America

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In the days following the attack on New York, Americans held their breath, waiting for the ax to fall again.

When it became plain that months would be required to return electrical service to normal levels in New York and Washington, people abandoned the cities in mass exoduses, overwhelming transportation and human services agencies. The simple truth that everyone was discovering was that modern cities require electricity to function; without it, they are uninhabitable.

The towns and cities that surrounded the dead urban metroplexes were flooded with refugees, many of whom were without a place to live or the means to pay for it. The inability of the authorities to deal with the sheer numbers of people who needed food, water, and a place to sleep resulted in a survival-of-the-fittest attitude that led, in some of the most crowded places, to a breakdown in law and order.

In addition to the emptying of the stricken cities, people in significant numbers throughout the eastern United States fled undamaged cities, choking highways and gridlocking public transportation. There was little panic, but the people leaving the cities had made up their minds and were not dissuaded by urgent entreaties from elected officials, or by less subtle closings of key roads and bridges by state police on orders from governors trying to manage the mess. Determined knots of people ignored and taunted police officers, pushed police vehicles out of the way, and went where they wanted to go.

This massive displacement of people was unprecedented in American history. Some commentators were reminded of the scenes of people fleeing from the advancing Nazi armies during World War II.

It was obvious that armed force was going to be necessary to enforce order, but elected politicians were unwilling to take that step for a variety of reasons, not the least of which, the president told his cabinet, was that the men and women in uniform might refuse to obey orders if those orders required firing on unarmed civilians. This danger was real, General Alt advised.

Huddled at Camp David with his advisers, the president realized that if he lost control of the armed forces, the federal and state governments in America would collapse in the resulting anarchy. What might happen then was too horrible to contemplate. Still, he had already ordered National Guard units to patrol Washington, D.C., and New York City, so he federalized more guard units to patrol the major cities that were being abandoned: Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Savannah, Richmond, Norfolk, and a host of others.

He also made a speech, quoting the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The words did have a quieting effect, but they weren't enough. The economy was coming unwound, businesses were laying off employees by the thousands, the stock market was in free fall, and all over America people realized that the country was on the cusp of an economic depression.

USS America was somewhere in the Atlantic, and everyone knew it. Any day, any hour, more Tomahawk E-warheads could burst… anywhere.

So everyone waited.

Two days after the strike on New York, Vladimir Kolnikov brought America up under a storm system in the central Atlantic and raised the communications mast above the surface. He kept it there for five minutes, just long enough to record a dose of CNN's headline news on the hour.

He and Turchak listened, then erased the tape.

"We can't launch a missile without Rothberg to program the flight path," Turchak said, pointing out the obvious, more to stimulate Kolnikov than anything else.

Kolnikov grunted. He had said little in the last two days, preferring to keep his own counsel.

"They don't know that," Turchak continued, waving generally eastward.

"Umm."

"Of course, we don't know where the attack submarines are, where the Americans have placed their ASW forces."

"I don't want them to catch us shallow," Kolnikov said finally. "Let's go back down, slowly, updating the sonar model."

"Same course as before?"

"Yes."

With that, Kolnikov wandered toward the captain's cabin to try again to take a nap. He hadn't been sleeping well. He hadn't mentioned it to anyone, but he was exhausted. A guilty conscience, he told himself. You'll get over it.

Toad Tarkington brought a television from home — he lived in Morningside, far enough from the locus of the E-warhead blasts that the electronics in his home had not been affected. With a satellite dish on the windowsill and some fancy jury-rigging, the office crowd got it up and running. They kept the idiot box tuned to CNN.

Jake Grafton was at his desk studying the information on the files Tommy Carmellini had stolen from the Jouany firm in London when Toad stuck his head in the door. "They're interviewing Jouany, Admiral. You might be interested in this."

Jake stood in the doorway and watched. Carmellini was there, as was the rest of the staff. Stranded in a dead city, everyone seemed to want to come to the office. To visit, even if no productive work could be accomplished.

Antoine Jouany was a short, rotund sixtyish man with only wisps of hair on his perfectly round head. He spoke excellent English with a French accent.

"Of course I am making a fortune trading currencies on behalf of my investors. I apologize to no one. Our economic models suggested that the American economy was overextended, so we sold dollars and purchased euros. Events beyond our control have left us looking quite brilliant. Today. Had the dice rolled the other way, no one would have shed a tear for us."

The interviewer asked just how many billions Jouany's activities had generated, and he refused to answer. "This is not the time or place for such a discussion."

"What is your prediction? Will the dollar continue to slide?"

"I have no crystal ball. Common sense suggests that the decline is not over."

"You must admit, Monsieur Jouany, that your massive bet against the dollar was fortuitous, to say the least."

" 'Fortune favors the bold.' That is a quote, but I do not know who said it."

"Today your attorneys filed a libel suit against a columnist for an American newspaper who suggested your good luck might be more than fortune."

"Indeed they did. There is not a word of truth to that charge. That newspaper is distributed here in the United Kingdom, so we sued here. British libel law is quite clear. We defend our honor."

There was more, but Jake went back to his desk. The names, Alt, Stalnaker, Le Beau… Grafton! And Blevins. All these military officers supposedly had investment accounts with Jouany's firm. Was that the fact that had been leaked to the columnist? If so, it would certainly come out in the libel suit. It was untrue, of course, but it would cast a pall of suspicion over those officers. Would lead to investigations and charges and countercharges in the press and in Congress. A lot of smoke.

He went back to the door and called for Carmellini, who came in to Jake's office. Jake indicated a chair and closed the door.

"Let's do the timetable again. When did your supervisor tell you of the Jouany problem?"

Carmellini consulted the calendar on Jake's desk before he answered. "Fourteen weeks ago, at least, Admiral. We targeted Sarah

Houston and I started working on her about twelve weeks ago, in early June."

"But the Jouany operation predated the loss of the SuperAegis satellite?"

"Well, looking back on it, I guess it did. The Jouany firm had been selling dollars and buying euros for months."

"Was the date for the London break-in set when they first told you to meet Sarah Houston?"

"No. It couldn't be. We had no idea just how fast I could get her into a situation where we could put her out. I'm good, but I ain't James Bond. We knew something about the security setup and knew we needed eyeprints and fingerprints to get access."

"The other night you told me about always getting into her computer, regardless of the password, on the third try."

"Right."

"What if you hadn't gotten in?"

"I didn't expect to. I went there to steal the hard drive. Obviously, if I took it they would know I had it, so I tried to finesse 'em. Whoever set me up didn't expect me to learn that any old password would do. They wanted me to get in, open the door for NSA hackers, then go sashaying home proud as punch about how I played that outfit like a fiddle. So I didn't do it."

"You're a difficult employee, Tommy."

"Thank you, sir."

"The CIA still doesn't know you're in Washington?"

"I suspect they do, but they don't know where. Or if they do, they haven't come after me. I'm doing okay bunking at Tarkington's. He's got beer in the fridge. Hell, he's got a fridge. My apartment is in the dead zone. I hate to think what the refrigerator is going to be like when I get back."

"Tell me again about the CIA's London man."

"McSweeney, a real piece of work. The Brits have to know he's CIA. He might as well wear the black T-shirt with the big white letters. They know as much about his business as he does. Maybe more."

"That's an opinion."

"He makes no secret of the fact he's CIA. He tools around London like he was an earl on an expense account. They know what he eats,

where he eats it, when he eats it, who he screws, when he screws, everything."

"So what do you want to do? Go back to the CIA? Tell them you are alive and well inside the Beltway, reporting back?"

"No, sir. I've submitted my letter of resignation. I'd just as soon hang out with you and Tarkington until my time runs out, then sort of sift on out of here. If the Langley crowd never sees my smiling face again, that'll be fine by me. If they get pissy maybe you can tell them you had me sweating in your shop?"

"I don't think the federal personnel regs work just that way," Jake Grafton said. "Why don't you just drop them a note and tell them you quit? I'll even buy the stamp."

"Geez, I would, Admiral, but there are some old felony investigations lying around in various prosecutors' offices. The statute of limitations has run on some of that stuff, but some of it's still hot. To make a long story short, the CIA sorta drafted me a few years back. Now I want to move on to a more lucrative career. A man's got to make his way in the world, seek his fortune, save a little for his old age."

A hint of a smile made Jake's lips twitch. "I see," he said. "Involuntary servitude, in this enlightened age. Who would have thought it?" He made a sound with his tongue.

"Shocking, I know," Carmellini said earnestly. "I normally don't trot out my troubles at the office, but I am in kind of a bind."

"I'll do some research on the personnel regs. It'll take a few days."

"Fine. Anything I can do to help, just say so."

"Well, there is one thing. This list is going to start stinking one of these days. Who is Sarah Houston?"

"I don't know," Carmellini said, his brows knitting.

"If you were going to find out, how would you go about it?"

"I've got her eyeprints and fingerprints. I—"

"Do you?"

"Well, I've got someone's."

"Talk to Tom Krautkramer when he comes in. Get a real name to go with your eyeprints and fingerprints. Let me know what you find out."

"Yes, sir."

Next through Jake's door was Captain Sonny Killbuck. "What is the navy doing to find the SuperAegis satellite?" was Jake's question.

"It's a question of probabilities, Admiral," Killbuck said, rubbing his hands together. "This is pretty neat. I wish I could have taken credit for it, but the engineers at NASA came up with this." He used a pen on a sheet of paper to illustrate. "The trajectory that the missile was to follow is this line, which is also the line of highest probability. Lines are then drawn, say one degree apart, radiating outward from the Goddard platform. Inevitably, the greater the distance from the intended track, the lower the probability that the third stage came to rest there. The distance from the Goddard platform is also a function of probability — we know precisely where the missile was when we lost it on radar. Voila, with those parameters we drew the chart and started searching the areas of highest probability first, then worked our way down."

"Scientific as hell," Jake Grafton said and whistled softly.

"Left alone, engineers are dangerous," Killbuck agreed.

"How many assets are devoted to this task?"

"Thirty ships, sir. Everything that will carry magnetometers and side-scan sonar. And every area gets searched twice."

It was indeed a neat system, but the searchers had yet to find the missing third stage. Jake refrained from commenting on that obvious fact.

"How about doing a computer study, by tomorrow, if possible. I want you to identify all the areas in the Atlantic between, say, Britain and Natal, with one hundred feet of water or less. Better make it a hundred and fifty."

"I'll do it both ways, sir. Shouldn't be difficult."

When FBI agent Krautkramer came in an hour later, he had a file on Heydrich. An underwater demolition and salvage expert, Heydrich had worked all over the globe. Jake studied the file as Krautkramer briefed him on the state of the FBI's investigation.

"One of the SuperAegis techno-kings is missing. Peter Kerr. Told his wife he was going fishing for a few days and never came back. She called us yesterday, fearing foul play."

" 'Foul play.' I didn't know real people used phrases like that."

"Her words, not mine. Kerr is in his fifties, got a daughter in grad school, been married over thirty years. In any event, before he went fishing he cleaned out his savings account and withdrew all the money from his 401(k) plan. We're going through his house and office now."

"SuperAegis and America."

"According to the scientists, Kerr could have put SuperAegis in the water. His specialty was software, but he worked on the launch team and had access to everything. It's a break."

"He did have access," Jake agreed. "I know him. I sat in several meetings he chaired. He's one of those guys who knows a lot about everything. A lot of people think they do, but Pete Kerr really does."

Krautkramer scratched his head. "If we can somehow connect the satellite and the submarine.."

"Not to change the subject, but your guys did a good job playing assassins the other day."

"They loved it. They want an invite the next time you throw a party. Did Ilin bite?"

"I don't know. He said some things worth thinking about, but he certainly didn't spill his guts. Here, look at this."

Jake tossed Krautkramer the list of military investors from the Jouany computer, then sat silently as he scanned it.

"What is this and where did you get it?"

The admiral explained. Krautkramer looked him in the eyes as he spoke. "So you never invested a dollar with these people?"

"No. My family's stupendous fortune is with an American broker." Jake named the company. "It strikes me that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to slander the senior officers in the American military who might be looking hard for America. Or SuperAegis."

Krautkramer nodded.

"My prediction is that this list will surface shortly in London as part and parcel of Jouany's libel suit. Then the American government will be asked if they know about this, and lo and behold, the answer is yes. A CIA agent filched the list from Jouany. If the president or government spokesperson denies it, they will ultimately be branded liars; if they admit it, it looks like the Americans have something to hide. Either way, it's going to be bad. And the people on that list will be under a cloud."

"You included."

"You betcha."

"Why?"

"Whoever put this together wanted a lot of smoke. The more smoke there is, the more difficult it becomes to find the stick that's actually on fire."

"So what do you want to do about this?"

"I want everything there is to know about Jouany and the European aerospace consortium, EuroSpace, and I want it by five o'clock today."

Krautkramer looked at his watch. "I'll do my best," he said. "May I have this list?"

"Not yet."

Jake snagged his hat and the telephone book and on the way out of the office motioned for Toad to follow. Down the endless staircase, then out to the car. Another car. The one Jake drove to northern Virginia and abandoned alongside the road had been quietly returned to a government motor pool so that Ilin wouldn't see it again.

"Where to, boss?"

"Federal Protective Service." Jake flipped open the telephone book and after a minute came up with an address.

He had to use his letter with the president's signature, but he eventually got what he wanted. The copy machines were toast, so he and Toad pored over the records and made notes. It was mid-afternoon by the time the two men left the building, just enough time for Jake to get to the Pentagon to see Flap Le Beau.

Flap looked harassed. "Give me some good news," he pleaded.

Jake dumped the bag. When he finished, Flap frowned. "So you don't have any hard evidence that the loss of the Super Aegis satellite and the theft of America are connected."

"They must be," Jake insisted and went over to the map hanging on the commandant's wall. "What are the odds that two major events would happen two months apart? And the connection has been staring us in the face all the time. That satellite is somewhere in this ocean" — he tapped the chart—"America is carrying a minisubmer-sible on her back and she has an underwater salvage expert aboard. The salvage expert is not critical, but the minisubmersible is."

"We're hunting for the satellite," the marine pointed out. "Hunting hard, I might add. We've got thirty ships out there right now towing magnetometers and using every gadget in the book."

"It's a stupendously big ocean," Jake replied. "We may never find the thing. I think the salvage guy on America has a huge advantage— I think he knows where it is. Or where it should be. Peter Kerr could have told him. Indeed, Peter Kerr could have put it there."

"One guy in a minisubmersible. He doesn't have the diving gear or enough stuff to salvage the satellite, let alone the upper stage of that rocket."

"I think the sub will rendezvous with a ship — somewhere — get more people and gear, then recover the satellite. If they can find it. That's going to take some doing, but with Revelation… I think it's possible."

"Then why is the salvage guy already aboard?"

"Sir, I don't know."

"How deep can the submersible go?"

"On its own, down to a few hundred feet. Attached to the sub, it can go as deep as the sub takes it. The limitation is not the crush depth but the capacity of the ballast system."

"Two hundred feet," Flap said thoughtfully, examining the chart. "That's still a lot of real estate."

"Offshore waters for all of Europe, Africa, and the Atlantic islands," Jake agreed. "And even some of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge."

"And the attacks on Washington and New York?"

"Diversions. Profitable ones." He pointed toward the list from Jouany's computer. "This didn't just happen. Someone planned very carefully, and the plan is working. The American economy is staggering like a dying horse and Europe is doing quite well, thank you. Nations around the world are selling dollars and buying euros. European investors in American stocks are taking their money home. European companies will pick up a lot of international business when American companies have difficulty meeting their delivery dates, for whatever reason. The business that American companies lose will go to European enterprises that can meet the demand."

"So who is the man inside?" Flap Le Beau asked.

"I've got a candidate," Jake Grafton told him.

"Okay."

"The problem is that the timetables don't fit."

Zelda Hudson found the message on one of her regular visits to a hacker's bulletin board. "Butterfly," the caption said. It was encrypted, of course, a meaningless gobbledygook of letters. She downloaded it, got off-line, checked the message for viruses — there were none.

She reached for Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary on the bottom shelf of the nearby credenza and looked up the word butter. Then she checked the posting date, added those numbers together, multiplied by another number, and began counting words that began with the following letter, c, ignoring words with fewer than six letters. When she found the word she wanted, she typed it into an encryption matrix and pressed Enter. The computer then used that word to construct a complete matrix, which was used to transform the downloaded message into another long sequence of apparently random letters.

Fly. She counted again, carefully, in the compilation for words beginning with g, found the word, typed it into another matrix. The computer ran the message through the second matrix, and voila!

I am writing to express my concern with the course of current events. When you offered me the information about the Black-beard team, requesting that I reveal it to DeGarmo, thereby killing the operation, I knew then that I was fulfilling some purpose that would benefit you. After consultation with my superiors in Moscow, the decision was made to do as you requested, for several reasons. The current political situation in Moscow would be destabilized by the successful theft of a Russian submarine or by a thwarted attempt. And our relationship has been quite successful — we hope it continues to our mutual profit into the future.

The possibility that you had other plans for the Blackbeard team did not occur to us. I think I see your hand in subsequent events. So does Admiral Grafton, who I suspect is closer to the truth than he realizes. Certainly closer than you thought possible.

My government does not want the SuperAegis satellite to end up in foreign hands. I think your most likely customer is EuroSpace. It must not happen. Russia and the United States have similar interests in this matter. Frankly, do not rely on your relationship with us to protect you in a matter of such gravity.

Zelda Hudson read the message through again, then deleted it and the matrices that had decoded it. Then she purged the trash file and reformatted the disk segment she had used.

Peter Kerr, the fool! His disappearance must have incited Grafton's suspicions.

Like many of Washington's power elite, Avery Edmond DeGarmo lived in the Watergate apartment complex near the Kennedy Center. And like many of his fellow residents, he had decamped during the power crisis. When Jake, Toad, and Tommy Carmellini arrived the following morning, the building was deserted. There were two guards at the desk in the lobby but not a resident in sight. Not even a doorman. Jake and his friends sat in the front seat of the van looking things over.

"You'd think for all that money the tenants would get a doorman," Toad said.

"Where'd DeGarmo go, anyway?" Carmellini asked Toad, who carried around a surprising store of useless, unimportant facts.

"Bunking with the marines at Quantico, I heard. The grunts deliver him and a bunch of others to Washington every morning by helicopter."

"Simplifies commuting, I suppose."

"They may never move back to town."

"You think you can get into this place?" Jake asked dubiously. He was in the passenger seat of the carpet company van, Carmellini was behind the wheel, and Toad sat between them.

"Just watch the master at work," Carmellini said. From the hip pocket of his coveralls he removed a pack of chewing tobacco, broke the seal, and helped himself to a man-sized plug, which made his unshaved cheek bulge nicely. Then he got out of the van and headed for the main entrance.

Carmellini was wearing a one-piece coverall with the carpet company's name and logo across the back. So were Toad and Jake, who remained in the vehicle. Last night Carmellini called a fellow he knew, and the man rented him the van and uniforms for the day for the magnificent sum of one hundred dollars.

"Are you sure? That doesn't sound like a lot of money."

"You aren't going to get caught, are you? Nothing will come back on mer

"You'll hear not a peep from anyone. Guaranteed."

"A hundred is enough, and I'm glad to get it. With the power mess and all, our business has dried up to nothing."

Outside the Watergate, Tommy Carmellini spit on the sidewalk, adjusted his chew, and went in. He went up to the security desk, where the guards had supplemented the light coming through the glass door with a small kerosene lantern. There were two of them, in uniform, a man and a woman.

"Got a carpet delivery for… for…" Carmellini removed an invoice from his hip pocket and scrutinized it. "DeGarmo. Apartment 821."

The male guard consulted a list on a clipboard. "He's not in today."

"By God, I hope not. Gonna have to pull up the bedroom and living room carpet and lay new. Not many customers want to watch us do it." He glanced at the closed-circuit camera mounted above the guards' desk and at the dark monitor behind them.

"You got a key to his apartment?"

"Why, hell no, I ain't got no key. He said you people'd let me in."

"You're not on the tradesman list." The guard gestured toward the clipboard.

"Umm, you got a place I could spit?"

With a look of disgust, the guard nodded toward a trash can at the end of his desk. Carmellini relieved himself and returned.

"Much obliged."

"Talk about a filthy habit!" That was the woman.

"Yeah. So how'm I gonna get this carpet in there?"

"I can't let you in unless you're on the tradesman list," the male guard said.

"Just curious, but without phones, how is he gonna tell you to put me on that list? Not being smart or nothin', I hear that this guy is some big weenie in government. He supposed to just tell the president to sit tight while he makes a personal trip down here to talk to you about the carpet in his pad?" After delivering himself of this speech, Carmellini took two steps to the trash can to spit again.

He worked his chew into position while he waved the invoice. "Here's his signature on this. Men who buy forty-five hundred dollars' worth of carpeting don't usually like to lay it themselves. But if you don't let me in, he's gonna. We'll offload it right here in the lobby and you can let him have it the next time he wanders by."

"Tell you what," said the male guard, who did take a cursory look at DeGarmo's forged signature. "We'll let you in downstairs. Miss McCarthy will take you up to the apartment and wait while you do your thing."

"Much obliged," said Tommy Carmellini, and gave them both a big tobacco grin. Out on the sidewalk he spit a stream of brown juice over his shoulder, then climbed into the driver's seat of the van.

"We're in," he said to Jake and Toad. "Just let me do the talking."

As they rolled around the building, Carmellini said, "We lucked out. Got a female who thinks tobacco chewing is a filthy habit. After she unlocks the place, I'll fart and spit a bit and she'll find something else to do somewhere else."

And that was the way it worked out. The men put on cotton gloves, then unloaded a roll of carpet from the back of the van and hoisted it onto their shoulders. Miss McCarthy led them to the freight elevator.

The apartment was stifling. "Must be eighty degrees in here," Carmellini complained.

The guard lady took it personally. "We crank and crank on that air-conditioner in the basement and the cool air just never gets up this far. We need some real muscle men to do the cranking."

"I'll bet," Carmellini replied, then spit into a Styrofoam coffee cup that he had brought up from the van.

The men were moving furniture in DeGarmo's bedroom when Miss McCarthy told Carmellini, "Be sure and stop by the desk on your way out."

"This is gonna take awhile. Gotta do it right, I always say. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. That's why people buy their carpet from us."

They waited for a count of ten after she closed the door behind her, then Jake said, "Very well done."

Carmellini spit his chew into his hand and nodded. He dashed for a bathroom to wash out his mouth.

They began searching, carefully, meticulously, not trashing the place but searching it as thoroughly as possible.

"What do you hope to find, Admiral?" Toad had asked that morning on their way over in the carpet van.

"Anything at all that shouldn't be there. Occasionally people leading secret lives keep little tidbits or artifacts of that secret life tucked away. Or so I've heard."

"I certainly do," Carmellini said, nodding a vigorous assent. "You oughta see my collection."

"We're looking for something," Jake continued, "anything that we can use to unravel Avery DeGarmo's secret life."

"How do you know he has a secret life?" 1 don t.

"Probably got a wife and kids in L.A. that he hasn't told a soul about," Toad told Carmellini and winked.

They found that DeGarmo, a lifelong bachelor, had a collection of paper matches bearing the logos of restaurants in which he had eaten. Hotels he had visited. Businesses. Golf courses. All kinds of matches. Drawers full, boxes full.

He kept a loaded nine-millimeter pistol in the drawer beside his bed, he used toothpaste with baking powder, soft toothbrushes, and disposable razors. He had a prescription for an anticholesterol medication, ten pills still in the bottle. He threw socks away one at a time, so he had a nice collection of singles. He wore Jockey shorts and tailored wool suits.

Jake Grafton settled into DeGarmo's chair behind his desk in the den. There were two computers, both with telephone wires leading to them. After the stink about the CIA deputy director who kept classified info on his home computer, one assumed DeGarmo wouldn't be so foolish. But really, when you stopped to think about it, computers were involved in this whole mess. One wouldn't know what was on them until he checked. Jake unplugged the monitors and keyboards, pulled all the wires from the main computers, and picked them up, one atop the other.

He went looking for Tarkington and Carmellini. They were snacking on crackers in the kitchen.

"Nothing, Admiral. Absolutely nothing."

"Did you open the refrigerator?"

"No," Carmellini said brightly. "We thought you should have the honor."

Jake tugged at his gloves and took one last look around. "We'll do the fridge next time. Let's take the two computers and our carpet and make a clean getaway."

Zelda Hudson watched her monitor. The computer graphic ordered by Vice-Admiral Navarre was being put together now by the National Geodesic Survey's main Earth-mapping computer. Areas of the Atlantic with one hundred feet or less of water, then another map depicting 150 feet or less.

Zelda was in a foul mood. Someone, somewhere had figured out the connection between America and the missing SuperAegis satellite.

Of course it was there all the time, in plain sight, but no one saw it. Until now. She looked at the authorization. Captain Killbuck, office of ACNO (submarines).

Carmellini. He was turning into a regular pain in the posterior. The FBI had run a fingerprint identification request through the Clarksburg fingerprint database. The name that popped up was Susan Boyer, deceased.

That request could have originated only with Carmellini, who was carrying around the dead woman's eye- and fingerprints. The request was authorized by Special Agent Krautkramer, the agent in charge investigating America's hijacking. Killbuck, Krautkramer — the tracks led to Rear Admiral Grafton.

When Jake arrived at his apartment in Rosslyn that evening, Callie had two steaks and two potatoes ready for the barbecue, which was getting quite a workout since the electric range was useless.

"Do you think America will fire any more missiles?" Callie asked as they brought each other up to date on their days.

"No, I don't," Jake replied. "We've got every P-3 we own on the East Coast in the air, loaded with sonobuoys and torpedoes. If anyone shoots a missile we can have a P-3 on site in less than a half hour. We've cleared friendly submarines from the area, so from the moment the first sonobuoy hits the water, they'll be pinging actively. With one P-3 Kolnikov might have a chance. Even two. But not four. When they get America located, they'll put torpedoes in the water."

Callie was not her usual self. "I can't get those men aboard La Jolla off my mind. Sometimes life just isn't fair."

"Kolnikov's luck will run out," Jake said forcefully, wanting it to be true. "So far he's anticipated every move. He knows what is possible and how long it takes to make things happen. Now that we're ready, I doubt if he'll chance it. Of course, he could prove me a poor prophet and have one on the way to Boston or Atlanta this very minute. If so, the odds are that he and his crew aren't going to be with us much longer. Which would be fine by me."

"So how are they going to escape?" Callie asked. "They must have some plan. They aren't going to cruise around the world forever like Captain Nemo aboard the Nautilus."

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Jake said. "If you were Kolnikov, how would you do it?"