Alexeyev stood to go to the kitchen, deciding to stop at the restroom. He washed up and stepped to the kitchen, where the staff were stirring a large cauldron. A tantalizing aroma filled the kitchen, making Alexeyev even more hungry.
“What is it?”
“Rabbit stew with homemade dumplings, Captain,” one of the fleet guards said, wiping a hand on his apron. “Are you ready for us to serve?”
“Not yet, we’re missing four people.”
Alexeyev left the kitchen and saw the missing four had shown up and were seated. As he approached the table, the newcomers began to stand to greet him, but he waved them back to their seats.
“Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev,” he said, introducing himself. The woman nearest him shook his hand, her grip soft, her hand warm, and she introduced herself. Alexeyev greeted the other three. They all seemed pretty, but nothing that would tempt him away from his wife, Natalia, he thought, although other married men might not feel their marriages were as solid. He looked over at Kovalov, who seemed to be staring at the oldest of the four. In contrast to the other three, all brunettes, the fourth, the youngest, was a platinum blonde with large blue eyes and puffy apple red lips.
“Have any of you sailed on submarines before?” Lebedev asked the oldest one, who had introduced herself as Captain Third Rank Svetlana Anna.
Anna shook her head. “Our only sea voyages have been on support ships. This will be all new to us.”
Kovalov laughed. “You picked one hell of a mission for your first submarine ride.”
“Can you tell us about it?” Anna asked.
“That’s why we’re here,” Alexeyev said, putting out his hand to Kovalov for another cigarette.
“Op brief!” Quinnivan bellowed. “Get your arses in here, ye scurvy junior officers! And U-Boat, cut the fookin’ crap.”
The deck was trembling violently from the power of the flank bell and had been since they’d dived. Pacino had gotten used to it and barely noticed it unless he placed his coffee cup on the table and saw the waves in its surface form from the hull vibrations. But whenever the ship was running flank, blasting through the ocean, U-Boat Dankleff — who absolutely loved hauling ass at flank — would always do his “flankin’ it, flankin’ it” dance, a ridiculous arm-waving, leg-twisting jig that, to Pacino, just never got old. On Quinnivan’s reprimand, Dankleff plopped down in his seat and feigned contrition, but looked up at Pacino and winked.
“Who are we missing?” Quinnivan asked with an angry expression creasing his features. The man, Pacino thought, looked positively jolly most of the time, but absolutely evil when he was mad.
“Electrical officer,” Engineer Kelly said, but just then Varney hurried into the room and shut the door behind him.
“Sorry, XO,” Varney said, taking his seat. “Watch relief on the conn was delayed.”
Pacino reached for the coffee carafe and refilled his cup. Lunch had been sliders with thick steak fries, and he was drowsy from it. That or his scrambled sleep schedule. He’d gotten off the conn with Short Hull at 0600 and had worked out in the torpedo room, intending to catch some sleep after his shower, but Short Hull had wanted several qualification check-outs. It had never occurred to Pacino that giving a system check-out — a verbal test of knowledge — could be as draining to the person giving it as the person requesting it. Cooper had wanted to start big, asking to be checked out on operating the BQQ-10-V6 sonar suite. A sonar check-out like that could involve three or more full watches of questions, answers and “look-ups,” when the non-qual was assigned to find the answers to questions that he’d failed. That had taken till noon meal, and when the dishes had been cleared from that, the operation brief had been convened by the XO.
“Well, Nav,” Quinnivan said. “Are we here and are we all cleared for this briefing?”
“XO,” Lewinsky said, “the supply officer is on the conn and Long Hull Cooper is aft as engineering officer of the watch. We’ve got everyone else. And, yessir, we’re all cleared.”
“Very well, then,” Quinnivan said. “Madam Engineer, would you be so kind as to call the captain and inform him we’re all present and ready for him?”
Kelly reached for the phone set into a small alcove behind her, dialed the captain, murmured a few words, and hung up. “He’s on his way.”
“Everyone have coffee?” Quinnivan asked, holding the carafe and pouring for himself, then setting a cup in front of the captain’s chair and pouring for him.
Seagraves walked into the room from the forward door. “Afternoon, people,” he said. In unison the officers returned the greeting. He took his seat, nodded at Lewinsky, and took a sip of his coffee. “Let’s proceed.”
Lewinsky pointed a remote control at the flatpanel over the missing supply officer’s seat and the display came to life. It had two pages projected on it, their orders given to the captain before sailing.
“What we’ve been ordered so far,” Lewinsky said, “is to proceed northeast at flank speed to the U.K. Naval Base, Clyde. Faslane, Scotland. Their submarine base. As you can see on page two, we’re to load up arctic supplies, food, and weapons.”
Pacino nodded to himself. New Jersey had sailed with an empty torpedo room, which was like walking into a war zone without bullets. He would have felt better if they’d at least been loaded with two ADCAP Mark 48 torpedoes as a contingency.
“Also, as you can see, we’re to bring on a dry-deck shelter and team of SEALs, the same guys from Task Force Eight Zero who we sailed with on the Panther run.”
Seagraves spoke up. “The Pentagon is now calling that the Battle of the Arabian Sea.”
“Which is odd,” Quinnivan said, “seeing as how it wasn’t really a battle until the South Atlantic. I note, ladies and gents, it remains top secret SCI codeword-slash-special-handling information that we traded torpedoes with the Russians on that op. As far as the open-source media is concerned, we just hijacked that sub, sailed it to AUTEC, then gave it back. The Russian loss of three subs — well, it never happened. And we were never there.”
Pacino glanced at Short Hull Cooper, whose eyes had bugged out at the mention of the details of the Panther run. It hadn’t been discussed since he’d reported aboard.
“Please continue, Mr. Lewinsky,” Seagraves said.
“That’s pretty much it, Captain,” Lewinsky said. “There’s nothing else in the order. And we don’t have an operation order for what happens after Faslane. And we don’t know how long we’ll be in Faslane.”
“Is there any context here from a scrub of the open-source news files and the classified intel digest?” Seagraves asked.
Styxx put out her hand. “I did an extensive search, Captain. There’s some mention of the Russian Omega II submarine Belgorod. A few articles on the Poseidon torpedoes. A few Russian editorials about Vostov deciding to be more confrontational with NATO and the Americans. But nothing very specific.”
“So we’re left guessing,” Lewinsky said. “Captain, with your permission, may I speculate?”
Seagraves smiled. It was perhaps only the second smile Pacino had seen from the captain. “By all means, Navigator.”
“My guess is that we’ll be sent to try to trail the Omega II and see what he’s doing. The under-ice supplies make me believe the Omega II may try to do an ICE-EX and go to the pole.”
“Maybe,” Seagraves said. “But why the SEALs?”
“You’ve got me there, Captain. I can’t imagine we’d try to hijack it like we did the Iranian Kilo,” Lewinsky said. “The Russians got fooled once. They won’t let that happen again.”