Pacino inwardly winced at the thought of Bruno Romanov, Rachel’s ex-husband, nursing her back to health. “And the bad news, XO?”
“She’s got partial amnesia,” Quinnivan said. “They’re calling it ‘retrograde amnesia’—which usually means the patient loses memory of events before a traumatic brain injury. In Rachel’s case, she’s lost the last six or seven months.”
“Dear God,” U-Boat Dankleff said. “That means she’s lost the entire Panther run.”
“And it means she won’t remember me,” Pacino said, trying to keep his voice level and emotionless, but failing.
“Take heart, laddie,” Quinnivan said, clapping Pacino on the shoulder. “They say familiar sights or aromas can bring the memories crashing back. Maybe if she sees you, it will all return. Or if she smells the inside of a submarine again.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Pacino said. “So, XO, what’s the plan for getting us back to Norfolk?”
“Everyone, gather around,” Quinnivan said in a loud voice. The crew surrounded him, standing close to hear what he had to say, the SEAL officers and enlisted, with their white parkas, among the crowd. “The SEALs will embark aboard the USS Hyman G. Rickover, the sub with the dry-deck shelter. They’ll dive the wreck of the New Jersey and make sure it can’t be salvaged. Then they’ll go out and dive the wrecks of the Russian deep-diver sub and the Belgorod to do a post-action damage assessment. And to see if the Status-6 torpedoes are destroyed. If not, they’ll take care of that little problem.
“The other sub, the USS Montana, has called for a C130 arctic transport out of Joint Base Thule in Greenland. The plane should be in the air as we speak. The Montana will loiter here until we’re all safely embarked and in the air flying back to Thule. However, anyone among the crew who doesn’t have dolphins will be joining the Montana for the trip back, so you can continue to work on qualifications without interruption. And finally, Montana will radio SubCom to dispatch a second Russian rescue aircraft to pick up our good friends from the Belgorod and Losharik.”
Pacino looked at Short Hull Cooper. “Looks like you’re riding home on the Montana,” he said.
Squirt Gun Vevera pulled Pacino aside, away from the crowd. “Patch, if Rachel’s moved back in with Bruno, that leaves her room in the Snake Ranch available. You want to invite Short Hull to join us? We need the rent money. And he seems like a good guy.”
“Let’s wait till Montana pulls into Norfolk,” Pacino said. “There’s still a chance Rachel may regain her memory.”
“I’ll light a candle to that as soon as there’s a convenient church,” Vevera said.
Pacino laughed. “Squirt Gun, if you darkened the door of a church, the roof would cave in.”
“Which is why God will listen,” Vevera smiled back.
The sound of turboprops could be heard in the distance. Pacino shaded his eyes and looked for the plane. Eventually he could make it out. It circled the area, then slowed, made its approach, lowered skids, and landed on the ice, coming to a stop a hundred feet from the shelter. Pacino saw the star and stripes on the tail and the block letters on the fuselage spelling U.S. AIR FORCE and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“Guys,” Pacino said to his friends. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
30
“Mr. Vice President,” Presidential Secretary Eve LaBelle said from the side entrance door to the Oval Office, “the president and attorney general are here to see you.”
Vice President Michael Pacino stood up from the desk, pushing back the monstrous leather chair and smiling as Paul Carlucci was wheeled in, looking annoyed at being in a wheelchair, but smiling back at Pacino.
“I’m glad you’re back, Mr. President,” Pacino said, reaching out and shaking Carlucci’s hand. Carlucci’s handshake was strong, but nothing like the politician’s grip he’d had before the shooting. “How do you feel?”
“Like hell, Patch. Being shot is not an experience I’d recommend. Zero stars.”
Pacino laughed and looked at the attorney general. Madilynn Campbell was immediately recognizable, her gigantic figure regularly the subject of biting satire on social media. Carlucci had confided to Pacino that he had wanted to replace her, but she was embedded with the party faithful, he’d said, and he couldn’t spend the political capital to fire her. How much damage, he had wondered, could an attorney general really do?
“Good morning, Madam Attorney General,” Pacino said, reaching for her hand, but instead she slapped a folder into his hand.
“I hope you’ll sign this without any drama, Mr. Vice President,” she said, getting straight to business.
Pacino opened the folder. It was a one-page document signed by the president and the cabinet revoking Pacino’s interim appointment as acting president under the 25th Amendment. There was a space at the bottom for him to sign. Campbell handed him a pen, and he signed the document and returned it and the pen to her. Without a word, the beefy attorney general turned and left the room.
“She’s a real sweetheart, isn’t she?” Carlucci quipped.
“I suppose that job would bring out the dark side of anyone, sir,” Pacino said.
“Can you imagine what she would have done if you’d refused to sign that? I might have advised you to do that just to see the look on her face,” Carlucci chuckled. “Anyway, have a seat, Patch,” Carlucci said, waving to the floral-patterned couch. “I need to talk to you.”
“Why do I feel like I did whenever one of my wives used to say, ‘we need to talk’?” Pacino said, taking a seat on the couch so he could face Carlucci’s wheelchair.
“Exactly,” Carlucci said, his expression turning grim. “Patch, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it. You’re fired. I need you out of the building in the next thirty minutes.”
Pacino stood and offered his hand to Carlucci. He smiled and said, “it was an honor working for you, Mr. President.”
“Wait, Patch, what the hell? Sit back down,” Carlucci said in exasperation. “Don’t you want to know why I’m firing you?”
“Reasons for being fired never matter, Mr. President. Only the decision matters. Besides, as to reasons to fire me? I probably know a dozen reasons that haven’t even occurred to you yet.”
“Maybe, Patch, but you’ll need to know in case the media asks. And they will ask. What you will say affects us both. So let’s get our story straight.”
Pacino sat back down. “Go ahead, then, sir,” he said.
“First, you didn’t get fired. You resigned. Getting fired as the VP would stain your reputation. But you’re walking out of here by your own choice. That way, politically, you live to fight another day. And I don’t look like a jerk for firing a popular vice president.”
Carlucci’s chief of staff, Remi O’Keefe stuck his head in the side door. “Should I wait, Mr. President?” he asked.
“No, Remi, come on in.”
Chief of Staff Remi O’Keefe strode in, all six foot four inches of him. He was a African-American attorney who’d been a college basketball star at LSU and almost played for the NBA before a bad knee changed his career to law. He’d recovered nicely, Pacino thought, Harvard Law and a career as a Manhattan prosecutor, even being recruited to run for district attorney, but sometime during his travels, he’d sat on an airplane seat next to Carlucci, who at the time was running for mayor of Cleveland, and the two had become friends. O’Keefe had left Manhattan to become Carlucci’s chief of staff when Carlucci had been elected to the Senate, and had been by his side ever since.