Free America by Stephen Coonts Page A

Either way they were all dead men.
    He wondered if the others had carefully considered the risks. Or were they here because they thought he had? Maybe they just didn’t care. “At some point in life you gotta just grab for it, man.” That was the American, Leon Rothberg’s, explanation, and it was probably as good as any.
    Kolnikov spent another hour exploring the boat, examining everything, trying to absorb all of it. The boat was two technological generations beyond anything he had seen in the Russian Navy or on the drawing tables. The torpedoes, fired by computers that displayed the tactical problem on large screens; the cruise missiles, with their breathtaking capabilities; and the remote periscope—all these things were marvels, yet the main technological jewel was the multistatic passive sonar. Truly it was a Revelation, revealing all things.
    As he walked through the boat he paused often to listen and marvel at the quiet. He put his head against bulkheads, for any vibration or noise would be magnified by its transmission through a solid. Essentially nothing. As he listened he could hear his own heart beating. Years ago the Americans pioneered techniques to acoustically isolate mechanical noisemakers so the sound would not be transmitted throughout the hull of the boat. Now the Americans had taken that technology to a whole new level.
    He would have to do something about the Americans crammed into the mess hall. Kolnikov conferred with Heydrich. “I intend to find a ship and surface near it before dusk, put these men into the water, get rid of them.”
    â€œDo you want to keep anyone?”
    â€œNo. We would have to watch anyone we kept, keeping our people up around the clock. Put them over the side.”
    â€œSeveral of them probably have the combination of the crypto safe. No doubt I can persuade them to open it. The codebooks would make us extremely wealthy men.”
    â€œThey will be worth pennies when we find the time to peddle them; they aren’t worth the effort. Put all the Americans over the side.”
    Heydrich grimaced. “These people will tell tales. Why not just shoot them, then jettison their bodies through a torpedo tube in the middle of the ocean?”
    â€œYou’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œI don’t take unnecessary risks.”
    â€œRisks are my department, Heydrich. We do it my way.”

CHAPTER THREE
    As he rode the helicopter across the Delmarva peninsula and the Chesapeake Bay on his way back to Washington, Jake Grafton speculated about the urgent summons. He knew nothing about submarines—had spent his entire career in naval aviation.
    He smiled to himself as he recalled Callie’s enthusiasm this morning. When he was handed the assignment to the military liaison staff of the anti-ICBM project—Super-Aegis—he had been depressed. He knew enough about the navy to understand that the job was a dead end, on the career path to nowhere. The liaison team would get no credit for a job well done. Problems that led to complaints from foreign governments, however, would earn everyone involved sufficient notoriety to force his or her retirement.
    Callie hadn’t seen it that way. This job was a fine opportunity, she said, a challenge. “Someone chose you for this job because he knows you can do it well.”
    Jake just nodded. He didn’t tell her that Admiral Stuffy Stalnaker put Jake in this job because he didn’t want to give him a job with a shot at promotion.
    Ah, well. Bureaucracies were the same the world over. And regardless of how it went, Jake was ready to retire. Sharing the days with Callie would certainly be fun. And yet, as Callie had predicted, he was enjoying the challenge of the liaison team.
    The space-based missile-defense system was a technological marvel, a marriage of computers, reactors, lasers, and infrared sensors that many said could never be made to work. That many didn’t