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But only a few of the officers were al Qaeda or committed to the path of martyrdom. He needed the full cooperation of all his men in this difficult mission to come.

It was too bad, he thought, that all of these brave men would perish with the Shuhadaa when the Americans caught her at last.

Friday, 12 May 2006
Bachelor Officer's Quarters
Submarine Base
New London, Connecticut
1525 hours, local time

"Tom, I just don't think we can continue like this."

Garrett heard the words but was having trouble grasping their reality. They were faint with distance, but clear enough. Damn it, not again….

"Don't do this to me, Kazuko." He heard the echo of his voice on the line, marking the half-second's delay as his voice was relayed by satellite from New England to California. "Please don't do this to me." Not like this….

"How long has it been since we were together, Tom? Four months? Five?"

"The last time I was on leave. In November. I flew out to LAX just to be with you on your birthday." That had been a hell of an expensive vacation, but worth every dollar, worth every moment. "Kazuko, I love you."

"I love you, Tom. But we can't continue a relationship where we see each other twice a year, maybe, when both of us happen to be in the same town."

Garrett leaned back in the chair — one of the one-size-fits-all wonders of modern furnishing provided in naval BOQs the world over. The room was a pleasant one and tastefully decorated; he was a commander, after all, and the captain of an attack submarine. But it was also sterile, a hotel room, not a home.

He'd almost forgotten how much he missed home… or missed, at least, the idea of one.

"I told you last week, baby," he said. Damn, that echo was distracting. Hearing his own words bouncing back at him made him all too aware of how pathetic he sounded. "I've got some more leave coming. I was saving it for our anniversary. I could probably get approval for a long weekend, though. I could come out there. We could talk."

They had to talk. Had to. He'd been seeing Kazuko for four years, now, since shortly after his divorce, in fact. She'd been a junior flight attendant working for Singapore Airlines then; she was a senior attendant now, which meant she had a good deal more flexibility in arranging her schedule.

He heard her sigh. "I'll be home in Bangkok next weekend," she told him. "After that, I'll be on the Tokyo-Singapore run again. That'll be at least six weeks."

Garrett closed his eyes, mind racing. It might work.

"Maybe I could swing seeing you out there, hon. In about a month." He couldn't say more. His new command, the Virginia, was at sea now undergoing her trials. He would formally take command when she returned to New London, sometime next week. The scuttlebutt was that she would then be deployed to the Far East — possibly Japan, possibly Hong Kong. The latest intelligence reports suggested that the Chinese navy was up to something, possibly something big, and the rumors suggested that Virginia's mettle might be tested in the same waters where Garrett had taken the Seawolf three years before.

It was only scuttlebutt, of course, and not something he would ordinarily count on. Virginia might easily be sent anywhere in the world, and her orders hadn't been cut yet. But if there was even a chance of seeing Kazuko face to face, to make her reconsider…

Even if the Virginia called at Hong Kong rather than at Yokosuka, he might be able to wangle a forty-eight for a quick flight to Tokyo and see her there.

"Tom … I don't think you're hearing me. I can't live like this. I can't live on promises and stolen weekends. I can't live with the secrecy and the maybes and the 'I'll try to see you if I'm in port.' I can't go on month after month not knowing when I'll see you again. This is good-bye."

"Not long distance, damn it," he said. "I want to see you. I want you to look me in the eyes when you tell me that!"

"It won't change anything, Tom. Give me a call when you're in Japan again. I'll see you if I can. But I won't change my mind."

"Kazuko, please…"

"I've… I've got to go now, Tom. I'm sorry. I know this is hard on you. It's hard on me, too. But, like I said, I can't keep living this way. I want my life back!"

"Kazuko, don't—"

But the line was dead.

Garrett sat there for a long time, the phone still to his ear, listening to the buzz of the dial tone. Kazuko… She'd just walked out of his life. Not again. Damn it, not again. His marriage had ended five years ago when his wife couldn't stand the long stretches of sea duty or the uncertainty. A casual romp with a Japanese flight attendant had swiftly grown into something very serious indeed. They'd talked about marriage.

Carefully, he replaced the phone in the cradle on his desk. If the Navy wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one with your sea bag. The old saw, long popular among enlisted men in boot camp, clawed its way out of long-buried memory, taunting him.

Suddenly, Garrett was terribly, achingly lonely.

No … he corrected himself. He'd been lonely all along. Kazuko's call had merely dredged that carefully buried fact out of the muck of his unconscious and smacked him in the face with it. It hadn't been this bad since… well, not since Claire had left him.

Part of the price of command, he knew, was the loneliness that came with it. The captain of a submarine, of any vessel, needed distance between himself and the men under his command, an aloofness that meant that, while they might come to him with their problems, he could not share his problems with them. The captain simply could not afford to be human.

Nor could he share the burden of command with friends, family, or wife. They couldn't know what it was like to be responsible for 153 men packed into a watertight sewer pipe with delusions of grandeur. The only other people who could possibly understand were other submarine drivers.

And they usually had problems enough of their own.

Eventually, Garrett dealt with the pain the way he'd always dealt with it — burying himself in work. The Virginia was not his just yet. She would be, though, next week, after she returned from her trials. A change-of-command ceremony was scheduled for the following Thursday morning, with all of the usual pomp and circumstance demanded by such occasions. They were preparing the dock for the ceremony now, carpenters banging away at the VIP stand and dignitary bleachers. The usual round of invitations had already gone out to most of the politicians, admirals, and civic leaders in New London and Washington and most points in between. It promised to be quite a show.

In the meantime, though, he had plenty to keep him busy — wading through status reports and stores inventories, personnel records and weapons manifests. Virginia had been heralded as a truly "paperless" submarine, with all reports and recordkeeping handled by computer. The interface of Virginia's computer records with the paper-logged files and folders ashore, however, formed a major bottleneck. A small army of personnel-men, yeomen, and civilian secretaries were busily inputting data into the electronic files that would shortly be transferred to the Virginia, and Garrett needed to check and sign off on much of it — a tedious and thankless job.

But one that kept his mind from dwelling on more painful thoughts.

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