“Norfolk Navcom, this is Echo Five November with an urgent Navy Blue, over.”
In the control room Houser took his face from the periscope and looked at the speaker of the UWT, disbelief in his eyes. It was unmistakable … “… ho ho ho! Ho ho ho! …”
There were many voices, the call repeated over and over, the sounds coming in distorted like a Halloween tape recording made for a haunted house. But haunted spirits up north, here at the top of the world?
Or was that ho-ho-hoing something to do with … Ho ho ho, like they’d learned in submarine school? An emergency escape? The other submarine, the one that was to take care of the Destiny but had shot at them, forcing them to run, and then what had happened, no one knew. Maybe the Destiny had won. It seemed to have left them alone so far but—
“Ho ho ho!”
It was worse than any nightmare Pacino had ever had. The sea around him was a black darkness. It was so cold he could feel his body shutting down. It was all he could do to continue to shout ho-ho-ho, his screams getting weaker the higher he rose. But then he began to hear things, his ears already damaged from the Vortex launch and the explosions, but now he could swear he heard a ghostly voice echoing through the deep saying strange things … Compartment, Captain, right twenty degrees rudder … level the ship … low-pressure blow … Captain …
An auditory hallucination … what else could it be? But it seemed so real, the voice so large, coming from a giant throat and echoing through the water.
“Ho ho ho,” he screamed.
The ascent seemed to go on forever. At last the sounds of the voices stopped. In the final hundred feet of his ascent he lost consciousness, no longer aware when the voice rang out through the deep again. He had stopped shouting but was breathing rapidly, his lungs giving up the air, which was fortunate … if he had breathed any slower he might have had his lungs explode.
He rose until the light from the rising sun penetrated the surface. He blasted through the surface, rising until only his shins were submerged, then splashed back down, floating in the water buoyed up by his Steinke hood. He never felt the arms grab him and pull him into the raft.
Admiral Donchez stared at the plate-glass window at the building’s entrance. The snow had finally stopped, but the plows would still take a long time even to get to the primary roads. The drifts were as tall as houses, the snow in the flats almost waist-high. All Donchez wanted was to get out of this prison.
“Admiral? Another signal for you, sir. It’s in the comm center.”
Donchez rubbed his bloodshot eyes as he followed the radio tech sergeant.
In the comm center he took the message form. It was another message from Pacino! He could scarcely believe it.
DATE/TIME: TIME OF RECEIPT OF SLOT MESSAGE
FROM: USS SEAWOLF SSN-21
TO: C.N.O WASHINGTON, DC // CINCLANT NORFOLK, VA // COMSUBLANT NORFOLK, VA
SUBJ: CONTACT REPORT NO. 4
//BT//
1. SEAWOLF DOWN, THIS POSITION.
2. PLEASE HURRY.
//BT//
“Mother of God,” he muttered. He caught Fred Rummel’s eye. “Fred, get me Admiral Steinman on the secure voice.
And get me a weather report for the Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea. Now, dammit!”
All he could hope for was that the storm hadn’t moved off to the northeast, that it had gone out due west, maybe even curved to the south. While he waited he couldn’t help wondering what had become of the Destiny. And the Phoenix.
He had heard nothing.
No sonic booms had been heard across Canada, nor any in the northeastern U.S. If the Destiny had launched, the missile would have landed by now. Pacino must have stopped the Destiny’s launch and was alive. At least for the moment.
Please hurry.
Hang on, Mikey.
When Steinman’s voice came over, Donchez began speaking, the action allowing him to fight off the images of his surrogate son and friend at risk of dying in the frozen north.
Chief Nelson found Kane in the radio room, still trying to get through.
“Sir, we have only minutes left on the battery. If you can, you’ve got to hurry up with that distress signal. The battery breaker will be popping open at any minute.”
“Dammit. Norfolk Navcom, this is Echo Five November, Navy Blue to follow, over.”
Nothing but static.
“I’m going to transmit in the blind. Senior Chief. If they get it, they get it … Navcom, Navcom, Navcom, this is Echo Five November. Navy Blue as follows. Estimated position very rough at six three degrees three zero minutes. November, five eight degrees two zero minutes whiskey. We are drifting with battery almost dead. Urgent you pick us up as soon as possible, with airlift if available. I say again, Navy Blue as follows.” Kane read the message again.
There was no response, just the whine of the static. Suddenly the room plunged into darkness.
“Guess that’s it. Captain,” Binghamton said, tossing his headset to the deck and clicking on the battle lantern. “This boat’s just a big life raft now.” Life raft. Bad joke.
The battle lanterns in the control room came up, then on through the upper level. Kane walked into his control room, amazed at how quiet it was with no ventilation, no firecontrol, no intercom system. A dead ship. Kane shivered and zipped his parka. It seemed much colder now without the lights even though the temperature had already been at freezing for hours.
Now all they could do was wait, and hope that Norfolk — or someone — had received their distress signal.
They wouldn’t last long in this dead hull.
Donchez glared at both Captain Rummel and the communications technical sergeant. “Read it again,” he said.
“Signal means, “Navcom, Navcom, Navcom, this is Echo Five November’ — that’s the USS Phoenix, Admiral — “Navy Blue as follows. Estimated position very rough at six three degrees’ — garbled here, then — ‘minutes November’ — garbled again, then message concludes — ‘drifting with battery almost dead. Urgent you pick us up as soon as …’ The rest was static, Admiral.”
Donchez nodded and pulled Captain Rummel aside. “The weather?”
“The storm went up the coastline, sir. The Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea are in the middle of the worst of it. And there’s no reason to think it will ease up. As it goes north, the cold will make it real bad.”
“Great. Can we fly?”
“Bad visibility and high winds aloft. But yes, we can fly. We just won’t see anything.”
“The search-and-rescue guys. We need to get them working on this.”
“I know the skipper of the Navy Search and Rescue unit out of Kangamiu, Greenland. They’re the closest. We’ll get the Canadians on it too. But don’t get your hopes up, sir.”
“They never were up, but what’s on your mind?”
“With the storm and all, we’ll have a rough time of it. Even though we can fly, we may not see anything. And if we do see something, with the winds aloft, it’ll be a damned miracle if we can get down to it.”
“What options do we have?”
“Fly search-and-rescue or quit.”
“There you go. Well, this old man ain’t about to quit. Get on it, Fred.”
Donchez watched Rummel go. They had a partial location of the Phoenix, but what the hell would become of the Seawolf. Just what did “Seawolf down, this position” mean, anyway? Were the crew members trapped in a submerged hull? Or had they made it to the surface and abandoned ship? It would take twenty hours to get a deep-submergence rescue vehicle to the Davis Strait if the weather were perfect, but the DSRV’s ungainly transport plane would not be able to get anywhere close until the storm eased. If Pacino and his men were in a sunken hull they’d have a long wait.