"Bad tactical move, Captain." Bart Mancuso was not known for his diplomacy. "XO, what advice was that you gave to your skipper?" Claggett recited it word for word. "Captain, why did you reject that advice?"

"Sir, I estimated that our acoustical advantage was sufficient to allow me to do that in such a way as to maximize separation from the target."

"Wally?" Mancuso turned to the skipper of the Red Team, Commander Wally Chambers, about to become the CO of USS Key West. Chambers had worked for Mancuso on Dallas, and had the makings of one hell of a fast-attack skipper. He had just proven that, in fact.

"It was too predictable, Captain. Moreover, by continuing course and changing depth course you presented the noise source to my towed array, and also gave me a hull-popping transient that ID'd you as a definite submarine contact. You would have been better off to turn bow-on, maintain depth, and slow down. All I had was a vague indication. If you'd slowed down, I would never have ID'd you. Since you didn't, I noted your hop on top the layer and sprinted in fast underneath as soon as I cleared the CZ. Captain, I didn't know I had you until you let me know, but you let me know, and you did let me get close. I floated my tail over the layer while I stayed right underneath it. There was a fairly good surface duct, and I had you at two-nine thousand yards. I could hear you, but you couldn't hear me. Then it was just a matter of continuing my sprint until I was close enough for a high-probability solution. I had you cold."

"The point of the exercise was to show you what happened when you lost your acoustical advantage." Mancuso let that sink in before going on. "Okay, so it wasn't fair, was it? Who ever said life was fair?"

"Akula's a good boat, but how good is its sonar?"

"We assume it's as good as a second-flight 688."

No way, Ricks thought to himself. "What other surprises can I expect?"

"Good question. The answer is that we don't know. And if you don't know, you assume they're as good as you are."

No way, Ricks told himself.

Maybe even better, Mancuso didn't add.

"Okay," the Commodore told the assembled attack-center crew. "Go over your own data and we do the wash-up in thirty minutes."

Ricks watched Captain Mancuso exit the room sharing a chuckle with Chambers. Mancuso was a smart, effective sub-driver, but he was still a damned fast-attack jockey who didn't belong in command of a boomer squadron, because he simply didn't think the right way. Calling in his former shipmate from Atlantic Fleet, another fast-attack jockey - well, yeah, that's how it was done, but damn it! Ricks was sure he'd done the right thing.

It had been an unrealistic test. Ricks was sure of that. Hadn't Rosselli told the both of them that Maine was quiet as a black hole? Damn. This was his first chance to show the commodore what he could do, and he'd been faked out of making a favorable impression by an artificial and unfair test, and some goofs from his people - the ones Rosselli had been so damned proud of.