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“I didn’t do anything!”

Jabo grimaced. “Howard, you want to know my personal philosophy in situations like this? Say the following words: ‘I fucked up, and it won’t happen again.’”

“But I didn’t!”

“Howard, they found your book in the dryer. On top of a big pile of rags.”

“I know — Yowler told me. I didn’t wash any rags. As soon as my poopies were dry, I got out of there — I was going to head to the conn to go to PD, like you said.”

“And the book?

“I keep that book in there, shoved between the deck and the hull. I would never put it in the dryer!”

“So what do you think happened?”

Howard shook his head. “I have no idea. But I got my poopies out of the dryer and left. I was changing in my bunkroom when they called away the fire.”

Jabo thought it over — it was weird. Howard had just been drying poopies, he’d seen it with his own two eyes. And why would he throw a load of rags in after, along with a book?

“I don’t know what to say Howard. I fucked up too — I should have seen that hose pressurized in the rack. And if you did make any mistakes — take responsibility for them, you’ll come out better in the end.”

Howard shook his head at that, and walked away frustrated, his young man’s sense of justice violated. Jabo walked up to control, still reeking of smoke, his feet tired and his head pounding, and took the conn from an equally exhausted Lieutenant Hein.

He pressed his right eye to the periscope and turned slowly around, one complete revolution every minute. It was dusk, and the ocean was like glass, smooth to the horizon where sea and sky met, different shades of the darkest blue. Ship control was easy and the scope stayed a steady three feet out of the water; Jabo calculated that the distance to the horizon was about 2.5 miles. So the Alabama’s periscope pointed up in the exact center of a five mile diameter circle, inside of which, Jabo verified with each revolution, there were no other ship was in sight, no running lights of any kind, white, red, or green. He looked west and saw nothing, no running lights of any color. If Sierra Nine was out there, he couldn’t see it. Alabama was profoundly alone.

• • •

The Navigator spread his charts out in the Officer’s Study and erased the track that he had carefully laid out in the days before. They hadn’t lost much time. The Captain had opted to use the diesel engine rather than the blower to ventilate the ship, which did the job in about half the time. Within two hours at snorkel depth, all atmospheric tests in the missile compartment proved benign so they stopped the rumbling diesel, and descended back to 400 feet. In total they’d lost almost three hours during the fire, almost half a watch. Which meant they were behind, and would have to move even faster to make up their track.

It was so weak, he thought. A fire in the laundry.

Optimism had shot through him when he first heard the alarm, smelled the smoke. And the closest hose made useless! Maybe the fire would cripple the ship, he thought, turn them around, end their disastrous journey to Taiwan.

But that was stupid, he now knew. A mere fire in a clothes dryer wouldn’t stop this ship, this mission, not even close. Huge forces were at work, malignant forces. And he was an idiot to think that a few burning rags could stop that. But would what could?

Almost all equipment on the boat, like the washer and dryer, came in pairs. For just this reason: redundancy meant reliability. There was only one reactor, but that sacred machine was incredibly well protected by men and machinery. It was hard to imagine an equipment malfunction that could make them turn around.

But people were different. The submarine had lots of equipment but few people. Already the watchbill was stretched to the limit. If crewmen started dying, then the ship would have no choice but to turn around. Especially if they died in large numbers.

The navigator’s tried to stop his hand from shaking by refocusing on the chart. He was running out of time: they were halfway to Taiwan.

• • •

Mary Beth Brown picked Angi up at her house in her new Lexus. They took the Kingston Ferry across the sound, and then drove to Bellevue, home of the Bellevue Square Mall. The parking lot looked like a luxury car dealership, and Angi knew it was Microsoft money, perhaps with a sprinkling of Starbucks fortunes interspersed as well. It was much different than the Fords and Chevys that populated the lot at the Silverdale Mall, where she lived, a blue DOD sticker on every windshield. As they walked in, Angi noticed how the two malls even smelled different, Bellevue smelling like very good coffee, while the mall in Silverdale smelled of burnt popcorn