Phoenix Sub Zero

Betts picked up the bench and carried it to the starboard weapon rack, to the free space where no weapons were stowed. He bent and brought a tool chest to the opposite side of the corner of the rack, kneeled on his box, brought his huge arm down on the rack and stared at Daminski.

The deck had leveled off and was now rocking gently in the waves near the surface. Two decks above, the O.O.D would be on the periscope while the bigmouth radio antenna reached for the sky, picking up the radio traffic from the orbiting communications satellite. The GPS navigation system would be swallowing a data dump from the navigation satellite, pinpointing their location in the wide ocean to within a few yards.

Daminski kneeled down on the toolbox, his knee protesting from three operations to repair damaged cartilage. He put his elbow on the rack, his ham hand only two-thirds the size of Betts’s. The two men grasped hands, Daminski’s fingers so crooked that his middle finger had to be straight to allow him to clasp his other fingers around Betts’s hand.

“Giving me the finger, huh?” Betts asked, sounding serious.

“That’ll just piss me off and you’ll have a compound fracture.”

Daminski was grinning, his lips pulled back so far every tooth in his mouth showed, a war face he had cultivated since his days on the Dace. It did nothing for Betts, who two decades before had watched Rocket Ron practicing the face in the mirror.

“On three,” Betts said, his face already looking slightly red, his wrist tense, ready to cock when the contest began.

“One, two, three!”

The two arms jumped, the tendons and muscles straining.

Sweat broke out on Betts’s forehead. Daminski’s face muscles trembled. Two, then three men in the compartment silently gathered around.

Betts’s fist had cocked slightly inward, pulling Daminski’s hand in an unnatural twist. Daminski’s arm, however, had not given an inch, still ramrod straight, if anything allowing his hand to twist while still pushing for an angle. But the senior chief had over a hundred pounds on the captain. Both arms began to shake, slightly at first, then more pronounced.

Daminski’s hand began to travel backward toward the rack surface as Betts bore down on him. In one grunt Daminski recovered, almost all the way to the vertical. A shrill rip sounded in the room as Daminski’s poopysuit shoulder seam let go. Daminski grunted as his arm began to force the massive chief’s hand backward, perhaps an inch.

The phone from the control room whooped, making Betts jump slightly. Daminski sensed an opportunity but Betts took a breath, tensed his arm, pushing the smaller Damin ski’s back to the vertical, then farther. Daminski’s hand was slowly sliding down toward the rack.

One of the men in the room picked up the phone. “Captain, it’s for you, sir. Officer of the deck.”

“Tell him to wait.” Betts took advantage of the interruption and pushed Daminski’s hand farther down, now almost at a forty-five-degree angle, halfway down to the rack.

Daminski kept fighting, his breaths wheezing.

“Captain says to wait, sir,” the phone talker said. “Yes sir, wait one.” Then to Daminski, “Captain, O.O.D says there’s a flash radio message for you, personal for the captain. He says he needs you in control. Now, sir.”

Daminski looked up at Betts, who was smiling.

“I’d better go. Chief.”

Betts’s hand kept pushing on Daminski’s, but the effort to get the captain down had cost him. Daminski’s hand was fighting its way back up.

“Yeah, you’d better get up there,” Betts said, taking a gasping breath between each word.

By then Daminski’s fist was almost at the vertical again.

“On the count of three, let go.”

“Okay.” “One,” Daminski said, eyes closed, still struggling against Betts’s bulk. The ship’s deck took on an angle again as the submarine left the danger of the surface and returned to the arms of the deep, beneath the thermal layer, where only an extraordinarily lucky warship would be able to detect them.

“Two,” Daminski wheezed, his fist now cocking against Betts’s, driving the huge arm downward toward the rack.

Betts’s face was red, his eyes clamped shut, his teeth biting into his lip. Daminski’s arm began to move Betts’s down.

Betts began to give out a groaning sound. Daminski took one final breath and forced his arm toward the rack. Betts’s hand shook. After a final moment, Betts let go and Daminski drove the huge fist down to the rack. Betts slipped off the bench box, holding his arm and gasping.

Daminski stood. “Three. You okay, Terry?” “Screw you,” Betts said from the deck as four torpedomen tried to pull him upright. “Sir.”

Daminski laughed, fingered the rip in his uniform and headed for the stairs to the middle level.

“Next time for sure, right. Senior?”

Betts got to his feet and stared at Daminski. “You won’t survive the next time. Skipper.”