Phoenix Sub Zero

Barczynski walked up now, his collar unbuttoned, his hairy throat poking through, a Heineken dwarfed by his paw, a grin on his face. The two men chatted for several minutes.

Barczynski finished an old tank story before Fred Rummel caught Donchez’s eye from the end of the room, waving urgently.

Donchez excused himself and walked with Rummel to the lakeside patio. Rummel shut the French doors behind them, a light snow falling in the mid-evening and beginning to accumulate on the cleared stones of the patio. Rummel looked around, then pulled a crumpled piece of paper stamped top secret, with the code words Early Retirement under the TS stamp. Donchez initialed the sheet with Rummel’s pen, then read the last message from the Augusta.

DATE/TIME: TRANSMISSION LOG AT DETECTION OP UHF BUOY

FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH

FM USS AUGUSTA SSN-763

TO CTMCNAVFORCEMED

SUBJ CONTACT REPORT

SCI/TOP SECRET — EARLY RETIREMENT

//BT//

1. CONTACT REPORT NUMBER TWO FOLLOWS.

2. POSITION APPROXIMATE IN STRAIT OP SICILY AT DETECTED POSITION OF SLOT BUOY.

3. USS AUGUSTA ATTACKED DESTINY SUBMARINE WITH MULTIPLE MARK 50 SALVO. WEAPONS DID NOT DETONATE, WE SUSPECT, BECAUSE DESTINY HAD RELEASED A FULL-SPECTRUM DECOY THEN SHUT DOWN REACTOR AND STEAM PLANT TO HIDE WHILE WE SHOT AT DECOY.

4. DESTINY BATTERY CAPACITY LOW OR HE HAD DC ELECTRICAL PROBLEMS. REDETECTED DESTINY SNORKELING JUST PRIOR TO HIS LAUNCH OF APPROX FIVE LARGE BORE TORPEDOES. ALSO, DESTINY EMITS A 154 HZ DOUBLET.

5. CURRENTLY RUNNING PROM UIF TORPEDOES. WILL ATTEMPT COUNTERFIRE, BUT HAVE LOST CONTACT ON TARGET WHOSE LAST POSITION WAS IN OUR BAFFLES. PROBABILITY OF A HIT ON DESTINY SUB CONSIDERED LOW.

6. IF AUGUSTA SINKS, IN THE NAME OF OUR LOVE FOR OUR FAMILIES PLEASE TELL THEM AS MUCH OF THE TRUTH AS YOU CAN, AS SOON AS YOU CAN.

7. CDR. R. DAMINSKI SENDS.

//BT//

Donchez looked up at Rummel, his face pale.

“Who knows about this?”

“Message center crews, cincmed and sublant watch officers. They sent it on the SCI fax in your staff car. It’s only been seven minutes since it was first transmitted.”

Donchez read it again. “Get Traeps and Roy Steinman out here.”

Rummel returned with the admirals. By then Donchez had read the message from Daminski twice more. When the admirals arrived, Donchez handed the message over for them to read. Steinman, the slow-talking New Orleans submariner with the young face, spoke first.

“Daminski could be going down right now while we’re reading this. We need to find out what happened to him. Then we need to sink this SOB.”

“Phoenix is at Gibraltar,” Traeps said. “We could bring her up and ask if she heard anything.”

“Get a DSRV to Daminski’s last position,” Donchez ordered, wondering where the nearest deep submergence rescue vehicle was. “If Augusta went down, we might get someone out.”

Steinman shook his head while Rummel hurried back to the staff car. “I know you’re right, we’ve got to do that, sir, but if Daminski was on the wrong end of five Nagasaki torpedoes he didn’t stand a chance. We just completed an intel estimate we got from an insider at Toshiba. The Nagasaki can do seventy knots on a high-speed axial turbine and has a range of seventy-five nautical miles. It’s a big sucker, three feet in diameter and fifty feet long. Most of that is warhead.

If it’s launched against you … well, I recommend we copy this message to the Phoenix so she knows about this playing-possum tactic. She might have to get out of the way if this sucker is as good as Rocket Ron thinks.” Or, he added silently, like he thought.

“Let’s wait on the death certificate until we hear more, Roy,” Donchez said. “John, get on a secure line to your watch officer and have him call Phoenix up to periscope depth and get a report from her on anything she heard from the bearing to the Strait of Sicily. Go ahead and copy Phoenix on this message but have it marked personal for commanding officer.”