Commodore Sharef frowned down at the deck from the surface-control space on top of the fin, ten meters above the curving hull. Perhaps under different circumstances he would have been less agitated — it was shaping up into a beautiful morning, the sun rising higher in the winter sky, the deep blue water of the Mediterranean so clear that Sharef could see the hull shape underwater from the elliptical bow forward to the X-tail aft. And the air smelled so clean after being locked inside the Hegira for the last twenty-four hours. There was something invigorating about being on the surface, even though the surface was the submariner’s enemy.
As if to remind him of the danger, the sound of distant aircraft engines came whining into his ears. He looked up and saw nothing. Even the binoculars were unable to locate the jet — it must have been a high-altitude transport … he hoped.
Sharef shouted down to the deck, his voice unhurried but clipped.
“On deck! Get those men below! Now!”
The rescue team had just pulled the second man in from the raft. One of the men was younger and healthy, the second bent and weak, needing help just to stay on his feet on the curving deck. The deckhands and the survivors pushed into the hatch set into the port side of the fin and went down the ladder to the control room below. Sharer leaned over and saw that the last man had secured the hatch fairing in the side of the fin. The only men left in the surface-control space were deck officer Omar Tawkidi and Sharef. Sharef glanced at his watch and ordered Tawkidi below. Sharef lifted the panel doors, the cubbyhole at the top of the fin vanishing, the fin again streamlined and continuous. He checked for loose items, binoculars or flashlights, anything that could bounce or rattle around to cause noise, and finding nothing, lowered himself down into the hatchway and shut it. Twenty steps down at the joining of the fin to the outer hull there was a wide space in the vertical tunnel.
Sharef checked the hatch set in the side of the fin and, satisfied it was secure, lowered himself into the command-module access-hatch. When his head was clear he pulled down the hatch to the fin tunnel and spun the hatch wheel, engaging the heavy dogs. He continued down the ladder all the way to the deckplates and operated a hydraulic control lever.
The lower hatch, stowed in the overhead, rotated into position below the upper hatch, engaged its own dogs, and rotated into place. The ship was now rigged for submergence.
Sharef stepped through the doorway into the control room and blinked in its dim light, looking for Tawkidi.
“Deck, are you ready to submerge?”
“Yes sir.”
“Take the ship down to 100 meters, heading east at dead-slow. Continue the heading for ten minutes, then do a computer self-delouse. I want a report on the status of the delouse.”
“Yes sir. Ship control, dead slow ahead, ship’s depth 100 meters.”
“Where are the survivors?”
“Your stateroom, sir. Captain al-Kunis is with them.”
“Any idea who they were?”
Tawkidi took a deep breath.
“You won’t believe it. Commodore. I think you’d better see for yourself.”
Sharef hurried out of the control room, down a narrow passageway between the computer space to starboard and the radio room to port to the door to his stateroom. He opened the door and found himself looking into the face of the Sword of Islam, Gen. Mohammed al-Sihoud. A part of Sharef’s mind realized he should be snapping to attention, but he simply stood there, looking from Sihoud to his first officer al-Kunis, to the second survivor, Rakish Ahmed.
The door opened slowly, the hinges groaning as it came open. The light from the passageway was bright enough to make the eyes ache even under sleep-swollen lids.
“Captain, sir? Noon meal is being served, sir. The officer of the deck thought you might want to go down to the wardroom.”
Commander Ron Daminski tossed aside the sweaty sheet and sat up in his narrow rack. The room seemed to swim around him. The chronometer showed it to be 1125 hours Greenwich mean time. As he ran his blunt fingers through his hair he tried to remember when he’d fallen asleep. Ten hours before. He should have felt refreshed, recharged, but instead felt heavy and tired and old. He squinted up at the mess cook.
“Tell the officers to go ahead without me.” Daminski knew he was breaking with tradition, but somehow it seemed dishonest for him to be joking and talking with the officers at a meal and then reprimanding them for their inattention to duty a half-hour later. For his entire tour aboard, he had rarely eaten in the wardroom although protocol still demanded that he be invited, in case he changed his mind.
He knew inattendance at the meals was taken as a sign of aloofness, perhaps of arrogance, by the junior officers, but that was his style and he was unable and unwilling to change.
“Aye, sir. Would you like me to bring your meal up here for you?”
Daminski yawned, wondering if he looked as bad as he felt. What would Myra think of how he looked, he wondered.
God, Myra’s letter — where was it? He found it on the scrunched bedclothes and tucked it into the waistband of his gray boxers.
“Huh? Oh, no. I’m not hungry. Seaman March.” Just go away, he thought. Let an old man wake up.
The door shut slowly. Daminski stood, his knees popping.
At the thought that a shower would help him wake up, he tossed the boxers in the laundry bag and stepped into the cramped head between his stateroom and the XO’s. There was a small stall, a phone-booth-sized shower and a tiny sink. The whole affair was covered with sheet stainless steel except for the deck. Daminski walked into the shining shower and turned the water on full cold, convulsing as the spray hit him. He turned it back off and lathered up without water — there were no running water showers on Daminski’s ship, not when each drop had to be distilled from seawater and most of it made for the reactor and steam plants, not for hotel usage. Once soapy, he turned on the water again, mixing in the hot, and rinsed off, the force of the water a vigorous massage. He cut the water, now feeling cold in the steel vertical coffin. He wiped the walls down with a squeegee and toweled off.
In the mirror above the sink was the pale sun-deprived face of a man too far past his prime, the wrinkles now deep in his forehead, a forehead that gained more real estate each year as the hair vanished. His graying hair was too long, almost shaggy. He dried it and brushed it straight back. He considered growing his beard back; in the three weeks left in the patrol he could have a well-filled-in beard that would mask his chin’s growing jowls. He shook his head. Captains should be clean shaven, he’d always maintained. He dragged the razor across his face, brushed his teeth with the baking soda in the tube. Back in his stateroom he put on fresh boxers and T-shirt and a new poopysuit, a black coverall with American flag patches sewn on the shoulders, his name over the left pocket, an embroidered gold dolphin emblem above his name. Then his black Reeboks and he was ready for an other day at sea.
But he’d been wrong that he’d be cheered up by the shower, he thought as he unzipped the poopysuit and slid Myra’s letter against the skin of his chest. The heaviness was still with him, just cleaned of its surface scum but as solid and substantial as ever. There was always one man who could cheer him up — Terry Betts, the torpedoman chief.
Betts should have finished lunch by then. Daminski left his stateroom and padded down the steps to the torpedo room two levels below, down in the belly of the forward compartment.