America (23 page)

“You think they did not look for this boat after we stole it? That they weren't looking before we fired the missiles? They could not look with more fervor if we threatened to destroy the entire planet. The entire American navy is hunting us.”

“But we tell them where we are when we launch a Tomahawk,” Müller explained. “The satellites see us. We are not somewhere buried deep in the great wide ocean, hopelessly hidden. We are right there, in that one little finite place, right where those missiles leap from the water. Right, precisely, there! And we must run and hide all over again.”

Kolnikov nodded.

“How many times can we get away with it, I ask you?”

“Twice more, I think.”

“We think once was more than enough. Dead men don't spend money. That is an inarguable fact.”

“People who don't take chances don't have money to spend,” Kolnikov replied sourly. “I'll try to keep us alive. You have my word on it.”

“Do you care if we live or die?” Steeckt asked.

Kolnikov was suddenly at full alert. “We? You four?” he asked softly. “Or just you and me? Precisely what is it you are asking, Steeckt?”

“Who gave you the right to risk our lives? We didn't vote or anything. We don't know what you agreed to.”

“You men agreed to sail with me. I told you that it would be dangerous, that all of us might die. I offered you a chance to make some serious money. Every mother's son of you freely agreed to sail with me. You asked to go, worried that the chance would be denied you. Now you stand here whining about the risks. Let there be no mistake, no fuzzy thinking, no sea lawyer talk in the engine room: The lives of all of us—you, me, Turchak there, all of us—are on the line. We are betting everything. We did that Saturday morning when we killed the tugboat crew. We did it again when we fired the first shot at the American sailors on this vessel. And there is no going back. We cannot wipe out a jot of it even if we wanted to. We are totally, completely, absolutely committed. We—all of us. Every swinging dick.”

Vladimir Kolnikov paused a moment to let his words sink in while he checked the depth gauge and the compass. Then he continued: “I do not want to see any of you in the control room again unless you obtain my permission before you set foot through the hatchway. This is a ship of war and I am the captain. Those are my rules. Now get back to your duty stations.”

*   *   *

Once they determined that there was no electrical power in the Washington metropolitan area, the television professionals quickly solved the problem. Generator trucks were driven into the city from Philadelphia and Baltimore, and broadcasts were sent via satellite elsewhere for rebroadcast.

As Toad had predicted, by the following morning the fact that a CIA crew trained by the U.S. Navy had stolen
America
and photographs of the still-smoking ruins of the White House were playing all over the planet. Thirty minutes after the crew story broke, the president's staff, operating out of the Old Executive Office Building, confirmed that two Tomahawks armed with electromagnetic warheads had exploded over the Washington area. They refused to confirm the exact locations of the warhead detonations, citing military secrecy, but the press had a field day with maps and experts who narrowed the possibilities down to a few blocks.

As Toad also had predicted, the reporters were in a savage mood. So was the Congress, if the statements of random senators and representatives that were aired were an accurate sample. Accusations and recriminations were tossed back and forth like live hand grenades. Hearings and investigations were promised.

This circus played on television to the rest of the nation; the people in Washington were without power, so they didn't hear it. Within several miles of the trillion-watt supernovas, even battery-operated devices had been rendered inoperative. Since newspapers couldn't be composed or printed, Washingtonians didn't read about the attack either.

The Pentagon was a small oasis of civilization inside the devastated E-bomb desert. During the Cold War the Pentagon's electrical system had been hardened to protect it against the electromagnetic pulse of nuclear detonations. Now emergency generators were supplying power for lights. The telephone system worked within the building, and communications with U.S. military units worldwide were unaffected. However, the personal computers and noncritical mainframes in the building had arrived after the end of the Cold War; no one had thought it critical to harden them—no one wanted to beg for the money from a parsimonious Congress—so they were junk.

The Joint Chiefs were again meeting in the war room when Jake Grafton found Captain Sonny Killbuck at his desk in the outer office of the submarine commander, Vice-Admiral Val Navarre. They were the only two people in the office. “No one else could get in this morning,” Killbuck said. “I live far enough south that I could get my car started but decided today would be the traffic day from hell, so I rode my bicycle in.”

“How far out do you live?”

“Fifteen miles, sir. Great morning for a ride, but not under these circumstances.”

“Yeah,” Jake said and pulled a chair around. “Tell me what you know about Cowbell.”

“Cowbell?” His voice dropped to a whisper. It was instinct, Jake thought. “Sir, even the code name is so highly classified that it can't be mentioned outside of a secure space.”

“In light of the special circumstances, I think we're safe,” Jake said dryly. “Cowbell.”

“Admiral, that program is very tightly held. Very. Less than two dozen people in the world know about it. As it happens, I am one of the two dozen. I don't think you are, sir.”

“I read about Cowbell in the National Security Council transcript of this past Saturday morning,” Jake Grafton replied, “when the council was reacting to the theft of
America.
Regardless of how highly classified this program is, when Congress gets their hands on that transcript, there are going to be a lot more than two dozen people in the know. I'll take the responsibility for any security violation today if you'll answer my question. What is Cowbell?”

Killbuck automatically glanced around at the empty room, then said in a low voice, “It's a beacon. We put one on every submarine after we lost
Scorpion.
The beacons can be triggered by a coded transmission from the submarine communication system.”

“And once activated, the beacon transmits?”

“That's right. Transmits acoustically. Then it's a simple matter of homing in on the transmission to find our submarine.”

A homing beacon! If the Russians ever found out … This was the ultimate secret, the knowledge of which would profoundly alter the rules of the game.

“Unbelievable,” he whispered.

“Cowbell wasn't a navy idea,” Sonny Killbuck said bitterly. “The risks are incalculable. The politicians didn't want any more lost submarines.”

Jake Grafton ran a hand through his hair as he considered the implications. If the upper echelons knew where the submarine was, why hadn't they sunk it? What in the world is going on here? After he had taken two deep breaths, he asked, “So where is
America
now?”

“That's just it, sir. The president didn't order
America
sunk after she was hijacked because he was told we could find her anytime. We should have been able to, but we can't. We're transmitting, and her Cowbell isn't answering.”

*   *   *

The worker bees at Hudson Security Services were glued to the television monitors, in awe of the breaking story. Zelda Hudson and Zipper Vance watched their reactions. If they knew that anyone there had anything to do with the Washington attack, they never let on. Of course, Zelda knew they didn't know, so she didn't pay much attention. Vance was not as sure, so at one point she called him over to her desk and told him to quit watching everyone else.

As bad as the attack on Washington was, the workers' bitterest reactions were directed at the White House, which approved the Blackbeard operation, and the navy, which trained the perfidious bastards. The secretary, Zelda's only nontechnical employee, summed up the mood best. “Who the hell do they think they are, training people to steal submarines? Why, that submarine could blow up the whole East Coast, kill millions of innocent people. My God, people have a right to know!” After stating this opinion, she looked up at the ceiling, almost as if she expected a missile to come crashing through.

So Kolnikov had pulled it off. Zelda was never sure if he would really do it. When she had told him what she wanted, he had just sat staring at her. “You're crazy,” he said finally. “We can't get away with it.”

“Why not?”

When he didn't reply, she said, “You think the United States Navy is going to look more diligently because you launched missiles?”

“No,” he admitted. He didn't think that. After a bit he asked, “Why?”

“For thirty million dollars.”

“For you? Or me?”

“You. I'll make a lot more.”

Kolnikov laughed then. “You should have been a Russian. You would have fit right in. The people at the very top are stealing the foreign aid, the money the IMF sends, washing it and accumulating vast fortunes and putting those fortunes in their pockets. Communism was nice, with all that crap about everyone being in the same boat, but it didn't make them rich. Now they are getting rich.”

“They're trying to catch up all at once.”

“Yes,” he said.

“So. Will you do it?”

“You don't know what you are asking. Rothberg will be the only man who could program the missiles. They aren't like a rifle, just aim and shoot. It's a bit more complicated.”

She resented being talked down to, but she bit her tongue.

“No promises,” Kolnikov said finally.

“Thirty million. You can split it up among the crew any way you like.”

“Willi Schlegel is not going to like this. The man in Paris wanted a satellite.”

“I'll handle Willi.”

“If you succeed, you'll be the very first. Rumor has it that three or four others who tried are dead. No one ever found the bodies.”

“Willi Schlegel wants something very badly. As long as he thinks he has a chance to get it, he'll behave.”

Kolnikov refused to promise anything. He wouldn't even say he would try.

But the missiles flew.

As the CNN talking heads went through the Washington disaster one more time, Zelda thought about Kolnikov. He was hard to fathom. A Russian, willing to fight and risk death in that steel coffin. For money, of course. Dead men can't spend money, though.

Ah, who knew what drove him? Doubtlessly he didn't understand her either.

She was sitting at her desk, staring blankly at the computer screen, when she realized that she had an encrypted message. She called it up, verified the encryption protocol, then decoded it: “An explanation is in order. Missiles were not part of our agreement. Willi.”

She took a deep breath, then typed her reply: “Kolnikov obviously has his own agenda. Let's hope he hasn't forgotten ours.”

She stared at the message, weighed it, then encrypted it. She got up, walked to the refrigerator and took out a Diet Coke. Sipping it, half listening to the CNN broadcast and the comments of her angry, frightened colleagues, she walked back to her computer and fired the message to Willi into cyberspace.

*   *   *

When General Le Beau made it in to work, Jake was waiting in his outer office.

Flap motioned with his hand that Jake was to follow him into the office. He told Flap about Cowbell, but the marine didn't seem too interested. “I've got to go to a Joint Chiefs meeting in a few minutes that General Alt called. This fucking submarine…” He dropped into a chair. “Gonna be a helluva day, any way you cut it. What can we do to make tomorrow better?”

“Induce a four-mile error in the global positioning system,” Jake Grafton replied. GPS, as they well knew, allowed anyone on Earth with a little black box to receive signals broadcast by a small constellation of satellites and thereby fix their position within several meters. The satellites' signals, however, could be tweaked, subtly altered, thereby fooling the little black boxes.

Flap looked startled. “I hadn't thought of that.”

“An accurate position is essential to launching a successful Tomahawk attack. The pirates will use the GPS to update their inertial. Let's lead them down the primrose path.”

“And mislead every airliner and ship in the world?”

“The stakes are high, General,” Jake acknowledged. “Real high.”

“Why not just shut the system down?”

“Then they will update their inertial position with a star sight. If the GPS works, there is a good chance that these guys will merely push the update button without checking to see how much the inertial position disagrees with the GPS position. That's an easy mistake to make, and this equipment is new to all these guys. They're feeling their way along.”

“What if an airliner full of people goes into a mountain?”

“That's the risk,” Jake acknowledged.

“Jesus, you are a hard-ass.”

“Sir, I've been told that more than four hundred people died here in Washington last night. They were killed. Murdered. It's time to take the gloves off. If the pirates put a four-mile error into their inertial, their Tomahawks will miss their targets. The latest versions of the missiles will self-destruct or dive into the ground when the computer determines that the missile is lost. Sometimes we must risk lives to save lives.”

“You are assuming they will shoot more missiles.”

“These guys didn't steal a submarine just to wreck the Lincoln Bedroom.”

“I'll suggest it,” Flap Le Beau said. “The decision will have to be made by the president. Just between you and me, I don't think the folks at the White House have the cojones for a move like that.”