America (2 page)

The fourth member of the team, who was looking around at the lively crowd as if he were attending his first hockey game, was Sergi Kuznetsov, the Russian. He was the only one of the four who was an acknowledged intelligence professional, yet he probably knew as much about ICBMs and the problems involved with shooting them down as any of the others. He was taciturn to a fault, spoke only when spoken to, and never made small talk. Tarkington referred to him as a stranger in a strange land, which Jake thought an apt description. Apparently America had overwhelmed him. When asked, he once admitted that this was his first foreign assignment.

Jake was the deputy to the team leader, Air Force Lieutenant General Art Blevins, who was somewhere below with the launch team. Tarkington filled an administrative assistant's billet, although in addition to his admin duties he functioned as Jake's assistant. He and the admiral had been together on various assignments for years.

Looking around, Jake decided he was probably the junior flag officer on the platform today. A good many three-and four-star flag officers were on the flight deck of the USS
United States
or one of her escorts. And truth be told, from that vantage point they would have a better view than the bunch on the Goddard platform, who were going to watch the launch on the control room monitors.

More people were filing up onto the tiny platform under the rocket, so Jake eased his way down the steps to the catwalk. From here he could see the giant flame deflectors that would vent the rocket's exhaust away from the platform's massive legs. He took a last look at the carrier, destroyers, frigates, and protesters' yachts as he made his way along the catwalk. He entered the personnel module and began climbing the ladders, working his way up six stories while uniformed NASA launch personnel filed down to make their final checks. The ladderways reminded Grafton of those in aircraft carriers.

The control/launch module was designed to contain everyone on the Goddard platform during the launch. The module was a bombproof, fireproof vault with small, three-inch-thick windows that looked as if they could withstand anything up to a nuclear blast. Huge monitors were spotted strategically throughout the room, and it was at these that the spectators looked. Cameras all over the platform were focused on the rocket, which gleamed on the monitors like … “the administration's phallic symbol.”

Congresswoman Samantha Strader made this observation in a clear voice. She had the ability, honed through the years, to make herself heard in crowds. The babble died abruptly. A few people tittered nervously.

Strader had buttonholed the secretary of state, who had reached the command module just moments before Jake arrived. He was huddled with the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Strader was the senior minority member of the House SuperAegis subcommittee, which was why she was here. She was the administration's most vociferous critic of SuperAegis and had used that issue to catapult herself to national prominence. In fact, in some quarters she was seen as presidential timber. If she made a splash in the primaries, she certainly had a shot at the vice-presidential nomination.

“Man, she ought to love SuperAegis,” Tarkington whispered. He had followed Jake up the ladder with the international liaison team in tow. “Got her on the cover of
Time
magazine last week.”

Jake didn't hear the secretary's retort, but he heard Strader's riposte. “… should be issuing hara-kiri knives to you gentlemen, in the event this bottle rocket goes in the water. After squandering fifty billion on it, hara-kiri is the least you could do for your country.”

The secretary had had enough of Sam Strader. “I'd be delighted to do the dirty deed on those terms, Ms. Strader,” he said loudly, “if you'll promise to use the knife if SuperAegis works as advertised.”

The public address system buzzed to life, ending the bantering with an order for all personnel on the Goddard platform to enter the command module. “Ten minutes and counting,” the announcement ended.

The launch technicians sat at computer consoles butted against each other, all in a row, against the forward bulkhead. A second row of consoles sat behind the first, also oriented toward the windows. This arrangement allowed the controllers to peek through the bombproof portholes at the waiting rocket if they could somehow tear their eyes from their computer screens. Few, if any, did. The technicians wore headsets and concentrated fiercely on the screens before them.

Walking behind the technicians and looking over their shoulders were the scientists and engineers who designed and supervised the construction of SuperAegis. This launch was the culmination of years of effort, a lifetime of study and theorizing for most of these men and women.

They reminded Jake Grafton of expectant parents, chewing fingernails, strolling aimlessly, lost in their own thoughts. Here and there one of them would pause to study a computer monitor, then move on, apparently reassured.

At five minutes to go, all conversation behind the consoles stopped. The audience stood silently, watching.

Jake glanced at Strader, who was watching the proceedings with rapt attention.

The launch director's name was Stephen Gattsuo. He reminded Jake of an orchestra conductor, and in many ways he was. Grafton and the liaison team had attended many practice countdowns, so many that the admiral felt he could have written the launch order and got it pretty close. If anything, the real countdown was going much smoother than the practice sessions, which were full of emergencies and every malfunction the fertile brains of the engineers could conjure up.

A minor electrical problem delayed the countdown for several seconds, perhaps twenty, but the technicians rerouted data around the malfunctioning distribution bus so smoothly most of the observers didn't know there had been a problem.

Tick by tick, the clock worked down. All conversation ceased among the spectators.

Ignition!

With a roar that was awe-inspiring, the first-stage rocket engines ignited. For only a moment was the beast still chained, then it began to rise. Through the bombproof windows only white-hot fire could be seen, so everyone not staring at a computer screen looked at a monitor.

Slowly, majestically, the rocket rose on a pillar of fire, perceptibly accelerating.

As the intensity of the noise began to diminish, the view on the monitors became an upward look at the dazzling exhaust plume of the rising rocket.

Jake Grafton realized he had been holding his breath. His skin tingled. He exhaled, then forced himself to breathe regularly as the rocket slowly shrank to a dot of brilliant flame on the monitors.

Now he was aware of the controllers' voices, talking to chase pilots, talking to each other, talking to tracking stations downrange. He clearly heard the first hint of trouble. “Bahamas tracking has gone off the air, apparently power failure.”

He was watching the monitor when he saw the flash that meant the first stage had expended its fuel and dropped away as the second stage ignited.

The exhaust was a white-hot star in the monitors, low on the horizon, high in the atmosphere, accelerating.…

“Azores tracking is down. We are the only station with contact, and we're going to lose it in twenty-five seconds.”

“Missile is changing course! Two, three, four degrees left … six, eight…”

Jake glanced at Gattsuo, the launch director, who stood like a statue staring at the monitor, listening to the reports. The missile should
not
be changing course. With a nuclear reactor aboard the satellite, the United States could not afford, ethically or politically, for the missile to wander off course and crash wherever, contaminating the crash site for thousands of years. On the other hand, if the missile managed to place the SuperAegis satellite in orbit, perhaps the orbit could be successfully altered later, saving the mission and the billions of dollars involved. Gattsuo was the man on the spot; the decision to destroy the missile his to make.

“Second-stage burnout in five seconds … four … three … two …

The star in the center of the monitors that was the second-stage exhaust winked out. Leaving … nothing!

“Third stage has failed to ignite,” the male voice on the PA system intoned flatly. “Missile seventeen degrees off course. We'll lose contact in nine seconds … eight…”

As the seconds passed, Gattsuo's face reflected his agony.

“Self-destruct,” he ordered. “Destroy it.”

Nothing on the monitor. No flash, nothing.

“Three … two … one … radar contact lost!”

In the crowded launch module dead silence reigned. It was broken finally when Stephen Gattsuo said disgustedly, “Shit!”

In the seconds that followed that comment, Jake Grafton distinctly heard a strident feminine voice ask, “Where's the knife?”

*   *   *

In the hours that followed, a parade of helicopters ferried the VIPs off the Goddard platform. They were a subdued lot, even Congresswoman Sam Strader, who knew better than to gloat. As they filed up onto the helo platform and stared at the empty place where the rocket had been, they even ignored each other. It was as if they had witnessed something obscene and were ashamed they had been there.

Jake Grafton and the liaison team remained behind. As the hours passed, the tracking stations came back on the air one by one, but no one could explain why the stations had all experienced power failures at the most inopportune time. “The odds are a billion to one that all the stations would lose power at the same time, and by God it happened!” exclaimed Gattsuo and smashed the flat of his hand against a bulkhead.

“Or someone made it happen,” Toad Tarkington muttered.

“Why did the rocket go off course?” Jake Grafton asked the launch director.

“We don't know that it did.”

“It sounded to me like it was wandering around.”

Gattsuo had other things on his mind. “Maybe it drifted a little off course,” he said distractedly. “We'll study the data.”

“Why didn't the third-stage engines ignite?”

“We don't know.”

“Did it self-destruct or didn't it?”

“We don't know.”

“If it didn't self-destruct, where did the third stage—and the satellite—come down?”

“Goddamn it, Admiral,
we don't know!
”

Three days later when Jake and the liaison team finally went ashore, none of those questions had been answered. The SuperAegis killer satellite was lost.

CHAPTER ONE

A small band played lively Sousa marches as USS
America,
America's newest nuclear-powered attack submarine, prepared to get under way on its first operational cruise. The raucous crowd on the pier was in a holiday mood that balmy September Saturday morning. As seagulls skimmed over the heads of the happy onlookers, the band swung into a heartfelt rendition of “Anchors Aweigh.” The line handlers on
America
's deck threw the last of the lines to the sailors on the pier, severing the connection between the sub and the land.

The sailors in white uniforms standing on the small, flat, nonskid surface atop the curved hull were going to sea for three months. As the gulls cried and the music floated away on the sea breeze, they took their last fond look at America—wives and kids and girlfriends and scores of navy officers high and low, miles of gold braid, and despite the early hour, barely eight
A.M
., dozens of civilian dignitaries up to and including an undersecretary of defense and the secretary of the navy. The congressional delegation from Connecticut was there—the boat had been constructed at Electric Boat—and of course various other senators and congresspeople high and low, those who were on defense committees in their respective houses and those who merely wanted to be seen on the evening news back home. Most of the political people even had a pithy sound bite ready if they were lucky enough to have a microphone thrust at them.

As the distance between the sub and pier widened, sailors blew their families kisses and everyone waved. When the last notes of “Anchors Aweigh” drifted off on the breeze, the band began playing “The Navy Hymn.” Many of those on the pier and the sub's deck swabbed moisture from their eyes.

“Oh, hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea,” the skipper of the sub sang under his breath as he watched the pier slide aft.

“What a day!” the officer of the deck said, glancing at the wispy cirrus high above in the cerulean sky. This morning the sea breeze was light, just enough to roughen the surface of the water and make the sun's reflection on the swells twinkle wildly, as if the sunlight were reflecting off diamonds. Gulls hovered almost within arm's reach of the sail, begging for a handout.

America
's commanding officer, Commander Leonard Sterrett, was shoulder-to-shoulder with the officer of the deck and two lookouts in the tiny, cramped bridge atop the sail. A temporary safety railing had been rigged around the bridge, but it would be removed and stowed before the boat dived. A hatch would then be lifted hydraulically into place to seal the opening.

The tug pulling the sub away from the pier seemed to be pulling effortlessly, with little white water from her screw.

With the band still playing, Captain Sterrett ordered everyone except the watch team on the bridge to go below. Time to say good-bye to earth and sky and families and get about the serious business of taking a brand-new, state-of-the-art attack submarine on patrol for the very first time.

Leonard Sterrett had been eagerly anticipating this day from the moment he had been told, three years ago, that he was to be
America
's first commanding officer. He had been working to earn a submarine command since that summer day twenty-three years ago when he walked through the gate at the Naval Academy in Annapolis to begin his plebe summer. Now he had it. The responsibility for a capital ship worth two billion dollars manned by 134 men was all his.