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The Providence was the thirty-seventh entry in the Navy's Virginia-class fleet to be commissioned, and Fincic's job was to make sure all the bells rang and whistles blew as they were supposed to. So far, the vessel's first two full weeks at sea had gone off without a hitch. The training mission was currently taking the sub through Alaska's Icy Strait, waters that were home to large pods of both whales and sea lions. Just minutes before, they had passed George Island. A World War II history buff, Captain Fincic had already regaled much of the crew with tales of the island being home to a living artifact of that war in the form of an eighteen-ton, long-range gun. The Navy had actually had to build a road from one side of the island to the other that was big enough to accommodate it. That gun had only been fired in practice and never in combat, a deterrent as much as anything, just as Fincic hoped would be the case with the Providence itself.

The most important feature of the ship's two-week training mission was testing the ultra-top-secret stealth technology that made the Providence undetectable to surface ships and even rival subs. The stealth technology was designed to render all incarnations of sonar and radar moot, so she would have free rein of the sea. Accordingly, the Providence could approach, sneak up on, or take up position in range of any target on land or at sea without her presence ever being detected.

"Con, sonar! We have a surface bogey slowing above us!"

"Coordinates," Fincic said into his headset.

"Twelve hundred meters ahead. Stopped in the water."

"Can you identify?"

"A trawler or salvage vessel based on the size and signature."

"Marine or environmental science?" Fincic quizzed, since such excursions were common in these parts.

"No way to be sure, sir."

"No naval vessels on station in the area," reported his executive officer, the ship's second-in-command.

"Stay on course. Maintain heading, Chief," Fincic ordered the chief of the boat. "Descend to one-zero-zero and resume zero bubble."

"Aye, sir, one-zero-zero meters. Resume zero bubble."

He felt the hairs on the back of his neck warming, the first sign that his defenses had been alerted. "And I want an ID of that ship over us. I want configuration, armaments, registry, and I want it five minutes ago. Clear?"

"Clear, sir," said the chief.

Fincic turned his gaze involuntarily upward, picturing the vessel almost directly above them as he felt the Providence level off at a depth of one hundred meters.

* * *

"Rover One has located the target, Captain!"

Captain Barbara Larson of the Salvor watched as the World War II mine took shape on the bridge monitor before her, courtesy of the underwater ROV's high-definition camera. It was formed of black steel with a pair of ridged bands wrapped around its circumference. Larson knew the mine was circular in design, but the angle of the ROV's camera made it appear oblong. It weighed a thousand pounds, around half of that comprised by the still-live explosives packed within, rigged to detonate when it came into contact with a vessel cruising near the surface. The floats keeping it buoyant had long since deteriorated, accounting for it sinking to the bottom to join a graveyard of unexploded World War II ordnance that remained a great danger to anything that came into contact with them.

Larson had never commanded her own boat while serving in the Navy, though she had served as the executive officer on both a destroyer and a guided missile cruiser. The Salvor, a rescue and salvageclass vessel, had originally been commissioned by the Navy in 1986. The ship had performed her duties admirably for more than twenty years before being decommissioned in 2007. Fifteen years later, she was retrofitted for her current purpose of locating and dredging unexploded World War II explosives that continued to litter the seas. Upon leaving the Navy and assuming her first command, Larson was pleased that the ship still carried its original name, though all naval markings had been removed. The Salvor was now the property of a private contractor the government retained to do the job.

Larson watched as the ROV operator adroitly manipulated a pair of joysticks that controlled the actions of Curly's fully articulable arms and pincers. "Curly" was one of three ROVs on board the Salvor, the other two appropriately named Moe and Larry.

On-screen, Curly wrapped steel cable around the mine and then attached a thick eye hook through which to thread a thinner, Kevlar-wrapped cable in order to haul the mine to the surface where it would be raised aboard the Salvor. Detonating the mine where it lay was strictly against protocol, due to the potential of doing damage to the existing ecosystem and unsettling the resident population of marine life. Procedure dictated that the mine be safely detonated once it reached the surface instead.

"Target secured," Curly's operator said to Larson.

With the tug cable in place, there was only one thing left to do.

"Then let's bring the son of a bitch up."

* * *