“Did you radio for a chopper?”
“Yeah,” Eisenhart said. “Could be an hour or two to get it out here. Meanwhile, take these guys below and watch them.”
“We know the drill,” Pacino said. “You sending guys over to help?”
“We know the drill as well,” Eisenhart said. “We’re bringing two dozen guys over to help you watch the Russians.”
A half hour later, Pacino walked into the wardroom, looking mournfully over at the credenza. The coffee had finally run out and he felt drowsy already. The Russian crew sat shivering, their clothes wet from the swim over.
“I’m Lieutenant Anthony Pacino, United States Navy. Anyone here speak English?” Pacino asked.
“I do,” an older man said. He was the oldest of the survivors. He wore a black eye patch and had streaks of gray in his hair. His voice was oddly flat and disconnected. He must be in shock, Pacino thought. “Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev. I was captain of the Kazan. The submarine you sank. With a torpedo invented by us.”
Pacino sat down across from the Russian. “Sorry about that, Captain. It was nothing personal. Just business.”
Alexeyev looked over at Pacino with his good eye. “You know, we were down to only two torpedoes. I thought very seriously about breaking off contact and going home. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”
“Anything could have happened today,” Pacino said. “I almost couldn’t get the torpedo tube door opened.”
“If you hadn’t, I would have shot you with one of my last torpedoes. I believe the Virginia submarine — what did you call it, Vermont? — was out of weapons, so no countermeasures would have stopped my two. One for you.” Alexeyev pointed in the direction of the Vermont. “One for them. And then today would have ended very differently. I’d have been a hero. You’d be dead.”
Pacino nodded. “I wonder sometimes,” he said, “how much of this is destiny. Hell, Captain Alexeyev, I wonder if this, all of this, is truly real. One of my friends on this mission says that we’re all just living in a simulation, one of hundreds imagined by ourselves from the afterlife. If he’s correct, there’s probably scenarios where you did sink me today and went home the hero.”
“No offense, Lieutenant — what is it — Pacino? But I have to say, I wish I’d been living inside that scenario.”
“Do you mind if I ask you something tactical, Captain? No obligation to answer.”
“Go ahead Lieutenant.”
“Well, sir, how did you know we’d hug the coast at the Cape of Good Hope rather than going wide by, say, the Antarctic coastline and enter the Atlantic that way?”
Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev looked at Pacino with his good eye. “You’re out of food. Am I right?”
Pacino returned the Russian’s look. “Do I look well-fed to you, Captain?”
Alexeyev laughed. “No. You look like you’re starving. I figured your lack of rations would speak to you and you’d take the great circle route.”
“If I could, Captain, I’d offer you and your crew food. But we’re out of everything but peanut butter. The last of the crackers ran out this morning.”
“It is no matter, Lieutenant.”
The door of the wardroom rolled open. It was Dankleff.
“Chopper’s here,” he said. “Everybody to the forward hatch.”
Alexeyev stopped at the wardroom door and looked at Pacino and Dankleff. “You fought a hard battle, gentlemen,” he said. “You have my congratulations. And my respect. And despite what must be a severe punishment awaiting me for losing to you, I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”
Pacino smiled and shook the Russian’s hand. “Safe travels, Captain.”
Ten minutes later, Pacino stood next to Dankleff on the deck of the submarine Panther, watching the colossal helicopter accelerating and climbing toward its destination, Cape Town, the Russian survivors all aboard.
“Damn shame,” Pacino said. “You ever wonder what it would be like to take those guys out drinking? See what stories they have to tell?”
“Hell, Lipstick, I doubt any of their stories could compare to ours on this run.” Dankleff clapped Pacino twice on the shoulder. “Resupply helicopters will get here in twenty minutes. Tonight, Patch, it’s steak and lobster.”
“Sounds great, U-Boat. We damned well deserve it.”
“I asked if they could sneak some scotch into the rations. And some good vodka for Abakumov.”
“Damn, U-Boat, as always, you demonstrate a command ability equal to that of Seagraves.”
“Equal, hell. Exceeding. Just don’t tell Seagraves I said that. And after that resupply? We’ll see if this tub can submerge one more time and take us to the Bahamas.”
“Ah, the Bahamas,” Pacino said. “I like the sound of that. Funny drinks with little umbrellas.”
“And a funny female lieutenant commander and admiral’s aide, waiting for you?”
“U-Boat, I doubt she even remembers me.”
Epilogue
The limo turned left off of Admiralteyskiy Prospekt onto Admiralteyskiy Proyezd, a single lane road fronting the Admiralty Building, where a formally dressed soldier at the guard post checked him into the complex. The limo glided to a halt at the arched entrance to the yellow brick structure. Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev climbed out of the car and looked at the statues on either side of the entrance, each one featuring three women holding the globe on their shoulders. For a moment, he was reminded of his three female department heads and his female first officer, but he had to correct himself. Two department heads. Navigator Maksimov and Weapons Officer Sobol had survived, but his engineer, Captain Third Rank Alesya Matveev, had died in the reactor explosion, undoubtedly roasting from the steam leak in the fourth compartment or dying instantly from the flash of neutron and gamma radiation that was ten thousand times an individual’s lifetime dose. At least, Alexeyev hoped she’d died instantly. Dying aboard a submarine could be anything but merciful, he thought, and it was important to him today that she hadn’t suffered.
Under the archway there was another guard post for him to check in with biometrics, and an aide, a senior lieutenant, led him into the gargantuan labyrinth of the complex. It was deceptive from the outside, just three stories tall, but nearly a kilometer long. The aide took him inside one of the inner buildings across a courtyard from the arch and into an elevator. The elevator descended to a floor deep under the building. Probably constructed during the First Cold War, Alexeyev thought, hardened against a direct nuclear hit.
The elevator door opened to a simple and functional corridor. After a walk that seemed endless and two changes in direction, the aide admitted Alexeyev to a large conference room. The first thing he noticed were the large charts on the wall. The Gulf of Oman. The Arabian Sea. The South Atlantic at the Cape of Good Hope. The charts were marked up with bold red arrows, circles, and blue arrows. At the conference table were his senior officers, Lebedev, Maksimov and Sobol. Across the table from them were unfamiliar officers, with nametags reading ORLOV, VLASENKO, DOBRYVNIK and TRUSOV. Orlov, Alexeyev thought, could that be Natalia’s first husband? He looked at the man, dismayed that he seemed handsome, making Alexeyev wonder what Natalia had seen in Alexeyev.
Alexeyev moved to take a seat next to Lebedev, but as he touched his seatback, a parade of admirals came into the room, led by Chief Commander of the Navy Anatoly Stanislav, then the Chief of Staff and First Deputy Commander of the Navy Pavel Zhabin, then the Pacific Fleet Commander Aleksandr Andreyushkin and Northern Fleet Commander Gennady Zhigunov. An unfamiliar man in a suit came in after Zhigunov. The last in the procession, a large, solid female admiral, shut the door and waved them all to seats.