The ship was rigged for night wartime steaming, the nav lights out, the bridge lit only by two weak red lamps.

It was all Pacino could do to find Donner. The ship was also at full antisubmarine warfare alert, which Pacino found comical, since by itself the carrier was helpless against submarines. Only the ships of the task force could help her, and most of them had gone to the northeast or southwest to patrol the exclusion zone boundary, leaving the Ronald Reagan with a token force — the cruiser Port Royal, an AEGIS-class unit that was excellent at fighting incoming aircraft or missiles and adequate at antisubmarine warfare, the towed array sonar systems and her LAMPS helicopters the main means of defense, and the destroyer John Paul Jones, the Arleigh Burke-class ship that was now refitted to handle its own LAMPS helicopter. Pacino noted that none of the helicopters was now flying. He would take that up with Donner.

It was also time to think about bringing one of the submarines back in close to act as their escort. In Pacino’s opinion, the carrier position was also too close to the islands.

“Have you heard about the Cheyennef”

“Yes sir.”

“What do you make of it?”

“Officially, I can’t say until we can vector one other submarine to the area. I think it’s more important that the other sub, the Pasadena, be recalled to protect the carrier, even if it means leaving the Sea of Japan open for now.” “You said officially. What do you think unofficially?”

“I think the Japanese MSDF subs put the Cheyenne on the bottom.”

“So the way you see this, you were right all along.

The Japanese are fighting back.”

“Admiral, I don’t form opinions so that they will confirm my earlier predictions. I’m calling it the way I see it.”

“I’m sorry. Patch. I have to say that I agree with you.

I’m just worried about Warner.”

“Why? What’s the president going to do?”

“If word gets out that we lost a submarine? In exchange for a tanker? We’ll be relieved the same uay.”

“Sir,” a young lieutenant commander said, coming up to the admiral, “we’ve got a detect of a laser off the starboard beam. I’m calling battlestations.”

Before the admiral could respond, the officer of the deck’s call blared out over the ship’s circuit-one announcing system.

“MAN BATTLE STATIONS. MAN BATTLE STATIONS.”

The ship’s general alarm went off while Pacino and Donner moved to the center of the room.

“I’m laying below to ASW Control,” Donner said.

Pacino nodded, deciding to remain on the bridge.

Laser detect, Pacino thought. That meant a submarine was out there. A submarine that was not a friendly.

* * *

SUV–III-987 Curtain Of Flames official deck log of underway mission number 118, commencing 20 december Mission 118 Official Deck Log Entry 28: Current position — thirty kilometers west of island Onahara jima, forty kilometers south of the mouth of Tokyo Bay. This unit is at mast-broach depth observing the American aircraft carrier hull number CVN-76, as it steams southwest on a pace pattern. Episode elapsed time is plus forty-five seconds. Tubes one, two, three, four have been fired. Torpedoes one through four are on their way to the aircraft carrier the target.

Episode elapsed time plus fifty seconds. Tube five is launched, the torpedo now away. This unit keeps the periscope up.

USS RONALD REAGAN

Pacino stood on the bridge feeling helpless. The men in ASWC, the combat-information center for antisubmarine warfare, would fight the ship, fight the task force.

He stood behind a row of video consoles and watched, the ASW Control scenes of little value to him but the sound being piped in telling him the story. Paully White appeared.

“Admiral,” he said in his high-pitched voice, “I couldn’t find you. You weren’t in ASW Control or flag plots—”

“This is as good as ASW Control. We can get the audio feed.”

“They’d better launch the Vikings and the helos or we’re in deep shit,” Paully said.

“I think they’re setting up to do that now. Looks like we’re turning to the south so we can launch aircraft.

And check out the Port Royal and the Jones. Their helos are taking off now.”

“All I can say is that those choppers should have been up a long time ago.”

“Ditto.”

“They don’t listen to me. Admiral. They just tell me where to put my submarines, your submarines, and ever since they sent Pasadena and Cheyenne to the other side of the world, I’m pretty much irrelevant. I told the captain he’d better get one of the subs back but he didn’t want to hear it. Same story you got from Donuts up here.”

“Careful, Paully. Admiral Donner isn’t fond of that moniker.”

White pulled out a cigarette. “Ah, he’s a sweetheart, he just don’t know dick about submarines.”

“I’d say that’s why—”

The audio feed from ASW Control grabbed Pacino’s attention.

“Did you hear that?”

“No, sir, what?”

“They called torpedo in the water.”

* * *