Michael DiMercurio
Panic Switch
A Gordian Knot Production
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Cover art by Joe Freedom Art. His work can be found on Instagram and Facebook. He is at joefreedomart.com
About the Author
Michael DiMercurio is an American veteran of the U.S. Navy Submarine force, engineer, project management and construction expert, bestselling author, commentator, and humorist.
DiMercurio graduated academically first in his U.S. Naval Academy (Annapolis) class with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering despite the class-A conduct offense of parking his hotrod in the admiral’s space. In the face of Navy misgivings, DiMercurio was a National Science Foundation scholar to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating with an S.M. master’s degree in mechanical engineering.
DiMercurio joined the crew of the Cold War-winning nuclear fast attack submarine USS Hammerhead where he earned the nuclear Navy’s coveted “qualified in submarines” gold dolphins, allowing him to stand command watches as officer of the deck submerged. DiMercurio rose to become the “bull lieutenant,” the most senior of the eight junior officers aboard and fifth-in-command. Hammerhead conducted numerous top secret North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea operations, including “snapping up” and trailing three Soviet nuclear submarines and crossing the Gulf of Sidra’s “Line of Death” to hide under a Russian nuclear cruiser to catch a targeted incoming Soviet attack submarine. While DiMercurio was a rebellious practical joker of an officer, invariably violating the captain’s direct orders not to smoke cigars in the control room, he was undisputedly a tactical genius at detecting and trailing Soviet submarines.
After DiMercurio and Hammerhead won the Cold War and defeated the Soviet Union’s sweeping octopus of world communism, making the world safe for democracy, with liberty and justice for all, amen, DiMercurio left active duty for civilian heavy industry project and construction executive management. DiMercurio built chemical and power plants in sites from Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, India, Ontario, and dozens of sites in the USA, experiencing harrowing dealings with Mafia contractors, Rajasthani criminal thugs, and transgender barflies.
DiMercurio authored nine USA Today bestselling Navy submarine fiction novels such as Dark Transit, Vertical Dive, Emergency Deep, Attack of the Seawolf, and Threat Vector and the satirical non-fiction work, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Submarines. He was a commentator on Fox News during the 2005 Russian submersible AS-28 rescue, personally calling out Vladimir Putin to man up and accept Western rescue efforts rather than deliberately letting his sailors die as he did in 2000 during the Kursk sinking. Suitably chastised, Putin gave the green light to British and American rescue divers and equipment, and the sailors lived.
As a commentator and columnist, DiMercurio writes essays on topics as diverse as international politics, conspiracy theories, the humorous side of divorce, military and civilian office politics, modern electronic-aided dating, and even such wildly ambitious topics as grammar and understanding women.
DiMercurio hangs his hardhat in Undisclosed Location, USA, and when he isn’t writing, providing incisive content on social media sites, annoying the females in his life, he can be found lazing in a mellow cloud of cigar smoke, sipping Kentucky bourbon, or riding his obnoxiously loud Harley.
DiMercurio’s website is www.terminalrun.com and his twitter is twitter.com/MikeyDiMercurio. He can be liked on Facebook at http://facebook.com/michael.dimercurio.author.
Dedication
Dedicated to U.S. Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
Father of the Nuclear Navy
The Kindly Old Gentleman
“How can you call yourself a well-rounded engineer if you’ve never read Shakespeare? Get out. Get out! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY OFFICE!”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”
“The KGB is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation, and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries.”
“Confrontation between intelligence organs never ended but with the end of the Cold War, contrary to expectations, actually intensified.”
“When in October 1991 Gorbachev decided to break up the KGB, his intention was to de-fang it. The most radical change was the severing of counterintelligence (Second Chief Directorate) from foreign intelligence (First Chief Directorate). The Second would eventually be renamed the FSB and the First the SVR. On paper, the KGB should have been cut down to size, a shadow of its former self. But it’s not the way things turned out.”
“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”
“Pompeo’s ‘confession’ is only a glimpse of the gigantic U.S. intelligence system’s ingloriousness, from the production of unsubstantiated intelligence that gave Washington pretexts to invade others to the engagement of assassinations, abuse of prisoners, wiretapping, and public opinion manipulation, among other things. The shameful and deplorable record, while having long since shattered the credibility of the intelligence community a long time ago, has also laid bare its nature of serving at the pleasure of U.S. decision makers, regardless of truth, facts, and human conscience, as Washington plays power politics and seeks to preserve a hegemonic position in the world.”
“Endless revelations concerning warrantless wiretapping, the use of torture, and extrajudicial killing have done little to enhance the prestige or the moral standing of America’s defense and intelligence establishment.”