by Tom Clancy
Merry Christmas, kids, your daddy just got blown up. Sorry there’s no body to bury, but you see…It occurred to Ryan to pray briefly — but for what? For help in killing another man? It’s like this, Lord…
“Still with me, Captain?” he called out.
“Da.”
That would give the GRU agent something to worry about. Ryan hoped the captain’s presence would force the man to shade more to the port side of his tube. Ryan ducked and rushed around the port side of his. Three to go. Ramius followed suit on his side. He drew a shot, but Ryan heard it miss.
He had to stop, to rest. He was hyperventilating. It was the wrong time for that. He had been a marine lieutenant — for three whole months before the chopper crashed — and he was supposed to know what to do! He had led men. But it was a whole lot easier to lead forty men with rifles than it was to fight all by himself.
Think!
“Maybe we can make a deal,” Ryan suggested.
“Ah, yes, we can decide which ear the shot comes in.”
“Maybe you’d like being an American.”
“And my parents, Yankee, what of them?”
“Maybe we can get them out,” Ryan said from the starboard side of his tube, moving left as he waited for a reply. He jumped again. Now there were two missile tubes separating him from his friend in the GRU, who was probably trying to crosswire the warheads and make half a cubic mile of ocean turn to plasma.
“Come, Yankee, we will die together. Now only one puskatel separates us.”
Ryan thought quickly. He couldn’t remember how many times he’d fired, but the pistol held thirteen rounds. He’d have enough. The extra clip was useless. He could toss it one way and move the other, creating a diversion. Would it work? Shit! It worked in the movies. It was for damned sure that doing nothing wasn’t going to work.
Ryan took the gun in his left hand and fished in his coat pocket for the spare clip with his right. He put the clip in his mouth while he switched the gun back. A poor highwayman’s shift…He took the clip in his left hand. Okay. He had to toss the clip right and move left. Would it work? Right or wrong, he didn’t have a hell of a lot of time.
At Quantico he was taught to read maps, evaluate terrain, call in air and artillery strikes, maneuver his squads and fire teams with skill — and here he was, stuck in a goddamned steel pipe three hundred feet under water, shooting it out with pistols in a room with two hundred hydrogen bombs!
It was time to do something. He knew what that had to be — but Ramius moved first. Out the corner of his eye he caught the shape of the captain running toward the forward bulkhead. Ramius leaped at the bulkhead and flicked a light switch on as the enemy fired at him. Ryan tossed the clip to the right and ran forward. The agent turned to his left to see what the noise was, sure that a cooperative move had been planned.
As Ryan covered the distance between the last two missile tubes he saw Ramius go down. Ryan dove past the number one missile tube. He landed on his left side, ignoring the pain that set his arm on fire as he rolled to line up his target. The man was turning as Ryan jerked off six shots. Ryan didn’t hear himself screaming. Two rounds connected. The agent was lifted off the deck and twisted halfway around from the impact. His pistol dropped from his hand as he fell limp to the deck.
Ryan was shaking too badly to get up at once. The pistol, still tight in his hand, was aimed at his victim’s chest. He was breathing hard and his heart was racing. Ryan closed his mouth and tried to swallow a few times; his mouth was as dry as cotton. He got slowly to his knees. The agent was still alive, lying on his back, eyes open and still breathing. Ryan had to use his hand to stand up.
He’d been hit twice, Ryan saw, once in the upper left chest and once lower down, about where the liver and spleen are. The lower wound was a wet red circle which the man’s hands clutched. He was in his early twenties, if that, and his clear blue eyes were staring at the overhead while he tried to say something. His face was rigid with pain as he mouthed words, but all that came out was an unintelligible gurgle.
“Captain,” Ryan called, “you okay?”
“I am wounded, but I think I shall live, Ryan. Who is it?”
“How the hell should I know?”
The blue eyes fixed on Jack’s face. Whoever he was, he knew death was coming to him. The pain on the face was replaced by something else. Sadness, an infinite sadness…He was still trying to speak. A pink froth gathered at the corners of his mouth. Lung shot. Ryan moved closer, kicking the gun clear and kneeling down beside him.
“We could have made a deal,” he said quietly.
The agent tried to say something, but Ryan couldn’t understand it. A curse, a call for his mother, something heroic? Jack would never know. The eyes went wide with pain one last time. The last breath hissed out through the bubbles and the hands on the belly went limp. Ryan checked for a pulse at the neck. There was none.
“I’m sorry.” Ryan reached down to close his victim’s eyes. He was sorry — why? Tiny beads of sweat broke out all over his forehead, and the strength he had drawn up in the shootout deserted him. A sudden wave of nausea overpowered him. “Oh, Jesus, I’m—” He dropped to all fours and threw up violently, his vomit spilling through the grates onto the lower deck ten feet below. For a whole minute his stomach heaved, well past the time he was dry. He had to spit several times to get the worst of the taste from his mouth before standing.
Dizzy from the stress and the quart of adrenalin that had been pumped into his system, he shook his head a few times, still looking at the dead man at his feet. It was time to come back to reality.
Ramius had been hit in the upper leg. It was bleeding. Both his hands, covered with blood, were placed on the wound, but it didn’t look that bad. If the femoral artery had been cut, the captain would already have been dead.
Lieutenant Williams had been hit in the head and chest. He was still breathing but unconscious. The head wound was only a crease. The chest wound, close to the heart, made a sucking noise. Kamarov was not so lucky. A single shot had gone straight through the top of his nose, and the back of his head was a bloody wreckage.
“Jesus, why didn’t somebody come and help us!” Ryan said when the thought hit him.
“The bulkhead doors are closed, Ryan. There is the — how do you say it?”
Ryan looked where the captain pointed. It was the intercom system. “Which button?” The captain held up two fingers. “Control room, this is Ryan. I need help here, your captain has been shot.”
The reply came in excited Russian, and Ramius responded loudly to make himself heard. Ryan looked at the missile tube. The agent had been using a work light, just like an American one, a lightbulb in a metal holder with wire across the front. A door into the missile tube was open. Beyond it a smaller hatch, evidently leading into the missile itself, was also open.
“What was he doing, trying to explode the warheads?”
“Impossible,” Ramius said, in obvious pain. “The rocket warheads — we call this special safe. The warheads cannot — not fire.”
“So what was he doing?” Ryan went over to the missile tube. A sort of rubber bladder was lying on the deck. “What’s this?” He hefted the gadget in his hand. It was made of rubber or rubberized fabric with a metal or plastic frame inside, a metal nipple on one corner, and a mouthpiece.
“He was doing something to the missile, but he had an escape device to get off the sub,” Ryan said. “Oh, Christ! A timing device.” He bent down to pick up the work light and switched it on, then stood back and peered into the missile compartment. “Captain, what’s in here?”
“That is — the guidance compartment. It has a computer that tells the rocket how to fly. The door—,” Ramius’ breaths were coming hard, “—is a hatch for the officer.”
Ryan peered into the hatch. He found a mass of multicolored wires and circuit boards connected in a way he’d never seen before. He poked through the wires half expecting to find a ticking alarm clock wired to some
dynamite sticks. He didn’t.
Now what should he do? The agent had been up to something — but what? Did he finish? How could Ryan tell? He couldn’t. One part of his brain screamed at him to do something, the other part said that he’d be crazy to try.
Ryan put the rubber-coated handle to the light between his teeth and reached into the compartment with both hands. He grabbed a double handful of wires and yanked back. Only a few broke loose. He released one bunch and concentrated on the other. A clump of plastic and copper spaghetti came loose. He did it again for the other bunch. “Aaah!” he gasped, receiving an electric shock. An eternal moment followed while he waited to be blown up. It passed. There were more wires to pull. In under a minute he’d ripped out every wire he could see along with a half-dozen small breadboards. Next he smashed the light against everything he thought might break until the compartment looked like his son’s toybox — full of useless fragments.
He heard people running into the compartment. Borodin was in front. Ramius motioned him over to Ryan and the dead agent.
“Sudets?” Borodin said. “Sudets?” He looked at Ryan. “This is cook.”
Ryan took the pistol from the deck. “Here’s his recipe file. I think he was a GRU agent. He was trying to blow us up. Captain Ramius, how about we launch this missile — just jettison the goddamned thing, okay?”
“A good idea, I think.” Ramius’ voice had become a hoarse whisper. “First close the inspection hatch, then we — can fire from the control room.”
Ryan used his hand to sweep the fragments away from the missile hatch, and the door slid neatly back into place. The tube hatch was different. It was a pressure-bearing one and much heavier, held in place by two spring-loaded latches. Ryan slammed it three times. Twice it rebounded, but the third time it stuck.
Borodin and another officer were already carrying Williams aft. Someone had set a belt on Ramius’ leg wound. Ryan got him to his feet and helped him walk. Ramius grunted in pain every time he had to move his left leg.
“You took a foolish chance, Captain,” Ryan observed.
“This is my ship — and I do not like the dark. It was my fault! We should have made a careful counting as the crew left.”
They arrived at the watertight door. “Okay, I’ll go through first.” Ryan stepped through and helped Ramius through backward. The belt had loosened, and the wound was bleeding again.
“Close the hatch and lock it,” Ramius ordered.
It closed easily. Ryan turned the wheel three times, then got under the captain’s arm again. Another twenty feet and they were in the control room. The lieutenant at the wheel was ashen.
Ryan sat the captain in a chair on the port side. “You have a knife, sir?”
Ramius reached in his pocket and came out with a folding knife and something else. “Here, take this. It’s the key for the rocket warheads. They cannot fire unless this is used. You keep it.” He tried to laugh. It had been Putin’s, after all.
Ryan flipped it around his neck, opened the knife, and cut the captain’s pants all the way up. The bullet had gone clean through the meaty part of the thigh. He took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and held it against the entrance wound. Ramius handed him another handkerchief. Ryan placed this against the half-inch exit wound. Next he set the belt across both, drawing it as tight as he could.
“My wife might not approve, but that will have to do.”
“Your wife?” Ramius asked.
“She’s a doc, an eye surgeon to be exact. The day I got shot she did this for me.” Ramius’ lower leg was growing pale. The belt was too tight, but Ryan didn’t want to loosen it just yet. “Now, what about the missile?”
Ramius gave an order to the lieutenant at the wheel, who relayed it through the intercom. Two minutes later three officers entered the control room. Speed was cut to five knots, which took several minutes. Ryan worried about the missile and whether or not he had destroyed whatever boobytrap the agent had installed. Each of the three newly arrived officers took a key from around his neck. Ramius did the same, giving his second key to Ryan. He pointed to the starboard side of the compartment.
“Rocket control.”
Ryan should have guessed as much. Arrayed throughout the control room were five panels, each with three rows of twenty-six lights and a key slot under each set.
“Put your key in number one, Ryan.” Jack did, and the others inserted their keys. The red light came on and a buzzer sounded.
The missile officer’s panel was the most elaborate. He turned a switch to flood the missile tube and open the number one hatch. The red panel lights began to blink.
“Turn your key, Ryan,” Ramius said.
“Does this fire the missile?” Christ, what if that happens? Ryan wondered.
“No no. The rocket must be armed by the rocket officer. This key explodes the gas charge.”
Could Ryan believe him? Sure he was a good guy and all that, but how could Ryan know he was telling the truth?
“Now!” Ramius ordered. Ryan turned his key at the same instant as the others. The amber light over the red light blinked on. The one under the green cover stayed off.
The Red October shuddered as the number one SS-N-20 was ejected upward by the gas charge. The sound was like a truck’s air brake. The three officers withdrew their keys. Immediately the missile officer shut the tube hatch.
The Dallas
“What?” Jones said. “Conn, sonar, the target just flooded a tube — a missile tube? God almighty!” On his own, Jones powered up the under-ice sonar and began high-frequency pinging.
“What the hell are you doing?” Thompson demanded. Mancuso was there a second later.
“What’s going on?” the captain snapped. Jones pointed at his display.
“The sub just launched a missile, sir. Look, Cap’n, two targets. But it’s just hangin’ there, no missile ignition. God!”
The Red October
Will it float? Ryan wondered.
It didn’t. The Seahawk missile was pushed upward and to starboard by the gas charge. It stopped fifty feet over her deck as the October cruised past. The guidance hatch that Ryan had closed was not fully sealed. Water filled the compartment and flooded the warhead bus. The missile in any case had a sizable negative bouyancy, and the added mass in the nose tipped it over. The nose-heavy trim gave it an eccentric path, and it spiraled down like a seedpod from a tree. At ten thousand feet water pressure crushed the seal over the missile blast cones, but the Seahawk, otherwise undamaged, retained its shape all the way to the bottom.
The Ethan Allen
The only thing still operating was the timer. It had been set for thirty minutes, which had allowed the crew plenty of time to board the Scamp, now leaving the area at ten knots. The old reactor had been completely shut down. It was stone cold. Only a few emergency lights remained on from residual battery power. The timer had three redundant firing circuits, and all went off within a millisecond of one another, sending a signal down the detonator wires.
They had put four Pave Pat Blue bombs on the Ethan Allen. The Pave Pat Blue was a FAE (fuel-air explosive) bomb. Its blast efficiency was roughly five times that of an ordinary chemical explosive. Each bomb had a pair of gas-release valves, and only one of the eight valves failed. When they burst open, the pressurized propane in the bomb casings expanded violently outward. In an instant the atmospheric pressure in the old submarine tripled as her every part was saturated with an explosive air-gas mixture. The four bombs filled the Ethan Allen with the equivalent of twenty-five tons of TNT evenly distributed throughout the hull.
The squibs fired almost simultaneously, and the results were catastrophic: the Ethan Allen’s strong steel hull burst as if it were a balloon. The only item not totally destroyed was the reactor vessel, which fell free of the shredded wreckage and dropped rapidly to the ocean floor. The hull itself was blasted into a dozen pieces, all bent into surreal shapes by the explosion. Interior equipment formed a metallic cloud within the
shattered hull, and everything fluttered downward, expanding over a wide area during the three-mile descent to the hard sand bottom.
The Dallas
“Holy shit!” Jones slapped the headphones off and yawned to clear his ears. Automatic relays within the sonar system protected his ears from the full force of the explosion, but what had been transmitted was enough to make him feel as though his head had been hammered flat. The explosion was heard through the hull by everyone aboard.
“Attention all hands, this is the captain speaking. What you just heard is nothing to worry about. That’s all I can say.”
“Gawd, Skipper!” Mannion said.
“Yeah, let’s get back on the contact.”
“Aye, Cap’n.” Mannion gave his commander a curious look.
The White House
“Did you get the word to him in time?” the president asked.
“No, sir.” Moore slumped into his chair. “The helicopter arrived a few minutes too late. It may be nothing to worry about. You’d expect that the captain would know enough to get everyone off except for his own people. We’re concerned, of course, but there isn’t anything we can do.”
“I asked him personally to do this, Judge. Me.”
Welcome to the real world, Mr. President, Moore thought. The chief executive had been lucky — he’d never had to send men to their deaths. Moore reflected that it was something easy to consider beforehand, less easy to get used to. He had affirmed death sentences from his seat on an appellate bench, and that had not been easy — even for men who had richly deserved their fates.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, Mr. President. The source this data comes from is more important than any one operation.”
“Very well. What about Senator Donaldson?”
“He agreed to our suggestion. This aspect of the operation has worked out very well indeed.”
