“I thought about that,” Pacino said. “I was sorely tempted, believe me. But I think the third Yasen-M might sneak into the Indian Ocean and look for us based on transients, so that’s the leg where we need to keep him confused. There’s no help for the Cape of Good Hope. We have to go around South Africa no matter what — the globe is just built that way. Trouble is, we’ll still have to charge batteries every eighteen hours, but for the six-hour charge period, we’ll run only six knots. And that will be the time we’ll be making the most noise and be the most vulnerable, so we’ll charge during the mid-watch. Russians tend to put their second string on the graveyard shift. So bottom line, I’m whistling through the graveyard by going six knots through the Cape of Good Hope passage, but otherwise, I’m flanking it, just not on a great circle route until Cape Town is behind us.”
“That isn’t logic, Lipstick, it’s instinct,” Varney said.
“Label it however you want,” Pacino said. “But we have to get this mission to end, and if we have to burn nuclear fuel to do it, so be it. Less dangerous to be loud at thirty-one knots than stopping for food two or three goddamned times between here and the Bahamas.”
“Your lips to God’s ear. Anyone else have anything for this meeting?” Dankleff asked. “Let’s get back to work then, or to your racks, or to your watch station. Mr. Abakumov, start the reactor immediately and report to central command when you’re ready to answer all bells. Patch, stick around for a minute, I want to talk to you.”
Varney, Ahmadi, the SEALs, the chiefs and Abakumov filed out of the room, leaving Pacino alone with Dankleff. Pacino stood and made coffee for them both, then sat back down at the wardroom table.
“Jesus, Lipstick,” Dankleff said, “if we go flank this whole way, we’re going to be eating a torpedo from that Yasen-M. Or a dozen.”
Pacino looked at Dankleff. “I know. The odds of us getting safely to AUTEC? I put them at one in four.”
“You talk to any of the others about that feeling?”
“It would do harm to the mission,” Pacino said. “We need the crew to keep their happy thoughts. So I kept my mouth shut. It’s a no-win, U-Boat. Either we starve or we get torpedoed. As for me, I guess I’d rather die fast. But I have a plan.”
“I’ve noticed something about you, Patch. You always have a plan.”
Pacino nodded. “Ahmadi says we can open the outer torpedo tube doors and keep two weapons powered up for an hour at a time before their gyros melt. We can rotate through the tubes, so we don’t destroy any weapons, but at all times, our gun is loaded and cocked. We get the slightest indication a bad guy is out there, we fire — even without the slightest hint of a solution — for effect. Best if we launch a Shkval, that bastard making noise and blasting through the ocean. If nothing else, it would alert Vermont. Or, if we hear Vermont launching weapons, we toss our own in the same direction.”
“This is more of your desire to go down with an empty torpedo room, isn’t it?” Dankleff looked at Pacino, his expression serious and empathetic.
“Doesn’t it make sense, U-Boat?” Pacino asked. “If we go down, don’t we want to go down shooting? Even if we’re shooting at shadows? Don’t act like you paid for those torpedoes with your own money, U-Boat.”
Dankleff laughed. “Okay, Patch. You’re unofficial navigator and unofficial weapons officer. Load our guns and cock them. If the bad guys give us any shit, let’s toss it right back at them.”
“Damn straight, OIC.” Pacino scooped up the charts and left the room to return to the navigation space. Dankleff stared after him.
We’re going to end up on the bottom of the ocean, Dankleff thought. This mission had never been survivable.
BOOK 6:
REVENGE SERVED HOT
32
The big limousine glided to a halt outside the brightly colored portico of the Detskiy Mir school, the elite private pre-school for children of the Council of Ministers. The Council was headed by President Dmitri Vostov for the last twelve years. Vostov was unfathomable to the West’s academics and intelligence analysts, since he was both a hardliner and a reformer. But at this moment, he was just a father of a four-year-old adorable daughter, Anya, who bounced out of her side of the limo, grabbing her backpack with the colorful illustration of a ferocious tiger being stared down by a brave cartoon little girl.
Vostov got out on his side and crossed over to the door Anya had exited. She reached up for his hand as he walked her to the door, her small hand warm and soft in his. He stooped down to receive her enthusiastic hug and kiss on his cheek. He smiled at her, thinking how wonderful children were at this age. He had older children from his first marriage, one now an Air Force fighter pilot stationed in the western Arctic, the other a Navy destroyer enlistee in the Pacific fleet, and both had been absolute terrors as teenagers, and as adults they were still somewhat distant, only talking to their father when they thought they had to. But a four-year-old, Vostov thought, represented the absolute perfection of humanity. He loved her so much it could bring tears to his eyes. So innocent, and so full of trust and love for him — he, a man who had sent hundreds of souls to their deaths back when he’d been an officer of the KGB, before the sad day marking the striking of the flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
“Daddy,” Anya said in her musical little girl’s voice, “after school, Mommy wants to go shopping. She said your driver could pick me up and take me to your office. Can I keep you company while you work, Daddy?”
Vostov smiled at her. “I would love that, baby girl. I will wait for you with great anticipation.”
“Yay!” she said, smiling and hugging him again. “I will see you after school, Daddy.”
She turned and skipped into the door of the school, the headmaster holding the door open for her and standing at rigid attention, acknowledging that the president himself had visited. Vostov smiled and waved at the headmaster and ducked back into his limousine for the two-minute ride to the Kremlin. The ride was short, but enough to get his mind shifted into a different gear. The eight o’clock meeting this morning would be brutal — not for him, but for his subordinates.
When the car stopped at the entrance to the Kremlin’s Dom Pravitelstva Rossiiskoi Federatsii, the White House, where Vostov had built a cavernous office adjoining the prime minister’s suite, Vostov grabbed his large briefcase and exited the limo. He stopped to look at the sky and the weather. It was mid-June, and Moscow was breathtakingly beautiful. He smirked — give it six months, and it would be a frigid frozen hell on earth. When he entered the ornate brass door, then a second wood double door, then a third steel blast door, the military guards came to attention and saluted. He saluted them back, his posture and hand rigid. Beyond the guards, his aide waited for him. Tonya Pasternak was a tall, slender brunette with a large chest, narrow waist and mile-long legs. For the last year, Vostov had considered replacing her with a male aide de camp, but Pasternak was icily competent. Competent, but a temptation. Vostov’s second wife, Larisa, virulently objected to his having an aide as beautiful and sexy as Pasternak, but there was an enduring principle of politics involved here, Vostov thought. The more power a man had in a hierarchy, the more desirable his female lackies were. He smirked at Pasternak, glad that she couldn’t hear his thoughts.