Phoenix Sub Zero

by Michael Dimercurio

  one perfect touchdown, or the time the softball had flown what seemed a quarter-mile away.

  Daminski sat down next to Belts and let out a whoosh of breath, the feeling of heaviness sneaking into him in spite of Betts’s presence.

  “We still looking at going home in three weeks, Cap’n?” Betts asked.

  “I guess. Not that there’s much to come home to.”

  Betts studied a Mark 50 torpedo on the central rack.

  “Myra got another bug up her ass?”

  “Worse than usual. This time she—”

  A phone at Betts’s side whooped. Betts scooped up the handset, the black telephone dwarfed in his massive fist.

  “Torpedo room. Betts … yeah, he’s here. Hold on.” Betts handed Daminski the phone. “Conn for you. Skipper.”

  “Captain.”

  “Off’sa’deck, sir. Request permission to come to periscope depth, sir.”

  “Whatya got?”

  The officer of the deck gave the ship’s course, speed, and depth and the distance to the surface-ship contacts being tracked. Satisfied that the ship wouldn’t collide with some rustbucket tanker bound for Naples, Daminski ordered the ship to periscope depth. The submarine would remain submerged, hiding under the cover of the waves, interacting with the world above only, extending the radio mast to listen to the satellite transmission of their radio messages, extending the periscope to avoid a collision. Daminski handed the phone back to Betts. Even as the big torpedoman chief reached over to replace the handset in its cradle, the deck inclined upward to a fifteen-degree angle as the O.O.D drove Augusta up toward the surface 500 feet overhead.

  Betts asked again about Myra. Daminski thought about finishing the story, then thought better of it, dismissing the impending breakup of his marriage with a wave of his football-damaged hand.

  “Hell with it, Terry. The real reason I came down is that you’re looking kind of wimpy these days. I think the fat’s gotten into your arms there. What do you say? Loser buys the keg.”

  Betts stared down his nose at Daminski. Daminski was fond of frequenting the bars on the piers and arm-wrestling anyone who was foolish enough to

  take him on, but he had always had the intelligence never to challenge Betts.

  “Captain, I will break your arm, and then you’ll bust me to third class.”

  “Come on.”

  Betts picked up the bench and carried it to the starboard weapon rack, to the free space where no weapons were stowed. He bent and brought a tool chest to the opposite side of the corner of the rack, kneeled on his box, brought his huge arm down on the rack and stared at Daminski.

  The deck had leveled off and was now rocking gently in the waves near the surface. Two decks above, the O.O.D would be on the periscope while the bigmouth radio antenna reached for the sky, picking up the radio traffic from the orbiting communications satellite. The GPS navigation system would be swallowing a data dump from the navigation satellite, pinpointing their location in the wide ocean to within a few yards.

  Daminski kneeled down on the toolbox, his knee protesting from three operations to repair damaged cartilage. He put his elbow on the rack, his ham hand only two-thirds the size of Betts’s. The two men grasped hands, Daminski’s fingers so crooked that his middle finger had to be straight to allow him to clasp his other fingers around Betts’s hand.

  “Giving me the finger, huh?” Betts asked, sounding serious.

  “That’ll just piss me off and you’ll have a compound fracture.”

  Daminski was grinning, his lips pulled back so far every tooth in his mouth showed, a war face he had cultivated since his days on the Dace. It did nothing for Betts, who two decades before had watched Rocket Ron practicing the face in the mirror.

  “On three,” Betts said, his face already looking slightly red, his wrist tense, ready to cock when the contest began.

  “One, two, three!”

  The two arms jumped, the tendons and muscles straining.

  Sweat broke out on Betts’s forehead. Daminski’s face muscles trembled. Two, then three men in the compartment silently gathered around.

  Betts’s fist had cocked slightly inward, pulling Daminski’s hand in an unnatural twist. Daminski’s arm, however, had not given an inch, still ramrod straight, if anything allowing his hand to twist while still pushing for an angle. But the senior chief had over a hundred pounds on the captain. Both arms began to shake, slightly at first, then more

  pronounced.

  Daminski’s hand began to travel backward toward the rack surface as Betts bore down on him. In one grunt Daminski recovered, almost all the way to the vertical. A shrill rip sounded in the room as Daminski’s poopysuit shoulder seam let go. Daminski grunted as his arm began to force the massive chief’s hand backward, perhaps an inch.

  The phone from the control room whooped, making Betts jump slightly. Daminski sensed an opportunity but Betts took a breath, tensed his arm, pushing the smaller Damin ski’s back to the vertical, then farther. Daminski’s hand was slowly sliding down toward the rack.

  One of the men in the room picked up the phone. “Captain, it’s for you, sir. Officer of the deck.”

  “Tell him to wait.” Betts took advantage of the interruption and pushed Daminski’s hand farther down, now almost at a forty-five-degree angle, halfway down to the rack.

  Daminski kept fighting, his breaths wheezing.

  “Captain says to wait, sir,” the phone talker said. “Yes sir, wait one.” Then to Daminski, “Captain, O.O.D says there’s a flash radio message for you, personal for the captain. He says he needs you in control. Now,

  sir.”

  Daminski looked up at Betts, who was smiling.

  “I’d better go. Chief.”

  Betts’s hand kept pushing on Daminski’s, but the effort to get the captain down had cost him. Daminski’s hand was fighting its way back up.

  “Yeah, you’d better get up there,” Betts said, taking a gasping breath between each word.

  By then Daminski’s fist was almost at the vertical again.

  “On the count of three, let go.”

  “Okay.” “One,” Daminski said, eyes closed, still struggling against Betts’s bulk. The ship’s deck took on an angle again as the submarine left the danger of the surface and returned to the arms of the deep, beneath the thermal layer, where only an extraordinarily lucky warship would be able to detect them.

  “Two,” Daminski wheezed, his fist now cocking against Betts’s, driving the huge arm downward toward the rack.

  Betts’s face was red, his eyes clamped shut, his teeth biting into his lip. Daminski’s arm began to move Betts’s down.

  Betts began to give out a groaning sound. Daminski took one final breath and forced his arm toward the rack. Betts’s hand shook. After a final moment, Betts let go and Daminski drove the huge fist down to the rack. Betts slipped off the bench box, holding his arm and gasping.

  Daminski stood. “Three. You okay, Terry?” “Screw you,” Betts said from the deck as four torpedomen tried to pull him upright. “Sir.”

  Daminski laughed, fingered the rip in his uniform and headed for the stairs to the middle level.

  “Next time for sure, right. Senior?”

  Betts got to his feet and stared at Daminski. “You won’t survive the next time. Skipper.”

  Daminski waved at Betts and moved up the stairs, taking the second flight to the upper level, turning the corner and heading aft to the control room, amazed at how much better he felt, Myra’s letter almost forgotten. Almost.

  Officer of the deck Lt. Kevin Skinnard stood on the raised periscope

  stand, a slim man in his late twenties with traces of acne on his cheeks below his deep-set eyes. His face looked haunted by lack of sleep as he held out a metal clipboard to Daminski, the radio messages printed out from their trip to periscope depth.

  Daminski opened the clipboard cover and read the message.

  261157ZDEC FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH PLASH FLASH
FM CINCNAVFORCEMED TO USS AUGUSTA SSN763 SUBJ RETASKING SCI/TOP SECRET–-EARLY RETIREMENT PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING OFFICER/PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING OFFICER //BT// 1. MISSION RETASKING FOLLOWS EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

  2. USS AUGUSTA ORDERED TO INTERCEPT AND SINK UNITED ISLAMIC FRONT DESTINY CLASS TYPE TWO NUCLEAR SUBMARINE UNIT ONE AT FIRST DETECTION.

  3. SUBJECT UIF SUBMARINE UNIT SURFACED BRIEFLY AT 0635 LOCAL AT LATITUDE NOVEMBER THREE FIVE LONGITUDE ECHO ZERO THREE ZERO. UNIT PICKED UP DOWNED PILOTS, PROCEEDED EAST AND SUBMERGED.

  4. INTENT OF UIF SUBMARINE UNKNOWN. DESTINATION/ MISSION ALSO INDETERMINATE. HOWEVER, ANALYSTS BELIEVE GENERAL SIHOUD MAY BE ABOARD AS A RIDER. 5. P-3 PATROL AIRCRAFT FROM SIGONELLA WILL BE PATROLLING IN SEARCH OF UIF SUBMARINE. ANY DETECTION WILL BE PUT ON COMMSAT TRAFFIC WITH ELF CALL TO PERISCOPE DEPTH. 6. USS AUGUSTA ORDERED TO TRANSMIT SITREP TO CINCNAVPORCEMED IMMEDIATELY ON CONFIRMED DETECTION OF UIF

  SUBMARINE. AFTER SITREP TRANSMISSION AUGUSTA AUTHORIZED WEAPON RELEASE FOR SINKING OF UIP UNIT. 7. AFTER UIF SUBMARINE CONFIRMED SUNK USS AUGUSTA ORDERED TO PROCEED TO NAPLES ITALY FOR PATROL REPORT DEBRIEFING TO COMMEDPLEET. 8. GOOD LUCK TO YOU AND YOUR CREW, RON. GOOD HUNTING. 9. ADMIRAL J. TRAEPS SENDS. //BT//

  Daminski smiled, signed the message, glanced at the chronometer and jotted down the time. He handed the message board to O.O.D Skinnard and moved down to the chart table, shuffled down in the locker portion for a new chart of the Mediterranean and marked the spot of the Destiny-class’s surfacing with a blue pencil dot. He grabbed a time-distance circular slide rule and spun the wheel several times, then drew a circle in the sea with the compass center on the blue dot. Skinnard checked his calculation and nodded. Daminski pointed to the chart.

  “Course two eight five at flank until we’re here, then slow to ten knots and do a large sector search. Notify the ops boss to do his homework on the Destiny-class and tell him we’ll be briefing the officers at 1400.”

  “Dive, make your depth eight five four feet. Helm, all ahead flank, right two degrees rudder, steady course two eight five,” Skinnard ordered.

  Daminski frowned at Skinnard for a moment. The youth was the sonar

  officer, and Daminski was about to see how good he was.

  “Skinnard, you got a sonar-search plan for the Destiny-class?”

  The lieutenant didn’t blink. “I reviewed it myself two days ago. Captain. It’s current. My sonarmen will have it loaded in five minutes. If that sucker’s out there, we’ll snap him up.”

  Daminski’s frown didn’t ease but inside he was smiling.

  The kid had given the right answer, and it was because he was trained right—Daminski-trained.

  “I know you will,” Daminski said, his face close to Skinnard’s. He turned and walked to his stateroom, whistling tunelessly. A lousy day had turned out pretty fine, after all.

  He rubbed his right shoulder and biceps and grimaced. At least he could shoot the Destiny submarine without it ripping his arm out of the socket. Damned Betts. Next time he’d lift a few weights before challenging his beefy torpedoman.

  Thursday, 26 December eastern mediterranean USS augusta The door to sonar smashed open. The sonar chief turned and stared at Captain Daminski, his hair drawn back, red wraparound glasses shading his round

  eyes. Chief Bruce Hillsworth, Royal Navy, was on an exchange program, his usual assignment to the HMS Triumph, an attack submarine of the Trafalgar class. After going to BSY-1 BATEARS sonar school in San Diego, Hillsworth had reported aboard Augusta for the temporary assignment to assist the regular sonar supervisor. But the irreverent Brit had proved so adept at his job that, at Daminski’s insistence, the Navy had approved his top-secret clearance and proposed to the British Admiralty that he be allowed to complete a three-year tour.

  Daminski slammed shut the door to the sonar shack, violating the rig for patrol quiet that required doors to be shut gently. Hillsworth ripped off his earphones and glared at the captain, then spoke, his South London accent oddly exotic in a navy dominated by descendents of early twentieth-century immigrants and great-grandsons of the Confederacy.

  “Sir, if you insist on slamming the door I shall be obliged to ask you to leave my sonar compartment.”

  Daminski clapped Hillsworth on the shoulder. “Aw, your queen wears combat boots.”

  Hillsworth’s nose tilted toward the overhead. “Is there anything in particular I might be able to help you with, sir?”

  Daminski looked around the room and took it in, as if he were seeing it

  for the first time, or perhaps the last. The space was quiet, the sonar display consoles humming, ventilation ducts purring, the room dimly lit by blue fluorescent lights and the green of the console video screens. A wall speaker played the sound of the selected beam of the spherical sonar array, the volume turned low enough to make the ears strain to hear the sound of the merchant ship’s propeller off in the distance. The faraway whooshing of the screw blades sounded lonely, mournful.

  “I want to see the sonar search-plan for the Destiny-class.”

  Hillsworth nodded, took off the headphones and led Daminski to the computer in the forward corner of the cramped space. Daminski paged through the software, looking at the expected tonal frequencies predicted from the Japanese-constructed ship. Little was known about her sound signature. When the ship had left the Mitsubishi shipyard in Yokosuka the Improved-Los Angeles-class submarine Louisville had trailed her out, doing an “underhull,” a periscope surveillance of the new ship as it ran on the surface.

  The video of that observation had given naval intelligence a more complete picture than if they had gotten a tour of her drydock. When the Destiny-class submerged, the Louisville stayed with her, circling her in what was known as an SPL (for sound pressure level recording). The wideband-width tape recordings were analyzed for weeks at navsea until the resulting sonar search plan was created. That plan noted the various

  pure tones emanating from the Destiny submarine as a function of distance from the contact and the angle of the ship itself. Sonar detection in the BATEARS BSY-1 suite was done primarily by narrowband detection, listening in a narrow slice of ocean for a particular pure frequency, a tonal. Reducing the space listened to and the frequencies listrened for cut down on the near infinite amount of data the sonar computers would otherwise have to process to find the enemy sub. But the plan depended heavily on what tonals the target submarine transmitted.

  Daminski frowned. “This SPL is a year old,” he complained.

  “Afraid so, Cap’n.”

  “This might not sound anything like the Destiny does today.”

  “It might.”

  “No way. Chief. This data was taken on Destiny’s maiden voyage. God knows our boats sound completely different from sea trials to a year later after we’ve fixed all the shipyard’s screwups and eliminated all the sound shorts. I think we should open up the tonal gates.”

  “Sir, you’ll be doubling or tripling the volume of data.

  It’ll slow us down. Might not scoop up the rascal at all.”

  Daminski turned from the computer screen and looked up at the overhead. “I can’t help thinking they’re somehow ahead of us. There’s something we haven’t thought about.”

  The phone rang from the conn.

  “O.O.D for you, gov’na. Says you’re requested in the officers’ mess for a briefing. Probably about our friend the Destiny.” “Yeah.” Daminski sighed. “Don’t forget opening those gates. Chief. At least a couple hertz.”

  “I’ll consider discussing it with the weapons officer, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  Daminski laughed, noting Hillsworth’s rigid insistence on following the chain of command, even knowing that the weapons officer would take his orders from Daminski.

  “Keep listening for this asshole. Chief.”

  “As ever, sir,” Hillsworth said, strapping his headset back on.

  Daminski left sonar, shutting the door gently this time, and walked down the passageway to the amidships ladder, to the middle
level. He ducked

  into the wardroom, which was packed with the ship’s officers, took his place at the head seat at the leather-covered table and waved at the navigator and operations officer. Lieutenant Commander Tim Turner, to begin the briefing.

  Turner was of medium height, his most noticeable feature his oddly coifed hair—odd for a thirty-three-year-old— moussed nearly vertically from his forehead in imitation of a current rock star. His face made him look ten years younger than he was, but the baby face and outgoing, amiable personality covered an explosive temper. The only time the Augusta crew had seen evidence of that temper was when Daminski had pushed him too far, yelling in the lieutenant commander’s face over a problem with the routing of the radio messages. Turner had blown up, telling Daminski where he could shove the message board. Surprisingly, Daminski had backed off, apologized, and walked away. It almost seemed Daminski had been deliberately trying to get Turner to lose control, just to see where that boundary was for future reference. Ever since then the two men had gotten along very well.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Turner said. “This briefing is SCI top secret, code name: Early Retirement. Everybody cleared for this, Jamie?”

  “Yes sir,” the communications officer said, checking the room’s attendees against his clearance list.

  “Okay. A few hours ago we received a flash transmission to intercept the United Islamic Front Destiny-class submarine, reported to be in this area.” Turner pointed to a chart he’d taped to the wall, showing an ellipse drawn in the eastern Mediterranean basin between Cyprus and Crete. “Our mission once we detect and classify the contact is twofold.

  First, we transmit a message to the CINC that the Destiny is there. Then,” Turner said, “we sink it.” Turner tapped the chart again. “We’re heading out at flank speed. In another two hours we’ll slow to ten knots to lower our own ship’s noise to do a large area sonar search. The handouts Jamie’s passing to you are the details of the sonar search-plan with the Destiny’s tonals and SPL results. Also in the handout is a print of the Destiny-class nuclear submarine.”