Ward whistled. “Wow! We need to get the DSRV rolling pronto. I’ve got Joe Glass and Toledo exercising with the Brits over in the Irish Sea. That has to be the closest mother sub.”

“That’s what we figured, too. The DSRV will be airborne out of North Island within six hours. The C-5 should touch down in Prestwick, Scotland, ten hours later. Have Toledo alongside the pier in Faslane, ready to take it on board. I want her under way inside of twelve hours.”

Ward glanced at the chart of the Atlantic and Europe hanging on the wall across from his desk. “Tom, it’s over twelve hundred nautical miles from Faslane to the Barents. With the twenty-knot speed limit because of the DSRV, it’ll take Toledo three days just to get there. Wouldn’t the Russians be able to get there a hell of a lot quicker?”

Donnegan cleared his throat. “Jon, the Russians maintain that they don’t have any boats missing. They are now, for some damn reason, resurrecting their old bullshit claim that the Barents is an inland sea—that it is their sovereignty and that we are to stay out.”

“So, okay, they are embarrassed and don’t want help. Same thing happened when the Kursk went down. We didn’t butt in then. Why now on this one?”

Donnegan paused a beat. Ward felt a sudden chill crawl up his spine. On one of the brochures on his desk, a happy couple waved from the railing of a cruise ship.

“There’s one more thing, Jon. Miami said she would be back in communications twelve hours after the original message. She is now twenty-four hours overdue. Tell Joe Glass he had best keep his eyes open up there.”

The giant trailer eased out of the brightly lit hangar, making its way toward the waiting open cargo door on the C-5B Galaxy. This entire end of North Island Naval Air Station, near San Diego, hummed with sudden activity. Men raced about carrying boxes or directing forklifts loaded with pallets into the Galaxy aircraft’s after cargo door.

The trailer’s suspension groaned under the massive weight of the huge khaki-green-and-white cylinder that sat strapped to its bed as the tractor tugged it toward the waiting plane. Large black letters painted across the side proclaimed this to be DSRV-1, the Mystic.

A warm wind blew in off the dark Pacific, tousling Lieutenant Dan Perkins’s blond hair as he watched his baby slide out of the hangar. Perkins never ceased to be amazed that he was now the officer in charge of Mystic. Amazed but proud. How had the Navy known to pick a mustang diver for the perfect job? Coming up through the ranks as a working diver, Perkins had always dreamed of this. Now it was true. He smiled every time he thought about it.