America

Heydrich dragged Hudson along the sponson and passed her to a sailor, who stuffed her down the hatch. Heydrich went next. Jake waited until they motioned, then followed along. The other men filed out behind him. Schlegel himself told Callie, Corina Le Beau, Rita, Lizzy, and the others to wait for the next boat. No one made an issue of the fact that Flap was at the end of the line.

The space inside the minisub was tight. Without portholes, even ones that were opaque, the feeling with six people aboard was claustrophobic. The smell was a mixture of dampness and light lubricating oil. And fear. Everyone was perspiring freely, even Jake. Sweat ran into his eyes, making them sting, but he tried to ignore it.

When his passengers were arranged and seated, Heydrich said something to the sailors, then closed the hatch. Jake thought about knifing him right then, but a dead Heydrich wouldn't get him into America. If there was some kind of code… and, of course, he didn't know how to run the minisub. Perhaps Sonny Killbuck did, but Jake had never asked. After a while Sonny was going to have to give it a try. Sonny sat silently, looking at this and that, betraying no emotion. He met Jake's gaze for a second or two, then looked away. Toad Tarkingon seemed ready for anything. Tommy Carmellini was trying to look deadpan and succeeding.

Heydrich had a gun, a silenced automatic. He displayed it, pointed it at Zelda Hudson, who was right beside him. And he raised his voice. 'If anyone moves, toward me, at me, in any direction whatsoever, I shall shoot this woman in the head. Do you understand? If anything happens, if anyone wants to be a hero, she dies first. Then I will see how many of you I can kill.'

Zelda was in obvious pain. She was seated yet bent over at the waist, in an upright fetal position. Semiconscious, oblivious to her surroundings, she chewed on her lower lip with her eyes tightly closed. She moaned softly from time to time, but she didn't open her eyes or try to change positions.

Heydrich flashed the minisub's lights, then turned the helm, which controlled the minisub's motion in pitch and roll, much like an aircraft yoke. The rudder pedal was beneath his feet. He watched the closed-circuit monitors intently, finally engaged the prop. In a few moments the towering side of the liner disappeared from view. Heydrich began flooding the ballast tanks. The valves were audible as they opened, the water gurgled as it poured into the tanks, and the minisub swam slowly down into the dark, black, watery abyss.

With the women on the sponson, Flap Le Beau's options were limited. There were the three men with silenced submachine guns, Schlegel and two sailors, line handlers.

The sailors stayed out of the way, just in case one of the armed men decided to shoot somebody. They looked like they were from the Far East, perhaps Malaysia or Indonesia. They refused to look at the prisoners, Flap noted. If they were ever called as witnesses they would say they knew nothing. A job is a job is a job, if you have a family to feed and no skills to speak of.

Flap didn't blame them. He just hoped they stayed out of the way.

He waited patiently. Years before, when he had been a jarhead in the jungle mud, he learned patience. Let the enemy come to you in his own time.

Two of the gunmen lit cigarettes. They smoked in silence.

Then the break he had been waiting for came. Schlegel wanted to talk.

'Sorry it worked out this way, General. Obviously it would have been better for everyone if you had stayed home.'

'You can't get away with this, Schlegel. The United States government knows we're here, knows you're involved. The Americans will apply excruciating pressure to the French government, which will drop you like a hot potato.'

'A potato?' Schlegel asked, obviously unfamiliar with that idiom.

'Thermonuclear.'

'I think not.' Schlegel smiled. The man was enjoying himself hugely. Flap took a step closer. He was holding his wrists together, keeping them in against his body so that no one could see that the plastic tie was missing. It was, in fact, in his pocket.

That was the moment that Callie Grafton picked to faint. She went limp, sagged, hit the deck like a side of beef, and lay sprawled out.

Schlegel glanced at his gunmen, decided they were sufficiently fearsome to discourage heroics, and stepped over to check on Callie.

She kicked him in the balls.

As Schlegel bent over in pain, Rita Moravia delivered a right cross to the jaw that snapped his head sideways. The impact propelled him back and he lost his balance. He teetered on the edge of the sponson, his arms waving wildly. Then he fell in.

One of the three gunmen found that he had the hilt of a knife protruding from his solar plexus. He released his hold on his weapon as he sank to his knees. He tried to draw it out with both hands, but the effort was too much. He toppled slowly forward.

The gunman nearest Flap never saw him coming. He had been watching Schlegel's balancing act, so when he saw Flap coming at him out of the corner of his eye, he was flat-footed, not quite ready. The cigarette in his fingers didn't help. By the time he got his weapon turned and his hand on the trigger, Flap ripped it from his grasp and elbowed him once in the larynx, crushing it.

People holding loaded guns on other people are rarely alert, convinced that people will be paralyzed at the mere sight of a muzzle pointed in their direction. It usually works; few things in life are more horrifying.

The third gunman, also a smoker, paid for his inattention. By the time he got his weapon into action, Flap was shooting at him. His bullets went high. Flap's didn't.

The third gunman took a burst right in the chest. By the time he hit the bulkhead and slid to the deck, he was dead.

Bobbing in the water, Willi Schlegel saw the third gunman go down. And he saw the grim visage of Flap Le Beau turn in his direction and point his weapon. 'No,' he screamed.

Flap fired a short burst. When the spray cleared, only the top of Schlegel's head was visible, rising and falling with the motion of the black seawater.

The general turned, ensured that the sailors didn't want any part of what he had in his hands, then motioned to the women marines. 'Get these guns. Quickly now.' They collected the submachine guns, spare magazines, and three pistols. Flap took the time to reload his weapon. He stuck a pistol in his waistband.

As he herded his wife and Callie off the sponson, he said to Lizzy, 'You stay here. If the minisub surfaces and that dude sticks his head out of the hatch, shoot him.'

'Yes, sir.'

The minisub made some noise as it swam down into the blackness, but not much. Jake Grafton thought he heard the hum of the electric motor that turned the prop, or perhaps it was the fan that circulated air inside the sub. The loudest noise, he decided, was the whisper of water moving past the hull, and even that was muted.

Less than a minute after he left the surface ship, Heydrich turned on the minisub's exterior lights. They penetrated the dark water for a short distance and created the illusion that visibility was better than it was. Consequently, when the hull of America appeared, an intensely black presence that the lights refused to illuminate, the appearance surprised the watchers. America had been in the field of view for several seconds before the watchers realized what they were seeing.

Heydrich approached from the port side, made the turn behind the island to match his course and speed to the monstrous black streamlined shape, and used the searchlights to find the attachment point over the airlock.

Down the minisub came, closer and closer, the movement finally almost stopping as the two craft drifted ever so slowly together. They touched with a metallic clang. Heydrich shot the hydraulic locks, then stopped his prop and centered his controls. He threw a few more switches — Jake didn't know what they were but surmised at least one of them would connect the minisub to the mother's electrical system — then turned to his passengers.

With the pistol in his hand, he set Killbuck to opening the hatch in the minisub's belly. When the hatch opened into the airlock, he gestured with the pistol.

Killbuck went first, then the men in the minisub handed Zelda down. In places her clothes were becoming sodden with blood. She groaned when they handled her, still in obvious pain.

She hadn't shown any signs of recognizing Tommy Carmellini. When he lifted her he whispered, 'Hang tough,