by Tom Clancy
“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 microphone 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 sai
ling 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.”
“Keep thinking those happy thoughts, sir,” Machinist’s Mate First Class Jesse Overton said. “Still clear on sonar?”
“Right, Jess.” Johnsen had been working with the machinist’s mate for two years. The Sea Cliff was their baby, a small, rugged research submarine used mainly for oceanographic tasks, including the emplacement or repair of SOSUS sensors. On the three-man sub there was little place for bridge discipline. Overton was not well educated or very articulate — at least not politely articulate. His skill at maneuvering the minisub was unsurpassed, however, and Johnsen was just as happy to leave that job to him. It was the lieutenant’s task to manage the mission at hand.
“Air system needs some work,” Johnsen observed.
“Yeah, the filters are about due for replacement. I was going to do that next week. Coulda’ done it this morning, but I figured the backup control wiring was more important.”
“Guess I have to go along with you on that. Handling okay?”
“Like a virgin.” Overton’s smile was reflected in the thick Lexan view port in front of the control seat. The Sea Cliff’s awkward design made her clumsy to maneuver. It was as though she knew what she wanted to do, just not quite how she wanted to do it. “How wide’s the target area?”
“Pretty wide. Pigeon says after the explosion the pieces spread from hell to breakfast.”
“I believe it. Three miles down, and a current to spread it around.”
“The boat’s name is Red October, Captain? A Victor-class attack submarine, yo
u said?”
“That is your name for the class,” Kaganovich said.
“What do you call them?” Johnsen asked. He got no reply. What was the big deal? he wondered. What did the name of the class matter to anybody?
“Switching on locater sonar.” Johnsen activated several systems, and the Sea Cliff pulsed with the sound of the high-frequency sonar mounted on her belly. “There’s the bottom.” The yellow screen showed bottom contours in white.
“Anything sticking up, sir?” Overton asked.
“Not today, Jess.”
A year before they had been operating a few miles from this spot and nearly been impaled on a Liberty ship, sunk around 1942 by a German U-boat. The hulk had been sitting up at an angle, propped up by a massive boulder. That near collision would surely have been fatal, and it had taught both men caution.
“Okay, I’m starting to get some hard returns. Directly ahead, spread out like a fan. Another five hundred feet to the bottom.”
“Right.”
“Hmph. There’s one big piece, ’bout thirty feet long, maybe nine or ten across, eleven o’clock, three hundred yards. We’ll go for that one first.”
“Coming left, lights coming on now.”
A half-dozen high-intensity floodlights came on, at once surrounding the submersible in a globe of light. It did not penetrate more than ten yards in the water, which ate up the light energy.
“There’s the bottom, just where you said, Mr. Johnsen,” Overton said. He halted the powered descent and checked for buoyancy. Almost exactly neutral, good. “This current’s going to be tough on battery power.”
“How strong is it?”
“Knot an’ a half, maybe more like two, depending on bottom contours. Same as last year. I figure we can maneuver an hour, hour an’ a half, tops.”
Johnsen agreed. Oceanographers were still puzzling over this deep current, which seemed to change direction from time to time in no particular pattern. Odd. There were a lot of odd things in the ocean. That’s why Johnsen got his oceanography degree, to figure some of the buggers out. It sure beat working for a living. Being three miles down wasn’t work, not to Johnsen.
