"Pre-flood shots showed seven of the holes definitely hit and destroyed. One more probably wrecked, and two unknowns, but definitely with shock damage of some sort. The weather seals on the holes won't withstand that much water pressure, and ICBMs are too delicate for that sort of treatment. Toss in debris carried downstream from the flooding. The missiles are as dead as we can make them without a nuclear strike of our own, and we managed to do the mission without it." Jack paused. "It was all Robby Jackson's plan. Thanks for letting me reward him for it."

"He's with the carrier now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, it would seem that he's the man for the job, wouldn't it?" the President asked rhetorically, clearly relieved at the evening's news. "And now?"

"And now, Mr. President, we try to settle this one down once and for all."

The phone rang just then. Durling lifted it. "Oh. Yes, Tish?"

"There's an announcement from the Japanese government that they have nuclear weapons and they hope—"

"Not anymore, they don't," Durling said, cutting off his communications director. "We'd better make an announcement of our own."

"Oh, yeah," Jones said, looking at the wall chart. "You did that one in a big hurry, Bart."

The line was west of the Marianas. Nevada was the northernmost boat. Thirty miles south of her was West Virginia. Another thirty and there was Pennsylvania. Maryland was the southernmost former missile submarine. The line was ninety miles across, and really extended a theoretical thirty more, fifteen to the north and south of the end-boats, and they were two hundred miles west of the westward-moving line of Japanese SSKs. They had just arrived in place after the warning from Washington that the word had been leaked somehow or other to the Japanese.

"Something like this happened once before, didn't it?" Jones asked, remembering that these were all battleship names, and more than that, the names of battlewagons caught alongside the quays one morning in December, long before his birth. The original holders of the names had been resurrected from the mud and sent off to take islands back, supporting soldiers and Marines under the command of Jesse Oldendorf, and one dark night in Surigao Strait…but it wasn't a time for history lessons.

"What about the 'cans?" Chambers asked.

"We lost them when they went behind the Bonins, sir. Speed and course were fairly constant. They ought to pass over Tennessee around midnight, local time, but by that time our carrier—"

"You have the operation all figured out," Mancuso observed.

"Sir, I've been tracking the whole ocean for you. What d'ya expect?"

"Ladies and gentlemen," the President said in the White House Press Room. He was winging it, Ryan saw, just working off some scribbled notes, never something to make the Chief Executive comfortable. "You've just this evening heard an announcement by the Japanese government that they have fabricated and deployed nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles.