America

red alarms that drew instant attention to suspicious activity.

That was almost the only vertical area within six feet of the floor not covered with politically incorrect posters and cartoons attacking anything and everything, but especially management, inelegant programming, and advertisements hyping 'secure systems' that had been broken into and exploited.

Amid this clutter three people sat on folding chairs staring at the television monitors, two women and a man. They wore jeans or shorts, T-shirts, one of the women was smoking, all were young. Zelda's crew. On a normal workday there were a dozen.

No one paid any attention to her as she walked to her desk. She looked at the television to see what had them captivated. For the fifty-second time, CNN was running the video from the Boston television station helicopter. She was just in time to see Kolnikov squirt a burst at the camera.

'Someone hijacked a submarine yesterday morning,' the young man told Zelda. He was a tall, pale, intense youth with a scraggly beard. His name was Zip Vance. He had a Ph.D. from Stanford and an IQ close to two hundred. 'It's still on every channel,' he added. 'Been on since yesterday morning.'

The four of them watched the coverage for another hour. Little was said. Finally the women said good-bye and took the elevator, leaving Vance alone with Zelda.

'The White House asked for a news hold in the name of national security. The station in Boston told them hell no and put it on the air.'

'And the navy?'

'They're moving heaven and earth to get assets out there to find it. So far no luck.'

'What do you think?'

Zip Vance grinned. 'I think we pulled it off,' he said and laughed aloud.

Zelda Hudson joined him in laughter. After a bit, Zip went to the refrigerator in the far corner and returned with a cold bottle of champagne. 'I bought this to celebrate,' he said, and made a production of popping the cork, which shot away. He didn't bother retrieving it. As they sipped champagne from Styrofoam coffee cups, Zelda kicked off her shoes, put her feet up on her overnight bag, and tousled her long hair.

God, she felt sooo good!

'We did it!' she said, and laughed again.

CHAPTER FIVE

'How does this system work?' Jake Grafton asked Captain Piechowski. Jake, Toad, and Janos Ilin were standing with the two simulator experts near the desk in the corner of the dark, old gymnasium.

'The ship is in the computer, if you will, Admiral. The helmets contain sensors that locate them for the computer and provide the direction of orientation. Same with the gloves. The computer presents a three- dimensional holographic image on the faceplate of the helmet as you move in cyberspace.'

'Remarkable.'

'Much cheaper than a simulator made of hardware, which by the way also requires a computer to give it life.'

'Has the virtual sim replaced hardware completely?'

'No, sir. Not yet. We still have an actual control room sim to teach crew coordination and procedures. The rest of it is done here. With the exception of America's reactor and engineering personnel, who do their training in the base reactor and engineering simulators. Those devices are also used for Seawolf- and Los Angeles-cass boats; the plants are sufficiently similar.'

'How big is the computer that runs this thing?' Toad Tarkington asked.

'It's a mainframe. The system is capable of simultaneously han-

dling ten people and ten sets of gloves, so the computing capacity must be generous. We have a smaller portable system that we take to other bases for refresher training and retraining on procedural revisions. It will handle just four people at a time.'

'How portable?'

'An enhanced laptop runs it.'

The admiral glanced at the Russian. 'Any questions, Mr. Ilin?'

'It all seems quite amazing,' Janos Ilin said, and carefully scrutinized the helmet he held in his hand. 'Too bad you still use cords.' He was referring to the electrical wires that connected the helmets and gloves to the computer. The use of the wires required the wearer of the helmet and gloves to be careful not to get tangled or wrapped around a fellow trainee.

'We could go wireless,' the chief commented innocently, 'but wires make the system more secure. I am told there are people in this world who have the capability of intercepting wireless transmissions. Over time they could duplicate the contents of the mainframe, thereby discerning hardware and software design characteristics of America.'

Jake Grafton was tempted to smile, but the urge died before it reached his lips. Someone had stolen the whole submarine, not just the design.

'Thank you for your time, Captain. You too, Chief. You've been most helpful.'

'Captain Killbuck, I asked for the best submariner in the United States Navy, and they tell me you're him.' General Flap Le Beau, commandant of the Marine Corps, made this remark when he was introduced to Captain Leroy 'Sonny' Killbuck in the Pentagon war room. Killbuck was on the briefing platform and Le Beau was seated in his usual chair, one of the large ones reserved for the Joint Chiefs arranged in a semicircle in the front of the room. In the chairman's seat was General Howard Alt.

'That's very flattering, General,' Killbuck said. 'I heard you were the toughest marine in uniform.'

'They've lied to both of us, then,' Le Beau shot back. Killbuck was a year or two over forty, just screened for flag, with a lot of American Indian in him apparently. He had high cheekbones, dark brown skin, jet-black straight hair, and a rugged, craggy face. Someone said he was Shawnee. A star on the staff of Vice-Admiral Navarre, the assistant CNO for underseas warfare, he was being groomed for high command.

An African American, Le Beau was just a shade darker than Killbuck. He was a veteran of Vietnam and several brushfire wars since, a fearless knifefighter with the knack of inspiring people to give the very best that was in them. He liked to tell people that his name, Le Beau, was from his white ancestors, a family of Louisiana planters, but in truth he had no idea where it came from. His mother, who had called herself Twila Le Beau, died of a drug overdose when he was in his early teens; he never knew who his father was, and if he had grandparents who outlived his mother, he never knew them. He was, he told his closest friends, a Brooklyn sewer rat. Those who knew him would tell you that he had given himself to the marines body and soul, that he embodied the heritage and values of the corps; the troops said that even his blood was green.

'So where's that submarine?'

Sonny Killbuck gestured toward the map that formed the wall behind the podium. 'We drew the black circle an hour ago, sir. The submarine was hijacked thirty-six hours ago, so this is a circle with a seven-hundred-and- twenty-nautical-mile radius, centered on New London. The submarine is somewhere within that circle.'

'I thought America had a maximum sustained speed of nearly thirty knots.' Le Beau shot a glance at Stuffy Stalnaker, the CNO, who was sitting in his usual seat, looking sour. Vice-Admiral Navarre was sitting beside him. His face was stony.

'It does, sir, but at anything over twenty knots the boat will begin to make some noise — and we haven't yet detected it on SOSUS.' Beginning in the 1950s, the United States placed hydrophones on the ocean floor all over the world and gradually built a complete system. Today the raw data from hydrophone arrays was processed through a regional evaluation center, and the processed results were then passed to the main evaluation center in Washington, where they were correlated with information from other sources, such as satellites, human intelligence, patrol planes, etc.

'The senior hijacker was apparently a former Russian submariner named Kolnikov,' Sonny Killbuck continued. 'Presumably he knows a great deal about SOSUS, knows to keep his speed down.'

'The yellow circle?'