America (30 page)

Anyway you cut it, Buck Brown thought, we're in for a gunfight with real bullets.

He wiped his forehead, then wiped his hands on his trousers.

The skipper seemed to read his thoughts. He leaned over, whispered, “I want you to stay on the panel. If you need to take a head break, do it now, before things get interesting. Do your job, tell us what's out there, and let me do the rest.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ryder slapped one of those big hands on Brown's shoulder, then went to the back of the compartment where a sailor kept a manual running plot on a maneuvering board. Like
America, La Jolla
had a computerized tactical presentation, but Ryder merely used it to back up the manual plot. The computer could crap out—and when it was desperately needed, probably would—but the manual plot could be kept with dead reckoning, if nothing else, and would be there when all else failed.

Ryder was well aware that he was rushing to a position that would be more than an hour old when he arrived. Worse, he was just following a bearing, not going to a known location. In all likelihood,
America
was leaving the launch site at a good clip right now. But where was she going?

He was thinking that problem through when the com officer brought him a flimsy of an ELF message. It consisted of a single letter of the alphabet. Without consulting the code book, Ryder knew what it meant. The message was an order to ascend to periscope depth to receive an encrypted UHF message transmitted via satellite.

He was tempted. The UHF message would probably give him the exact location of the missile launch. Yet he would have to slow to rise and receive it, and even if he knew the exact location, the basic problem remained: He was rushing to a position where
America
had been, not where she would be when he arrived.

So where was the stolen submarine?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

An air force E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft on patrol two hundred miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey, was the first to spot the Tomahawk missiles after launch. The crew picked up the first missile on radar just seconds after it came out of the water, then the second and third as they rose from the sea. The coordinates of the launch site and a rough intercept heading were broadcast to a navy P-3 Orion patrol aircraft, which was approximately a hundred miles to the south.

The Orion commander turned as soon as he heard the heading over the radio. In the back of the Orion, the tactical coordinator, or TACCO, typed the coordinates into the computer and called out a new bearing. The pilot made the correction, three degrees, and set the bug on his horizontal situation indicator (HSI).

At his console in the main compartment of the plane, the TACCO began planning his search and programming the sonobuoy panel. While the TACCO worked, the pilot and copilot restarted the number one and four engines, which they had secured earlier to save fuel. Only when both engines were developing cruise power and the temperatures were stabilized in the normal range did the pilot key his intercom mike. “How long until we get there?” At the time he was level at 200 feet above the water, making 250 knots.

“Twenty-three minutes,” the TACCO told him.

The pilot was Duke Dolan, a graduate of Purdue University. His ambition had been to fly fighter planes from aircraft carriers, but the needs of the navy and his standing in his flight school class had conspired to put him in P-3s. There were worse fates, he often told his wife. “At least I don't have to go on a cruise on the big gray boat.”

So now he was hunting one. USS
America.
She had gotten the name, he recalled, after the
Kitty Hawk
–class carrier named
America
had been scrapped. Rumored to be the quietest thing in the ocean,
America
would take some finding. The way to do it, he thought, was to actively echo-range, or ping, the sonobuoys.

But wasn't there another submarine out here someplace? No doubt the TACCO knew where it was, so the pilot didn't need to worry about it.

Indeed, the TACCO did know about
La Jolla.
He didn't know her exact position, of course, but he knew she was in this operating area. Which frosted him more than a little. With a friendly boat down there, he would need absolutely certain identification before he strapped on the pirate ship with a Mk-48 torpedo. Finding the damned boat was going to be tough enough, but an ironclad positive ID? And he wasn't going to be able to use active sonar because he might illuminate
La Jolla
for the bad guys. Hoo boy!

“Where did they say those missiles were going?” the copilot asked Duke.

“Probably don't know yet.”

“Didya see the White House on TV after the bastards whacked it? Smoking hole, man.”

“Yeah. I saw it.”

“I hope they don't hit the O-Club, anything like that.”

The copilot was an idiot, no question. How in the hell did he get in the navy, anyway? And by what twist of evil fate, the pilot wondered, did he wind up in my right seat on what is probably the only day of my naval career that I will hunt a submarine for real? Why me, God?

*   *   *

Five minutes after the first missile was launched, a pair of F-16 fighters, which had been on alert status at the end of the Dover Air Force Base runway, with their pilots in the cockpits, lit their afterburners and rolled. They made a section takeoff, raised their gear together, and punched into the overcast that blanketed the East Coast of the United States at about twenty-three hundred feet. Two minutes after takeoff they switched to the operational frequency of the E-3 Sentry aircraft, which was a Boeing 707 with a thirty-foot radar rotodome mounted atop the fuselage.

“We have three Tomahawks in the air,” the mission commander aboard the Boeing told the F-16 section leader, whose name was Rebecca Allison. “Your vector to intercept is zero six zero. Estimated distance to intercept is four hundred twelve miles, recommend you use a max range profile.”

“Roger that,” Rebecca Allison said and noted the info on her knee board. She dialed the heading bug on her horizontal situation indicator (HSI) to the recommended heading and engaged the autopilot, which could keep the fighter in a smooth, steady climb while she punched the intercept data into her computer and checked the symbology on the heads-up display, or HUD. Each plane was carrying two six-hundred-gallon aux tanks, one under each wing, and each had a Sidewinder on each wingtip missile station.

The planes were climbing through cloud. Allison checked her wingman, Stanley Schottenheimer, who was tucked in nicely on her right wing.

They topped the clouds at ten thousand feet and continued their climb. Schottenheimer increased the distance between the planes so that he too could attend to cockpit chores.

“Anvil One, Eagle Four Two,” Allison called on the secure UHF radio. “Do you have a projected destination for the bogies?”

“Looks like New York. Unfortunately, all three are on different flight paths. We'll put you down on the closest one.”

“Do you have any other interceptors, over?”

“None that can intercept prior to the target area. You two are it.”

“Why don't you split us up, give us each a target, over?”

“Okay. Wingman, state your call sign.”

“Eagle Four Seven,” Schottenheimer replied.

“Both of you stay together for now. We'll separate you in a bit, try to give you each a missile.”

Three missiles, two planes. Uh-oh. And the missiles were Tomahawks, which flew right in the weeds. Allison tightened her harness straps and reached for her master armament switch. She would try for a Sidewinder shot, if she could get a lock on the missile's exhaust. If not, she would have to use the gun.

*   *   *

The control room was packed as
America
descended toward the depth Vladimir Kolnikov wanted, two thousand feet. Boldt was wearing the sound-powered telephone, so it was he who reported leaks in the engine room passing eleven hundred feet.

Kolnikov turned and glared at the crowd. “Have you never been on a submarine before? Check for leaks. Everyone should be at his post wearing sound-powered phones. Find 'em and fix 'em. Check every compartment.” The control room emptied, leaving only Eck, Boldt, Rothberg, Turchak on the helm, and Kolnikov. And Heydrich, who sat in the back at an unused sonar console doing and saying nothing.

Two thousand feet was three hundred feet below her certified depth, and everyone in the room seemed to be holding his breath. When the boat's hull creaked and groaned a bit from the stupendous pressure passing eighteen hundred feet, Kolnikov said, “That's deep enough. Take it back up to seventeen hundred and let's get the giggles and bangs out of it.” When she stabilized at seventeen hundred feet, her certified depth, the noises stopped. Boldt reported that the boat had leaks here and there, but the crew was working on them.

“This isn't a dinner boat on the Seine,” Kolnikov growled. Leaks were the bane of a submariner's life. They could develop at any moment.

“We'll not go lower than this unless we have to,” Kolnikov said aloud, to no one in particular. “We must stay as silent as possible, or believe me, the Americans will find us.” Kolnikov had not streamed the towed array. He planned to drift with no way on, so the array would end up hanging straight down on its half mile of cable, of little or no use.

At a nod from Kolnikov, Turchak let the submarine drift slowly to a stop. About two minutes passed before the inertial readout stopped going slower. The final speed was half a knot, which was probably the speed of the current at this depth.

The pumps that kept her trimmed seemed to work fine. She lay motionless in the sea, steady as a rock. Kolnikov put his head against the metal of the bulkhead to listen, then checked the computer screen that analyzed the ship for noise. Almost nothing. The ship was as silent as the sea itself.

“Just in case,” Kolnikov said to Boldt, “while we are alone, have everyone make a head call, then secure the head until further notice. And let's flood tubes one and two and open the outer doors.”

Turchak, at the helm, was also wearing a sound-powered telephone headset. He concentrated on monitoring the trim of the boat. He would ease the power lever forward for a few turns to establish steerageway—and plane effectiveness—if that became necessary. Eck and Boldt were busy with the computers, with Rothberg supervising, running from one to another, looking over shoulders, offering little explanations. Kolnikov stood mesmerized by the large, flat bulkhead-mounted sonar displays. Once again the impression that the displays were mere windows in the hull and he was actually looking at the ocean struck Kolnikov powerfully.

The screens were dark just now, for the sea at this depth was very quiet. Yet the darkness was not total—there were gleams of light here and there from the grunts and calls of sea creatures, fish and whales and dolphins, very faint and far away. The muted symphony also gave them tantalizing hints of hull and machinery noises, no doubt from distant ships and planes. And every now and then they were teased by low-frequency rumbling noises, perhaps from earthquakes or landslides, maybe deep-sea volcanoes.

He reluctantly left the sonar displays and was looking over Boldt's shoulder, studying the navigation data displayed there, when out of the corner of his eye he saw Eck press his earpieces tightly against his head. After a bit Eck held up a hand and said in almost a whisper, “I think I hear screw noises. Low-frequency beats.” He removed the sonar audio from the control room loudspeaker so it wouldn't be returned to the sea.

Kolnikov donned the headset and listened. Meanwhile Eck was typing on his keyboard, initiating a track, labeling it. A symbol appeared on the horizontal tactical display and on one of the bulkhead screens. The men stared mesmerized at the symbol, which almost obscured a faint gleam of light hiding amid the darkness.

Turchak, wearing the sound-powered headset, told Kolnikov, “Tubes one and two flooded, outer doors open.”

Kolnikov climbed onto the captain's stool and lit a cigarette. He was staring at the dim gleam that Eck said was the noise of a submarine when a tiny light flashed on the surface in the other direction some distance away, perhaps six or seven miles.

Five seconds passed before Eck said softly, “Sonobuoy. We have a P-3 overhead.”

There were eight sonobuoys in the water when Eck gestured toward the submarine symbol on the panel display. “That isn't where it is. There's a thermal layer distorting the sound.”

“Can you identify it?”

“We need a little more noise. He's closing, that's certain.”

Three minutes later Eck said, “
Los Angeles
–class, according to the computer.”

“Which one?”

“Still working on that.”

A half minute later he said, “
La Jolla.
Her signature is in the computer.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Leon Rothberg said bitterly and sagged into an empty chair.

*   *   *

Toad Tarkington was at his desk in the Crystal City SuperAegis liaison office when the intercom buzzed. The unexpected sound made Toad jump. Without telephones ringing, the office was abnormally quiet, pleasantly so. The security officer in the lobby was calling. “Sir, there is a Mr. Carmellini down here asking for Admiral Grafton.”

“Carmellini?” Toad drew a blank for several seconds, then he remembered. Oh yeah, the CIA guy from Cuba. “I'll be down to escort him,” Toad told the guard. Carmellini. He was in Hong Kong with Admiral Grafton last year, Toad remembered, when the revolutionaries kidnapped Callie.

The building elevators were still out of service, so Toad took the stairs to the lobby. He recognized Carmellini and shook hands. “The admiral isn't here, but come on up,” Toad said and led the way to the stairs. “Anything you'd tell him he'd refer to me, so you might as well eliminate the middleman.”