"Not a single contact," Captain Ricks said in the wardroom.

"Except for Omaha." LCDR Claggett looked over some paperwork. "And he was in too much of a hurry."

"Ivan doesn't even try anymore. Like he's gone out of business." It was almost a lament from the Navigator.

"Why even try to find us?" Ricks observed. "Hell, aside from that Akula that got lost "

"We did track the guy a while back," Nav pointed out.

"Maybe next time we'll get some hull shots," a lieutenant observed lightly from behind a magazine. There was general laughter. Some of the more extreme fast-attack skippers had, on very rare occasions, maneuvered close enough to some Soviet submarines to take flash photographs of their hulls. But that was a thing of the past. The Russians were a lot better at the submarine game than they'd been only ten years earlier. Being number two did make one try harder.

"Now, the next engineering drill," Ricks said.

The Executive Officer noted that the faces around the table didn't change. The officers were learning not to groan or roll their eyes Ricks had a very limited sense of humor.

"Hello, Robby." Joshua Painter got up from his swivel chair and walked over to shake hands with his visitor.

"Morning, sir."

"Grab a seat" A steward served coffee to both men. "How's the wing look?"

"I think we'll be ready on time, sir."

Admiral Joshua Painter, USN, was Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, Commander-in-Chief Atlantic, and Commander-in-Chief U.S. Atlantic Fleet - they only paid him one salary for the three jobs, though he did have three staffs to do his thinking for himi. A career aviator - mainly fighters - he had reached the summit of his career. He would not be selected for Chief of Naval Operations. Someone with fewer politically rough edges would get that job, but Painter was content. Under the rather eccentric organization of the armed services, the CNO and other service chiefs merely advised the Secretary of Defense. The SecDef was the one who gave the orders to the area CINCs - commanders-in-chief. SACLANT-CINCLANT-CINCLANTFLT might have been an awkward, cumbersome, and generally bloated command, but it was a command. Painter owned real ships, real airplanes, and real marines, had the authority to tell them where to go and what to do. Two complete fleets, 2nd and 6th, came under his authority seven aircraft carriers, a battleship - though an aviator, Painter rather liked battleships, his grandfather had commanded one - over a hundred destroyers and cruisers, 60 submarines, a division and a half of marines, thousands of combat aircraft. The fact of the matter was that only one country in the world had more combat power than Joshua Painter did, and that country was no longer a serious strategic threat in these days of international amity. He no longer had to look forward to the possibility of war. Painter was a happy man. A man who'd flown missions over Vietnam, he'd seen American power go from its post-World War II peak to its nadir in the 1970s, then bounce back again until America once more was the most powerful country on earth. He'd played his part in the best of times and the worst of times, and now the best of times were better still. Robby Jackson was one of the men to whom his Navy would be turned over.