Damage Control. Gordon Kent

admiral on board the Indian light carrier Vishnapatingham would see only his. It had taken weeks of computer work by the two nerds in Alan’s exercise detachment to make this mutual blindness happen, and now one pilot was screwing it all up. He wanted to argue, even to use his supposed power as umpire to stop the exercise, but the big point was to cooperate with India and make diplomatic points. Canceling would be really bad diplomacy.

      Alan sighed. “Okay, we’ll go for startex. But you’re on your honor about reports from that S-3.” In fact, Rafe probably wouldn’t be forced to his honor; the S-3 was a long way south of the Indian battle group, and if Stevens turned on his radar before startex, he’d be admitting he was cheating.

      The hell with it. Get it over with and go home. He was touchy because the umpire’s job had been wished on him only forty-eight hours ago. He had been supposed to honcho the intel side for the US and then go home, where right now he could be enjoying his wife’s birthday. For once.

      “Four minutes to exercise start, then,” he said into his mike. Then Rafe, knowing Alan was angry, maybe feeling guilty, made small talk for forty seconds, and they ended the conversation as friends.

      Alan turned to Benvenuto. “Three minutes to exercise. Start the message traffic feed.”

      “Aye, aye, sir.”

      Across the room, Indian ratings were feeding the scenario setup into the two comm nets.

      Everything was going to be fine.

      Aboard Indian Submarine Nehru, Arabian Sea

      The communications officer coughed into his fist for the second time and read the message again. He couldn’t control his thoughts, which twisted and turned through his convictions and his fears faster than he could clutch at them.

       The day.

      Around him, the enlisted men on the comms station reacted to his all too visible nerves. Ram Vatek, his most senior technician, raised an eyebrow.

      He knew Vatek as one of the faithful. He leaned back and coughed into his fist again, focusing on Vatek’s loyalty, using the man’s face as an anchor to reality. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

      “It’s a new day,” he murmured and watched Vatek’s usually confident expression turn to apprehension.

      The comms shack became still. Every man on duty knew what the words meant. Many of them knew parts of the overall plan. Knowing the plan and facing the grim reality of the message were different beasts.

      No one in the comm shack flinched, however. They opened an arms locker that should not have been there behind the central computer processor and took out pistols, Tokarevs loaded with special low-power ammunition.

      He pressed the push-to-talk button on the main comms console and spoke to the whole ship.

      “Today is a new day,” he said, his voice unsteady as he spoke.

      On the bridge, the navigator reached under his chart table and drew a Makarov pistol from its holster, turned, and shot the captain in the face. Under the pressure of the moment, he shot him repeatedly, pulling the trigger until the slide clicked open and the noise and smoke filled the bridge.

      In the engine room, the second engineer drove a screwdriver into the abdomen of the engineer and stood appalled at the amount of blood that pooled on the smooth gray deck as his superior writhed. A rating shot the dying man in the head and seemed to enjoy the act. The engineer had not been a popular officer.

      The second engineer looked at the blood on his hands and uniform and wanted to scream. And he looked at the wild eyes of the rating with the smoking gun and wondered what they had unleashed.

      In the weapons space forward, two of the faithful shot their way through with smuggled Uzi Combat Commanders, killing every crewman in the space and inadvertently wrecking one of the operational weapons stations. A lot of the weapons techs were Sikhs and other unrecruitable sectarians, so they had to be killed.

      In ninety seconds, the mutineers had control of the ship. Every man they believed might not be loyal to their cause, including a few who had received the indoctrination, was herded into the mess deck and locked down. Many others were killed because the mutineers, once blooded, were vicious. On the bridge, the navigator settled into the newly cleaned command chair and tried to ignore the smell of blood and feces.

      “Make revolutions for five knots. Dive to one hundred fifty meters. Helmsman, make the course zero eight nine.”

      “Aye, aye, sir.”

      The Kilo-class submarine turned to port and headed away from the exercise area and back toward the west coast of India.

      In the comms shack, the communications officer sent a coded message using the small golden egg he wore around his neck. The message went out through the VLF antenna and was received at West Fleet Headquarters, Mahe, where it was routed with other exercise traffic to its addressee at a small naval test facility in southern India—and to the Indian exercise-control officer at exercise headquarters, where Alan Craik waited.

      West Fleet HQ, Mahe, India

      Intel officers wait, Alan thought as he watched a digital clock tick down toward the beginning of the fleet exercise. Two minutes twenty to startex. And worry. He was standing by the JOTS repeater, staring at it as if memorizing the position of every ship in both fleets, but he was thinking about his wife, Rose, wanting to be with her. He tried to focus on the exercise. He called across to a female US rating, the only other American there besides him and Benvenuto. “Borgman, give me an update on my comms with the two fleet commands.”

      “Good to go, sir.” Borgman was a heavy-bodied woman with an almost childishly pretty face, a plodder who got things done with tenacity rather than brilliance.

      He nodded and went back to the JOTS terminal and the glowing blobs that represented the American and Indian ships. Nothing had changed. He looked up and let his eyes swing over the room. An Indian rating named Mehta looked up and let their glances meet as if to say, We’re doing the best we can here.

      A little more than a minute to go. Alan raised his eyebrows at Benvenuto.

      “Good to go, sir,” Benvenuto said. He was looking at something over Alan’s shoulder as he said, “Data’s streaming—”

      Aware then of somebody behind him, Alan turned, saw an Indian officer standing there, registered the single star on the collar, produced a name without having to look at the man’s tag—Commodore Chanda, the Indian exercise-control officer. Alan smiled, guessed that the answering scowl was prestart nervousness.

      “Sir,” Alan said.

      The commodore was watching the clock, must have been watching it when Alan turned around. Across the room, a nervous Indian lieutenant was also staring at the orange numerals.

      The commodore was standing too close. Alan wanted to elbow him out of the way, of course couldn’t. He bent over the terminal, pretending to study the location of the American flagship. The commodore was right behind him. Well, he’s a commodore; he can stand where he—

      The crease in the commodore’s trousers brushed the back of Alan’s right thigh; Alan shifted left to make room for the more senior man, shifted his eyes for a fraction of a second off the terminal, catching a whiff of some scent the Indian officer used, then flashed back to the terminal as it—inexplicably, surprisingly—darkened and lost its picture, like an eye blinking. He caught movement below him—

      —and saw a hand emerging from a uniform sleeve with a commodore’s broad stripe on it, holding something glittering and brassy to the input port of the JOTS repeater.

      “Hey—!” Alan started to say, grabbing, without thinking, at the hand. Then, too late, he said, “Sir—!” but the commodore’s enraged eyes had already