Phoenix Sub Zero

Donchez yawned, sat up and took the message board.

“How about a cup of coffee? You got anything brewed fresh? Like this

week?”

“Coming up. Admiral.”

Donchez read the message, another one from the Seawolf.

As he read it, he felt like he’d been punched in the gut. The air whistled out of him.

He read the terse message again, then again. Until its words blurred across the page, the pain of them burning into him.

DATE/TIME: TIME OF RECEIPT OF SLOT MESSAGE

FROM: USS SEAWOLF SSN-21

TO: C.N.O WASHINGTON, DC // CINCLANT NORFOLK, VA // COMSUBLANT NORFOLK, VA

SUBJ: CONTACT REPORT NO. 3

//BT//

1. DESTINY IS WINNING.

2. COMMENCING ATTACK WITH VORTEX MISSILE BATTERY.

//BT//

LABRADOR SEA, NORTHWEST OF GODTHAAB, GREENLAND

USS PHOENIX

Kane felt the arctic cold pouring into his bones. His breath formed vapor clouds in front of his face, the eerie fog making the room look haunted in the glaring bright spots and dark shadows of the battle lanterns.

“Hard to believe,” he said. “At least up forward it seems we had less damage from the Nagasaki than from the grounding.”

“That’s not true,” Mcdonne said. “Look at the ship. We’re blown to hell. No reactor, no communications with the engineroom, under the ice cover …”

“But the impact didn’t kill anybody. Anybody new …”

“The g-loading must have been less. We were pinned up against the ice and it hit us from below. Not much room for the hull to shake. But it gutted us. We’d have been better off if we’d been killed by the explosion.”

“I don’t think so, XO,” Houser said. “We still have a battery. With luck we can run the emergency propulsion motor and move us out of here.”

“You’re dreaming, Houser. With nobody aft, how are we gonna run the EPM?”

“We don’t know they’re dead aft. All we have is that there’s no one answering the phone. Maybe the phone lines are blown away where they went through the RC.”

“Sure, but what about the DC cables from the battery? If the phone lines are blown away how will battery power get to our guys aft?”

“The DC cables are as big around as your arm, XO. They’d stand a hell of a lot better chance than the phone lines.”

“Maybe. So what do we do? With no communications, with us trapped up here, them trapped aft, and all of us trapped under the ice, how are we going to get out of this?” “Schramford,” Kane said. “Schramford’s the engineer, but he’s finished his command quals. Which means he’ll be thinking the same things we are. He’ll run the EPM without orders and try to get us out of here. He’ll take local control of the rudder and stern planes and try to drive us out.”

“Sure, Captain. But he’ll need depth control to do it. He’s not going anywhere without us flooding a depth-control tank to take some of the buoyancy off.” “Okay,” Kane said. “We’ll get ready to flood a DCT manually, or we can rig up the ballast-control panel so it’ll work.”

“How will he know where to go?” Mcdonne said. “He’s got no compass back there.”

“We’ll tell him,” Kane said. “We may not have a phone but we’ve got something just as good.”

“What, sir? Tomato-soup cans and string? If we were surfaced we could just walk outside the hull and bang on his hatch and set up the soup cans, but we’ve got a hundred-foot-thick ice raft between us and the surface.”

“You forgot the underwater telephone, XO.”

Mcdonne looked stunned. The UWT system was an active sonar hydrophone that broadcast the human voice instead of pings or pulses. “You think the UWT works?

Damn, maybe you’re right. Let’s power it up and see what we can — hey, wait, we don’t have AC power. It won’t work on DC.” “Yes it will,” Sanderson said from behind them. “As soon as I make some changes in its wiring. All I’ve got to do is retie in the static inverter to the battery supply and hardwire and fuses. Well, there’s more to it, but in three or four hours we’ll have a UWT.”

“If we can stay warm that long,” Mcdonne said.

“Break out the parkas, Houser,” Kane ordered. “Grab all the sweaters, sweatshirts and long Johns you can find.”

“Yes sir,” Houser said, vanishing out the forward door after Sanderson.

“Let’s hope,” Mcdonne said, “that Engineer Schramford back aft is reading from the same script we are.”

A hundred feet aft, in the engineroom, Lt. Comdr. Tom Schramford lay facedown in a rapidly cooling pool of blood.

USS SEAWOLF

APT HULL SECTION

Pacino looked at Vaughn. Both had thrown up. The men still alive, some eighty of them, were gathered in the more open spaces of the top deck of the compartment, between the quiet turbine generators and the main engines.

“What is it, XO?” His voice sounded dead. His hearing was coming back, but too slowly.

“Atmosphere,” Vaughn said. “Must be contaminated.”

“Let’s try the emergency air masks.”