Phoenix Sub Zero Read online

  PHOENIX SUB ZERO by Michael DiMercurio

  This time, danchez and the gallant submariners are confronted by a nightmare scenario: Muslim fundamentalist terrorists with a super-submarine and a weapon they’re planning to unleash…you’ll not want to surface once you dive, dive, dive! into this one!

  AN ONYX BOOK

  … Take heed in your manner of speaking That the language ye use may be sound, In the list of the words of your choosing “Impossible’ may not be found … —adm. R. A. hopwood, RN “the laws OF THE navy”

  PROLOGUE.

  Wednesday, Christmas Day

  The Hiroshima missile dived for the desert floor and armed the final detonator train of the Scorpion warhead. After a descent through the low clouds, the missile broke out into the clear over the abandoned town of Bajram-Ali, Turkmenistan.

  A few hundred meters east of the town center and mosque, the missile’s high explosive detonated.

  The explosion, in its first millisecond, ruptured a bag of vinyl acetate monomer mixed with a dozen other chemical components; in the next it ruptured a high-pressure bottle of ethylene gas, the chemicals mixing and reacting in the high temperatures and pressures of the fireball; finally the pressure pulse reached a bag of finely ground iron filings. The explosion scattered the filings as it spread, 1,000 meters above Bajram-Ali. The iron filings drifted to the town below.

  As they did, the reacting chemicals from the missile formed a thin milky atomized liquid that rained down and wetted the buildings and streets. Ten minutes later, the milky chemicals had dried into a sticky glue. The iron filings, mixed in with the glue, were stuck to the surfaces of the

  streets and roofs and walls of the decaying structures. Within 1,000 meters of the Hiroshima missile detonation, iron filings were glued to every horizontal and vertical surface.

  An hour later a small army of technicians took the town apart, digging samples from the road, cutting bricks out of building walls, running metal detectors along pavement, deploying fire hoses to try to wash off the glue and its iron filings.

  The glue resisted all attempts to rinse it away.

  Late that evening, an urgent encrypted radio message was transmitted to the United Islamic Front of God headquarters stating that the weapon test had been a great success, promising that when the iron filings of the Scorpion test warhead were replaced by highly radioactive and poisonous plutonium, doped with cobalt-60, the target town would be so contaminated that it would have to be abandoned for 20,000 years, and that every soul within two kilometers of ground zero would die a slow, painful and ugly death of radiation poisoning, all accomplished with only a fraction of the plutonium needed to build the smallest nuclear weapon.

  The message concluded that when the Scorpion warhead was employed against the target American city— Washington, D. C., at the moment—the course of the world war would be turned, and victory would soon be

  forthcoming.

  On the other side of the world, on the fourth deck of the Pentagon the chief of naval operations, Adm. Richard Donchez, picked up the six-month-old memo he’d written to the president and read it with mixed emotions, part amusement that he had been dead right, part regret that its recommendations had been ignored. Its four dry pages of thick Pentagonese had advocated assassinating Gen. Mohammed al-Sihoud, dictator and leader of a thirty-nation coalition called the United Islamic Front of God, spanning all of North Africa, most of the Arabian peninsula, and half of Asia. At the time, Sihoud had just begun the invasion of India after already swallowing Chad and Ethiopia in a month-long blitz.

  Had the memo’s decapitation assault been implemented when it was proposed, the war would never have gotten out of hand. But it had, and finally, after India had appealed to the United Nations, America and the major nations of Europe had formed the Western Coalition and declared war on Sihoud’s United Islamic Front. After endless preparations for the invasions, the war had turned into a bloody three-front meat-grinder of a ground war, as Donchez had predicted.

  And now, a half-year late. President Dawson had ordered Donchez to propose the Navy’s “most innovative recommendations” to win the war quickly. Donchez had considered giving him the old assassination memo

  back, the central ideas still viable, but had not out of tact. Finally, Monday, the president had given his approval to take out General Sihoud. Donchez had proposed that Operation Early Retirement commence immediately, Christmas Day, but the president had balked at killing the general on a holy day.

  Donchez relented, ordering the operation to commence on the day after Christmas, two minutes after midnight local time, making it late afternoon of Christmas Day eastern standard time.

  Donchez propped his feet up on the huge desk, put his hands behind his bald head and looked out the windows at the snowy landscape of the Potomac River below, the familiar Washington skyline, the vista lonely on Christmas, the town’s workers and lawyers and politicians home with their families. In another half hour, the operation would commence, starting with the liftoff of a cargo jet full of Navy Sea/Air/Land commandos and the firing of sea-launched Javelin cruise missiles at Sihoud in his headquarters bunkers.

  By early afternoon Thursday, Donchez expected to hold a press conference reporting the death of General-andkhalib Mohammed al-Sihoud, and with him, the end of a war that had the potential to kill millions of Americans.

  Donchez stared out the window for some moments, deciding to wade through

  his urgent paperwork during the time he must wait before the decapitation assault against Sihoud kicked off. He took his feet off the desk and rifled through a file marked vortex missile test—exercise BONECRUSHER–-AUTEC SUBMARINE VS. SUBMARINE LIVE FIRE. After he read it, he put it back on the desk, ran his hand across his bald scalp, his face an annoyed frown, and picked up the phone.

  Michael Pacino sat back in the deep recliner in front of the fireplace, the Virginia Beach weather finally cool enough to justify lighting the fire. For the last hour he had dozed, waiting for Christmas dinner, falling into a deep sleep. His face twitched and beaded with sweat as he dreamt, his sleeping visions obviously troubled.

  When the phone jangled he sat up, his eyes wide, the room slowly coming into focus, Janice’s low Southern accent distant as she answered the call. By the time she asked him to pick up the phone, his heart rate had slowed to its normal rhythm. He climbed out of the easy chair and walked to the phone, wondering what his duty officer wanted on a slow holiday afternoon. His submarine, the USS Seawolf, sat inert and helpless in a shipyard drydock, a gaping hullcut opened in her flank, her torpedo room brutalized by the shipyard workers and the overgrown Vortex missile tubes being jammed in. It seemed a crime that in the middle of a hot war on the other side of the world, the most advanced submarine in the U.S.

  “Captain Pacino,” he said curtly into the phone, expecting a young

  lieutenant to report another problem. But it wasn’t the ship calling.

  “Mikey,” Admiral Donchez’s voice boomed in Pacino’s ear. “Merry Christmas.”

  Hillary Janice Pacino, a slim attractive woman with golden hair curling halfway down her back, lit a cigarette and listened to the phone conversation in the background, her expression growing steadily unhappy as it became obvious that Pacino would be leaving. Thirty seconds after the conversation ended, right on cue, he appeared in the kitchen.

  “Where to this time?” she asked, her voice surprisingly calm.

  “Autec. Bahamas test range. Donchez’s Vortex missile test. He wants me to watch. His jet is picking me up in two hours.”

  “On Christmas Day?”

  “The missile test goes down tomorrow.”

  “What’s the big rush? It’s not like you’re going to war. If there was one
Christmas I thought you’d make, it was this year. Your ship is in the dock and you’re being relieved in two months. Why are you going now? Because the chief of naval operations asks and you jump?” “No. Because Dick Donchez asks and I jump. We still have time for dinner.”

  “How long?”

  “Two days, maybe three.”

  Pacino watched as his wife clammed up and began moving around the room, banging pots and plates. He climbed the stairs and packed a bag, wondering himself why a weapon test was so important that he had to drop everything on Christmas Day to see it.

  Ten minutes later he stood in front of the television, the news channel reported on the Coalition invasion of southern Iran. Pacino bit his lip in frustration, wondering for the hundredth time why Seawolf had to sit out the war. If he had to be away on Christmas, he thought, it could at least be to take the ship on a mission. He thought about his old captain, Rocket Ron Daminski, who was now on patrol in the Mediterranean aboard the Augusta, there since Thanksgiving, probably spending the holiday watching old movies in the wardroom and complaining bitterly about being at sea, driving his crew crazy.

  Too bad, Pacino thought, there was nothing for a sub to do during the ground war except poke holes in the ocean. Or so it seemed.

  Thursday, 26 December eastern mediterranean ten nautical miles east OF cape greco, cyprus operation early retirement USS augusta

  The Javelin cruise missile blew out of the dark water of the Mediterranean, momentarily frozen in space above an angry cloud of spray until the weapon’s rocket motor ignited in a violent fireball, hurling the missile skyward with an agonizingly bright flame trail.

  The crosshairs of the periscope view framed the fiery parabola of the submarine-launched missile’s trajectory as it flew to its peak, 1,500 feet into the clear starlit sky, then arced downward on its way to its ground-hugging approach to its target. Commander Ron Daminski trained the periscope view downward until the missile rocket motor cut out, and the flying automaton vanished into the night. Daminski removed his eye from the periscope optic module for a moment, just long enough to look at the battlestations crew surrounding him in the cramped rigged-for-black control room of the Improved Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Augusta. Satisfied, he returned to his periscope and trained it in a slow circle, a surface search, while the crew prepared to launch the second Javelin warshot missile from the forward vertical launch system.

  “Missile two on internal power. Captain. Target is locked in and readbacks are nominal,” the executive officer, Danny Kristman, reported, as emotionlessly as if he were commenting on the weather. “Ready for launch in three zero seconds.”

  “Open the muzzle door,” Daminski ordered, training his periscope view forward to see the second launch.

  “Door open, tank pressurized … Five seconds, sir.

  Three, two, one, mark.”

  “Shoot,” Daminski commanded.

  “Fire!” Kristman barked, the roar of the missile tube the punctuation to the order.

  Daminski watched as the second Javelin cleared the water and lifted off toward the east. When it too had disappeared, he lowered the periscope and turned to executive officer Kristman.

  “XO, you have the conn. Secure battle stations, take her deep and continue orbiting at the hold point.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The deck took on a down angle as Kristman made the orders, the hull groaning and popping loudly from the sea pressure as the Augusta descended into the depths. From the periscope stand Lieutenant Commander Dan Kristman glanced across at Daminski as the captain yawned,

  stretched, and tried to fight the sleep he’d evaded for the last three nights.

  “Rocket Ron” Daminski, so named for his intensity and white-hot temper, had just turned fifty, unusually old for the job of commanding the submarine Augusta. He was stocky and short, his hair beginning to recede from his lined forehead, yet he still carried himself like the athlete he had once been, in spite of bad knees and several dozen old football injuries.

  He spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent and frequently referred to himself as an “ignorant New York Polack,” but he dismissed the fact that he had been a brilliant engineer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Still, he was a troubled officer, always passed over for promotion, and had no illusions that his career would have any further surprises.

  Daminski had been aboard Augusta four months, ever since the previous captain had run aground and been relieved for cause. The investigation had shown that the ship had become sloppy and poorly trained, and the admiral in command of the Atlantic’s submarine forces had sent out the ultimate sub-fixer, some would say ass-kicker. Rocket Ron Daminski, a ten-year veteran of straightening out ill-performing submarines.

  At first, the crew had dreaded Daminski’s arrival, with good reason. Once aboard, the man was a hurricane, sweeping through every department,

  finding fault with every division, every officer, every chief, and most enlisted men. Each flaw, regardless of significance, was treated by Rocket as a treasonous personal affront. Every excruciating day had brought several dozen of his demanding emotional outbursts, but over weeks, the boat had responded. Even the men who professed to hate Rocket Ron began to give him the credit as the ship began to function smoothly, going from the squad ron dog to the squadron’s best, until they were certain to win any exercise. Daminski’s tantrums became less frequent, his inspiring speeches more frequent, until over the last month he had become almost jovial in his praise for the men and officers. The ship was ordered to the Mediterranean to support the war against the United Islamic Front, a cause for celebration, the notice that Augusta had arrived.

  Through the entire ordeal of putting Augusta back on track. Rocket Ron Daminski had never revealed much of his personal life to the crew. It was known that he was married to his second wife, a pretty and voluptuous younger woman named Myra; the two of them had three small children.

  Daminski had filled his stateroom with pictures of his family, nearly wallpapering an entire bulkhead with their photos.

  Kristman had noticed that not one photograph included Daminski himself. He had on a recent occasion noticed Daminski mooning over a letter from

  his wife, so deeply in thought that it had taken Kristman three tries to get the captain’s attention. Daminski carried the letter with him everywhere—not in his shirt or pants pockets, but against the skin of his chest. In one recent emergency drill, Daminski had rushed to the control room in his boxers and T-shirt—which in an emergency was considered normal— and the letter from Myra had been stuck in the waistband of the boxers beneath Daminski’s T-shirt. Kristman could now see the slight rectangular bulge in Daminski’s submarine coveralls where the letter was stowed as Daminski yawned again and ran his huge misshapen football-injured fingers through his hair.

  As the ship pulled out of the dive, the deck again became flat. Daminski stepped off the raised periscope stand aft to the twin chart tables, a cigarette appearing between his lips as he bent over the chart. Across the landmass to the east, the thin orange pencil lines traced the serpentine tracks of the Javelin missiles. The lines terminated at a city just north of the Iranian border, the capital city of the United Islamic Front of God, Ashkhabad, in a country called Turkmenistan.

  A country that five years before was barely on the map, a two-bit ex-Soviet republic, but was now the center of a thirty-nation confederation of Muslim states. The uniting of the Islamic states had taken almost five years, yet in that time the Western intelligence agencies seemed caught by surprise that it had happened, believing until it was too late that the Muslims still hated each other even more than

  the West. In this, the spooks had been as wrong as they had been in the months before the fall of the Shah’s Iran.

  And as history proved once more, there was no limit to what a single determined man could do. The twentieth century had seen one dictator after another take the reins of power and threaten the world, but most paled next to Mohammed al-Sihoud
, the dictator of the United Islamic Front of God. Sihoud had made Turkmenistan his hub territory, the UIF’s capital the city of Ashkhabad, where the Combined Intelligence Agency, now paying very close attention, indicated he had been for the last two days.

  There in a concrete reinforced bunker on the northern city limits of Ashkhabad, General-and-Khalib Mohammed al-Sihoud was about to get a very nasty surprise. The operation’s name, “Early Retirement,” was appropriate. Never before in the century had a world war against a dictatorship been conducted by a concerted attempt to assassinate the dictator. This war was to be different.

  Executive officer Kristman joined Daminski at the chart.

  Both men studied the tracks of the Javelin cruise missiles for several quiet moments. Kristman spoke first.

  “Think this is going to work. Skipper?”

  “I don’t know, Danny. Probably depends on the seal team commandos. We’re just insurance.”

  “At least we got to shoot something at that bastard.”

  Daminski nodded, knowing what Kristman meant. In the last ten months of the war, the work had been done by ground troops of the Army and the Marines while the glory had gone to the Navy and Air Force fighter pilots. Meanwhile the surface and submarine navies had paced the seas restlessly, effectively useless against the massive and deadly combined land forces of the United Islamic Front.

  “I’m going to grab some rack,” Daminski said. “Get the section’s officer of the deck on the conn and station yourself as command duty officer. Call me if anything comes in on the ELF circuit.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Daminski walked forward to the tiny cubbyhole of his stateroom, shut the door, and sank into the narrow bed. He had been awake going on forty hours, since the flash message announcing the kickoff of the operation had come in on the sub broadcast. Daminski was exhausted, but he knew he was much too wired from shooting the cruise missile warshots to fall asleep.

  He pulled the letter from Myra from inside his shirt and read it again, the dogeared stationery proclaiming in her loopy handwriting that she loved him but was leaving him anyway. You are just too intense to live with … I can’t watch you run this house like you run one of your submarines.