Anthony "Patch" Pacino Series

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino reports aboard the “project boat” USS Vermont two years after having survived the catastrophic sinking of the Piranha. Pacino quickly learns that Vermont’s missions are all ultra-secret with the boat reporting only to the sub force commander, the national security advisor, and the president: Vermont does the dirty deeds that need doing in deadly silence and obscurity. After Vermont misses the mark on an easy mission, there are questions asked about her ability to conduct the next mission.

The oily and brackish waters of the Russian Northern Fleet submarine base part for the passage of the colossal special purpose Omega II-class submarine Belgorod, on a mission to hold the United States hostage. This gigantic submarine is armed with three Poseidon unmanned submersibles, each with a 10-megaton warhead. Her goal: placing them offshore in US ports in a nuclear-blackmail chess move.

There is only one way to reunite a country that has been split by two bloody civil wars in thirty years, one of them nuclear: savage their external enemies and leave them so weak they cannot interfere with the union until stability is achieved. The newly reconstituted China–now the Federated States of the New Middle Kingdom–has a strike plan that will leave both the Russians and Americans bleeding and desperate to survive.

In the aftermath of a vicious sea battle with the Chinese fleet that ends in a nuclear blast, the presidential project submarine Silversides is dispatched on a search-and-destroy mission against the resurrected submarine Panther, recently converted by the Iranians to fire hypersonic electrical grid-killer missiles at the U.S. East Coast.