Pacino looked up at Donner. Another life lost from his orders. He said something to Donner but couldn’t remember it. He was dimly aware of the doctor coming in and injecting him with a syringe, and darkness closing in on him despite his fighting it USS Piranha, SSN-23 electric boat division, groton, connecticut

“Any questions?” Phillips asked the assembled crew in the ship’s mess, all of them dressed for December weather, the heat in the room making their parkas that much more uncomfortable.

“Sir,” a chief asked, “how long to get to the Japan Oparea?”

“Going under ice, maybe two weeks, maybe less.”

“I’ve been stuck under the ice before. Captain, back on the Chicago. It wasn’t great.”

“Well, it’s not gonna happen to us. Next.”

“Yes sir,” Lt. Pete Meritson said. Meritson was the sonar boss and the most senior of the junior officers.

Phillips said that Meritson had the sweetest disposition and the most pleasant face, that it was a shame that he wasn’t selling used cars — he’d have made millions.

Meritson was more than a pleasant presence on board the Piranha. His intellect was penetrating. With the modern sonar systems now being installed on the Seawolf class, it was more common that the “bull” lieutenant, the most senior and trusted of the junior officers, be a sonar officer than the main propulsion assistant to the chief engineer. In this case Meritson was the man for the job. He had been an electrical engineer at Cornell with a specialty in electronic communications, the major that was sailing so many graduates into the highest paid engineering jobs as the Writepads and cellular phones became as common as telephones had been in the previous century. But he had chosen to join the Navy, without the service paying a nickel of his education, just up and sauntered into a Navy recruiting office one day, spent three months in an officer-training program and a year in nuclear-power training and sub school, and scarcely a year after graduation was a submarine officer. The enlisted men joked that he was possibly the only one aboard who had paid for his own schooling, and was still doing “hard time” on board the submarine when he could be out making money.

“Go ahead, Meritson.”

“Sir, what exactly are we going to do when we get there?”

Phillips looked around the room as if wondering if it were secure enough to say what he needed to say.

“Gentlemen, the only reason I’m going to answer that question is that when we’re done here we’re going to sea.” Phillips called the chief of the boat over, the COB, Chief Hanson, a torpedoman, a country boy. “COB,” Phillips said, “collect all the cellular phones, every god damned one of them.” Cellular phones were controlled more carefully than anything else aboard, the submarine force becoming security crazed after several SEAL operations had proved that the subs’ cellular phones were giving away too much. Only official ship’s phones were allowed aboard. Anyone caught with their own cellular unit lost it to the COB until the ship made port again.

“Okay, here’s the deal. Just before the executive officer and I reported aboard we ran a special simulation against a Destiny II-class submarine, trying to sneak up on the SOB. Guess what? No matter what we did, we lost.” Phillips let that sink in for a moment. “Now, that was with an improved-688 class, but Seawolf ships are only marginally better against the Destiny. Let’s face a fact, gents — if we could buy Destiny II submarines we’d fill our piers with them and sell off these 688s and Seawolfs to the highest bidder. They’re that good. But we’ve got something that can neutralize even a Destiny.” Phillips paused for effect. “The Vortex missiles we’re carrying like a bandoleer are the ultimate antisubmarine weapon.” As long as they didn’t blast their rocket exhaust through the hull, he thought. “Which means we’re the cavalry. If the sub force goes up against the Destiny ships in combat, and I hope to hell they don’t, we’ll be there to put them down.” “Skipper,” said Roger Whatney, the Royal Navy executive officer in RN sweater with its soft epaulets and lieutenant commander’s stripes, the star missing, a loop of braiding replacing it, “if there are more than ten Destiny subs we could be in for trouble.”

“Spoken like a gentleman, sir,” Phillips said, unconsciously imitating something Whatney was fond of saying.

“Now, if we can get on with it, let’s get this pig to sea. We’ve got to make the best time ever made to the Bering Strait. I’ve got a feeling that our people in the Japan Oparea are going to need us.”

NORTHWEST PACIFIC

USS RONALD REAGAN

“Admiral, I’m sorry I lost it last night,” Pacino said, standing on the bridge next to Donner’s admiral’s chair.

The waves were still pounding the ship, the other ships of the surface action group invisible in the storm. The glass windows of the bridge were drenched with rain.