The entire length of USS Maine Maine reverberated like a ba.s.s drum as one of the logs struck the fibergla.s.s dome over the bow sonar array. reverberated like a ba.s.s drum as one of the logs struck the fibergla.s.s dome over the bow sonar array.

There were three sections of what had once been a single tree. The first hit axially just on the edge of the sonar dome, doing very little damage because the submarine was only doing a few knots, and everything about her hull was built for strength. The noise was bad enough. The first log was shunted aside, but there were two more, and the center one tapped the hull once just outside the control room.

The helmsman responded at once to the Captain's command, pushing his control yoke all the way to the stops. The stern of the submarine rose at once, into the path of the logs. Maine Maine had a cruciform stern. There was a rudder both above and below the propeller shaft. To the left and right were the stern planes, which operated like the stabilizers of an aircraft. On the outer surface of each was another vertical structure that looked like an auxiliary rudder, but was in fact a fitting for sonar sensors. The chain between two of the logs fouled on that. Two logs were outboard, and one inboard. The inboard one was just long enough to reach the spinning propeller. The resulting noise was the worst anyone had ever heard. had a cruciform stern. There was a rudder both above and below the propeller shaft. To the left and right were the stern planes, which operated like the stabilizers of an aircraft. On the outer surface of each was another vertical structure that looked like an auxiliary rudder, but was in fact a fitting for sonar sensors. The chain between two of the logs fouled on that. Two logs were outboard, and one inboard. The inboard one was just long enough to reach the spinning propeller. The resulting noise was the worst anyone had ever heard. Maine' Maine's seven-bladed screw was made of manganese-bronze alloy that had been shaped into its nearly perfect configuration over a period of seven months. It was immensely strong, but not this strong. Its scimitar-shaped blades struck the logs one after another, like a slow, inefficient saw. Each impact gouged or dented the outboard edges. The officer in the maneuvering room, aft, had already decided to stop the shaft before the order to do so arrived. Outside the hull, not a hundred feet from his post, he heard the screams of abused metal as the sonar fitting was wrenched off the starboard stern plane; along with it went the additional fitting that held the submarine's towed-array sonar. At that point the logs, one of them now badly splintered, fell off into the submarine's wake, and the worst of the noise stopped.

"What the f.u.c.k was that?" Ricks nearly screamed.

"Tail's gone, sir. We just lost the tail," a sonarman said. "Right-side lateral array is damaged, sir." Ricks was already out of the room. The petty officer was talking to himself.

"Conn, maneuvering room," a speaker was saying. "Something just pounded the h.e.l.l out of our screw. I'm checking for damage to the shaft now."

"Stern planes are damaged, sir. Very sluggish on the controls," the helmsman said. The Chief of the Boat pulled the youngster off the seat and took his place. Slowly and carefully, the Master Chief worked the control wheel.

"Damaged hydraulics, feels like. The trim tabs"-these were electrically powered-"look okay." He worked the wheel left and right. "Rudder is okay, sir."

"Lock the stern planes in neutral. Ten degrees up on the fairwater planes." This order came from the XO.

"Aye".

"So, what was it?" Dubinin asked.

"Metallic-an enormous mechanical transient, bearing zero-five-one." The officer tapped the blazing mark on his screen. "Low frequency as you see, like a drum ... but this noise here, much higher pitch. I heard that on my phones, sounded like a machine gun. Wait a minute ..." Senior Lieutenant Rykov said, thinking rapidly. "The frequency-I mean the interval of the impulses-that was a blade-rate, that was a propeller ... only thing it could be...."

"And now?" the Captain asked.

"Gone completely."

"I want the entire sonar crew on duty." Captain Dubinin returned to control. "Come about, new course zero-four-zero. Speed ten."

Getting a Soviet Army truck was simplicity itself. They'd stolen it, along with a staff car. It was just after midnight in Berlin, and since it was a Sunday night, the streets were empty. Berlin is as lively a city as any in the world, but Monday there is a workday, and work is something that Germans take seriously. What little traffic there was came from people late to leave their local Gasthaus, Gasthaus, or perhaps a few workers whose jobs required round-the-clock manning. What mattered was that traffic was agreeably light, allowing them to get to their destination right on time. or perhaps a few workers whose jobs required round-the-clock manning. What mattered was that traffic was agreeably light, allowing them to get to their destination right on time.

There used to be a wall, Gunther Bock thought. On one side was the American Berlin detachment, and on the other a Soviet detachment, each with a small but heavily used exercise area adjacent to their barracks. The wall was gone now, leaving nothing but gra.s.s between two mechanized forces. The staff car pulled up to the Soviet gate. The sentry there was a senior sergeant of twenty years with pimples on his face and an untidy uniform. His eyes went a little wide when he saw the three stars on Keitel's shoulder boards.

"Stand at attention!" Keitel roared in perfect Russian. The boy complied at once. "I am here from Army Command to conduct an unannounced readiness inspection. You will not report our arrival to anyone. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Colonel!"

"Carry on-and clean up that filthy uniform before I come back through here or you'll find yourself on the Chinese border! Move!" Keitel ordered Bock, who was sitting at the wheel.

"Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst," Bock replied after he moved off. It was funny, actually. There were a few humorous aspects to all this, Bock thought. A few. But you had to have the right sense of humor for it.

The regimental headquarters was in an old building once used by Hitler's Wehrmacht that the Russians had used more than they had maintained. It did have the usual garden outside, and in the summer one could see the flowers arranged to duplicate the unit's patch. This one was a Guards Tank Regiment, though one with a history to which its soldiers paid little attention, judging by the sentry at the gate. Bock pulled right up to the door. Keitel and the rest dismounted from their vehicles and walked into the front door like G.o.ds in a bad mood.

"Who's the duty officer of this wh.o.r.ehouse?" Keitel bellowed. A corporal just pointed. Corporals do not dispute the orders of staff-grade officers. The duty officer, they found, was a major, perhaps thirty years of age.

"What is this?" the young officer asked.

"I am Colonel Ivanenko of the Inspectorate. This This is an unannounced operational-readiness inspection. Hit your alarm!" The Major walked two steps and punched a b.u.t.ton that set off sirens all over the camp area. is an unannounced operational-readiness inspection. Hit your alarm!" The Major walked two steps and punched a b.u.t.ton that set off sirens all over the camp area.

"Next, call your regimental commander, and get his drunken a.s.s over here! What is your readiness state, Major?" Keitel demanded without giving the man a chance to take a breath. The junior officer stopped in midreach for the phone, not knowing which order he was supposed to follow first. "Well?" "Well?"

"Our readiness is in accordance with unit norms, Colonel Ivanenko."

"You have a chance to prove that." Keitel turned to one of the others. "Take this child's name!"

Less than two thousand meters away, they could see lights going on at the American base in what had so recently been West Berlin.

"They're having a drill also," Keitel/Ivanenko observed. "Splendid. We'd better be faster than they are," he added.

"What is this?" The regimental commander, also a colonel, arrived without his b.u.t.tons done.

"This looks like a sorry spectacle!" Keitel boomed. looks like a sorry spectacle!" Keitel boomed. "This "This is an unannounced readiness inspection. You have a regiment to lead, Colonel. I suggest you get to it without asking any further questions." is an unannounced readiness inspection. You have a regiment to lead, Colonel. I suggest you get to it without asking any further questions."

"But-"

"But what?" what?" Keitel demanded. Keitel demanded. "Don't you know what a readiness inspection "Don't you know what a readiness inspection is?" is?"

There was one thing about dealing with Russians, Keitel thought. They were arrogant, overbearing, and they hated Germans, however much they protested otherwise. On the other hand, when browbeaten, they were predictable. Even though his rank insignia was no higher than this man's, he had a louder voice, and that was all he needed.

"I'll show you what my boys can do."

"We'll be outside to watch," Keitel a.s.sured him.

"Dr. Ryan, you'd better get down here." The line clicked off.

"Okay," Jack said. He grabbed his cigarettes and walked down to room 7-F-27, the CIA's Operations Center. Located on the north side of the building, it was the counterpart to operations rooms in many other government agencies. In the center of the twenty-by-thirty-foot room, once you got past the cipher lock on the door, was a large circular table with a lazy-Susan bookcase in the center and six seats around it. The seats had overhead plaques to designate their functions: Senior Duty Officer, Press, Africa-Latin America, Europe-USSR, Near-East-Terrorism, and South Asia-East Asia-Pacific. The wall clocks showed the time in Moscow, Beijing, Beirut, Tripoli, and, of course, Greenwich Mean. There was an adjacent conference room that looked down on the CIA's internal courtyard.

"What gives?" Jack asked, arriving with Goodley in his wake.

"According to NORAD a nuclear device just went off in Denver."

"I hope that's a f.u.c.king joke!" Jack replied. That, too, was a reflex. Before the man had a chance to respond, Ryan's stomach turned over. n.o.body made jokes like that one.

"I wish it were," the Senior Duty Officer replied.

"What do we know?"

"Not much."

"Anything? Threat board?" Jack asked. Again it was reflexive. If there had been anything, he would have heard it by now. "Okay-where's Marcus?"

"Coming home in the C-141, somewhere between j.a.pan and the Aleutians. You're it, sir," the SDO pointed out, quietly thanking a beneficent G.o.d that it wasn't himself. "President's at Camp David. SecDef and SecState-"

"Dead?" Ryan asked.

"It would appear so, sir."

Ryan closed his eyes. "Holy Jesus. The Vice President?"

"At his official residence. We've only been going about three minutes. The NMCC watch officer is a Captain James Rosselli. General Wilkes is on the way in. DIA's on line. They-I mean the President just ordered DEFCON-TWO on our strategic forces."

"Anything from the Russians?"

"Nothing unusual at all. There's a regional air-defense exercise under way in Eastern Siberia. That's all."

"Okay, alert all the stations. Put the word out that I want to hear anything they might have-anything. They are to hit every source they can just as fast as they can." Jack paused one more time. "How sure are we that this really happened?"

"Sir, two DSPS satellites copied the flash. We have a KH-11 that's going to be overhead in about twenty minutes, and I've directed NPIC to put every camera they have on Denver. NORAD says it's a definite nuclear detonation, but there's no word on yield or damage. The explosion seems to be in the immediate area of the stadium-like Black Sunday, Black Sunday, sir, but real. This is definitely not a drill, not if we're jacking the strategic forces to DEFCON-TWO, sir." sir, but real. This is definitely not a drill, not if we're jacking the strategic forces to DEFCON-TWO, sir."

"Inbound ballistic track? Aircraft delivery?"

"Negative on the first, there was no launch warning, and no ballistic radar track."

"What about a FOBS?" Goodley asked. A weapon could be delivered by satellite. That was the purpose of a Fractional-Orbital Bombardment System.

"They would have caught that," the SDO replied. "I already asked. On the aircraft side, they don't know yet. They're trying to check air-traffic-control tapes."

"So we don't know jack s.h.i.t."

"Correct."

"President check in with us yet?" Ryan asked.

"No, but we have an open line there. He has the National Security Advisor there also."

"Most likely scenario?"

"I'd say terrorism."

Ryan nodded. "So would I. I'm taking over the conference room. Okay, I want DO, DI, DS&T in here immediately. If you need choppers to fetch them in, order 'em." Ryan walked into the room, leaving the door open.

"Christ," Goodley said. "You sure you want me here?"

"Yes, and when you have an idea, you say it out loud. I forgot about FOBS." Jack lifted the phone and punched the FBI b.u.t.ton.

"Command Center."

"This is CIA, Deputy Director Ryan speaking. Who is this?"

"Inspector Pat O'Day. I have Deputy a.s.sistant Director Murray here also. You're on speaker, sir."

"Talk to me, Dan." Jack put his phone on speaker also. A watch officer handed him a cup of coffee.

"We don't know anything. No heads-up at all, Jack. Thinking terrorists?"

"At the moment it seems the most plausible alternative."

"How sure are you of that?"

"Sure?" Ryan shook his head at the phone, Goodley saw. "What's 'sure' mean, Dan?"

"I hear you. We're still trying to figure out what happened here, too. I can't even get CNN on the TV to work."

"What?"

"One of my communications people says the satellites are all out," Murray explained. "Didn't you know that?"

"No." Jack pointed for Goodley to get back into the Ops Center and find out. "If that's true, it could scratch the terrorism idea. Jesus, that's scary!"

"It's true, Jack. We've checked."

"They think ten commercial commosats are nonfunctional," Goodley said. "All the defense birds are on line, though. Our commlinks are okay."

"Find the most senior S&T guy you can find-or one of our commo people-and ask him what could snuff out satellites. Move!" Jack ordered. "Where's Shaw?"

"On his way in. Going to be awhile the way the roads are."

"Dan, I'll give you everything I get here."

"It'll be a two-way street." The line went dead.

The most horrible thing was that Ryan didn't know what to do next. It was his job to gather data and forward it to the President, but he had no data. What information there was would come in through military circuits. CIA had failed again, Ryan told himself. Someone had done something to his country and he hadn't warned anyone. People were dead because his agency had failed in its mission. Ryan was Deputy Director, the man who really ran the shop for the political drone placed over his head. The failure was personal. A million people dead, maybe, and there he was, all alone in an elegant little conference room staring at a wall with nothing on it. He hunted a line to NORAD and punched it.

"NORAD," a disembodied voice answered.

"This is the CIA Operations Center, Deputy Director Ryan speaking. I need information."

"We do not have much, sir. We think the bomb exploded in the immediate vicinity of the Skydome. We are trying to estimate yield, but nothing yet. A helicopter has been dispatched from Lowry Air Force Base."

"Will you keep us posted?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you." That was a big help, Ryan thought. Now he knew that someone else didn't know anything.