"He makes the best damned coffee, too." Burroughs collected the pot. He was six dollars ahead.

"Portagee, it has been a while. Sure, go ahead. It's called black-gang coffee. Pete. Old seaman's tradition," Clark explained, also enjoying the pleasant inactivity.

"John?" Ding asked.

"Later, my boy." He picked up the deck and started shuffling adeptly. It would wait.

"Sure you have enough fuel?" Checa asked. The supplies that had been dropped in included auxiliary tanks and wings, but Richter shook his head.

"No prob. Only two hours to the refueling point."

"Where's that?" The signal over the satcomm had said nothing more than PROCEED to PRIMARY, whatever that meant.

"About two hours away," the warrant officer said. "Security, Captain, security."

"You realize we've made a little history here."

"Just so I live to tell somebody about it." Richter zipped up his flight suit, tucked in his scarf, and climbed aboard. "Clear!"

The Rangers stood by one last time. They knew the extinguishers were worthless, but somebody had insisted on packing them along. One by one the choppers lifted off, their green bodies soon disappearing into the darkness. With that, the Rangers started dumping the remaining equipment into holes dug during the day. That required an hour, and all that remained was their walk to Hirose. Checa lifted his cellular phone and dialed the number he'd memorized.

"Hello?" a voice said in English.

"See you in the morning, I hope?" The question was in Spanish.

"I'll be there, Señor."

"Montoya, lead off," the Captain ordered. They'd keep to the treeline as far as they could. The Rangers clasped weapons so far unused, hoping to keep it that way.

"I recommend two weapons," Lieutenant Shaw said. "Spread the bearings about ten degrees, converge them in from under the layer, and nail him fore and aft."

"I like it." Claggett walked over to the plot for a final examination of the tactical situation. "Set it up."

"So what gives?" one of the Army sergeants asked at the entrance to the attack center. The trouble with these damned submarines was that you couldn't just hang around and watch stuff.

"Before we can refuel those helos of yours, we have to make that 'can go away," a petty officer explained as lightly as he could.

"Is it hard?"

"I guess we'd prefer he was someplace else. It puts us on the surface with—well, somebody's gonna know there's somebody around."

"Worried?"

"Nah," the sailor lied. Then both men heard the Captain speak.

"Mr. Shaw, let's go to battle stations torpedo. Firing-point procedures."

The Tomcats went off first, one every thirty seconds or so until a full squadron of twelve was aloft. Next went four EA-6B jammers, led by Commander Roberta Peach. Her flight of four broke up into elements of two, one to accompany each of the two probing Tomcat squadrons.