“President Carlucci’s handle back when he was pushing a fighter jet off an aircraft carrier for a living. Apparently his afterburners caused some minor damage to a car parked too close to an Air Force Base taxiway.”
“Minor damage?”
“Well, the way Carlucci tells it, the car went up in flames and the gas tank exploded and he didn’t even know it, he was all the way down the runway and going vertical by that time. Turns out the car belonged to the Air Force base commander. Not very career-enhancing for poor Lieutenant Commander Vito Carlucci.”
“I can imagine.”
“He stuck out his tour, then punched out shortly after the Bohai Bay conflict, decided to try politics.”
“‘Scorch’—he’s probably the last guy I could see having a name like that.”
“I know what you mean,” Pacino said. “He’s pretty cautious for an ex-fighter jockey.”
“Cautious? More like weak. You’re aware the political cartoons all depict him holding a purse, right?”
“That’s why he brought me in. But from what I’ve seen so far, he’s pretty tough behind the scenes. Far tougher than I would have ever thought.”
“Press flamed on him pretty hard for appointing you, Patch, you warmonger.”
Pacino smiled, his eyes on the road as he downshifted to third for a tight curve, then down again to second, the engine squealing as he throttled up out of the curve.
“You sink one little Chinese fleet and they call you a warmonger. So unfair.”
Catardi grinned. “So, Camp David. What’s it like?”
“It’s nice. Forested, secluded, rustic. It’s quiet there. The cabins are a bit basic and haven’t been updated or remodeled since Gerald Ford hung out here, but I guess that’s part of its charm. I’m told Carlucci doesn’t use it like other presidents did. It’s an absolute no-media zone, a total comms lockdown. No photographers, videographers, news reporters, nobody. No presidential family members. Cabinet and top-level staff only. And as few of those as possible, and none of their lackeys are invited. That’s why I had to tell you to leave your aide behind, what’s her name? River something.”
“Wanda. Wanda Styxx. Apparently she’s your son’s type. They danced one dance at the AUTEC O-Club and then disappeared together.”
Pacino stared over at Catardi for a split second. “Wow, really?”
“Didn’t see her again until late the next morning, just before your son’s boat shoved off.” Catardi decided to be discreet and not mention that Wanda Styxx was in an uncharacteristically excellent mood for the morning after an O-Club drink-fest.
“I guess he’s starting to get over Carrie,” Pacino said. Catardi lifted an eyebrow.
“Your former engineer, Robby, Carolyn Alameda.”
Catardi whistled, shaking his head. “I couldn’t make her funeral in time. Admiral Rand had me at a comearound at Pac Fleet HQ in Pearl Harbor. She died so suddenly. But you said Patch Junior was quote, getting over her, unquote. They were—?”
“Yeah, they were seeing each other. I thought I’d have to talk him out of getting married, it was that serious.”
“Holy shit. I never knew.”
“Going through what you guys suffered, I guess they stayed in touch after that. And you know the story. Tale as old as time. Boy meets girl. Girl calls boy a non-qual. Boy falls for girl. Boy rescues girl from certain death. Girl falls for boy.”
Catardi felt a moment of guilt that he’d tried to bury the Piranha incident in his mind and hadn’t kept in contact with Alameda, Schultz or the younger Pacino, probably unconsciously thinking that seeing them would bring him right back to that horrible deep submergence vehicle where he’d almost died.
“You were telling me about Carlucci and Camp David,” Catardi prompted.
“Yeah,” Pacino said. “Carlucci doesn’t like the usual presidential accommodations at Aspen Lodge with all its facilities for meetings and communications. He holes up in the super-humble Birch Cabin. He’s got us bunking in the old Holly Lodge, which was the presidential house before they built Aspen Lodge. It has enough gigantic bedrooms to host half a dozen heads of state at a time. The Secretary of State and the Director of Combined Intelligence will be there with us along with the VP. When Carlucci calls, we walk over to Birch’s back deck if the weather’s nice, or indoors in the small den with the fireplace going if it’s raining or snowing or just cold. And that fire’s always going.”
“Sounds cozy. I guess. But the outside deck at the Birch Cabin can’t be secure enough for what I think we’ll be talking about. I suppose I can’t really ask why I got called here.”
Pacino shook his head. “This car’s a lot of things, Robby, but it ain’t a SCIF. But the den at Birch Cabin is.”
An hour later, they parked and took their bags to the security building to check in and get their belongings scanned. After clearing security, a golf cart waited for them, a young, pretty staff aide ready to drive them over the narrow road to Holly Lodge.
“It’s pretty humble for presidential digs,” Catardi said, following Pacino into the house.
“Hey,” Pacino said, “we’re camping, remember?”
The officers’ wardroom doors were both shut, with leather covers affixed to their small circular windows and warning signs posted outside reading SECURE VIDEO CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS.
Captain First Rank Boris Novikov sat in a chair in the middle of the long edge of the table on the inboard side. To his left sat the navigator and chief of tactical operations, Captain Third Rank Leonid Lukashenko. To his right sat First Officer Anastasia Isakova. On the other side of the room, against the outboard bulkhead, a large flatscreen display showed the surface of a table, an ornate green tablecloth on it with elaborate gold stitching, the wall behind the table a dark wood paneling with a framed oil painting of a Project 671 Shchuka-class submarine on the surface, plowing through a high sea state.
As the officers of the Voronezh waited, they each took out their tablet phones and scanned the news again, as they had for the last week, but there was still nothing but a single sentence about the Suez Canal closing.
Finally a large older man appeared in the screen, taking his seat and putting his officer’s cap on the table surface. Someone off-screen handed him an ash tray and a silver cigarette case. The officer opened the case and took out a cigarette, accepted a lighter from the person off-screen, lit up and let out a cloud of smoke. He was in late fifties or early sixties, with all his hair, albeit mostly gray, with a face that was probably once handsome but had given up to the infirmities of age. His face was stern as he got settled and lifted a remote to turn on his screen.
“Good afternoon, Admiral,” Novikov said. “This is First Officer Isakova and Navigator Lukashenko, sir. Officers, allow me to present Admiral Zhigunov, commander of the Northern Fleet Submarine Force.”
The mean expression on Zhigunov’s face melted into a warm smile. “Hello Boris Alexandrovich. And hello also to your officers. I hope you are all well, yes? My chief of staff said you had an urgent matter. What is it that is so urgent that you can’t put it in a radio dispatch?”
The truth was that Novikov wanted to see the expression on his adopted father’s face when the matter of the closed canal came up. Novikov outlined the situation.
“I’d heard,” Zhigunov said, letting smoke out of his nostrils and taking another puff.