entrance, with the car pointed away from the Jouany building. Carmellini got a glimpse of the man's head behind the wheel.
He walked away in the other direction.
That evening in America the footage was played over and over on every news channel as the chattering class offered running commentaries. The public mood, if the media coverage was any indication, was becoming increasingly shrill. The one thing the chatterers could agree upon, however, was that the administration had made a severe mistake concealing the identity of the hijackers from the public. 'They tried to suppress it,' were the words commonly used to describe the government's misguided attempt to keep the secret. An administration spokesperson explained that since the stolen warship carried no nuclear weapons and nothing was known of the motives of the crew, a disclosure of a canceled CIA operation would not have been in the public or national interest.
In any event, the existence of Operation Blackbeard was a secret no longer. Every sentient person on the planet had an excellent opportunity to learn of it by late that evening. And every person with a telephone had an opportunity to comment on the news on the endless local, regional, and national radio talk shows. Many were doing just that.
With or without nuclear weapons, the power of the submarine pirates to cause havoc was beyond dispute. Power company executives predicted that it would take ten days to two weeks to restore electrical service in the heart of the capital and in Reston. The damage to the telephone network was still being assessed, but the one fact all the engineers agreed on was that massive banks of switching units were damaged beyond repair. Computer equipment that had been subject to the electromagnetic pulses of the E-warheads was also junk and would have to be replaced. The immobilized vehicles that littered Washington and Reston were being towed away for repair, which would take weeks, perhaps months, due to the sheer numbers that had been damaged.
The government declared a state of emergency and announced that it would use the army to feed the populace of the affected area, which had no way to prepare or store food. Mobile generators were flown in from all over America to provide emergency power to hospitals and police radios. People who needed urgent medical treatment were being flown from the affected area by military helicopters.
All of this was expensive inconvenience salted with occasional personal tragedies, such as the folks wearing defibrillators and pacemakers who went into cardiac arrest or died when the warheads detonated. However, the crashes of the two airliners and two business jets on their way into Reagan National gave the incident a horrifying, visceral dimension. In an age when air travel was an unavoidable, unenjoyed part of life, the specter of being a passenger in a doomed airliner plummeting to earth out of control gave most people the cold sweats. The FAA quickly canceled airline service in the danger area, which the bureaucrats decreed was anywhere east of the Mississippi River. Aircraft on emergency missions or not carrying paying passengers for hire and private aircraft could fly — at their own risk, the bureaucrats said — but few did. Cautious CEOs called their attorneys, who told the executives bluntly that they could not afford to pay the judgments that would be rendered against them if they ignored the FAA's warning and lives were subsequently lost.
When Kolnikov brought
After updating the GPS, Kolnikov lowered the mast. Rothberg was eyeing him. Kolnikov nodded matter-of- factly. 'Three hits,' he said.
'I told you they were good birds,' Leon asserted, jutting out his chin.
'Get busy on the next three.'
'When do you propose to launch them?'
'I don't know. I'll have to think about that.'
'What should I use as the starting position?'
Kolnikov thought before he answered. He studied the tactical presentation on the horizontally mounted display, looked at the map of the North Atlantic, took the time to rub his eyes. He had slept for three hours this afternoon, but he was still tired.
Finally he made a small mark on the chart and showed it to Rothberg. 'Here. That position is as good as any. Just leave the time open.'
The sea seemed noisy this evening. Kolnikov had Eck deploy the towed array so he could see and hear better. When it was out he listened to the computer enhancement of the raw audio and watched the presentations on the big wall screens. 'Let's go back down to five hundred feet, below the surface layer,' he told Turchak, who was back from his bunk and the head.
At one point Kolnikov thought he heard pinging, or echo ranging, but the sound was from a long way away, very attenuated. On the screen the noise was converted to light, of course, but the flashes were so dim he wasn't sure they were really there. The computer, which could discern a pattern that the ear could not hear or the eye detect, verified the sound and gave a bearing.
They are looking, he thought. They are looking hard.
Well, let them look. We are safely hidden below the thermal layer and too quiet for the SOSUS. As long as we don't have a close encounter with an American
Jake Grafton had just taken a cold-water shower and lain down on his couch when he heard someone knocking on the apartment door. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, so he answered it.
A marine corporal was standing there. 'Admiral Grafton? General Le Beau sends his compliments, sir, and asks if you would accompany me back to the Pentagon.'
'Are you on a horse?'
'No, sir. The marines at Quantico sent every vehicle on the base.'
'Give me five minutes to get on a clean uniform. Come on in.'
Callie talked to the corporal while Jake dressed. Of course the young marine stood tongue-tied, unable to think up a single comment in the rarefied air of a flag officer's powerless apartment. He was from Tennessee, was a fan of the Titans, thought the marines were a lot of fun, a comment that drew a grin from Jake Grafton in the next room.
As Jake puckered up to kiss his wife, she handed him a handful of candles.
'Use these to put a little light on the subject.'
'Very funny,' he said. 'Ha, ha, and ha.' But he took the candles.
He kissed her and followed the corporal out the door.
In the Pentagon war room, Sonny Killbuck and Vice-Admiral Val Navarre were the center of attention. The Joint Chiefs were in their usual chairs and tossing questions. Behind them sat the senior members of the staff. The session had just started, apparently, Jake thought as he dropped into an empty chair in back.
Sonny was in the front of the room holding a pointer, using it on the map that was projected on the screen. He pointed out where the U.S. Navy submarines and antisubmarine patrols were located. Now he overlaid the patrol plane tracks on the screen. The navy had indeed been busy. Still, none of the searchers had found
Space Command was on full alert, watching for cruise missile launches in the North Atlantic, the air force had AWACS planes aloft, looking for incoming missiles, and fighters on five-minute alert all along the Atlantic seaboard, ready to attempt to intercept incoming cruise missiles. Two carriers were at sea, using their aircraft to search areas that the antisubmarine patrol planes were not covering. There was no doubt — the United States military was exerting itself to the maximum. Everything that could be done was being done.
When Sonny finished his canned brief, the Joint Chiefs began discussing the military's worldwide response to the new defense condition set a few hours ago by the president, DEFCON ONE, war alert. The senior officers of the Joint Staff fielded questions as fast as they were tossed. Some of them made notes.
No one mentioned Cowbell.
Or the fact the
Well, Jake Grafton thought, Cowbell was history. If he had not already done so, the CNO would have to order
