“The unit is launched from a large host submarine such as the modified Omega-II class Belgorod, which we think can hold three of these, or from Belgorod’s deep-diving submarine, Losharik.” Sutton clicked her slide deck and a 3D cutaway view appeared of the Omega-II submarine Belgorod. To show its scale, the right side of the slide showed the sub oriented vertically next to an image of the Empire State Building, the sub climbing to three-quarters of the skyscraper’s height, the point being that Belgorod was enormous.

“What is this?” Karen Chushi asked impatiently. “Why are we worried about a torpedo? You worried about our aircraft carriers?”

“No, ma’am,” Sutton said. “This is an autonomous weapon with a nuclear power plant and a range of up to seven thousand nautical miles. It can travel at up to fifty-four knots. It’s two meters in diameter and twenty-four meters long and can dive to a thousand meters. It has enough nuclear fuel to loiter on station — that is, lie on the bottom — for years. It has a nuclear payload of between two and ten megatons, with some sources claiming it could be as big as a hundred megatons. We’ve refined our estimates in the last months to put its yield at ten megatons, one of the biggest hydrogen bombs in military use. As you know, most of our nukes are now in the hundreds or mere tens of kilotons. It’s been years since we used yields in the megaton range.”

“Why is that?” the VP asked.

“Our weapons have dramatically improved in accuracy,” Sutton said. “The smaller yields get to all those hard-to-reach places despite being kilotons rather than megatons. The other reason is that our revised targeting is almost all military targets. And by and large, we no longer target civilian cities, which is the only thing a megaton-range nuke does for you now, which is city-killing.

“The NATO name ‘Kanyon,’” Sutton continued, “was appropriate, because this weapon was designed to drive itself into a coastal port and wait. At the time to detonate, this unit would make a crater that would form a brand new bay. The displaced water would form a tsunami that would cause even more damage inland. Worse, there is speculation these bombs might have warheads doped with Cobalt-60, which would leave the radioactive areas downwind uninhabitable for a hundred years or more. So we modeled what a ten megaton blast would do to the Port of New York—“ Sutton moved to click to the next slide, but Carlucci cut her off.

“Don’t show that slide, Admiral,” he snapped. “It’s inflammatory. We get it. A ten megaton nuke would be bad for business. But big deal. So the Russians have a big scary torpedo. So what?”

Sutton glanced at CIA Director Margo Allende and sat down. Margo looked over at the president, glanced at the heads of NSA and DIA and then back at Carlucci.

“Sir, Russian President Vostov and his staff have been sending memoranda about the possibility of deploying Poseidons from the Belgorod at several target harbors on the U.S. east coast. Then yesterday Vostov’s calendar was changed, inserting in the upcoming month a tour of the shipyard factory that assembles these weapons, and of the Belgorod itself. This and other intercepts hint that Vostov’s actually committing to sending these to American shores.”

For a long moment, Carlucci leaned back in his seat, his face hard, his arms crossed. “Well,” he finally said, his voice deep and furious. “Obviously that’s goddamned unacceptable. Ms. Allende, I want a meeting with you and your deputy ops director in my study in one hour.” Carlucci looked at Pacino. “You too, Admiral Pacino.” There was no doubt. Carlucci had definite ideas about how to respond to the Russian president.

<p>3</p>

Monday mornings were always brutal, Anthony Pacino thought, but never so much as when it was Monday in the shipyard. He rolled up to an empty parking space at Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s Admin Building 1182 just as the sun rose over the horizon, the old red brick building a short walk from Graving Dock Number One, where the burned-out hulk of the USS Vermont lay helplessly on the blocks, black smoke still wafting out of her hatches while shipyard engineers and technicians swarmed over her, trying to assess when she’d be seaworthy again, if ever. And what the plan would be to repair her. Odds were they would have to rip out most of the forward compartment and start over at the bare hoop steel. It could be years before the boat would be refloated. And what, in the meantime, Pacino thought, would he and the crew do until then? Babysit the shipyard shitcanning the interior structures?