The irritating jangling of the telephone at his elbow disturbed Captain Jon Ward’s train of thought. He had the travel brochures fanned out on the desk before him. It would be the first vacation he and Ellen had taken alone since their honeymoon, twenty years before.

Two whole weeks! Where to? The Caribbean? Paris? Rome? Ellen had been dropping strong hints about a cruise, maybe around the Greek islands. Ward wasn’t sure. Just what a Navy man needed. Two weeks on a ship!

Ward listened to the phone shriek two more times, waiting for his yeoman to answer it and stop the noise. It was a lesson he had learned when he took command of his first nuclear submarine, Spadefish, years before. Captains shouldn’t answer the phone themselves. They never knew when it might be Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes. Now that Ward was in Norfolk, commanding a submarine squadron, it was an even more valuable lesson. The proximity of the media animals in D.C. was much too convenient.

Not this time. The yeoman stuck her head in the office door. This was a call he would take.

“Admiral Donnegan for you, sir.”

Ward shoved the travel brochures aside and grabbed the phone. “Captain Ward.”

“Jon, good to hear your voice. I haven’t seen enough of you and Ellen since you took command of Squadron Six. Here we are, just down the road from each other. When are you coming up to see me in this five-sided puzzle palace?”

Tom Donnegan was an old and dear family friend. He had served as a surrogate father after Jon Ward’s dad was killed when Jon was a young boy. The gruff, cigar-chewing admiral had been promoted to the job of Director of Naval Intelligence. That promotion forced him to leave his beloved Hawaii for the congestion and clamor of Washington and the Pentagon.

“We’ve been meaning to get up there, Admiral, but it’s been so busy down here, as you can imagine. We’re still getting settled in and learning the ropes. These LANTFLT sailors do things a lot different than we did out in the PAC.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Donnegan said with a chuckle. There was a slight hesitation. Ward could picture the admiral shifting the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, signifying an obvious change of subject. “Jon, I didn’t call just for social niceties. I’ve got a job for you.”

Ward knew it was time to get down to business. He grabbed a notepad and pen before he responded. “What you got for me, sir?”

“We received a message from the Miami. She was out on one of those scientific cruises, listening to whales up near the ice edge in the Barents. Brad Crawford…I think you know Brad.…He reported a Russian sub down, under the pack ice and with survivors.”