The Hunt for Red October

by Tom Clancy

  “Wait a minute. You say they have issued orders to their ships to sink one of their submarines?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  The president looked at the DCI. “This is reliable information, Judge?”

  “Yes, Mr. President, we believe it to be solid.”

  “Okay, Dr. Ryan, we’re all waiting. What’s this Ramius fellow up to?”

  “Mr. President, our evaluation of this intelligence data is that Red October is attempting to defect to the United States.”

  The room went very quiet for a moment. Ryan could hear the whirring of the fan in the slide projector as the National Security Council pondered that. He held his hands on the lectern to keep them from shaking under the stare of the ten men in front of him.

  “That’s a very interesting conclusion, Doctor.” The president smiled. “Defend it.”

  “Mr. President, no other conclusion fits the data. The really crucial thing, of course, is the recall of their other missile boats. They’ve never done that before. Add to that the fact that they have issued orders to sink their newest and most powerful missile sub, and that they are chasing in this direction, and one is left with the conclusion that they think she has left the reservation and is heading this way.”

  “Very well. What else could it be?”

  “Sir, he could have told them that he’s going to fire his missiles. At us, at them, the Chinese, or just about anyone else.”

  “And you don’t think so?”

  “No, Mr. President. The SS-N-20 has a range of six thousand miles. That means he could have hit any target in the Northern Hemisphere from the moment he left the dock. He’s had six days to do that, but he has not fired. Moreover, if he had threatened to launch his birds, he would have to consider the possibility that the Soviets would enlist our assistance to locate and sink him. After all, if our surveillance systems detect the launch of nuclear-armed missiles in any direction, things could get very tense, very quickly.”

  “You know he could fire his birds in both directions and start World War III,” the secretary of defense observed.

  “Yes, Mr. Secretary. In that case we’d be dealing with a total madman—more than one, in fact. On our missile boats there are five officers, who must all agree and act in unison to fire their missiles. The Soviets have the same number. For political reasons their nuclear warhead security procedures are even more elaborate than ours. Five or more people, all of whom wish to end the world?” Ryan shook his head. “That seems most unlikely, sir, and again, the Soviets would be well advised to inform us and enlist our aid.”

  “Do you really think they would inform us?” Dr. Pelt asked. His tone indicated what he thought.

  “Sir, that’s more a psychological question than a technical one, and I deal principally with technical intelligence. Some of the men in this room have met their Soviet counterparts and are better equipped to answer that than I am. My answer to your question, however, is yes. That would be the only rational thing for them to do, and while I do not regard the Soviets as entirely rational by our standards, they are rational by their own. They are not given to this sort of high-stakes gambling.”

  “Who is?” the president observed. “What else might it be?”

  “Several things, sir. It could simply be a major naval exercise aimed at testing their ability to close our sea lines of communication and our ability to respond, both on short notice. We reject this possibility for several reasons. It’s too soon after their autumn naval exercise, CRIMSON STORM, and they are only using nuclear submarines; no diesel-powered boats seem to be involved. Clearly speed is at a premium in their operation. And as a practical matter, they do not run major exercises at this time of year.”

  “And why is that?” the president asked.

  Admiral Foster answered for Ryan. “Mr. President, the weather up there at this time of the year is extremely bad. Even we don’t schedule exercises under these conditions.”

  “I seem to recall we just ran a NATO exercise, Admiral,” Pelt noted.

  “Yes, sir, south of Bermuda, where the weather’s a lot nicer. Except for an antisub exercise off the British Isles, all of NIFTY DOLPHIN was held on our side of the lake.”

  “Okay, let’s get back to what else their fleet might be up to,” the president ordered.

  “Well, sir, it might not be an exercise at all. It could be the real thing. This could be the beginning of a conventional war against NATO, its first step being interdiction of the sea lines of communication. If so, they’ve achieved complete strategic surprise and are now throwing it away by operating so overtly that we cannot fail to notice or react forcefully. Moreover, there is no corresponding activity whatever in their other armed services. Their army and air force—except for maritime surveillance aircraft—and their Pacific Fleet are engaged in routine training operations.

  “Finally, this could be an attempt to provoke or divert us, drawing our attention to this while they are preparing to spring a surprise somewhere else. If so, they’re going about it in a strange way. If you try to provoke somebody, you don’t do it in his front yard. The Atlantic, Mr. President, is still our ocean. As you can see from this chart, we have bases here in Iceland, the Azores, all up and down our coast. We have allies on both sides of the ocean, and we can establish air superiority over the entire Atlantic if we so choose. Their navy is numerically large, larger than ours in some critical areas, but they cannot project force as well as we can—not yet, anyway—and certainly not right off our coast.” Ryan took a sip of water.

  “So, gentlemen, we have a Soviet missile submarine at sea when all the others, in both oceans, are being recalled. We have their fleet at sea with orders to sink that sub, and evidently they are chasing it in our direction. As I said, this is the only conclusion that fits the data.”

  “How many men on the sub, Doctor?” the president asked.

  “We believe 110 or so, sir.”

  “So, 110 men all decide to defect to the United States at one time. Not an altogether bad idea,” the president observed wryly, “but hardly a likely one.”

  Ryan was ready for that. “There is precedent for this, sir. On November 8, 1975, the Storozhevoy, a Soviet Krivak-class missile frigate, attempted to run from Riga, Latvia, to the Swedish island of Gotland. The political officer aboard, Valery Sablin, led a mutiny of the enlisted personnel. They locked their officers in their cabins and raced away from the dock. They came close to making it. Air and fleet units attacked them and forced them to halt within fifty miles of Swedish territorial waters. Two more hours and they would have made it. Sablin and twenty-six others were court-martialed and shot. More recently we have had reports of mutinous episodes on several Soviet vessels—especially submarines. In 1980 an Echo-class Soviet attack submarine surfaced off Japan. The captain claimed to have had a fire aboard, but photographs taken by naval reconnaissance aircraft—ours and Japanese—did not show smoke or fire-damaged debris being jettisoned from the submarine. However, the crewmen on deck did show sufficient evidence of trauma to support the conclusion that a riot had taken place aboard. We have had similar, sketchier reports for some years now. While I admit this is an extreme example, our conclusion is decidedly not without precedent.”

  Admiral Foster reached inside his jacket and came out with a plastic-tipped cigar. His eyes sparkled behind the match. “You know, I could almost believe this.”

  “Then I wish you’d tell us all why, Admiral,” the president said, “because I still don’t.”

  “Mr. President, most mutinies are led by officers, not enlisted men. The reason for this is simply that the enlisted men do not know how to navigate the ship. Moreover, officers have the advantages and educational background to know that successful rebellion is a possibility. Both of these factors would be even more true in the Soviet Navy. What if just the officers are doing this?”

  “And the rest of the crew is going along with them?” Pelt asked. “Knowing what would happen to them and their families?”r />
  Foster puffed a few times on his cigar. “Ever been to sea, Dr. Pelt? No? Let’s imagine for the moment that you’re taking a world cruise, on the Queen Elizabeth 2, say. One fine day you’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—but how do you know exactly where you are? You don’t know. You know what the officers tell you. Oh, sure, if you know a little astronomy, you might be able to estimate your latitude to within a few hundred miles. With a good watch and some knowledge of spherical trigonometry you might even guess your longitude to within a few hundred. Okay? That’s on a ship that you can see from.

  “These guys are on a submarine. You can’t see a whole lot. Now, what if the officers—not even all the officers—are doing this? How will the crew know what’s going on?” Foster shook his head. “They won’t. They can’t. Even our guys might not, and our men are trained a lot better than theirs. Their seamen are nearly all conscripts, remember. On a nuclear submarine you are absolutely cut off from the outside world. No radios except for ELF and VLF—and that’s all encrypted; messages have to come through the communications officer. So, he has to be in on it. Same thing with the boat’s navigator. They use inertial navigation systems, same as us. We have one of theirs, from that Golf we lifted off Hawaii. In their machine the data is also encrypted. The quartermaster reads the numbers off the machine, and the navigator gets their position from a book. In the Red Army, on land, maps are classified documents. Same thing in their navy. The enlisted men don’t get to see charts and are not encouraged to know where they are. This would be especially true on missile submarines, right?

  “On top of all that, these guys are working sailors, nucs. When you’re at sea, you have a job to do, and you do it. On their ships, that means from fourteen to eighteen hours a day. These kids are all draftees with very simple training. They’re taught to perform one or two tasks—and to follow their orders exactly. The Soviets train people to do their jobs by rote, with as little thinking as possible. That’s why on major repair jobs you see officers holding tools. Their men will have neither the time nor the inclination to question their officers about what’s going on. You do your job, and depend on everybody else to do his. That’s what discipline at sea is all about.” Foster tapped his cigar ash into an ashtray. “Yes, sir, you get the officers together, maybe not even all of them, and this would work. Getting ten or twelve dissidents together is a whole lot easier than assembling a hundred.”

  “Easier, but hardly easy, Dan,” General Hilton objected. “For Christ’s sake, they have at least one political officer aboard, plus moles from their intelligence outfits. You really think a Party hack would go along with this?”

  “Why not? You heard Ryan—that frigate’s mutiny was led by the political officer.”

  “Yeah, and since then they have shaken up that whole directorate,” Hilton responded.

  “We have defecting KGB types all the time, all good Party members,” Foster said. Clearly he liked the idea of a defecting Russian sub.

  The president took all this in, then turned to Ryan. “Dr. Ryan, you have managed to persuade me that your scenario is a theoretical possibility. Now, what does the CIA think we ought to do about it?”

  “Mr. President, I’m an intelligence analyst, not—”

  “I know very well what you are, Dr. Ryan. I’ve read enough of your work. I can see you have an opinion. I want to hear it.”

  Ryan didn’t even look at Judge Moore. “We grab her, sir.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No, Mr. President, probably not. However, Ramius could surface off the Virginia Capes in a day or two and request political asylum. We ought to be prepared for that contingency, sir, and my opinion is that we should welcome him with open arms.” Ryan saw nods from all the chiefs. Finally somebody was on his side.

  “You’ve stuck your neck out on this one,” the president observed kindly.

  “Sir, you asked me for an opinion. It will probably not be that easy. These Alfas and Victors appear to be racing for our coast, almost certainly with the intention of establishing an interdiction force—effectively a blockade of our Atlantic coast.”

  “Blockade,” the president said, “an ugly word.”

  “Judge,” General Hilton said, “I suppose it’s occurred to you that this is a piece of disinformation aimed at blowing whatever highly placed source generated this report?”

  Judge Moore affected a sleepy smile. “It has, Gener’l. If this is a sham, it’s a damned elaborate one. Dr. Ryan was directed to prepare this briefing on the assumption that this data is genuine. If it is not, the responsibility is mine.” God bless you, Judge, Ryan said to himself, wondering just how gold-plated the WILLOW source was. The judge went on, “In any case, gentlemen, we will have to respond to this Soviet activity whether our analysis is accurate or not.”

  “Are you getting confirmation on this, Judge?” the president asked.

  “Yes, sir, we are working on that.”

  “Good.” The president was sitting straight, and Ryan noted his voice become crisper. “The judge is correct. We have to react to this, whatever they’re really up to. Gentlemen, the Soviet Navy is heading for our coast. What are we doing about it?”

  Admiral Foster answered first. “Mr. President, our fleet is pulling to sea at this moment. Everything that’ll steam is out already, or will be by tomorrow night. We’ve recalled our carriers from the South Atlantic, and we are redeploying our nuclear submarines to deal with this threat. We began this morning to saturate the air over their surface force with P-3C Orion patrol aircraft, assisted by British Nimrods operating out of Scotland. General?” Foster turned to Hilton.

  “At this moment we have E-3A Sentry AWACS-type aircraft circling them along with Dan’s Orions, both accompanied by F-15 Eagle fighters out of Iceland. By this time Friday we’ll have a squadron of B-52s operating from Loring Air Base in Maine. These will be armed with Harpoon air-to-surface missiles, and they’ll be orbiting the Soviets in relays. Nothing aggressive, you understand,” Hilton smiled. “Just to let them know we’re interested. If they continue to come this way, we will redeploy some tactical air assets to the East Coast, and, subject to your approval, we can activate some national guard and reserve squadrons quietly.”

  “Just how will you do that quietly?” Pelt asked.

  “Dr. Pelt, we have a number of guard outfits scheduled to run through our Red Flag facility at Nellis in Nevada starting this Sunday, a routine training rotation. They go to Maine instead of Nevada. The bases are pretty big, and they belong to SAC.” Hilton referred to the Strategic Air Command. “They have good security.”

  “How many carriers do we have handy?” the president asked.

  “Only one at the moment, sir, Kennedy. Saratoga stripped a main turbine last week, and it’ll take a month to replace. Nimitz and America are both in the South Atlantic right now, America coming back from the Indian Ocean, Nimitz heading out to the Pacific. Bad luck. Can we recall a carrier from the eastern Med?”

  “No.” The president shook his head. “This Cyprus thing is still too sensitive. Do we really need to? If anything…untoward happens, can we handle their surface force with what we have at hand?”

  “Yes, sir!” General Hilton said at once. “Dr. Ryan said it: the Atlantic is our ocean. The air force alone will have over five hundred aircraft designated for this operation, and another three or four hundred from the navy. If any sort of shooting match develops, that Soviet fleet will have an exciting and short life.”

  “We will try to avoid that, of course,” the president said quietly. “The first press reports surfaced this morning. We had a call from Bud Wilkins of the Times right before lunch. If the American people find out too soon what the scope of this is…Jeff?”

  “Mr. President, let’s assume for the moment that Dr. Ryan’s analysis is correct. I don’t see what we can do about it,” Pelt said.

  “What?” Ryan blurted. “I, ah, beg your pardon, sir.”

  “We can’t exactly steal a Russian
missile sub.”

  “Why not!” Foster demanded. “Hell, we have enough of their tanks and aircraft.” The other chiefs agreed.

  “An aircraft with a crew of one or two is one thing, Admiral. A nuclear-powered submarine with twenty-six rockets and a crew of over a hundred is something else. Naturally, we can give asylum to the defecting officers.”

  “So, you’re saying that if the thing does come sailing into Norfolk,” Hilton joined in, “we give it back! Christ, man, it carries two hundred warheads! They just might use those goddamned things against us someday, you know. Are you sure you want to give them back?”

  “That’s a billion-dollar asset, General,” Pelt said diffidently.

  Ryan saw the president smile. He was said to like lively discussions. “Judge, what are the legal ramifications?”

  “That’s admiralty law, Mr. President.” Moore looked uneasy for once. “I’ve never had an admiralty practice, takes me all the way back to law school. Admiralty is jus gentium—the same legal codes theoretically apply to all countries. American and British admiralty courts routinely cite each other’s rulings. But as for the rights that attach to a mutinous crew—I have no idea.”

  “Judge, we are not dealing with mutiny or piracy,” Foster noted. “The correct term is barratry, I believe. Mutiny is when the crew rebels against lawful authority. Gross misconduct of the officers is called barratry. Anyway, I hardly think we need to attach legal folderol to a situation involving nuclear weapons.”

  “We might, Admiral,” the president mused. “As Jeff said, this is a highly valuable asset, legally their property, and they will know we have her. I think we are agreed that not all the crew is likely to be in on this. If so, those not party to the mutiny—barratry, whatever—will want to return home after it’s all over. And we’ll have to let them go, won’t we?”

  “Have to?” General Maxwell was doodling on a pad. “Have to?”

  “General,” the president said firmly, “we will not, repeat not, be party to the imprisonment or murder of men whose only desire is to return to home and family. Is that understood?” He looked around the table. “If they know we have her, they’ll want her back. And they will know we have her from the crewmen who want to return home. In any case, big as this thing is, how could we hide her?”