Phoenix Sub Zero

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Status of the weapons?” Sharef called to the deck officer.

  “Large-bore tubes two through six are equalized to sea pressure, bow cap doors open, Nagasaki torpedoes spinning up now,” Tawkidi reported, glancing at the weapons status display. “We’ll be ready to launch in less than one minute.”

  “Very good. Equalize and open bow cap doors to tube eleven and spin up the Dash Five.”

  “Tawkidi gave the orders to the officers seated at the weapon panels, then looked at Sharef. “You think we should use our only evasion device?”

  At that moment Ahmed and General Sihoud walked into the room.

  “Warm up the Dash Five evasion unit,” Sharef said, looking at the visitors. “We need it.”

  USS augusta Daminski concentrated on bearing one one zero, the selected spherical array broadband beam. The sounds of white noise were piped into his earphones, the sounds of the ocean a slushy mix of rushing sounds from the waves, distant schools of dolphins, hissing from shrimp, the rumble of ocean floor and perhaps Daminski’s inner ear itself, the noise from the sea much like the inside of a conch shell held to the skull. He was about to rip the earphones off for a few moments when his shoulder was tapped.

  The radioman of the watch stood behind Daminski’s high-backed seat holding a clipboard. “Your draft contact message, Captain. O.O.D said you wanted to load a message into a slot buoy.” slot was shorthand for submarine-launched one-way transmitter, a baseball-bat-sized buoy that could be put out of a signal ejector, float to the surface and transmit a UHF message to the satellite without requiring the sub to come up to

  periscope depth.

  Daminski knew this was cheating but so be it. He had been ordered to send a detailed contact report when he detected the Destiny. Before the encounter the Pentagon wanted to know that Destiny’s location had been pinpointed and reported so that if anything went wrong, they would know where to send the next unit to sink the UIF submarine.

  Orders to transmit were an incredible burden on a submarine trying to sneak up on an adversarial contact. Transmitting a contact report meant going up to periscope depth in the middle of a shipping lane, putting up the bigmouth antenna, and transmitting a message that might take five minutes to write, confirming the position of contact and all the other bullshit data the sidelines officers wanted: signal-to-noise ratio, first detected frequency, target bearing and range, target course and speed, on and on. The ship would take needless minutes and make unnecessary noise ascending to periscope depth, transmitting, and descending again before the attack could be started.

  But then, orders were orders, which was why Daminski had decided to cheat, writing a contact report in advance, anticipating contact and preloading the message in a slot buoy that he could launch from test depth with no more interruption of the attack business than the push of a button, then get on with sinking the UIF submarine. After all, the only thing the topside sailors really needed was the information that

  Augusta had contact at the approximate position and that the attack was underway. Anything else they could find out when it was over.

  Daminski scratched a few lines on the clipboard:

  DATE/TIME: TRANSMISSION LOG AT DETECTION OF UHF BUOY FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH PLASH FLASH FM USS AUGUSTA SSN-763 TO CINCNAVFORCEMED SUBJ CONTACT REPORT SCI/TOP SECRET–-EARLY RETIREMENT //BT// 1. CONTACT REPORT FOLLOWS. 2. POSITION APPROXIMATE IN STRAIT OF SICILY LATITUDE NOVEMBER THREE SEVEN DEGREES ONE THREE MINUTES LONGITUDE ECHO ONE ONE DEGREES TWO ONE MINUTES, MODIFIED BY POSITION OF UHF BUOY.

  3. COMMENCING ATTACK. 4. FURTHER DETAILS TO FOLLOW. //BT//

  Daminski reread the message. He especially liked “commencing attack.”

  “Show it to the officer of the deck, then code it into the slot buoy. I want that buoy loaded in the signal ejector in five minutes.”

  “Aye, sir.” The radioman took the clipboard and vanished.

  Daminski strapped his earphones back on and turned to the console. He was interrupted again, this time by Chief Hillsworth.

  “Captain, I think you’d better check this,” he said, punching keys on

  Daminski’s touch pad. The lower waterfall display of the broadband spectrum blinked out, replaced by several graphs of sound intensity against frequency. The graph with 154 hertz in the center looked like a child’s sketch of twin peaks.

  “A doublet,” Daminski said, “right where the old SPL said it would be, minus one cycle. Good thing we opened the gates, right. Chief?”

  “We’d have found it anyway, Cap’n.”

  As the men watched, the twin hills on the graph grew in height, the hills becoming mountains, then columns, then spikes. No fish or natural phenomena made frequencies that pure. The tonals were manmade. It was a machine. A submarine.

  “Nice nipple erections on that freak bucket, eh. Chief?”

  Daminski asked, not averse to bugging the proper Hillsworth. “Can I make the report?” Hillsworth nodded. Daminski pulled the boom microphone to his mouth.

  “Conn, Sonar. New narrowband contact, designate Sierra Four, showing a double frequency at one five four hertz, approximate bearing one three zero. Contact is a submerged warship.”

  “Sonar, Conn, aye. Captain to control.”

  “On the way,” Daminski replied to his boom mike.

  “Meanwhile designate Sierra Four as Target One. Launch the contact message radio buoy and man silent battle stations, spin up all four Mark 50s and open two torpedo tube outer doors.”

  “Captain, Conn, aye.”

  Daminski handed Hillsworth the earphones, stood up and clapped the chief on the shoulder, then left the sonar room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  Friday, 27 December strait OF sicily The baseball-bat-sized slot buoy rested inside a tight tube on the flank of the forward part of the ship. It had not waited long when the tube’s insides filled with seawater, the pressure increasing until it matched the outside sea pressure of the Mediterranean. A few seconds later the muzzle door opened; there was no more light in the tube than there had been before. Another moment, and the lower end of the tube pressurized with flowing seawater at a higher pressure than the seawater outside. The slot buoy was launched from the tube, the force of the ejection and its own buoyancy carrying it to the surface over 500 feet above. For several minutes the buoy rose in the dark seawater, the pressure around it easing as it drifted upward. The

  buoy breached the surface, the upper few inches of the unit drying out in the sea air, open-circuiting a sensor that eventually caused a whip antenna to flip up into the moonlit sky. The transmitter inside began sending Daminski’s contact message to the UHF communications satellite above, repeating the message over and over until an hour later the battery was exhausted and the buoy shut down, flooded, and sank back into the depths of the sea.

  High overhead, in a geosynchronous orbit, the Navy’s Commstar communications satellite received the message the first time it was transmitted, logged in the time, and seeing the message priority as flash, interrupted its other tasks and retransmitted the message to the commsat in orbit in mid-Atlantic, which then relayed the message to the U.S. Navy communications facility deep inside the Pentagon. There in the special compartmented communications center, an annunciator alarm went off on a computer console, alerting the watchstander of the flash message. Immediately after the message printed out the senior chief radioman made a call on a top-secret cleared phone to the office of the commander in chief of naval forces Mediterranean, Admiral John Traeps. Traeps’s aide, a lieutenant commander, ordered the message taken to Flag Plot, where Traeps was conferring with the C.N.O. The printout was hand-carried to Admiral Traeps and Admiral Richard Donchez in Flag Plot. Traeps read it, initialed it, passed it to Donchez, who commanded the position be plotted on the electronic wall chart. Within thirty seconds a flashing blue dot appeared on the chart’s Strait of Sicily, the dot

  labeled uss augusta ssn—763 submerged operations; beside it a flashing orange dot’s label announ
ced uif destiny unit one.

  Traeps had called a radioman over to take a message.

  Traeps handed him the message from the Augusta, with orders to copy the message to the VSST. fhoenix, now on station guarding Gibraltar and the entrance to the Atlantic, to the Reagan’s ASW Viking jets, and to the Sigonella Orion ASW patrol turboprops.

  Donchez looked up at the chart and nodded. Within the hour he should be calling Barczynski to tell him the good news.

  USS augusta In the control room, officer of the deck Mark Berghoffer looked expectantly at Daminski, who had just shouldered his way into control from the door to sonar. Daminski began giving orders faster than they could be acknowledged.

  “Off’sa’deck, I have the conn. Helm, all ahead one third, turn for five knots, left ten degrees rudder, steady course two four zero. Dive, make your depth 1,000 feet. Give me tube status, off’sa’deck …”

  The deck inclined downward as the helmsman pushed the control yoke for the stern planes to the full-dive position. As the deck leveled off, the room began to fill with men, all four consoles of the attack center

  manning up with officers on headsets, phone talkers backing up the ship-control station, plotters working manual plot tables to back up the computers, executive officer Danny Kristman arriving as firecontrol coordinator, Tim Turner taking over as battle stations officer of the deck, Kevin Skinnard manning the attack center’s Position Two, Jamie Fernandez beside him at Pos One, the weapons officer Ron Hackle at the firing panel.

  Daminski checked his watch—battle stations had been fully manned within two minutes of his arrival at the conn. Not bad.

  As the watchstanders settled in, information began its flow to put a torpedo on the contact. Three minutes after Daminski’s maneuver to the west, Skinnard dialed in a trial range and speed of the target. His estimate of target course was good, assuming the Destiny was heading through the strait going outbound, making it going northwest.

  “XO,” Skinnard called on his boom mike to Kristman, the battle stations firecontrol coordinator, “I have a curve and a fair solution based on narrowband TMA. Range 43,000 yards, target speed eighteen knots.”

  Kristman appeared over Skinnard’s shoulder and looked at the dot stack, then turned to Daminski.

  “Captain, based on narrowband TMA, we have a firing solution.”

  “Sonar, Captain,” Daminski called, “any broadband detects yet?”

  “Conn, Sonar, no,” Hillsworth replied.

  Daminski turned to Kristman. “I hate to shoot on a narrowband solution.”

  “I recommend we shoot a horizontal salvo now, sir. We don’t know what this guy’s detection threshold is. He could counterdetect any second.”

  “Yeah, but if we shoot early and he hears the fish or the launch transient, he’ll turn tail and run and we miss our chance. For Early Retirement.”

  “If we don’t shoot and he gets off a shot first, we’ll be the ones running.”

  Daminski glanced across at the Pos One geographic plot, made a decision. “Attention in the firecontrol team,” he said, his football-huddle voice grabbing the attention of every watchstander in the room. “We have a narrowband solution to Target One and I’m putting out a horizontal salvo of Mark 50s down the strait. The range is distant, so to conserve weapon-fuel usage we’ll use a slow transit speed with a shallow depth run to enable. That will also keep the torpedoes quiet as they do their run. Everybody got that? Be ready for a counterfire if this guy sees us

  first. Carry on.”

  Daminski turned to Kristman again. “Torpedo presets, XO— offset the torpedoes by one degree, run to enable 25,000 yards, low-to-medium active snake. Give me a readback.”

  Daminski watched the firing panel until the torpedoes were programmed, then took a last look at Skinnard’s dot stack. The solution was tracking. It was time to shoot.

  “Attention in the firecontrol team. Firing point procedures, tubes one and two. Target One, horizontal salvo, one degree offset, one minute firing interval.”

  “Ship ready,” officer of the deck Tim Turner reported.

  “Weapons ready,” firing panel operator Ron Hackle called.

  “Solution ready,” Skinnard said from Pos Two.

  Daminski looked around one last time. In another five seconds he would have ordnance in the water aimed at an other submarine. This wasn’t an exercise, this was the real thing. Daminski called out the start of the launching litany.

  “Tube one, shoot on generated bearing.”

  “Set.” Skinnard on Pos Two, sending the firecontrol computer’s estimate of the target position, course and speed into the torpedo.

  “Standby.” Hackle on the firing panel, rotating the trigger to nine o’clock.

  “Shoot!” Daminski from the conn.

  “Fire.” Hackle, taking the trigger to the three-o’clock position marked fire.

  The air in the room seemed to detonate in a reverberating blast, smashing Daminski’s ears as the high-pressure air from the piston ram vented inboard, the air sent to pressurize the water tanks surrounding the torpedo tube, which then flushed the torpedo out of the tube. The watchstanders yawned in unison, clearing their ear passages from the pressure pulse.

  “Conn, Sonar,” Hillsworth’s British accent declared on the firecontrol phone circuit, “own-ship’s unit, normal launch.”

  “Firing panel lined up for tube two, sir,” Hackle reported.

  “Tube two, shoot on generated bearing,” Daminski repeated.

  “Set.”

  “Standby.”

  “Shoot!”

  “Fire!”

  The deck jumped beneath Daminski’s feet and his ears slammed again.

  “Conn, Sonar, second-fired unit, normal launch.”

  “Weps, cut the wires on units one and two and shut the outer doors.”

  “Aye, sir, wires cut on one and two … outer doors shut on one and two.”

  “Open muzzle doors tubes three and four,” Daminski said impatiently, cursing that it was taking so long to get out the salvo, but the tube banks could line up only one tube from each side at a time.

  “Three and four open, presets loaded, ready for launch.”

  “Firing point procedures, tubes three and four. Target One,” from Daminski.

  “Ship ready.”

  “Weapons ready.”

  “Solution ready.”

  “Shoot on generated—”

  Hillsworth’s worried voice cut through Daminski’s order: “Conn, Sonar, loss of Target One!”

  “Sonar, Captain, say again.”

  “Sir, we’ve lost Target One. He’s vanished.”

  CNFS hegira Ahmed walked slowly into the control room, glancing uneasily at Sihoud as he noticed how crowded the room was, almost the entire crew seated at the consoles or standing over the seated men. As crowded as the room was, it was eerily quiet, the only sounds a slight high-pitched whine from the three dozen computer consoles in the room. Something was definitely wrong. Ahmed’s voice was hushed as he addressed Sharef.

  “Commodore, what—”

  Sharef impatiently waved Ahmed to silence while bending over a video display. Ahmed studied it, unable to make out anything useful in spite of being trained in the latest fighter cockpit computer weapons systems.

  One of the ship’s more senior officers, a commander with tawkidi written on his breast pocket, appeared next to Ahmed, as if it were his duty to brief Sihoud and Ahmed. He spoke in a hushed tone, “We’ve detected a hostile coalition submarine in the narrows up ahead. Probably an American Los Angeles-class.

  He’s blocking our exit. He probably does not know we are here.” Sihoud said nothing, just stood frowning at the computer screens and the officers’ backs. Ahmed tried to find the general’s eyes but Sihoud didn’t acknowledge him.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We aren’t close enough yet. In a few minutes, when we are closer, we’ll be launching a Nagasaki torpedo salvo at the coalition sub.”


  Ahmed frowned. “Why can’t we fire the torpedo now?”

  “We can, but the captain does not wish to give away our position by

  firing—torpedoes are noisy. If we launch from too great a distance, the target may hear and turn to run. A torpedo in a tail chase sometimes catches up, but sometimes it runs out of fuel before it can go into attack mode, and the sub escapes.”

  “Then chase him and fire again.” “We might not detect him again,” Tawkidi said.

  “Why not? You have this time,” Ahmed said, his voice rising.

  Sharef turned and glared at him. Ahmed felt his face flush.

  “The sea does funny things with sound,” Tawkidi said.

  “Detecting him now may be easy, but detecting him six hours from now may be impossible when the sun heats the water near the surface and changes the temperature profile and makes the biologies become active.” Ahmed shook his head. It was like being told his aircraft radar only worked on good days. “… torpedo launch transient …” an officer at one of the panels said quietly to Sharef, his earphone removed from one ear. “Incoming torpedo from the target, sir.”

  Sharef picked up a set of headphones and listened while staring at another display panel, the patterns on it different but still meaningless to Ahmed.

  “Prepare to insert a computer delouse,” Sharef commanded.

  “Select the Dash Five in tube eleven. Ship control, engine stop.”

  “Ready, sir.”

  “Engine stopped.”

  “Insert the delouse!” Sharef ordered.

  “Shutting down now,” the mechanical officer called to Sharef from the aft starboard corner of the room. “Reactor is -shut down. Battery life is thirty percent.”

  The ventilation fans spun to a halt in the room and the heat of the computers and men immediately caused the temperature to soar. Sweat broke out on Ahmed’s forehead, a drop forming on the end of his nose, his armpits wet.