Phoenix Sub Zero

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Does that mean we won’t be able to sink the Destiny?”

  “No, sir. We have a tactical advantage against the Destiny.

  He can’t run from a torpedo he doesn’t know has been launched.”

  “This Vortex—it was your invention, wasn’t it, Dick?” Clough asked.

  Donchez understood Clough wanted to equate the Vortex test failures with Donchez personally.

  “The concept was mine, yes. The weapon that eventually was named”Vortex’ introduces a new era in torpedoes. General Barczynski. It is a hybrid weapon, half-torpedo, half-missile, a solid-fueled missile that travels underwater for its entire run to the target. It goes 300 knots. It cannot be outrun.

  And its warhead is five times the size of the Mark 50’s, over seven tons of Plasticpac explosive. The yield comes close to the kiloton TNT level with conventional explosives.

  It’s the ultimate submarine-versus-submarine weapon system.”

  “Except that it blows up when you try to launch it,” Clough added.

  “Felix,” Barczynski said tonelessly. “Go ahead, Dick.”

  “The early weapon tests were, I grant you, troubling. We found the rocket fuel had to be hot-launched—ignited inside the launching tube—otherwise the missile lost stability, but in-tube ignition means the tubes have to be incredibly strong. Also, the solid fuel is more volatile than typical rocket fuel and we had problems slowing the combustion rate. On launch the pressure transient in the tubes exceeded the design pressure and led to a longitudinal stress failure—” “What does that mean?” Barczynski asked.

  “It means the launching tubes blew up,” Donchez said, “in nine out of twelve static launches. We completed a detailed study of the failure mode and did a total weapon redesign.

  The new missile was named the Mod Bravo, and in its two static tests it has performed perfectly. Tomorrow’s Mod Bravo test will be a sea-launch from the USS Piranha, a decommissioned 637-class attack submarine, against the old Bonefish, which is a diesel sub set up to be a test drone.”

  “You’re launching this Vortex from an old attack sub? Is that wise, with all the tube explosions? Couldn’t that sink the boat?”

  “That won’t happen, sir. Besides, the firing ship will be unmanned. It’s fully instrumented. If something were to go wrong, we’d be able to

  determine why without the problem hurting anyone.”

  “Setting up two drone submarines is rather expensive, isn’t it. Admiral?” Clough flipped through papers. “I think I have some budgetary figures here—”

  Donchez stood and addressed Barczynski.

  “If there’s nothing else, sir, I’ll be following Operation Early Retirement in Flag Plot.”

  He had scanned out of the room before Clough could say anything else.

  Friday, 27 December tongue OF THE ocean, east OF andros island, bahamas atlantic undersea testing and evaluation center (AUTEC) exercise bonecrusher USS piranha Captain Michael Pacino stepped down the tight ladder to its landing in the gyro control space, jogging left to the door to the torpedo room. In his early forties, slim to the point of gauntness, and tall, Pacino’s six-foot-two height made him duck as he cleared the stair landing. His hair, once black, was streaked with early shades of gray at the temples. His eyes were a penetrating blue-green, the skin around them wrinkled from years of squinting out periscopes. He wore cotton khakis, the only insignia the eagles on his collars, the submariner’s dolphin pin over his left pocket and a round brass capital-ship command pin beneath the pocket button.

  His jaw clenched as he walked into the room, making him appear angry or intensely determined.

  Pacino looked at the room, fighting back a sense of deja vu, the voices of the past loud in his ears. The USS Piranha was identical to his former command, the Devilfish, every detail matching the memories he had tried hard to forget— the layout, the paint colors, the cramped interior, the poorly arranged control room, even the smell, that odd moisture of oil and diesel exhaust and ozone and sweat, edged with battery acid. Pacino couldn’t help wondering what his Devilfish looked like at that moment—had the old girl imploded from the depths, or had she flooded completely through the open bridge hatch as she sank in 11,000 feet of freezing Arctic Ocean seawater? Had she come to rest on the ocean bottom keel down, or heeled over miserably, or was she perhaps vertical, her tail impaling the sandy bottom like a spear stuck in the ground? The questions were always ringing in his mind, but never more insistently than now that he was in Devil fish’s sister ship, the submarine class leader and prototype, the Piranha, Richard Donchez’s old command from the early seventies.

  Somehow it was appropriate to test Donchez’s Vortex missile from the ship that he had once commanded so long ago, back when Pacino’s father—Donchez’s friend and academy roommate—was alive and in command of the Stingray one pier over. The present intruded on Pacino’s thoughts

  when his tour guide, a tanned lieutenant commander, introduced the weapon-test director.

  “Dr. Rebman, this is Captain Michael Pacino, the skipper of the Seawolf, the submarine that will be doing the next Vortex test with a manned submarine when this test is complete. Dr. Rebman is from the Dahlgren weapons lab, he’s the Vortex program manager.”

  Rebman was a dark chubby man wearing an expensive gray suit, the clothes seeming out of place in the surroundings of machinery and equipment. He had a mustache and goatee, perhaps an attempt to minimize his fleshy lower face but which made him look rather devilish and ridiculous all at once. When told Pacino commanded the Seawolf, Rebman’s face lit up with delight.

  “Captain! Wonderful to make your acquaintance! I was just asking about you and the Seawolf. How is the Vortex tube installation going?”

  Pacino shook the limp sweating hand. He did not smile.

  “The shipyard is behind schedule,” Pacino said, his voice toneless. “The Vortex tubes have some problems.”

  Rebman frowned. “Maybe I should come over after the test firing and take a look. Would you show it to me?” “I suppose,” Pacino said, looking

  around the torpedo room at the port side where the Vortex missile tube had been installed. The tube had replaced both port torpedo tubes and extended aft from the forward bulkhead to the rear bulkhead of the room and beyond, the laundry space ripped out to accommodate the massive weapon. The sheer size of the missile was one reason Pacino and the crew of the Seawolf disliked the system—just one Vortex tube on the Piranha had taken over the lower level. On Seawolf, the three-tube launching system had hogged most of the starboard torpedo room, taking up space that could have stored twenty-five weapons. Seawolf’s normal fifty-weapon loadout had been cut in half, only to make space for three weapons that tended to blow up their launching tubes. Pacino shook his head, then looked at Rebman, who for the last minute had been giving a passionate lecture on the Mod Bravo and how it would be different and how it would revolutionize submarine, warfare.

  “Don’t you agree. Captain, that just one 300-knot underwater missile would be all you’d need to sink an underwater adversary?”

  “Dr. Rebman, if you’re really interested in what I think, here it is. We rarely kill a bad guy with just one shot. Combat isn’t like that. And it would be nice, if it’s not asking too much, if the missile could be launched without blowing up the launching platform.” Rebman’s face tightened. “Well, I’m going back to the Diamond. Good luck, Dr. Rebman.”

  Pacino leaned on the wooden handrail of the Diamond and stared out at

  the shimmering blue-green sea; with the sun rising over the Bahamas to the east, the sleeping Andros Island behind him to the west, the scene could have been pictured in a travel agent’s vacation brochure. The Tongue of the Ocean autec submarine test range was one of the few submarine facilities in the world with such splendor, but it had been chosen for advantages unrelated to the beaches and the transparent Bahamian waters. The facility had been chosen because it was a bathtub of deep water surrounded by a ledge of shallows and islands—the sh
allows ensured that no prowling opposition submarines could spy on the tests, yet the tongue, the bathtub of deep water, was sufficiently broad that sub-versus-sub exercises could be held without fear of running out of room. The entire bathtub was instrumented with a three-dimensional sonar system linked to a Dynacorp Frame 90 supercomputer capable of immense data storage and rapid processing. Nearby Andros Island was worthless as a resort because, except for Andros Town, it was a rock resembling the surface of the moon, if the moon had scrubby undergrowth. On the shore facing east toward Tongue of the Ocean, Dynacorp’s Sound Surveillance Systems subsidiary had set up a compound, a small town housing the technicians, naval officers, engineers, scientists, and salvage divers needed to run the test facility. Other than a weekly plane from Palm Beach, the island was isolated from the world, which the Navy saw as another benefit. Pacino had spent two nights on the Dynacorp compound with nothing to do but drink in the prefab building used as an officers’ club. He was glad to see the test finally get underway; it was time to get back to the Seawolf. There was much to do and little time to

  do it, including getting the ship out of the drydock and ready for the first manned live firing of the Vortex missiles.

  And to turn over command of the ship to her next captain, he reminded himself, a thought he did not want to face.

  Giving up Seawolf would feel like giving up his son … “Captain Pacino,” Dr. Rebman’s voice called, “you might want to see this from inside.”

  In a covered deck space behind the pilothouse a command center had been rigged in what had been the crew’s mess.

  Behind Pacino, through several large windows installed in the bulkhead, a dozen men could be seen peering into eight oversized video monitors. Pacino walked into the space, almost immediately breaking into a sweat, the air conditioning inadequate to keep up with the men and the video screens and the heat of the Caribbean sun. On the forward bulkhead, four of the monitors showed the interior of the gutted target submarine Bonefish, one camera in the rear of the boat pointing forward, another forward pointing aft, one showing the topside deck looking aft toward the conning tower, one below the deck level; the only thing discernible inside the empty boat were the strings of temporary lights and the pallet of batteries that powered them. Every bulkhead, console, valve, pipe, and cable had been removed from the old boat so that the hull

  could be seen. Bonefish had no engines but did have a rudimentary depth-control system. Her forward motion would be controlled by a tug with a cable to Bonefish’s bow, the tugboat expendable and under command from the Diamond. The video signals from the cameras were obtained remotely in the Diamond’s control space using telemetry.

  The camera’s video data was transmitted along fiber-optic lines to a telemetry module inside the remote-controlled tugboat. The cameras would roll aboard the Bonefish even after missile detonation and the sub was on her way to the bottom.

  The scientists intended to study how the ship sank, what the hole looked like, how the ship died when the Vortex hit it, all in an attempt to judge the effectiveness of the warhead.

  The remains of the hull would be salvaged and evaluated by materials experts. The 3D sonar data would be evaluated and presented, showing the path of the weapon, whether the unit had been stable after launch, whether its trajectory to the target had been straight and controlled or serpentine and reckless.

  Not all the data was coming from the target. The firing ship was also under the eyeballs of the Dynacorp technicians.

  Two of the screens showed flickering images of the interior of the

  Piranha, viewing the fat and long steel Vortex launching cylinder from several angles. The tube was covered with strain gauges and what looked like miles of wires, trying to find out how the tube behaved under the stress of the missile launch. The visual and electronic data would be conveyed to the outside world by means of cables leaving the submarine at the aft end of her sail to a data buoy floating on the surface, which would transmit the images and tube-strain information to the Diamond via data link. The buoy had a long reel of cable with a tension spring, so that no matter where in the bathtub the transmitting sub went, the Diamond would continue to receive data. The data buoy also received control signals to the Piranha’s maneuvering system from the Diamond’s control space; at the aft end of the hot room a control console had been placed with room for two technicians. These men drove the Piranha, changing her speed, depth, and course from the wraparound console.

  In the past, data would have been collected from the weapon as well, the warhead replaced with a data recorder, a black box, that would tell the researchers what the torpedo had seen at each second of its trip to the target and the ensuing pursuit and “explosion,” the final detonation replaced with a tumaway maneuver. But in this test, the missile’s tremendous kinetic energy at 300 knots was so extreme that after it passed the target, it would continue on—there was no way to shut down a solid-fueled rocket—and in continuing it would smash into the far sheer wall of the bathtub, taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars of sonar sensors. The weapon-test scientists had elected to allow the

  Vortex to detonate its warhead to study the effects on the target, but also to act as a missile self-destruct system to preserve the bath tub’s sonar array.

  Pacino watched as the control crew orchestrated the test, the snatches of conversation blending into each other, rising into a slow crescendo as the launch time approached. Over the next hour the Bonefish left the surface, sinking into the clear Tongue water under the control of the towing control tugboat. At the command of the technicians at the Piranha control console, the firing ship submerged and slowly cruised toward the launch point. The morning test preparations continued until the sun was high in the cloud-streaked sky. At last the missile firing was on its final countdown.

  Pacino, his summer-weight khaki shirt now soaked with sweat, took a position at the oversized windows facing the Tongue and waited. Dr. Rebman joined him, the suit coat now replaced with a starched white lab coat. The countdown was initiated, and as it reached zero Pacino watched the sea where the tugboat towed the target. At the count of zero, launch point, the room grew silent, all eyes but Pacino’s watching the video monitors.

  He saw a slight rush of foam at the distant point where he had imagined the firing ship to be, then moments later the sea at the target bearing erupted in a column of water that blasted upward in an odd spherical

  shape, barbs of spray coming out of the curving dome of the explosion. The water continued to rise, forming a mushroom cloud that dwarfed the Diamond, the cloud spreading and rising into the air, then raining down on the sea below. Then the sound came from the distant explosion, the roaring power of it rattling the glass of the windows, slamming Pacino’s eardrums, the full bass of the detonation pounding him. Pacino smiled, unable to contain the exhilaration of it, already bringing his hands up to clap, and turned to the men in the room, expecting the crew to be as exuberant at the success of the test.

  Instead he saw long, incredulous faces staring at two video monitors as a tape player replayed the scene. Rebman was bent over a control console, shouting into a headset. The video scene rolled, the Vortex tube of the Piranha in the center of the picture, until Pacino could see the tube burst open in slow motion, then the explosion as the missile’s flaming exhaust filled the torpedo room. The camera apparently died at that point, the picture turning to snow. On the screens on the right videos played in a closed loop as the target ship’s cameras recorded the death of the ship— apparently the missile had sunk the Bonefish. But it had also put the Piranha on the bottom. Another tube rupture.

  Rebman slammed the headset down and rejoined Pacino at the window. Without a word Pacino walked out to the weather deck and leaned on the wooden railing, staring out to sea where the tugboat floated, no longer towing anything but a frayed-ended cable. Rebman followed him out.

  “At least it sank the target,” Pacino said.

  Rebman said nothing for several minutes.r />
  Finally the scientist said, so quietly Pacino had to strain to hear him, “This is the end of the program, we’ve tried everything.

  The Vortex program is canceled.”

  But was it really dead? Knowing Donchez, Pacino had to wonder … After a few minutes the Diamond turned and headed back to the Dynacorp compound’s piers.

  Two hours later Pacino was on a Navy DC-9 flying for Palm Beach, wondering how long it would take the shipyard to tear out the Vortex system from Seawolf. It would probably take three or more months to return the ship to her pre-Vortex condition, and by then he would no longer be captain. True, he would be going on to a plum assignment—who could take issue with promotion to rear admiral and the job as commander submarines, Atlantic Fleet? But still, he would have liked to take Seawolf out to sea just one last time as her commander. This business with the Vortex had taken that from him. Driving submarines was a young man’s job, Pacino finally concluded, and now forty-two years old, it was time to move on, and the sooner he accepted that the sooner he’d adjust

  to driving a desk. It was time to give up playing with toys, he tried to tell himself.

  And didn’t really believe it; At Palm Beach International, on the way to the commercial jet to take him to Norfolk, he was intercepted by an ensign in service dress blues.

  “Admiral Pacino?”

  “Captain, son, just captain.”

  “Message says ‘admiral,’ sir. But anyway. Admiral Donchez sends his regards and requests your presence at the Pentagon. There’s a Falcon jet waiting for you, sir.”

  “Do you know what this is about?”

  “Something about a weapon test, sir. That’s all I know.”

  The jet’s approach to National Airport in Washington was spectacular, the flight path taking Pacino over the Pentagon.