the Hunt for Red October (1984)

by Clancy, Tom - Jack Ryan 03

  “Start over,” Melekhin ordered, “from the beginning.”

  Twenty minutes later Svyadov, now sweating from the warm air that gathered at the top of the compartment, made an identical report. He came down awkwardly, his arms and legs tired.

  “Have a cigarette,” Ramius suggested. “You did well, Svyadov.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Captain. It’s warm up there from the lights and the coolant pipes.” The lieutenant handed the counter to Melekhin. The lower dial showed a cumulative count, well within the safe range.

  “Probably some contaminated badges,” the chief engineer commented sourly. “It would not be the first time. Some joker in the factory or at the yard supply office—something for our friends in the GRU to check into. ‘Wreckers!’ A joke like this ought to earn somebody a bullet.”

  “Perhaps,” Ramius chuckled. “Remember the incident on Lenin?” He referred to the nuclear-powered icebreaker that had spent two years tied to the dock, unusable because of a reactor mishap. “A ship’s cook had some badly crusted pans, and a madman of an engineer suggested that he use live steam to get them cleaned. So the idiot walked down to the steam generator and opened an inspection valve, with his pots under it!”

  Melekhin rolled his eyes. “I remember it! I was a staff engineering officer then. The captain had asked for a Kazakh cook—”

  “He liked horsemeat with his kasha,” Ramius said.

  “—and the fool didn’t know the first thing about a ship. Killed himself and three other men, contaminated the whole fucking compartment for twenty months. The captain only got out of the gulag last year.”

  “I bet the cook got his pans cleaned, though,” Ramius observed.

  “Indeed, Marko Aleksandrovich—they may even be safe to use in another fifty years.” Melekhin laughed raucously.

  That was a hell of a thing to say in front of a young officer, Petrov thought. There was nothing, nothing at all funny about a reactor leak. But Melekhin was known for his heavy sense of humor, and the doctor imagined that twenty years of working on reactors allowed him and the captain to view the potential dangers phlegmatically. Then, there was the implicit lesson in the story: never let someone who does not belong into the reactor spaces.

  “Very well,” Melekhin said, “now we check the pipes in the generator room. Come, Svyadov, we still need your young legs.”

  The next compartment aft contained the heat exchanger/steam generator, turboalternators, and auxiliary equipment. The main turbines were in the next compartment, now inactive while the electrically driven caterpillar was operating. In any case, the steam that turned them was supposed to be clean. The only radioactivity was in the inside loop. The reactor coolant, which carried short-lived but dangerous radioactivity, never flashed to steam. This was in the outside loop and boiled from uncontaminated water. The two water supplies met but never mixed inside the heat exchanger, the most likely site for a coolant leak because of its more numerous fittings and valves.

  The more complex piping required a full fifty minutes to check. These pipes were not as well insulated as those forward. Svyadov nearly burned himself twice, and his face was bathed in perspiration by the time he finished his first sweep.

  “Readings all safe again, comrades.”

  “Good,” Melekhin said. “Come down and rest a moment before you check it again.”

  Svyadov almost thanked his chief for that, but this would not have done at all. As a young, dedicated officer and member of the Komsomol, no exertion was too great. He came down carefully, and Melekhin handed him another cigarette. The chief engineer was a gray-haired perfectionist who took decent care of his men.

  “Why, thank you, Comrade,” Svyadov said.

  Petrov got a folding chair. “Sit, Comrade Lieutenant, rest your legs.”

  The lieutenant sat down at once, stretching his legs to work out the knots. The officers at VVMUPP had told him how lucky he was to draw this assignment. Ramius and Melekhin were the two best teachers in the fleet, men whose crews appreciated their kindness along with their competence.

  “They really should insulate those pipes,” Ramius said. Melekhin shook his head.

  “Then they’d be too hard to inspect.” He handed the counter to his captain.

  “Entirely safe,” the captain read off the cumulative dial. “You get more exposure tending a garden.”

  “Indeed,” Melekhin said. “Coal miners get more exposure than we do, from the release of radon gas in the mines. Bad badges, that’s what it has to be. Why not take out a whole batch and check it?”

  “I could, Comrade,” Petrov answered. “But then, due to the extended nature of our cruise, we’d have to run for several days without any. Contrary to regulations. I’m afraid.”

  “You are correct. In any case the badges are only a backup to our instruments.” Ramius gestured to the red-circled detectors all over the compartment.

  “Do you really want to recheck the piping?” Melekhin asked.

  “I think we should,” Ramius said.

  Svyadov swore to himself, looking down at the deck.

  “There is no extravagance in the pursuit of safety,” Petrov quoted doctrine. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” The doctor was not a bit sorry. He had been genuinely worried, and was now feeling a lot better.

  An hour later the second check had been completed. Petrov took Svyadov forward for salt tablets and tea to rehydrate himself. The senior officers left, and Melekhin ordered the reactor plant restarted.

  The enlisted men filed back to their duty stations, looking at one another. Their officers had just checked the “hot” compartments with radiation instruments. The medical corpsman had looked pale a while earlier and refused to say anything. More than one engine attendant fingered his radiation badge and checked his wristwatch to see how long it would be before he went off duty.

  THE EIGHTH DAY

  FRIDAY, 10 DECEMBER

  HMS Invincible

  Ryan awoke in the dark. The curtains were drawn on the cabin’s two small portholes. He shook his head a few times to clear it and began to assess what was going on around him. The Invincible was moving on the seas, but not as much as before. He got up to look out of a porthole and saw the last red glow of sunset aft under scudding clouds. He checked his watch and did some clumsy mental arithmetic, concluding that it was six in the evening, local time. That translated to about six hours of sleep. He felt pretty good, considering. A minor headache from the brandy—so much for the theory that good stuff doesn’t give you a hangover—and his muscles were stiff. He did a few sit-ups to work out the knots.

  There was a small bathroom—head, he corrected himself—adjoining the cabin. Ryan splashed some water on his face and washed his mouth out, not wanting to look in the mirror. He decided he had to. Counterfeit or not, he was wearing his country’s uniform and he had to look presentable. It took a minute to get his hair in place and the uniform arranged properly. The CIA had done a nice job of tailoring, given such short notice. Finished, he went out the door towards the flag bridge.

  “Feeling better, Jack?” Admiral White pointed him to a tray full of cups. It was only tea, but it was a start.

  “Thank you, Admiral. Those few hours really helped. I guess I’m in time for dinner.”

  “Breakfast,” White corrected him with a laugh.

  “What—uh, pardon me, Admiral?” Ryan shook his head again. He was still a little groggy.

  “That’s a sunrise, Commander. Change in orders, we’re heading west again. Kennedy’s moving east at high speed, and we’re to take station inshore.”

  “Who said, sir?”

  “CINCLANT. I gather Joshua was not at all pleased. You are to remain with us for the moment, and under the circumstances it seemed the reasonable thing to let you sleep. You did appear to need it.”

  Must have been eighteen hours, Ryan thought. No wonder he felt stiff.

  “You do look much better,” Admiral White noted from his leather swivel chair. He got up, took Ryan’s a
rm, and guided him aft. “Now for breakfast. I’ve been waiting for you. Captain Hunter will brief you on your revised orders. Weather’s clearing up for a few days, they tell me. Escort assignments are being reshuffled. We’re to operate in conjunction with your New Jersey group. Our antisubmarine operations begin in earnest in another twelve hours. It’s a good thing you got that extra sleep, lad. You’ll bloody need it.”

  Ryan ran his hand over his face. “Can I shave, sir?”

  “We still permit beards. Let it wait until after breakfast.”

  Flag quarters on HMS Invincible were not quite to the standard of those on the Kennedy—but close. White had a private dining area. A steward in a white livery served them expertly, setting a third place for Hunter, who appeared within a few minutes. When they started talking, the steward was excused.

  “We rendezvous with a pair of young Knox-class frigates in two hours. We already have them on radar. Two more 1052s, plus an oiler and two Perrys will join us in another thirty-six hours. They were on their way home from the Med. With our own escorts, a total of nine warships. A noteworthy collection, I think. We’ll be working five hundred miles offshore, with the New Jersey—Tarawa force two hundred miles to our west.”

  “Tarawa? What do we need a regiment of marines for?” Ryan asked.

  Hunter explained briefly. “Not a bad idea, that. The funny thing is, with Kennedy racing for the Azores, that rather leaves us guarding the American coast.” Hunter grinned. “This may be the first time the Royal Navy has ever done that—certainly since it belonged to us.”

  “What are we up against?”

  “The first of the Alfas will be on your coast tonight, four of them ahead of all the others. The Soviet surface force passed Iceland last night. It’s divided into three groups. One is built around their carrier Kiev, two cruisers and four destroyers; the second, probably the force flag, is built around Kirov, with three additional cruisers and six destroyers; and the third is centered on Moskva, three more cruisers and seven destroyers. I gather that the Soviets will want to use the Kiev and Moskva groups inshore, with Kirov guarding them out to sea—but Kennedy’s relocation will make them rethink that. Regardless, the total force carries a considerable number of surface-to-surface missiles, and potentially, we are very exposed. To help out with that, your air force has an E-3 Sentry detailed to arrive here in an hour to exercise with our Harriers, and when we get farther west, we’ll have additional land-based air support. On the whole our position is hardly an enviable one, but Ivan’s is rather less so. So far as the question of finding Red October is concerned?” Hunter shrugged. “How we conduct our search will depend on how Ivan deploys. At the moment we’re conducting some tracking drills. The lead Alfa is eighty miles northwest of us, steaming at forty-plus knots, and we have a helicopter in pursuit—which is roughly what it amounts to,” the fleet operations officer concluded. “Will you join us below?”

  “Admiral?” Ryan wanted to see Invincible’s combat information center.

  “Certainly.”

  Thirty minutes later Ryan was in a darkened, quiet room whose walls were a solid bank of electronic instruments and glass plotting panels. The Atlantic Ocean was full of Russian submarines.

  The White House

  The Soviet ambassador entered the Oval Office a minute early, at 10:59 A.M. He was a short, overweight man with a broad Slavic face and eyes that would have done a professional gambler proud. They revealed nothing. He was a career diplomat, having served in a number of posts throughout the Western world, and a thirty-year member of the Communist party’s Foreign Department.

  “Good morning, Mr. President, Dr. Pelt,” Alexei Arbatov nodded politely to both men. The president, he noted at once, was seated behind his desk. Every other time he’d been here the president had come around the desk to shake hands, then sat down beside him.

  “Help yourself to some coffee, Mr. Ambassador,” Pelt offered. The special assistant to the president for national security affairs was well known to Arbatov. Jeffrey Pelt was an academic from the Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies—an enemy, but a well-mannered, kulturny enemy. Arbatov had a fondness for the niceties of formal behavior. Today, Pelt was standing at his boss’s side, unwilling to come too close to the Russian bear. Arbatov did not get himself any coffee.

  “Mr. Ambassador,” Pelt began, “we have noted a troubling increase in Soviet naval activity in the North Atlantic.”

  “Oh?” Arbatov’s eyebrows shot up in a display of surprise that fooled no one, and he knew it. “I have no knowledge of this. As you know, I have never been a sailor.”

  “Shall we dispense with the bullshit, Mr. Ambassador?” the president said. Arbatov did not permit himself to be surprised by the vulgarity. It made the American president seem very Russian, and like Soviet officials he seemed to need a professional like Pelt around to smooth the edges. “You certainly have nearly a hundred naval vessels operating in the North Atlantic or heading in that direction. Chairman Narmonov and my predecessor agreed years ago that no such operation would take place without prior notification. The purpose of this agreement, as you know, was to prevent acts that might appear to be unduly provocative to one side or the other. This agreement has been kept—until now.

  “Now, my military advisers tell me that what is going on looks very much like a war exercise, indeed, could be the precursor to a war. How are we to tell the difference? Your ships are now passing east of Iceland, and will soon be in a position from which they can threaten our trade routes to Europe. This situation is at the least unsettling, and at the most a grave and wholly unwarranted provocation. The scope of this action has not yet been made public. That will change, and when it does, Alex, the American people will demand action on my part.” The president paused, expecting a response but getting only a nod.

  Pelt went on for him. “Mr. Ambassador, your country has seen fit to cast aside an agreement which for years has been a model of East-West cooperation. How can you expect us to regard this as anything other than a provocation?”

  “Mr. President, Dr. Pelt, truly I have no knowledge of this.” Arbatov lied with the utmost sincerity. “I will contact Moscow at once to ascertain the facts. Is there any message you wish me to pass along?”

  “Yes. As you and your superiors in Moscow will understand,” the president said, “we will deploy our ships and aircraft to observe yours. Prudence requires this. We have no wish to interfere with whatever legitimate operations your forces may be engaged in. It is not our intention to make a provocation of our own, but under the terms of our agreement we have the right to know what is going on, Mr. Ambassador. Until we do, we are unable to issue the proper orders to our men. It would be well for your government to consider that having so many of your ships and our ships, your aircraft and our aircraft in close proximity is an inherently dangerous situation. Accidents can happen. An action by one side or the other which at another time would seem harmless might seem to be something else entirely. Wars have begun in this way, Mr. Ambassador.” The president leaned back to let that thought hang in the air for a moment. When he went on, he spoke more gently. “Of course, I regard this possibility as remote, but is it not irresponsible to take such chances?”

  “Mr. President, you make your point well, as always, but as you know, the sea is free for the passage of all, and—”

  “Mr. Ambassador,” Pelt interrupted, “consider a simple analogy. Your next-door neighbor begins to patrol his front yard with a loaded shotgun while your children are at play in your own front yard. In this country such action would be technically legal. Even so, would it not be a matter of concern?”

  “So it would, Dr. Pelt, but the situation you describe is very different—”

  Now the president interrupted. “Indeed it is. The situation at hand is far more dangerous. It is the breach of an agreement, and I find that especially disquieting. I had hoped that we were entering a new era of Soviet-American relations. We have settled o
ur trade differences. We have just concluded a new grain agreement. You had a major part in that. We have been moving forward, Mr. Ambassador—is this at an end?” The president shook his head emphatically. “I hope not, but the choice is yours. The relationship between our countries can only be based on trust.

  “Mr. Ambassador, I trust that I have not alarmed you. As you know, it is my habit to speak plainly. I personally dislike the greasy dissimulation of diplomacy. At times like this, we must communicate quickly and clearly. We have a dangerous situation before us, and we must work together, rapidly, to resolve it. My military commanders are greatly concerned, and I need to know—today—what your naval forces are up to. I expect a reply by seven this evening. Failing that I will be on the direct line to Moscow to demand one.”

  Arbatov stood. “Mr. President, I will transmit your message within the hour. Please keep in mind, however, the time differential between Washington and Moscow—”

  “I know that a weekend has just begun, and that the Soviet Union is a worker’s paradise, but I expect that some of your country’s managers may still be at work. In any case, I will detain you no further. Good day.”

  Pelt led Arbatov out, then came back and sat down.

  “Maybe I was just a little tough on him,” the president said.

  “Yes, sir.” Pelt thought that he had been too damned tough. He had little affection for the Russian but he too liked the niceties of diplomatic exchange. “I think we can say that you succeeded in getting your message across.”

  “He knows.”

  “He knows. But he doesn’t know we know.”

  “We think,” the president grimaced. “What a crazy goddamned game this is! And to think I had a nice, safe career going for me putting mafiosi in jail…Do you think he’ll snap at the bait I offered?”

  “‘Legitimate operations?’ Did you see his hands twitch at that? He’ll go after it like a marlin after a squid.” Pelt walked over to pour himself half a cup of coffee. It pleased him that the china service was gold trimmed. “I wonder what they’ll call it? Legitimate operations…probably a rescue mission. If they call it a fleet exercise they admit to violating the notification protocol. A rescue operation justifies the level of activity, the speed with which it was laid on, and the lack of publicity. Their press never reports this sort of thing. As a guess, I’d say they’ll call it a rescue, say a submarine is missing, maybe even to the point of calling it a missile sub.”