The Seventh Angel (56 page)

Ann tried to look past him. “Are they here?”

Bowie shook his head. “No. I didn’t want to spring them on you. I know you’re not a people person. And I know you’re having a rough time lately.”

Ann felt her cheeks go warm. “Did Sheldon tell you that?”

“
Yeah,” Bowie said. “Sheldon and I chat sometimes. He tells me you’re having dreams.”

Ann didn’t like where this was going. “Everybody has dreams,” she said.

Bowie cocked his head a few degrees to one side. “Not these kinds of dreams. Sheldon says you’re having nightmares about Pearl Harbor. About the people we didn’t save.”

“
Sheldon talks too much,” Ann said.

Bowie smiled again, but it was a different kind of smile. “Would it help any if I told you that I’m having nightmares too?”

His question surprised Ann. “You
are
?”

“
Of course,” Bowie said. “Believe me, I’m no stranger to bad dreams. It goes with the territory.”

“
What territory?” Ann asked.

“
With saving part of the world,” Bowie said.

“
Part
of it? What does that mean?”

Bowie’s strange little smile disappeared. “In the comic books, Superman gets to save the entire world. But we’re just mortals, and this is not a comic book. We can only save
part
of the world. And even doing
that
much takes a hell of a lot of luck, and more sacrifice than I care to think about.”

“
What about the parts you can’t save?” Ann asked. “What do you do about the people who die because you can’t do your job well enough to save them?”

Bowie slid his hands into his pockets. “I try to remind myself that every doctor, and every firefighter faces that exact same question. Nobody wins every time, Ann. We just do the best we can.”

He paused for a couple of seconds. “And things get worse the minute we stop trying.”

Ann felt her throat beginning to constrict. “I screwed up,” she said. “When I was programming Mouse to go after the submarine, I screwed up. I forgot to reinstall the software patch.”

“
You made a mistake,” Bowie said. “It happens. You’re fallible, just like the rest of us.”

“
But you could have killed that sub the first time,” Ann said miserably. “Mouse had the submarine located. If my programming glitch hadn’t driven Mouse off task, you could have destroyed the submarine a whole day earlier.
Before
it had a chance to launch its missiles.”

Her voice was shaky now. “It’s my fault,” she said. “Those people didn’t have to die. If I had done my job properly, they’d still be alive.”

Bowie rubbed his chin. “Can I share an observation with you? It’s a bit of wisdom that I picked up from a very intelligent person.”

Ann gave a half-hearted jerk of her head, not particularly interested in whatever comforting platitude that Bowie was about to trot out.

“
You’re full of shit,” Bowie said.

His words stopped Ann cold. “
What
?”

“
You’re full of shit,” Bowie said again. “That’s what you said to me that day in the wardroom, when you reminded me that you had crammed two days worth of programming into a few hours. You were working under incredible pressure, busting your ass to get the job done, and trying your hardest to do it right, and you missed something. You didn’t do it on purpose; you didn’t try to cover it up; and you fixed your mistake the minute you found out about it.”

Bowie laughed. “You stood right there on my own ship, and told me that I was full of shit,” he said. “And you were absolutely right. Now you want to go back and judge yourself by the same screwed up standards? I’m sorry, but you’re just as full of shit
now
, as I was
then
.”

“
But those people,” Ann said. “They didn’t have to …”

Bowie cut her off. “We couldn’t have gotten that submarine without you, Ann. If you need to fixate on something, try focusing on
that
. You saved millions of lives. Not hundreds. Not thousands.
Millions
.”

Ann didn’t respond.

“
Come on,” Bowie said. “Let’s go meet Charlie and Gabriella. We’ll have a drink, and blow off some steam. And you’ll get a chance to meet some of the people you
did
save.”

He gave Ann a serious look. “It helps,” he said softly. “It won’t make all of the doubts and the bad dreams go away, but it really does help.”

“
Where’s the other guy?” Anne asked.

“
What other guy?”

“
The third guy from the submersible,” Anne said. “There were three people on the
Nereus
, right? You want me to meet with two of them. What happened to the other guy?”

She stopped, as a horrid thought crossed her mind. “Did he …”

“
The other guy is fine,” Bowie said. “His name is Steve Harper. He won’t be here today.”

“
Why not?”

Bowie grinned. “Mr. Harper is gearing up to sue NOAA, and the Navy, and the manufacturer of the submersible, and probably the Easter Bunny.”

“
You’re joking,” Anne said.

“
Nope,” Bowie said. “Mr. Harper is suing everything in sight. I guess he doesn’t want to be seen fraternizing with potential defendants.”

“
Is he suing
me
?” Anne asked.

“
Not as far as I know,” Bowie said. “But don’t be surprised if he gets around to it. That’s part of the down-side of saving the day. Not everyone is grateful.”

Ann felt herself reach a decision on some unconscious level. She pushed the door closed, just far enough to release the chain. “I don’t guess I can pass up the opportunity to have a drink with my co-defendants.”

She opened the door and stepped back, finally allowing Bowie into her living room. “Have a seat, while I get changed.”

Bowie stepped through the door. “Thanks.”

Ann headed for the hall. Just before she left the room, she stopped and turned around. “I’ll go with you to meet these people,” she said. “But it’s only fair to tell you up front. I
still
don’t like you.”

Bowie nodded. “I know,” he said. “That’s why you’re buying.”

As students of oceanography or climatology will note, I’ve taken a few liberties with the ice formations in the Sea of Okhotsk. I’ve described the location and geography accurately, and the surface topography of the ice is every bit as rugged as I’ve depicted it, but the density and coverage of the winter ice pack are not as heavy as my story suggests. From late February through early March, the ice in the Sea of Okhotsk is often 30 to 50 inches thick, but less than half of the sea will freeze over during a typical winter.

These exaggerations were strictly for dramatic purposes. The Soviet Navy actually did hide ballistic missile submarines under the ice pack in the Sea of Okhotsk during the Cold War, and the practice may still continue under the new Russian Navy. I didn’t invent the strategy. I simply embellished the size and thickness of the ice pack to make the task of going after the rogue missile submarine a little tougher for the crew of USS
Towers
.

I’ve also exercised a bit of artistic license in my portrayal of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The real world mission of the DIA is to provide timely, objective, and cogent military intelligence to warfighters, defense planners, and national security policymakers.

DIA agents don’t generally conduct the kind of field operations that I’ve written about in
The Seventh Angel
. They are unlikely to stash wounded foreign intelligence operatives in U.S. military hospitals, and they don’t customarily threaten to shoot people for breaches of security protocol. If such extreme actions ever become necessary, the DIA will probably not be called upon to handle the dirty work. I thought it would be fun to let a couple of DIA agents do some cowboy stuff, even if only in the pages of a novel.

I’m sorry to report that I did
not
invent or exaggerate the tragic condition of the Russian Federation’s nuclear forces. The Russian military has fallen into an advanced state of decay, and the Russian news media has stated openly on several occasions that the integrity and security of the massive post-Soviet nuclear arsenal are in serious jeopardy. In 2007, the Russian government began a series of major military funding initiatives that are supposed to halt and (eventually) reverse this dangerous trend. At the time of this writing, I’m seeing no compelling indications that the budget increases are having the desired effect. They may well be too little, too late.

Personally, I hope the Russians do manage to turn the problem around. As strange as it sounds, I believe that a stable and capable Russian military is better for global security than one on the verge of disintegration. If the Russian military collapses, the thousands of remaining nuclear weapons in the Russian stockpile will not magically evaporate. Every one of those warheads will ultimately fall into someone’s hands. We cannot predict who will gain control over those weapons, or what their agendas will be.

In the writing of this book, I’ve deliberately created tense situations. I’m a thriller writer, and there are no thrills without a sense of danger and dramatic tension. But I didn’t invent many of the scariest parts of this story. I simply looked at the current climate of world affairs, and wrote what I saw.

— Jeff Edwards