Phoenix Sub Zero

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Ping interval is prolonged. Range is probably two thousand to three

  thousand yards.”

  A nautical mile, Daminski thought. He was a mile to a mile and a half ahead of the weapons. He was going forty-two knots. Allowing for a fifty-knot torpedo—no, he’d give it fifty-five knots—that meant he had between four and seven minutes till the torpedoes caught up.

  “Listen up,” he said to the watchstanders, “we’ll be launching the counterattack now, then launching a radio buoy in the signal ejector telling the boss we’ve been attacked and to watch out for the Destiny’s shutdown-and-hide tactics. I’m going to order us to slow to twenty knots to launch, then we’ll throttle right back up and keep running.

  Ready? Helm, all back two-thirds, mark speed two one!”

  The helmsman rang up the order on the engine telegraph.

  Back aft in the maneuvering room the throttleman answered the bell, shut the forward turbine throttles and opened up the astern turbines. The ship shook hard, as if rattled by the hand of a god. A bookcase above the chart table dumped its contents to the deck, one of the volumes hitting the plotting officer in the head on its way down.

  “Speed two one, sir,” the helmsman called.

  “All stop! Snapshot tube one!”

  “Set,” Skinnard called.

  “Standby and fire,” Hackle said, rotating the trigger. The blast of the tube firing sounded more violent than the previous four.

  “Snapshot tube two.”

  “Standby and fire.” The second tube fired. Daminski shouted over the second blast, “All ahead flank, maneuvering cavitate, 150-percent reactor power, T-ave five twenty!”

  The deck trembled again with the power of the screaming main engines. The speed indicator needle climbed slowly, too slowly, to forty-two knots.

  “Conn, Sonar, both own-ship units, normal launch.”

  “Sonar, Captain, what’s the pulse interval?”

  “Sir, active sonar from the torpedo has shut down.”

  “Jeez, what the hell does that mean?” Daminski mumbled to Kristman. “Danny, have we got that radio buoy loaded?”

  Kristman nodded. “Loaded forward, tube flooded, muzzle door open.”

  “Shoot the forward signal ejector.”

  Daminski looked around the room at the watchstanders, trying to maintain his war face. There was nothing more he could do. He had shot back at the enemy submarine. He had warned cincnavporcemed that they were on the business end of five UIF torpedoes. He had launched evasion devices, for whatever good they would do. And he had taken the reactor far over the redline, overpowering it as far as he dared without melting the core or breaching the steam piping or blowing open a turbine casing.

  He had Augusta running for her life.

  He had always wondered whether he would want to know in advance if he were going to die. He had decided he would want five minutes warning, no more. Not enough time to worry about it, just time to think about the children and perhaps make peace with the angry Catholic Church God of his youth. Maybe say goodbye to the good things in life, tip back a Coors or down a shot of Wild Turkey. He tried to remember the last time he had made love to Myra but it was a blur. He fingered the letter from her, imagined her face. He had a momentary memory, sharp as a new razor, of the faces of his three little children, then one of his father, his dad angry even in this reflective memory—

  “Conn, Sonar, active sonar from one of the torpedoes.”

  “Range gate?”

  “Sorry, Cap’n, the unit is pinging a ramp wave in continuous.”

  Daminski shared a look with Kristman. The incoming torpedoes were so close that one of them was transmitting a continuous waveform, getting a precise fix on Augusta’s location.

  There was only one thing he could do, Daminski thought.

  If he did an emergency surface, he might get above the ceiling setting of the weapon, or perhaps it would blow its warhead at the bubbles the ballast tanks left behind. And even if they got hit, maybe if they made it to the surface he could save some of the men, maybe not all, but some.

  “Chief of the watch, emergency blow fore and aft! Diving officer, take her up, twenty degree up-bubble!”

  The COW slammed two large stainless-steel levers into the overhead while the diving officer ordered the ship up.

  The room filled with the blasting noise of high-pressure air as the bottles emptied the air into the ballast tanks, pushing out the seawater and making the ship lighter. The deck tilted up, the helmsman overreacting, the ship coming up in a thirty-degree angle before the diving officer could push the control yoke forward to get the bubble back to twenty degrees.

  The depth indicator numerals spun as the ship climbed out of the depths, heading for the surface, her speed aided by the buoyancy in the tanks, the speed indicator reading forty-five knots, then forty-six. Augusta was screaming for the surface.

  But even over the noise of the roaring emergency blow system, Daminski could hear the wailing sonar system of the lead torpedo in pursuit. The depth indicator unwound, 500 feet, 400, 350, but the screaming siren of the torpedo sonar system grew louder. Daminski could hear the torpedo’s screw itself, a whooshing sound just outside the hull. He turned away from the depth indicator on the ship control panel. It had spun to sixty feet as the bow of the ship blew out of the water, climbing at her tremendous velocity until the sail came out, then the long length of black hull, her underside painted a dull anticorrosion red, until gravity dragged her back, the deck already coming back to level as the ship fell back into the sea, the splash raising a cloud of water vapor in a 300-foot diameter around her. Her downward momentum then carried her under again, the hull vanishing from the surface, only the upper

  half of the sail breaking through the waves.

  It was at that moment that the first Nagasaki torpedo detonated, the weapon having followed the target as it went shallow, as if the torpedo had expected it. The explosion was centered below the reactor compartment, the explosive force directed upward, breaching the hull and rupturing a steam generator and its main coolant piping, the seawater smashing into the compartment. The second Nagasaki detonated farther aft, beneath the turbine generators of the aft compartment, the hull breaching there too, the water filling the space. The third torpedo was a dud, the detonation from the second knocking the detonation train off, the preexplosive failing to detonate the high explosive and the unit disintegrated.

  The fourth torpedo impacted the aft section of the forward compartment, blowing a twenty-foot gash in the lower level, the blast smashing through two decks and tearing apart the navigation space aft of control before the water came flooding in. Daminski had a quarter-second to turn and see the deckplates flying upward in slow motion as the blast disintegrated the aft part of the room. The last torpedo detonated at the flank of the forward compartment, forward of the control room. The wall of water from the aft of control had washed its way to the plot tables by the time of the last explosion and its unmerciful water came blasting in from the forward end.

  The lights went out as the plot table came off its mountings and smashed into Daminski, who would have hit the deck but instead splashed into seawater. He expected the impact of the table to kill him, but he was still conscious as the darkness came, not from death but from the seawater shorting out the battle lanterns.

  Five feet to port, Dan Kristman was knocked into Tim Turner by the force of the invading wall of water, the force of their collision breaking bones, Kristman’s ribs and Turner’s arm and collarbone. The two officers flew forward into the ship control seats, knocking Turner out, snapping Kristman’s neck, the bodies collapsing into the rising water.

  Kevin Skinnard, sitting at Pos Two, was carried through the door to sonar and into a sonar-display console, the glass screen spider-webbed by the impact of his head. He was stunned but conscious when the unit blew sparks all around him as its power supply shorted out in seawater, an arc flashing in front of his face before the water filled the room,
the battle lanterns in sonar surviving and illuminating the submerged room with a dim smoky light. Skinner tried to move, to swim, the water forcing its way into his lungs paralyzing him with shock. He had a fraction of a second to recall childhood nightmares of drowning, seeing ships sinking in deep water, wetting his bed after seeing a movie about the Titanic, upset too because his teddy bear was soaked. His father had preached confronting his fears, and as an adult he had, going into submarines in part to show himself that the fear of deep water—which

  he’d never told any of the sublant shrinks about—had been overcome. Now he knew that fear had finally come for him. Eventually the pressure of the increasing depth burst his lungs, the bubbles rising sideways toward a bulkhead instead of up toward the overhead.

  The ship must be rolled nearly horizontal, he thought.

  It was his last thought.

  In the control room Daminski felt himself pinned beneath the plot table and what he guessed was the deck beneath the attack center. The pressure around him increased, squeezing on his chest until his lungs gave out, breath forced out of him, water filling his body. In a part of his mind that still functioned he remembered how deep the sea was beneath him, the memory of the last fathometer report from Turner-over 900 feet there at the mouth of the strait. He had time to wonder whether he’d still be alive when the hull hit the sea floor before that thought and all others slowly faded … The broken hull of the Augusta hit the rocky bottom of the Strait of Sicily at terminal velocity, seventy knots, going bow down. Two of her Mark 50 torpedoes detonated from the shock of the crash with the bottom. The impact split her into three pieces, the damage already done by the four torpedo detonations. For several minutes the reactor core spewed steam in protest against its loss of cooling, but soon the seawater brought the fuel temperature down, and the reactor merely put out hot water. The rush of bubbles from the hull took more

  than an hour to stop, the sea finally calm at the wreckage site, the water again quiet.

  Nine hundred feet above, a slot radio buoy finished its last transmission, flooded and sank, coming to rest on the ocean floor a mile northwest of the wreckage.

  Fifteen nautical miles to the northwest, aboard the UIF submarine Hegira, the report was received that the target had gone down. Several junior officers and Rakish Ahmed smiled until Commodore Sharef fixed them with a burning glare.

  The two torpedoes launched from the target sub before it was hit had gone far off-course, eventually running out of fuel and sinking, and when they did, the last pieces of the Augusta came to rest on the ocean floor.

  Friday, 27 December burke lake, virginia Donchez pulled at his starched collar, cursing the bow tie of his dinner dress blue uniform, and asked the bartender for a Canadian on the rocks. Alone for the first time in the last half-hour, he took a moment to look at the house too grand—pretentious, perhaps—to be a mere house. General Clough called it his “lake cottage,” a reference to the fact that he owned at least four residences, his old money put to work for him tonight as he entertained the entire Joint Staff from the chief petty officers and

  master sergeants all the way to General Barczynski himself. Clough stood in a far corner of the high-ceilinged living room, near one of the four couch arrangements, talking to two of Donchez’s admirals, John Traeps and the visitor Roy Steinman up from Norfolk, the commander of the Atlantic Fleet’s submarines.

  There were times, Donchez had to admit, when Clough’s political skills were impressive; he might even have liked the man had the general not decided to attach his service’s survival on the decline of the Navy—or perhaps his war was declared not on the Navy but on Donchez himself, as the ring of admirals around Clough would suggest. In the end, it didn’t matter. All jobs, even chief of naval operations or chief of staff of the Air Force, were temporary.

  Of course, even if he and Clough had a hot war between them instead of just broken diplomatic relations, Donchez would still be at the party, not out of obligation or ambition, not with any sort of duplicity or hypocrisy, but because of the odd military multiple-personality each of them had.

  Many times the military had reminded Donchez of an old cartoon that began with a sheepdog and coyote punching in a time clock, exchanging pleasantries until the work began, then each going through a day of murderous conflict, the coyote attacking the dog to get the sheep, the sheepdog defending, and after a dozen explosions of TNT and mishaps with

  crossbows and boulders on pulleys, the end-of-shift whistle blew, the combatants punching out the time clock, each hoping the other had a nice evening and planning their bowling outing. So many times in Donchez’s career that had applied, his old executive officer on the Thresher literally shouting in his face at 1600, only to invite him for a beer at the club at 1730. The odd schizophrenia had repeated itself in his own leadership, when he had been XO of Dace and had to get the attention of one of the talented but inexperienced junior officers, finally raising his voice in a younger man’s face—as he frequently had to Ronny Daminski—then continuing the man’s training after-hours in the officers’ club, laughing about the incident over a beer, and then beginning the same routine the next day when Daminski had messed up again. Even now, he and Clough and Barczynski could have their differences, even acidic conflicts, and still check their jobs at the door. They were, after all, in the same game, brethren of the same system, at the moment united against the Muslims on the other side of the globe and against all other enemies.

  Barczynski walked up now, his collar unbuttoned, his hairy throat poking through, a Heineken dwarfed by his paw, a grin on his face. The two men chatted for several minutes.

  Barczynski finished an old tank story before Fred Rummel caught Donchez’s eye from the end of the room, waving urgently.

  Donchez excused himself and walked with Rummel to the lakeside patio. Rummel shut the French doors behind them, a light snow falling in the mid-evening and beginning to accumulate on the cleared stones of the patio. Rummel looked around, then pulled a crumpled piece of paper stamped top secret, with the code words Early Retirement under the TS stamp. Donchez initialed the sheet with Rummel’s pen, then read the last message from the Augusta.

  DATE/TIME: TRANSMISSION LOG AT DETECTION OP UHF BUOY FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FM USS AUGUSTA SSN-763

  TO CTMCNAVFORCEMED SUBJ CONTACT REPORT SCI/TOP SECRET–-EARLY RETIREMENT //BT// 1. CONTACT REPORT NUMBER TWO FOLLOWS. 2. POSITION APPROXIMATE IN STRAIT OP SICILY AT DETECTED POSITION OF SLOT BUOY. 3. USS AUGUSTA ATTACKED DESTINY SUBMARINE WITH MULTIPLE MARK 50 SALVO. WEAPONS DID NOT DETONATE, WE SUSPECT, BECAUSE DESTINY HAD RELEASED A FULL-SPECTRUM DECOY THEN SHUT DOWN REACTOR AND STEAM PLANT TO HIDE WHILE WE SHOT AT DECOY. 4. DESTINY BATTERY CAPACITY LOW OR HE HAD DC ELECTRICAL PROBLEMS. REDETECTED DESTINY SNORKELING JUST PRIOR TO HIS LAUNCH OF APPROX FIVE LARGE BORE TORPEDOES. ALSO, DESTINY EMITS A 154 HZ DOUBLET. 5. CURRENTLY RUNNING PROM UIF TORPEDOES. WILL ATTEMPT COUNTERFIRE, BUT HAVE LOST CONTACT ON TARGET WHOSE LAST POSITION WAS IN OUR BAFFLES.

  PROBABILITY OF A HIT ON DESTINY SUB CONSIDERED LOW. 6. IF AUGUSTA SINKS,

  IN THE NAME OF OUR LOVE FOR OUR FAMILIES PLEASE TELL THEM AS MUCH OF THE TRUTH AS YOU CAN, AS SOON AS YOU CAN. 7. CDR. R. DAMINSKI SENDS. //BT//

  Donchez looked up at Rummel, his face pale.

  “Who knows about this?”

  “Message center crews, cincmed and sublant watch officers.

  They sent it on the SCI fax in your staff car. It’s only been seven minutes since it was first transmitted.”

  Donchez read it again. “Get Traeps and Roy Steinman out here.”

  Rummel returned with the admirals. By then Donchez had read the message from Daminski twice more. When the admirals arrived, Donchez handed the message over for them to read. Steinman, the slow-talking New Orleans submariner with the young face, spoke first.

  “Daminski could be going down right now while we’re reading this. We need to find out what happened to him.

  Then we need to sink this SOB.”
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  “Phoenix is at Gibraltar,” Traeps said. “We could bring her up and ask

  if she heard anything.”

  “Get a DSRV to Daminski’s last position,” Donchez ordered, wondering where the nearest deep submergence rescue vehicle was. “If Augusta went down, we might get someone out.”

  Steinman shook his head while Rummel hurried back to the staff car. “I know you’re right, we’ve got to do that, sir, but if Daminski was on the wrong end of five Nagasaki torpedoes he didn’t stand a chance. We just completed an intel estimate we got from an insider at Toshiba. The Nagasaki can do seventy knots on a high-speed axial turbine and has a range of seventy-five nautical miles. It’s a big sucker, three feet in diameter and fifty feet long. Most of that is warhead.

  If it’s launched against you … well, I recommend we copy this message to the Phoenix so she knows about this playing-possum tactic. She might have to get out of the way if this sucker is as good as Rocket Ron thinks.” Or, he added silently, like he thought.

  “Let’s wait on the death certificate until we hear more, Roy,” Donchez said. “John, get on a secure line to your watch officer and have him call Phoenix up to periscope depth and get a report from her on anything she heard from the bearing to the Strait of Sicily. Go ahead and copy Phoenix on this message but have it marked personal for commanding officer.”

  Admiral Traeps left through the house to the front, where Donchez’s staff car waited. Steinman reread the message. He looked up at Donchez, the moon reflecting off the teardrop-shaped lenses of his glasses.

  “Did you note that line about telling the truth?” Steinman looked out over the lake, swallowing hard.

  “I agree with Rocket Ron. If we lost Augusta, I want to tell the families immediately.”

  “How are we gonna do that, sir, let the world know a third-world sub put one of our best on the bottom?”