Phoenix Sub Zero

A phone rang from the east end of the building. Morris couldn’t wait too long—the caller would be alerted that no one was answering, especially since the phones probably rolled over to the sentry at night. By 0645 no one else had arrived. Morris called the withdrawal code on the VHF, grabbed up his pack and the scientist, the duct tape on his legs cut, and moved out to the south, out of the metal building he’d come into, across the complex yard to the fence cut.

He ordered the men on, pulling out a radio trigger from his vest while the platoons continued toward the rendezvous point. Morris took one last look at the complex before uncovering the toggle switch and clicking it on. The complex blew apart as two dozen high-explosive charges detonated.

There was not a great deal of HX brought in, the idea more that secondary lab chemical fires and paper-fed flames would level the facility. The plan had worked; three secondary explosions sounded from the lab end of the brick building, filling the dawn sky with a bright rising mushroom cloud. Morris turned and ran in the snow up the ridge, veering away to the assembly area once he was over the peak.

He caught up to the others, soon able to hear rotors, hoping the Marines would wait, hurrying the Muslim scientist, the frightened man offering little resistance but walking too slow. Morris motivated him with the muzzle of the MAC-10. He pulled the tape off his mouth and let him breathe. The assembly area came into view, the idling V-22’s rotors whipping up tiny shards of ice in the increasing light of morning. The scientist struggled when he saw the plane, but another hit got him in the door. The aircraft interior seemed hot and airless as the door came closed, the noise level drilling into Morris’s ears as the rotors spun up and the plane lifted off, the ground shrinking away as the rotors spun up and the plane accelerated. Morris stowed his backpack, pulled off his sweaty balaclava and parka and gloves, the earpiece of the radio feeling waxy, the lip-mike wet with his sweat. The scientist was looking out one of the oval windows, his body stiff from fear or cold or both.

Morris found the coffee um and poured a cup, tasted it and found it fresh, poured a cup for the scientist nodding at Bart to free his hands. The man took it, his hands wrapped around the cup to gather its warmth. The plane climbed over the mountains to be joined by F-18s. Hours later, when the rotors tilted to the horizontal for the approach to Coalition-occupied Minab, the hostage scientist was asleep.

When the rear door opened, the plane was mobbed by HQ types unloading the stolen data and taking custody of the scientist. Morris walked to the debriefing, whistling tunelessly, his mind moving on to the next mission.

Chapter 27 Wednesday, 1 January

EASTERN ATLANTIC, WEST EUROPEAN BASIN

USS PHOENIX

Kane stood looking over Mcdonne’s shoulder as the executive officer dialed in a speed change for the assumed solution to Target One, the Destiny’s designation. Kane had been steadily driving a target-motion analysis wiggle in the UIF sub’s stem ever since returning from periscope depth twelve hours before. Mcdonne’s solution showed target speed somewhere between twenty-five and thirty knots. The Destiny had been moving at that high speed since a few minutes after reacquisition. Kane’s data showed it capable of speeds up to forty-five, maybe even fifty knots. If the sub went at its max speed. Phoenix would be unable to keep up with it.

But at the speed it was going it was making considerable noise.

The Destiny was on the way somewhere, in a hurry but not in such a hurry that it needed to go full throttle. Too fast for a routine transit, since the speed did risk detection. What was he doing? The chart’s track of their progress since emerging from the Strait of Gibraltar had been a great circle route leading to the southern tip of Greenland. The HP computer’s projection had the Destiny in the Labrador Sea between Canada’s Newfoundland coast and Greenland in another seventy hours. Three days. And why in hell would Sihoud be visiting Greenland?

Worse was the fact that he could enlist no other minds to solve the riddle. Communication, though possible physically, was impossible tactically. To rise to periscope depth meant low speeds of five or six knots to avoid breaking off the antenna and periscope, the masts too delicate to withstand higher forces from hydrodynamic drag. The slowness of PD ruled it out, at least for HF radio transmission. It would be easy to zip up to PD and transmit a UHF burst comm to a satellite and dive deep again; even with the Destiny driving at thirty knots. Phoenix could catch up, but to spend any more time at PD meant losing the Destiny. Kane was unwilling to risk losing the UIF vessel, now more than ever, since the mystery of its destination had to have some at least tactical significance.

“XO, any questions?”