America (20 page)

The briefer listed the U.S. Navy's available antisubmarine assets, including attack submarines, and showed their locations, whether or not they were ready for sea, how long it would be before they sailed. She discussed SOSUS arrays, P-3 patrol plane antisubmarine patrols, then national assets such as satellites with radar and infrared sensors, etc.

Finally the briefer showed the location of all known submarines of other nations, including two Russians. Seated beside Jake Grafton, Janos Ilin didn't turn a hair when his nation's submarines were pinpointed as if the coordinates had been published in the morning newspaper.

The Joint Chiefs interrupted the briefer to hold a discussion among themselves about a destroyer about to enter the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Could the maintenance be postponed and the ship sent to sea to join a task group?

“Can the satellites see a mast if
America
sticks it up above the surface?” Flap Le Beau asked.

“Yes, sir. If a mast is run up with the submarine at speed in daylight, with no cloud cover.”

“At night? Under a squall?”

“Yes and no, sir. Sea surveillance radars would be more likely to pick it up from space in real time.”

“Stuffy, don't they have to stick that thing up occasionally to update the inertial?” General Alt asked that question.

“For ordinary navigation, no,” Stalnaker replied. “A wise man would want an update before he launched Tomahawks, so he would run up the communications mast. An update might take from one to two minutes. Most of the time would be taken up with the system locating the satellites.”

“If they do launch a Tomahawk, will we pick the missile up on radar as it comes out of the water?”

“Uh, no, sir. Not unless a task group is close.”

“Airborne surface search? Will they see it?”

“Perhaps.”

“A satellite?”

“Sir, it would depend on the sensor and the satellite location. Perhaps is the only possible answer.”

“How long until we hear of it?”

“After a launch is detected, a few minutes, sir.”

“Okay, with a Tomahawk in the air, flying toward the Goddard launch platform or Yankee Stadium, what are our options?”

The air force was not sanguine. Although Tomahawk was subsonic, it was small and flew low. It would be difficult to intercept and difficult to kill.

“We need to get some destroyers around the Goddard platform, with orders to shoot down anything incoming.” The Joint Chiefs discussed that, how long it would take for three destroyers to get into position. Twenty-two hours, they were told.

“How about antimissile defense of Washington, New York, Philly? Can we get Patriot batteries into position to provide some protection?” The chairman asked that.

“Won't do any good,” the army chief of staff said disgustedly. “Patriot can't engage a target that flies that low.”

The four-stars discussed it. There was a PR issue here—the public needed to see the military doing
something.
It turned out that staff had already given the order. The first batteries around Washington would be in place within six hours. Everything available would be in position within twenty-four hours, but there weren't enough batteries to cover all possible approach directions. Staff was assessing where the batteries could be placed to have the greatest likelihood of intercepting.

And so the briefing went, detail by detail, for over an hour.

When it was over, Jake Grafton huddled with Flap Le Beau while Toad escorted the liaison officers back across the parking lot toward Crystal City.

After Jake had told Flap all he had learned since he had seen him last, he remarked, “I would still like to know why the
Paul Jones
was not authorized to sink
America
while she was still on the surface in Long Island Sound.”

“That decision was reached at the White House, not here in the Pentagon.”

“Were any of the Joint Chiefs there?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Sir, I'd like to see the transcript. I know it will be classified to the hilt, but I would like to see it before Congress gets involved and lays their hot little hands on it. And that is going to happen. There is no way on earth that the White House can cork this volcano.”

“You want to go look at that transcript this evening?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'll call over there, see what I can do. Keep me advised.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

*   *   *

The submarine rose slowly from the depths. Almost all of the small crew were in the control room, watching silently as Turchak conned the boat and Kolnikov walked back and forth, taking it all in. They were drinking coffee and the U.S. Navy's orange bug juice—Kool-Aid. They had earned the drinks—that afternoon ten of them had loaded all four of the torpedo tubes and run all the electronic checks to ensure that the weapons were ready. Just in case.

Now Eck was on the sonar, and Leon Rothberg, the American, was at the weapons control console. As usual, Boldt was at the main systems panel. Kolnikov was pacing and smoking, slowly and deliberately.

Eck had streamed the towed array over an hour ago to help clarify the sonar picture as the submarine rose through the thermal layers. The computer-derived pictures of the world on the other side of the steel bulkheads and ballast tanks mesmerized the crew, whose eyes were drawn to that hazy, indistinct horizon. If there were a ship out there, that is where it would be, at the sonar horizon or just beyond.

Kolnikov ignored the horizon. He looked below it, into the depths, trying to see into the constantly changing, swirling darkness. He was looking for submarines. If an American attack boat was hunting
America,
it would be hidden in the depths, listening.

Nothing. He saw nothing.

“Airplanes, Eck?”

“There is a jet running high and fading. Nothing close.”

After dark, with the ship running at three knots and stabilized just below the surface, Turchak raised the electronic support measures (ESM) mast. The antennas on the mast were designed to detect radar energy across a wide spectrum of frequencies. Kolnikov and Turchak studied the signals detected by the ESM computer, looked at the relative strengths of the signals, warily eyed the computer's estimate of ranges. Nothing seemed close.

Kolnikov pulled down the ESM mast and ran up the com one. A receiver on this mast would update the global positioning system, or GPS, which would in turn update the ship's inertial navigation system, or SINS, and the inertial navigation systems in the Tomahawks waiting in their vertical launching tubes.

An accurate position was essential for firing the Tomahawk missiles, which lacked terminal homing guidance. As originally designed, the missile flew to a point in space guided by its onboard inertial system, which used terrain-following radar to provide updates from prominent landmarks on the missile's flight path. The latest versions of Tomahawk, which were carried in
America,
also used GPS to update the onboard inertial, if GPS signals were available, but still the missiles lacked terminal homing systems, which were in the research phase but had been delayed in the 1990s for budgetary reasons. While the missiles still could not be guided into perfect bull's-eyes, neither could they be jammed or defeated by decoys in the final stages of their flight.

Rothberg had spent hours at the universal targeting console planning the route of flight of each of the three missiles Kolnikov wished to launch, looking for prominent way points that the missile's sensors could detect and use to update the inertial. The seven-hundred-fifty-pound warheads of conventional high explosives would be totally wasted if the missiles missed their targets by more than fifty feet. Incredibly, the missiles usually flew to within ten feet of the designated aiming position, the target, after flights of up to one thousand nautical miles.

This level of accuracy was absolutely extraordinary, Kolnikov thought as he savored the smoke of his unfiltered Pall Mall cigarette. The quality control and precision manufacturing required to achieve those tolerances in a mass-production weapons system would never have been attempted in Russia. Only in America, he thought. Only there.

The sea and sky were empty in every direction.

“Have you got your GPS update?” Kolnikov growled at Turchak.

“Yes, sir.” At least he sounded professional.

“Rothberg?”

“I am ready. Anytime.”

“Depth of water?”

“About seventeen thousand feet, Captain,” Turchak said.

“Eck, reel in the towed array. Report it stowed.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“We will launch our three missiles one at a time, one after another, expeditiously. Then we shall turn to a heading of one two zero magnetic and dive to fifteen hundred feet. We shall proceed at twelve knots on that course until just before dawn, when we will slow and rise so that we can raise the mast, receive some American commercial broadcasts. Any questions?”

“What if we encounter American antisubmarine forces? Will we defend ourselves?”

“We will evade. Any more questions?”

There were none.

“Let's run up the photonics mast for a quick squint, just for the fun of it.”

The sensor head was raised above the surface of the sea for about ten seconds, just long enough for the visual light sensor to make one complete circuit of the horizon and the sky, then it was lowered.

Now Kolnikov and his crew began the leisurely study of the images projected by the computer on one of the bulkhead-mounted flat displays. They found themselves staring at what appeared to be a television picture of the ocean's surface. With the camera in low-light operating mode, the picture looked as if it were daylight above their heads. Boldt slowly rotated the image in a 360-degree circle, then tilted it so the control room watchers could see straight up. No stars visible under the overcast, Kolnikov noted, then told Boldt to again run the image by, only this time much slower. “Enhance it, let us see if there are any boats or ships on the horizon,” he added.

Nothing. The surface of the sea was empty, just as Revelation said.

Thirty-five minutes passed before Eck reported the array in and stowed. During that time the men drank coffee, water, and the U.S. Navy's ubiquitous orange bug juice and whispered among themselves. The tension grew with each passing minute.

And was released when Kolnikov said, “Let us begin. Rothberg, the countdown checklist, if you please.” He eyed the clock and the ship's position on the tactical display. The old technology in Tomahawk required that the time of flight to each navigation checkpoint on the route be programmed in before launch, which meant that the missiles had to be launched from precise prechosen locations, so the distance and time would work out properly.

As Rothberg worked the checklist aloud, Kolnikov told Turchak to slow one knot.

Fifteen minutes later the outer door of the first vertical launching tube selected was opened hydraulically. A cap over the missile kept the seawater from reaching it. Seconds later, the encapsulated missile was ejected from its launch tube in a welter of compressed air that generated a subsurface noise that could be heard for a thousand miles. As the missile reached the surface, the booster rocket fired. Seconds later, when the missile's velocity was well over a hundred knots, the turbojet engine lit off, and the first Tomahawk was on its way.

A minute later
America
launched a second missile, and a minute after that, a third. When all three birds were in the air, Kolnikov had Turchak turn the submarine to the 120-degree heading and began a descent. The power lever by the helmsman was full forward now, asking the engineering plant computer for full power. The submarine accelerated with surprising rapidity. When it reached fifteen hundred feet below the surface, Kolnikov would push the boat hard for a half hour to clear the area, then decelerate to twelve knots. He would like to go faster, but the Americans would be closing and he worried about the noise.

After he shooed the spectators from the control room, Kolnikov checked his watch, carefully scanned the sonar displays, then lit another cigarette.

*   *   *

The secure telephone rang in the Pentagon E-Ring office of the chief of naval operations, Admiral Stalnaker. Despite the hour, he was still there, working on a summary of the weekend's events that the president had requested. He picked up the telephone.

“Sir, Space Command reports that a satellite picked up the launch of a missile in the North Atlantic about one minute ago. Apparently a cruise missile.”

“Where?”

“From the coordinates, the location appears to be about four hundred miles east of Ocean City, Maryland.”

“What are our nearest assets?”

“A patrol plane can be over the area in fifteen minutes. We have an attack submarine two hours away and an ASW destroyer four hours away.”

“Keep me advised.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The telephone rang twice more, at two-minute intervals. After the third missile launching, the telephone stopped ringing, but Stalnaker couldn't concentrate on his writing. As he waited for the telephone to ring again he went to the window and looked at the lights of Washington glittering in the velvet night.

His days as CNO were numbered, Stalnaker reflected. Within a few days, a week or two at the most, the president would ask him to file retirement papers, and of course he would have to do it. A stolen submarine, missiles raining down on America … It was conceivable that a board of inquiry might someday say he was derelict in his duties. No wonder captains often elected to go down with their ships.

He shouldn't be thinking of himself and his career at a moment like this, but hell—he was only human. Damnation! That all those years of work and sweat and achievement should have to come to
this!

The silence was oppressive.