“Still a big iron hull, though,” Seagraves said. “It still disturbs the magnetic field. If the torpedo is good, it could still home in on a hovering submarine.”
“What if Panther’s not playing possum?” Romanov asked, frowning. “What if it got knocked out by that last smaller explosion? We don’t know what that explosion was. There were no torpedoes near her. Maybe something went wrong.”
Anthony Pacino could feel his face on the cold wood floor, blood flowing from a deep gash on his cheek, his face throbbing in pain.
He opened one eye, the pooled blood partially congealed, sticking his face to the floor of his bedroom.
He was six years old.
He was wearing his favorite pajamas with the pattern of dolphins swimming together.
Downstairs, his mother was screaming at his father.
It was December.
Almost Christmas.
And his mother was furious at his father for leaving on his submarine Devilfish to go on a secret mission. It was hard to tell what made her more mad, that Daddy was leaving, or that he couldn’t tell her why it was so urgent to go now, just before the holiday that they’d all been planning for months.
His bedroom door opened and his father came in, dropping a large duffel bag on the floor. Anthony Pacino pulled his face out of the blood, the skin of his face trying to stick to the messy puddle. His father didn’t seem to notice. He stooped down and stroked Anthony’s hair, ignoring the remnants of the blood.
“I have to go, little man,” the older Pacino said gently. He was wearing his service dress blue uniform. There was a gold dolphin emblem and ribbons over his left pocket, a gleaming gold capital ship command pin below his ribbons. He wore his officer’s cap, with the gold laurel leaves on the brim. On his father’s sleeves were three gold stripes. “We have a very important mission, Anthony. I hate to leave you, but I have to go.”
“Where are you going, Daddy? Are you going to the North Pole again?”
A look crossed his father’s face, and Anthony could tell his father was trying to decide whether to speak the truth or not. Finally he nodded.
“Are you going there to help Santa? Is he in trouble?”
Again the older Pacino debated telling the truth, and again he nodded slowly. “It’s a very bad situation, Anthony,” he said gravely.
Anthony Pacino nodded at his father. “I understand, Daddy. Be careful.”
His father hugged him and kissed his forehead despite the blood, stood up, grabbed the duffel bag and turned at the door to look down at him. There were tears in his father’s eyes. It was the first time the younger Pacino had ever seen his father cry. The heavy footfalls receded as his father went down the hall and down the stairs to the middle level, then continued to the lower level. Anthony could hear a car door slam, then the sound of a powerful engine starting. The wheels shrieked at his father roared off down the beachfront road in Sandbridge, Virginia.
Anthony pulled himself upright and tried to walk to his bedroom door. He stood, wobbling a bit as he stepped to the door and opened it. A dim light came into his room. He stepped through the door into the softly lit restaurant and bar of the Grafton Street Pub and Grill on Massachusetts Avenue across from Harvard’s campus. The sepia-colored hanging lamps lent the establishment a beautiful glow, the dark pub quiet in the Sunday summer evening, most of the Harvard and MIT undergrads and graduate students gone for the summer, the ones remaining hungover and back in their dorms, apartments or libraries preparing for a summer session Monday, leaving only the usual patrons, like Pacino himself and Carolyn Alameda.
He felt a soft, warm female hand in his. He looked up at Carrie Alameda, the love of his life, who was sweeping her glorious dark hair off her shoulder and smiling down at him. He looked down and saw he was still wearing his dolphin pajamas. His feet were still bare. And his face was still bloody. A server smiled at Carrie and led them to their favorite booth beneath an hourglass-shaped lamp, where the light was mostly soft except directly under the lamp, the small circle of brightness allowing menu reading.
Pacino looked across the table at Alameda. Their waitress, gorgeous Lieutenant Commander Rachel Romanov, resplendent in starched service dress whites, with full medals and a ceremonial sword, brought over a round of drinks without asking. A Merlot for Carolyn, an eighteen-year-old Macallan scotch for Pacino. Rachel Romanov walked away, back toward the bar. Pacino looked over at Carrie, hoping the blood on his face wouldn’t disgust her, or his dolphin pajamas give her pause, but she just smiled at him.
“Are you having your usual?” he asked. “That blackened chicken wreck?”
“I love that blackened chicken. It reminds me of being here with you. And that, in turn, makes me feel very romantic, Anthony.”
For a moment, he wasn’t sure what she meant. He looked at the menu. “I think I’ll have the usual.”
“Grafton burger again?” she asked, smiling at him and holding his hand.
Lieutenant Commander Rachel Romanov came back to the table to take their orders. Carolyn asked her what tonight’s specials were.
Rachel Romanov smiled. “We have a succulent Shkval torpedo that has been carefully sautéed in onions and tube-loaded in tube five. It’s completely functional. If you get the tube door open, it will take care of things quite nicely.”
Alameda looked at Romanov. “What if the tube door is jammed?”
“Oh, it’s no problem at all,” Romanov said, smiling at Carolyn Alameda. “Anthony here just has to take his boat shallow, then back to test depth, then shallow again — lather, rinse, repeat — and that tube door will open right up.”
“Anthony,” Carolyn said, her expression serious. “I think you should order the Shkval. Shoot it at the position of the firing submarine. Hit it with active sonar first, get its position, and launch that Shkval at it. It will end the battle.”
“End the battle?” he said, raising a blood-encrusted eyebrow at her. “You said ‘end the battle,’ not ‘win the battle.’ What does that mean?”
She looked at him with fondness. “There’s no winning this battle, Anthony. You’re up against — what did the Russians call it?”
Romanov interjected to help Carolyn Alameda. “They called it the supreme attack submarine on the planet.”
“Exactly,” Carrie said. “The best you can hope for is making the battle stop.”
He nodded at her, and looked at Rachel Romanov. “I think I’ll take the Shkval torpedo,” he said, taking a sip of his scotch, hoping no one in the bar would object to a six-year-old in dolphin pajamas — with a face covered in blood — drinking eighteen-year-old scotch.
Surprising him, Rachel Romanov sank down to her knees and looked at Carolyn Alameda. The two women locked eyes. Carolyn spoke first.
“Rachel, will you take good care of him?” she asked, glancing toward Pacino.
Romanov nodded solemnly and said to Carolyn, “I’ll take great care of him. He’ll want for nothing.”
Carrie Alameda wiped a tear from her eye, and looked over at Romanov and held out her hand.
“Thank you, Rachel. God bless you.”
And Rachel Romanov replied, “May God look kindly on us all today.” With that, she rose from her knees and disappeared toward the kitchen.
“Anthony?” Alameda asked, but Pacino was still stunned from watching the exchange between the two beautiful women, one of them dead, the other seven thousand miles away.
“Yes, Carrie?”
“Why didn’t your step-mother come to my funeral?”
Pacino stared at her. He’d never considered the question. He’d been too absorbed in Alameda’s death to realize he’d been at Carrie’s funeral with only his father and mother, not his stepmother Colleen, the woman who had been there on the Explorer II when he had been revived after his near death experience.