Phoenix Sub Zero

“Emmitt, the weld will be done by dawn. As the last bead is in place I

want the dock flood valves opened. Seawolf will be at sea by sunrise.”

“You can’t do that! What about X-rays and repairs?”

“How good are the welders?”

“Come on. Patch, that’sHY-100. It doesn’t weld like mild steel. Even with the best welders on the coast we’ll have two dozen flaws, that’s if we’re lucky. The repairs will take half a day, the retests another half day and the paint job most of Wednesday—”

“Skip the X-rays and the repairs. There won’t be any paint job. We’ll go to sea green.”

“Mike, listen to me. You’re making a big mistake. I can’t guarantee a weld like that without tests. You could spring a leak the first time at test depth—a bad one—and we’d never hear from you again. And that’s not all—the weld could be fine for the first ten excursions to test depth, but the eleventh could be fatal. Or it could be fine in warm water, but diving into colder temperatures could make a flaw brittle-fracture.

It could go with no warning, no chance to emergency blow.

You’re risking your neck, your crew’s necks.”

In the drydock floodlights Pacino’s eyes focused on a sight far from the dock below.

“Wrap the welds and flood the dock. My crew will be ready to go by 5:00 a.m.” Stevens sighed. “You got it, Patch. Jesus, though, good luck.”

Pacino didn’t answer.

EASTERN ATLANTIC

CNFS HEGIRA

Commodore Sharef didn’t need to see the updated displays to know that the Hegira was about to take a torpedo hit. The torpedo that had been ahead of them to the west had started out too close. Its intercept speed, combined with the ship’s initial closing velocity, had caught them. The computer initially predicted impact at four point five minutes after initial detection. The update was tracking.

Sharef turned away from the displays and stepped to the forward bulkhead of the room to where Rakish Ahmed and Sihoud were standing. Ahmed had borrowed a crewman’s jumpsuit. Sihoud had reclaimed the silk shesh he had been wearing when they had picked him up, the rip in the garment’s hem now sewn up. Sharef idly wondered who had done the sewing. Hard to imagine the Khalib himself doing a seamstress’s job. Sihoud’s dagger gleamed on his belt. In spite of the general’s inspiring size and presence, Sharef felt it was a charade. His instincts told him the general was frightened. Not that fear was dishonorable, because if there was a time to feel it, this was it. Had he not been nearly killed on the Sahand, it might have been different, but he had seen the deaths the enemy missiles had brought, and the idea that the same could happen to these men now filled him with a resolve that precluded fear.

“General. Colonel. In less than a minute the first torpedo will hit us. We have done everything possible to avoid it, but with three weapons coming in from all around we were not likely to evade them all. I wanted you to be prepared for the impact.”

“Is there nothing else you can do. Commodore?” Sihoud asked.

“There is one option, to surface and count on the torpedoes having a ceiling setting to avoid surface-ship traffic, but that will slow us down and the weapons will easily catch up. Our own Nagasaki torpedoes were designed to find a surfacing sub that much easier from the clouds of bubbles put out by the surfacing systems. It is not a good gamble, General. We have a better chance of the attacking torpedoes running out of fuel than we do of evading by surfacing.

Other than that, all we can do is run.” “You said less than a minute,” Ahmed said. “How long now?” “Twenty seconds,” Tawkidi said.

The SCM system began groaning out false sonar signals even before the incoming sonars could be heard through the hull. Sharef moved to

Lieutenant Ishak’s master console. He dropped to one knee, hearing the seconds ticking off in his mind, but tried to keep his voice level.

“Lieutenant, have you told the Second Captain our in tended route to the North Atlantic?”