"Nice job, Kelly," Pacino said, his voice weak. "I knew you could do it."
"Well, that job's done," Murphy said. "And so's mine, Admiral. I'm tired. I quit."
"So, Sean," Pacino said, "who should replace you as CNO?"
"You see that guy there in white? Two-star admiral?"
"Patton?"
"You got it."
"He's a bit young. Think he can handle it?"
"Yes, Patch. I think he can."
Pacino laughed. "Okay. What about the commander of the Unified Submarine Command? Who's going to run the shop once Patton's gone?"
Murphy pointed again. "See that other guy in white? Four-striper? Next to Patton? Wearing the Navy Cross?"
"Captain Kelly McKee? Yeah, I see him."
"You're looking at the new ComUSubCom."
"Sean, you'd better buy those guys new shoul-derboards. They're out of uniform."
"Done, sir."
"And I suppose you'll have some advice to Admiral McKee on who will be taking over his Hammerhead?"
"I would. But I'm not sure if he'll take my advice."
"Why's that?"
"See for yourself. I don't know if he'd put her on the conn."
On the screen, Kelly McKee was holding the hand of a female officer sitting in a wheelchair, her shoulderboards showing three stripes. Karen Petri.
Pacino laughed. "I suppose it would depend on
who ends up wearing the pants in the relationship. Me, I run my marriage with an iron hand." "Shut up, mister," Colleen said, smiling.
The jet that landed in Milan's airport pulled up to the general aviation hangar, where a man in an Italian suit stood in the fading light of dusk.
The door opened, and a squinting and confused Alexi Novskoyy climbed out.
Rafael walked up to him and shook his hand. "You did very well. Congratulations."
"Why do you say that?" he asked as the two men walked to the limousine. "The surface force headed home with its tail between its legs. The operation did not work."
"It worked well enough for us to get paid. Dolo-vietz had a contract, and he had to pay. So his Uruguay operation failed. That wasn't part of our contract."
"He kept up his end of the deal?" Novskoyy asked as he ducked into the limo.
"He had to, or else the press would have gotten some embarrassing videodisks. I understand he's running for election next year. And I also hear that he'll have a tough run of it. A certain Pavel Grachev is running against him."
"I hadn't heard."
"I certainly hope you were nice to him, Al. We'll be making a sales call at his campaign headquarters in the next month or two. We may even be heavy contributors to his campaign. Someday he may need us. But in the meantime, you are a very rich man. Check that out."
Rafael put a computer in front of Novskoyy's face. The statement of his bank account.
"Are you serious?"
"It's all yours, my friend. You could buy Moscow with that. I just hope you're not so rich that you would quit on us. We need your talent."
"What now?"
"Now? How about helping Suhkhula with the Saudi shipping operation? You'll be joining her with the operation in progress, but you two seem to work together well."
"I'll fly down tonight."
"Not before we celebrate. I've got the best restaurant in town waiting for us."
"Drive on," Novskoyy said.
Pavel Grachev cautiously opened the door of his house, cradling his broken wrist, wearing a cast and a sling. It was evening, and he was finally back from the endless debriefings at fleet headquarters.
"Honey?" he called. "Martinique?"
She hit him at a full rim, hugging him so hard he thought he'd smash into the door. Her arms wrapped around him, her kisses covering his face, her tears flowing like faucets, her nose running too. "Pavel! Pavel! You're alive! They told us this afternoon! I can't believe it! Pavel!"
A small voice below him joined the cacophony, "Daddy! Daddy, Daddy!"
Grachev smiled, pushing his wife and son far enough away from him that he could look at them.
"Well, then," he said, grinning. "Did you miss me?"
He was immediately smothered with the body of his wife, his son's arms hugging his leg so tightly his foot fell asleep.
"You look great. Is your head okay?" McKee asked Karen Petri at their table overlooking the waves lapping gently on the sand of Sandbridge Beach.
"Almost perfect. They say I'll have headaches for some time."
"I'll have a stern talk with Mr. Dietz about clobbering you with the battle lantern."
Karen smiled, carefully, her head still throbbing. "No, you won't, Kelly. He saved my life. We're throwing a party for him." "We? As in you and me?" "Do you have a problem with that?" "No, not at all." McKee smiled, raising his wineglass. "To us."
"To us," she smiled. "And to Bryan Dietz." McKee drank, staring into her dark eyes, realizing for the first time in a year that he was truly happy.
"And to Bryan Dietz," he said.
"Admiral Patton," Byron DeMeers said, back in Patton's Norfolk headquarters, packing the office for the move to the Pentagon in Washington, where Patton would be taking over as the Chief of Naval Operations.
"Yes, Byron?"
"We have a strange report just in. Two oil carri-
ers coming out of Saudi Arabia exploded at sea and sank."
"When did that happen?"
"This afternoon. And another supertanker out of Saudi was reported missing this morning."
"Let me see that," Patton said.
"Admiral?" his secretary called. "A Captain McDonne on the phone from Naval Intelligence?"
"Patch him into the video in here," Patton said.
McDonne's fleshy face came up on the wall-mounted flat panel. "Admiral."
"Carl. What's keeping you in the office this late?"
"Trouble, sir. Another Saudi supertanker was just reported missing, and we have a satellite detect of an explosion and sinking at sea. Along the sailing plan of another Saudi tanker. I think we have a situation here."
Patton nodded and began to issue a flurry of orders, realizing that he was doing what he'd been born to do. And loving it.
A hundred and seventy miles northeast of Sand-bridge Beach, Virginia, four ships dropped anchor in the shallows of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia peninsula. The ships were heavy salvage vessels, there for an operation that would commence at sunrise.
That operation was the raising of the hull of the submarine Devilfish.
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MICHAEL DiMERCURID
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Threat vector Page 40