America

America Read Free Page A

Book: America Read Free
Author: Stephen Coonts
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came back on the air one by one, but no one could explain why the stations had all experienced power failures at the most inopportune time. “The odds are a billion to one that all the stations would lose power at the same time, and by God it happened!” exclaimed Gattsuo and smashed the flat of his hand against a bulkhead.
    â€œOr someone made it happen,” Toad Tarkington muttered.
    â€œWhy did the rocket go off course?” Jake Grafton asked the launch director.
    â€œWe don’t know that it did.”
    â€œIt sounded to me like it was wandering around.”
    Gattsuo had other things on his mind. “Maybe it drifted a little off course,” he said distractedly. “We’ll study the data.”
    â€œWhy didn’t the third-stage engines ignite?”
    â€œWe don’t know.”
    â€œDid it self-destruct or didn’t it?”
    â€œWe don’t know.”
    â€œIf it didn’t self-destruct, where did the third stage—and the satellite—come down?”
    â€œGoddamn it, Admiral, we don’t know! ”
    Three days later when Jake and the liaison team finally went ashore, none of those questions had been answered. The SuperAegis killer satellite was lost.

CHAPTER ONE
    A small band played lively Sousa marches as USS America, America’s newest nuclear-powered attack submarine, prepared to get under way on its first operational cruise. The raucous crowd on the pier was in a holiday mood that balmy September Saturday morning. As seagulls skimmed over the heads of the happy onlookers, the band swung into a heartfelt rendition of “Anchors Aweigh.” The line handlers on America ’s deck threw the last of the lines to the sailors on the pier, severing the connection between the sub and the land.
    The sailors in white uniforms standing on the small, flat, nonskid surface atop the curved hull were going to sea for three months. As the gulls cried and the music floated away on the sea breeze, they took their last fond look at America—wives and kids and girlfriends and scores of navy officers high and low, miles of gold braid, and despite the early hour, barely eight A.M ., dozens of civilian dignitaries up to and including an undersecretary of defense and the secretary of the navy. The congressional delegation from Connecticut was there—the boat had been constructed at Electric Boat—and of course various other senators and congresspeople high and low, those who were on defense committees in their respective houses and those who merely wanted to be seen on the evening news back home. Most of the political people even had a pithy sound bite ready if they were lucky enough to have a microphone thrust at them.
    As the distance between the sub and pier widened, sailors blew their families kisses and everyone waved. When the last notes of “Anchors Aweigh” drifted off on the breeze, the band began playing “The Navy Hymn.” Many of those on the pier and the sub’s deck swabbed moisture from their eyes.
    â€œOh, hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea,” the skipper of the sub sang under his breath as he watched the pier slide aft.
    â€œWhat a day!” the officer of the deck said, glancing at the wispy cirrus high above in the cerulean sky. This morning the sea breeze was light, just enough to roughen the surface of the water and make the sun’s reflection on the swells twinkle wildly, as if the sunlight were reflecting off diamonds. Gulls hovered almost within arm’s reach of the sail, begging for a handout.
    America ’s commanding officer, Commander Leonard Sterrett, was shoulder-to-shoulder with the officer of the deck and two lookouts in the tiny, cramped bridge atop the sail. A temporary safety railing had been rigged around the bridge, but it would be removed and stowed before the boat dived. A hatch would then be lifted hydraulically into place to seal the opening.
    The tug

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