America

And the sub kept right on going. It was up to thirteen knots now.

Warfield jabbed the button on the squawk box labeled Radio.

'Tell everyone in the world, flash immediate: We have fired a warning shot across Americas bow and it was ignored.'

When Warfield looked up, his XO was standing there, the finest naval officer he had ever been privileged to serve with, Lorna Dun-nigan. He felt better just having her there. As usual, she got right to it.

'What do you intend to do, Captain?'

'I don't want the responsibility for killing a bunch of Americans either,' Warfield admitted. 'I want more facts before I pull any triggers.'

Vladimir Kolnikov was on his second cigarette when the splash of the warning shot showed on the integrated tactical display and on the sonar. He glanced at the photonics image — yep, there too.

'How deep is the water here?' he asked Eisenberg, his navigator.

'One hundred eighty feet below the keel, Captain.'

'How long to the hundred-fathom curve?'

'Three hours at this speed.'

'Fifty fathoms?'

'An hour.'

Kolnikov leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the console in front of him. 'I need an ashtray,' he remarked to no one in particular.

'Aren't you going to sink this destroyer?' Heydrich asked. He was seated in an empty sonar operator's chair, watching.

'With what? It will take all night for us to figure out how to aim and fire a torpedo.'

'So he can kill us at his leisure?'

'That's about the size of it. But he won't. The captain of that destroyer does not know what happened aboard this boat. He certainly suspects, but he doesn't know. None of the Americans know, and we are not going to help them find out. I wouldn't shoot at that destroyer even if I could.'

'They will fish some of the Americans from the sea and question them. Those men will talk.'

That process would take time. And no two of the Americans would tell the story the same way, Kolnikov reflected. Half-drowned men would tell disjointed tales, disagree on critical facts. 'They'll talk,' he told the German. 'And they will say that there are still Americans aboard this boat.'

'So?'

'That fact means nothing to you, Heydrich, but it will mean a great deal to the Americans. Trust me.'

A half hour later Harvey Warfield had two pieces of critical information. He knew that about fifty Americans remained aboard America, and he was convinced that the submarine had been hijacked. In addition to the testimony of the America sailors pulled from the sea, he had a videotape from the camera of the television news helicopter, which was sitting in the helo spot on the destroyer's fantail. Two navy helicopters were circling over the sub and destroyer, neither of which was equipped with a dipping sonar or any of the other high-tech paraphernalia of antisubmarine warfare. Warfield talked to the Pentagon duty officer on a scrambled radio voice circuit as he watched the video on a monitor mounted high in a corner of the bridge.

'At least a dozen men,' Warfield said. 'They spoke accented English. One of the crewmen thought they were Russians, two thought they were Germans, one guy thought they were Bosnian Serbs, two swore they were Iranians, no one knows for sure. I'm watching them on videotape, though, shoot a submachine gun at the helicopter taking pictures. The guy just turns and shoots, like he was swatting at a fly.'

'How many Americans were killed?'

'At least eight that we know of. The Coast Guard has already recovered that many bodies.'

'Captain Sterrett?'

'Dead. Shot once at the base of the throat with a bullet that went all the way through.'

'I'll pass this along to the national command authority.'

'Better pass along this fact too, Admiral. This sub is going to dive in the very near future. If it is as quiet as everyone has been saying it is, I'll lose it unless I'm shot with luck. Whatever the brains in Washington want to do about this had better be done before this thing slides under.'

'Try to stay on it.'

'Aye aye,' Warfield said without enthusiasm and hung up the headset.

'What if this guy squirts a torpedo at us, Captain?' the OOD asked.

'He won't,' Warfield said with conviction. 'I doubt that he has any torpedoes in the tubes ready to go, but even if he does, he won't shoot. This guy kept fifty hostages to ensure that we wouldn't shoot at him.'

'If he didn't have any hostages,' the XO asked, 'would you sink him?'

'Right now. This very minute.'

'So the choice is to sink him with the gun or let him go.'

'Or try to ram him, disable the screws.'

Even as he said the words, Harvey Warfield was considering. If he could bend or break off just one blade, the sub would lose a great deal of speed and become a real noisemaker. He picked up the handset, asked for the Pentagon war room again.

The admiral there was unenthusiastic. 'The evidence for a hijacking hasn't changed in the last five minutes, has it?'

'No, sir.'

'Still thin.'

Harvey Warfield had had enough lawyering. 'We fry people in the electric chair with less evidence than we have right now,' he told the admiral. 'The Coast Guard has eight dead American sailors stretched out on their deck.' Warfield lost his temper. 'Are you going to wait for autopsies, Admiral?'

'If you ram the sub you will damage both ships, perhaps severely.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Perhaps crack the sub's reactor, have a nuclear accident right there in Long Island Sound. With thirty million people strewn around the shore.'

'There is that possibility,' Harvey Warfield admitted. He felt so helpless, listening to this cover-my-ass paper pusher while he watched a brand-new, genuine U.S. attack submarine armed to the teeth sail for the open sea with a bunch of criminals at the helm. Killers. Murderers.

'This decision needs to be made by the national command authority,' the Pentagon admiral said. By that he meant the president of the United States. 'We'll get back to you.' Yes, sir.

That was the situation twenty-seven minutes later when Kolnikov decided the water was deep enough. Two freighters were nearby, on their way out of Long Island Sound into the Atlantic, and several fishing boats. The Block Island ferry was about to cross the sub and destroyer's wake when Kolnikov reduced power. As two Coast Guard helicopters buzzed angrily overhead, the sub decelerated, gradually flooded its tanks, and settled slowly into the sea. The destroyer was abeam the submarine on the starboard side when the top of the sub's masts disappeared from sight. Crying raucously and soaring on the salty breeze blowing in from the sea, a cloud of seagulls searched the roiling water for tidbits brought up from the depths.

Aboard John Paul Jones, Harvey Warfield knew that he didn't have a chance of tracking the submarine unless he used active sonar, so he gave the order. Jones was a guided-missile destroyer, its systems optimized to protect a carrier battle group from air attack. The ship had an antisubmarine capability, but it certainly was not state of the art.

The sonar operator tracked the sub as it turned into the swirling water disturbed by the destroyer's passing, then lost it.

'This guy is no neophyte,' Harvey Warfield muttered darkly when the tactical action officer in combat gave him the news, but there was little he could do. He turned the destroyer, slowed to two knots, and waited for the wake turbulence to dissipate. All the while the sonar pinged on, probing for the submarine that was actually going back up the destroyer's wake at five knots, steadily opening the distance between the hunter and the hunted.

The TAO called the captain again. 'The water is very shallow, sir. The sound is echoing off the bottom and other ships and thermal layers. It's like we're pinging inside a kettledrum. The scope is a sea of return.