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Chapters (60)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Foreword
  4. Preface
  5. Prologue
  6. PART ONE
  7. Kharkiv, Ukraine
  8. The President’s weekly defense and foreign policy meeting, The Kremlin, Moscow
  9. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC), Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), Belgium
  10. Briefing Room, Boryspill Air Force Base, Ukraine
  11. The Kremlin, Moscow
  12. Washington, D.C.
  13. Residence of DSACEUR La Belle Alliance, Erbisoeul, Belgium
  14. North Atlantic Council Conference Room, NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  15. Banks of River Daugava, Riga, Latvia
  16. Ādaži Training Camp, Latvia
  17. Riga, Latvia
  18. National Defense Control Center, Moscow
  19. Ādaži Training Camp, Latvia
  20. NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  21. National Armed Forces Joint HQ, Riga, Latvia
  22. Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), Mons, Belgium
  23. Central European Time 1600 hours, Eastern Standard Time, The White House, Washington, D.C.
  24. Lielvārde Air Base, Latvia
  25. Lielvārde Air Base, Latvia
  26. Camp David, Catoctin Mountains, Maryland
  27. British Embassy, 5, J.Alunana Street, Riga, Latvia
  28. The Russell Arms, Butler’s Cross, Buckinghamshire
  29. HMS Queen Elizabeth Middle Slip Jetty, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth
  30. National Defense Control Center, Moscow
  31. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC) SHAPE headquarters, Mons, Belgium
  32. Somewhere in the forest, Gauja National Park, Latvia
  33. 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, London
  34. HMS Queen Elizabeth in the Baltic Sea
  35. Control Room, Kilo Class submarine Krasnokamensk, Baltic Sea
  36. PART TWO
  37. Prime Minister’s Office, House of Commons, London
  38. The Presidential Dacha Barvikha, Odintsovsky District of Moscow Oblast
  39. The White House, Washington, D.C.
  40. NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium
  41. Gauja National Park Forest, Latvia
  42. PART THREE
  43. “The Tank,” Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
  44. North Atlantic Council NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  45. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Cheltenham, England
  46. GCHQ, Cheltenham, England
  47. Forest south of Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad, Russia
  48. Headquarters, Kaliningrad Special Region, Kaliningrad
  49. The President’s Office, The Kremlin, Moscow
  50. Forest south of Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad, Russia
  51. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC) SHAPE headquarters, Mons, Belgium
  52. Command Bunker, Iskander Missile Battery Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad
  53. Over Wroclaw, Poland
  54. Forest north of Pravdinsk Iskander Battery, Kaliningrad
  55. 25,000 feet above Kaliningrad
  56. Close to the Pravdinsk Iskander Battery, Kaliningrad
  57. Epilogue
  58. Glossary
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. Notes

Meanwhile, the monotonous tone of the planesman started to call the depth as the submarine surfaced steadily from its operating depth of 200 meters: “Fifty, forty, thirty, twenty . . . Approaching periscope depth. Periscope depth . . . Now.”

“Hold her there,” ordered Chernavin. “Up periscope.” And, leaning down, he grabbed the handles of the periscope as it slid up to him. Before it had even reached knee level he was down, squatting on his haunches, anxious to get his eyes to the viewfinder and so make the most of every precious second to look at the contact.

He was too experienced a submariner to need to waste any time adjusting his eyes to the lenses of the viewfinder, so he saw her instantly: HMS Queen Elizabeth, with her vast deck, the ski jump in the bow and the twin islands on the starboard side. Despite being five nautical miles away, she was magnified by the powerful lenses of the periscope and the great ship seemed to fill the viewfinder.

“Down periscope. Flood torpedo tubes one to three. Stand by to fire,” ordered Chernavin. There was a whoosh as the periscope disappeared into its mast well in the deck of the control room.

Then he turned and looked at his Executive Officer, still standing behind him. “Confirm visual sighting of British carrier, Queen Elizabeth,” Chernavin said.

The Executive Officer stepped forward. “Up periscope.”

Like his captain, he squatted as it rose so that he could gain maximum time at the viewfinder. A five-second look was enough. “Down periscope.”

Chernavin looked inquiringly at him.

“Confirmed,” came the response.

The tension in the submarine was touchable. Chernavin took a deep breath and, for a moment, he felt a deep calm as time seemed to stand still. Then the reality of the moment hit him. What he was about to do would go down as an event of the magnitude of the sinking of HMS Royal Oak, the pride of the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet, by a German U-boat in Scapa Flow in October 1939. Or the sinking of the mighty battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales by Japanese dive bombers in 1941, an event that changed the course of the war in the Far East. And now, HMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest ship ever built for the Royal Navy, was about to join them and he, Captain of the Second Rank, Alexander Ivanovich Chernavin of the Russian Navy, would be the man responsible.