“Add turns,” Romanov said to Pacino, who was acting as approach officer under the watchful eye of Captain Seagraves.
“Pilot, add two turns,” Pacino commanded.
Lieutenant Dankleff, at the ship control console, acknowledged. “Add two turns, Pilot aye, and Maneuvering answers, now making five six turns and seven point zero knots.”
“Very well, Pilot.”
The target was ahead of them and slightly shallower, at a depth of 328 feet. He was cruising at seven knots, steady at this depth since they’d acquired him. It seemed an odd depth at first, but it was well below the thermal layer and correlated to the target’s depth gauges reading exactly one hundred meters. The speed of seven knots would seem to optimize his range on his batteries.
It was only a matter of time before he came to periscope depth and the operation to take him over could begin.
The voice of the navigation electronics tech came from aft and port. “Approach Officer, Navigator, mark sunrise.”
Captain First Rank Boris Novikov poured tea into the first officer’s cup. Isakova declined the offer of cream and sugar. They were seated at the table of his stateroom, trying to kill time before Port Said Operations called their convoy to form up and proceed south into the Suez Canal.
Kovalyov stuck his head in. “Captain, our convoy commences forming up in one hour.”
“Very well, Communicator.” Novikov checked his watch. It was 0530 hours local time. He picked up his phone and dialed the central command post.
“Watch Officer,” the navigator’s voice said.
“Navigator, the convoy will start forming in an hour. Are you ready?”
“We’ll set maneuvering stations watch in twenty minutes, sir, then weigh anchor and position ourselves in preparation.”
“Very well,” Novikov said, putting up the phone. Finally, this ridiculous wait was coming to an end.
National Security Advisor Michael Pacino gratefully accepted the steaming coffee from Vice Admiral Robert Catardi. They were the first to arrive at Birch Cabin’s special compartmented information facility, a SCIF that had preserved the rustic look and feel of the cabin’s former den, complete with wood-burning fireplace, the out-of-date tables and upholstered couches and chairs that looked like they came straight out of Great Aunt Maude’s front parlor from the year of our Lord 1943.
“Did you get in a nap?” Pacino asked Catardi. The call to assemble in Birch Cabin’s SCIF had come at 2030 after Pacino had been unable to fall asleep for a nap, knowing that once they got Carlucci’s call, they might be up for two days straight. He’d finally slipped into an uneasy rest, the images of a nightmare vaporizing with the jangling of the 1950s bedside table phone, but the residue of unease had lingered behind.
“You kidding? You get the word to fly to Joint Base Andrews for a comearound with the President of the United States, cool your heels over hamburgers and sausages on the Holly Lodge back deck grill with the muckety-mucks, sip a little Kentucky whiskey, but you know that any moment you’ll be standing tall, braced up, in front of the president? For maybe days at a time without being able to go to bed? Who sleeps with that going on?”
Pacino smiled and nodded his chin toward the newcomer coming through the door, Jehoshaphat Taylor. “I bet he did.” Taylor was a vice admiral in the Navy’s Special Warfare Command, or SpecWar, as they liked to say. He was built like a refrigerator, weighing in at something like 270 pounds, all of it bone and muscle. He was swarthy, with black hair, bushy eyebrows and an overgrown beard extending to the collar button of his starched black Harley-Davidson button-down shirt, worn under a leather jacket and above black jeans and black steel-toed boots. He had a look of half-mad violence about him, as if one wrong word and he’d break someone in half. But he saw Pacino and broke into a grin that lit up his caveman face.
“Patch Pacino. Admiral. Sir,” Taylor said, coming up to Pacino and pumping his hand in a hairy paw that dwarfed Pacino’s. “It’s great to meet you in the flesh. The stories about you — my mentors were on the Seawolf with you in the Bo Hai Bay. The stuff of legend, sir.”
Pacino smiled. “No ‘sirs’ around me, Admiral. It’s just ‘Patch’ now.”
Taylor continued pumping Pacino’s hand. “It’ll always be ‘sir’ to me, sir.”
Pacino laughed. “Have you met Rob Catardi, boss of the submarine force?”
Taylor smiled at Catardi. “You mean the boss of the bus drivers who take my commandos into action?”
“Bus drivers?” Catardi said, almost getting irritated.
“I’m just kidding, Rob,” Taylor offered. “Jehoshaphat Taylor. You can just call me ‘Jumpin Joe.’ God knows, I’ve answered to worse.”
“Coffee, Joe?” Pacino asked Taylor.
“I’d rather it were something stronger, it being after happy hour and all,” Taylor said, “but I’ll settle for a blonde-and-sweet.”
The fourth arrival into the SCIF was Admiral Grayson Rand, the commander of the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. He walked up and shook their hands, smiling. “Gentlemen,” he said, “and I use the term very loosely.” Rand stood barely five foot six, wiry and energetic, his hair going bald but trimmed to a crew cut, making his appearance seem tough. He had a Bayonne, north Jersey accent that accentuated his projected toughness. Dressed in a herringbone sport coat over jeans and brown Bruno Magli loafers, he looked ready to accept an umbrella-decorated cocktail at a megayacht’s party. “So what, pray tell, is going on here?”
“I imagine the president will tell us when he’s good and ready,” Pacino said, refilling his coffee cup.
The door opened again and a chunky man of average height came in, appearing in his forties. He wore a black fedora cap, a Hawaiian shirt and chinos. He seemed dark, with a black goatee and mustache, wide eyes so dark brown they seemed black. He was nowhere near as imposing as Taylor, but certainly formidable. He walked to the coffee pot without a word and poured a cup for himself, acting as if the gathered admirals weren’t even there. Theatrically, he took a deep pull on the coffee, then comically seemed to wake up and realize there were other human beings nearby. He smiled and offered his hand to Pacino.
“Angel Menendez, CIA deputy director of operations.” His accent seemed familiar to Pacino. Cuban, perhaps.
“I’m Patch Pacino, the new national security advisor,” Pacino said, then introduced the other admirals. Menendez shook their hands while sucking down his first cup of coffee.