The ship was truly a doomsday device. I raised my hand and asked how the crew would feel about launching more nukes on a planet already laid waste by them. Would the crew cooperate and launch, knowing that the result would just be more death? The captain’s jaw tightened and there may have been a quiver in his voice as he replied, "Son, most of us have wives and young children at home. If Russia goes nuclear and wipes us out, you can goddamn bet that every single member of this crew will live for the moment that we can exact our revenge. We will follow our orders, even if the men who wrote those orders ceased to exist months ago. That’s our mission and our purpose."

The love affair with submarines began before they actually existed. David Bushnell’s Turtle, Horace Hunley’s self-named H.L. Hunley, and Bourgeois’ Plongeur were not submarines but concepts brought to life, brief flirtations into the third dimension of sailing. Jules Verne’s Nautilus gave the world a glimpse of the staggering power of a true submarine but men would have to wait for ingenuity to catch up with imagination. The modern submarine is able to hide from the eyes of the world, to appear and strike without any possible warning, and to escape undetected within the folds of the ocean where no surface ship impeded by that nautically immature characteristic of positive buoyancy can follow.

One of the features we could not cut, though it was hotly debated, was interoperable multiplayer with Destroyer Command. If there ever was a ‘back of box’ feature, this was it. Even if nobody ever played it, it had to be in. Here lies another problem. The original multiplayer middleware purchased to handle the feature was from a company called RTime. In the span of time between purchasing the licenses and the time the feature was actually implemented, RTime had been purchased by Sony and all support ceased to exist. If that sounds challenging, just wait, it gets better. Ultimation was also working on Harpoon4 at this time....

At times, there is no job in the entire world better than standing lookout on a diesel boat. I can remember balmy summer nights, light breezes, full moon with reflection running all the way to the horizon. Boat running ‘full on four’ slicing along at twenty-plus knots, and bottlenose dolphins leaping around in the bow wave. Leaving phosphorescent tracks…water rising up the tank tops, slamming through the limber holes then falling away aft. Diesel exhaust drifting low over the screw guards to disappear in wake spray and the night. The luminescent glow of the stern light marking our passing. At times you could see the trailing edge of the flag aft of the sail, and when you couldn’t see it, you heard it snapping in the wind. At times you could pick out the wing lights of aircraft heading to and from Europe. Once in a while, you got merchant surface contacts.

ARA San Luis is most famous for serving in the Falklands War. After HMS Conqueror had sunk the cruiser ARA General Belgrano, the Argentine fleet retired to port for the duration of the war, with the exception of the San Luis. She was the only Argentine naval presence facing the British fleet.

In the early hours of May 1^st, the San Luis’ sonar apparatus, an Atlas Elektronik CSU 3, detected in passive mode the distant hint of a contact. The detected frigate was likely one of a group of two ships, frigates HMS Brilliant and HMS Yarmouth, and the helicopter noise was probably produced by Sea King helicopters from 826 squadron. After a silent approach maneuver, and at a distance about 10,000 yards to the target, Frigate-Captain Azcueta ordered the manual launching of an SST-4 anti-surface torpedo.

"Hold on," Kruse said, as they rose on the swell of the following wave. "This is going to get interesting." As the boat wallowed over the crest of the roller they could see the outline of the British corvette only a scant kilometre or so in front of them. There didn’t appear to be any reaction on the escort. Hoss held his breath as they drew closer to the escort with no response. The tension on the watchtower was palpable as the U-boat and the corvette passed within 800 metres of one another and still no reaction from the British ship. The corvette was now slipping astern. The anxious watch crew stared as the grey shape slid into the gloom behind them.

The policy of Preemption was a dramatic shift from any previous ones in our history. During the nation’s 229 years only three national policies have determined when we went to war, and what kind of military forces we had available to fight. The first of the three was Isolationism. George Washington announced this in his farewell address to the officers that fought with him in the Revolutionary War. This policy lasted 170 years until the end of WWII. The Containment policy became known as the ‘Cold War’. It changed the submarine force dramatically. In August 2002, eleven years after the demise of the Soviet Union and the policy of Containment, President George W. Bush announced a new policy – ‘Preemption’. The president announced that in the future America would not wait to be attacked. We would engage any terrorist or country that supported terrorists anywhere in the world.

Drilling continued throughout the following day until after twenty-seven hours, they had hit the metal of the Type XXI’s hull. Trying to aim the shaft for the hatch on the foredeck of the German submarine, based on blueprints, seismic and radar images, it seemed that they were only about two feet off target. Given the poor resolution of the imaging, it was better than they could have hoped for. Jake volunteered to go down the shaft with the air chisel to clear the ice away from the hatch. It was a claustrophobic and dangerous operation, but Jake made good progress and within four hours he had the hatch exposed and free of the glistening bluish-white ice of the chasm. Time, ice, and the pressure of the shifting floes had certainly not done the U-boat any favors. The sub had remained watertight it seemed, but the air was stale even with the hatch open, and occasionally Jake found himself bumping into one of the submarine’s former crew, who were all grotesquely mummified. It appeared some had chosen to kill themselves too rather than suffocate.

Word was passed down that anyone who spoke even a little French was needed on the bridge. My chance! My chance to see the ocean. "Here, Chief!" I lied. "Three years of French in High School."

He shrugged. "Well, come on, get your ass to the bridge."

Five minutes later, I was atop the sail. The flag fluttered and whipped proudly, and the ocean—my God, this was really the ocean! I couldn’t have been happier. All my dreams were now true; I was on top of the world…I then heard the captain’s voice. Now this captain was a cross between Darth Vader and Cujo. He had a habit of slobbering when he yelled, and he yelled a lot. "Meadows! Stop sightseeing! Here, take the bullhorn."

You’ve all heard of, and some may have had, the phenomenon called ‘pucker factor’. Mine was off the scale at that moment.

"We’re drifting down to that wharf, and the water is too shallow to use the SPM," the CO snapped at me. "Tell the tugboats to put the lines over the cleats."

Now, the only French I had ever known in West Virginia was French Fries, and Christina Hill introduced me to a French kiss, but that was it. I’d seen the ocean and if God were merciful, he would kill me now. I wouldn’t have minded.

"Now, Meadows!" the skipper screamed.

I brought the bullhorn to my lips, and using the best French accent I could conjure, let go with, "Put ze linez over zee cleats!"