now in his early forties, Meckstar had joked he would dye his temples gray if that would lend him more credibility. Meckstar sank into the sofa opposite Pacino and Donchez, next to Secretary of State Phil Gordon. Gordon was thin, a marathon runner who had joined government directly out of Harvard, although little of his education or elite background seemed to have rubbed off on him. His eternal smile and joking cheerfulness were so thick as to seem affected but they were not. His political instincts were matched by none; his success at State was eerie. Someone had remarked that Gordon could have been a time traveler back from the future armed with detailed history books, so accurate were his intuitions about foreign heads of state.

At the end of the opposite couch Steve Cogster, the National Security Advisor, stretched his awkwardly long legs. Cogster was an oddball. Donchez had once told Pacino he did not trust him. Impeccably turned out in a pinstriped suit, imported silk tie, and sparkling wingtips, Cogster was as tall as Pacino, with thinning blond hair, slightly buck teeth, and oval-shaped lenses in wire-framed glasses. Cogster was famous for his soft-spoken arguments in public, coupled with his flaming Emails and memos so caustic his own staff had nicknamed him “the Blowtorch,” passing his acerbic E-mails throughout State. Even Donchez had received a few winners at NSA. It was rumored that Phillip Gordon kept a file of Cogster’s most acidic memos and passed them around Friday afternoons.

Some said that Gordon even had some of them framed in his office and only took them down when Cogster or the president visited him at State.