Phoenix Sub Zero

And I’m sorry I hollered at you. You did an excellent job and you should be proud of yourself.”

Daminski turned, his shoulders stooped, and walked into his stateroom.

Pacino didn’t know which bothered him more, the chewing out or the aftermath of contrition.

Not that it mattered now, he thought, looking at his wife’s eyes. She still waited for an answer.

“I don’t remember,” he said.

“But I still want to understand,” she continued. “You never liked him and now you’re full of grief. What do you know that I don’t know?”

“We all spent that whole tour on the Atlanta hating Daminski and bitching every second about what a hardass he was and how miserable he made our lives. But when he left it was all the crew could do to keep their eyes dry. At that change of command there was a real sense of loss. See, Daminski, somehow, made us bigger than we were. He challenged the man in every sailor and officer aboard. The best was never good enough for him. We used to say that heaven would regret the day he died, because he’d chew Saint Peter’s butt for the gates of heaven showing dust and improper maintenance. And now that he’s gone I look back and I see that he was a sort of second father to every man he ever commanded. A stern sonofabitch of a father, but underneath, he really cared.”

“Great,” she said. “So what’s the big rush for you?”

He was about to tell her when it suddenly seemed a bad idea. He shouldn’t have told Emmitt Stevens, except that Emmitt needed some real motivation. Janice had nothing she could do with the truth except worry.

“It’s nothing, Jan. Just more Navy bullshit. You were right the first time, a call from Uncle Dick. He can’t stand to see the Seawolf in the dock. And who am I to argue with him?

I was the one who told him I wanted to take her to sea one last time before I was relieved. This is probably his Christmas present to me. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Before she could question him he left the room, went out of the house to the beach and started walking in the surf, wondering what Rocket Ron really said to Saint Peter.

Chapter 15 Sunday, 29 December

STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR

Ahmed stood in the crowded control room. The screens, as before, were filled with cluttered patterns of light and color.

Four of them in the sensor area were devoted to what appeared to be graphs with curves tracing contours across horizontal axes, the curves forming mountains and valleys that wiggled slowly as he watched.

Commodore Sharef was hunched over the displays.

Sihoud was not in the room, preferring instead to stay in his stateroom and study the tactical maps of the North African Atlas Front. It was difficult for Sihoud to stay in the control room when the information presentations were indecipherable and the officers too busy to tell him what was going on.

As for Ahmed, he was suspended far below the surface in this iron lung driven by men he had no experience with, had no control over and had no reason to trust other than that they wore a uniform similar to his own. He felt a trickle of sweat fall down his forehead and into his eye. He turned away, wiping the stinging eye, and leaned over the computer-driven plotting table to look at the plot between the shoulders of two mid-grade and one junior officer. The plot showed the contour of the narrowing sea-lane between Spain and Morocco, depth shown by the shade of blue — darker in the center of the channel, lighter as it neared the shoreline — a pulsing red mark located a few kilometers east of the narrowest part of the strait.

“What’s the red mark?”

Commander Tawkidi answered, his eyes remaining on the plot.

“Another submarine. Los Angeles-class American, like the last one we encountered.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We?” And at that moment Commodore Sharef spoke, his voice loud.

“Commander, a moment please.”

Tawkidi held up a hand to Ahmed and walked to Sharef at the plotting table.

Sharef’s voice was low now. “The American is at the limit of our sensors. Navigator. I propose we shoot now, before he has a possibility of detecting us. The torpedo will come onto his sonar screens before he knows we are in the area and force him to run west into the strait. There’s a chance that a navigation error could cause him to wreck but he will certainly be hit.”

Tawkidi looked down at the sketchpad Sharef had been doing calculations on. “Sir, the hostile sub is over ninety kilometers distant. That is almost outside the range of the weapon. It can only cover 180 kilometers at search speed, 140 at attack velocity.”