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  With a small glow of inner warmth, she recalled again the first time she'd encountered that kind of harassment. She'd been a new recruit at Annapolis, twenty years old and brimming with fire, ambition, and a positively fierce determination to make good in this alien world that still, after over a decade, was run for and by men. Hurrying with an armful of books on her way to her next class, she'd squeezed past a group of five fellow cadets loitering in the passageway, all male. Just as she passed, one of them had muttered a low-voiced, "Christ, that one looks like she gives great head," speaking just loud enough that she could hear without having the comment directed to her.

  She could have ignored it. She could have reported it. Neither course would have been satisfactory, not if she didn't want more of the same and worse. Instead, she'd stopped, turned sharply, and picked out the kid who'd spoken, selecting him by the gleam in his eye and the expressions on the faces of the others. His name tag, she remembered, had read "SHAZINSKY," and he'd been big, a muscular guy who towered over the others in the group like a football player at a meeting of the school math club.

  "Well gee, Shazinsky," she'd said sweetly. "I wouldn't know from personal experience, 'cause I'm not equipped for it, y'know? But I heard the other night you gave the best head in Lehman Hall!"

  She'd puckered a pretend kiss in his direction, and Shazinsky's face had flushed scarlet as his companions dissolved into hooting gales of laughter.

  She'd had no more wise-ass crap out of Shazinsky during her whole time at Annapolis. In fact, she'd not had much trouble out of anyone after that.

  Word had gotten around that she could play the guys' game on their terms, and win.

  That was the way to handle verbal harassment ― to give better than she got. She'd slapped Slider down a couple of times already, but so far he'd just kept coming back for more.

  What to do about him? She could report him to CAG. In fact, going by the regs she probably should. But what good would it do? The man would get a lecture, maybe a slap-on-the-wrist reprimand, and the next time the squadron was gathered in the VF-95 ready room she would still be sitting next to him.

  Worse, the next time they were up, he might be on her wing. The jerk just thought he was being funny; that, or it was the only way he could think of to catch her attention. Report him, and things could get nasty, maybe nasty enough to lead to him getting court-martialed or grounded. Hell, she didn't want to wreck the guy's career, even if he was a pig.

  Besides, proving sexual harassment in a situation like this was hard, verging on the impossible. After all, what had he actually said or done?

  Asked if there was anything he could do to warm her up, in a tone that only suggested something sexual? Agreed with her when she'd thoughtlessly given him a classic straight man's line? Called her "baby," or grinned as he told her to "make a hole," which had been a part of every sailor's lexicon for generations. It meant, "Get out of the way," or, "Let me through." Only on the lips of someone like Slider, and when directed at a woman, did it take on a different, salacious meaning.

  What she disliked the most was Arrenberger's twisting of her call sign.

  She was Brewer, damn it, not "Brew" or "Brewski."

  Among the popular myths of the history of American arms, the story of Lucy Brewer was one of the most enduring. She'd been a prostitute who, during the 1800s, had published a widely read series of pamphlets describing how she'd passed herself off as a male Marine serving aboard the U.S.S.

  Constitution during the War of 1812. Lucy's claims had long since been disproved by Marine Corp historians. Her accounts of battle were too precise, drawn nearly word-for-word in some cases from the captain's published after-action reports or from newspaper accounts at the time.

  In any case, Lucy's claims that she'd escaped detection for three years in cramped quarters occupied by 450 men, where the toilets were a couple of open-air perches at the ship's beakhead, and where the regulations of the day required all Marines to strip, bathe, and dress in the presence of a commanding officer responsible for checking frequently on their physical condition, were patently ridiculous. There were cases of women serving aboard ship during that era, usually prostitutes or wives smuggled aboard without the officers' knowledge. "Jeannette," the wife of a seaman aboard a French warship who was plucked from the sea after the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, was a well-known example. The story of Lucy Brewer, however, was almost certainly a complete fabrication, one given new life only recently by books with feminist agendas and titles like Jeanne Holm's Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution.

  That hadn't stopped Conway from adopting "Brewer" as her call sign.

  She'd read Holm's book while she was in flight training at Pensacola, and that had led her to research Lucy's history, as well as accounts of other American women in combat, from Molly Pitcher serving a cannon at Monmouth to the now-nameless Confederate girl who, dressed like a man, had died by her husband's side during Pickett's Charge. If Lucy Brewer's story hadn't really happened the way she said it had, it still could have, even should have, for it reflected the attitudes of other Americans who felt that women ought to have the same right to defend their homes and loved ones as men.

  Not many of the men Conway had served with knew the origin of the call sign. Most, typically, assumed it had something to do with beer, which explained why a few like Arrenberger twisted it into "Brew" or "Brewski."

  Usually, she didn't mind, not really, not when she'd long ago learned that fighting every possible slight, put-down, or innuendo did nothing but wear her own nerves to a frazzle.

  Conway was fond of claiming that she was not a militant feminist, but a military feminist; she referred to herself and others as "girls," just as she sometimes called the men she served with "boys" or "the guys," and she'd laughed as hard as any man the first time she'd heard the story of the sailor, the Marine, and the admiral's daughter. Thirty-one years old, with eleven of those years in the Navy, she was in every sense a professional, intensely proud of who and what she was, and of her success in what for so long had been an exclusively male-dominated bastion. All her life, since long before the notion of women serving in combat units had been seriously addressed, she'd wanted to be a Navy aviator. Her older brother had been a Tomcat driver in VF-41, the Black Aces, stationed aboard the Nimitz during the late eighties, while her father had flown Navy F-4B Phantoms off the Forrestal in Vietnam.

  The day she'd first stepped onto the flight deck of the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson had been a dream come true.

  Now, just two weeks later, she was wondering if the dream hadn't already begun to take on the shades of nightmare.

  Her defenses, she told herself with a sigh, were way, way down. As she turned a corner and entered a companionway, quick-stepping down a ship's ladder to the 0–2 deck, she thought that the worst of it was the environment, the tight, gray-bounded shipboard atmosphere that was part of life at sea and stretched on unchanging for day after day after day. Privacy next to zero; regulations governing everything from when she could take a shower to how she took that shower to where she could use a toilet; the inevitable presence of a few bastards like Arrenberger, who insisted on turning each exchange of pleasantries into a hormone-charged sexual encounter of some kind; the language, God, the language…

  It wasn't that she minded the profanity; if she did, she'd definitely made one hell of a bad career choice. Shit, she'd stopped being shocked by mere words sometime during her first week at Annapolis. No, for Conway, the worst aspect of the language used by Navy men came from the accidental verbal harassments, the expression on some guy's face when he slipped and said something he thought he shouldn't have said in her presence. Things like, "He's got real balls," or, "It just went tits-up," or, "Make a hole."

  She'd only been aboard the Jefferson for two weeks and it was starting to get to her. Hell, if she was this stressed out already, what would it be like in a month? In three? In seven? This was a war patrol, and no one knew when they'd be setting course for
Norfolk again. Smart money said the cruise would last at least six months… and eight or nine was far more likely.

  "Girl," she murmured to herself, "it is just barely possible that you have made one hell of a big mistake."

  Turning right at the next cross passageway, Conway reached the block of compartments that had been set aside for women officers aboard. A female electrician's mate third class, a stocky, plain-faced girl wearing the bright silver police badge of Jefferson's MAA force pinned to her uniform blouse, stood guard. "Evening, ma'am."

  Conway eyed her name tag. "Hey, Shupe. How're they hangin'?"

  Shupe's eyes widened. "I… beg your pardon, ma'am?"

  "Nothing. Forget it. I'm just tired." She reached the compartment she shared with Lieutenant Commander Joyce Flynn and walked in.

  Flynn, call sign "Tomboy," was a petite redhead, a radar intercept officer who'd served with a reserve squadron flying out of Oceana before being transferred to VF-95. She was sitting at the room's tiny wall desk, reading a Hughes factory manual on the F-14's AWG-9 radar weapons-control system. "Ho, Brewer. Glad you made it. Some of us thought you were going to have to swim back."

  "Shit, Tomboy, did everyone on this bird farm see me pull that bolter?"

  "Only the ones on duty, and just about everybody else aboard who wasn't asleep at the time. You put on quite a PLAT show."

  "I'll just bet."

  "What's the matter, Brewer? You okay?"

  "Nah. Just feeling unusually bitchy tonight."

  "The PMS blues?"

  "Navy blues is more like it. I came that close to cashing in on a real-estate deal for me and Damiano both tonight. I guess I'm just a little shook, is all." She plucked at her uniform blouse, feeling it cling unpleasantly to her skin. The inside of her flight suit had been soaked with sweat when she'd changed to her uniform up in the ready area a few minutes ago. "God, Tomboy, I stink. You're going to make me sleep in the passageway."

  "I can stand it if you can."

  All she really wanted right now was a scalding hot shower and bed… and she couldn't even have that shower tonight because Jefferson's women had to share the shower head with the men, rotating with them according to a posted schedule. It was damned inconvenient, though not, she reminded herself, as inconvenient as it would have been to redesign and rebuild the entire aircraft carrier just to include separate and private plumbing for women. In any case, water discipline was strictly enforced aboard the carrier for all hands, and showers could only be taken at specified times during the day. With the women sharing the facilities on the 0–3 deck forward, shower times for female personnel were from 1800 to 2000 hours each evening, and again from 0500 to 0600 each morning.

  Since she'd been on CAP until well past 2100, she'd missed her chance at a shower tonight. True, there was a small shower up by the ready room for the use of aviators with the duty, but someone had been in there when she'd been changing out of her flight suit and she hadn't felt like waiting. There was also a small head down the passageway outside, reserved for women only. If she wanted, she could give herself a sponge bath from the sink.

  Too much trouble. Unbuttoning her blouse, she pulled it off, then tucked it in with her dirty laundry. She'd grab her shower in the morning during the 0500 to 0600 slot.

  "You sure there's nothing the matter?"

  "Ah, I ran into Arrenberger up on 0–3."

  "The guy's an asshole."

  "This is news?"

  "Hardly. He's been hitting on me a lot lately too."

  "You going to report him?"

  Tomboy shrugged. "Hardly worth the hassle, is it? Counterproductive.

  Especially if I get assigned as his RIO someday. You can bet I will if he gets too far out of line, though."

  Stripped down to her panties, Conway pulled on the oversized T-shirt she liked to sleep in, working her head through the hole. "Sometimes I want to kick the bastard in the nuts so hard they pop out his ears. So much for the camaraderie of men at war, right?" She climbed into her rack and flicked out the reading lamp attached to the bulkhead nearby.

  Tomboy watched her from the desk. "Am I going to bother you if I stay up and read a bit?"

  "Hynn, right now Valentin Krasilnikov and the entire KGB could break down that door in pursuit of my maidenly virtue and I don't think I'd hear a thing.

  Stay up as long as you want."

  But sleep didn't come immediately. As Conway lay there, feeling the corkscrew pitch of the carrier plowing through worsening seas, she wondered about this test-case role she found herself trapped in. Women serving aboard ship. Women in front-line combat. These were causes she'd passionately believed in ever since she'd first made up her mind to be a naval aviator like her dad and like Robert. Did she still believe?

  Wrong question. The real question should be, was she going to let a few horny sewer-brains like Arrenberger kill that dream?

  No… no way. She could handle Slider. She'd flame his ass if she had to. Again she considered following the regs to the letter and reporting Arrenberger to CAG. She had that right and that responsibility, and he'd definitely been breaking the rules. It wasn't so much any single exchange of words or unwanted touching with that guy, but his overall pattern of behavior.

  He always acted like an asshole… except when he strapped on an F-14. She hated to admit it, but that son of a bitch could fly.

  Besides, there was no way to regulate or legislate against anybody's God-given right to be an asshole.

  Eventually, she fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  Wednesday, 11 March

  0930 hours (Zulu +2)

  Tretyevo Peschera

  Near Polyamyy, Russia

  Admiral Ruslan Zakharovich Karelin stood on the dockside, his coterie of staff officers and guards clustered at his back as he surveyed the bustle of activity echoing and re-echoing throughout the length and breadth of the vast, rock-hewn chamber. Workers clustered everywhere, and the piercing gleams of a dozen welder's torches dazzled and hissed from the flanks of dark, quiescent monsters. Steel clashed, and an officer bellowed orders, the words ringing from rock and hull metal, then swiftly vanishing into the steady background rumble of heavy machinery. High overhead, the massive tackle of a traveling bridge crane crawled ponderously along its latticework tracks beneath the rough-hewn rock of the ceiling, casting weirdly shifting shadows from the banks of fluorescent lights as it moved.

  They called the place Tretyevo Peschera, the Third cavern, but such a colorless name scarcely seemed adequate to describe the thrilling, Socialist workers' glory of this place. It had taken an army of engineers, construction workers, and levies of forced labor imported from the mining camps beyond the Urals seven years to pierce this granite sea cliff, tunneling into solid rock for hundreds of meters. Though that initial construction had been complete by 1984, work on the deeper chambers and storerooms continued to this day.

  During the past decade, construction on this and three other, similar caverns scattered along the rugged western coast of the Kola Inlet between Polyamyy and Sayda Guba had been interrupted only intermittently during Russia's brief flirtations with democracy.

  "Is the work here proceeding on schedule?" Karelin demanded of his host.

  "Da, Tovarisch Admiral," a short, dark-haired man with the epaulets and insignia of a kapitan pervovo ranga, a captain first rank, snapped back with military precision. Every man at each base he'd visited, Karelin reflected, had been eager to show his zeal.

  And well they might. Karelin's retinue included two men in civilian clothing, anonymous, yet obvious in their anonymity as agents of the Third Directorate, that arm of the KGB responsible for guaranteeing the loyalty of military units all the way down to the company level. Around them were eight men in standard, green-camouflaged army uniforms, but with peaked caps and the collar tabs bearing the Cyrillic "VV" identifying them as Vnutrennie Voiska, the MVD's interior army. All had the flat, expressionless faces of Central Asians, men favored for MVD assignments because,
as one Soviet army officer had once observed, they were "known for their obedience, stupidity, and cruelty."

  They particularly enjoyed hurting Russians for some reason, which was why they were so useful for internal security work. The AKM assault rifles they held were not carried slung or held at port arms. Instead, the weapons' muzzles seemed to probe restlessly in all directions about the tight-knit group, finding and tracking each potential threat.

  Clasping his hands behind his back, Karelin let his eyes run the length of the nearest of two titanic mountains of steel rising like islands from the sea cave's oil-black water. "Excellent, excellent," he said. Despite being completely enclosed, the cavern air was cold, especially here by the water.

  Karelin's words launched puffs of white vapor before his face. "And what is their current status, Comrade Captain?"

  "Leninskiy Nesokrushimyy Pravda is ready for sea now," the officer replied. He gestured across the dark water toward a more distant island identical to the first. A hammerhead crane was positioned above it, a blunt-tipped, white cylinder sixteen meters long dangling from its tackle. A crew was positioned on the long deck beneath, guiding the cylinder past an open hatch in the deck. "As you can see, Comrade Admiral, Slavnyy Oktyabrskaya Revolutsita is still taking missiles aboard. It is his captain's intent to work through the night and have him ready to deploy to sea by this time tomorrow." As a Russian, he referred to ships with the masculine pronoun, rather than the feminine.

  "They are true monsters," Karelin said. It never failed. Each time he saw these black-armored behemoths, especially within the confines of one of the caverns, he found himself a boy again, gaping up at their rounded flanks and towering sides like the greenest raw recruit. These were the centerpiece of the Motherland's defense, the very embodiment of her technical and nuclear might: Tyfun.

  One hundred seventy-one meters long, an imposing twenty-four meters wide, with a submerged displacement of almost thirty thousand tons, Typhoon was by far the largest submarine in the world. There were eight in all, two home-based at each of four specially designed and constructed underground shelters along the Kola Inlet.