America

new, state-of-the-art attack submarine on patrol for the very first time.

Leonard Sterrett had been eagerly anticipating this day from the moment he had-been told, three years ago, that he was to be America's first commanding, officer. He had been working to earn a submarine command since that summer day twenty-three years ago when he walked through the gate at the Naval Academy in Annapolis to begin his plebe summer. Now he had it. The responsibility for a capital ship worth two billion dollars manned by 134 men was all his.

He turned in the cramped open bridge and waved one last time at the people on the dock, especially his wife and parents, who had shared his dream all these years. He could see them and his teenage daughter waving back.

Then he turned to face the sea.

The officer of the deck, Lieutenant Ellis Johnson, seemed to read the CO's mood. 'Congratulations, sir,' he murmured, just loud enough to be heard.

'Thank you,' the skipper said and smiled at the sea and sky.

A mile or so away, barely making steerageway, USS/oA«Paul Jones, a guided- missile destroyer, kept a watchful eye on the covey of boats that had gathered to watch America get under way from the New London submarine base. For the last hour a small Coast Guard cutter had done most of the work of keeping the spectator boats corralled, mainly through use of a bullhorn. Overhead a helicopter belonging to a television station circled slowly, shooting footage for the evening news. One of the boats contained a delegation of antinuclear activists who had tried their best to raise a rumpus and be noticed by the camera folks in the news chopper. The Coast Guard skipper had threatened them with arrest and confiscation of their borrowed boat, so they were behaving themselves just now.

Aboard Jones, Captain Harvey Warfield focused his binoculars on America. The sail on the sub was located far forward on the hull, almost as if the attack boat were a boomer full of ballistic missiles. Well behind the sail was the squarish shape of a miniature submarine, a fifty-five-ton delivery vehicle for special-warfare commandos, SEALs. Although it was hard to judge from the portion of the submarine visible above water, to Warfield's practiced eye America looked slightly longer and sleeker than the navy's Seawolf boats. Perhaps the fact that he knew its dimensions exactly, 377 feet long and 34 feet in diameter, colored his perception. _ft

Certainly not the fastest or the deepest-diving U.S. submarine, America was the quietest, without a doubt the ultimate stealth ship. Designed for shallow-water combat, the most difficult environment submarines could fight in, America packed more computer power inside her hull than all the other submarines of the United States Navy combined. Originally the submarine had been laid down as USS Virginia; the name had been changed to get a few more votes in Congress, which was the way things worked in Washington in this age of Pax Americana. These things Warfield knew from press releases and briefings — he wasn't cleared for the really juicy classified stuff, the secrets the submariners put in the I-could-tell-you-but-then-I'd-have-to-kill-you category.

Which was just as well, Warfield thought. Submarines had never interested him much — months submerged, the crew packed into the tiny ship like sardines in a can, the ever-present threat of drowning or being crushed when the hull imploded…. Just thinking about it was enough to make Warfield's skin tingle. Submarining was tough duty, obviously, and somebody had to do it. Those who did certainly earned their extra dough every month, Warfield thought, and were welcome to it.

Warfield checked his watch. America had cast loose her lines right on time, just what he expected from Lenny Sterrett.

Today the Coast Guard seemed on top of the small-boat situation, the navigator and senior quartermaster were on the bridge, and War-field's officer of the deck was the best he had, so the captain reached for a pile of paperwork on the small table beside his raised bridge chair. After one last glance around, he picked up the first document in the pile and began reading.

Standing in the wheelhouse of the tugboat pulling America away from the pier, Vladimir Kolnikov lifted his binoculars and aimed them yet again at John Paul Jones. The destroyer was making only a couple knots, yet it was there, ready.

Ready for what?

That was the question, wasn't it? Ready for what?

How good was the skipper of the destroyer? How fast could he handle the unexpected? How quickly could the crew obey unanticipated directives?

'What do you think?' Georgi Turchak asked in Russian. He was at the helm of the tugboat. The captain of the tug lay in a corner of the small bridge, quite dead.

'You knew there would be destroyers,' Kolnikov replied without lowering his binoculars. 'We are lucky there is only one.'

'What if there is another submarine out there?'

'Then we will soon be dead. Do you wish to back out now?'

'No, damn it. I wish you would tell me comforting things to make me think that we are going to pull this off, get filthy rich, and live to a ripe old age enjoying our money.'

Kolnikov turned the binoculars, focused them on the captain of the submarine. He could see the features of his face plainly, see him talking to the officer of the deck, the OOD, and the lookouts, who were looking all over the horizon with their binoculars and paying no attention to the tugboat.

'He's going to want to release the line any moment now,' Kolnikov said, more to himself than anyone else. He walked to the head of the — ladder leading down.

'Are you ready, Heydrich?'

The man below looked about him at other men hidden from Kolnikov's view. 'Eck? Boldt? Steeckt?' There were fourteen men belowdecks, one on the fantail, and of course here on the bridge Kolnikov and Turchak, for a total of seventeen.

Now the man below looked up the ladderway at Kolnikov. His face was one of large cheekbones and tiny eyes. 'We are ready, Russ-ki. Give the word.'

'Very soon, I think.'

The band was playing 'America, the Beautiful' when the OOD used a bullhorn to call the tugboat. He could still hear the music plainly even though the sub and tug were about seven hundred yards from the pier. 'We are ready to release the tow,' he called.

Releasing the tow was a relatively simple maneuver. When the tugboat reduced power, the towline would go slack so the submarine's deck crew could release it from the towing cleat. Then the tug would accelerate away and the sub would proceed under its own power.

Kolnikov signaled to the man on the fantail of the tug, who began winding the towline tighter around a power winch as Turchak at the helm gently reduced power on the tug's engines.

The distance between tug and submarine began to decrease, while the men on the sub's deck waited in vain for slack to develop in the line.

It took several seconds for Captain Lenny Sterrett and the OOD, Ellis Johnson, to comprehend what was happening. Sterrett spoke sharply to Johnson, who barked into the bullhorn, 'Get off the winch and give me some slack.'

The white foam coming from the tug's fantail ceased as the distance between the two vessels closed. Kolnikov shouted at the man on the winch, waved his arms excitedly, and the distance continued to close until only a few feet of water remained between the two hulls.

Then smoke erupted from the fantail of the tug. Three seconds later, a minor explosion along the tug's waterline blew water into the air. The man on the fantail went over the side. Kolnikov rushed down the ladder from the tug's bridge and raced for the afterdeck.

Two more crewmen appeared on the tug's deck and ran aft.

'Man overboard, civilian from the tug!' The OOD shouted this message into the intercom, and in seconds it blared on the boat's loudspeakers.

In the control room the chief of the boat pronounced a curse word. 'Oh, man!' he said. 'First Greenville, then this!' Everyone in the control room knew what he meant — if the civilian in the water drowned before the sub crew could pull him out, the media would savage the navy and Captain Lenny