Katie didn’t have time to think, only react.
With athleticism she didn’t know she possessed, she somehow managed to turn a quarter revolution in the air and get the soles of her boots up. Using her legs as shock absorbers, she redirected the impact. Sea spray soaked her from bottom to top as an angry North Atlantic roller slammed into the sail below her and blasted upward like a geyser. The freezing cold made her breath catch in her throat and stole her attention as she swung back for a second collision.
“Markowski, grab the line,” Knepper, who was now above her, yelled on the radio.
This time Katie wasn’t able to orient properly and her left shoulder and hip slammed into the side of the sail. The impact knocked the wind out of her lungs and filled her vision with stars.
“Got it,” someone shouted.
“Get her up, damn it, before she gets beat to death,” someone else yelled.
She felt her stomach go heavy and the side of the sail blur as either the pilot or the winch operator—or maybe both of them together—raised her elevation. This time, when she swung in for a third collision, she tucked her legs to her chest. The instant she cleared the top of the sail, she extended them into a V and scissor-wrapped around Knepper, who was primed and ready to catch her. She felt him lock his arms around her hips, his face smashed into her lower abdomen, as the other pumpkin-suited sailor struggled to unclip her harness from the drop line.
“Fuck. I need slack!” he shouted.
She felt an upward tug, and both she and Knepper—who were clinging to each other for dear life—lifted into the air.
“I said slack, damn it!”
A heartbeat later, they dropped, gravity back in play. The deck grate reverberated with a metallic clank as Knepper took the full brunt of their combined weight. She heard him grunt, but he didn’t drop her or let go.
“Both hooks are free,” the guy who’d been manhandling her harness shouted.
“Angel, Blackfish, we’ve got the package. The drop line is clear, you’re free to bug out,” Knepper said as he gave Katie’s back a comforting I got you pat.
Mind and body still flooded with adrenaline, it took her a long second to register this detail, but when she did she finally unclenched her death grip on his torso and lowered her booted feet onto the grate below.
He held her for a second to make sure she had her sea legs, then stepped back a foot to smile at her and say, “Welcome aboard the USS Washington, your underwater Uber. I’ll be your driver, Dennis.”
Despite the throbbing in both her left shoulder and ribs, she managed a smile.
“I deserve that,” she said and let out a heavy exhale. “But thank you for accommodating.”
“Accommodating” was an understatement.
A pair of booted feet and legs in orange foul-weather trousers now dangled in the bridge cockpit beside her. She followed Knepper’s gaze up to look at the guy with the pole hook, who now sat, rather than surfed, on top of the sail.
“Quite the balancing act you did up there,” she said.
“Petty Officer Markowski’s previous tour was in Pearl Harbor,” Knepper said. “They say he spent a lot of time at the North Shore, so I decided to put that rumor to the test.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” she said to Knepper, then looking up again, added, “Thanks for risking your life to haul me in.”
Markowski flashed her the Hang loose sign with his free hand, his other clutching the pole hook. “My pleasure, ma’am.”
“All right, OOD,” Knepper said, looking behind her at the only person she’d not met in the cramped bridge cockpit. “Transfer the watch below and get the bridge rigged for dive with Markowski. We need to get deep ASAFP.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer said and immediately hoisted himself up to sit beside Markowski to make room for Knepper to lift the deck grating they all stood on.
“The ladder rungs are wet and slick and it’s a long way down,” the XO said as he raised the grating to reveal a narrow vertical tunnel with a ladder in three sections that extended down into the belly of the submarine. “Take it slow and hold on with both hands at all times.”
“Roger that,” she said and did exactly as he said, working her way down methodically and carefully, her legs trembling the whole way down as her body burned off the adrenaline dump from her transfer.
Her ribs and left shoulder flared with each extension, but she gritted her teeth and concentrated on the climb. When she reached the bottom, she was greeted by the sub’s captain, dressed in the iconic dark blue coveralls that she guessed represented the underway uniform of submariners around the world. Unlike Knepper, he did not look pleased to see her.
“Lieutenant Ryan, I’m Commander Houston, CO of the Blackfish,” he said with a narrow-eyed stare. He paused a moment before sticking out his hand to her.
She shook it, making sure to return his firm grip despite feeling completely spent. Knepper stepped off the ladder and joined them in a closed circle of three in the narrow corridor.
“She, uh, took a pretty good shot against the side of the sail,” Knepper said to the captain, then turned to her. “Ryan, do you want to get checked out by the doc?”
“I’m okay,” she said, noticing that Houston’s expression shifted from agitation to concern with this new information.
“Are you sure, Ryan?” the CO asked. “I didn’t realize there was an incident up there.”
“Not an incident . . . Just a hard landing, is all,” she said.
“Okay, in that case, let’s talk turkey. Why are you here, Ryan?” he said. “What was so important that you had to pull us off mission, force us to disengage while tracking an enemy submarine, and broach this ship in rough seas, putting multiple lives at risk, including your own?”
“Maybe we should talk in a SCIF,” she proposed.
“No, you’re gonna tell me right here, right now.” He gestured around the small space. “You’re in my SCIF.”
For a moment, she said nothing. Then, in an exhausted, emotion-laden torrent, it all came out. He listened without interruption all the way until the end.
“I needed to look you in the eye and tell you that sometime in the next twenty-four hours the Blackfish is going to be the only thing that stands between Konstantin Gorov and World War Three. I believe that the Belgorod has gone rogue and intends an attack on the United States—a nuclear attack with a salted warhead delivered by a Status-6 torpedo, which we have confirmed he has on board. Captain Houston, how you decide to act on this information will determine the fate of the entire world.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared at her blankly, and for a moment she wondered if she’d hallucinated the conversation. Then he checked his watch and shot a look at Knepper. “XO, I want the bridge rigged for dive in the next three minutes. Then take us deep and get the thin line back out. Every second counts.”
“Yes, sir,” Knepper said. “Do you want me to secure from battle stations?”
“No,” he said, then turned to Katie. “Ryan, follow me.”
The CO turned on a heel and headed aft—at least she thought it was aft—but she’d not spent enough time aboard during her last visit to make a mental map of the sub. She followed him around a dogleg, down a ladder, then forward into the command passageway. He opened a door with a placard that read commanding officer and gestured for her to step into his stateroom, which was way less than half the size of the stateroom they’d put her up in on the Ford. He shut the door behind him and gestured to the lone chair for her to take a seat. She did as ordered and he squeezed past her to sit on a little bench seat in a cutout on the aft bulkhead.
She decided it best to wait for him to start the conversation.
He sighed heavily, then bowed his head to massage his temples. “Does the President know you’re here?” he asked, going straight to the place where few dared to tread.
“Honestly, sir, I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t spoken directly with him or his staff in quite some time.”
“Hmm . . . That’s what I was afraid of,” he murmured, still rubbing his temples and looking down at the floor.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said with a defensive edge to her voice.
“It means that not only have you apparently dumped the fate of humanity on my shoulders, Lieutenant, but you’ve also made me responsible for safeguarding someone the President of the United States holds most precious.” He looked up at her. “I assume you’ve heard the term ‘burden of command,’ Lieutenant Ryan?”
She smiled. “Yes, sir. It just happens to be a Ryan family dinner conversation greatest hit.”
The corners of his mouth curled up, his eyes softening only slightly. “Yeah . . . I imagine it is.”
She contemplated for a moment how to respond, before saying, “Look, I know I just dropped a two-ton ox yoke on your back, but I’m not going to apologize. The truth is, this is the last place on earth that I want to be right now. I would love nothing more than to be at home, curled up with a Jessica Strawser novel, blissfully unaware that there’s a Russian submarine preparing to fire a nuclear-armed torpedo at the Eastern Seaboard. But a life of safety and comfort is not the life I chose . . . Which is why I’m here, at the vanguard of our national defense with you and this crew.”
He stared at her, then glanced away, thinking perhaps. “I heard what you said about the Belgorod being loaded with nuclear Status-6 torpedoes, masking its acoustic signature, and sabotaging the mid-Atlantic DASH network. I also believe what you told me about Gorov’s history and losing his wife and child, but—” A knock on his stateroom door stopped Houston midsentence. He stood and said, “Come.”
The door opened and a handsome sailor dressed in coveralls and wearing a fear the blackfish ball cap stuck his head out. “Captain, we just got a P4 message on board,” he said, referring to a “personal for” message.
Houston stuck out his hand for the printed page, but the radioman hesitated. “Actually, sir, it’s for Lieutenant Ryan.”
For a split second Houston looked taken aback, but then he said, “All right, then give it to her.”
The sailor did, and Katie took the printed page and read the message from former CIA intelligence officer Matthew Reilly, sent via the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, implying it had been both seen and approved by the director herself, Mary Pat Foley. Instead of the typical intel message written to be concise, to the point, and sterilized of opinion or conjecture, below the header the body appeared to be a word-for-word transcription of a personalized note addressed to her, penned by Reilly. The body text read:
Katie, after we spoke I did some digging and pursued a nagging hunch based on our conversation. One of my contacts in Moscow discovered that Gorov has pancreatic cancer. He’s kept it quiet by seeking treatment in the private sector outside the Main Military Medical Directorate health system. He is terminal.—M.R.
The final sentence reverberated in her mind like an echo after a rifle report.
He is terminal . . .
She handed the paper to Houston.
He scanned it, looked up at the radioman standing in the doorway, and said, “Thank you, Castaneda.”
“Sir,” Castaneda said, left, and shut the door behind him.
“Now do you believe me?” she said, meeting his hazel-green eyes.
“It’s not a matter of believing you, Ryan. This message doesn’t contain any orders,” he said, shaking the page in the air. “This is not tasking. It’s information. Important information, disturbing information, but that’s all it is.”
“But—” she tried to interject, but he stopped her with a solemn shake of his head.
“Ryan, you might be the daughter of POTUS, but you do not speak for POTUS. Your logic, your data, your gut instincts . . . they might all be spot-on, but when it comes to me ordering firing-point procedures on a foreign Navy’s submarine, it’s irrelevant. My mandate as a submarine captain is to execute this platform’s tasking to the letter. Until we receive a message from my chain of command changing my rules of engagement, our tasking is to protect the carrier strike group and track this submarine. I can play defensive, but I can’t shoot first.”
“I’m an Academy graduate and a naval officer, sir,” she said. “Believe me, I understand the chain of command. And if I gave you the impression that I’m here in my father’s stead, speaking on his behalf, then let me say unequivocally that I am not.”
“That’s good, because from where I’m standing, it sounded like you came here to try to convince me to go rogue and take unsanctioned, preemptive action against a foreign nation’s submarine.”
“No, sir. One rogue submarine captain is already more than I can handle.”
“Then why are you here, Ryan? Help me understand.”
She let out a shaky exhale. This wasn’t going like she’d scripted it in her head.
“I’m here, Captain, to make sure you are fully briefed on the mental and emotional state of your counterpart on K-329. To inform you that his submarine is carrying two nuclear-armed Status-6 long-range autonomous torpedoes. To help you connect the dots in advance for an enemy’s future action that would defy all logic to a submarine captain and crew operating in a relative information vacuum. And finally, and most importantly, I’m here because I know, with absolute certainty, what is coming. And I know that you will likely be faced with a command decision to react, at a time when communications will be difficult and impossible, and you will have to make that command decision before it will be too late.”
He thought for a moment, then said, “And while I appreciate your efforts and concern, none of what you just said changes anything. I cannot and will not take firing orders from you.”
“I know that, sir, and I’m not asking you to. I’m asking—”
The radio phone clipped to his coveralls rang and Katie felt the floor tilt aggressively in what her brain told her was the forward direction. The Blackfish was going deep.
“CO,” Houston said, staring daggers at her while he took the call. “Very well, stream the TB-29 and reacquire Master One.” He clipped the device back on his chest. “What, exactly, are you asking me to do, Ryan? Be specific in your word choice, because I have a submarine to command and I’m running out of patience.”
“I’m asking you,” she said, knitting her fingers together almost as if in prayer, “to prepare yourself now for the terrible decision Captain Gorov is going to force you to make when you don’t have the chain of command to back you up.”
Houston stared at her and then let out a long sigh.
“Well, Ryan,” he said, rising, “it’s not gonna matter much if we can’t reacquire the contact that you believe is trying to start World War Three.” His look softened, but again only barely, and he added, “So let’s get to work.”