“If we are fired upon, we will shoot evasion devices from both signal ejectors and evade toward the open sea at flank.”

Sam Wallich gave his skipper a thumbs-up. Both ejectors already had evasion devices loaded and he was ready to shoot them on a moment’s notice.

“We will stay deep and try to sneak out. Nav, keep me fifty feet off the bottom and snug up against the east flank of the entrance, just like when we snuck into this little rat hole.”

Jerry Perez stood hunched over his navigation charts, sweat dripping off his chin and pooling on the Mylar chart cover. He was feeling the pressure but trying his best to hide it. He nodded his understanding.

Glass paused long enough to look around the cramped space. The young faces of his crew looked back at him with grim determination, each man ready for whatever came. He had told them, straight out, what he planned to do. Every man knew the danger that lay ahead. Whatever was about to happen was left up to chance and the fortunes of war.

“Gentlemen, this is what we have been trained to do,” Glass said. “Our country is depending on us to do it to the best of our ability. I know you will. Let’s go to work!”

Master Chief Tommy Zillich disappeared back into the sonar shack. The rest of the team went back to their tasks, sifting every morsel of information to try to figure out what the Russians were doing. Quiet settled over the control room, the only sound that of the well-oiled hum of a perfectly tuned machine, a professional team hard at work.

Joe Glass sat back on the little flip-down stool behind number-two periscope and stretched his aching back. Standing for endless hours on the hard steel deck never used to bother him. Now it was torture.

Must be getting old, he thought. He smiled. He used to think that Jon Ward was unspeakably old when they were on Spadefish together. Now here Glass was, “the old man” on Toledo.

Doug O’Malley clamped his hands to the earpiece, trying to hear. His brow was furrowed with concentration. He glanced over at Glass, his eyes reflecting concern. The skipper jumped up and stood next to his fire control coordinator.

“Captain, sonar reports picking up rotor frequencies on the conformal array. Master Chief says it has to be a Helix. Counterrotating.”

Glass nodded. The Russian KA-27 Helix helicopter was designed with one task in mind, finding and destroying American nuclear submarines, and it was damned good at its job. A Udaloy destroyer normally carried two of the seagoing bumblebees, and the destroyer stalking Toledo had put one of theirs in the air. This was yet another complication in an already devilishly complicated situation.

There was nothing to do but snuggle close to the mud and try to sneak by.