Phoenix Sub Zero

“Like sending a return back early so the weapon thinks he’s closer than he is.”

“It’s possible.”

“Take a hell of a computer and a sonar system to do that,” Daminski said. “And a damned quiet boat. Even then, it might work against one weapon, but against two? Or four?”

“What if we switched off the active on units three and four? That way they can’t get confused.”

“Do we have the signal-to-noise ratio we need to switch them to passive sonar mode?”

“Hillsworth’ll know.”

“Sonar, Captain, have we got enough SNR to switch units three and four to passive search mode?”

“Captain, Sonar, yes.”

“Do it.”

Hackle’s fingers flashed over the panel, stabbing variable function keys, changing the display to a new menu showing torpedo presets. In the menu he changed the search mode from active to passive, programming the second-fired units to search for the target by listening only rather than pinging active and listening for the return.

The men in the room were quiet, waiting for the second pair of torpedoes to enable, to begin their search for the target.

The wait took several minutes. Daminski stood behind Hackle and Kristman, wondering what the hell he’d do if the second units went into reattack.

* * *

Sharef had stared at his wristwatch on and off for the last ten minutes. Every time he did Ahmed watched him, waiting for the commander to do something. But nothing happened.

Sharef’s thoughts would have confused Ahmed. Sharef was thinking about the Persian rug in his stateroom, about its intentional imperfection. The imperfection that had been woven into it as a symbol of mankind’s humility before Allah, who was insulted by the thought of human perfection.

And to Sharef, the imperfection of the Hegira was her battery, a battery much too small to allow the ship to hide under the acoustic curtain of a delouse maneuver. But unlike the rug, the submarine’s imperfection would have consequences.

It might end up killing them all. Maybe that would please Allah, Sharef thought, a bitterness edging his thoughts. He looked at his watch and up to see Ahmed staring at him. He flashed the air force officer a humorless smile. Ahmed frowned.

The deck sloped ominously downward, the ship in a dive.

Sharef had ordered the man at the ship controls to let the ship dangle and not fix the angle unless it threatened to exceed seven degrees, but even a quarter degree was detectable to Ahmed, and one degree set off alarms in his mind that the ship was sinking. Five degrees felt like a ramp. With the deck at a five-degree dive, the forward end of the room was a half-meter lower than the aft end.

Finally Sharef moved behind the ship control consoles and spoke to the youngster in the left seat. The order made little sense to Ahmed: “Bubble one and three, bring it up at point five per second, start your flood at a hundred, maintain thirty to twenty-five meters.”

“Yes, sir. Bubbling one and three now.”

A muffled sound of rushing air could be heard for a few seconds.

“Quzwini, lay below to the auxiliary diesel panel and prepare to snort.”

The mechanical officer turned over the power plant consoles to a lieutenant and hurried out of the room. Ahmed searched the patches of dark and glare for Commander Tawkidi, finding him at the sensor console area leaning on one of the stations.

“Now what. Commander?”

“We’re coming up to periscope depth to restart the reactor.”

“Why don’t we do that deep?”

“Battery’s dead. We need electricity. Once we get near the surface we’ll put up the snort mast and let the diesel engine breathe. The diesel generator will give us enough current on the grid to restart the reactor plant.”

“Oh. But it will be loud, won’t it? Will the enemy hear us?”

“Yes. But that is the commodore’s decision.”

The deck leveled off, then began inclining the opposite direction, the aft end sinking. The boat drifted upward, the deck continuing its slow oscillations. Ahmed felt his frustration intensify at how ridiculous it was to have lost power and drift in the sea at the most critical moment, when they were under attack by an enemy submarine. If they survived this madness he intended to ask Sihoud to have Sharef fired.

Two decks below, in the aftmost bulkhead of the command module in the equipment room. Commander Ibn Quzwini took a seat at the auxiliary diesel console, his battle lantern lighting the dead gauges. His walkie-talkie radio on his belt squawked.

“Quzwini, raise the snort mast.”

Quzwini took the cover off a hydraulic control valve, careful to keep any leakage inside the cover from spilling on the deck. He grabbed the knob of the valve lever and pushed it up and to the right, then locked it into position. A hiss and a thunk sounded from the overhead as the high-pressure hydraulic oil forced the snort mast out of the fin and extended it high over the hull.