Mancuso nodded. "Right, it was a deliberate test, and they worst-cased everything to see if anyone could detect an Ohio. Isothermal water, below the layer, everything."

And still Tennessee won," Ricks pointed out. "Frank was under orders to make it easy, and he still detected first, and as I recall he had a solution three minutes before Mike did."

"True." Mancuso thought for a moment. "Make it twenty-five thousand yards separation. No closer than that."

"Fine. I know I can track an Akula at that range. I have a very good sonar department - hell, we all do. If I stumble across this guy, I hover out there and gather all the signature data I can. I draw a twenty-five-thousand-yard circle around him and keep outside of it. There is no chance in hell that I'll get counter-detected."

"Five years ago, Group would have shot both of us even for talking like this," Mancuso observed.

"The world's changed. Look, Bart, you can run a 688 in close, but what does it prove? If we're really worried about boomer vulnerability, why dick around?"

"You're sure you can handle this?"

"Hell, yes! I'll write up the proposal for your operations staff, and you can send it up the flagpole to Group."

"This'll end up in Washington, you know that."

"Yeah, no more "We hide with pride," eh? What are we, a bunch of little old ladies? Damn it, Bart, I'm the commanding officer of a warship. Somebody wants to tell me I'm vulnerable, well, I'm going to prove that's a load of horseshit. Nobody has ever tracked me. Nobody ever will, and I'm prepared to prove that."

This interview had not gone the way Mancuso had expected at all. Ricks was talking like a real submarine-driver. It was the kind of talk Mancuso liked to hear.

"You're sure you're comfortable with this? It's really going to light a fire up the line. You're going to take some heat."

"So are you."

"I'm the squadron commander. I'm supposed to take heat."

"I'll take my chances, Bart. Okay, I'm going to have to drill the hell out of my people, especially the sonar troops, tracking party, like that. I have the time, and I have a pretty good crew."

"Okay. You write up the proposal. I'll give it a favorable endorsement and send it up."

"See how easy it is?" Ricks grinned. If you want to be number one in a squadron of good skippers, he thought, you have to stand out from the crowd. OP-01 in the Pentagon would get excited about this, but they'd see that it was Harry Ricks who'd made the suggestion, and they knew his reputation as a smart, careful operator. On that basis, plus Mancuso's endorsement, it would be approved after some hemming and hawing. Harry Ricks: the best submarine engineer in the Navy, and a man willing to back up his expertise with deeds. Not a bad image. Certainly an image that would be noted and remembered.