Phoenix Sub Zero

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Yes, Commodore. The Second Captain can do the calculations easily. It will create some noise level as we release the ballast-tank air, but we could slow down to as low as twenty-five clicks.”

  “Make it so. Colonel, after your second tank entry I will want another progress report. Anything to say. General Sihoud?”

  Sihoud had been quiet, too quiet, for the entire trip.

  Tawkidi had reported that he had been in the first-officer stateroom since the recovery from the torpedo. He had not come out for meals and had refused meals in the stateroom.

  He looked unwell.

  “Commodore,” Sihoud said, his voice showing no sign of stress, the depth

  of it still commanding. But there was some thing in his eyes, Sharef thought. “You and Colonel Ahmed have thoroughly planned the weapon deployment. For this I compliment you both. I urge you two to continue working together to get the Scorpion weapon launched. Once it is air borne we will prevail in our struggle. That is all I have to say.”

  Sharef watched Ahmed and Sihoud leave, his thoughts interrupted by Tawkidi.

  “I’ll be flooding the tank now, sir, and slowing. You should rest until Ahmed finishes the next tank entry.”

  “I will,” Sharef said, accepting Tawkidi’s help into his bed, swallowing the pills from the table with water Tawkidi had brought.

  As he stared at the overhead above his bed, Sharef remembered Sihoud’s eyes. They were no longer bright but seemed flat, dead. As though already resigned to his own death. Well, Sharef thought, he didn’t share Sihoud’s fanaticism that justified everything in the name of his beloved Allah. On the other hand, he was, in effect, a captive on his own ship, in spite of what he had told Ahmed and Sihoud.

  His frustrations were relieved only when the heavy curtain of drowsiness descended on him, the drugs from the doctor taking over.

  USS phoenix Kane looked uneasily at the chart. Their course through the past twenty hours had been straight-edge steady, a bullet heading directly to the south of Greenland’s southernmost point at Cape Farewell. For the past thirteen hours Target One had been going thirty-five knots, twice the speed that Kane would have transited the Atlantic. At the beginning of the thirty-five-knot run the contact had put out a loud transient.

  Sanderson said it sounded like he had blown a ballast tank as if he intended to surface but he had continued on submerged. They were now halfway to Greenland, the ETA to the Canadian coast two days from now, maybe less.

  The longer he followed the Destiny the more its escape from the Med remained a mystery, and the deeper the mystery had grown. He had taken a large plot showing the North Atlantic and much of the surrounding north hemisphere and with thin orange navigation tape placed their track on it since Gibraltar. He had extended the tape into the Med to Kassab, where the Destiny had begun her mission. With the knowledge that General Sihoud was aboard, the escape from the Med and the beeline for the Canadian coast could be interpreted several ways.

  Perhaps Sihoud had decided to abdicate or surrender and had agreed to leave the UIF with a sub, to give up in Newfoundland or Labrador or Greenland. Yeah, right. Or maybe he was going to a special peace talk to

  be conducted in Canada or Greenland, talks so secret that he had to disappear in the eyes of his own military. But why would a leader going to a secret peace meeting sink two ships to get there? That made no sense. What if he was bringing some kind of weapon out of the Med to fire at the U.S.? Why wouldn’t he simply shoot it from the Med? Range—the Med was a long way away. The Japanese might have sold the UIF a few supersonic high-altitude cruise missiles and maybe Sihoud thought he could bring them close so that they would be in range. But why not just proceed on a straight line toward the American east coast then? And what damage could a conventional cruise missile do? A couple terrorists with some plastic explosive in the sewer system could do more damage and have better odds on success than trying to lob a cruise missile into the east coast’s radar-saturated environment.

  What if he’d found a way to make a nuke? He would come as close as he could to his target and launch it in. Assuming he had a delivery vehicle. Maybe he was going to drop off a nuclear weapon in the Labrador Sea, surfacing at night and off-loading it onto a fishing vessel, and the fishing vessel would take it to some sleepy Canadian port where a battered rental car could take it to the border and bring it to Boston or New York or D.C. Or a seaplane could just fly it in with no stops.

  Sure, Kane, sure … He’d just radio that in a contact message and Admiral Steinman would have a laugh and send him a box full of old Alistair Maclean novels. Besides, in intelligence was not his function.

  His role was gathering the raw data. So far they had boxcars full of raw data he needed to tell someone about. And he hadn’t been able to because of the speed of the Destiny. He simply could not afford to slow down and come to PD to transmit on HE He turned from the chart and wandered to the middle level to get a cup of coffee. The ship was a ghost town. Control was busy with trailing the Destiny, the room’s hustle making thinking difficult. He couldn’t bounce his ideas off of Mcdonne, since the XO was sleeping, preparing to take over for Kane during the evening and midwatch. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Senior Chief Binghamton in the crew’s mess. He summoned the radioman to the wardroom.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Any change in the status of the UHF gear?”

  “Still down hard, sir. For us, it’s HF or nothing/’ “What about spare parts for the—”

  “Captain,” a voice rang out from the passageway. “Captain?”

  “He’s here,” Binghamton said. The phone talker in the passageway was holding a long cord coiled in his hand, his duty to relay communications from the middle level to control when rigged for ultraquiet so that the Circuit One PA speakers did not need to be used.

  “Control’s calling sir. O.O.D wants you up there ASAP.”

  “On the way.” Kane hurried up the stairs to the upper level, made control in a few strides. Control was stuffy and crowded, the O.O.D and junior officer of the deck standing at the attack-center consoles, plotters manning manual plots, conversations relayed in murmurs. Jensen had the conn, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep or from the wounds he’d taken during the grounding.

  “Skipper, Target One just slowed. We’ve got him at thirteen knots. No sign of a counterdetection or a baffle-clear maneuver. And he’s just put out a whopper of a transient.

  Smoot’s on watch in sonar, said it sounded like venting a ballast tank.”

  This was Kane’s chance to pop up to periscope depth and radio the contact report. It might be his only chance. Slowing and going to PD risked losing the contact, but it had to be done. With the Destiny at thirteen knots Kane could let him get ahead and still be able to catch up to him after lingering at PD. He told himself he’d give it twenty minutes at periscope depth, no more.

  “Contact range?”

  “Nine thousand yards.”

  “Any change in Target One course?”

  “No, sir, he’s going straighter than an arrow.”

  “Increase speed to twenty knots, close the range to 5,000, then take her up to PD at seven knots, no baffle clear. I’ll. be in radio. Let’s go, take her up.”

  Kane’s heart was beating in his throat by the time the ship leveled off at periscope depth, the maneuver done without pausing to clear baffles and check surface traffic at 150 feet.

  Binghamton’s shaved scalp beaded up with sweat as he called for the bigmouth multifrequency antenna, a green light coming on when the telephone-pole-shaped mast was fully extended. The senior chief handed Kane a headset with a boom microphone while strapping on his own. The consoles in front of him beeped and buzzed as he adjusted frequencies and juggled a code book.

  “Norfolk Navcom Center, this is Tango Two Foxtrot,” Binghamton called, the T2F the January 2 call sign for the Phoenix. He repeated the call several times, a whistling sound rising and falling from the transceiver, static blaring out over the
speakers.

  “Come on, come on,” Kane muttered, intensely aware that the Destiny was driving on ahead, opening the range.

  “Norfolk Navcom Center, this is Tango Two Foxtrot, over.”

  Static.

  “Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot with a Navy Blue message, over.”

  Static, broken by a distorted voice, then more whistling on the speaker.

  “Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot with a flash Navy Blue, over.”

  A hissing, interrupted briefly by a voice: “TWO FOX …”

  “Come on, Senior,” Kane said, more to himself than Binghamton.

  “Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot with Navy Blue to follow. Do you copy, over?”

  “TANG … OOH … OX … BED YOU FIVE BY … ANSMIT … OVER.”

  “Is that the best we can do. Senior?”

  “Let’s transmit and see if they can read back.”

  Kane glanced at a message form he’d scratched out.

  “Norfolk Navcom Center, this is Tango Two Foxtrot,” he said slowly and clearly. “Navy Blue message to follow, break.” Navy Blue meant the message was a flash transmission to go directly to Admiral Donchez in the Pentagon.

  “Tango Two Foxtrot reports own position at latitude five two degrees four minutes twelve seconds November, longitude three three degrees seventeen minutes four zero seconds whiskey, break.” Kane had agonized over the next section of the message, knowing it was going out with no encryption, able to be heard by UIF receivers if they were listening.

  “Our customer was met at the original point of contact and continued to present location with probable destination Labrador Sea, speed three five for the last twenty hours with re cent slowing to speed one three. Tango Two Foxtrot damaged but recovered, but UHF radios out of commission. our garage has no more Matthew-Luke-and-John five zero vehicles.” A way of getting across that he was out of Mark 50 torpedoes. “Further updates to follow, break. Bravo tango. I say again, Navy Blue message to follow …” Kane repeated the transmission and asked for a readback.

  The speakers whistled and sputtered.

  “ANGO … AVY BLUE … REPORT … OSITION LAT … FIVE TWO DE … NOVEMBER, LONG …

  THREETH … SEVENTEEN MIN … WHISKEY …”

  The rest of the readback continued that way. Kane looked at Binghamton. There was enough of the message coming back that it seemed safe to assume that they’d received it, if it was really the naval communications center they were talking to.

  “TANGO TWO … NAVCOM … AUTHENTICATE GOLF … OVER.”

  Binghamton took over. “Say again, Navcom, you are coming in garbled.”

  “AUTHENTICATE GO … VICTOR THR …”

  “Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot, confirming, do you desire authenticate golf victor three?”

  “TANGO … AFFIRMA …”

  Binghamton grabbed the code book from the ledge, the black volume marked top secret—comsec, the designation for the highest communications security classification.

  “Let’s see here,” the senior chief mumbled to himself, “today is the second of January, here’s golf, down to the victor column, to the three line. Golf victor three should all thenticate as W3B. Do you concur, sir?”

  Kane looked at the code book, the rows and columns meaningless numbers and letters. The Navcom center was trying to verify that they really were the Phoenix by asking them to decode an alphanumeric that could be decoded only by having a code book, and the new codebooks were printed for individual ships—only the Phoenix had this version of the code book. Anyone else out there would be unable to decipher GV3 as W3B. It would positively mark their message as authentic.

  “Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot, we authenticate as whiskey three bravo, repeat whiskey three bravo, over.” “… FOXTROT … ROGER YOUR … MESSAGE RE … NAVCOM … OUT.”

  “I think they got it. Skipper.”

  “Conn, radio, lower the bigmouth and go deep!” Kane shouted to the control-room speaker microphone. The deck plunged downward before he could get out of radio and back into control.

  Now came the hard part. Could they find Target One again after all that?

  national security agency headquarters fort meade, maryland building 427 special compartmented information facility It had been overcast with heavy featureless clouds when the sun had set. Donchez had taken the limo from the Pentagon to nearby Fort Meade, halfway between D.C. and Baltimore along the Baltimore-Washington Expressway. By the time the car approached the beltway the blizzard started, slowing them down. A half-hour later the Lincoln’s tires were buried in snow at the gate of Fort Meade. When Donchez got out at Building 427 the snow covered him, making his long black overcoat white in just twenty steps to the building entrance.

  “I can see we’ll be sleeping here tonight,” Donchez told his aide Rummel. “Better grab us a couple rooms at the BOQ before we get too involved at the briefing.”

  Donchez had asked for the briefing in his own SCIF, but the NSA had insisted that they brief him here. The NSA had won the early joint-operations turf battles for control of interception and decoding of foreign communications, competing successfully with the Combined Intelligence Agency’s crypto division. The Dole Act’s reorganization of the CIA, the DIA, and NSA had left the NSA not only whole but bigger, until Cla’s crypto personnel found themselves working for NSA at Fort Meade. Donchez conceded the NSA folks were professional and good, but also a strange breed.

  Donchez and his aide scanned into the front security entrance of the brick building 427, which could have passed for a recently constructed high school, the brick new, the architecture pleasing but ordinary, made unusual only by the absence of windows. A naval officer met them inside per Donchez’s instructions, since normal procedure would have the commander of the base meet Donchez personally and escort him in, but Donchez had ordered the ceremony skipped.

  They were escorted to the electronic checkpoint and then deeper into the building, passing two more security checkpoints before they came to the entrance to the SCIF, the double lead-lined doors guarded by an armed sentry. The checkin process was much longer here.

  Finally they were led into the SCIF room, the furnishings new and comfortable, the leather chairs and oak table and soft wall-coverings making the room appear to be a boardroom.

  Donchez barely noticed, his impatience taking over.

  The briefer, an Army colonel, came in an interior door with papers and videotapes. He looked young and fresh-faced to be a senior officer, rosy cheeks and round wire frame glasses, his mustache looking as if it belonged to a teenager.

  “I’m Col. John Parker. I run the computer crypto detail.

  Pleased to meet you, sir.” Parker had a nasal high-pitched voice but spoke briskly. “These handouts are an abstract of the presentation. I know you’re pushed for time so I’ll get right to the point. You may not even want to see the raw data but I think the abstract may make you want to see it anyway.”

  “Fine, Colonel. Give me the short version first.”

  “Yes, sir. The intercepted computer data and files, as well as the debriefing of Muhammad Ibn al-Kabba, the UIF scientist we captured, all indicate the UIF has come up with a new kind of weapon. It’s technically called a dispersion adhesion explosive using plutonium for the poison. It’s nowhere near the destructive potential of a nuclear warhead, but with a small fraction of the plutonium, this weapon goes a very long way. I would compare it to a neutron bomb that achieves its death potential through radioactivity rather than blast effect. This does something similar, but instead of a single burst of neutron flux, it relies on exposure to the plutonium, the dust getting into ventilation systems and into the victims’ lungs, onto the victims’ skin, sticking to surface of streets and buildings. If you’re anywhere near ground zero you’ll die, even if you’re driving through at ninety miles per or in the basement of a building—that dust will get you. And it can’t be washed away—the cleanup crews would die. If this thing is dropped on a large

 
city, the casualties would number in the millions. And it gets worse. With a neutron weapon or nuclear warhead, within a year you can clean up and rebuild. Not so here. The target city would be radioactive and uninhabitable for untold years to come.

  Donchez sat through five minutes of an explanation of the glue bomb’s purpose and function. He interrupted the colonel. “How many do they have?”

  “Two, maybe three.”

  “Delivery system?”

  “A warhead inserted onto the tip of a Hiroshima missile.

  Range is only 1,900 nautical miles. A bit too small to be a long-range threat.”

  “So they’d need to get close to launch it at us. Or deliver it by aircraft.”

  “Or hand-carry it. But the Hiroshima missile is what the data says was the preferred method, since it’s a high-altitude supersonic vehicle with radar-evading electronics.”

  “Aren’t there two versions of the Hiroshima?”

  “Sea-launched and aircraft-launched, yes.”

  “Same missile?”

  “No, the sea-launched device is designed to be ejected from a submerged tube launcher on a sub, so it has a water proof capsule—that doesn’t change the characteristics of the missile, but this version must start its trip at zero velocity at sea level, so its booster rocket stage is much bigger.

  The air-launched version’s solid rocket booster is tiny by comparison.”

  “Warheads the same size?”

  “No, the air-launched version has a bigger warhead capacity since it’s got the lighter rocket. Six thousand kilos for the air-launched, only 3,500 for the sea-launched version.”

  “How heavy is this dirty dust-bomb’s warhead?”

  “Let’s see …” The colonel searched his data. “We never added this up.” He scratched two columns on a pad, flipping through a large binder, adding up the second column of weights.

  “There are a few components I’d be guessing at as far as mass is concerned, sir, but within a few percent, this war head is about three metric tons. That’s 3,000 kilos, give or take a few hundred.”