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“I’ll answer: the shitty jets usually win. You might get one, maybe two, but three on one is too much. How about…three shitty tanks against one really kick-ass American tank?”

Duggan was looking at his hands.

“That’s right, kids, the shitty tanks win. So, how about…two shitty subs against a one billion dollar US Trident submarine with the best minds in the country aboard? Now, how about two not-so-shitty diesel subs versus one Trident? How about two pretty good diesel boats, perhaps the best, quietest diesel-electric boats in the world, against one Trident submarine manned by junior officers who think because they are nuclear trained college graduates that no fucking Chinese skipper in a diesel boat can ever hurt them?”

Everyone was quiet now. Duggan looked like he wanted to melt away.

“Okay, XO, I think you’ve made your point,” said the captain. “You oncoming guys — go take the watch. I am sure the engineer is breaking out in hives up there.”

Book Two: Ahead Flank

Angi was drifting off, not quite asleep, when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Angi, its Karen Duggan.”

Angi could hear worry in her voice; it woke her right up. “What’s wrong?”

“Have you heard anything about a fire on the boat?”

A chill went through her. Almost every patrol there were rumors like this, and almost every patrol they proved to be baseless. Well, not baseless, but usually exaggerated somehow, a grain of truth mutated in the Petri dish of a bunch of wives with too much too worry about and not enough real information. “No I haven’t heard anything, Karen.”

“Please,” she said, “tell me if you know anything. I am really freaking out about this.”

Angi sympathized with Karen, who’d moved out west with Brendan, thousands of miles from her family just weeks after getting married — just like she and Danny had. She remembered that hopeless feeling of not knowing anything, the feeling that everyone else somehow knew more. “Karen, I haven’t heard anything, I swear, but I’ll ask around. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve heard.”

“I was talking to one of the chief’s wives at the exchange, and she said they had a friend at SUBPAC who said that they had to order some equipment for the boat and rush it to the shipyard in Japan, said that something had been damaged in a fire and had to be replaced. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about, but shit, what do I know?”

Angi thought it over. It sounded ominously specific. And those chiefs’ wives always did seem to have access to better information than the wardroom wives…

“Karen, I am going to make some calls, and I’ll get right back to you. But I am sure it’s nothing. If it was bad, the Navy would have told us something by now.”

“Okay, Angi, thanks.” Angi could tell that her last statement had made her feel better. Only someone on their first patrol would believe it.

• • •

She called Denver Kincaid first.

“Denver, have you heard anything about a fire on the boat?”

“Molly Hein just called and asked me the same thing,” she said. “Do you think there’s something to this?”

“Molly might have just heard about it from Karen, too…I don’t know. I think I’m going to call Cindy,” she said.

“Let me know…”

“I will. I’m sure everything is fine.”

• • •

“Cindy, this is Angi.”

“Hello Angi, how are you feeling?”

“Fine, just tired all the time…listen, sorry to bother you, but a couple of us have heard something about a fire on the boat.”

She paused to await a response from Cindy. There was none.

“It’s just…I thought if there was an announcement getting ready to make the rounds, maybe you could let me know, so I could head off some of the panic with the new wives, you know…”

Still Cindy said nothing.

“Cindy are you there?”

“Yes, Angi, I’m here. No I haven’t heard anything about a fire. But I am sure everything is okay. If there was a fire.”

For the first time, Angi felt a real stab of dread. Cindy was the absolute worst person in the world at keeping secrets, and everything she said just confirmed to Angi that something had gone wrong. If it was just a normal, baseless, meandering patrol rumor, Cindy would have wanted to dissect every detail, add her own elaborations, usually colored with her multiple decades of experience as a submarine wife. By not saying anything, she was saying everything.

“Cindy, is there anything you can tell me?”

“Angi, I am sure everything is fine.”

As Angi hung up the phone and replayed Karen Duggan’s phone call in her mind, something else occurred to her. Why in the hell would repair parts for Alabama be heading toward a shipyard in Japan?

• • •