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  He opened it up, finding a small WritePad handheld computer inside, but with an elaborate passkey system, one part reading his fingerprint, a second scanning his retina, then lighting up and

  asking his password. He typed in his midshipman number from sixteen years before, a number so ingrained in memory he used it for all his personal passwords.

  The computer didn't come to life with the usual Windows/Linux 2017 display, but showed just a flat white sheet with black print, almost as if he were looking at a sheet of paper. Past the first paragraph, a definition of Release Twelve, the next fine identified the code word Alpha. This was defined as information about developments in the Ukraine.

  Alpha information went beyond recent Ukrainian history to a war between Argentina and Uruguay in South America, a subject McKee hadn't heard about. The next page of computer text revealed that both had acquired nuclear weapons in large quantities and had been threatening each other for the last five years. In 2013, both nations had manned up their conventional militaries, mostly land armies.

  The next page reported the intentions of Argentina, gathered from electronic eavesdropping of phone conversations and computer e-mail. The country had struck a deal with the ever insolvent Ukraine involving its Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine had agreed to sail south to the coast off Montevideo, Uruguay, and attack from the sea while Argentinean forces crossed the border on land.

  McKee whistled aloud—none of this had ever made its way to the New York Times. He'd assumed the massive Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet was rusting away in mothballs at the Sevastopol piers.

  Yet he certainly believed that they'd want to get some use out of all that firepower.

  McKee looked up and found the naval air lieutenant sitting opposite him, watching him intently.

  "Yes?" he asked.

  "Can I get you anything?" she asked.

  "Coffee would be great," he said. "And I'd like to smoke, but I don't imagine you have a stock of cigars."

  "Admiral Phillips said to give you whatever you need," she said, standing. From an overhead compartment she withdrew a small humidor and opened it to reveal a half-dozen Cuban Montecristo cigars, a cutter, and a lighter, then moved aft to the bar.

  "What I really need is a phone," McKee growled.

  "Except for a phone," she called back from the bar, smiling.

  "Goddammit," McKee muttered. Clipping the tip from the torpedo-shaped cigar, he fired it up with a lighter with the skull-and-crossbones emblem of the U.S. Unified Submarine Command on it. When the coffee landed in front of him, he waved at the lieutenant and paged the computer display through another page of dry text.

  The next section was a file of e-mails and encrypted radio messages, going as far back as 2013, five years ago. They detailed the hostility breaking out between the two South American countries— over trade, border disputes, and what seemed to boil down to a personality conflict between the respective heads of state. Then in 2014, Uruguay det-

  onated an underground nuclear test. Early in 2015, Argentina blew up four test warheads. A cargo ship sailed from Red China and made port in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, off-loading twenty missile bodies, ready for warheads. In 2016, Uruguay's army was a paltry thirty thousand men. By 2017, Uruguay had put a whopping 700,000 in uniform, out of a population of twelve million. And by that time Argentina's army had grown to two million, but Uruguay had imported over three hundred of the newest Indian Madras battle tanks. Argentina's sparse navy had been ordered to maximum readiness, while the Argentinean talks with Ukrainian President Dolovietz progressed from the theoretical to compensation details. As Argentinian money was wire-transferred to Swiss accounts, the Black Sea Fleet's maintenance went from poor to substandard to fair. Over the course of two years the destroyers, frigates, cruisers, and aircraft carrier of the Black Sea Fleet were tended to with loving care, being prepared for action.

  There was one lengthy e-mail to the President from the Secretary of State, acerbic Lido Gaz, going over the five-year history of the failed American diplomatic initiatives to bring the Urguay-Ar-gentina feud to an end. This included the recent intervention in the Ukraine, when Gaz had gone to speak to—or threaten—President Vladimir Dolovietz, but the entreaty had been ignored.

  The messages in the file grew recent. On April 14 of this year, three Ukrainian destroyers had transited the Bosporus Strait and Dardanelles and made their way into the Mediterranean Sea, on an

  exercise. They made port in Toulon, France, for what they called a foreign exchange port call. On April 20, another squadron of three destroyers left the Black Sea, also stopping in France. On April 25, all six destroyers departed Toulon and transited Gibraltar to the deep Atlantic. U.S. satellite reports showed them conducting exercises in a square block of ocean two hundred miles off Spain.

  On April 28, the engine room of the huge nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov lit off, the heat blooms captured in American spy satellite passes. Later that day the nuclear reactor of the Severodvinsk fast attack nuclear submarine Tigr was started. On April 29, four cruisers departed Sevastopol, Ukraine, and headed west, followed by four fast amphibious attack ships, all of them stuffed to the gills with Ukrainian marines and tanks. Following them were two oilers loaded with fuel for the fleet, enough for a long voyage. On April 30, three squadrons of frigates made their way to the Mediterranean. That same day the Severodvinsk submarine departed the Sevastopol pier and within twenty kilometers dived and disappeared. On the first of May the aircraft carrier tossed over her lines and made for the seaway behind the frigates and cruisers. On May 10, satellite scans showed the late-departing flotilla going westward through Gibraltar into the Atlantic, one ship at a time, casually, so as not to attract untoward attention. By May 11 the entire fleet was in the Atlantic, conducting independent maneuvers in the square of ocean off Europe.

  On May 12, a flurry of e-mails, phone calls, and

  radio messages passed between Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Kiev, Ukraine. On May 13, the Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet formed up and headed south-southwest at maximum speed, thirty knots. On May 14, three squadrons of Flanker supersonic attack fighter-bombers took off from Sevastopol and landed on the deck of the Kuznetsov, followed by a dozen attack helicopters. By May 16, the Ukrainian battle group had crossed the Tropic of Cancer en route to the equator, the headlong rush to the South Atlantic still in progress.

  McKee looked down at his fist, where the cigar had gone out. His coffee had long gone cold, but he slurped the remainder down anyway and refit the cigar. He returned to the message file, where he found the name of one particular American ship mentioned more and more, the USS Devilfish. This was the prototype ship of the NSSN new attack submarine class, designated SSNX, SSN standing for submersible ship nuclear, the X for experimental. The NSSN program was designed to replace the Seawolf class and take the fleet into the twenties and thirties. And as a prototype, SSNX was a one-of-a-kind ship, not quite the same as the follow-on USS Virginia, the true first NSSN on the building ways in Groton, Connecticut, at the Dyna-Corp New Construction Facility. Three other NSSN hulls were in various stages of construction, but until Virginia joined the fleet a year from now, Devilfish was considered the most formidable submarine in the world. The messages began to suggest that Devilfish might be tasked to intercept the Ukrainian task force. The suggestion had origi-

  nated at a low level, then made its way higher, becoming recommended by Admiral Bruce Phillips himself. As commander of the Unified Submarine Force, Phillips carried tons of weight in the Pentagon. The next few messages were e-mails exchanged between Phillips and Admiral Kane, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations for Submarine Warfare, then a few exchanges between Phillips and the Chief of Naval Operations, the commanding admiral of the entire U.S. Navy, Admiral Michael Pacino.

  Pacino's messages were full of questions about tactics, survivability, purpose of the operation, and exactly how Devilfish would be employed. What kind of weapons she would fire, whom she would target. The e-mails th
en went to even higher levels, Admiral Pacino's recommendations to Fleet Admiral Richard O'Shaughnessy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and to Freddy Masters, the Secretary of War, that Devilfish be loaded out with surface-ship- and sub-killing weapons and sent at maximum speed to intercept and sink the Ukrainian battle fleet. The next e-mails in the file were from Freddy Masters to President Warner herself, the reply the convening of the National Security Council at Camp David that weekend. The meeting transcript from the Saturday meeting was thirty-two pages long; the meat of it was that the Black Sea Fleet should be put on the bottom of the Atlantic to attempt to defuse a possible nuclear war.

  The message traffic had grown heavy on May 15, a few days ago, when the upper levels of the Pentagon suddenly realized that the commanding officer

  of Devilfish had gone on leave, to parts unknown, and could not easily be called back. Glitches like this became commonplace when information was as tightly controlled as Release Twelve, since even Admiral Phillips was unaware of the coming conflict when he had approved the Devilfish captain's vacation plans. On May 17 the executive officer, the second-in-command, of the Devilfish was ordered to set sail for the Atlantic, making a maximum speed run for the equator. When the captain was located, he would be taken to a rendezvous point and reunited with his submarine. On May 19 the captain was traced to a remote Wyoming location. Today, May 20, he would be airlifted to the rendezvous point, the operation already three days old.

  May 23, three days from now, was the date set for the interception of the Ukrainian battle group, at latitude thirty degrees south, off Porto Alegre, Brazil, just out of Ukrainian aircraft range. It would be cutting it close, but the submarine was in a tail chase at flank speed, and would need all the time the White House could grant her to speed ahead of the enemy fleet and ambush it.

  The last message was from the Seal Team Seven platoon commander, reporting that the Devilfish commander had been located and was being airlifted to his ship. McKee shut off the computer and closed the portfolio. Out the window the morning sun was glimmering over the deep blue water of the Caribbean Sea, or at least what he imagined was the Caribbean Sea.

  So that was why he'd been pulled out of the

  cabin. But couldn't they just knock on the door like anyone else? he wondered. But then, after seeing what Release Twelve meant, he began to see that they couldn't afford to have him say no. Someone would have had to say, 'You have to, it's war,' and at that point Release Twelve code word Alpha information would be compromised. What a tangled web, McKee thought.

  He stared out the window some more, amazed that a week ago he had been doing little more than political infighting in a peacetime Navy. Now he was going to war. It was too much to process. Despite the queasiness he felt from the aftereffects of the drug the Seals had used on him and the jitters from the coffee and cigar tobacco, he decided to try to sleep. He reclined the seat, pulled down the window shade, and shut his eyes.

  What sleep he got was troubled. He kept seeing Diana's face, her cheeks wet with tears. He woke after less than an hour, feeling deeply disturbed, and promised himself he'd quit the Navy as soon as this operation ended.

  fatter pole. The first was a type 20 periscope, the second a Bigmouth multifrequency antenna.

  At the top of the sail, clamshell trap doors were lowered into a cavity, forming a crow's nest, the bridge. Two men appeared, both wearing at-sea parkas and ball caps. One of them hoisted a stainless-steel flagpole aft of the bridge, raising a huge American flag from one halyard. Following was the black emblem of the Unified Submarine Command, a skull-and-crossbones pirate flag with script printing above the skull reading deep — silent — fast — deadly, and below, unified submarine command. The flag had been designed by Admiral Phillips' predecessor, Admiral Michael Pacino.

  On the top of the deck two massive steel hatches opened upward. From them a dozen men wearing safety harnesses and cables appeared, manning the deck.

  The submarine below was the USS Devilfish,, It was 377 feet long and 34 feet in diameter and displaced 7,700 tons, carrying a torpedo room of twenty-six weapons, with twelve vertical launch tubes. The ship was powered by an S9G DynaCorp pressurized water nuclear high-density power-reactor driving two grip-service electrical turbines and two steam turbines, called main engines, turning the alternating-current propulsion generators supplying the single oil-enclosed AC main motor for the propulsor. The reactor made 230 megawatts thermal with an incredible sixty thousand shaft horsepower at the propulsor.

  "We're ready for you, Commander," a crewman shouted from behind McKee's perch. McKee nod-

  ded, and before he had time to think, he was suspended in empty space over miles of ocean. He dropped until he was caught by several men and guided to the foam-tiled deck of the ship. The anti-sonar coating felt strange when feet expected solid steel underneath. The harness was released and withdrawn up to the chopper, which was already banking hard and flying away. McKee walked quickly to the open hatch on the deck aft of the sail, lowered himself into the gaping maw, and went down the ladder. The interior seemed pitch-black in contrast to the midmorning Caribbean sunshine. The escape hatch chamber was a large cylinder of steel fully one deck tall, leading to the middle level of the three-deck-tall forward compartment.

  There an officer stood waiting by the ladder, dressed in an at-sea blue jumpsuit. A wailing bosun's whistle sounded throughout the ship. "Devilfish, arriving!" The PA system boomed on all levels the announcement that the ship's commanding officer had just arrived aboard. It sounded strange here, over two thousand miles from the pier the ship had departed three days ago. The bosun's whistle sounded again at the same time Commander McKee's boots hit the floor plates of the deck at the base of the ladder. When McKee let go of the ladder, the officer came to attention.

  "Welcome back, Captain," she said, her voice deep for a woman.

  The slim, tall lieutenant commander with the brunette ponytail tied tightly behind her skull looked at McKee. Her embroidered name patch read

  petri. Her collars carried gold oak leaf insignia. Above her pocket was an embroidered dolphin pin. On one sleeve her coveralls bore an American flag patch. On the other sleeve she wore the Unified Submarine Command patch and a second one with the emblem of the Devilfish, a snarling ram's head above, a nuclear submarine below, the hull numbers of all submarines having carried the name at the bottom.

  "XO," McKee said tersely, using the universal Navy nickname for the executive officer, looking at her with what appeared to be at once relief and annoyance. Petri presumed that the relief was that he was back in his world, and the annoyance came from his being away long enough for Karen Petri to assume temporary command, infringing upon McKee's turf. Her stint as acting captain was now over, and she realized that she had mixed emotions about it. The emergency orders to get underway from Norfolk without the captain had at first made her anxious, but then as she had risen to meet the task, the feeling of command had started to grow on her, and she had learned what ancient seafarers had known since the beginning, that command at sea is a drug like no other. And with the appearance of Commander Kelly McKee, her mentor and captain, she was disappointed and half angry that she'd have to return command of the ship to him. But the feeling of happiness to see him prevailed. It had been a difficult voyage so far, and McKee brought an air of confidence to every task. With him around, nothing was difficult.

  McKee was of average height, but his style made

  him seem taller. His hair was a dark brown, his eyes likewise dark. His facial features were rugged, his lips too full for his otherwise bony skull, his hairline a strong arch over his bushy eyebrows, the overgrowth of them striking for a forty-year-old man.

  Petri had worked with McKee for the last two years, and she felt she had grown to know him better than anyone on earth, even his wife. She studied him, was next to him all day, in the pressure cooker of a sub, while Diana sat in her gilded cage and expected McKee to pamper her. Diana was not Petri's favorite person, but
Petri was a diplomat, something that had served her well in her career to date. She was one of the first female officers granted admission to the previously all-male submarine force.

  When the word came down from Congress to allow women into the force, Admiral Phillips had made a decision that the way to do it wrong would be to bring them in from the bottom, where the men might be tempted to harass and bully the women. He had decided to inject them into the force at the top of the command ladder, where their authority would not be questioned. He'd hand picked two dozen female officers, all of them surface-ship executive officers, all with the best fitness reports, all deep-selected for command at sea. Petri had been in line to command a nuclear cruiser, having completed her executive officer tour on the Port Royal, when the call had come in from Phillips' office. His staff had offered her the chance to serve in submarines, taking an implicit demotion

  back to executive officer, with the promise that superb performance would merit a sub command of her own.

  The training had been grueling. She'd had only two years to master what most men had taken sixteen years to accomplish. There had been months of little sleep, with attack simulator run after run, finally giving her the better part of the knowledge she needed. She already knew the Navy and knew how to command men. It was the knowledge of the machine that had been missing, or so she'd thought. But it wasn't just learning a machine, it was learning a new language, a new culture, a new world, and without Kelly McKee she would never have gained entrance to that world. He had spent hours training her, putting her on the conn during battle drills, infusing her with every scrap of experience and knowledge he'd gained in the decade and a half since Annapolis graduation.

  There were times she thought of him as more than just a mentor, more than her commanding officer, but she was a woman of extreme discipline, and thoughts such as these she did not admit even to herself.