The Hunt for Red October

by Tom Clancy

  “Captain Borodin, do you agree?” Mancuso asked.

  Borodin felt as if he were being pushed too fast, even though the suggestion made perfectly good sense. “Yes, have your man do it.”

  “Skipper, how long we gonna be here?” Jones asked.

  “A day or two, why?”

  “Sir, this boat looks kinda thin on creature comforts, you know? How ’bout I grab a TV and a tape machine? Give ’em something to look at, you know, sort of give ’em a quick look at the USA?”

  Mancuso laughed. They wanted to learn everything they could about this boat, but they had plenty of time for that, and Jones’ idea looked like a good way to ease the tension. On the other hand, he didn’t want to incite a mutiny on his own sub. “Okay, take the one from the wardroom.”

  “Right, Skipper.”

  The Zodiac delivered the Pogy’s corpsman a few minutes later, and Jones took the boat back to the Dallas. Gradually the officers were beginning to engage in conversation. Two Russians were trying to talk to Mannion and were looking at his hair. They had never met a black man before.

  “Captain Borodin, I have orders to take something out of the control room that will identify—I mean, something that comes from this boat.” Mancuso pointed. “Can I take that depth gauge? I can have one of my men rig a substitute.” The gauge, he saw, had a number.

  “For what reason?”

  “Beats me, but those are my orders.”

  “Yes,” Borodin replied.

  Mancuso ordered one of his chiefs to perform the job. The chief pulled a crescent wrench from his pocket and removed the nut holding the needle and dial in place.

  “This is a little bigger than ours, Skipper, but not by much. I think we have a spare. I can flip it backwards and scribe in the markings, okay?”

  Mancuso handed his radio over. “Call it in and have Jonesy bring the spare back with him.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.” The chief put the needle back in place after setting the dial on the deck.

  The Sea Stallion did not attempt to land, though the pilot was tempted. The deck was almost large enough to try. As it was, the helicopter hovered a few feet over the missile deck, and the doctor leaped into the arms of two seamen. His supplies were tossed down a moment later. The colonel remained in the back of the chopper and slid the door shut. The bird turned slowly to move back southwest, its massive rotor raising spray from the waters of Pamlico Sound.

  “Was that what I think it was?” the pilot asked over the intercom.

  “Wasn’t it backwards? I thought missile subs had the missiles aft of the sail. Those were in front of the sail, weren’t they? I mean, wasn’t that the rudder sticking up behind the sail?” the copilot responded quizzically.

  “It was a Russian sub!” the pilot said.

  “What?” It was too late to see, they were already two miles away. “Those were our guys on the deck. They weren’t Russians.”

  “Son of a bitch!” the major swore wonderingly. And he couldn’t say a thing. The colonel of division intelligence had been damned specific about that: “You don’t see nothin’, you don’t hear nothin’, you don’t think nothin’, and you goddamned well don’t ever say nothin’.”

  “I’m Doctor Noyes,” the commander said to Mancuso in the control room. He had never been on a submarine before, and when he looked around he saw a compartment full of instruments all in a foreign language. “What ship is this?”

  “Krazny Oktyabr,” Borodin said, coming over. In the centerpiece of his cap there was a gleaming red star.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Noyes demanded.

  “Doc,” Ryan took him by the arm, “you have two patients aft. Why not let’s worry about them?”

  Noyes followed him aft to sick bay. “What’s going on here?” he persisted more quietly.

  “The Russians just lost a submarine,” Ryan explained, “and now she belongs to us. And if you tell anybody—”

  “I read you, but I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t have to believe me. What kind of cutter are you?”

  “Thoracic.”

  “Good,” Ryan turned into sick bay, “you have a gunshot wound victim who needs you bad.”

  Williams was lying naked on the table. A sailor came in with an armful of medical supplies and set them on Petrov’s desk. The October’s medical locker had a supply of frozen plasma, and the two corpsmen already had two units running into the lieutenant. A chest tube was in, draining into a vacuum bottle.

  “We got a nine-millimeter in this man’s chest,” one of the corpsmen said after introducing himself and his partner. “He’s had a chest tube in the last ten hours, they tell me. The head looks worse than it is. Right pupil is a little blown, but no big deal. The chest is bad, sir. You’d better take a listen.”

  “Vitals?” Noyes fished in his bag for a stethoscope.

  “Heart is 110 and thready. Blood pressure’s eighty over forty.”

  Noyes moved his stethoscope around Williams’ chest, frowning. “Heart’s in the wrong place. We have a left tension pneumothorax. There must be a quart of fluid in there, and it sounds like he’s heading for congestive failure.” Noyes turned to Ryan. “You get out of here. I’ve got a chest to crack.”

  “Take care of him, Doc. He’s a good man.”

  “Aren’t they all,” Noyes observed, stripping off his jacket. “Let’s get scrubbed, people.”

  Ryan wondered if a prayer would help. Noyes looked and talked like a surgeon. Ryan hoped he was. He went aft to the captain’s cabin, where Ramius was sleeping with the drugs he’d been given. The leg had stopped bleeding, and evidently one of the corpsmen had checked on it. Noyes could work on him next. Ryan went forward.

  Borodin felt he had lost control and didn’t like it, though it was something of a relief. Two weeks of constant tension plus the nerve-wrenching change in plans had shaken the officer more than he would have believed. The situation now was unpleasant—the Americans were trying to be kind, but they were so damned overpowering! At least the Red October’s officers were not in danger.

  Twenty minutes later the Zodiac was back again. Two sailors went topside to unload a few hundred pounds of frozen food, then helped Jones with his electronic gear. It took several minutes to get everything squared away, and the seamen who took the food forward came back shaken after finding two stiff bodies and a third frozen solid. There had not been time to move the two recent casualties.

  “Got everything, Skipper,” Jones reported. He handed the depth gauge dial to the chief.

  “What is all of this?” Borodin asked.

  “Captain, I got the modulator to make the gertrude.” Jones held up a small box. “This other stuff is a little color TV, a video cassette recorder, and some movie tapes. The skipper thought you gentlemen might want something to relax with, to get to know us a little, you know?”

  “Movies?” Borodin shook his head. “Cinema movies?”

  “Sure,” Mancuso chuckled. “What did you bring, Jonesy?”

  “Well, sir, I got E.T., Star Wars, Big Jake, and Hondo.” Clearly Jones wanted to be careful what parts of America he introduced the Russians to.

  “My apologies, Captain. My crewman has limited taste in movies.”

  At the moment Borodin would have settled for The Battleship Potemkin. The fatigue was really hitting him hard.

  The cook bustled aft with an armload of groceries. “I’ll have coffee in a few minutes, sir,” he said to Borodin on his way to the galley.

  “I would like something to eat. None of us has eaten in a day,” Borodin said.

  “Food!” Mancuso called aft.

  “Aye, Skipper. Let me figure this galley out.”

  Mannion checked his watch. “Twenty minutes, sir.”

  “We have everything we need aboard?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jones bypassed the pulse control on the sonar amplifier and wired in the modulator. It was even easier than he’d expected. He had taken a radio microp
hone from the Dallas along with everything else and now connected it to the sonar set before powering the system up. He had to wait for the set to warm up. Jones hadn’t seen this many tubes since he’d gone out on TV repair jobs with his father, and that had been a long time ago.

  “Dallas, this is Jonesy, do you copy?”

  “Aye.” The reply was scratchy, like a taxicab radio.

  “Thanks. Out.” He switched off. “It works. That was pretty easy, wasn’t it?”

  Enlisted man, hell! And not even trained on Soviet equipment! the October’s electronics officer thought. It never occurred to him that this piece of equipment was a near copy of an obsolete American FM system. “How long have you been a sonarman?”

  “Three and a half years, sir. Since I dropped out of college.”

  “You learn all this in three years?” the officer asked sharply.

  Jones shrugged. “What’s the big deal, sir? I’ve been foolin’ with radios and stuff since I was a kid. You mind if I play some music, sir?”

  Jones had decided to be especially nice. He had only one tape of a Russian composer, the Nutcracker Suite, and had brought that along with four Bachs. Jones liked to hear music while he prayed over circuit diagrams. The young sonarman was in Hog Heaven. All the Russian sets he had listened to for three years—now he had their schematics, their hardware, and the time to figure them all out. Bugayev continued to watch in amazement as Jones’ fingers did their ballet through the manual pages to the music of Tchaikovsky.

  “Time to dive, sir,” Mannion said in control.

  “Very well. With your permission, Captain Borodin, I will assist with the vents. All hatches and openings are…shut.” The diving board used the same light-array system as American boats, Mancuso noticed.

  Mancuso took stock of the situation one last time. Butler and his four most senior petty officers were already tending to the nuclear tea kettle aft. The situation looked pretty good, considering. The only thing that could really go badly wrong would be for the October’s officers to change their minds. The Dallas would be keeping the missile sub under constant sonar observation. If she moved, the Dallas had a ten-knot speed advantage with which to block the channel.

  “The way I see it, Captain, we are rigged for dive,” Mancuso said.

  Borodin nodded and sounded the diving alarm. It was a buzzer, just like on American boats. Mancuso, Mannion, and the Russian officer worked the complex vent controls. The Red October began her slow descent. In five minutes she was resting on the bottom, with seventy feet of water over the top of her sail.

  The White House

  Pelt was on the phone to the Soviet embassy at three in the morning. “Alex, this is Jeffrey Pelt.”

  “How are you, Dr. Pelt? I must offer my thanks and that of the Soviet people for your action to save our sailor. I was informed a few minutes ago that he is now conscious, and that he is expected to recover fully.”

  “Yes, I just learned that myself. What’s his name, by the way?” Pelt wondered if he had awakened Arbatov. It didn’t sound like it.

  “Andre Katyskin, a cook petty officer from Leningrad.”

  “Good, Alex, I am informed that USS Pigeon has rescued nearly the entire crew of another Soviet submarine off the Carolinas. Her name, evidently, was Red October. That’s the good news, Alex. The bad news is that the vessel exploded and sank before we could get them all off. Most of the officers, and two of our officers, were lost.”

  “When was this?”

  “Very early yesterday morning. Sorry about the delay, but Pigeon had trouble with the radio, as a result of the underwater explosion, they say. You know how that sort of thing can happen.”

  “Indeed.” Pelt had to admire the response, not a trace of irony. “Where are they now?”

  “The Pigeon is sailing to Charleston, South Carolina. We’ll have your crewmen flown directly to Washington from there.”

  “And this submarine exploded? You are sure?”

  “Yeah, one of the crewmen said they had a major reactor accident. It was just good luck that Pigeon was there. She was heading to the Virginia coast to look at the other one you lost. I think your navy needs a little work, Alex,” Pelt observed.

  “I will pass that along to Moscow, Doctor,” Arbatov responded dryly. “Can you tell us where this happened?”

  “I can do better than that. We have a ship taking a deep-diving research sub down to look for the wreckage. If you want, you can have your navy fly a man to Norfolk, and we’ll fly him out to check it for you. Fair enough?”

  “You say you lost two officers?” Arbatov played for time, surprised at the offer.

  “Yes, both rescue people. We did get a hundred men off, Alex,” Pelt said defensively. “That’s something.”

  “Indeed it is, Dr. Pelt. I must cable Moscow for instructions. I will be back to you. You are at your office?”

  “Correct. Bye, Alex.” He hung up and looked at the president. “Do I pass, boss?”

  “Work a little bit on the sincerity, Jeff.” The president was sprawled in a leather chair, a robe over his pajamas. “They’ll bite?”

  “They’ll bite. They sure as hell want to confirm the destruction of the sub. Question is, can we fool ’em?”

  “Foster seems to think so. It sounds plausible enough.”

  “Hmph. Well, we have her, don’t we?” Pelt observed.

  “Yep, I guess that story about the GRU agent was wrong, or else they kicked him off with everybody else. I want to see that Captain Ramius. Jeez! Pulling a reactor scare, no wonder he got everybody off the ship!”

  The Pentagon

  Skip Tyler was in the CNO’s office trying to relax in a chair. The coast guard station on the inlet had had a low-light television, the tape from which had been flown by helicopter to Cherry Point and from there by Phantom jet fighter to Andrews. Now it was in the hands of a courier whose automobile was just pulling up at the Pentagon’s main entrance.

  “I have a package to hand deliver to Admiral Foster,” an ensign announced a few minutes later. Foster’s flag secretary pointed him to the door.

  “Good morning, sir! This is for you, sir.” The ensign handed Foster the wrapped cassette.

  “Thank you. Dismissed.”

  Foster inserted the cassette in the tape player atop his office television. The set was already on, and the picture appeared in several seconds.

  Tyler was standing beside the CNO as it focused. “Yep.”

  “Yep,” Foster agreed.

  The picture was lousy—no other word for it. The low-light television system did not give a very sharp picture since it amplified all of the ambient light equally. This tended to wash out many details. But what they saw was enough: a very large missile submarine whose sail was much farther aft than the sails on anything a Western country made. She dwarfed the Dallas and Pogy. They watched the screen without a word for the next fifteen minutes. Except for the wobbly camera, the picture was about as lively as a test pattern.

  “Well,” Foster said as the tape ended, “we got us a Russian boomer.”

  “How ’bout that?” Tyler grinned.

  “Skip, you were up for command of Los Angeles, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We owe you for this, Commander, we owe you a lot. I did some checking the other day. An officer injured in the line of duty does not necessarily have to retire unless he is demonstrably unfit for duty. An accident while returning from working on your boat is line of duty, I think, and we’ve had a few ship commanders who were short a leg. I’ll go to the president myself on this, son. It will mean a year’s work getting back in the groove, but if you still want your command, by God, I’ll get it for you.”

  Tyler sat down for that. It would mean being fitted for a new leg, something he’d been considering for months, and a few weeks getting used to it. Then a year—a good year—relearning everything he needed to know before he could go to sea…He shook his head. “Thank you, Admiral. You don’t know what that means
to me—but, no. I’m past that now. I have a different life, and different responsibilities now, and I’d just be taking someone else’s slot. Tell you what, you let me get a look at that boomer, and we’re even.”

  “That I can guarantee.” Foster had hoped he’d respond that way, had been nearly sure of it. It was too bad, though. Tyler, he thought, would have been a good candidate for his own flag except for the leg. Well, nobody ever said the world was fair.

  The Red October

  “You guys seem to have things under control,” Ryan observed. “Does anybody mind if I flake out somewhere?”

  “Flake out?” Borodin asked.

  “Sleep.”

  “Ah, take Dr. Petrov’s cabin, across from the medical office.”

  On his way aft Ryan looked in Borodin’s cabin and found the vodka bottle that had been liberated. It didn’t have much taste, but it was smooth enough. Petrov’s bunk was not very wide or very soft. Ryan was past caring. He took a long swallow and lay down in his uniform, which was already so greasy and dirty as to be beyond hope. He was asleep in five minutes.

  The Sea Cliff

  The air-purifier system was not working properly, Lieutenant Sven Johnsen thought. If his sinus cold had lasted a few more days he might not have noticed. The Sea Cliff was just passing ten thousand feet, and they couldn’t tinker with the system until they surfaced. It was not dangerous—the environmental control systems had as many built-in redundancies as the Space Shuttle—just a nuisance.

  “I’ve never been so deep,” Captain Igor Kaganovich said conversationally. Getting him here had been complicated. It had required a Helix helicopter from the Kiev to the Tarawa, then a U.S. Navy Sea King to Norfolk. Another helicopter had taken him to the USS Austin, which was heading for 33N 75W at twenty knots. The Austin was a landing ship dock, a large vessel whose aft end was a covered well. She was usually used for landing craft, but today she carried the Sea Cliff, a three-man submarine that had been flown down from Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

  “Does take some getting used to,” Johnsen agreed, “but when you get down to it, five hundred feet, ten thousand feet, doesn’t make much difference. A hull fracture would kill you just as fast, just down here there’d be less residue for the next boat to try and recover.”