America by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page B

authority.”
    â€œBetter pass along this fact too, Admiral. This sub is going to dive in the very near future. If it is as quiet as everyone has been saying it is, I’ll lose it unless I’m shot with luck. Whatever the brains in Washington want to do about this had better be done before this thing slides under.”
    â€œTry to stay on it.”
    â€œAye aye,” Warfield said without enthusiasm and hung up the headset.
    â€œWhat if this guy squirts a torpedo at us, Captain?” the OOD asked.
    â€œHe won’t,” Warfield said with conviction. “I doubt that he has any torpedoes in the tubes ready to go, but even if he does, he won’t shoot. This guy kept fifty hostages to ensure that we wouldn’t shoot at him.”
    â€œIf he didn’t have any hostages,” the XO asked, “would you sink him?”
    â€œRight now. This very minute.”
    â€œSo the choice is to sink him with the gun or let him go.”
    â€œOr try to ram him, disable the screws.”
    Even as he said the words, Harvey Warfield was considering. If he could bend or break off just one blade, the sub would lose a great deal of speed and become a real noisemaker. He picked up the handset, asked for the Pentagon war room again.
    The admiral there was unenthusiastic. “The evidence for a hijacking hasn’t changed in the last five minutes, has it?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œStill thin.”
    Harvey Warfield had had enough lawyering. “We fry people in the electric chair with less evidence than we have right now,” he told the admiral. “The Coast Guard has eight dead American sailors stretched out on their deck.” Warfield lost his temper. “Are you going to wait for autopsies, Admiral?”
    â€œIf you ram the sub you will damage both ships, perhaps severely.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œPerhaps crack the sub’s reactor, have a nuclear accident right there in Long Island Sound. With thirty million people strewn around the shore.”
    â€œThere is that possibility,” Harvey Warfield admitted. He felt so helpless, listening to this cover-my-ass paper pusher while he watched a brand-new, genuine U.S. attack submarine armed to the teeth sail for the open sea with a bunch of criminals at the helm. Killers. Murderers.
    â€œThis decision needs to be made by the national command authority,” the Pentagon admiral said. By that he meant the president of the United States. “We’ll get back to you.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    *   *   *
    That was the situation twenty-seven minutes later when Kolnikov decided the water was deep enough. Two freighters were nearby, on their way out of Long Island Sound into the Atlantic, and several fishing boats. The Block Island ferry was about to cross the sub and destroyer’s wake when Kolnikov reduced power. As two Coast Guard helicopters buzzed angrily overhead, the sub decelerated, gradually flooded its tanks, and settled slowly into the sea. The destroyer was abeam the submarine on the starboard side when the top of the sub’s masts disappeared from sight. Crying raucously and soaring on the salty breeze blowing in from the sea, a cloud of seagulls searched the roiling water for tidbits brought up from the depths.
    Aboard John Paul Jones, Harvey Warfield knew that he didn’t have a chance of tracking the submarine unless he used active sonar, so he gave the order. Jones was a guided-missile destroyer, its systems optimized to protect a carrier battle group from air attack. The ship had an antisubmarine capability, but it certainly was not state of the art.
    The sonar operator tracked the sub as it turned into the swirling water disturbed by the destroyer’s passing, then lost it.
    â€œThis guy is no neophyte,” Harvey Warfield muttered darkly when the tactical action officer in combat gave him the news, but there was little he could do. He turned the destroyer,