America

Sterrett, which would probably sink his naval career.

Meanwhile the two vessels drifted without power. No slack developed in the towline, which continued to pull the vessels together until the tug's stern gently contacted the anechoic skin of the submarine below the waterline.

In the sub's tiny cockpit, Lenny Sterrett was trying to sort it all out. The men on the line-handling party on the submarine's deck threw the man in the water a line. He came clambering up it hand over hand with surprising agility.

'Cut that tow line,' Lenny Sterrett roared at the senior petty officer on the sub's deck, who turned to grab an ax that had been thoughtfully carried on deck, just in case.

Too late. The man coming up the line pulled a weapon from beneath his loose-fitting wet shirt and shot the six unarmed men in the line-handling party as fast as he could pull the trigger. Then he scrambled for the open deck hatch.

All Lenny Sterrett heard were pops from the silenced reports, but the sight of falling men galvanized him, cleared away the cobwebs. He keyed the intercom and roared, 'General quarters. Close all watertight doors. Prepare to repel unauthorized boarders.'

Those were his last words, because even as he said them, a man with a sniper rifle standing on the wing of the tug's bridge shot him.

When the skipper went down, bleeding profusely, the OOD stood for a second, too stunned to move. The sight of two men crossing the line that held the sub to the tug hand over hand galvanized him. He jumped down the hatch into the sail. 'You two, clear the bridge!' he shouted back up at the lookouts.

Neither man made it down the hatch. The sharpshooter on the tug didn't miss.

When he realized what had happened, the OOD closed the hatch and feverishly worked to dog it down. This evolution could not be done quickly. Unlike World War II submarines that patrolled on the surface and crash-dived to evade enemies, America was designed to submerge when leaving port and stay submerged for months.

Meanwhile, in the control room, the radioman punched a button to allow him to transmit on the ship-to-ship plain-voice frequency, Navy Blue. He was wearing a headset. 'Mayday, America' he said. 'Unauthorized armed personnel attempting to board America. Request assistance ASAP. Mayday.'

The chief of the boat, who had been standing behind the helmsman, for in this new class of submarine there was only one, reached above his head for the safety cover that shielded the SCRAM button, which would drop the rods into the reactor, stopping the nuclear reaction. He broke the safety wire on the cover and lifted it.

Valuable seconds were wasted as the OOD wrestled with the hatch dogs. Finally he got them secured to his satisfaction, then he dropped down the ladder to the first deck, where he rushed below to the control room.

'Boarders,' he roared. 'SCRAM the reactor. Close all the hatches. Don't let them—'

At that moment two men carrying silenced submachine guns rushed in and shot Ellis Johnson. They each fired one aimed shot; the bullets struck the lieutenant square in the back. The chief of the boat already had his hands up, reaching for the SCRAM button, so they ignored him. He jabbed in the red button.

And nothing happened! Warning lights should have lit up like a Christmas tree, the power in the boat should have switched to battery backup….

'Hands up,' the intruders roared, and one man stood with his weapon on the sailors as his companion dashed aft toward the engine and reactor spaces. The radioman was listening to excited voices from John Paul Jones.

He keyed the mike with his foot control. 'Intruders in America—' he began, then they shot him.

The American sailors stood stunned, shocked, speechless. Unsure of what they should do to resist, most of them simply raised their hands and remained frozen. Those who had other ideas were mercilessly shot by the gun- toting men who came pouring through the main deck hatch in front of the sail and ran through the submarine.

Kolnikov was the last of the intruders to board. He paused on the deck, watched one of the Germans chop the towline through with an ax. The fantail of the tug was already awash. The demolition charges had produced noise and smoke and blown a nice hole in the side of the tug below the waterline, all of which was calculated to cause confusion on the American sub, where the sailors' innate caution would be overridden by the obvious peril of the man in the water and those aboard the tug. And it worked.

The downwash of the helicopter buzzing overhead made it difficult to stand on the open deck. Kolnikov lifted his submachine gun and squeezed off a burst. He was so close to the chopper that he saw holes popping in the Plexiglas. The machine veered away rapidly.

The destroyer was still a mile or so away, barely moving.

Good.

Kolnikov lowered himself into the open hatch.

'Captain, we have received a radio message from America. Armed intruders are boarding.'

Aboard John Paul Jones, Captain Harvey Warfield took about two seconds to process that information.

'Verify,' he barked at the OOD, a short, heavily built female lieutenant who used a telephone to call the radio room.

After listening a moment, the OOD said, 'Put it on the loudspeaker on the bridge.'

At the bottom of the ladder, Kolnikov found himself in a tight compartment above the control room. One of Kolnikov's men held a submachine gun on four Americans, who had their hands raised.

'Out,' Kolnikov said to the American sailors, gesturing toward the ladder. 'Up, into the water.'

When the last of them was out, Kolnikov and the gunman went forward, opening the hatch to the space in the forwardmost part of the boat, which housed the sonar computers. One man was there. He was unceremoniously rushed aft at the point of a gun and pushed toward the ladder leading to the open air.

Kolnikov went aft, through the crew spaces and mast housings that protruded down from the sail. 'Get them out,' he told the two men there holding weapons on the Americans.

Then Kolnikov went into the control room. He knew what to expect — indeed, he had studied wall-sized photographs of the displays. Still, the massive screens and control consoles were so different from those on the submarines that he had served aboard in the Russian Navy, and before that the Soviet Navy, that he stopped involuntarily and took a deep breath.

The bodies of two men lay on the deck between the consoles, two wearing khaki. One was the body of the OOD, the other the control room chief. The radioman was slumped in his cubicle beside the control room.

'Get them out,' Kolnikov told Heydrich, meaning the American officers and sailors who stood there with their hands raised. 'The bodies too. Put them in the water.'

'The men in the engineering spaces have secured the hatches,' Heydrich said, 'and jammed the dogs.'

'You know what to do,' Kolnikov replied.

Heydrich turned to the nearest man wearing khaki. He grabbed him by the arm, then turned to a sailor wearing a sound-powered telephone headset. 'Tell them they have ten seconds to open that hatch, and if they don't, I shoot this man. Ten seconds later I shall shoot a second man. You will be last. Tell them to take all the time they want.'

Heydrich put the muzzle of the pistol against the forehead of the sound-powered telephone operator. 'If they SCRAM the reactor, we will kill each and every man on this boat. All of them. Every single one. The ten seconds start now. Tell them.'

The operator was about twenty, with fair hair and acne. He began talking. He looked as if he were about to faint. Heydrich lowered his gaze to his watch, studied it. The talker was still delivering his message when Heydrich pointed the pistol at the man whose arm he held and killed him with one shot in the side of the head. The talker almost lost it on the spot.

He began babbling to Heydrich and Kolnikov, 'No, no, they are opening the hatch. They are opening it!'

On the bridge of John Paul Jones, the captain and watch team listened without breathing to the garbled sounds of Heydrich and the sound-powered telephone operator. The dead radioman's foot rested on the push-to-talk pedal, so everything picked up by his lip microphone went out over the air.