The van finally parked. The engine stopped. The back door opened. It was dark outside. Melnik was marched into a clearing of the woods.
“What’s happening?” he asked. “Where are you taking me?”
He felt the pistol barrel on the back of his head.
After that, there was nothing.
The tactical SBP officer behind the body of Melnik picked up his legs and his deputy picked up the body’s shoulders. They rolled him into a deep grave. A concrete truck’s engine started and it backed up to the grave. A chute came out and the truck driver pulled a lever and cubic meter after cubic meter of concrete flowed down the chute and into the grave. The truck drove off, and the SBP officers scattered topsoil and brush over the concrete, then returned to the van. The van’s engine started, and it turned back toward Moscow.
Captain First Rank Sergei Kovalov walked down the jet ramp into the Murmansk terminal and through the doors from the secured area. The terminal waiting hall was filled with people.
He recognized the teenage girl running toward him, her mother smiling behind her.
“Daddy!” Magna Kovalov squealed. “You’re alive!”
She ran to him, almost knocking him down, and threw her arms around him. He hugged her back and kissed the top of her head. By then, Kovalov’s wife, Ivana, came up to him and hugged both Kovalov and his daughter.
“The news said your boat and Belgorod sank under the icecap,” Ivana said, sobbing. “They said there were no survivors. What took you so long to come here? Where were you?”
“We had to debrief with President Vostov in Moscow,” Kovalov said. “It took longer than anticipated. Vostov had a thousand questions.”
“What happens now?” his wife asked. “Your Losharik sank, so you don’t have a boat.”
“We have a meeting with Admiral Alexeyev tomorrow morning. I suppose he will let me know then. I’m hoping he’ll put me in command of one of the Yasen-M attack boats coming out of the drydock after atmospheric control modifications.”
“I’d be happy if you just had a nice, safe, boring shore duty,” Ivana said.
He smiled at her and his daughter, thinking that if there were anything good about this horrible mission, it was that it had returned his daughter to him. And his wife.
EPILOGUE
“Follow me,” Anthony Pacino said to Rachel Romanov, leading her to the rear of the Naval Academy chapel, where concrete steps led down to a black brass double door. Pacino tried the knob, but it was locked. He pulled the knob upward and the door groaned. He pulled on the knob and the door slowly opened.
“What are you doing? Are you breaking into the chapel?” Rachel asked.
“This door has been rigged for decades,” he said. “A secret that only midshipmen and grads know.”
“Why doesn’t the admiral-in-command have it fixed? Isn’t he a graduate?”
“It’s this way on purpose. Sometimes, in the middle of a dark night — or a dark night of the soul — midshipmen need to sneak down here. I used to. All the time. And in fact, once I met Admiral Murphy, the Superintendent, when I was here at three in the morning. Turns out he did the same thing I did.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“You’ll see.” Pacino opened the door and guided her in. She gasped as she entered.
“Oh my God. What is this?”
The beige marble floor led to an octagon formed by eight dark marble columns. In the center of the columns, a massive gleaming black sarcophagus was supported by four marble dolphins, the circle of floor beneath the coffin gleaming black. An inscription was engraved on the floor.
JOHN PAUL JONES, 1747–1792
U.S. NAVY, 1775–1783
HE GAVE OUR NAVY ITS EARLIEST TRADITIONS
OF HEROISM AND VICTORY
ERECTED BY THE CONGRESS, A.D. 1912
“Captain John Paul Jones,” Pacino said, “meet Lieutenant Commander Rachel Romanov.”
“I’m absolutely speechless,” she breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Come over here and sit on this bench. This is where I used to sit when I’d come down here to talk to Captain Jones.”
They sat on the marble bench that had a view of the coffin from the side.
“It’s beautiful. It’s amazing. I can see why you’d come here for inspiration.”
“Not only inspiration,” Pacino said, “but for luck.”
“Luck?”
“I’d come before final exams. Or after I’d typed a term paper. There was a bad semester when I was sure I was going to get kicked out.”
“You?”
“Yeah, I was okay in academics but I was a bit of a conduct case. Sneaking out to go to Chick’s Diner out in town in the wee hours. Drinking in a Baltimore strip club as a third-class midshipman when a first-class midshipman came in, recognized me, and put me in for a class-A conduct violation. So yeah, Captain John Paul Jones and I talked a lot that semester.”
Rachel laughed. “I’d say he gave you lots of luck,” she said. “Maybe that’s why your submarine operations go so well.”
“All that death, Rachel. I don’t think this last one went well at all.”
“You lived and came back to me, Pacino,” she said, looking adoringly into his eyes. She put her hand on his face. “That’s all that matters. But why do you need luck now?”
“Because I’m going to ask you a question.” Pacino stood, pulled something out of his pocket and sank to one knee.
“Oh dear God, no, Pacino, what are you doing?”
He opened the ring box, looked up at her and said, “Rachel Romanov, will you marry me and change your last name to Pacino?”
She’d clamped her hand to her mouth and tears suddenly streamed from her eyes, her cheeks wet with them.
But she looked at him through the tears and started laughing.
“What?” he said, feeling foolish, still kneeling.
“No way I’m marrying you, Pacino,” she said, laughing. She plucked the ring from the box, admired it, and put it on her left ring finger, held out her hand and stared at it, smiling. “But I’m not an idiot, I’m keeping the ring.”
Pacino stood up, his heart sinking. But when Romanov saw how his face fell, she stood and pulled him over to her, hugged him and whispered in his ear, “Of course I’ll marry you, you idiot. But we can’t do it now. They’d send one of us to a different ship or even a different base.”
He looked into her wet eyes. “We could get married in secret,” he offered.
“What good would that do? The whole purpose of getting married is to announce to the world that we’re a couple and not to mess with us. And believe me, I can’t wait for my last name to no longer be ‘Romanov.’ Rachel Pacino. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“What about the ring?” Pacino asked. “You can’t wear that.”
“I’ll get a chain for it tomorrow and wear it around my neck. Next to my heart. Pacino?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think you can wait?”
“It’ll be years,” Pacino said.
“I could always quit the Navy to be with you,” she said.
“Hell no,” Pacino said to her. “Are you kidding me? I’m not an idiot either. I have an executive officer — and acting captain — who dances to my tune. Why would I give that up?”