Mirage

Patronov shot him a look that twisted the tech back in his seat so that he too stared at the radios. “It took us a week of searching the first time,” he said as he left the room. “It will probably take me that long just to decrypt this damn message.”

It took him the better part of an hour to decode the page-length missive. Because this was a private communiqué between the two men and not an official order, he had to use a private codebook that Kenin had given only to his most loyal followers. Patronov knew that such a book was in the possession of senior captain Sergei Karpov. Karpov was currently on deployment aboard a Typhoon-class missile boat with a complement of twenty nuclear-tipped ICBMs. Patronov knew Sergei well and knew that if Kenin ever ordered a secret launch, Karpov would press the button as fast and as hard as he could.

Truth told, Patronov admitted, so would he.

With China ascending as a world leader and America no longer willing to fulfill its role as a superpower, a void was opening that a man like Admiral Kenin could exploit. The dragon and eagle would eventually fight it out in some form, but it would be the bear that would emerge victorious.

Patronov read through the decrypted message for a second time before hitting the comm button on his desk that co

Seven seconds later, the sub’s executive officer, her second-in-command, knocked on Patronov’s cabin door.

“Enter.”

Paulus Renko stepped through the door and stood as stiff as a ramrod until his captain waved him into a chair. The younger man was the opposite of Patronov physically. He was as handsome as a model on a recruiting poster, a hairsbreadth shy of the maximum height allowance on a submarine, and had a fencer’s lean build, with broad shoulders and a tapered waist and hips.

Patronov eyed him for a moment, his ugly countenance giving away nothing. He sighed as if reaching a weighty decision. “I’ve been tasked with telling you, Commander Renko, that you will never deploy as an executive officer ever again.”

Renko’s blue eyes widened in shock and his mouth gaped.

“Admiral Kenin has communicated to me that following this mission you will have a boat of your own.” Patronov stood and struck his hand across the small desk that took up a quarter of his cabin’s floor space. “Congratulations.”

Renko’s face went from ashen fear to flushed jubilation in the blink of an eye. He shook his captain’s hand, his grin widening until he could no longer contain himself, and he whooped aloud.

“I can’t believe this,” he said when he could finally speak. “I didn’t know I was even up for promotion.”

“You weren’t,” Patronov said as he retook his seat. His chilly tone cooled the room by twenty degrees, and Renko’s smile turned a little sickly.

He fumbled back into his chair. “Sir?”

“Let me tell you a story,” Patronov said in a disarming tone as if the frostiness of the past few seconds had never happened. “Eighteen months ago, before you joined this crew, we were tasked to act as a dive platform on a salvage job. It took place close to the eastern seaboard of the United States, though not in her territorial waters. We were on-station for a week, and the divers recovered items of a technical nature from a sunken ship.” He forestalled his subordinate’s obvious question by adding, “Admiral Kenin never cleared me, so I have no idea what they took off the derelict. All I know is, the wreck was about a hundred years old, and Kenin felt the reward justified the risk of discovery by America’s Coast Guard or Navy.

“I just got a message from the Admiral that he’s learned that another group is showing unusual interest in the derelict and may dive on it soon.”

“Who is this group?”

“American mercenaries,” Patronov said with obvious distaste. “It was decided the first time we were there not to destroy the wreck so we wouldn’t draw attention to it. Now Kenin wants us to blow it off the bottom with a couple of torpedoes. To do that, I need your authorization as XO to fire live shots as per procedure.”

“And if I go along with this, I get promoted?”

“Quid pro quo.”

Renko rubbed his lantern jaw. “I take it neither this act nor the original dives were authorized by the Navy High Command?”

“I’m sure a few know about it, those closest to Admiral Kenin, but, no, this operation is strictly off the books.”

“What about the mercenaries?”

“According to Kenin’s source, they aren’t capable of detecting us, let alone fighting us. We’ll sneak in low and slow, pop two USET-80s into the wreck, and be gone before they know we were there. If they happen to have divers on the bottom, well, that’s just bad luck for them. So what do you say, Paulus, do you want to be a captain at the age of thirty-one? That would, by the way, give you a two-year head start on breaking my service record.”

Renko stood and reached across the desk to shake his captain’s hand. “I’m your man, sir.”

“Very good, alert the torpedo room that we will be loading two tubes with the antisubmarine fish. We have a good three days’ sailing to get into position, but I want them prepped down there.”

“Aye, sir.”

Patronov jotted some coordinates onto a piece of scratch paper. “That’s the GPS location for the wrecked ship. Refine and plot our new course. Remain at full speed.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Renko pivoted on his heel and left the cabin.

Patronov could tell his subaltern was excited about his future prospects, but, then again, all deals with the devil promised much. It wasn’t until much later you learn the costs.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“You are the very picture of boredom,” Max said, stepping off the elevator at the rear of the op center.

Cabrillo settled his coffee cup into a holder built into the Kirk Chair, the central command platform in the middle of the electronics-packed, low-ceilinged space. On the main view screen was a murky video feed coming up from a tethered probe poking around the bottom of the Atlantic nearly three hundred feet down. Details were hard to come by as the unma

“Got that right,” he replied. “Twenty-two wrecks checked and twenty-two consecutive goose eggs.”

“So what are we looking at?” Max asked as he crossed the room with a plate of food in his hand. He set it next to Cabrillo’s elbow. “Fish tacos, by the way. Fresh pico de gallo, but the chef hid a ghost chili in there, so watch yourself.”

“Thanks. I’m starved.” Cabrillo ate half of a taco in a single bite, managing to not ruin his shirt when the shell inevitably collapsed. “What we are seeing, if my five days of experience has taught me anything, is a Boston long-liner that sank in 1960 or so.”

“Not our target?”

“Not even close. Do you know how many wrecks there are off the East Coast?”

“About thirty-five hundred,” Max replied. “And most of them are clustered between Richmond, Virginia, and Cape Cod. Less than a quarter of them are identified. Which leaves us searching a lot of haystacks for a single needle.”

“You are the paragon of the understatement.”

In the days since Cabrillo’s return to the ship after his ill-fated meeting with Wesley Te