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a few feet of water remained between the two hulls.
    Then smoke erupted from the fantail of the tug. Three seconds later, a minor explosion along the tug’s waterline blew water into the air. The man on the fantail went over the side. Kolnikov rushed down the ladder from the tug’s bridge and raced for the afterdeck.
    Two more crewmen appeared on the tug’s deck and ran aft.
    â€œMan overboard, civilian from the tug!” The OOD shouted this message into the intercom, and in seconds it blared on the boat’s loudspeakers.
    In the control room the chief of the boat pronounced a curse word. “Oh, man!” he said. “First Greenville, then this!” Everyone in the control room knew what he meant—if the civilian in the water drowned before the sub crew could pull him out, the media would savage the navy and Captain Lenny Sterrett, which would probably sink his naval career.
    Meanwhile the two vessels drifted without power. No slack developed in the towline, which continued to pull the vessels together until the tug’s stern gently contacted the anechoic skin of the submarine below the waterline.
    In the sub’s tiny cockpit, Lenny Sterrett was trying to sort it all out. The men on the line-handling party on the submarine’s deck threw the man in the water a line. He came clambering up it hand over hand with surprising agility.
    â€œCut that tow line,” Lenny Sterrett roared at the senior petty officer on the sub’s deck, who turned to grab an ax that had been thoughtfully carried on deck, just in case.
    Too late. The man coming up the line pulled a weapon from beneath his loose-fitting wet shirt and shot the six unarmed men in the line-handling party as fast as he could pull the trigger. Then he scrambled for the open deck hatch.
    All Lenny Sterrett heard were pops from the silenced reports, but the sight of falling men galvanized him, cleared away the cobwebs. He keyed the intercom and roared, “General quarters. Close all watertight doors. Prepare to repel unauthorized boarders.”
    Those were his last words, because even as he said them, a man with a sniper rifle standing on the wing of the tug’s bridge shot him.
    When the skipper went down, bleeding profusely, the OOD stood for a second, too stunned to move. The sight of two men crossing the line that held the sub to the tug hand over hand galvanized him. He jumped down the hatch into the sail. “You two, clear the bridge!” he shouted back up at the lookouts.
    Neither man made it down the hatch. The sharpshooter on the tug didn’t miss.
    When he realized what had happened, the OOD closed the hatch and feverishly worked to dog it down. This evolution could not be done quickly. Unlike World War II submarines that patrolled on the surface and crash-dived to evade enemies, America was designed to submerge when leaving port and stay submerged for months.
    Meanwhile, in the control room, the radioman punched a button to allow him to transmit on the ship-to-ship plain-voice frequency, Navy Blue. He was wearing a headset. “Mayday, America, ” he said. “Unauthorized armed personnel attempting to board America. Request assistance ASAP. Mayday.”
    The chief of the boat, who had been standing behind the helmsman, for in this new class of submarine there was only one, reached above his head for the safety cover that shielded the SCRAM button, which would drop the rods into the reactor, stopping the nuclear reaction. He broke the safety wire on the cover and lifted it.
    *   *   *
    Valuable seconds were wasted as the OOD wrestled with the hatch dogs. Finally he got them secured to his satisfaction, then he dropped down the ladder to the first deck, where he rushed below to the control room.
    â€œBoarders,” he roared. “SCRAM the reactor. Close all the hatches. Don’t let them—”
    At that moment two men carrying silenced submachine guns rushed in and