America (33 page)

Ilin laughed. “Your guarantee only means that you do not know if they are listening. I must factor in the possibility that you have a pure heart and an ignorant head.”

“The world is never as it seems,” Jake murmured.

“Occasionally it is,” Ilin said.

“You are evading the question. How did the Russian government find out about the Blackbeard team. Answer it or refuse to do so, your choice.”

“One of the members of the team told us.”

“But the CIA vetted them,” Jake pointed out. “None were SVR.”

“A Russian cannot get out of Russia without the approval of the SVR. He can't get an exit visa. The bureaucracy knows something, always something, about everyone. They never let go. A Russian can never escape them. One of the members of the team worried that the SVR would eventually find out about his participation in the scheme and retaliate against him or his relatives. So he reported it.”

“Who turned the team, told it to steal a U.S. sub?”

“I don't know.” Ilin shrugged.

“The SVR?”

“That is a possibility. I do not know.”

“Would a matter like that be routinely shared with you?”

“Never. Unless I was a part of the operation.”

“How did you learn of the Blackbeard team?”

“I was assigned the job of making contact with one of them.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. The one who betrayed their mission.”

“But you told the director of the CIA of the team's existence?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

As Ilin weighed his answer, Jake added, “Were you told to do so by your government?”

“No.”

“It was your idea?”

Ilin nodded, as if examining that reality for the first time. “Yes.”

“If you had not told, what would have happened?”

“Presumably the team would have been captured in Russia, interrogated, perhaps tried publicly. It is difficult to predict because the decision about what to do with them would have been made at the highest levels based on what the leadership wanted from the United States at that time. It is possible they would have been executed secretly.” He raised his shoulders a millimeter and let them fall.

“But you spilled the secret?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn't that a risk? Isn't it possible the SVR will learn that you betrayed the service, betrayed your trust?”

“Life is full of risks,” Janos Ilin said flatly. “Discussing this with you is one of them.”

Jake Grafton tried to read the Russian's face. Was that statement true? Or magnificent fiction? “I can understand betting your life now and then, but you are putting it at risk rather freely, wouldn't you say? And for what? To save the lives of rogues you don't know?”

“In a country as poor as Russia, lives aren't worth much. Theirs or mine.”

“Did the thought occur to you that the CIA might not be happy that you threw a monkey wrench into their plans?”

Janos Ilin's eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting that the CIA wanted the Blackbeard team to fail?”

“That is a possibility,” Jake Grafton said innocently, glancing at Ilin's face. “There are others.”

“Did they want a Russian submarine, or would any submarine do? Is that where you are going?”

“A CIA team trained to steal a submarine stole one,” Jake said, weighing his words. “The team fired missiles at an American city. That is the reality we must somehow explain.”

Before Ilin could reply to that comment, Jake heard the buzzing of a light plane. It was the first one he had heard all day, so he automatically looked up. The plane was no more than a thousand feet above them, a high-wing Cessna with fixed gear, a Cessna 182 perhaps. Jake got a glimpse of two heads in the front seat.

“That's the first plane I've heard today,” Ilin said, glancing up. “I thought only emergency aircraft were authorized to fly.”

“He's probably gotten permission from someone,” Jake responded slowly. The Cessna rolled into a turn, pointed its left wing at the two of them. As the Cessna held the turn, Jake realized the men in it were looking at him and Ilin. It flew away to the north, toward a low hill, descended gently, then turned steeply. Down to about a hundred feet, the plane came racing back toward the two men in the pasture.

Jake saw one of the men lean out the passenger window opening—obviously the glass had been removed. He had something …

A weapon.

“Jesus, he's got a gun!”

Before they could run more than two paces, a burst of automatic fire went over their heads and kicked up dirt.

As the plane went over, Jake Grafton darted north toward the nearest trees, away from the road. He heard Ilin puffing along behind him.

The four-strand barbed-wire fence along the tree line was old and rusty. Grafton threw himself flat and rolled under the bottom strand as he heard the airplane coming back. Ilin went under headfirst, digging wildly with his arms and legs. Both men managed to roll behind trees as the engine noise crested and a burst of submachine gun bullets beat a tattoo on the tree limbs and trunks over their heads. The white plane with faded blue trim swept on by with its wheels just above the grass, then began rising gently to clear the tree line to the east.

Ilin's chest heaved as he fought for air. His face was gray. Too many cigarettes.

“What was that comment you made about risks?” Grafton asked.

*   *   *

Unlike
America,
the control room in
La Jolla
was brightly lit. The room was directly under the submarine's sail. The computer consoles and control stations were arranged around the periscopes, which were so long they ran from the keel of the boat to the top of the sail when stowed. There were no Revelation panels on the bulkheads because the new sonar system with its massive computers for processing the raw audio data was not installed in
La Jolla,
or any other American submarine for that matter. At the forward bulkhead were two cockpitlike control stations, complete with airline-type control wheels. One of the stations controlled the planes, the other the rudder. The chief of the boat stood behind the two helmsmen, watching the analog depth gauges, compass, and trim indicators and checking them against the information presented on a computer display.

Petty Officer First Class Buck Brown sat at the primary sonar control station studying the displays, sampling frequencies, and designating tracks for the computer to follow and plot. Beside him sat three other sonarmen. There were actually eleven sonar consoles, but only four were necessary for full operation of the system. The others were there in the event one of these consoles had a maintenance problem, or to use for training purposes.

Brown had heard the sonobouys hit the water and correctly designated them as bouys. The fact that the tracks failed to move was the giveaway. The computer kept a running tactical plot, but to back it up, two sailors stood at identical drafting tables in the rear of the control room plotting the bearings and connecting the dots. The navigator checked them constantly. Junior Ryder, the skipper, also liked to glance at the charts as they drew, ensuring that the tactical picture he carried around in his head matched the picture that unfolded on the computer display and the plotting tables.

Ryder left his stool in the center of the room and walked the three steps aft to the plotting tables with his usual quick stride. He was a large man full of nervous energy, and it showed. Now he checked the boat's progress along the bearing line that Brown had laid down two hours ago when he first heard the Tomahawk launch.

He tried to decide what he would have done had he been the pirate captain aboard
America
after he launched the cruise missiles from the vertical launch tubes. Clear the area as fast as possible would be one's first instinct, he knew. However, the faster
America
left the area, the more likely it was that someone would hear her. Perhaps the Russian skipper had dashed a few miles, then slowed to minimize his noise signature … and listen.

Who was this Russian, Kolnikov, whom SUBLANT said stole
America?
An experienced submariner, obviously, but how experienced? How knowledgeable? Was he one of those Russians who knew how to think for themselves, or had he spent his life saluting and doing precisely what he was told?

After he launched the missiles, in which direction did he leave the scene? At three knots his boat would travel only a hundred yards in the minute that it took to get the three weapons airborne. One minute, a hundred yards … of course Brown had been unable to determine any change in bearing from the first launch to the last and thereby get a hint of
America
's course.

But afterward … Kolnikov had launched missiles at Washington thirty-six hours ago from a position about 160 miles south. These missiles today could have been aimed at New York or Boston, maybe even Philadelphia. Did he intend to go northeast, toward Nantucket? Or east, out to sea? Perhaps south?

If he went west he would soon get into shallow water.…

“Captain?” That was Buck Brown, on the sonar.

“Yes.”

“I'm hearing something funny … well, sir, I just don't know. It shouldn't be there and darn if I know what it is.”

Was it possible, Junior Ryder asked himself? Have we met
America
leaving the area?

Junior Ryder slipped on a headset and adjusted it to fit. He pressed the earpieces to create a tight seal as he closed his eyes and concentrated. He heard … something, some kind of a gurgle maybe … nearly inaudible.

“Can you enhance it?”

“Yes, sir.” Brown twiddled a few knobs.

Now the commanding officer could hear it better. Definitely a gurgle. “Is that us?”

“I don't think so, Skipper.”

“What is it?”

“Sir, I'd just be guessing.”

“Guess away, Buck.”

“The problem is that I can't resolve a bearing. The array seems to say it's coming from dead ahead, and the flank sensors seem to indicate it's coming from behind. Does that make sense? Could it be between us and the array?”

Junior Ryder stood very, very still. “How long have you been hearing this noise?”

“I noticed it about three or four minutes ago, sir. But it's so faint, it may have been there for quite a while.”

“Hours?”

“Oh no, sir. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Maybe less. I'm sure if it had been there longer I would have noticed it sooner.”

“So what is it? Take a guess.”

“I'm probably way off base, sir. It kinda sounds to me like water swirling around an open torpedo tube. Or a couple of them.”

*   *   *

The changing tone of the Cessna's engine drew Jake's attention. He put his head around the tree, looked for the plane. There it was, descending, turning, lining up on the pasture.

“Damn! They're going to land! Let's get the hell outta here.”

He turned and charged into the woods, Ilin following.

The Russian was quickly winded. As they ran through the brush and second-growth timber, slapping limbs out of the way and being slapped by them, he managed to ask, “Who—? Who wants you dead?”

Grafton paused for a moment to let Ilin catch up. “I thought they were after you,” he said, searching the Russian's face. At least it was no longer gray. Now it was bloodless, the color of old paper. “Maybe the SVR has found out about your chat with DeGarmo, the CIA banana.”

Ilin leaned against a tree, trying desperately to get air. “Oh, no … They … would never … have let me … walk out … of the embassy.” He took a huge breath and exhaled dramatically. “They would have sent me back to Russia … or executed me in the embassy.… Not this…” he waved a hand at the men behind.

Jake Grafton could no longer hear the hum of the aircraft engine. Presumably the killers had shut off the plane and were now coming through the woods, searching for their quarry.

“C'mon,” Jake said and led off.

Unless the gunmen were expert trackers, and this wasn't the Wild West, they were going to have to come slowly through the woods, looking carefully. Maybe he and Ilin had a chance.

Unfortunately they were going up a slope, which slowed them down, and Ilin was panting like a sled dog, which must be audible for a quarter mile.

After what seemed like a quarter hour, but was probably half that, they crested the ridge and found a trail along the top. Right or left?

Jake opted for right because the direction seemed to take them away from the highway. He felt like running but forced himself to walk. If he ran, Ilin would never keep up. As it was he was holding his side. Still, he too walked as quickly as he could.

They had gone a quarter mile or so when the trees ahead thinned.

A house. Jake glimpsed the brick. White trim. Big house, with chimneys.

Across the lawn, looking for signs of life.

No people, no cars in the driveway, no one visible in the windows.

He rang the doorbell on the entrance nearest the garage. He tried the knob. Locked, of course.

Felt around in the mailbox, looked under the doormat. Nothing. A flowerpot on the window ledge. He took it down, looked in.

“What are you looking for?”

“A key. Unless you want to run through the woods like a rabbit.”

Now he heard the engine of the airplane, revving … taking off.

A light fixture … no. A box for milk deliveries … And there it was, taped to the bottom of the milk box.

Please, God, no alarm!
Please!

He unlocked the dead bolt, then found he had to do the doorknob too. Finally the door swung open.

No alarm.

He relocked the door behind them, then looked around. They were in the foyer of a large house, ten or twelve rooms, well furnished. The place reeked of serious money.