Stanton was in his office at COMPACFLT Headquarters in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, staring at a computer screen showing him the bio and military service record of the USS Florida’s current commander.

The communications screen indicated they had a link, and Chuck appeared, his silver hair expertly razored into a crew cut, his face barely wrinkled for a man pushing sixty. Stanton had already broken that barrier, and he wanted to believe he looked as good as Chuck. Aw, hell, who was he kidding?

“Hey, Donny.”

“Hey, Chuck. Listen, I just got an e-mail from American Eagle telling me we’ve got total control of the Iridium cell phone system. He wants us to reach out to your boy up north. I was just reading his record.”

“Andreas is a pretty clever lad. Once he figures out the satellite is bent, he just might poke up his sail long enough to check for a text message. But how can I help?”

“My techies tell me they need the phone numbers for every Iridium 9505A onboard Florida, plus we need something—something personal—that will convince Andreas that our text message is legit. I know how serious you guys are about the silent in silent service.”

“I’ll get the squadron commander on the horn. Smitty keeps a roster of all the allocated 9505As, and next I’ll give Andreas’s wife a buzz. I’ll bet she can come up with something personal to authenticate with.”

“Sounds like a plan, Chuck. My best to Jamie. Fifteen minutes?”

“Back in fifteen, Admiral.”

“Hold on,” Commander Jonathan Andreas said, cutting off his communications officer. “Right now I want to hear Senior Chief Radioman Sheldon’s assessment of the situation.”

“Captain, I’ve been over every inch of that gear. I even got Chief Electronics Technician Burgess to look over my shoulder. I swear that the ELF and satellite receivers are good to go.” His tone grew ominous. “There’s just no signal.”

Andreas couldn’t estimate how much pride calling in another chief for help had cost his senior chief radioman.

Andreas nodded, “Sheldon, that’s good enough for me.”

Andreas returned to his quarters and sat on his bunk for almost ten minutes, allowing himself to work through the mystery, taking in each piece of evidence, examining it, probing it, trying to reach conclusions. Then he started down a new path, one in which they took action to get answers.

He came up with two plans.

Finally, he stood and purposefully stepped through the doorway into the head separating his stateroom from the XO’s. He knocked twice on the door in the opposite bulkhead, then stepped through to where the XO was reading something at his desk. He glanced up. “Sir?”

Without preamble, Andreas said, “XO, I’m about to break a cardinal rule, and I want you to hear it.”

“Skipper, are you sure?”

“Yes, I am.” The first plan sounded even more logical to him as he voiced it rapid-fire. “I’m going to go deep, sprint thirty miles northwest, stick up the antenna, and ping the transponder on the satellite. The problem could still be ours, but right now it’s the next-to-last action we can take. What do you think?”

“Skipper, with the shrouded propulsor, and at a depth of, say, eight hundred feet, we can do that.”

“I just can’t wait around any longer.”

“No doubt. We sprint at nearly thirty knots and find us a nice lonely spot out in the middle of the gulf.”

“So it’s worth a try?”

“It is, but I have to play devil’s advocate—what happens if we don’t trigger an answering ping from the transponder?”

“I said this was my next-to-last plan, XO. If this doesn’t work, you won’t believe what I’ll do next.”