And, he remarks about how he's in his early 40's now.and then the monkey-wrench comes in. He was never in command of even a single squadron of submarines, let alone multiple squadrons.and now he's in charge of all of them - which seems to fly in the face of the author's obvious love of meritocracies.

Personally, my biggest issue with this is that prior to his illustrious elevation, Pacino has only ever commanded a single submarine. Presumably, this occurs just a year or two after 'Phoenix Sub Zero' with Admiral Pacino now ComSubLant (Commander Submarine, Atlantic), although, he and the former Admiral Donchez, now Director of the NSA Donchez, have combined that position with ComSubPac into a Combined Submarine Commander - so, I'm guessing he's in charge of all the submarines now. DiMercurio knows what the hell he is doing with this story. So, of the four that I've read, I'd say that this is actually one of the better, if not best ones - although, that's like saying stale bread is the best kind of bread when all you have to compare it to is moldy bread.

Barracuda by Michael DiMercurio