“Sir?” It was obvious from his tone that the young radio operator hadn’t expected such disrespect from his captain for the fleet’s commanding admiral.

“Relax, Pavel. When the time comes for them to pin captain’s bars on your shoulders, you will curse my name ten times worse than I curse my first commander.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I mean . . .” The young radioman wisely stopped talking and kept his stare riveted on his equipment. The second radio operator swiveled in his chair and asked, “Will we reacquire the Americans?”

Patronov shot him a look that twisted the tech back in his seat so that he too stared at the radios. “It took us a week of searching the first time,” he said as he left the room. “It will probably take me that long just to decrypt this damn message.”

It took him the better part of an hour to decode the page-length missive. Because this was a private communiqué between the two men and not an official order, he had to use a private codebook that Kenin had given only to his most loyal followers. Patronov knew that such a book was in the possession of senior captain Sergei Karpov. Karpov was currently on deployment aboard a Typhoon-class missile boat with a complement of twenty nuclear-tipped ICBMs. Patronov knew Sergei well and knew that if Kenin ever ordered a secret launch, Karpov would press the button as fast and as hard as he could.

Truth told, Patronov admitted, so would he.

With China ascending as a world leader and America no longer willing to fulfill its role as a superpower, a void was opening that a man like Admiral Kenin could exploit. The dragon and eagle would eventually fight it out in some form, but it would be the bear that would emerge victorious.

Patronov read through the decrypted message for a second time before hitting the comm button on his desk that connected him to the bridge. “Emergency order. XO to the captain’s cabin. Helm, make your course two three-five. Course to be corrected later when plot is resolved. Speed all ahead full. The American boomer is no longer a target. Repeat, the American is no longer a target.”

Seven seconds later, the sub’s executive officer, her second-in-command, knocked on Patronov’s cabin door.

“Enter.”

Paulus Renko stepped through the door and stood as stiff as a ramrod until his captain waved him into a chair. The younger man was the opposite of Patronov physically. He was as handsome as a model on a recruiting poster, a hairsbreadth shy of the maximum height allowance on a submarine, and had a fencer’s lean build, with broad shoulders and a tapered waist and hips.