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arrive a full day ahead of schedule.
    In the interim, the COB had died.
    “Captain, we’ve arrived at the designated coordinates. Sir?”
    Cubit wiped sweat from his forehead. “All stop. Dive Officer, take us to periscope depth.”
    “Aye, sir. One hundred feet . . . eighty feet . . . sixty feet—all stop.”
    Moving to the periscope, the Officer of the Deck pressed his eyes to the rubber housing, giving the horizon three quick sweeps. “No close contacts, skipper.”
    Captain Cubit reached for the internal microphone. “Radio, Conn. Anything on the VLF?”
    “Conn, Radio, transmission coming in now, sir.”
    “On my way. OOD, you have the Conn.”
    “Aye, sir, I have the Conn.”
    The naval commander made his way aft down tight passageways, registering the silent stares of his crew as he approached the communications shack.
    The radio officer handed his captain the message transmitted over the Very Low Frequency bandwidth, watching Cubit’s face as he read the message. From the skipper’s dour expression, he could tell this was clearly not the information his commanding officer was expecting.
    Commander Roy Katzen arrived, the second-in-command clearly agitated. “Two more dead, another dozen too ill to report for duty. Is that the destroyer’s coordinates?”
    Cubit handed his XO the message. “Admiral Wilson didn’t dispatch a destroyer. We’re to rendezvous with a Canadian trawler in thirty-six hours.”
    Katzen shook his head. “In thirty-six hours we could all be dead. We need to make port in Puerto Rico and get this entire crew to a hospital.”
    “The admiral’s aware of the situation.”
    “With all due respect, sir, Wilson’s way out of bounds on this one. This mission should have been red-flagged the moment he chose to refit the Philadelphia instead of using an active boat and a Navy SEAL team. I don’t know what’s in that crate, but I didn’t spend fifteen years in the navy so I could end up in a cancer ward.”
    “Agreed. Assemble an armed detail and meet me in the torpedo room in five minutes.”
    “Aye, sir!”
    Located in the lower level of the forward compartment, the torpedo room housed the equipment used to quickly lift and load torpedoes into the sub’s four forward tubes. Deck-mounted racks held stacks of Mk48 ADCAP torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Sealed shelves contained an assortment of mines.
    For the last twenty-two days, the torpedo room had been commandeered by the six members of Black Widow, an international private assault force. The men were on six-hour shifts guarding a four-by-three-foot crate adorned with Arabic letters and a nuclear radiation symbol—the mission’s prized bounty.
    While the Black Widows were equipped with lead-lined commando suits and iodine pills, the Philadelphia ’screwmenremained exposed to radiation. To protect his men, Cubit had ordered the torpedo room sealed for the duration of the voyage, but radiation was still seeping through the sub.
    Five minutes after rising to periscope depth, a six-man detail entered the chamber in fire-retardant suits to complete a scheduled systems check. Two techs worked together to perform a diagnostics test on the loader, both men anxious to vacate the toxic area.
    “I’m telling you, Artie, my balls are aching.”
    “Maybe you ought to give the Penthouse magazines a rest.”
    “I’m talkin’ about cancer. Whatever’s in that crate is giving off heat.” The technician purposely raised his voice, “And these hired jack-offs pretending to be SEALs know it.”
    One of the “hired jack-offs” had been pushed too far. The Scottish commando—a man named Lars—unsheathed his knife as he slowly circled the two crewmen. “Tell ye what, lad. How ’bout I give the short and curlies a bit of a trim, then feed ’em to ye.”
    The other submariners quickly closed ranks behind their threatened crewmen while the other members of Black Widow fingered the triggers of their assault weapons.
    Captain