beat under his fingers, fluttering now like a bird’s. “Do not call me Comrade,” he said quietly, menace in his voice. “You may call me sir, you may call me Colonel, but never Comrade. You and I — we have no blood in common. You will remember that, along with your other duties.”
“Yes, Colonel,” the man squeaked, barely able to force his voice past the cruel pressure on his throat. “I will remember.”
“And so will the rest of you,” Rogov said, raising his voice slightly. “Your people have forgotten much, but I will ensure that you remember this much. A Cossack is no comrade to any of you,” he said, pronouncing the hated word with disgust dripping in his voice. “We remember what you have forgotten. You will learn, during the next weeks, how much that is.” He turned back to the navigational chart, pretending to examine their position relative to the Oscar, buying himself some time to think at the expense of the crew’s nerves.
It must have been the Oscar, he decided. Her orders were to stay in the deep waters that were her natural abode, using her speed and nuclear propulsion to interdict any vessels that approached too close to Aflu or threatened to compromise the mission. For now, at least. Later, she’d have other missions, ones that made better use of her potent ship-killing capabilities.
But why surface to fire? He puzzled over that for a moment, trying to peer into the mind of the other submarine commander’s mind. Maybe to get a visual on the contact, to better weigh the delicate considerations that went into deciding to fire. With the American carrier in the area, the Oscar’s commander would have wanted to make sure he was not attacking within clear view of any warship. Unexplained losses in the North Pacific were common since the poorly equipped fishing vessels plied unforgiving waters and treacherous, unpredictable seas, but killing one of them within sonar range of the battle group would have been idiotic.
That must have been it, he decided, and felt a sense of relief as the unexplained explosion slipped neatly into an understandable tactical pattern. The Oscar’s commander was also a Cossack, as reliable and implacably determined as Rogov himself. And, as with Rogov, the Russian submarine force’s chain of command had never suspected either man’s higher loyalties.
The engineering problems the sonarman mentioned — was it possible? He shrugged. There were contingency plans for just such an occasion. There always were. But before he could alter his own plans, he had to find out whether or not the Oscar was out of commission.
Rogov turned to the conning officer. “I wish to observe this boat that the Oscar has attacked.”
The conning officer nodded and gave the commands preparatory to surfacing the submarine. Facing the churning ocean above was far less dangerous than remaining submerged below.
Tombstone Magruder strode briskly to the front of the room. He paused behind the podium and surveyed the faces arrayed before him. The assembled media and camera crews had that eager, slightly slavering look he’d come to expect from the press. He had even seen that expression on Pamela’s face at times, and flinched away from it.
Where was — there she was, seated in the middle of the pack. He suppressed a smile, wondering what sort of mistaken maneuvering had earned her that chair. Pamela Drake, star correspondent for ACN, had never been in the middle of the pack — never in her entire life. Her normal seat at any press conference was in the front row, directly in front of the speaker, where her astute questions and bulldog glare could rarely be avoided. She must have arrived late, he mused, and wondered what had been the cause of that.
“Thank you all for being here today,” Tombstone began, shuffling the papers in front of him. “As you know, this is a sad but historic occasion for the Navy. Decommissioning a command that has served this nation so honorably is never a pleasant task, but in these days of downsizing — right-sizing, as some of you have chosen to call it — most of our forward deployed units are being pulled back to CONUS — Continental United States, for you civilians,” he added, noting a few puzzled looks. “Now, I’ll start with a brief-“
“Admiral Magruder,” he heard someone say. He turned away from the slide presentation he had been about to begin, covering the illustrious history of the P-3 squadron’s service in Adak, his eyes going immediately to the slim, all-too-familiar figure. Pamela’s voice still could cut through him to some warm, secret place deep inside. Memories of the last time he had seen her aboard USS Jefferson surfaced.
Now, seeing her again after more than six months, the strength of his reaction surprised him. Memories of Tomboy should have erased every trace of Pamela Drake from his soul. Yet there was still something compellingly attractive about the strong, smooth curves of her body, the emerald eyes framed by dark hair now touched with gray, the easy athletic balance of her stance. He sighed. Pamela Drake had quit haunting his dreams five months ago. He supposed seeing her in reality was the payback for that. “Miss Drake,” he began coolly, “if you could just hold your questions, there will be plenty of time for them after the presentation. I think you’ll find that most of the information you need is already contained in this brief.”
Pamela regarded him bluntly, a slight tinge of amazement creeping into her expression. “Evidently you haven’t heard, yet, Admiral,” she remarked. “if you had, you would know that the decommissioning ranks a poor second against this current story.”
“And what would that be, Miss Drake?” Tombstone asked. The conviction in her voice gave rise to an uneasiness in his stomach. Whatever else she might have been, Pamela Drake was one hell of a reporter. If she was hot on the trail of another story, then there was probably something to it.
“About thirty minutes ago,” Pamela said, reading from a slip of paper in her hand, “the Greenpeace vessel SS Serenity disappeared fifty miles north of here. Immediately prior to that, an F-14 Tomcat was observed circling overhead. Did the crew of that Tomcat see anything that might explain the disappearance of this peaceful research vessel? And what is the squadron here doing as far as SAR goes — sea-air rescue?”
Tombstone rocked back slightly on his heels, stunned at her claim. He locked eyes with her for a moment and saw the determination burning in her eyes. “This brief will be postponed indefinitely,” he said abruptly. A protesting murmur arose from the crowd, quickly growing to a clamorous racket. “Miss Drake — please accompany my people immediately to my briefing room.”
Tombstone turned and strode away from the podium, aware of Captain Craig and two master-at-arms approaching Pamela. Tombstone heard her high heels clattering on the worn linoleum behind him.
Three minutes later, they were alone in the briefing room. “What is this about?” Tombstone demanded.
“No time for hi, how are you?” she said sarcastically.
“Not when lives may be at stake. Damn it, Pamela, what are you talking about?”
She met his gaze levelly. “Fifteen minutes ago, a fishing boat just south of the Aleutian Islands reported seeing a large explosion. The fishing boat was departing the area. The Greenpeace ship had been interfering with their operations, and their captain had finally given up trying to fish those waters. The captain claims to have seen a large fireball, and then the Greenpeace ship disappeared off the radar scope. Now what does that sound like to you?”
Tombstone swore silently, then turned to his operations officer. “Get everything we have airborne,” he ordered.
The operations officer said, “Admiral, there’s not much chance-“
“I know, I know,” Tombstone said. “With survival times in the North Pacific, there’s probably not much we can do. But I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here and hold a briefing while there’s a chance we can save someone. Go on, get moving!”
The operations officer had just reached the door when Tombstone thought of something else. “Captain Craig,” he said. “That squadron — they’re supposed to fly out for CONUS tomorrow morning, right?”
The chief of staff nodded. “The support staff will be here for another week, but the aircraft are leaving.”
“Hold back two of those P-3s and enough maintenance personnel to keep them up and ready to fly. And get a full load of sonobuoys and torpedoes on them.”
The operations officer turned back to him, and looked at him uncertainly. “You think that-“
“That the boat might have suffered a massive engineering casualty,” Tombstone said. “But based on my experience, the most common explanation for a surface ship sinking unexpectedly is a submarine. And if there’s one out there …”
He let the thought trail off. If the Soviets were deploying their submarines again — excuse me, the Russians, he thought bitterly — then it was the height of foolishness to pull this squadron back to CONUS. Now, more than ever, they might be needed at the westernmost point of America’s strategic envelope. He turned back to Pamela
