Phoenix Sub Zero

Perhaps Sihoud had decided to abdicate or surrender and had agreed to leave the UIF with a sub, to give up in Newfoundland or Labrador or Greenland. Yeah, right. Or maybe he was going to a special peace talk to be conducted in Canada or Greenland, talks so secret that he had to disappear in the eyes of his own military. But why would a leader going to a secret peace meeting sink two ships to get there? That made no sense. What if he was bringing some kind of weapon out of the Med to fire at the U.S.? Why wouldn’t he simply shoot it from the Med? Range — the Med was a long way away. The Japanese might have sold the UIF a few supersonic high-altitude cruise missiles and maybe Sihoud thought he could bring them close so that they would be in range. But why not just proceed on a straight line toward the American east coast then? And what damage could a conventional cruise missile do? A couple terrorists with some plastic explosive in the sewer system could do more damage and have better odds on success than trying to lob a cruise missile into the east coast’s radar-saturated environment.

What if he’d found a way to make a nuke? He would come as close as he could to his target and launch it in. Assuming he had a delivery vehicle. Maybe he was going to drop off a nuclear weapon in the Labrador Sea, surfacing at night and off-loading it onto a fishing vessel, and the fishing vessel would take it to some sleepy Canadian port where a battered rental car could take it to the border and bring it to Boston or New York or D.C. Or a seaplane could just fly it in with no stops.

Sure, Kane, sure … He’d just radio that in a contact message and Admiral Steinman would have a laugh and send him a box full of old Alistair Maclean novels. Besides, in intelligence was not his function.

His role was gathering the raw data. So far they had boxcars full of raw data he needed to tell someone about. And he hadn’t been able to because of the speed of the Destiny. He simply could not afford to slow down and come to PD to transmit on HE He turned from the chart and wandered to the middle level to get a cup of coffee. The ship was a ghost town. Control was busy with trailing the Destiny, the room’s hustle making thinking difficult. He couldn’t bounce his ideas off of Mcdonne, since the XO was sleeping, preparing to take over for Kane during the evening and midwatch. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Senior Chief Binghamton in the crew’s mess. He summoned the radioman to the wardroom.

“Yes, Captain.”

“Any change in the status of the UHF gear?”

“Still down hard, sir. For us, it’s HF or nothing/’ “What about spare parts for the—”

“Captain,” a voice rang out from the passageway. “Captain?”

“He’s here,” Binghamton said. The phone talker in the passageway was holding a long cord coiled in his hand, his duty to relay communications from the middle level to control when rigged for ultraquiet so that the Circuit One PA speakers did not need to be used.

“Control’s calling sir. O.O.D wants you up there ASAP.”

“On the way.” Kane hurried up the stairs to the upper level, made control in a few strides. Control was stuffy and crowded, the O.O.D and junior officer of the deck standing at the attack-center consoles, plotters manning manual plots, conversations relayed in murmurs. Jensen had the conn, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep or from the wounds he’d taken during the grounding.

“Skipper, Target One just slowed. We’ve got him at thirteen knots. No sign of a counterdetection or a baffle-clear maneuver. And he’s just put out a whopper of a transient. Smoot’s on watch in sonar, said it sounded like venting a ballast tank.”

This was Kane’s chance to pop up to periscope depth and radio the contact report. It might be his only chance. Slowing and going to PD risked losing the contact, but it had to be done. With the Destiny at thirteen knots Kane could let him get ahead and still be able to catch up to him after lingering at PD. He told himself he’d give it twenty minutes at periscope depth, no more.

“Contact range?”

“Nine thousand yards.”

“Any change in Target One course?”

“No, sir, he’s going straighter than an arrow.”

“Increase speed to twenty knots, close the range to 5,000, then take her up to PD at seven knots, no baffle clear. I’ll. be in radio. Let’s go, take her up.”

Kane’s heart was beating in his throat by the time the ship leveled off at periscope depth, the maneuver done without pausing to clear baffles and check surface traffic at 150 feet.

Binghamton’s shaved scalp beaded up with sweat as he called for the bigmouth multifrequency antenna, a green light coming on when the telephone-pole-shaped mast was fully extended. The senior chief handed Kane a headset with a boom microphone while strapping on his own. The consoles in front of him beeped and buzzed as he adjusted frequencies and juggled a code book.