in Africa. The phone rang. The secure line to the Pentagon.
He listened to the Flag Plot watch officer for ten seconds and hung up. By the time he had changed into his uniform his staff car pulled up.
In the back of the Lincoln Donchez considered using his satellite-secure voice radio-telephone but decided whatever the news was it was certainly bad and he would rather hear it from the watch officer. He turned on the car’s television and scanned the channels but there was still nothing new or breaking. Donchez paused for a moment during a special investigation into the sinking of the Augusta, watching as the media focused on the mistakes of the Portsmouth shipyard and the failed depth-indication system causing the ship to sink. Donchez hated cover stories, even though there was no way around them. Now the car crunched through the snow at the entrance to the Pentagon, snow falling faster than the ground crews could keep up with it, or they were still shorthanded from the people on Christmas vacation.
His aide Rummel was waiting at the entrance. This time Donchez had no patience for the stairs and they rode up the elevator, then strode down the E-Ring corridor to Flag Plot.
Once inside, the somberness of the faces told him the news was worse than he’d expected. He glared at his deputy for operations. Dee Watson, whose face looked even more jowly than usual, the heaviness of the
situation in the lines of his sagging face. The commander of the Atlantic’s submarines, Admiral Steinman, stared from the video screen above them on the wall, the video link to Norfolk uncharacteristically sharp. On the neighboring screen was cincnavforcemed’s John Traeps’s sleepy face, the time now in the very early hours in Naples. Donchez said nothing. Watson finally spoke.
“Sir, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just gonna tell you.”
“I hate briefings that begin like this,” Donchez mumbled.
“Destiny broke out into the Atlantic and we think the Phoenix is down.”
Donchez tried to absorb both statements. Why would Destiny move into the Atlantic? Why would she want out so bad as to sink Phoenix—and had Phoenix actually sunk or was she just missing?
Watson broke back in. “Look at this slot buoy message transmission from Phoenix. After this we heard a loud transient.
Nothing since. Not much different from Augusta’s report …”
Donchez scanned the message Watson handed him.
… DETECTED SINGLE INCOMING NAGASAKI TORPEDO FROM THE EAST AT LONG
RANGE … AM NOW ATTEMPTING TO OUTRUN UIF WEAPON … NEGATIVE, REPEAT NEGATIVE ACOUSTIC ADVANTAGE AGAINST DESTINY CLASS.
“Says here he wanted to fire some Mark 50s in passive circle mode at the Destiny,” Donchez said to the camera mounted above John Traeps’s monitor. “What happened?”
“Well, sir, we’ve pieced this together from the reports of the P-3s, S-3s and Burke destroyers. The Nagasaki torpedo hit the Phoenix, probably sinking her. Within a half-hour several of Phoenix’s passive circling torpedoes detected the Destiny west of Gibraltar and chased her northwest. Two of the fish shut down but one got a hot detect and detonated.
We heard inconclusive signs of damage but one of the P3s thought it heard transients ten minutes later. Reactor startup was what the operators reported it sounded like. Then it vanished. There was nothing more heard from the Destiny or the Phoenix.”
“What are we doing about this?”
“We’ve diverted the DSRV Avalon from the Augusta search to go down to the approximate position of the loud transient. We might find Phoenix there”
“And what about the Destiny?”
“We’ve directed all ASW assets in the Med out into the Atlantic to search, but the circle of probable detection continues to expand as time goes on. It could be anywhere in 20,000 square miles”
Watson interrupted. “And with her acoustic advantage over the 688class I think it might be a lousy idea to send any more Los Angeles-class submarines to find her. This bastard has mowed down two of the best ships in the fleet.
Even if he’s hurt I think he can still blow our 688s to the bottom. Do you agree, Roy?”
All the men in the room turned to the Norfolk video console. On the screen. Admiral Roy Steinman’s image blinked rapidly a few times, his face grim.
“I’m afraid so, sir. There’s no doubt about it. We need the Seawolf.”
“Roy, what’s the status of Seawolf?” Donchez said. “I wanted her underway today and we’re running out of today.”
“Sir, as far as I know she’s still in the dock welding on the hull cut at the Vortex tubes.”
“What’s the holdup?” “I’m not sure. Admiral,” Steinman said, sounding calm but Donchez knew he was flustered.
“Fred, can we patch in the shipyard on this thing?” Donchez asked Rummel. “If you can, pull up Stevens, the shipyard commander.”
Fred Rummel punched buttons on the phone and spoke.
The delay seemed endless. Donchez lit a Havana and puffed smoke at the ceiling. Eventually the screen flashed the image of the conference table in Stevens’s office. Gathered around Stevens were Pacino and an older admiral with Coke-bottle glasses. Donchez tried to place the admiral, who looked familiar, but came up blank. Pacino’s image looked dark Donchez sensed that he was trying hard to cover frustration.
Or anger.
Steinman asked the first question. “Captain Stevens, what’s the status of the Seawolf and why hasn’t she gotten underway?”
Stevens opened his mouth but the nearsighted admiral broke in. “Hello, gentlemen. I’m Admiral Douchet, the Naval Reactors office rep responsible for the yard.” Donchez didn’t like that … Naval Reactors involvement meant trouble. The NR office was a police organization
watching over the shipyard, often getting in the way of the real work, the obstacles thrown up in the hallowed name of reactor safety.
“As you know, we have welded the hull patch in place but the radiography, the X-rays, have not been taken. I found out today that the captain of the Seawolf ordered the dock flooded without taking the X-rays, and that is a gross violation of quality controls and reactor-safety protocols. I am disturbed by all this and, frankly, at Naval Reactors, we feel that Captain Pacino’s disregard for ship safety”
“Hold it right there,” Donchez broke in. “Are you going to sea when Seawolf casts off? Are you going to sea with Pacino?”
“Well, no, but”
“Captain Pacino?”
“Yes sir,” Pacino snapped, suppressing the beginning of a smile.
“Are you satisfied with the shipyard’s work and the quality of the hullcut weld?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain Stevens?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Are you satisfied with the weld?”
“It probably wouldn’t pass all the QC work if we did the X-rays, sir. But I think it’ll hold up. We’ll know for certain after a controlled dive to test-depth.”
“Admiral Douchet, what reason do you have for holding Seawolf after what you just heard?”
“Procedures, sir. This isn’t allowable by any subsafe procedure, and if you’ll pardon my saying so, the loss of the Augusta from a shipyard error should make all of us more cautious. This is not a proper way to”
“Thank you very much. Captain Stevens, Captain Pacino, flood the drydock and get Seawolf underway immediately.
Do you read me?” “Yes, sir,” both said in unison.
“Admiral Douchet, I want to see you in my office at zero eight hundred tomorrow morning. Captain Stevens, I’ll be . calling on you in four hours. If Seawolf isn’t gone by then, you are relieved.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Captain Pacino, get underway and execute your mission.”
“Aye, sir.”
Donchez broke the connection and looked at each of the men gathered around the screens. In the rush to push Seawolf out he had nearly lost focus on the biggest issue of the evening—why was Sihoud going out into the Atlantic?
“
Fred, what do you or yours in Intel think of the breakout?
What’s on Sihoud’s mind?”
Rummel hesitated. “I’m not so sure the thinking on that is very clear yet.”
“Go ahead anyway.”
“One theory holds him going around the horn of Africa all the way to Ethiopia, landing there and surprising us on the opposite flank.”
“But Destiny was headed northwest after the torpedo hit her.”
“The crew might just have been clearing datum away from the direction they originally meant to go, like they did after they first picked up Sihoud—the ship initially went east instead of west.”
“What else?”
“Sihoud might get off sooner along the Atlantic coast of Morocco. He might just be trying to shake our tail.”
“Maybe. But the track positions I see on the chart still don’t support circumnavigating Africa. Perhaps it’s a feint, but let’s suppose for a minute that they are really heading away from Africa and deep into the Atlantic. Why would they do that?” Donchez scanned the room. He thought about the nightmare every submariner used to have, that a ballistic-missile submarine would be hijacked or taken over by its own crew and cruise to the U.S. coast and launch a missile. The elimination of sea-launched ballistic missiles had ended those fears in some quarters, but the refinement of cruise missiles made the scenario worse. Ballistic missiles were detectable on launch, giving the victim a few minutes’ warning. Cruise missiles skimmed the earth below treetop level, arriving with no warning. Hiroshima missiles reportedly flew supersonic at very high altitudes, maintaining stealth with a radar-evasion device. Just as bad. But then, he reminded himself, he was probably just being paranoid. Too many years spent fighting the damned Cold War.
“Well, Admiral,” Rummel said, “maybe Sihoud and the Destiny have some new kind of offensive-weapon system, something they could lob at us, something they think will take away our stomach to fight.”
“What do you think. Dee?”
“Sir, like my grandmother used to say,”Maybe so, sonny, but I kinda fuckin’ doubt it.’ “
“It does seem far-fetched but, gentlemen, there is some thing here that bothers the hell out of me.” Donchez paused and glared at the staff from under his heavy brows. “Dee, I want you to put together a package of SEAL-commando operations. Get Intelligence to give us the probable locations of all UIF weapons-test facilities. Then put in a plan to raid every one of them with the objective of bringing back classified documents and weapon scientists who might know anything about a new kind of offensive weapon or missile or chemical or germ warfare. Or evidence of a UIF nuclear warhead.”
“Sir, there might be a hundred facilities including bio labs. And what about the joint directives? Army Special Forces will want a piece of the action.”
“I don’t care who does it as long as you trust them to get the data. I
need an answer in two days. To me that means call the Specwar guys at seal Team Seven and drop them into the weps labs.”
“Two days, aye. I hope the answer will be more than a shrug.”
“Get on it. Dee.”
“Yes sir.”
“John, tell me, what have we got searching for the Destiny and the Phoenix?’ Traeps spoke from his screen, the connection to Naples making an irritating echo. On the plot, Traeps’s pointer moved over the western Atlantic to illustrate his prolonged monologue on the ASW effort to find the Destiny. As Donchez listened, he wondered if he should go down to Norfolk and talk to Pacino one last time before Seawolf sailed on a mission impossible.
western atlantic USS phoenix Kane sat in the attack-center console seat feeling his head throb when the overhead lights flashed for just an instant and went back again, then flashed once more, the effect an eerie strobe light in the dead submarine. Finally the lights held.
The return of illumination to the control room made things worse rather than better, Kane thought, seeing the jumble of bodies. He unwrapped the awkward air hose and crawled on his knees to the men, finding several
bodies that were cold, dimly noting that the deck was slick with blood. Some of the men were breathing, wheezing in the ship’s dirty atmosphere.
Kane decided to get the ones breathing into air masks. The fact that the lights came on meant someone aft was bringing power back up. He thought about calling maneuvering on the phone but figured the nukes would be too busy restoring the reactor to want to talk. He found the air masks and began strapping them on the faces on the deck, wondering if unconscious men would be able to breathe in the masks since the regulators didn’t deliver air unless the user sucked hard. Still, he’d experimented on a few and they seemed to keep breathing so he went on with it.
When he finished he glanced at his watch—smashed and dead. It had been some time since the lights flashed on.
Kane grabbed his hose, unplugged the end, and headed aft.
His head still throbbed, his vision seemed less than clear and his lungs hurt from fighting the air-mask regulator. He had forgot to plug in the hose as he moved toward the aft compartment, which indicated how out of it he was—usually that was all an air-mask user could think of, the next air station—and once he nearly had to pull off the mask to breathe, finally finding a plug in the overhead of the crew’s mess just before fainting. He stood there, doing nothing but breathing. He forced
himself to move on, taking the steps down to the tunnel level, stepped through the hatch, emerged into the aft compartment’s middle level and unplugged from the tunnel hose station, dragging the hose up the ladder to the upper level, not sure whether to believe his ears as he got closer to the top of the ladder because he could hear the roaring of steam and the whining of a turbine.
At the top of the ladder he stepped off, took a few puffs from a hose station and moved past maneuvering, freezing in a double-take as he saw that the room was unmanned. Except by the four corpses on the deck. The reactor-control panel and electrical panel were splashed with blood. He looked up from the maneuvering room door and took in the scene of huge CB Mcdonne rushing by, hose in one hand, steam plant procedure book in the other.
“Captain! Get to lower level and start a condensate pump!
Then stand by to start a main feed pump. I’ll get you on the Circuit Two.”
Kane nodded, body aching as he descended the vertical ladders to the lower level two decks down. When he stepped off the ladder his foot splashed into water. He looked around. The compartment couldn’t really be called flooded, but the leaks would need to be pumped, and soon. The equipment was splash-proof but not designed to run under water. He waded
aft to the condensate bay, found the motor starters, pressed the first start button. The pump motor spun up to full speed. He started the other three, then waded for ward to the feed-pump bay, waiting for Mcdonne to get a turbine generator up to speed and on the grid so that the feed pump could be started. Finally Mcdonne’s voice boomed through the ship to start the pump. The unit was twice the size of a phone booth and loud coming up to speed. Kane tried to find a phone to see what else needed doing in the lower level. He rang the upper level. No answer.
The nightmare thought struck Kane that something had happened to CB Mcdonne. Without the XO, he would not be able to finish bringing up the plant by himself. Mcdonne was an engineer from Purdue, Kane an English major who’d put up with the nuke program just so he could command but never doing more than the minimum to get by. Since his engineer exam he had forgotten half of all he’d ever known and he hadn’t been involved in a plant startup in eight years.
But when he reached the upper level, CB was in maneuvering at the electrical panel, concentrating on switching breaker switches. After several minutes he stepped to the reactor-control panel, adjusted the rod height, then waved to Kane to follow him.
“We’re up in a normal full-power lineup. Let’s get the burners and scrubbers back on line and clean up the atmosphere. This mask is a goddamn pain.” So, he silently added, was their desperate situation.
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Monday, 30 December portsmouth, virginia norfolk naval shipyard graving dock 4
Pacino looked up from the dock as the wind suddenly picked up, nearly blowing off his hardhat. The wind gusted, then calmed, then again roared through the dock. He checked his watch—almost 11:00 p.m. and the water level in the dock had barely risen to the bottom of Seawolfs cylindrical hull after flooding for almost an hour. The ship looked eerie, almost surreal under the harsh floodlights, but also somehow important, like a NASA shuttle lit up for launch. The green of the hull added to the unreality. Pacino still could barely believe he was going to sea within hours—the dull disconnected feeling of being in the shipyard with a helpless vessel hadn’t left him yet. The frantic mood of the preunderway checklist did not, somehow, feel right here in a graving dock. A pier should be the place a submarine left from to go on a vital mission, not this giant hospital for ships. Still, he felt good that he would get to take the ship down one last time. Up to now he hadn’t focused much on the mission. It was all he could handle just to get the shipyard out of his hair, but now that the boat was really cleared for sea he felt a certain familiarity. He had lived this before. This was what he’d been created to do, a task reserved for him alone—that only he could do.
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