Phoenix Sub Zero

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, using 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.”

* * *