Phoenix Sub Zero

Admiral Traeps left through the house to the front, where Donchez’s staff car waited. Steinman reread the message. He looked up at Donchez, the moon reflecting off the teardrop-shaped lenses of his glasses.

“Did you note that line about telling the truth?” Steinman looked out over the lake, swallowing hard.

“I agree with Rocket Ron. If we lost Augusta, I want to tell the families immediately.”

“How are we gonna do that, sir, let the world know a third-world sub put one of our best on the bottom?”

“I’m hoping your Phoenix can take care of the Destiny.”

“At least Sugar Kane knows more than Rocket Ron did about this guy’s tactics.”

“Kane?”

“David Kane, captain of the Phoenix. Crew calls him Sugar, a title I regret to say I thought up. Kane was a junior officer of mine back on the Archerfish.”

“Small world,” Donchez said. He’d never heard of David Kane. “Your man Kane. Is he good?” “He knows his stuff,” Steinman said cautiously, knowing Kane wasn’t Donchez’s blood-and-guts kind of sailor. Kane was a politician, ever tuned to his own advancement — he’d always looked like he belonged on Wall Street wearing a $2,000 business suit rather than oily-smelling khakis on a nuclear submarine. But his squadron commanders and crew seemed to love him. Kane was a crowd-pleaser, adept at saying what his bosses and juniors wanted to hear. He was a new generation of captain, and Steinman wisely kept that to himself, knowing a single misinterpreted remark to the C.N.O could torpedo a career. Besides, Kane was good, he was just good in a self-serving kind of way.

Traeps and Rummel returned by the stairs to the patio from the lawn by the lake. They were covered with snow.

“You’d better check this out. Admiral.”

Donchez held the faxed message Rummel handed him up to the porch light and read. It was from the Phoenix. The meat of the message dashed his hopes.

SONAR DETECTED MULTIPLE DISTANT EXPLOSIONS ALONG BEARING LINE TO STRAIT OP SICILY. SUBSEQUENT TRANSIENTS BELIEVED TO BE HULL BREAKUP. USS PHOENIX REMAINS ON STATION EAST OF GIBRALTAR WITH NO FURTHER DETECTS.

Donchez held out the message to Steinman.

“Let’s get Barczynski,” he said. “We’ll have to come up with a story on this. I don’t want this UIF thing brought out, not till we kill him. Roy, I guess lost-sub cover stories are your responsibility. Sorry.”

“I know, sir. We’ll have a statement ready for the morning. We’d better get going on the notifications. I guess I’d best visit Daminski’s wife myself.”

“I’ll do that, Roy,” Donchez said. “He’ was one of my boys from the Dace. Maybe you could see to his XO and wardroom.”

Steinman nodded, trudging back into the house.

Donchez walked around to the front, where his staff car was parked, following the path made by Traeps and Rummel. The car’s engine was idling, the big black Lincoln bristling with antennae. The front door of Clough’s house opened and Barczynski came out, his overcoat thrown over his shoulders. After asking Donchez what was up, the look in Donchez’s eyes telling him the matter was grave, he read the messages, Daminski’s and Kane’s.

“General, we’ve got this message going out to the second sub in the western Med. He knows how the enemy fight their ship and he’ll be ready.

Sihoud and the Destiny will be on the bottom—”

“Dick, I’d like to believe that. But I heard the skipper of Augusta was a damn good man. An expert at getting top performance out of a crew.”

“He was one of the best,” Donchez said, thinking he ought to be, I trained him myself. “His professionalism shows in his last message, sir. He knew he was a dead man but he took the time to tell us how to beat the Destiny.”

Donchez looked hard at Barczynski. “I want to declassify that Augusta sank. General. Tonight. We couldn’t keep a lid on it too long anyway, she’s due back in a couple weeks.

It’ll give us a black eye if we let the next of kin celebrate New Year’s and wait on the pier and we tell them then she’s been gone since December. We sat on sinking news back when Stingray went down in ‘73 and the press and the families beat the hell out of us. And rightly so.”

“Dick, we can’t be saying anything about the Destiny sub—”

“We won’t. Steinman’s working on a story now. Augusta sank because of a faulty torpedo or a flooded main seawater system or any of a thousand things that can sink a submarine.

It’s known to be a dangerous business. We’ve lost three nukes in the past, sir, we’ve done this before, I’m sorry to say.”

“I don’t want any salvage divers coming up next week saying we lied.”

“We won’t say where she sank. Besides, she’s down in 900 feet of water. It’ll take a while. By the time any salvage vultures are down there, we’ll have the Destiny on the bottom.

Then they can dive for Sihoud’s bones.” He had to believe that.

“Okay, Dick. Do it your way.”