Phoenix Sub Zero mp-3

by Michael Dimercurio

  Greenland. The arctic circle. Where it was dark most of the time and frigid-cold all the time. So far Crossfield had avoided long-term relationships with women. And now that he was thirty-nine, his hair thinning, his muscles slowly but inevitably turning to fat, he was stuck on this godforsaken rock, commanding an SAR unit second to none, with no one to rescue other than the occasional fishing boat with mechanical problems, and with all the tanned blue-eyed Florida blondes over 2,000 miles away.

  Crossfield looked over at his operations officer, Dick Trill, the thin mustachioed youngster who still looked like a teenager but wore the uniform of a lieutenant, j.g.

  “Let me get this straight,” Crossfield drawled. “We got the worst blizzard of the century blowing outside and we’re supposed to saddle up and go take care of not just one but two submarines in bad trouble. And we know one of them’s on the surface drifting, her position hardly certain. And the second one is sunk, with the position pinpointed. Except by ‘pinpointed’ you mean somewhere in an area the size of Connecticut. Have I got all that right, son?”

  “Yes sir,” the ops boss said, a wary eye on Crossfield’s bulk.

  “We’re out of business with the choppers, right?”

  “Wind’s too high, sir. The V-22s can fly. That’s about it.”

  The Osprey, half airplane, half helicopter. Except for one thing. When the winds aloft were too high for the choppers, the V-22s could only fly, not hover. Even if they found the surviving drifting sub, they couldn’t land until the storm eased.

  “Well, get your brief ready. I want to take off in ten minutes. That’s one zero for you lieutenants. Oh, I forgot, you’re an Academy grad. For you, I want to take off when the big hand’s on the twelve and the little hand’s on the nine.”

  “Yes sir.” He kept a straight face. “The men will be here in two minutes.”

  The young man hurried out the door. Crossfield looked after him, then out the window and shook his head. The glass was rattling with the fury of the wind, the snow covering the bottom half, ice starting to form on the top half.

  “Those bubblehead submariners sure can pick the day to need help,” he mumbled to himself.

  LABRADOR SEA

  Kane drummed his fingers on the chart table. It had been a half-hour since they had surfaced and sent the distress code.

  Since then nothing had happened. The storm continued to blow outside. Inside it was extremely cold. Having nothing to do made matters even worse, the men could only focus on the cold.

  Kane decided to take a look topside. Houser had rigged the bridge for surface, the hatches open. Kane climbed up the long ladder, the metal of it threatening to freeze his skin.

  Houser lifted the grating for him.

  The view was so bright it hurt Kane’s eyes. The skin of his face felt like he was being sandblasted by ice particles.

  The fog had eased somewhat since they’d come up, and Kane thought he could make out the shape of the icebergs in the middle distance. Houser, in a leather face shield like a hockey-goalie mask, was looking through binoculars at a steady bearing toward the bow.

  “What are you looking at?” Kane asked him.

  “I’m not sure I believe it. Captain. I was waiting for it to be a mirage.”

  “Let me look.” Kane took the binoculars. “I don’t believe it either.” Kane would have had an easier time explaining the sight of pink elephants.

  “The sounds you heard on the UWT—”

  “Yes, skipper. “Ho ho ho.’ Merry submarine escape.”

  “Good God,” Kane said, staring into the binoculars, seeing the impossible, the dozen orange rafts floating in the whitecaps, all full of men. None of the men moving.

  “XO to the bridge,” Mcdonne called from below. Kane stepped aside while Houser lifted the grating for him. The bridge seemed crowded with Mcdonne’s bulk.

  “Jeez, it’s cold up here. And I thought it was bad below—”

  “XO, check this out,” Kane said.

  Mcdonne looked and whistled, then looked again.

  “Life rafts? Where the hell did they come from?”

  “Who knows? Maybe the Destiny?” Kane said.

  “Those rafts look like USN issue.”

  “They do?” Kane had never seen submarine rafts.

  “Yes sir. Don’t forget, I worked damage control over at navsea during shore duty. We’ve got to do something for these guys.”

  “XO, they’ve got to be a mile away. Maybe two. What are you going to do, swim?”

  “I’ll get our own rafts out there, pull those guys back here,” Mcdonne said, already going for the grating to the access tunnel. “We’ve got a couple of those canned electric motors from the seal deployment exercise. I could use those attached to our rafts and go over there and get them.”

  “Poor bastards are probably already dead,” Houser said, still looking through the binoculars that Mcdonne had given back to him.

  “If they’re not, they will be by the time we pull them aboard,” Kane said. “And even if they’re alive then, getting them aboard doesn’t do them much good. It’s almost as cold below as it is up here. We might drift here for days or weeks before anyone finds us. By then the cold will probably take all of us.”

  Houser looked over at him. “Hey, skipper. You’re the captain. You’re the one who’s supposed to be so god damned positive. Ditching’s my job, remember?”

  Kane stared at the lieutenant. Nodded. Honesty was dumb policy right now.

  “You think the XO is really going out there after those guys?”

  “If he can find the rafts. If he doesn’t freeze just getting them in the water.”

  Houser looked through the binoculars. “They’re definitely not moving. If they were alive they’d be waving at us or launching flares or something …”

  The wind picked up, blowing snow into the cockpit, reminding Kane of the cold. “I’m going below. You staying up here?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Kane looked over at the rafts, the blizzard beginning to make them hard to find.

  “Get below soon, Houser. Your face looks bad.”

  Kane lowered himself down the ladder, numbness creeping into his hands in spite of the cold. In the control room he could still see his breath.

  Chapter 37

  Saturday, 4 January

  KANGAMIU AIRFIELD, WESTERN GREENLAND

  The snow blew over the runway, obscuring the lights and the painted numerals. The snow-clearing crews had worked continuously through the night, without complete success.

  Crossfield pulled on the oversized helmet, adjusted the boom microphone, tested it and studied the chart clipped on his thigh clipboard while Trill, his copilot, brought the engines of the V-22 up to speed. The big aircraft shuddered as the rotors wound up to idle, the blades spinning horizontally as the plane prepared for a vertical ascent. Crossfield went through the takeoff checklist, spoke a few words to Trill, then watched as Trill throttled up. The engines howled louder than the wind, and the patch of runway beneath them, momentarily cleared of snow by the fierce manmade wind of the rotors, faded away.

  There was nothing in the windshield but white overcast and flakes blasting by so fast they caused dizziness. Crossfield shook his head. A rescue this day?

  Trill guided the aircraft up to 2,000 feet and rotated the rotors so that the aircraft began flying as a plane, forward airspeed building up to 300 knots. It would be a few hours before they reached the latitude of the distress signal. The submariners better be praying the storm cleared by then, Crossfield thought.

  * * *

  Kane watched from the periscope as the executive officer and a group of chilled volunteers put their inflatable rafts into the water. Mcdonne had found the tiny half-horse battery-driven motors, the two rafts slowly putting toward the other life rafts. His own raft listed dangerously, thanks to his massive bulk.

  Houser had come down into control, his face white and frostbitten from the cold. He looked on the same scene, usin
g the number one periscope next to Kane.

  “Some cavalry,” Houser said.

  * * *

  Mcdonne’s raft neared the first of the quiet bobbing rafts of the survivors.

  “Take the line and attach it to this raft,” he ordered a petty officer behind him. “We’ll tie up the others and tow them back. But from the looks of it I don’t think there’s any need to hurry …”

  * * *

  For the next hour Kane and Houser watched as the rafts were brought aboard, the rescued men unmoving, either unconscious or dead. All of them were wearing American submariner’s coveralls. Kane found Mcdonne in the crew’s mess, staring at food that was frozen solid.

  “What boat were they from?”

  “A bunch of belt buckles read Seawolf,” Mcdonne said.

  “Must have sent the Seawolf to get the Destiny, and all they got was sunk,” Kane said, more to himself than to Mcdonne. “Anybody alive?”

  “A few,” Mcdonne said. “Barely breathing. Doc’s looking at them. We’ll try to keep them warm, but hell, we can’t even give them a cup of hot coffee.”

  “You did the best you could, XO.”

  Houser came into the room, shivering, snow-covered, and whiter than before.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Kane asked.

  “I went topside. I thought maybe the storm would be clearing but I think it’s getting worse.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven,” Mcdonne said. “Almost lunchtime.”

  A bad joke.

  * * *

  Crossfield’s V-22 had been flying at latitude sixty-three degrees in an east-west pattern for the last hour and had found exactly nothing.

  “Anything?” he asked Trill for the twentieth time.

  “Infrared is terrible in this storm, skipper.”

  “Let’s try the radar.”

  “All that’ll do is give us icebergs. Even if she’s here, she’s a needle in a haystack.”

  “Ah, hell, let’s try it anyway. What’ve we got to lose?”

  “Yes sir. There, look. Detects across the board. A hundred of them. Now what?”

  “Hell, Trill, you’re the Academy grad. You tell me.”

  * * *

  Houser stood on the bridge, his face taking a beating, but he couldn’t stay inside the ship. If he were dying he didn’t want to do it inside a steel pipe. When the wind got too strong and bitter, like now, he found that he could shut a clamshell panel of the sail and sit down underneath it, against the bulkhead of the cockpit, and stay out of the wind. The cold of the steel deck seeped past the pile of life jackets and into him, but it was still better than the wind. He sat like this for some thirty minutes, too cold to sleep, too tired to stay fully awake.

  Eventually the cold was too much, and Houser abandoned the bridge for the access tunnel to return to the interior of the ship. It was stuffy and moist, but it was at least a few degrees warmer than the bridge. His hands were so numb he could barely hold on to the ladder as he lowered himself down the tunnel.

  Halfway down the access trunk he froze. He listened for a few moments, climbed back topside, sure that he’d heard it … and gradually the sound got louder.

  A buzz. The buzz of aircraft engines. Distant aircraft engines.

  He held still but the sound faded. It might even have been his imagination, but somehow Houser believed that this was no auditory hallucination. He had heard a powerful thrumming, like chopper rotors or propellers. That couldn’t have been the wind … He slid down the ladder into the control room and found Kane in a seat at the attack-center consoles, his head cradled in one hand.

  “Sir,” Houser tried to say, but his mouth felt like it was full of glue. “I heard—”

  Kane grabbed him and sat him down in a control seat.

  “Houser, you’re frozen half-solid, even your tongue’s frozen. I told you to stay inside, what the hell are you—”

  “Sir,” Houser said deliberately, “airplanes, choppers. I heard engines. We’ve got to get flares.” He felt dizzy, as if the room were spinning. He shut his eyes and put his head on the console, wondering if Kane would believe him.

  “XO, get the flare gun.”

  “Houser’s out of it, skipper. He’s dreaming.”

  “Probably. Still, if he’s right and we sit here on our butts …”

  “I’ll get the flares.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost fourteen hundred.”

  “Can’t last much longer. Better say a prayer that Houser’s right.”

  * * *

  “I’ve got something. An IR trace and a radar contact at the same bearing and range.”

  “Let me see.” Crossfield looked at the IR scope. “Polar bear. Or a seal. Damned dumb seal to be out in this weather.”

  Trill shrugged. “Where’s he supposed to go?”

  “Keep circling for a few minutes. I want to watch this. Anything visual?”

  “Still nothing but white.”

  “Whoa.” Crossfield said as the weak IR trace bloomed into bright hot life. “What’s this?”

  Trill looked. “Flare? That’s got to be them …”

  “Note the position and radio it back to base. Have them send it in to the brass running this op.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Too damned bad we can’t set down and pick them up.”

  Crossfield looked over at the panel and saw the fuel levels dipping. “We’re going to have to get back and get some gas anyway.”

  “Message is out, skipper.”

  “Take us back. Maybe by the time we refuel and get back here the damned storm will be clearing.”

  * * *

  “I hear it.” Mcdonne scanned the clouds with the binoculars but the lenses kept fogging up. The storm was getting worse, if that were possible.

  “I do, too,” Kane said. “Hard to tell what direction he is, though. Shoot another flare.”

  Mcdonne shot the flare gun. The flare immediately disappeared into the vapor of the swirling snow and clouds.

  Both men listened. Kane shook his head.

  “I don’t hear it anymore.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “But we both heard it, right?”

  “Yes, Captain. It was definitely aircraft engines.”

  “And now they’re gone.”

  FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

  “The SAR people found something. A solid radar return and a heat bloom, several heat blooms. Like they shot a flare. The latitude matched the last transmission of the Phoenix.”

  Rummel read off the message to Donchez. Donchez had bags under his eyes, his cheeks hollow. He looked embalmed.

  “What are they waiting for? Did they go in?”

  “Afraid not. Admiral. Winds are still too high and they were out of fuel. But at least they found something.”

  “Yeah, corpses.”

  * * *

  It took most of the afternoon to return to Kangamiu, fuel up and wait for the wind to ease enough just to be able to take off again. The airstrip’s runway was covered with almost a foot of snow, drifts forming in the wake of buildings. It had taken all of Crossfield’s skill just to find the runway to set down the V-22. Even as he landed the wind velocity exceeded the limits for a safe landing, but there had been no choice, the tanks were empty. It was land or crash. This time he’d been lucky, but he wouldn’t try to take off with a full load of fuel with the high windspeed at zero visibility.

  It had been a ninety-minute wait on the ground before the wind slowed. Crossfield had no idea how long it would last, but he didn’t wait to see. Trill spooled up the rotors and lifted off, immediately transitioning to horizontal flight. By the time the V-22 was over the location of the original detection, it had been almost six hours since they had departed.

  Night had closed in quickly, the only thing worse than the white of the blizzard the blackness of the snow-filled night.

  Crossfield searched again for the infrared signature of the Phoe
nix.

  Nothing.

  Trill called wearily from the copilot seat. “Weather radar and the weather report from base agree for once. The storm cell is passing through. Should be over in the next half-hour.”

  “Great,” Crossfield said. “Tell that to the poor bastards down there.”

  * * *

  It was Mcdonne’s turn to go topside. Kane had kept someone on deck ever since they had heard the aircraft engines.

  The watch was shifted every thirty minutes, rotating between the dozen men still able to go topside. Even with Mcdonne’s added bulk, the wind seemed to blast right through his parka, his sweatshirt, his two sweaters and into his flesh, right down to the marrow of his bones.

  The flares had run out hours before. They now had brought papers and mattresses and lighter fluid and anything that would burn, making a fire in the cubbyhole aft in the sail where a lookout would normally be stationed. That way the fire was protected from the blasting wind, but then the heat of it was lost to the men topside. Worse, the flames and heat would be detected only if the aircraft was directly overhead. But all attempts at starting fires on the deck had proved futile. The wind ate the flames or blew the material overboard. Mcdonne crouched in the sail, feeding paper to the flames, the pages of the reactor-plant manual burning slowly.

  It was all stupid, he thought. They were just waiting to die. For an instant he felt an impulse to leap overboard and just get it the hell over with. It could take the sea only two or three minutes to lower his body temperature enough to take away consciousness. After that, who cared?

  There was something wrong, he suddenly thought. Something was different. It took him a long time to realize it, his thinking impaired by the cold.

  The different thing was the wind.

  There was no wind.

  The storm had finally passed.

  And then something else changed. Mcdonne shut his eyes, trying to listen, his eardrums still ringing from the previous gale-force winds. But he was sure he heard it. Even though he realized he wanted to hear it enough to make himself hear it.