Phoenix Sub Zero

In the control room Daminski felt himself pinned beneath the plot table and what he guessed was the deck beneath the attack center. The pressure around him increased, squeezing on his chest until his lungs gave out, breath forced out of him, water filling his body. In a part of his mind that still functioned he remembered how deep the sea was beneath him, the memory of the last fathometer report from Turner-over 900 feet there at the mouth of the strait. He had time to wonder whether he’d still be alive when the hull hit the sea floor before that thought and all others slowly faded … The broken hull of the Augusta hit the rocky bottom of the Strait of Sicily at terminal velocity, seventy knots, going bow down. Two of her Mark 50 torpedoes detonated from the shock of the crash with the bottom. The impact split her into three pieces, the damage already done by the four torpedo detonations. For several minutes the reactor core spewed steam in protest against its loss of cooling, but soon the seawater brought the fuel temperature down, and the reactor merely put out hot water. The rush of bubbles from the hull took more than an hour to stop, the sea finally calm at the wreckage site, the water again quiet.

Nine hundred feet above, a slot radio buoy finished its last transmission, flooded and sank, coming to rest on the ocean floor a mile northwest of the wreckage.

* * *

Fifteen nautical miles to the northwest, aboard the UIF submarine Hegira, the report was received that the target had gone down. Several junior officers and Rakish Ahmed smiled until Commodore Sharef fixed them with a burning glare.

The two torpedoes launched from the target sub before it was hit had gone far off-course, eventually running out of fuel and sinking, and when they did, the last pieces of the Augusta came to rest on the ocean floor.

Chapter 13 Friday, 27 December

BURKE LAKE, VIRGINIA

Donchez pulled at his starched collar, cursing the bow tie of his dinner dress blue uniform, and asked the bartender for a Canadian on the rocks. Alone for the first time in the last half-hour, he took a moment to look at the house too grand — pretentious, perhaps — to be a mere house. General Clough called it his “lake cottage,” a reference to the fact that he owned at least four residences, his old money put to work for him tonight as he entertained the entire Joint Staff from the chief petty officers and

master sergeants all the way to General Barczynski himself. Clough stood in a far corner of the high-ceilinged living room, near one of the four couch arrangements, talking to two of Donchez’s admirals, John Traeps and the visitor Roy Steinman up from Norfolk, the commander of the Atlantic Fleet’s submarines.

There were times, Donchez had to admit, when Clough’s political skills were impressive; he might even have liked the man had the general not decided to attach his service’s survival on the decline of the Navy — or perhaps his war was declared not on the Navy but on Donchez himself, as the ring of admirals around Clough would suggest. In the end, it didn’t matter. All jobs, even chief of naval operations or chief of staff of the Air Force, were temporary.

Of course, even if he and Clough had a hot war between them instead of just broken diplomatic relations, Donchez would still be at the party, not out of obligation or ambition, not with any sort of duplicity or hypocrisy, but because of the odd military multiple-personality each of them had.

Many times the military had reminded Donchez of an old cartoon that began with a sheepdog and coyote punching in a time clock, exchanging pleasantries until the work began, then each going through a day of murderous conflict, the coyote attacking the dog to get the sheep, the sheepdog defending, and after a dozen explosions of TNT and mishaps with crossbows and boulders on pulleys, the end-of-shift whistle blew, the combatants punching out the time clock, each hoping the other had a nice evening and planning their bowling outing. So many times in Donchez’s career that had applied, his old executive officer on the Thresher literally shouting in his face at 1600, only to invite him for a beer at the club at 1730. The odd schizophrenia had repeated itself in his own leadership, when he had been XO of Dace and had to get the attention of one of the talented but inexperienced junior officers, finally raising his voice in a younger man’s face — as he frequently had to Ronny Daminski — then continuing the man’s training after-hours in the officers’ club, laughing about the incident over a beer, and then beginning the same routine the next day when Daminski had messed up again. Even now, he and Clough and Barczynski could have their differences, even acidic conflicts, and still check their jobs at the door. They were, after all, in the same game, brethren of the same system, at the moment united against the Muslims on the other side of the globe and against all other enemies.