America (39 page)

“I didn't know you prayed,” Turchak muttered, and wiped his hands on his trousers.

*   *   *

“SUBLANT says to go in,” the TACCO told Duke Dolan. “And we have explosions. Breakup noises.”

Duke Dolan turned his attention to the autopilot. He studied it carefully, gingerly turned the heading control to bring the big plane out of its turn and steady on the proper heading. Then he retarded the throttles and lowered the nose several degrees.

He did everything slowly, trying to concentrate, trying to block out the thought of dying men.

To die on such a day.

God forgive us.

*   *   *

“I can hear torpedoes running,” Eck said as he worked feverishly to get accurate bearings. Kolnikov could hear them too through the sonar headset he was wearing, but mainly he was listening to the sounds of
La Jolla
being crushed. The noises had about stopped. There was nothing left to crush as the wreckage sank slowly toward the ocean's floor, here about sixteen thousand feet below the surface.

More torpedoes were running. Life or death?

The deciding factor, Kolnikov hoped, would be the antitorpedo countermeasures.
America
's were two technological generations beyond the countermeasures in the
Los Angeles
–class boats.
Seawolf
was the generation between them. If he encountered
Seawolf
he would shoot fast and first.

Perhaps he should not have fired at the
Springs.
The other boat might have been unable to resolve a firing solution.

Well, it was done. Perhaps the
Springs
would successfully evade and he could slip away.

Or perhaps he and Turchak and Eck and all the others would die right here in just a few minutes when the torpedoes arrived.

Kolnikov didn't really believe in God, not as He was depicted by organized religions. He believed that there was
something
bigger than man, bigger than life, but he didn't know what. He hadn't thought about it much, either. He would learn all the answers soon enough.

He could hear the incoming torpedoes now, pick them out of the background noise … part of which was the
Springs
's noisemakers and bubble generators. The devil of it was that he couldn't tell how far away they were. He glanced at the clock.

Eleven minutes had passed. Running time should be a bit over nineteen if the
Springs
had fired at a target with a known range. Probably she hadn't. The Mk-48 torpedo was probably cruising at forty knots, searching as it came. That would make the running time … what? He tried to do the mental arithmetic and couldn't. He did it on a piece of paper lying nearby.

Nineteen minutes, forty seconds.

Twelve minutes gone …

Heydrich was sitting negligently in one of the chairs at an unused sonar console. He was watching Eck, the Revelation displays, Boldt, and Kolnikov. Just taking it all in, like a man whiling away the remainder of a lunch hour.

Kolnikov felt a rush of anger. He turned his back on Heydrich so he wouldn't have to look at him.

Thirteen minutes …

Boldt was chewing his fingernails, tearing at them. Sweat ran in rivulets down the cheeks of Georgi Turchak; the few remaining strands of hair on top of his head were sodden. He had the boat under perfect control, right at twenty knots, which was about as fast as the boat would go and still remain reasonably quiet. Eck was working like a madman at the sonar control panel, resolving the bearing, tweaking it, ensuring that the information was being fed to the computer-driven tactical plot. And Leon Rothberg, the American? He was staring listlessly at the bulkhead, his eyes apparently unfocused. Perhaps he was the only sane one among them.

Kolnikov studied the tactical plot. The torpedoes were curving in behind in a tail chase, one trailing the other. Alas, he had not managed to get outside their acquisition zone.

“Ten degrees left rudder, Turchak … Little more rudder … A little nose down, a few more turns … Boldt, fire off the hull transducers, let's see if we can make the torpedoes pass behind.”

He looked up from the tactical plot to the Revelation screen on the port side. There was the first torpedo, a luminous streak curving in, growing larger, closing … And the second, well behind, following the first. The distinctive high-pitched noise of their seekers squealed in his earphones; on the Revelation screen it looked as if the incoming torpedoes were sporting a single headlight each.

Should he launch an antitorpedo torpedo? Both of them?

“Full left rudder, Turchak. Wrap it up tight.”

At these grazing angles, the hull-mounted active acoustic countermeasure should be effective—the antitorpedo weapon probably would be the best choice for a torpedo coming in on the beam. Might get one of those tomorrow, he thought. Or in an hour.

Closer and closer came the rushing torpedo … and at the last instant turned to go behind the ship. He turned and saw it going away on the after starboard screen.

Back to port. One to go.

Racing in, tighter than the last one.

“Give me all the turn that's in her,” he roared at Turchak, who tilted the boat with the planes. Kolnikov had to grab something to keep from sliding on the deck.

As the second torpedo streaked past, he heard Rothberg sobbing again.

“Right full rudder,” Kolnikov commanded. “Take her down to sixteen hundred feet, put the
Springs
dead astern, and run like hell.”

After the boat rolled out of the turn with her bow down, Heydrich rose from his chair and stretched. “That was certainly an education. You are very good at this, Kolnikov. Very good.” Then he walked out of the compartment and went down the ladder to the galley.

*   *   *

Aboard
Colorado Springs,
the crew deployed decoys to build an acoustic wall between the incoming torpedo and the sub. Without a human brain to help it find a way through or around the decoy, the first torpedo picked out the strongest signal and went for it. Unfortunately that signal was well above and left of the submarine, and once it had missed, the torpedo ran on, vainly searching for a target.

It was only when the noise from the decoys began subsiding that the crew heard the second incoming torpedo, which had been fired several minutes after the first.

They put noisemakers in the water, but a bit too late. The torpedo struck the upper starboard tail plane a glancing blow and detonated. The force of the blast did not hole the pressure hull, but it blew the seals in the main propeller shaft and actually bent one of the blades. It also made a mess of the upper starboard tail plane.

When it became obvious that there were no more torpedoes inbound, the leaking, vibrating shaft convinced the captain the time had come to get to the surface. As quickly as he could. He gave the order to blow the tanks, emergency surface, and the submarine began to rise from the depths. Under control, still intact, but in no shape to hunt further for a stolen
America.

*   *   *

SUBLANT called Vice-Admiral Navarre in the Pentagon war room. He was standing there with the CNO, Stuffy Stalnaker, going over the tactical situation, figuring out what ships were where, what could be done with them.

“Torpedoes were fired, at least four. One submarine was hit and sunk. Another was hit and damaged and began an emergency surface maneuver. That is the evaluation of the P-3 TACCO from the sounds on his sonobuoy. We don't know which subs were hit.”

“Can SOSUS confirm?”

“We are working on that now, sir. I'll have more in a few minutes.”

“Keep us advised,” Navarre said and hung up the phone. He turned away from the CNO for a moment to try to get his face under control, then faced the man and relayed the news.

“I hope to Christ one of those torpedoes hit
America,
” Stalnaker said hopefully. From the look on Navarre's face, he could see the submariner didn't think that likely.

A half hour later they heard that Duke Dolan's P-3 was overhead the sub that managed to surface. Dolan said she was a
Los Angeles
–class boat. The sub was wallowing on the surface, down at the stern, unable to make way.

Two minutes later the admirals in the Pentagon learned that she was
Colorado Springs.
She was soon on the air, radioing a report of the action.

As the messages came in, it became obvious that the boat that had gone down was
La Jolla. America
had escaped.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jake Grafton and Janos Ilin waited impatiently for darkness to fall. They walked around inside the house they had entered as refuge from the gunmen who pursued them, glanced out of windows, paused to scan with the binoculars Ilin had found in the den, looked at the family albums and knickknacks, talked of inconsequential things.

Several times Jake flipped on the television to learn of the extent of the damage in New York City. The talking heads quickly informed him that billions of dollars in damage had occurred, an unknown number of lives had been lost, and private citizens and the authorities were trying to determine the extent of the catastrophe. Of course the politicians were making promises: aid, investigations, prosecutions, and punishment. General Alt also appeared for a sound bite, promising to find the stolen submarine in short order. How that was going to happen, he didn't say. He also didn't mention the fact that the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Flap Le Beau, had been given orders to find that sub by the president himself, who was more than a little put out with the navy.

Depressed, Jake could listen for no more than a few minutes before he turned off the idiot box.

“They are out there,” Ilin said gloomily, peering between drapes at the great outdoors, lawn and trees and sky. “They'll set up a roadblock.”

“You saw that on a television show.”

“We do roadblocks in Russia. A roadblock on a lonely road, then the car and the bodies go into a hole in the ground. The permanent disappearance, neat and tidy, with no witnesses, no evidence, and no bodies to wail over. People are left to speculate over the sins of the decedents and their fate. Stalin raised it to an art form.”

When the last of the twilight had faded and he couldn't see the trees through the binoculars, Jake led the way to the garage. He used a shovel to break the lightbulbs in the automatic door openers, then turned off the light in the garage and engaged the truck's starter. It had been sitting there awhile and didn't want to start, although it cranked strongly.

After a bad moment the engine came to life.

Unfortunately the truck was parked with its tail to the door, so the backup lights would illuminate as he backed out of the garage. With the engine running, he turned on the truck's lights, then got out of the vehicle and used a hammer from the workbench on the backup lights. The taillights remained lit.

He tossed the hammer on the floor and climbed back into the vehicle, buckled his seat belt. Ilin had already done so. Ilin's shotgun was in his hands; Jake's was wedged beside him with the muzzle pointing down. He turned off the truck's lights and pulled the lever that put the vehicle in four-wheel drive, felt the small thunk of the transmission going in.

Now he pushed the remote opener that was tucked into a drink holder. As the door rose, both men rolled down their windows.

“Ready?” he asked, looking out his window, trying to see the lower edge of the rising door.

“Go.”

He backed out carefully, turned the truck, then started down the drive. As soon as he cleared the retaining wall around the house, he turned hard right up onto the lawn. The truck's front tires spun on the sod, then gripped hard.

He could barely see what lay before him.

Hell, they're probably watching with night-vision goggles. They must hear the engine!
He flipped on the headlights.

Around the house he went, trying to avoid the shrubbery, running over several bushes anyway.

“How are you going?” Ilin asked.

“Same way we came in. We'll go through the fences, see if we can get to the interstate.”

They made it to the woods without any shots being fired. Finding the gate and the path through the forest took some backing up and swerving to scan with the headlights.

When he saw the gate, he gunned the truck, rammed the posts, knocking them over. They went along the path at about the speed a man could jog, knocking over saplings and being raked by low-hanging branches. Once a tree intervened, so Jake stopped, backed up, and maneuvered around it.

They couldn't find the spot where they had climbed the ridge, and the hillside was covered with trees anyway, so Jake stayed on the path, which was little more than a seasonal hiking trail.

He had gone at least a mile and a half when they came to a dirt road. Jake turned left, heading westward, parallel to the interstate, he hoped.

“This is probably our host's driveway,” he muttered. “That'd be just our luck.”

The road descended slightly. When they reached the bottom of the grade, the trees ended and they had a pasture on their left. They could see the headlights of the interstate beyond it.

“Are you game? Through the pasture?”

“Yes,” Ilin said. He was gripping the handle on the door-jamb tightly with his right hand and the shotgun with his left.

Jake turned hard, jumping the truck over the little embankment that lined the road. He rammed a post in the barbed-wire fence and kept going.

Thumps and scraping sounds. “We're dragging half that fence with us,” he told Ilin.

On the other side of the pasture was another fence, which he rammed. The truck nosed over sickeningly toward the ditch that separated the highway from the farm.

Desperate, afraid he was going to bury the nose of the truck in the ditch, Jake swerved right violently. The left front wheel went into the soft ditch bottom, and he floored the accelerator.