The Hunt for Red October

by Tom Clancy

  The Invincible

  “How far is she from us?” Ryan asked.

  “Two hundred miles. We can be there in ten hours.” Captain Hunter marked the position on the chart. “USS Pogy is coming east, and she ought to be able to rendezvous with Dallas an hour or so after we do. This will put us about a hundred miles east of this surface group when October arrives. Bloody hell, Kiev and Kirov are a hundred miles east and west of her.”

  “You suppose her captain knows it?” Ryan looked at the chart, measuring the distances with his eyes.

  “Unlikely. He’s deep, and their passive sonars are not as good as ours. Sea conditions are against it also. A twenty-knot surface wind can play havoc with sonar, even that deep.”

  “We have to warn him off.” Admiral White looked at the ops dispatch. “‘Without using acoustical devices.’”

  “How the hell do you do that? You can’t reach down that far with a radio,” Ryan noted. “Even I know that. My God, this guy’s come four thousand miles, and he’s going to get killed within sight of his objective.”

  “How to communicate with a submarine?”

  Commander Barclay straightened up. “Gentlemen, we are not trying to communicate with a submarine, we are trying to communicate with a man.”

  “What are you thinking?” Hunter asked.

  “What do we know about Marko Ramius?” Barclay’s eyes narrowed.

  “He’s a cowboy, typical submarine commander, thinks he can walk on water,” Captain Carstairs said.

  “Who spent most of his time in attack submarines,” Barclay added. “Marko’s bet his life that he could sneak into an American port undetected by anyone. We have to shake that confidence to warn him off.”

  “We have to talk to him first,” Ryan said sharply.

  “And so we shall,” Barclay smiled, the thought now fully formed in his mind. “He’s a former attack submarine commander. He’ll still be thinking about how to attack his enemies, and how does a sub commander do that?”

  “Well?” Ryan demanded.

  Barclay’s answer was the obvious one. They discussed his idea for another hour, then Ryan transmitted it to Washington for approval. A rapid exchange of technical information followed. The Invincible would have to make the rendezvous in daylight, and there was not time for that. The operation was set back twelve hours. The Pogy joined formation with the Invincible, standing as sonar sentry twenty miles to her east. An hour before midnight, the ELF transmitter in northern Michigan transmitted a message: “G.” Twenty minutes later, the Dallas approached the surface to get her orders.

  THE THIRTEENTH DAY

  WEDNESDAY, 15 DECEMBER

  The Dallas

  “Crazy Ivan,” Jones called out again, “turning to port!”

  “Okay, all stop,” Mancuso ordered, holding a dispatch in his hand which he had been rereading for hours. He was not pleased with it.

  “All stop, sir,” the helmsman responded.

  “All back full.”

  “All back full, sir.” The helmsman dialed in the command and turned, his face a question.

  Throughout the Dallas the crew heard noise, too much noise as poppet valves opened to vent steam onto the reverse turbine blades, trying to spin the propeller the wrong way. It made for instant vibration and cavitation noises aft.

  “Right full rudder.”

  “Right full rudder, aye.”

  “Conn, sonar, we are cavitating,” Jones spoke over the intercom.

  “Very well, sonar!” Mancuso answered sharply. He did not understand his new orders, and things he didn’t understand made him angry.

  “Speed down to four knots,” Lieutenant Goodman reported.

  “Rudder amidships, all stop.”

  “Rudder amidships aye, all stop aye,” the helmsman responded at once. He didn’t want the captain barking at him. “Sir, my rudder is amidships.”

  “Jesus!” Jones said in the sonar room. “What’s the skipper doin’?”

  Mancuso was in sonar a second later.

  “Still doing the turn to port, Cap’n. He’s astern of us ’cause of the turn we made,” Jones observed as neutrally as he could. It was close to an accusation, Mancuso noticed.

  “Flushing the game, Jonesy,” Mancuso said coolly.

  You’re the boss, Jones thought, smart enough not to say anything else. The captain looked as though he was going to snap somebody’s head off, and Jones had just used up a month’s worth of tolerance. He switched his phones to the towed array plug.

  “Engine noises diminishing, sir. He’s slowing down.” Jones paused. He had to report the next part. “Sir, it’s a fair guess he heard us.”

  “He was supposed to,” Mancuso said.

  The Red October

  “Captain, an enemy submarine,” the michman said urgently.

  “Enemy?” Ramius asked.

  “American. He must have been trailing us, and he had to back down to avoid a collision when we turned. Definitely an American, broad on the port bow, range under a kilometer, I think.” He handed Ramius his phones.

  “688,” Ramius said to Borodin. “Damn! He must have stumbled across us in the past two hours. Bad luck.”

  The Dallas

  “Okay, Jonesy, yankee-search him.” Mancuso gave the order for an active sonar search personally. The Dallas had slewed farther around before coming to a near halt.

  Jones hesitated for a moment, still reading the reactor plant noise on his passive systems. Reaching, he powered up the active transducers in the BQQ-5’s main sphere at the bow.

  Ping! A wave front of sound energy was directed at the target.

  Pong! The wave was reflected back off the hard steel hull and returned to the Dallas.

  “Range to target 1,050 yards,” Jones said. The returning pulse was processed through the BC-10 computer and showed some rough details. “Target configuration is consistent with a Typhoon-class boomer. Angle on the bow seventy or so. No doppler. He’s stopped.” Six more pings confirmed this.

  “Secure pinging,” Mancuso said. There was some small satisfaction in learning that he had elevated the contact correctly. But not much.

  Jones killed power to the system. What the hell did I have to do that for? he wondered. He’d already done everything but read the number off her stern.

  The Red October

  Every man on the October knew now that they had been found. The lash of the sonar waves had resounded through the hull. It was not a sound a submariner liked to hear. Certainly not on top of a troublesome reactor, Ramius thought. Perhaps he could make use of this…

  The Dallas

  “Somebody on the surface,” Jones said suddenly. “Where the hell did they come from? Skipper, there was nothing, nothing, a minute ago, and now I’m getting engine sounds. Two, maybe more—make that two ’cans…and something bigger. Like they were sitting up there waiting for us. A minute ago they were sitting still. Damn! I didn’t hear a thing.”

  The Invincible

  “We timed that rather nicely,” Admiral White said.

  “Lucky,” Ryan observed.

  “Luck is part of the game, Jack.”

  HMS Bristol was the first to pick up the sound of the two submarines and of the turn the Red October had made. Even at five miles the subs were barely readable. The Crazy Ivan maneuver had terminated three miles away, and the surface ships had been able to get good position fixes by reading off the Dallas’ active sonar emissions.

  “Two helicopters en route, sir,” Captain Hunter reported. “They’ll be on station in another minute.”

  “Signal Bristol and Fife to stay to windward of us. I want Invincible between them and the contact.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Hunter relayed the order to the communications room. The destroyermen on the escorts would find that order peculiar, using a carrier to screen destroyers.

  A few seconds later a pair of Sea King helicopters stopped and hovered fifty feet over the surface, letting down dipping sonars at the end of a cable as t
hey struggled to hold position. These sonars were far less powerful than ship-carried sonars and had distinctive characteristics. The data they developed was transmitted by digital link to the Invincible’s command center.

  The Dallas

  “Limeys,” Jones said at once. “That’s a helicopter set, the 195, I think. That means the big ship off to the south is one of their baby carriers, sir, with a two-can escort.”

  Mancuso nodded. “HMS Invincible. She was over our side of the lake for NIFTY DOLPHIN. That means the Brit varsity, their best ASW operators.”

  “The big one’s moving this way, sir. Turns indicate ten knots. The choppers—two of them—have both of us. No other subs around that I hear.”

  The Invincible

  “Positive sonar contact,” said the metal speaker. “Two submarines, range two miles from Invincible, bearing zero-two-zero.”

  “Now for the hard part,” Admiral White said.

  Ryan and the four Royal Navy officers who were privy to the mission were on the flag bridge, with the fleet ASW officer in the command center below, as the Invincible steamed slowly north, slightly to the left of the direct course to the contacts. All five swept the contact area with powerful binoculars.

  “Come on, Captain Ramius,” Ryan said quietly. “You’re supposed to be a hotshot. Prove it.”

  The Red October

  Ramius was back in his control room scowling at his chart. A stray American Los Angeles stumbling onto him was one thing, but he had run into a small task force. English ships, at that. Why? Probably an exercise. The Americans and the English often work together, and pure accident had walked October right into them. Well. He’d have to evade before he could get on with what he wanted to do. It was that simple. Or was it? A hunter submarine, a carrier, and two destroyers after him. What else? He would have to find out if he were going to lose them all. This would take the best part of a day. But now he’d have to see what he was up against. Besides, it would show them that he was confident, that he could hunt them if he wished.

  “Borodin, bring the ship to periscope depth. Battle stations.”

  The Invincible

  “Come up, Marko,” Barclay urged. “We have a message for you, old boy.”

  “Helicopter three reports contact is coming up,” the speaker said.

  “All right!” Ryan pounded his hand on the rail.

  White lifted a phone. “Recall one of the helicopters.”

  The distance to the Red October was down to a mile and a half. One of the Sea Kings lifted up and circled around, reeling in its sonar transducer.

  “Contact depth is five hundred feet, coming up slowly.”

  The Red October

  Borodin was pumping water slowly from the October’s trim tanks. The missile submarine increased speed to four knots, and most of the force required to change her depth came from the diving planes. The starpom was careful to bring her up slowly, and Ramius had her heading directly towards the Invincible.

  The Invincible

  “Hunter, are you up on your Morse?” Admiral White inquired.

  “I believe so, Admiral,” Hunter answered. Everyone was getting excited. What a chance this was!

  Ryan swallowed hard. In the past few hours, while the Invincible had been lying still on the rolling sea, his stomach had really gone bad. The pills the ship’s doctor had given him helped, but now the excitement was making it worse. There was an eighty-foot sheer drop from the flag bridge to the sea. Well, he thought, if I have to puke, there’s nothing in the way. Screw it.

  The Dallas

  “Hull popping noises, sir,” Jones said. “Think he’s heading up.”

  “Up?” Mancuso wondered for a second. “Yeah, that fits. He’s a cowboy. He wants to see what he’s up against before he tries to evade. That fits. I bet he doesn’t know where we’ve been the past few days.” The captain went forward to the attack center.

  “Looks like he’s going up, Skipper,” Mannion said, watching the attack director. “Dumb.” Mannion had his own opinion of submarine captains depending on their periscopes. Too many of them spent too much time looking out at the world. He wondered how much of this was an implicit reaction to the enforced confinement of submarining, something just to make sure that there really was a world up there, to make sure the instruments were correct. Entirely human, Mannion thought, but it could make you vulnerable…

  “We go up, too, Skipper?”

  “Yeah, slow and easy.”

  The Invincible

  The sky was half-filled with white, fleecy clouds, their undersides gray with the threat of rain. A twenty-knot wind was blowing from the southwest, and a six-foot sea was running, its dark waves streaked with whitecaps. Ryan saw the Bristol and Fife holding station to windward. Their captains, no doubt, were muttering a few choice words at this disposition. The American escorts, which had been detached the previous day, were now sailing to rendezvous with the USS New Jersey.

  White was talking into the phone again. “Commander, I want to know the instant we get a radar return from the target area. Train every set aboard onto that patch of ocean. I also want to know of any, repeat any, sonar signals from the area…That is correct. Depth of target? Very well. Recall the second helicopter, I want both on station to windward.”

  They had agreed that the best method of passing the message would be to use a blinker light. Only someone placed in the direct line of sight would be able to read the signal. Hunter moved to the light, holding a sheet of paper Ryan had given him. The yeomen and signalmen normally stationed here were gone.

  The Red October

  “Thirty meters, Comrade Captain,” Borodin reported. The battle watch was set in the control center.

  “Periscope,” Ramius said calmly. The oiled metal tube hissed upward on hydraulic pressure. The captain handed his cap to the junior officer of the watch as he bent to look into the eyepiece. “So, we have here three imperialist ships. HMS Invincible. Such a name for a ship!” He scoffed for his audience. “Two escorts, Bristol, and a County-class cruiser.”

  The Invincible

  “Periscope, starboard bow!” the speaker announced.

  “I see it!” Barclay’s hand shot out to point. “There it is!” Ryan strained to find it. “I got it.” It was like a small broomstick sitting vertically in the water, about a mile away. As the waves rolled past, the bottommost visible part of the periscope flared out.

  “Hunter,” White said quietly. To Ryan’s left the captain began jerking his hand on the lever that controlled the light shutters.

  The Red October

  Ramius didn’t see it at first. He was making a complete circle of the horizon, checking for any other ships or aircraft. When he finished the circuit, the flashing light caught his eye. Quickly he tried to interpret the signal. It took him a moment to realize it was pointed right at him.

  AAA AAA AAA RED OCTOBER RED OCTOBER CAN YOU READ THIS CAN YOU READ THIS PLEASE PING US ONE TIME ON ACTIVE SONAR IF YOU CAN READ THIS PLEASE PING US ONE TIME ON ACTIVE SONAR IF YOU CAN READ THIS AAA AAA AAA RED OCTOBER RED OCTOBER CAN YOU READ THIS CAN YOU READ THIS

  The message kept repeating. The signal was jerky and awkward. Ramius didn’t notice this. He translated the English signal in his head, at first thinking it was a signal to the American submarine. His knuckles went white on the periscope hand grips as he translated the message in his mind.

  “Borodin,” he said finally, after reading the message a fourth time, “we set up a practice firing solution on Invincible. Damn, the periscope rangefinder is sticking. A single ping, Comrade. Just one, for range.”

  Ping!

  The Invincible

  “One ping from the contact area, sir, sounds Soviet,” the speaker reported.

  White lifted his phone. “Thank you. Keep us informed.” He set it back down. “Well, gentlemen…”

  “He did it!” Ryan sang out. “Send the rest, for Christ’s sake!”

  “At once.” Hunter grinned like a madman.


  RED OCTOBER RED OCTOBER YOUR WHOLE FLEET IS CHASING AFTER YOU YOUR WHOLE FLEET IS CHASING AFTER YOU YOUR PATH IS BLOCKED BY NUMEROUS VESSELS NUMEROUS ATTACK SUBMARINES ARE WAITING TO ATTACK YOU REPEAT NUMEROUS ATTACK SUBMARINES ARE WAITING TO ATTACK YOU PROCEED TO RENDEZVOUS 33N 75W WE HAVE SHIPS THERE WAITING FOR YOU REPEAT PROCEED TO RENDEZVOUS 33N 75W WE HAVE SHIPS THERE WAITING FOR YOU IF YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE PLEASE PING US AGAIN ONE TIME

  The Red October

  “Distance to target, Borodin?” Ramius asked, wishing he had more time as the message was repeated again and again.

  “Two thousand meters, Comrade Captain. A nice, fat target for us if we…” The starpom’s voice trailed off as he saw the look on his commander’s face.

  They know our name, Ramius was thinking, they know our name! How can this be? They knew where to find us—exactly! How? What can the Americans have? How long has the Los Angeles been trailing us? Decide—you must decide!

  “Comrade, one more ping on the target, just one.”

  The Invincible

  “One more ping, Admiral.”

  “Thank you.” White looked at Ryan. “Well, Jack, it would seem that your intelligence estimate was indeed correct. Jolly good.”

  “Jolly good my ass, my Lord Earl! I was right. Son of a bitch!” Ryan’s hands flew up in the air, his seasickness forgotten. He calmed down. The occasion called for more decorum. “Excuse me, Admiral. We have some things to do.”

  The Dallas

  Whole fleet is chasing after you…Proceed to 33N 75W. What the hell was going on? Mancuso wondered, catching the end of the second signal.

  “Conn, sonar. Getting hull popping noises from the target. His depth is changing. Engine noise increasing.”

  “Down scope.” Mancuso lifted the phone. “Very well, sonar. Anything else, Jones?”

  “No, sir. The helicopters are gone, and there aren’t any emissions from the surface ships. What gives, sir?”

  “Beats me.” Mancuso shook his head as Mannion brought the Dallas back in pursuit of the Red October. What the hell was happening here? the captain wondered. Why was a Brit carrier signaling to a Russian submarine, and why were they sending her to a rendezvous off the Carolinas? Whose subs were blocking her path? It couldn’t be. No way. It just couldn’t be…