America

'Do you have any plans?'

'I was thinking of the British crown jewels and maybe the czar's jewels in the Kremlin museum.'

Although Pulzelli didn't often allow himself to smile, a hint of amusement crept across his features.

'I know what you're thinking,' Carmellini said breezily. 'You think I should start in the minor leagues, which is probably true. Perhaps I'll do some jewelry stores and museums as a warm-up.'

'I'll pass your letter along. While you are still on the government payroll, however, less lucrative chores await. Here are your round-trip tickets to London and the itinerary.' He glanced at his watch. 'If you get a move on you can catch the van to Dulles.'

Sitting now in the waiting area on the international concourse at Dulles Airport, Tommy Carmellini carefully folded the copy of the resignation letter and put it back in his attache case. A ball game was playing on the television mounted high in a corner of the area, a scout troop was seated against a wall sharing music CDs and snacks, and two rows over a couple sat necking amid a group of dressed-for-success businessmen and — women who were studiously ignoring them. He automatically scanned the crowd to see if anyone was paying any attention to him. Apparently not.

He probably shouldn't have made that crack to Pulzelli about the British crown jewels or jewelry stores, he thought. He'll probably just laugh it off and forget it. Still, if and when, Pulzelli might remember and feel duty bound to call the police.

Oh, well. He couldn't take back the words. He would have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

In the Pentagon war room the overstuffed chairs of the Joint Chiefs were arranged in a semicircle facing a large multimedia screen that formed the wall of the room. A podium stood off to one side so it wouldn't obstruct the view of the screen. Jake's group of liaison officers seated themselves in empty chairs two rows back, behind a cadre of senior captains and one-, two-, and three-star flag officers. The briefing officer was at the podium consulting her notes when a staff officer called the room to attention and the four-stars walked in. As they dropped into their seats the chairman, General Alt of the army, grunted something and everyone sat back down.

The briefing officer, an army colonel, didn't waste time. Immediately a graphic of the North Atlantic appeared on the screen at the front of the room. 'America has not been located,' she said. 'Here is a semicircle depicting where she might be if she had made good a twenty-knot speed of advance since she submerged alongside John Paul Jones sixty hours ago.' The semicircle appeared, twelve hundred miles in diameter, centered near Martha's Vineyard. It covered a huge chunk of the North Atlantic. 'And here is the ten-knot circle.' That too appeared, in a different color, a fourth the size of the first one.

The briefer listed the U.S. Navy's available antisubmarine assets, including attack submarines, and showed their locations, whether or not they were ready for sea, how long it would be before they sailed. She discussed SOSUS arrays, P-3 patrol plane antisubmarine patrols, then national assets such as satellites with radar and infrared sensors, etc.

Finally the briefer showed the location of all known submarines of other nations, including two Russians. Seated beside Jake Grafton, Janos Ilin didn't turn a hair when his nation's submarines were pinpointed as if the coordinates had been published in the morning newspaper.

The Joint Chiefs interrupted the briefer to hold a discussion among themselves about a destroyer about to enter the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Could the maintenance be postponed and the ship sent to sea to join a task group?

'Can the satellites see a mast if America sticks it up above the surface?' Flap Le Beau asked.

'Yes, sir. If a mast is run up with the submarine at speed in daylight, with no cloud cover.'

'At night? Under a squall?'

'Yes and no, sir. Sea surveillance radars would be more likely to pick it up from space in real time.'

'Stuffy, don't they have to stick that thing up occasionally to update the inertial?' General Alt asked that question.

'For ordinary navigation, no,' Stalnaker replied. 'A wise man would want an update before he launched Tomahawks, so he would run up the communications mast. An update might take from one to two minutes. Most of the time would be taken up with the system locating the satellites.'

'If they do launch a Tomahawk, will we pick the missile up on radar as it comes out of the water?'

'Uh, no, sir. Not unless a task group is close.'

'Airborne surface search? Will they see it?'

'Perhaps.'

'A satellite?'

'Sir, it would depend on the sensor and the satellite location. Perhaps is the only possible answer.'

'How long until we hear of it?'

'After a launch is detected, a few minutes, sir.'

'Okay, with a Tomahawk in the air, flying toward the Goddard launch platform or Yankee Stadium, what are our options?'

The air force was not sanguine. Although Tomahawk was subsonic, it was small and flew low. It would be difficult to intercept and difficult to kill.

'We need to get some destroyers around the Goddard platform, with orders to shoot down anything incoming.' The Joint Chiefs discussed that, how long it would take for three destroyers to get into position. Twenty- two hours, they were told.

'How about antimissile defense of Washington, New York, Philly? Can we get Patriot batteries into position to provide some protection?' The chairman asked that.

'Won't do any good,' the army chief of staff said disgustedly. 'Patriot can't engage a target that flies that low.'

The four-stars discussed it. There was a PR issue here-the public needed to see the military doing something. It turned out that staff had already given the order. The first batteries around Washington would be in place within six hours. Everything available would be in position within twenty-four hours, but there weren't enough batteries to cover all possible approach directions. Staff was assessing where the batteries could be placed to have the greatest likelihood of intercepting.

And so the briefing went, detail by detail, for over an hour.

When it was over, Jake Grafton huddled with Flap Le Beau while Toad escorted the liaison officers back across the parking lot toward Crystal City.

After Jake had told Flap all he had learned since he had seen him last, he remarked, 'I would still like to know why the Paul Jones was not authorized to sink America while she was still on the surface in Long Island Sound.'

'That decision was reached at the White House, not here in the Pentagon.'

'Were any of the Joint Chiefs there?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

'Sir, I'd like to see the transcript. I know it will be classified to the hilt, but I would like to see it before Congress gets involved and lays their hot little hands on it. And that is going to happen. There is no way on earth that the White House can cork this volcano.'

'You want to go look at that transcript this evening?'

'Yes, sir.'

'I'll call over there, see what I can do. Keep me advised.' Aye aye, sir.

The submarine rose slowly from the depths. Almost all of the small crew were in the control room, watching silently as Turchak conned the boat and Kolnikov walked back and forth, taking it all in. They were drinking coffee and the U.S. Navy's orange bug juice — Kool-Aid. They had earned the drinks — that afternoon ten of them had loaded all four of the torpedo tubes and run all the electronic checks to ensure that the weapons were ready. Just in case.

Now Eck was on the sonar, and Leon Rothberg, the American, was at the weapons control console. As usual, Boldt was at the main systems panel. Kolnikov was pacing and smoking, slowly and deliberately.

Eck had streamed the towed array over an hour ago to help clarify the sonar picture as the submarine rose through the thermal layers. The computer-derived pictures of the world on the other side of the steel bulkheads and ballast tanks mesmerized the crew, whose eyes were drawn to that hazy, indistinct horizon. If there were a ship