Phoenix Sub Zero

The lower hatch, stowed in the overhead, rotated into position below the upper hatch, engaged its own dogs, and rotated into place. The ship was now rigged for submergence.

Sharef stepped through the doorway into the control room and blinked in its dim light, looking for Tawkidi.

“Deck, are you ready to submerge?”

“Yes sir.”

“Take the ship down to 100 meters, heading east at dead-slow. Continue the heading for ten minutes, then do a computer self-delouse. I want a report on the status of the delouse.”

“Yes sir. Ship control, dead slow ahead, ship’s depth 100 meters.”

“Where are the survivors?”

“Your stateroom, sir. Captain al-Kunis is with them.”

“Any idea who they were?”

Tawkidi took a deep breath.

“You won’t believe it. Commodore. I think you’d better see for yourself.”

Sharef hurried out of the control room, down a narrow passageway between the computer space to starboard and the radio room to port to the door to his stateroom. He opened the door and found himself looking into the face of the Sword of Islam, Gen. Mohammed al-Sihoud. A part of Sharef’s mind realized he should be snapping to attention, but he simply stood there, looking from Sihoud to his first officer al-Kunis, to the second survivor. Rakish Ahmed.

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN

USS AUGUSTA

The door opened slowly, the hinges groaning as it came open. The light from the passageway was bright enough to make the eyes ache even under sleep-swollen lids.

“Captain, sir? Noon meal is being served, sir. The officer of the deck thought you might want to go down to the wardroom.”

Commander Ron Daminski tossed aside the sweaty sheet and sat up in his narrow rack. The room seemed to swim around him. The chronometer showed it to be 1125 hours Greenwich mean time. As he ran his blunt fingers through his hair he tried to remember when he’d fallen asleep. Ten hours before. He should have felt refreshed, recharged, but instead felt heavy and tired and old. He squinted up at the mess cook.

“Tell the officers to go ahead without me.” Daminski knew he was breaking with tradition, but somehow it seemed dishonest for him to be joking and talking with the officers at a meal and then reprimanding them for their inattention to duty a half-hour later. For his entire tour aboard, he had rarely eaten in the wardroom although protocol still demanded that he be invited, in case he changed his mind.

He knew inattendance at the meals was taken as a sign of aloofness, perhaps of arrogance, by the junior officers, but that was his style and he was unable and unwilling to change.

“Aye, sir. Would you like me to bring your meal up here for you?”

Daminski yawned, wondering if he looked as bad as he felt. What would Myra think of how he looked, he wondered.

God, Myra’s letter — where was it? He found it on the scrunched bedclothes and tucked it into the waistband of his gray boxers.

“Huh? Oh, no. I’m not hungry. Seaman March.” Just go away, he thought. Let an old man wake up.

The door shut slowly. Daminski stood, his knees popping.

At the thought that a shower would help him wake up, he tossed the boxers in the laundry bag and stepped into the cramped head between his stateroom and the XO’s. There was a small stall, a phone-booth-sized shower and a tiny sink. The whole affair was covered with sheet stainless steel except for the deck. Daminski walked into the shining shower and turned the water on full cold, convulsing as the spray hit him. He turned it back off and lathered up without water—there were no running water showers on Daminski’s ship, not when each drop had to be distilled from seawater and most of it made for the reactor and steam plants, not for hotel usage. Once soapy, he turned on the water again, mixing in the hot, and rinsed off, the force of the water a vigorous massage. He cut the water, now feeling cold in the steel vertical coffin. He wiped the walls down with a squeegee and toweled off.

In the mirror above the sink was the pale sun-deprived face of a man too far past his prime, the wrinkles now deep in his forehead, a forehead that gained more real estate each year as the hair vanished. His graying hair was too long, almost shaggy. He dried it and brushed it straight back. He considered growing his beard back; in the three weeks left in the patrol he could have a well-filled-in beard that would mask his chin’s growing jowls. He shook his head. Captains should be clean shaven, he’d always maintained. He dragged the razor across his face, brushed his teeth with the baking soda in the tube. Back in his stateroom he put on fresh boxers and T-shirt and a new poopysuit, a black coverall with American flag patches sewn on the shoulders, his name over the left pocket, an embroidered gold dolphin emblem above his name. Then his black Reeboks and he was ready for an other day at sea.