“Anyone know what this is about?” Pacino asked.
“President Carlucci wanted to see us in person,” Allende explained. “Said he wanted to see the whites of our eyes when he told us what he’s going to tell us.”
“Am I stepping in on cue?” President Vito “Paul” Carlucci said, walking in with a phalanx of staffers. Pacino, the admirals and the CIA spooks jumped to their feet. Carlucci flashed his winning smile and waved everyone to seats at the table. He took his seat at the end of the table and looked up at the gathered officials.
“Well,” he began, “I had a very interesting conversation with the Russian President.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I’ll just summarize the high points for you. First, we had a discussion about who had the better attack submarine. Vostov claimed victory on that, because his submarine Kazan had such an extreme acoustic advantage over the Virginia-class Vermont that Vermont could only hear the Yasen-M by using active sonar. Kazan was able to sneak up on the Vermont and fire off a stealth torpedo. But I told Vostov that number one, his three Yasen-M’s were on the bottom, two of them thanks to Vermont’s SubRocs, and that Vermont heard that stealth torpedo and countered everything Kazan had in her torpedo room with countermeasure torpedoes, and if she’d had just one more Tomahawk SubRoc, his prized Kazan would be on the bottom. Oh wait, I forgot, his prized Kazan is on the bottom.”
Carlucci paused to take a sip of the carbonated Italian water he favored. Pacino waited patiently.
“I then pointed out that his submarines are fragile. Hell, one of them spontaneously burst into flames and killed the entire crew for no apparent reason. We didn’t touch it. The nuclear strike vaporized that Yasen-M, but her crew were already dead. It was piloted by the onboard AI, which was pretty stupid from what I’ve gathered. And the second sub that sank from the nuclear depth charge should have survived, but it was so susceptible to fire that it sank when one of our subs would have lived on.
“Needless to say, Dmitri Vostov was not taking this lying down. He said all he had were minor design problems, and that the battles of June 7 and July 3 went our way only because we cheated. Cheated, I said. Yes, he replied, you cheated. First, he alleged, the Vermont fired not at the two Yasen-M submarines detected from her own onboard sensors but rather at a probability ellipse where the computers suspected they would be as a result of us cheating by placing transponders on their periscopes. And Vermont used nukes before detecting them. So it was a shot in the dark, but a lucky one. I asked him about the third Yasen-M, which we sank. And he said we cheated on that too, because Vermont was out of weapons, and the only thing that sank the third Yasen-M was a supercavitating torpedo invented by the Russians, fired from a submarine designed and built by Russians. So in Vostov’s mind, the victory wasn’t ours at all. It was at best a stalemate.”
Pacino thought about the Russian president’s allegations of them cheating, reminded of his first submarine command’s motto, you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.
Carlucci paused. “The good news is that Vostov won’t retaliate for our nuclear strike or for our stealing the Panther. Or sinking the third Yasen-M. Or even the grizzly bear worm. He listed his reasons — that we rescued the two crews, we were humane to the Russian submariners we rescued, we repatriated them without humiliating them or interrogating them, and when we took Panther, we released her crew without killing them. And we shut down the worm with no lasting effects on their military.”
Carlucci paused again to sip some more water and look at the gathered officials and staffers, clearly enjoying having this audience.
“So that brings us to the next point,” the president said. “The Panther. We’re giving it back.”
“Wait, Mr. President, no,” Pacino said without thinking. “All the blood, sweat and tears it took to steal that submarine—”
Margo Allende spoke. “Sir, Admiral Pacino could have lost his son on that mission. How can we give it back? We had the plans to the reactor, but they’re useless without having the real thing, and now we have it.”
Carlucci smirked. “We don’t need the Panther. We have Alexie Abakumov, the reactor’s designer. We have him and all his calculations. The Iranian crew is in flight right now and should be landing in the Bahamas in two hours. They’ll take back the Panther and sail it back to Bandar Abbas. Fueled up with low-smoke diesel and loaded out with food courtesy of the United States Navy. Lots of great American food. Pizza. Cheeseburgers. Chili. Steak and lobster.” Carlucci laughed. “And beer and wine. And some vodka and bourbon.”
Allende sighed. “Okay, Mr. President. We’ll do this your way.”
“Another point, folks,” Carlucci said, looking at the admirals. “Allow me a critique of our submarine program — while we showed the Russian submarines catch fire or experience reactor casualties in battle, how do we know our own ships can take that kind of shock and not experience massive fires and toxic gases all through the boat, or a reactor explosion like the Yasen-M had? You need to consider a shock-testing program, gentlemen, and pronto. And all these countermeasure torpedoes, folks, sure, they’re fine if the other guy’s out of fish, but otherwise, you spend all damn day just neutralizing each other’s weapons. You need to carry more of them so when the bad guy is out of bullets, you’re still loaded up. Someone once told me: guns are great, but the battle goes to the guy who’s got more ammo. And for God’s sake, get supercavitating torpedoes like that Shkval. What happened to your solid rocket-propelled Vortex underwater missile program? I thought all the bugs were out of that.”
Catardi answered as Pacino was about to comment. “The defense contractor who made them went out of business. We weren’t shooting them unless we were in combat, so we weren’t restocking inventory. Testing them was too dangerous to the firing ship. It was her own Vortex missile that caused the loss of the Seawolf.”
Pacino was glad Catardi had answered. He didn’t want to be reminded of the sinking of the Seawolf. He’d been the captain that day when the Vortex missile blew up in the torpedo tube and detonated every weapon in the torpedo room.
“I’m confident you’ll find a way to create a newer, safer, but just as lethal program. So Admirals, one last thing. The most important thing. The Russians have built a better submarine than the Virginia-class. Sure, the Yasen-M has problems like bursting into flames, but now that the Russians know about these weaknesses, they can harden up the soft spots. The important thing is that they can hear us miles before we can hear them. Have you gotten that into your heads, gentlemen, that our submarines are inferior?”
Vice Admiral Robert Catardi looked at Rand, then at Pacino, then back to the president.
“Well, sir,” Catardi said, “We’ll just have to build a better submarine.”
Carlucci smiled his politician’s smile. “We don’t have to build a better submarine, Rob. We just have to steal one.”
Michael Pacino pulled out a chair for Margo Allende in a secluded booth table at Kelly’s Irish Times, a dark, brick-and-wood Irish Pub walking distance from the Capitol building. He looked down at the green and white checkered tablecloth.