"We pay him to be good, X. We don't award medals for doing an adequate job. I want a playback later to see if there might have been a sniff earlier that he missed."

Anybody can find something on playback, Claggett thought to himself.

"Conn, Sonar, I'm getting a very faint blade-count seems to indicate fourteen knots, plus or minus one, sir."

"Very well. That's better, Sonar."

"Uh, Captain may be a little closer than ten thousand not much, but a little. Track is firming up best estimate now nine-five hundred yards, course roughly three-zero-five," Shaw reported next, waiting for the sky to fall.

"So he's not over ten thousand yards off now?"

"No, sir, looks like nine-five hundred."

"Let me know when you change your mind again," Ricks replied. "Drop speed to four knots."

"Reduce speed four knots, aye," the OOD acknowledged.

"Let him get ahead of us?" Claggett asked.

"Yep." The Captain nodded.

"We have a firing solution," the weapons officer said. The XO checked his watch. It didn't get much better than this.

"Very well. Glad to hear it," Ricks replied.

"Speed is now four knots."

"Okay, we have him. Sierra-Eleven is at bearing two-zero-one, range nine-one hundred yards, course three-zero-zero, speed fifteen."

"Dead meat," Claggett said. Of course, he's making it easy by going this fast.

"True enough. This will look good on the patrol report."

"That's tricky," Ryan observed. "I don't like the way this is going."

"Neither do I," Bunker agreed. "I recommend weapons release to the TR battlegroup."

"I agree, and will so advise the President." Ryan placed the call. Under the rules for this game, the President was supposed to be on Air Force One, somewhere over the Pacific, returning from an unspecified country on the Pacific Rim. The President's decision-making role was being played by a committee elsewhere in the Pentagon. Jack made his recommendation and waited for the reply.

"Only in self-defense, Dennis."

"Bullshit," Bunker said quietly. "He listens to me."

Jack grinned. "I agree, but not this time. No offensive action, you may act only to defend the ships in the group."

The SecDef turned to the action officer: "Forward that to Theodore Roosevelt. Tell them I expect full combat air patrols. Anything over two hundred miles I want reported to me. Under two hundred, the battlegroup commander is free to act at discretion. For submarines, the bubble radius is fifty - five-zero - miles. Inside that, prosecute to kill."

"That's creative," Jack said.

"We have that attack on Valley Forge." The best estimate at the moment was that it had been a surprise missile attack from a Soviet submarine. It appeared that some units of the Russian fleet were acting independently, or at least under orders not emanating from Moscow. Then things got worse.

"HOTLINE message. There has just been a ground-force attack on a Strategic Rocket Regiment SS-18 base in Central Asia."

"Launch all the ready bombers right now! Jack, tell the President that I just gave the order."