Phoenix Sub Zero mp-3

by Michael Dimercurio

  When the sketch was done he put it in the tech manual and returned to his bed, thinking that he still hoped his toast would come true, that Seawolf would indeed have good luck.

  But if she didn’t, he had a backup plan, he hoped.

  Chapter 26

  Wednesday, 1 January

  EASTERN ATLANTIC, WEST EUROPEAN BASIN

  80 NAUTICAL MILES SOUTHWEST OF CABO DE SAO VICENTE, PORTUGAL

  USS PHOENIX

  Kane took the conn for the trip to periscope depth, knowing it would be a most risky ascent. Sonar was in a deeply reduced status, firecontrol was still down hard, the Destiny was dangerously close, within 15,000 yards and still combatworthy and hostile. On top of that, any ascent to PD was filled with risk as the ship penetrated the thermal layer, the zone near the surface stirred by the waves and warmed by the sun, the deeper regions untouched by solar warmth and uniformly at a fraction of a degree above freezing. The warm-water-layer boundary reflected most surface sounds up and away from the deep region so that many surface noises were inaudible until the ship passed up through the boundary. The effect could make an incoming supertanker as quiet as a sailboat. Their position was within the shipping lanes on the way to the Mediterranean through Gibraltar, the war effort doubling cargo traffic. There would be a dozen surface ships that they probably wouldn’t hear until they came through the layer, and if there was a supertanker pointed at them, the massive oil tanks would further quiet its engines, its keel reaching down to a depth of over a hundred feet on some of the behemoths that transited the Atlantic. A collision with such a giant would put them on the bottom as surely as a Nagasaki torpedo. They would be coming up in the darkness, the view out the periscope their only warning of trouble.

  “Mark the time,” Kane called, suddenly wondering, as the deck inclined to five degrees up, what time and what day it was. Would it be night or day on the surface?

  The ship’s clocks had been set for zulu time, Greenwich mean time, since they had left Norfolk before Thanksgiving. That worked well in the western basin of the Med, but they were farther west now, a time zone from Greenwich. Kane had lost track of time since they had hit bottom and fought for the ship, the New Year rung in without being noticed aboard.

  “Zero three forty zulu, sir,” Houser said, his voice showing the wear of going too long without sleep or food.

  The view out the periscope was dark, a slight diffuse brightness filtering down from the moon or clouds above, but they were not yet close enough to the surface to make out the waves.

  “Sonar, conn, contact status?” Houser said over the headset.

  “Conn, sonar, no surface contacts.” Sanderson’s voice was harsh with annoyance or stress or both.

  “Nine five feet, sir,” the diving officer called.

  The waves above appeared, at first blurred by the depth, then focusing as they moved closer, their outlines defined by the phosphorescence of the whitecaps in the sea breeze.

  Kane rotated the periscope through almost two revolutions per second, looking for the underside of hulls.

  “Seven five feet, sir.”

  “No shapes or shadows … no shapes or shadows …”

  Kane’s announcement was meant for the ship-control team, which would need to take immediate action should a close hull be seen, the crew trained to take the sub down on Kane’s call of “emergency deep.”

  “Seven zero feet, sir. Zero bubble, ten-degree rise on the fairwater planes. Six eight feet… five-degree rise fairwater planes … six five feet, one-degree rise.”

  “Scope’s breaking … scope’s breaking …” There was no monitor view of the periscope view, since the light coming down the mast at night would be diminished by the light-hungry Perivis system, robbing Kane of his full vision. He was the only thing standing between safety and disaster. The waves and foam finally washed off Kane’s view, the outside world coming into sudden sharp focus, the clouds above formed into separate large banks of cotton, illuminated by the first-quarter moon, the surface at sea-state two, slightly choppy with sprinkles of light foam.

  “Scope’s clear!” Kane spun the optic module in three quick circles, and made out no details except the water in the immediate vicinity of the ship, the shimmer of the moon on the water passing by his view.

  Other than the dancing light on the surface from the moon, the sea was empty. “No close contacts!”

  Kane began his surface search, a slow rotation covering all 360 degrees. Still no lights of ships or dark shadows of unlit hulls.

  “Raise the bigmouth antenna,” Kane called out.

  “Radio, Captain, Bigmouth coming up, prepare to transmit the contact message.”

  “Radio, aye,” the earphones hissed.

  Kane continued his search, watching the sea slowly approaching the periscope view when it was trained forward, slowly receding as he looked aft. The time seemed to be clicking by with no report from radio.

  “Radio, conn, what’s the status?”

  “Conn, radio … we’re …”

  “Say again, radio.” Kane’s voice took on an edge. Every second at PD was another second the Destiny could be opening the range and getting away, soon getting out of sonar range or worse, circling below them preparing a torpedo attack that would be unheard until the torpedo came above the layer.

  “Conn, radio, transmission problems,” Senior Chief Binghamton’s voice was on the circuit. “We need to troubleshoot. It might take a half-hour.”

  “Why didn’t we do that deep. Senior?”

  “It’s a bigmouth problem. Captain. We didn’t see it until the mast was dry.”

  “I’m taking her deep,” Kane said. “We don’t have time for this. Sonar, conn, proceeding deep. Chief, lower the bigmouth. Dive, make your depth 500 feet, steep angle. Helm, all ahead two-thirds.”

  Almost immediately the waves came up and splashed the periscope lens. Kane snapped the grips up and lowered the scope. The bigmouth and the number-two periscope clunked into their stowed positions a second apart. The deck inclined downward to a steep thirty-degree dive.

  “Helm, ahead standard. Sonar, Captain, report status of Target One.”

  “Conn, sonar, complete loss of Target One.”

  “Houser, you have the deck and the conn.” Kane walked into sonar, where he found Sanderson glaring at the console screens. The senior chief glanced up at Kane, then went back to flipping through his displays, talking while he searched.

  “Narrowband is coming up but I’m not sure what I’m looking for. And there’s no trace of him broadband.”

  Kane moved back into control. “XO, based on Target One’s previous track, give me an intercept vector to his position.”

  “Unlikely he stayed on course and speed. Captain.”

  “Plot it like he did. We’ll drive out to where he’d be if he kept going like he was and see if we hear him. Once we do, sonar can get a narrowband signature on him and we can track him at the longer ranges. Get the calculation done, then have Mr. Houser get us there, fast.”

  Kane didn’t wait for an acknowledgement as he stepped out of control to the radio room. He punched in the combination to the push-button combination lock and slammed the door open. “Senior, what the hell was going on up there? We’ve lost the god damned Destiny and no one knows he’s out there but us.” Kane took a breath, upset he’d let his temper take over.

  Binghamton looked up, the sweat on his cueball head forming droplets that glinted in the light of the bright overhead lights. The senior chief, used to communication foul-ups during tense tactical situations, was steady. “UHF antenna is gone. Captain. Short of a new bigmouth, we won’t be talking to anybody. Even if we surfaced and had replacement parts, it can’t be fixed.”

  Kane leaned hard against the bulkhead, handles and dials of the radio cabinets digging into his flesh. Rotten irony, he had come this far and gone through the near-sinking and the second encounter only to learn the ship was mute as well as weaponless. Okay … what to do? Surface and driv
e for the nearest port, where he could phone Admiral Steinman and tell him about the Destiny? Gibraltar was only a day away now. But that would mean he couldn’t keep an eye on the Destiny as it continued on its mission, whatever it was.

  “But we’re not out of business yet. Skipper. The UHF is a dud, it’s true, but we may have HF capability.”

  Kane didn’t know how to react to that. HF was notoriously unreliable, subject to any sort of atmospheric disturbance.

  During a tactical exercise three months before, the ship had tried to reach Norfolk from a hundred miles out and could raise no one. Nothing but static. When they did get voice contact it was with a radio operator in Brazil. This absurdity of HF radio was the reason the U.S. had launched all those hundred-million-dollar satellites into geosynchronous orbit that received crisp, reliable, straight-line UHF transmissions.

  Using HF would be like stepping back into the 1940s, but it was still better than nothing.

  “Only thing is, sir, we’ll need a long time at PD to find a way to transmit this message. Could be an hour, maybe two.”

  Not quite the sixty-second stay at PD that a satellite would allow, Kane thought. How could he possibly trail the Destiny and linger so long at slow speed at periscope depth?

  The answer was he couldn’t. He had to make a decision: lose the Destiny or communicate. He could not do both.

  He muttered a curse and walked back into control.

  “Status, Mr. Houser?”

  “We’re doing twenty knots to intercept the previous track of the Destiny, Captain. Fortunately he was going only five knots the whole time we had him before. We’ll slow down in another two minutes and see what sonar hears.”

  Kane bent over the chart table and almost found himself hoping that they wouldn’t regain the Destiny on sonar, that he could spend the time at PD to communicate, then head home.

  “Conn, sonar,” Kane heard as he strapped on his sweat-soaked headset, “reacquisition Target One, bearing two five four. Recommend slowing to four knots.”

  “Ahead one-third, turns for four,” Houser shouted to the helmsman.

  “Man the plots,” Mcdonne called. The consoles of the firecontrol system suddenly flashed into life on the attack-center screens, then died again. “Firecontrol, what’s the status?”

  “Coming up in tape mode in two minutes, sir,” the technician reported, his voice muffled by the tall consoles between him and the control-room crew.

  Kane ran his hands through his hair, adjusting the headset.

  If anyone at prospective commanding officer school had asked what he would do in this scenario, he would have laughed in their face. Who would have believed he would continue to trail a front-line attack sub when he himself had an empty torpedo room? But then, when he looked at the chart, the Destiny was following a route to the northwest, going somewhere. Going damned slow, but on the way with a purpose. And someone had to find out what the hell he was doing, no matter the risk.

  New Year’s Day. Happy New Year.

  CNFS HEGIRA

  Sharef’s right eye did not respond in spite of all his efforts.

  His left eye opened but seemed caked with dirt. He clamped the eye shut and tried again, realization sinking in that his eye was open yet he could see nothing. He stemmed instinctive panic, grateful at least for his life. When he raised his hand to rub his eyes it wouldn’t move, and when he tried again a bolt of pain shot up to his shoulder. He forced himself to concentrate on what faculties he did have. Feeling, for one thing — he was lying flat, on what must have been a bed or couch, perhaps in his stateroom. He still felt the aftershock of the arm movement, now a throbbing ache. But he could also feel the other arm, his legs, his toes. Though that meant nothing, he reminded himself; the men who lost legs on the Sahand sinking had still felt their legs, even felt itching from their toes, then reached down and found only bloody stumps.

  Hearing. He thought he could sense the roar of the air from the ship’s air handlers, but it might be the white noise of deafness or even a symptom of concussion. Now for motion.

  He started with his toes, wiggled them, and thought he heard the rustling of a bedsheet. His fingers. On the right, wiggling, on the left, the resistance of a bandage or cast.

  Arms — the left seemed to ache as if bruised, and was handcuffed or strapped to something. He didn’t dare try the right again. His face moved, but his lips were chapped and cracked, his throat sore, his cheeks aching. His tongue felt like a rotting piece of meat, the ache making him suspect he bit it when — when what? What had happened?

  He took a breath, feeling the restriction of tape around his chest, and tried to speak. Only a rasp came out. He tried again. Another hoarse croaking sound. He tried to blink the left eye again but there was only darkness. He heard a distinct click, and light seemed to flood the room, making him clamp the eye shut again from the pain of the glare.

  “Commodore. You’re awake. We worried your coma was permanent.” The voice of someone familiar. Who? The sound of a phone handset lifting from a cradle. Sharef opened his good eye, seeing light but only as a blur.

  “Mr. Navigator, the Commodore is coming to. No, sir … yes, sir.” The handset clicked into the holder. The voice belonged to the medical officer, one of the junior officers named Al Rhazes, who was old to be a j.o. but had taken a demotion from lieutenant commander to attend the UIF medical program, and was now a sublieutenant learning the submarine trade. In the UIF Combined Naval Force it was not enough to be a doctor. A crew member was a submariner first.

  “Where …”

  “Try to rest. Commodore. You’ve had quite a hit.”

  Above him, Sharef saw the dim outline of a face, then the voice of the navigator. Commander Omar Tawkidi.

  “Sir,” Tawkidi said, “can you understand me?”

  Sharef nodded, trying to focus on the face. He could make out the twin dark blurs of eyes now, the oval shape of the navigator’s face.

  “We took the torpedo hit hard, sir. We lost six men and a rider. Three are seriously wounded, as is one of the riders.”

  “Who …?”

  “Captain al-Kunis is dead, sir. So are Mamun, Haddad, Avicenna and Abulcassis.”

  Sharef felt sick. His first officer, weapons officer, senior watch officer, electrical officer and communications officer were gone. Men he had trained and knew well. And al-Kunis, the man he had groomed for command, who was to replace him as captain someday. All of them gone. Some would say their deaths were holy, that they were glorious, but Sharef knew that was a lie. They died because their luck had run out. Allah? Apparently he wasn’t watching.

  How would he run the ship without the men, who each had fulfilled a vital function in the operation of the vessel? “… riders …?”

  “Dr. Abu-i-Wafa. And among the seriously wounded are All Tabari and junior officers Seid and Batouah.”

  “How bad?”

  “Head wounds, comas, like yours. We thought you might not—”

  Tawkidi stopped himself.

  “Me?”

  “You’ll be fine. Commodore. You’ve broken a rib, fractured your wrist, got some glass in your eye and a bad knock on the head. After a few weeks in a hospital you’ll be fine.”

  Sharef shut his eye, wondering how he could finish the operation without Abu-i-Wafa, the weapons scientist.

  “Where now?”

  “We’re only 200 kilometers into the Atlantic. The Second Captain drove us out at dead slow ahead, we think because it was trying to avoid ASW detection. It must have worked, we shook the ASW forces. We’re on the track now. Quzwini is calculating a speed change based on weapon-assembly time. We should be speeding up in a few minutes. We’ve lost the diesel/battery compartment. If we lose the reactor we’re in bigger trouble. There is some damage to the propulsion cables to the propulsor motor, but we’re limping along as is for now. We think there was some outer-hull damage from the blast, took out the aft-hull sonar arrays. But the important thing is the reactor is whole, the Se
cond Captain functioned and we’re still watertight.”

  “Sihoud?”

  “Still with us, and pressing me to hurry up the mission … Sleep some more, sir, I’ll be back in a few hours. When you can sit up we’ll figure out how to assemble the missiles. Colonel Ahmed says he can do it.” Tawkidi looked away to the medical officer. “See to it that he rests. Shoot him up if need be.”

  “Sir.”

  The door shut behind the navigator, and Commodore Sharef felt a needle pinch his arm. Soon he was floating, feeling an out-of-place euphoria, until he thought he was again on the bridge of the Sahand staring at the sky …

  NORTHERN IRAN

  Commander Jack Morris of seal Team Seven rested his head against the vibrating bulkhead of the V-22 Osprey, able to sleep better in a plane driven by the Marine Corps.

  He was jostled awake by his XO, Black Bart. He had asked Bart to get him up an hour before they arrived at the drop zone so he could review this crazy mission one last time.

  By the light of a hooded flashlight Morris looked over the op-order, shaking his head.

  Bart handed him a large styrofoam cup of coffee, steaming hot. Morris took it aboard slowly, reading the eighty-page op-order a second, then a third time. The airframe of the hybrid transport airplane-helicopter shuddered at drop-minus fifteen minutes. Bart went down the row of commandos, waking each one up, handing out coffee to the seals.

  Morris checked the small oval window. It was dark outside, a faint light from the moon fighting the growing overcast.

  The clouds were taking on a pregnant featureless look, as if snow would be in the forecast. The landscape of the north Iranian Koppeh Mountains below was covered with snow, the dingy sooty snow that had been around awhile.