Phoenix Sub Zero

But he knew what they were doing. They were going to try to force him and Sihoud down to see who they were, perhaps take them into captivity. It had to be, he saw the overwhelming logic of it. He too would have made such a decision if he had been the American commander. And there would be no way to abandon the Firestar with the F-14s watching. He might make it to the water, but the Hegira would be seen.

So shoot them, he thought. We’re only fifteen minutes from the rendezvous point. A competing voice, a stronger and more rational one, spoke … there are more waiting behind these. Shoot these and five more will come, and ten more, until they have killed the Khalib or have him in chains. The survival of the Union was at stake. Ahmed bit his lip and waited. When the jets were within ten kilometers, he had made a decision.

The electronic-warfare pod. The untested Japanese unit that promised so much but held such great risk. Ahmed wasted no more time and energized the pod’s circuits and waited as the liquid helium refrigeration unit surrounding the superconducting energy storage coil cooled down to operating temperature. The computer reported the successful cool-down and asked to take command of the port jet engine. Ahmed acknowledged the computer request and allowed the machine to take one of the Firestar’s engines off-line, the starboard jet throttling up to compensate. The port jet came up to full power, its turbine no longer providing the jet with thrust but spinning an auxiliary power turbine designed only to supply power to the energy-storage coil of the electronic-warfare pod.

It would take several minutes to charge the pod, agonizing minutes for Ahmed, who still wanted to fire the missiles at the incoming enemies.

If the EW pod worked, the F-14s would be destroyed, their old-fashioned semiconductor chips melted into useless butter. Unfortunately, the unit might also destroy the Firestar, which would then fall into the sea a hundred kilo meters short of the rendezvous point, and the Khalib would die or be taken prisoner.

The port engine roared at full throttle, all its tremendous power channeled into the EW pod’s energy coil, the voltage building up to unprecedented levels. Ahmed waited, knowing the unit might not wait for his command but might unleash its energy in an unrestrained explosion, the voltage ripping out from a coil leak and blowing the Firestar apart.

The rendezvous point was now five minutes away, short in timespan when still above the sound barrier, but more than 100 kilometers over the horizon, a very long swim. And now the American F-14s drew up on the Firestar’s wingtips as dawn broke over the eastern Mediterranean.

Chapter 4 Thursday, 26 December

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN

Commodore Sharef pressed his eye to the eyepiece of the periscope as the Hegira ascended toward the surface from her cruising depth of 300 meters. As the cold rubber shroud of the eyepiece contacted the skin of his eye, the surrounding control room vanished, replaced with blackness, not a coal blackness but a light twilight darkness, just a shade brighter than midnight, just light enough to see that Sharef thought he could see the crosshairs of the periscope reticle against the dark view. His deep-cushioned lumbar-supported periscope control seat tilted back as the deck of the ship angled upward, climbing toward the danger of the surface. He rotated his periscope view directly upward, searching for the bottom of the waves.

“One hundred meters, Commodore. All hull arrays report surface contacts distant.” The deck officer. Commander Omar Tawkidi, reported from the sensor control area of the room, the aft starboard corner. That corner’s Second Captain video screens displayed the noises, directions, and frequencies detected on the large-area hull arrays — the raw data — as well as the Second Captain’s analyzed guesses about the meanings of the sounds and the relationships of the sound sources to the Hegira. There were at that moment ten surface ships being tracked by the hull array sonars, all of them distant, the closest farther than forty-four miles to the west.

High above, the water began to grow lighter. As it did, Sharef commanded the view to rotate downward so that he peered out at a forty-five-degree angle from the vertical and began rotating the periscope control seat with a silent servomotor.

Soon he could see the waves high above, the large silvery bottom flanks of them showing the calm weather above. As the waves moved closer Sharef rotated the periscope seat faster while turning his view flatter. There were no shadows from hulls not detected by the hull arrays.

Sharef’s view broke through the waves and cleared while the deck beneath him leveled out.

“Commodore, depth twenty-seven meters,” Tawkidi announced.

“Very good. Deck Officer.”