America

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington met two dazed Secret Service agents inside the door.

"What the hell happened?" one of them shouted over the raucous blaring of the fire alarm.

"A missile hit the upper story and set it on fire," Jake replied. "Let's check if there is anyone up there injured."

He and Toad were running up the main staircase in the White House when a light flashed in the sky. Each man felt a transitory jolt of energy, as if he had inadvertently touched a hot spark plug just for an instant. Simultaneously, every light in the building went out and the siren died abruptly.

"What was that?" the first agent asked.

"Transformer somewhere blew out," the other one called. "Let's check for people." The words were barely out of his mouth when the dull boom of an explosion echoed faintly through the building.

"Flashlight!" Toad said bitterly. "Kolnikov fired a Tomahawk with a Flashlight warhead."

Flashlight was a highly classified warhead, an electromagnetic bomb, or explosive flux generator, mounted on the nose of a Tomahawk. When the warhead detonated a few hundred feet over a city, the explosion generated an intense electromagnetic current in the coil that surrounded the explosive. In the tenth of a microsecond before the explosion ripped the warhead apart, the energy wave was directed into an antenna and broadcast. A trillion watts of microwave energy raced away at the speed of light to fry every electronic circuit they hit, which was all of them. Electrical power switches, telephone switches, the chips in computers, cars, toys, calculators, servers… everything! In a fraction of an eyeblink, 150 years of technical progress were wiped out for several miles from the epicenter of the explosion.

As he ran up the staircase in the unnatural silence, Jake Grafton faintly heard the engines of an airplane moaning in the darkness. "Oh, my God!" he whispered.

Victor Pappas was the captain of an Airbus A-321 on final into Reagan National, flying past the Lincoln Memorial, right down the river, when the E-bomb detonated a few hundred yards from his right wingtip.

Everything in the cockpit went black. At first he thought he was flash blind, and he blinked mightily, trying to clear his eyes. He knew exactly what had happened — lightning!

Then he realized that the city below him was dark, coal black. Even the airport. Everything had disappeared!

"Jesus," he said into the mike at his lips, but it too was dead, without the usual feedback tone that told him it was working.

This is more than just a power failure!

He keyed the radio mike. No sound at all in his headset.

The moon was still there, the stars. He could see the reflection of the night sky on the Potomac, see the empty area that must be the airport….

To land without lights at a blacked-out airport is crazy! What has happened?

The copilot was shouting in his ear. Something about the generators. He reached for the emergency generator and deployed it, a little wind-powered device that popped up from a wing root into the slipstream. He had never in his career had to deploy one before now — only in the crazy emergencies of the simulator — but he had never before had a complete, total electrical failure. The entire glass cockpit was dead… even the goddamn batteries had bit the big one.

But the emergency generator didn't pick up any of the load.

Holy…!

Time to add power, get the hell out of here, and figure this shit out over an airport with lights!

That decision made, he pushed the power levers forward and pulled back ever so slightly on the control yoke. And got the shock of a lifetime.

Nothing. No response.

This isn't happening! Not to me, not with 183 people on board! Please, God, not this!

He pushed the yoke forward a smidgen, reduced power. Nothing. The engines were still running — he would have felt it had he lost one — but the inputs to the controls had absolutely no effect.

Ten seconds had passed since the flash, no more than that.

A total power failure, he thought, one chance in a zillion and by damn it's happening! That flash must have been lightning — it must have fried everything in this plane! The computers are cooked. Lightning! The plane is fly-by-wire, with computers that move the flight controls, that regulate fuel flow to the engines, that—

The plane began a slow roll to the left. A few degrees a second. Victor Pappas felt the plane roll, saw the moon and night sky and barely visible river move. Without conscious thought he twisted on the yoke, turned it to the right and pulled back slightly, trying to counter the nose-down drift that instinct told him was coming.

Oh, Jesus, there it was, the nose was dropping… twenty degrees angle of bank, turning toward the Anacostia Naval Station.. the nose dropping…

He slammed the throttles full forward. Nothing.

In slow motion the airliner continued to roll, the nose dropping toward the Earth. Behind him someone screamed.

Victor Pappas released the controls. One hundred and eighty-three people! He closed his eyes and began praying.

The airliner had reached ninety degrees of bank, thirty degrees nose down, when it slammed into the Earth.

At D.C. General Hospital, Dr. Apollo Ice had two patients on ventilators. One of them, an eighteen-year-old male, had been shot in the head earlier in the evening during a gang-related fracas outside a district bar. The other, a fourteen-year-old girl, had taken thirty sleeping tablets, all that remained in a bottle containing a prescription for her mother, after her first boyfriend told her she was ugly and he didn't want to be her boyfriend anymore.

Dr. Ice was in the ventilator room checking his patients when the power failed. He stood in the darkness waiting for the emergency generator to kick in. As the seconds passed, he counted.

When his count reached ten seconds he knew he had a decision to make. He didn't know why the emergency generator hadn't come on-line, supplying power — he didn't know that the switches in the circuit were fried — but he knew for an absolute fact that both his patients would die without air, which the machines had been providing.

The girl, he thought. The boy may have permanent brain damage.

He pulled the girl from the ventilator and began artificial respiration. He glanced at his watch. The liquid crystal display read 10:58.

He got into the rhythm, working slowly and steadily, trying for about twelve breaths a minute. After a bit the sweat began dripping off his nose.

Okay, people, let's get the goddamn emergency generator going here. The boy will die in minutes if we don't get juice to his machine. I can do this for only one person.

"Help!" he shouted. Maybe a nurse will hear. "Damn it all to hell, somebody come help me or we're going to lose this kid!"

How long had it been? The boy's brain would begin to die if he didn't receive some oxygen soon.

Apollo Ice looked at his watch. The display still read 10:58. He couldn't believe his eyes. Two or three minutes had passed, at least. He didn't know that the E-bomb's electromagnetic pulse had toasted the watch too.

"Help me," he shouted, unwilling to leave the girl. "Help me, for God's sake, somebody help me."

Moving carefully along the unfamiliar dark hallways, looking for people in the light of burning drapes and smoldering carpet, Jake Grafton found he had his cell phone in his hand. He jabbed the button to turn it on, waited for several seconds for the small display to light up. It didn't. The thing was dead as a rock.

Before his eyes a wall burst into flame. Unless the firefighters got on it quickly, the entire building would soon be involved. Missile warheads were designed to set aluminum and steel warships ablaze— the effect of a direct hit on a large building with a high wood content by a warhead containing 750 pounds of high explosive was awe-inspiring.

Satisfied that he could do nothing here without protective clothing and breathing apparatus, Jake found a window with the glass blown out and leaned out to get some fresh air. Behind him were the sounds of flame consuming everything it could reach, yet over that he could hear another airplane.

When the dull boom of the explosion from the crash of an airliner several miles away reached him, Jake Grafton left the window and made his way along the hallway, opening doors and searching for victims. He shouted over the noise of the fire, the rush of air, and crackling as dry wall and plaster and wood and steel burst into flame.

"Anyone here? Sing out!"

He was coughing when he found someone, a man in civilian clothes on the floor of one room. He heard the groan and found him by feel. Something had fallen from the wall or mantel and knocked the man unconscious. He was coming to now, but Jake grabbed him by the armpits and dragged him off. If they stayed here without protective clothing or breathing apparatus, they were both going to be victims.

Out on the lawn he found other people who had somehow made their way from the building, the entire top story of which was now ablaze. He pulled the man across the drive and put him under a tree, well away from the building. The man was breathing, with a regular heartbeat, when Jake left him.

Jake walked directly away from the burning mansion, toward the Mall. The Washington Monument should have been prominently visible, lit by floodlights, the city alive with lights and the streets with cars, even at this hour. But not a single gleam of light was visible beyond the garish light from the fire behind him. The noise of the fire was the only relief from the silence. There were no fire sirens, no fire trucks, no police sirens, no traffic noise of any kind.

Several of the people behind him were sobbing. He could see shadowy figures running across the driveway and lawn near the south entrance to the building… and from here and there, shouts, calls, curses. .

Jake heard another airplane, the engines howling. It swept over, apparently descending toward the river. It too crashed in a welter of fire and light, a glow that lit the horizon beyond the trees and buildings. Somewhere near Arlington National Cemetery, Jake thought.

Then he heard that unmistakable sound, a small turbojet engine traveling low and very fast, probably about five hundred knots.

"Another Tomahawk," Toad said in a hoarse whisper. He came up behind Jake.

The missile seemed to cross from left to right, from east to west, directly over the Washington Monument or very near to it. It literally flew down the Mall, over the Capitol, over the Washington Monument, and over the Lincoln Memorial. And that route made sense. All three of those huge man-made objects would make excellent points for position updates as the missile began its final run-in to its target.

"Where is it going?" Toad muttered, speaking more to himself than to his boss.

"West," Jake Grafton replied.

The stench and smoke brought him back to the here and now.

In the darkness the fire in the White House continued to burn. The fire had taken most of the upper stories on this side now. There were people in the driveways flaking out hoses, cursing about water pressure, issuing orders. But of fire trucks, he saw not a one.

"The whole thing is going to go," Jake said under his breath.

Although he waited and waited, he heard no more Tomahawks.

Crossing the Capital Beltway westbound, the last Tomahawk fired that evening from USS America pitched up into a climb. Then it nosed over into its final dive.

The E-warhead in the nose of the missile detonated fifty feet above the roof of the main America On-Line technical facility in Reston, Virginia.

The terawatt of energy just five hundred picoseconds long generated by that warhead burned out every computer chip and switch in all of AOL's servers, routers, and computer banks, one of the largest collections of computer equipment on the planet. Fortunately much of the telephone network that fed this massive complex was fiber optic and unaffected by the energy jolt that passed through it. However, the miles of copper telephone wiring that led to and from the fiber-optic system acted like giant antennas, soaking up energy and frying every electronic switch for miles, switches that had not been zapped by the first E-warhead explosion over the Pentagon.

This warhead effectively destroyed a huge chunk of bandwidth throughout the world. The Internet wasn't dead, but it was severely crippled.

All over Washington, Metro trains coasted to a stop as electrical power ceased to flow. Even if power could have been quickly restored, the computers that directed the operation of the trains were toast. Elevators froze in whatever position they were in, trapping people by the hundreds; escalators stopped; the computers at banks, airlines, travel agencies, and in every hotel in the downtown area died instantly. Hotel doors that were controlled by computer chips could not be unlocked, preventing people from getting into hotel rooms. Every motor vehicle or ignition key that contained a computer chip was inoperable. Radio and television stations were turned off in midsyllable.

In five hundred trillionths of a second the heart of this major city of more than four million people had been reduced to an artifact, unable to sustain human life. Reston was similarly affected. All refrigerators, stoves, ovens, and food storage and preparation machinery, all public and private transportation, all electronic communications devices, all automatic teller machinery were kaput — everything.

From the White House, Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington walked south on Fifteenth Street, across the Mall, toward the Fourteenth Street Bridge that spanned the Potomac. People were rushing in the other direction, toward the flaming White House, which was lighting up the dark city like a bonfire.

The rising moon was just bright enough to reveal the Washington Monument, which stood like a giant Stonehenge megalith against the darker night sky. Off to the south the fire in the wreckage of the Airbus that crashed at Anacostia was dying as the last of the jet fuel was consumed.

An old man stopped them on the Fourteenth Street Bridge. He got in front of them, forced them to stop and address him. Only then did he see their uniforms and looked relieved.

"It's my wife. She needs help. Won't you help me, please?"

The woman was sitting in the passenger seat of the nearest car, staring fixedly at nothing at all. Jake took her wrist, felt for her pulse. There was none.

"She's having a heart attack, I think," the old man said. He was so nervous he trembled. The night wind ruffled his white hair. "Her defibrillator went off. There was this explosion right above us — right over our heads — and the car stopped dead. The engine just quit all of a sudden. Like bang! And she grabbed her chest. The damned defibrillator just whacked the hell out of her for a while, then it stopped."

"How long ago was this?"

"Oh… when the lights went off. I've been talking to her, but she hasn't replied."

"She's dead."

"Dead?"

"Her heart has stopped." Jake replaced the woman's wrist in her lap and closed her eyes. "The defibrillator isn't working. She's gone."

"Dead?" His eyes widened. "My God, she can't be—"

"This happened what? An hour ago? Hour and a quarter?"

Despite himself, the old man nodded affirmatively. "What happened?" he demanded. "What went wrong?"

Jake Grafton didn't know what to say.

The old man thought about it, looked at the dark, silent city, letting it really sink in. Finally he said, "A plane crashed over there." He pointed at Anacostia. "Big plane. Rolled over and dove into the ground. Boom. Just like that… I was telling my wife about it. You can still see some of the flames. No one fought the fire or rescued the people. Anyone who survived the crash and couldn't get away from the plane on his own hook was left to die. It's like no one cares."

"Maybe no one could get there," Jake Grafton said gently, trying to calm the man.

"Our car just up and quit on us. Like everybody else's. They all quit at once. Our Taurus never did that before. . We live in Be-thesda and decided to drive down a while ago to see the city at night. Now.. the lights in the city are off. All of them. My wife's dead. That plane crashed. It's like the world is coming to an end."

"Yes."

"This is America," the man said, grasping Jake fiercely by the arm. "America!"

"Yes," Jake Grafton said again. He used his left hand to gently pry the man's hand away from his arm, grasped and shook it.

Then Jake and Toad walked on across the bridge.

Callie was at the apartment in Rosslyn, across the river from Georgetown. He wondered if she was okay. There was no way to get in touch with her, of course, unless he walked home. Like the old man, he studied the dark, dead city. At least during the nineteenth century the people of Washington had lanterns, candles, and horses, then gaslight.

He stopped in the middle of the bridge and watched the dying flames from what must be the wreckage of the plane that crashed in Anacostia. Unlike gasoline engines in automobiles, which require an ignition pulse for every piston power stroke, jet engines are continuously on fire, so the electromagnetic pulse of the E-bomb warhead would not cause a flameout. It would play havoc with the fly-by-wire flight controls, however, and all the computers that control the airplane's other functions, for example, those that regulate fuel flow. The pilots of the sophisticated modern airliners, Jake Grafton knew, must have lost all control. In a way the vulnerability of the airplanes was a horrible irony: The more modern the jet airplane, the more computers were incorporated into the design to increase the efficiency and maintainability, the more vulnerable the design was to electromagnetic-pulse weapons.

There was a fire in Arlington National Cemetery and another south of the Pentagon. Both, Jake suspected, were crashed airplanes.

Kolnikov. The missing American, Leon Rothberg… they had done this. Presumably for money.

"Money," Jake whispered to himself as he contemplated the dim reflections in the dark water. Or perhaps something else.

Toad broke into his musings. "Wait until the reporters find out the CIA trained those sons of bitches to steal a Russian sub,"

Tarkington said. "Tomorrow morning, I figure. It'll be a feeding frenzy. They're going to rip the president a new asshole."

Jake merely grunted. He was thinking of Callie. He wanted to go home, see her, hold her in his arms. He wasn't going to do that, though, not with that submarine out there. The pirates had fired two Flashlight warheads and had eight more in the launching tubes. And one more conventional explosive warhead — enough to create a great deal of havoc. No, he needed to go to the Pentagon.

Yet try as he might, he couldn't keep his mind on the submarine. As he walked through the darkness of a city under siege, he found himself thinking of his wife.

There were four of them, all Germans. Steeckt seemed to be the unofficial spokesman. Kolnikov was eating when they came into the control room and lined up in front of him. Two hours had passed since the missiles had been launched. They had hit their targets or crashed. The submarine was at fifteen hundred feet, so he wouldn't know until he could once again raise the communications mast and listen to a commercial radio station. That wouldn't be for hours. There were ships up there, and planes. Until then..

"We want to know what is going on, Captain. Why did you launch those missiles?"

"We are being paid. I explained all that." Boldt, he noticed, turned away from his console to look at him.

"You launched one of those missiles at the White House." It was a statement, not a question. Of course Rothberg had whispered to them.

"That is correct." Kolnikov finished scraping his plate with a spoon and laid it on the maneuvering monitor. He turned to face them squarely and looked from face to face. Two of them lowered their eyes.

"You are goading the tiger. We did not bargain for this."

"You think they did not look for this boat after we stole it? That they weren't looking before we fired the missiles? They could not look with more fervor if we threatened to destroy the entire planet. The entire American navy is hunting us."

"But we tell them where we are when we launch a Tomahawk,"

Muller explained. "The satellites see us. We are not somewhere buried deep in the great wide ocean, hopelessly hidden. We are right there, in that one little finite place, right where those missiles leap from the water. Right, precisely, there! And we must run and hide all over again."

Kolnikov nodded.

"How many times can we get away with it, I ask you?"

"Twice more, I think."

"We think once was more than enough. Dead men don't spend money. That is an inarguable fact."

"People who don't take chances don't have money to spend," Kolnikov replied sourly. "I'll try to keep us alive. You have my word on it.

"Do you care if we live or die?" Steeckt asked.

Kolnikov was suddenly at full alert. "We? You four?" he asked softly. "Or just you and me? Precisely what is it you are asking, Steeckt?"

"Who gave you the right to risk our lives? We didn't vote or anything. We don't know what you agreed to."

"You men agreed to sail with me. I told you that it would be dangerous, that all of us might die. I offered you a chance to make some serious money. Every mother's son of you freely agreed to sail with me. You asked to go, worried that the chance would be denied you. Now you stand here whining about the risks. Let there be no mistake, no fuzzy thinking, no sea lawyer talk in the engine room: The lives of all of us — you, me, Turchak there, all of us — are on the line. We are betting everything. We did that Saturday morning when we killed the tugboat crew. We did it again when we fired the first shot at the American sailors on this vessel. And there is no going back. We cannot wipe out a jot of it even if we wanted to. We are totally, completely, absolutely committed. We — all of us. Every swinging dick."

Vladimir Kolnikov paused a moment to let his words sink in while he checked the depth gauge and the compass. Then he continued: "I do not want to see any of you in the control room again unless you obtain my permission before you set foot through the hatchway. This is a ship of war and I am the captain. Those are my rules. Now get back to your duty stations."

Once they determined that there was no electrical power in the Washington metropolitan area, the television professionals quickly solved the problem. Generator trucks were driven into the city from Philadelphia and Baltimore, and broadcasts were sent via satellite elsewhere for rebroadcast.

As Toad had predicted, by the following morning the fact that a CIA crew trained by the U.S. Navy had stolen America and photographs of the still-smoking ruins of the White House were playing all over the planet. Thirty minutes after the crew story broke, the president's staff, operating out of the Old Executive Office Building, confirmed that two Tomahawks armed with electromagnetic warheads had exploded over the Washington area. They refused to confirm the exact locations of the warhead detonations, citing military secrecy, but the press had a field day with maps and experts who narrowed the possibilities down to a few blocks.

As Toad also had predicted, the reporters were in a savage mood. So was the Congress, if the statements of random senators and representatives that were aired were an accurate sample. Accusations and recriminations were tossed back and forth like live hand grenades. Hearings and investigations were promised.

This circus played on television to the rest of the nation; the people in Washington were without power, so they didn't hear it. Within several miles of the trillion-watt supernovas, even battery-operated devices had been rendered inoperative. Since newspapers couldn't be composed or printed, Washingtonians didn't read about the attack either.

The Pentagon was a small oasis of civilization inside the devastated E-bomb desert. During the Cold War the Pentagon's electrical system had been hardened to protect it against the electromagnetic pulse of nuclear detonations. Now emergency generators were supplying power for lights. The telephone system worked within the building, and communications with U.S. military units worldwide were unaffected. However, the personal computers and noncritical mainframes in the building had arrived after the end of the Cold War; no one had thought it critical to harden them — no one wanted to beg for the money from a parsimonious Congress — so they were junk.

The Joint Chiefs were again meeting in the war room when Jake Grafton found Captain Sonny Killbuck at his desk in the outer office of the submarine commander, Vice-Admiral Val Navarre. They were the only two people in the office. "No one else could get in this morning," Killbuck said. "I live far enough south that I could get my car started but decided today would be the traffic day from hell, so I rode my bicycle in."

"How far out do you live?"

"Fifteen miles, sir. Great morning for a ride, but not under these circumstances."

"Yeah," Jake said and pulled a chair around. "Tell me what you know about Cowbell."

"Cowbell?" His voice dropped to a whisper. It was instinct, Jake thought. "Sir, even the code name is so highly classified that it can't be mentioned outside of a secure space."

"In light of the special circumstances, I think we're safe," Jake said dryly. "Cowbell."

"Admiral, that program is very tightly held. Very. Less than two dozen people in the world know about it. As it happens, I am one of the two dozen. I don't think you are, sir."

"I read about Cowbell in the National Security Council transcript of this past Saturday morning," Jake Grafton replied, "when the council was reacting to the theft of America. Regardless of how highly classified this program is, when Congress gets their hands on that transcript, there are going to be a lot more than two dozen people in the know. I'll take the responsibility for any security violation today if you'll answer my question. What is Cowbell?"

Killbuck automatically glanced around at the empty room, then said in a low voice, "It's a beacon. We put one on every submarine after we lost Scorpion. The beacons can be triggered by a coded transmission from the submarine communication system."

"And once activated, the beacon transmits?"

"That's right. Transmits acoustically. Then it's a simple matter of homing in on the transmission to find our submarine."

A homing beacon! If the Russians ever found out… This was the ultimate secret, the knowledge of which would profoundly alter the rules of the game.

"Unbelievable," he whispered.

"Cowbell wasn't a navy idea," Sonny Killbuck said bitterly. "The risks are incalculable. The politicians didn't want any more lost submarines."

Jake Grafton ran a hand through his hair as he considered the implications. If the upper echelons knew where the submarine was, why hadn't they sunk it? What in the world is going on here? After he had taken two deep breaths, he asked, "So where is America now?"

"That's just it, sir. The president didn't order America sunk after she was hijacked because he was told we could find her anytime. We should have been able to, but we can't. We're transmitting, and her Cowbell isn't answering."

The worker bees at Hudson Security Services were glued to the television monitors, in awe of the breaking story. Zelda Hudson and Zipper Vance watched their reactions. If they knew that anyone there had anything to do with the Washington attack, they never let on. Of course, Zelda knew they didn't know, so she didn't pay much attention. Vance was not as sure, so at one point she called him over to her desk and told him to quit watching everyone else.

As bad as the attack on Washington was, the workers' bitterest reactions were directed at the White House, which approved the Blackbeard operation, and the navy, which trained the perfidious bastards. The secretary, Zelda's only nontechnical employee, summed up the mood best. "Who the hell do they think they are, training people to steal submarines? Why, that submarine could blow up the whole East Coast, kill millions of innocent people. My God, people have a right to know!" After stating this opinion, she looked up at the ceiling, almost as if she expected a missile to come crashing through.

So Kolnikov had pulled it off. Zelda was never sure if he would really do it. When she had told him what she wanted, he had just sat staring at her. "You're crazy," he said finally. "We can't get away with it."

"Why not?"

When he didn't reply, she said, "You think the United States Navy is going to look more diligently because you launched missiles?"

"No," he admitted. He didn't think that. After a bit he asked, "Why?"

"For thirty million dollars."

"For you? Or me?"

"You. I'll make a lot more."

Kolnikov laughed then. "You should have been a Russian. You would have fit right in. The people at the very top are stealing the foreign aid, the money the IMF sends, washing it and accumulating vast fortunes and putting those fortunes in their pockets. Communism was nice, with all that crap about everyone being in the same boat, but it didn't make them rich. Now they are getting rich."

"They're trying to catch up all at once."

"Yes," he said.

"So. Will you do it?"

"You don't know what you are asking. Rothberg will be the only man who could program the missiles. They aren't like a rifle, just aim and shoot. It's a bit more complicated."

She resented being talked down to, but she bit her tongue.

"No promises," Kolnikov said finally.

"Thirty million. You can split it up among the crew any way you like."

"Willi Schlegel is not going to like this. The man in Paris wanted a satellite."

"I'll handle Willi."

"If you succeed, you'll be the very first. Rumor has it that three or four others who tried are dead. No one ever found the bodies."

"Willi Schlegel wants something very badly. As long as he thinks he has a chance to get it, he'll behave."

Kolnikov refused to promise anything. He wouldn't even say he would try.

But the missiles flew.

As the CNN talking heads went through the Washington disaster one more time, Zelda thought about Kolnikov. He was hard to fathom. A Russian, willing to fight and risk death in that steel coffin. For money, of course. Dead men can't spend money, though.

Ah, who knew what drove him? Doubtlessly he didn't understand her either.

She was sitting at her desk, staring blankly at the computer screen, when she realized that she had an encrypted message. She called it up, verified the encryption protocol, then decoded it: "An explanation is in order. Missiles were not part of our agreement. Willi."

She took a deep breath, then typed her reply: "Kolnikov obviously has his own agenda. Let's hope he hasn't forgotten ours."

She stared at the message, weighed it, then encrypted it. She got up, walked to the refrigerator and took out a Diet Coke. Sipping it, half listening to the CNN broadcast and the comments of her angry, frightened colleagues, she walked back to her computer and fired the message to Willi into cyberspace.

When General Le Beau made it in to work, Jake was waiting in his outer office.

Flap motioned with his hand that Jake was to follow him into the office. He told Flap about Cowbell, but the marine didn't seem too interested. "I've got to go to a Joint Chiefs meeting in a few minutes that General Alt called. This fucking submarine…" He dropped into a chair. "Gonna be a helluva day, any way you cut it. What can we do to make tomorrow better?"

"Induce a four-mile error in the global positioning system," Jake Grafton replied. GPS, as they well knew, allowed anyone on Earth with a little black box to receive signals broadcast by a small constellation of satellites and thereby fix their position within several meters. The satellites' signals, however, could be tweaked, subtly altered, thereby fooling the little black boxes.

Flap looked startled. "I hadn't thought of that."

"An accurate position is essential to launching a successful Tomahawk attack. The pirates will use the GPS to update their inertial. Let's lead them down the primrose path."

"And mislead every airliner and ship in the world?"

"The stakes are high, General," Jake acknowledged. "Real high."

"Why not just shut the system down?"

"Then they will update their inertial position with a star sight. If the GPS works, there is a good chance that these guys will merely push the update button without checking to see how much the inertial position disagrees with the GPS position. That's an easy mistake to make, and this equipment is new to all these guys. They're feeling their way along."

"What if an airliner full of people goes into a mountain?"

"That's the risk," Jake acknowledged.

"Jesus, you are a hard-ass."

"Sir, I've been told that more than four hundred people died here in Washington last night. They were killed. Murdered. It's time to take the gloves off. If the pirates put a four-mile error into their inertial, their Tomahawks will miss their targets. The latest versions of the missiles will self-destruct or dive into the ground when the computer determines that the missile is lost. Sometimes we must risk lives to save lives."

"You are assuming they will shoot more missiles."

"These guys didn't steal a submarine just to wreck the Lincoln Bedroom."

"I'll suggest it," Flap Le Beau said. "The decision will have to be made by the president. Just between you and me, I don't think the folks at the White House have the cojones for a move like that."

In London, Tommy Carmellini awakened from a nap to find the American media circus on most of the channels of his television. He watched the White House burn, horrified and fascinated at the same time.

He left the tube on while he showered and shaved, dressed, hung up his clothes in the closet, checked the attache case the CIA man who met him at the airport had handed him when he dropped Tommy at the hotel. After looking over the contents of the case very carefully, he closed and locked it.

He turned off the television only when dusk had fallen and he was ready to go find something to eat. He took the attache case with him.

At ten o'clock he walked two blocks to a pub. He ordered a cider and was sipping it in a booth against the back wall, making it last, when the door opened and Terrell McSweeney walked in. He saw Tommy, ordered a pint, then brought it over to the booth.

"Good to see you," McSweeney said. "What's it been, three months?"

"Something like that."

"Seen any television today?"

"A little, before I left the hotel."

"Holy damn. Sounds as if somebody declared war on the guys in the white hats. They shot the shit outta Washington last night. A stolen submarine, no less. Beats the hell outta me what the world is coming to."

McSweeney was CIA, of course, attached to the London embassy. He was over fifty, balding, porking up, with a braying voice. If the Brits didn't know he was a spook they were complete, utter incompetents.

"Maybe terrorists, you think?" Carmellini asked.

"Iraqis, I bet. Before it's over we'll find Saddam had his eye glued to the periscope."

"I always wondered, McSweeney. Tell me, do the Brits know you're a spook?"

McSweeney snorted. "Of course they know. I go to conferences with them all the time. When they want something from us, they call me. Every Brit spook has me on his Rolodex."

"Umm."

"I know, you're thinking that maybe we should have had a covert officer contact you. Well, hell, I know what the book says, but this is the real world. I mean, who in the hell are we fooling anyway."

"I saw the barkeep give you the high sign when you came in. You ever use this pub before?"

"I have a pint here a couple times a week, sure."

"You're a real horse's ass, McSweeney, a professional joke. I've half a mind to walk out that door and grab the next plane back to the States."

"Don't give me any of your shit, Carmellini. I'm in charge in London. Me! This is my turf."

"You're compromising me, asshole!"

"Hell, we're only doing burglary tonight, not espionage."

"That's a relief. I was so worried! But if I get caught and charged with anything, I'm taking you down with me. I'll squeal like a stuck pig. I'll even make stuff up."

"I've got immunity, man, and three years to go to retirement. Tell 'em any goddamn thing you want."

Tommy Carmellini rubbed his forehead. Why, Lord, why?

"Every other guy in the company is some kind of asshole," he said to McSweeney. "Does this work appeal only to assholes, or did working for the company turn you into one? Has there ever been a study on that?"

"They got you, didn't they?"

Carmellini drained his cider and slid out of the booth. He reached for the attache case. "I'll be outside when you get finished swilling that beer. Take your time. I don't want to talk to you any more than absolutely necessary." "Fuck you."

"Thanks, but I've been fucked before."

"And a good job they did of it, too."

Working with idiots, he thought. They have me working with flaming idiots. It's been like that on and off since the day I got into this outfit. Oh sure, there are a few good people, and every now and then you find a gold nugget in a pile of dirt.

Almost an hour passed before Terrell McSweeney came strolling from the pub. From the smell of him, he had had a couple more beers. "I thought the bobbies would get you out here for soliciting." He led the way to his car, which he unlocked with a button on his key ring.

Once they were in, McSweeney said, "Let's cut the friendly crap and get serious here. The target is the computers of the Antoine Jouany firm. Washington wants to know how big this guy is betting against the dollar and who is behind him. Anything you can get that answers that question will be appreciated. Get it and get outta there. And use one of those E-grenades in the attache case on the security computer."

"I got a brief in Washington."

"I don't know why they always say Jouany's betting against the dollar," McSweeney continued. "What he's really doing is betting on the euro. He probably just thinks euros are gonna pop. I do. Stuff ain't cheap over here, but Europe is jumping. Euros got nowhere to go but up. France and Germany aren't going in the crapper."

"Thank you, Chairman Greensweeney."

"I'll just find a spot to park this buggy and wait for you."

"This an embassy car?"

"Yeah."

"Why don't you get a couple of those magnetic signs for the doors that say CIA in big bold letters? Or maybe a logo, an eye peeping through a keyhole?"

"We already got a bumper sticker."

Jake Grafton didn't expect to find anyone in the liaison offices in the Crystal City Tower, across the parking lot and street from the Pentagon. Many of the commuters had driven in from the suburbs — a trek from hell, avoiding disabled vehicles — only to find that without electrical power or telephone service, nothing could be accomplished in the inner city. Jake went to the office to change clothes and think about the entire situation before he walked home. Toad had already set out for his house, worried about his son and the nanny. Jake hadn't heard from Callie — without telephones he was not going to— and he was exhausted and anxious to go home and sleep. Still, he thought he should check the office.

It wasn't empty. He found two secretaries and a staff officer in the warm, stuffy spaces. No one else. They were debating emptying the refrigerator of leftover lunches before things started to rot. Blev-ins, they said, hadn't been in.

In the closet of his office Jake kept a jogging outfit. It was cleaner than his uniform, which he had worn for two days and a night. He put it on, yet was so tired he had to sit to tie the laces on the tennis shoes. He didn't know if he had the energy to jog the three miles home.

He was trying to work up energy to get started when the door opened and Helmut Mayer walked in. "Are you still here, Admiral? I was expecting no one."

"Getting ready to run home."

"I will drive you, if you wish. A friend in the suburbs brought me a car earlier today."

Jake was genuinely grateful. He put his feet up on the desk and talked over the situation with the German. While they were talking Janos Ilin arrived. He too had a car. "I am a believer now," Ilin said. "You must have a car in America. Everyone."

The foreigners were full of news. Power in Washington would take at least ten days to restore, the telephone system perhaps a week, the men reported. Their embassies had hardened electrical systems and emergency generators, so they had been listening to the cable news networks.

"The networks have learned the name of the pirate captain who stole your submarine," Ilin said, making a steeple of his fingers. "Vladimir Kolnikov." He said it in the Russian way. "The reporters are besieging our embassy, wanting to know whatever it is we know about him, which is of course nothing at all."

"Did your government know that Kolnikov was being trained by the CIA?" Jake Grafton asked conversationally.

"So the story is true?" Ilin replied.

"Today we deal only in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. You knew that before the news broke, didn't you?"

"Ah, Jake, you overestimate the capabilities of my government. Once we were very capable, there is no argument about that, but now, with the political situation such as it is and the destitute condition of the government, we are not so capable."

"What a storyteller you are, Ilin," Mayer said in his flavorful Germanic English.

"So answer me a question," Ilin continued, looking at Grafton and ignoring Mayer. "Did the CIA really intend to steal a Russian submarine, or is that only a tale for the children's hour?"

"Is that what the television dudes say?"

"Yes."

Jake Grafton spread his hands and shrugged. "I don't go to meetings at that level. I have heard a rumor to that effect. I cannot swear to its veracity."

Ilin went to the window and looked out. There were other cars on the street now, almost as many as there usually were, and most of the disabled vehicles had been pushed up onto the sidewalks or towed. "There are many accidents at intersections," he told the two men behind him. "Americans need traffic lights."

"Let us call it a day, gentlemen," Jake said. "Herr Mayer, I will accept your kind offer of a ride home. But before we go, let me leave you two with something to think about. May I do that?"

Mayer and Ilin nodded.

"The White House was the target of a guided missile last night, with our head of state in residence. The Secret Service hustled him and his family out of the building, so they weren't hurt, although at least two people were killed by the fire. Several airliners crashed, killing all aboard, and people died all over the city when pacemakers and defibrillators and hospital equipment were knocked out.

"Gentlemen, the attack on this city last night resulted in at least four hundred deaths at last count. Four hundred twenty-nine was the last number I heard. That attack could well be construed as an act of terrorism. Or war! Perhaps both. The blood of innocent people is on the hands of the people behind this attack and cannot be washed off. Prophet that I am, I foretell a bad end for the people responsible for last night's atrocities. They will pay the ultimate price."

Neither man said anything.

Jake continued: "A threshold has been crossed. There is no going back. Regardless of what the politicians say later, the public will demand that those responsible pay in blood."

"I will pass your views to my government," Ilin said.

"You do that," Jake Grafton shot back. "I don't make American policy, but you can take it to the bank: When the identity of the culprits is known, the pressure on the politicians for revenge will be irresistible."

"I hope no government is behind this attack," Mayer said. "That would be a great tragedy."

"Indeed it would," Jake said. "Indeed it would."

The guard in the lobby of the Jouany building in the old City of London had been bought, according to the Langley briefer. Just say the magic words and he'll let you by and forget you ever existed.

Carmellini had winced when he heard that. After a suspected security breach, the lobby guard was the very first person an investigator would question. Any decent investigator would wire the guard to a lie detector. And giving a guard a wad of cash before the entry… of course the guy was going to spend it and attract attention. It was almost as if the agency didn't care if Carmellini got caught.

Two weeks. Then he would bid this silly band of paper-pushing bozos good-bye and be off to bigger and better things. If he wasn't in jail somewhere awaiting trial.

The guard was reading a newspaper when he walked in. There was a security camera behind him aimed across the desk at Carmellini, another above the arch over the elevator, and a third above the door where he had entered.

Carmellini nodded at the guard and spoke: "Someone told me you are a fan of American baseball."

"I like the Yankees," the guard replied as he looked Carmellini over.

"I'm a Braves fan myself," the American said. He noted that the monitor behind the desk was automatically cycling from one camera to another every ten seconds. No doubt there was a recorder somewhere, probably in the basement security office, capturing this gripping drama on videotape.

"The bank of elevators on the left. Ninth floor."

"Thanks."

"All the bigwigs are on the trading floor tonight," the guard added, but Carmellini just waved a hand as he headed for the elevator.

No cops eyeing him from behind the potted palms, no wailing sirens. . just the cameras catching my handsome criminal mug on videotape, he thought bitterly. I'm going to spend the next ten years eating macs and cheese off a plastic tray.

He pushed the button to call the elevator and tried to look slightly bored.

The ninth floor was the upper balcony level. The eighth floor was the lower balcony. The seventh floor, just visible through the floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass that shielded the offices from the elevator waiting area, was the trading floor, the pit. Amid the computer workstations two floors below, Carmellini could see a crowd of people — at least a dozen — staring at screens, talking animatedly, sipping drinks. The people in the pit traded currencies and currency futures around the clock worldwide, according to the Langley briefer. None of the traders seemed to pay any attention to him standing here at this entrance. They were engrossed in their business.

Hot night tonight, Carmellini thought, with the mess in Washington. The dollar was probably getting hammered worldwide.

The security station that controlled the heavy glass door was on the wall at his left. Two security cameras were in the corners, one aimed at the elevator door, the other at the security station. As Carmellini approached the wall-mounted unit, he took two objects from his pocket and glanced at them. A left and a right. They looked like marbles.

The security panel had a slot about six inches across and three inches high in the face of it, about belt high. Left or right hand? Sarah was right-handed, so he put his right hand into the slot. A light illuminated inside the device. He held his hand very still as the scanner read the fingerprints chemically embedded on the flexible plastic sleeves that covered his fingers and thumb. He had sleeves on the fingers of his left hand too, just in case.

A message appeared on the liquid crystal display at eye level. "Step closer please."

Right eye, he thought, and used his left hand to hold up the marble labeled "R" about four inches in front of the scanner. He held it as still as he could.

Three seconds passed, four…

"Thank you, Ms. Houston," flashed on the LCD display, and the main door unlocked with an audible click.

Carmellini went through the doors, then checked his watch. 1:12 A.M. local time.

Her workstation was in an office halfway along the balcony on the south side of the building, about as far away from a corner office as one could get, Carmellini noted wryly. She had a lot of corporate ladder left to climb.

There was a small finger scanner beside her computer. He used his right forefinger. After a few seconds her computer screen hummed and came to life.

Now all he had to do was type in her password and get to work. Alas, no one at Langley knew her password. Neither did Tommy Carmellini.

He sat staring at the blinking computer prompt, flexing his plastic-encased fingertips, reviewing everything he knew about Sarah Houston one more time. He had been dreading this moment for days, and now it was here. He had, he thought, no more than three bites of the apple before the computer would lock him out. Then his only option would be to disassemble the main computer and steal the hard drive.

On the flight across the Atlantic he had decided on the three keywords he would try, but now, at the moment of truth in front of her computer, his confidence deserted him.

He looked around her desk, at the photo of her parents and the cup full of pencils and pens. He opened the desk drawers, glanced at the contents, stirred the nail file and photos and paper clips and candy bar wrappers around with one finger while he thought it through again. Four of the photos were of Houston and a man, sort of a smarmy guy, Carmellini thought.

He had gone through the items in her purse very carefully when she had been lying drugged in the bed of the New York apartment. What had been in there? Think!

He flexed his fingers carefully, then typed "houston" and hit the

Enter key.

No. He was still at the password prompt.

So what could it be? This was a woman who wrote her four-digit bank PIN numbers on the envelopes that held the ATM cards. A telephone number?

He typed "houston020474." Her birthday.

No.

Okay, Carmellini, you clever lad. Last chance. He bit his lip. "houston090602." Today's date. Yes. The computer brought up the menu.

Tommy Carmellini found he had been holding his breath. He exhaled explosively.