THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER
A Super Stallion
They were traveling at one hundred fifty knots, two thousand feet over the darkened sea. The Super Stallion helicopter was old. Built towards the end of the Vietnam War, she had first seen service clearing mines off Haiphong harbor. That had been her primary duty, pulling a sea sled and acting as a flying minesweeper. Now, the big Sikorski was used for other purposes, mainly long-range heavy-lift missions. The three turbine engines perched atop the fuselage packed a considerable amount of power and could carry a platoon of armed combat troops a great distance.
Tonight, in addition to her normal flight crew of three, she was carrying four passengers and a heavy load of fuel in the outrigger tanks. The passengers were clustered in the aft corner of the cargo area, chatting among themselves or trying to over the racket of the engines. Their conversation was animated. The intelligence officers had dismissed the danger implicit in their mission—no sense dwelling on that—and were speculating on what they might find aboard an honest-to-God Russian submarine. Each man considered the stories that would result, and decided it was a shame that they would never be able to tell them. None voiced this thought, however. At most a handful of people would ever know the entire story; the others would only see disjointed fragments that later might be thought parts of any number of other operations. Any Soviet agent trying to determine what this mission had been would find himself in a maze with dozens of blank walls.
The mission profile was a tight one. The helicopter was flying on a specific track to HMS Invincible, from which they would fly to the USS Pigeon aboard a Royal Navy Sea King. The Stallion’s disappearance from Oceana Naval Air Station for only a few hours would be viewed merely as a matter of routine.
The helicopter’s turboshaft engines, running at maximum cruising power, were gulping down fuel. The aircraft was now four hundred miles off the U.S. coast and had another eighty miles to go. Their flight to the Invincible was not direct; it was a dogleg course intended to fool whoever might have noticed their departure on radar. The pilots were tired. Four hours is a long time to sit in a cramped cockpit, and military aircraft are not known for their creature comforts. The flight instruments glowed a dull red. Both men were especially careful to watch their artificial horizon; a solid overcast denied them a fixed reference point aloft, and flying over water at night was mesmerizing. It was by no means an unusual mission, however. The pilots had done this many times, and their concern was not unlike that of an experienced driver on a slick road. The dangers were real, but routine.
“Juliet 6, your target is bearing zero-eight-zero, range seventy-five miles,” the Sentry called in.
“Thinks we’re lost?” Commander John Marcks wondered over the intercom.
“Air force,” his copilot replied. “They don’t know much about flying over water. They think you get lost without roads to follow.”
“Uh-huh,” Marcks chuckled. “Who do you like in the Eagles game tonight?”
“Oilers by three and a half.”
“Six and a half. Philly’s fullback is still hurt.”
“Five.”
“Okay, five bucks. I’ll go easy on you.” Marcks grinned. He loved to gamble. The day after Argentina had attacked the Falklands, he’d asked if anyone in the squadron wanted to take Argentina and seven points.
A few feet above their heads and a few feet aft, the engines were racing at thousands of RPM, turning gears to drive the seven-bladed main rotor. They had no way of knowing that a fracture was developing in the transmission casing, near the fluid test port.
“Juliet 6, your target has just launched a fighter to escort you in. Will rendezvous in eight minutes. Approaching you at eleven o’clock, angels three.”
“Nice of them,” Marcks said.
Harrier 2–0
Lieutenant Parker was flying the Harrier that would escort the Super Stallion. A sublieutenant sat in the back seat of the Royal Navy aircraft. Its purpose was not actually to escort the chopper to the Invincible; it was to make a last check for any Soviet submarines that might notice the Super Stallion in flight and wonder what it was doing.
“Any activity on the water?” Parker asked.
“Not a glimmer.” The sublieutenant was working the FLIR package, which was sweeping left and right over their course track. Neither man knew what was going on, though both had speculated at length, incorrectly, on what it was that was chasing their carrier all over the bloody ocean.
“Try looking for the helicopter,” Parker said.
“One moment…There. Just south of our track.” The sublieutenant pressed a button and the display came up on the pilot’s screen. The thermal image was mainly of the engines clustered atop the aircraft inside the fainter, dull-green glow of the hot rotor tips.
“Harrier 2-0, this is Sentry Echo. Your target is at your one o’clock, distance twenty miles, over.”
“Roger, we have him on our IR box. Thank you, out,” Parker said. “Bloody useful things, those Sentries.”
“The Sikorski’s running for all she’s worth. Look at that engine signature.”
The Super Stallion
At this moment the transmission casing fractured. Instantly the gallons of lubricating oil became a greasy cloud behind the rotor hub, and the delicate gears began to tear at one another. An alarm light flashed on the control panels. Marcks and the copilot instantly reached down to cut power to all three engines. There was not enough time. The transmission tried to freeze, but the power of the three engines tore it apart. What happened was the next thing to an explosion. Jagged pieces burst through the safety housing and ripped the forward part of the aircraft. The rotor’s momentum twisted the Stallion savagely around, and it dropped rapidly. Two of the men in the back, who had loosened their seatbelts, jerked out of their seats and rolled forward.
“MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY, this is Juliet 6,” the copilot called. Commander Marcks’ body slumped over the controls, a dark stain at the back of his neck. “We’re goin’ in, we’re goin’ in. MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY.”
The copilot was trying to do something. The main rotor was windmilling slowly—too slowly. The automatic decoupler that was supposed to allow it to autorotate and give him a vestige of control had failed. His controls were nearly useless, and he was riding the point of a blunt lance towards a black ocean. It was twenty seconds before they hit. He fought with his airfoil controls and tail rotor in order to jerk the aircraft around. He succeeded, but it was too late.
Harrier 2-0
It was not the first time Parker had seen men die. He had taken a life himself after sending a Sidewinder missile up the tailpipe of an Argentine Dagger fighter. That had not been pleasant. This was worse. As he watched, the Super Stallion’s humpbacked engine cluster blew apart in a shower of sparks. There was no fire as such, for what good it did them. He watched and tried to will the nose to come up—and it did, but not enough. The Stallion hit the water hard. The fuselage snapped apart in the middle. The front end sank in an instant, but the after part wallowed for a few seconds like a bathtub before beginning to fill with water. According to the picture supplied by the FLIR package, no one got clear before it sank.
“Sentry, Sentry, did you see that, over?”
“Roger that, Harrier. We’re calling a SAR mission right now. Can you orbit?”
“Roger, we can loiter here.” Parker checked his fuel. “Nine-zero minutes. I—stand by.” Parker nosed his fighter down and flicked on his landing lights. This lit up the low-light TV system. “Did you see that, Ian?” he asked his backseater.
“I think it moved.”
“Sentry, Sentry, we have a possible survivor in the water. Tell Invincible to get a Sea King down here straightaway. I’m going down to investigate. Will advise.”
“Roger that, Harrier 2-0. Your captain reports a helo spooling up right now. Out.”
The Royal Navy Sea King was there in twenty-five minutes. A rubber-suited paramedic jumped in the water to get a collar on the one survivor. There were no others, and no wreckage, only a slick of jet fuel evaporating slowly into the cold air. A second helicopter continued the search as the first raced back to the carrier.
The Invincible
Ryan watched from the bridge as the medics carried the stretcher into the island. Another crewman appeared a moment later with a briefcase.
“He had this, sir. He’s a lieutenant commander, name of Dwyer, one leg and several ribs broken. He’s in a bad way, Admiral.”
“Thank you.” White took the case. “Any possibility of other survivors?”
The sailor shook his head. “Not a good one, sir. The Sikorski must have sunk like a stone.” He looked at Ryan. “Sorry, sir.”
Ryan nodded. “Thanks.”
“Norfolk on the radio, Admiral,” a communications officer said.
“Let’s go, Jack.” Admiral White handed him the briefcase and led him to the communications room.
“The chopper went in. We have one survivor being worked on right now,” Ryan said over the radio. It was silent for a moment.
“Who is it?”
“Name’s Dwyer. They took him right to sick bay, Admiral. He’s out of action. Tell Washington. Whatever this operation is supposed to be, we have to rethink it.”
“Roger. Out,” Admiral Blackburn said.
“Whatever we decide to do,” Admiral White observed, “it will have to be fast. We must get our helo off to the Pigeon in two hours to have her back before dawn.”
Ryan knew exactly what that would mean. There were only four men at sea who both knew what was going on and were close enough to do anything. He was the only American among them. The Kennedy was too far away. The Nimitz was close enough, but using her would mean getting the data to her by radio, and Washington was not enthusiastic about that. The only other alternative was to assemble and dispatch another intelligence team. There just wasn’t enough time.
“Let’s get this case open, Admiral. I need to see what this plan is.” They picked up a machinist’s mate on the way to White’s cabin. He proved to be an excellent locksmith.
“Dear God!” Ryan breathed, reading the contents of the case. “You better see this.”
“Well,” White said a few minutes later, “that is clever.”
“It’s cute, all right,” Ryan said. “I wonder what genius thought it up. I know I’m going to be stuck with this. I’ll ask Washington for permission to take a few officers along with me.”
Ten minutes later they were back in communications. White had the compartment cleared. Then Jack spoke over the encrypted voice channel. Both hoped the scrambling device worked.
“I hear you fine, Mr. President. You know what happened to the helicopter.”
“Yes, Jack, most unfortunate. I need you to pinch-hit for us.”
“Yes, sir, I anticipated that.”
“I can’t order you, but you know what the stakes are. Will you do it?”
Ryan closed his eyes. “Affirmative.”
“I appreciate it, Jack.”
Sure you do. “Sir, I need your authorization to take some help with me, a few British officers.”
“One,” the president said.
“Sir, I need more than that.”
“One.”
“Understood, sir. We’ll be moving in an hour.”
“You know what’s supposed to happen?”
“Yes, sir. The survivor had the ops orders with him. I’ve already read them over.”
“Good luck, Jack.”
“Thank you, sir. Out.” Ryan flipped off the satellite channel and turned to Admiral White. “Volunteer once, just one time, and see what happens.”
“Frightened?” White did not appear amused.
“Damned right I am. Can I borrow an officer? A guy who speaks Russian if possible. You know what this may involve.”
“We’ll see. Come on.”
Five minutes later they were back in White’s cabin awaiting the arrival of four officers. All turned out to be lieutenants, all under thirty.
“Gentlemen,” the admiral began, “this is Commander Ryan. He needs an officer to accompany him on a voluntary basis for a mission of some importance. Its nature is secret and most unusual, and there may be some danger involved. You four have been asked here because of your knowledge of Russian. That is all I can say.”
“Going to talk to a Sov submarine?” the oldest of them chirped up. “I’m your man. I have a degree in the language, and my first posting was aboard HMS Dreadnought.”
Ryan weighed the ethics of accepting the man before telling him what was involved. He nodded, and White dismissed the others.
“I’m Jack Ryan.” He extended his hand.
“Owen Williams. So, what are we up to?”
“The submarine is named Red October—”
“Krazny Oktyabr.” Williams smiled.
“And she’s attempting to defect to the United States.”
“Indeed? So that’s what we’ve been mucking about for. Jolly decent of her CO. Just how certain are we of this?”
Ryan took several minutes to detail the intelligence information. “We blinkered instructions to him, and he seems to have played along. But we won’t know for sure until we get aboard. Defectors have been known to change their minds, it happens a lot more often than you might imagine. Still want to come along?”
“Miss a chance like this? Exactly how do we get aboard, Commander?”
“The name’s Jack. I’m CIA, not navy.” He went on to explain the plan.
“Excellent. Do I have time to pack some things?”
“Be back here in ten minutes,” White said.
“Aye aye, sir.” Williams drew to attention and left.
White was on the phone. “Send Lieutenant Sinclair to see me.” The admiral explained that he was the commander of the Invincible’s marine detachment. “Perhaps you might need another friend along.”
The other friend was an FN nine-millimeter automatic pistol with a spare clip and a shoulder holster that disappeared nicely under his jacket. The mission orders were shredded and burned before they left.
Admiral White accompanied Ryan and Williams to the flight deck. They stood at the hatch, looking at the Sea King as its engines screeched into life.
“Good luck, Owen.” White shook hands with the youngster, who saluted and moved off.
“My regards to your wife, Admiral.” Ryan took his hand.
“Five and a half days to England. You’ll probably see her before I do. Be careful, Jack.”
Ryan smiled crookedly. “It’s my intelligence estimate, isn’t it? If I’m right, it’ll just be a pleasure cruise—assuming the helicopter doesn’t crash on me.”
“The uniform looks good on you, Jack.”
Ryan hadn’t expected that. He drew himself to attention and saluted as he’d been taught at Quantico. “Thank you, Admiral. Be seeing you.”
White watched him enter the chopper. The crew chief slid the door shut, and a moment later the Sea King’s engines increased power. The helicopter lifted unevenly for a few feet before its nose dipped to port and began a climbing turn to the south. Without flying lights the dark shape was lost to sight in less than a minute.
33N 75W
The Scamp rendezvoused with the Ethan Allen a few minutes after midnight. The attack sub took up station a thousand yards astern of the old missile boat, and both cruised in an easy circle as their sonar operators listened to the approach of a diesel-powered vessel, the USS Pigeon. Three of the pieces were now in place. Three more were to come.
The Red October
“There is no choice,” Melekhin said. “I must continue to work on the diesel.”
“Let us help you,” Svyadov said.
“And what do you know of diesel fuel pumps?” Melekhin asked in a tired but kind voice. “No, Comrade. Surzpoi, Bugayev, and I can handle it alone. There is no reason to expose you also. I will report back in an hour.”
“Thank you, Comrade.” Ramius clicked the speaker off. “This cruise has been a troublesome one. Sabotage. Never in my career has something like this happened! If we cannot fix the diesel…We have only a few hours more of battery power, and the reactor requires a total overhaul and safety inspection. I swear to you, Comrades, if we find the bastard who did this to us…”
“Shouldn’t we call for help?” Ivanov asked.
“This close to the American coast, and perhaps an imperialist submarine still on our tail? What sort of ‘help’ might we get, eh? Comrades, perhaps our problem is no accident, have you considered that? Perhaps we have become pawns in a murderous game.” He shook his head. “No, we cannot risk this. The Americans must not get their hands on this submarine!”
CIA Headquarters
“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Senator. I apologize for getting you up so early.” Judge Moore met Donaldson at the door and led him into his capacious office. “You know Director Jacobs, don’t you?”
“Of course, and what brings the heads of the FBI and CIA together at dawn?” Donaldson asked with a smile. This had to be good. Heading the Select Committee was more than a job, it was fun, real fun to be one of the few people who were really in the know.
The third person in the room, Ritter, helped a fourth person out of a high-backed chair that had blocked him from view. It was Peter Henderson, Donaldson saw to his surprise. His aide’s suit was rumpled as though he’d been up all night. Suddenly it wasn’t fun anymore.
Judge Moore waxed solicitous. “You know Mr. Henderson, of course.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Donaldson asked, his voice more subdued than anyone expected.
“You lied to me, Senator,” Ritter said. “You promised that you would not reveal what I told you yesterday, knowing all the time you’d tell this man—”
“I did no such thing.”
“—who then told a fellow KGB agent,” Ritter went on. “Emil?”
Jacobs set his coffee down. “We’ve been onto Mr. Henderson for some time. It was his contact that had us stumped. Some things are just too obvious. A lot of people in D.C. have regular cab pickup. Henderson’s contact was a cab driver. We finally got it right.”
“The way we found out about Henderson was through you, Senator.” Moore explained: “We had a very good agent in Moscow a few years ago, a colonel in their Strategic Rocket Forces. He’d been giving us good information for five years, and we were about to get him and his family out. We try to do that, you know; you can’t run agents forever, and we really owed this man. But I made the mistake of revealing his name to your committee. One week later, he was gone—vanished. He was eventually shot, of course. His wife and three daughters were sent to Siberia. Our information is that they live in a lumber settlement east of the Urals. Typical sort of place, no plumbing, lousy food, no medical facilities available, and since they’re the family of a convicted traitor, you can probably imagine what sort of hell they must endure. A good man dead, and a family destroyed. Try thinking about that, Senator. This is a true story, and these are real people.
“We didn’t know at first who had leaked it. It had to be you, or one of two others, so we began to leak information to individual committee members. It took six months, but your name came up three times. After that we had Director Jacobs check out all of your staffers. Emil?”
“When Henderson was an assistant editor of the Harvard Crimson, in 1970, he was sent to Kent State to do a piece on the shooting. You remember, the ‘Days of Rage’ thing after the Cambodian incursion and that awful screw-up with the national guard. I was in on that, too, as luck would have it. Evidently it turned Henderson’s stomach. Understandable. But not his reaction. When he graduated and joined your staff he started talking with his old activist friends about his job. This led to a contract from the Russians, and they asked for some information. That was during the Christmas bombing—he really didn’t like that. He delivered. It was low-level stuff at first, nothing they couldn’t have gotten a few days later from the Post. That’s how it works. They offered the hook, and he nibbled at it. A few years later, of course, they struck the hook nice and hard and he couldn’t get away. We all know how the game works.
“Yesterday we planted a tape recorder in his taxi. You’d be amazed how easy it was. Agents get lazy, too, just like the rest of us. To make a long story short, we have you on tape promising not to reveal the information to anyone, and we have Henderson here spilling that data not three hours later to a known KGB agent, also on tape. You have violated no laws, Senator, but Mr. Henderson has. He was arrested at nine last night. The charge is espionage, and we have the evidence to make it stick.”
“I had no knowledge whatever of this,” Donaldson said.
“We hadn’t the slightest thought that you might,” Ritter said.
Donaldson faced his aide. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Henderson didn’t say anything. He thought about saying how sorry he was, but how to explain his emotions? The dirty feeling of being an agent for a foreign power, juxtaposed with the thrill of fooling a whole legion of government spooks. When he was caught these emotions changed to fear at what would happen to him, and relief that it was all over.
“Mr. Henderson has agreed to work for us,” Jacobs said helpfully. “As soon as you leave the Senate, that is.”
“What does that mean?” Donaldson asked.
“You’ve been in the Senate, what? Thirteen years, isn’t it? You were originally appointed to fill out an unexpired term, if memory serves,” Moore said.
“You might try asking my reaction to blackmail,” the senator observed.
“Blackmail?” Moore held his hands out. “Good Lord, Senator, Director Jacobs has already told you that you have broken no laws, and you have my word that the CIA will not leak a word of this. Now, whether or not the Justice Department decides to prosecute Mr. Henderson is not in our hands. ‘Senate Aide Convicted of Treason: Senator Donaldson Professes No Knowledge of Aide’s Action.’”
Jacobs went on, “Senator, the University of Connecticut has offered you the chair in their school of government for some years now. Why not take it?”
“Or Henderson goes to prison. You put that on my conscience?”
“Obviously he cannot go on working for you, and it should be equally obvious that if he is fired after so many years of exemplary service in your office, it will be noticed. If, on the other hand, you decide to leave public life, it would not be too surprising if he were not able to get a job of equivalent stature with another senator. So, he will get a nice job in the General Accounting Office, where he will still have access to all sorts of secrets. Only from now on,” Ritter said, “we decide which secrets he passes along.”
“No statute of limitations on espionage,” Jacobs pointed out.
“If the Soviets find out,” Donaldson said, and stopped. He didn’t really care, did he? Not about Henderson, not about the fictitious Russian. He had an image to save, losses to cut.
“You win, Judge.”
“I thought you’d see it our way. I’ll tell the president. Thanks for coming in, Senator. Mr. Henderson will be a little late to the office this morning. Don’t feel too badly about him, Senator. If he plays ball with us, in a few years we might let him off the hook. It’s happened before, but he’ll have to earn it. Good morning, sir.”
Henderson would play along. His alternative was life in a maximum security penitentiary. After listening to the tape of his conversation in the cab, he’d made his confession in front of a court stenographer and a television camera.
The Pigeon
The ride to the Pigeon had been mercifully uneventful. The catamaran-hull rescue ship had a small helicopter platform aft, and the Royal Navy helicopter had hovered two feet above it, allowing Ryan and Williams to jump down. They were taken immediately to the bridge as the helicopter buzzed back northeast to her home.
“Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” the captain said agreeably. “Washington says you have orders for me. Coffee?”
“Do you have tea?” Williams asked.
“We can probably find some.”
“Let’s go someplace we can talk in private,” Ryan said.
The Dallas
The Dallas was now in on the plan. Alerted by another ELF transmission, Mancuso had brought her to antenna depth briefly during the night. The lengthy EYES ONLY message had been decrypted by hand in his cabin. Decryption was not Mancuso’s strong point. It took him an hour as Chambers conned the Dallas back to trail her contact. A crewman passing the captain’s cabin heard a muted damn through the door. When Mancuso reappeared, his mouth couldn’t keep from twitching into a smile. He was not a good card player either.
The Pigeon
The Pigeon was one of the navy’s two modern submarine rescue ships designed to locate and reach a sunken nuclear sub quickly enough to save her crew. She was outfitted with a variety of sophisticated equipment, chief among them the DSRV. This vessel, the Mystic, was hanging on its rack between the Pigeon’s twin catamaran hulls. There was also a 3-d sonar operating at low power, mainly as a beacon, while the Pigeon cruised in slow circles a few miles south of the Scamp and Ethan Allen. Two Perry-class frigates were twenty miles north, operating in conjunction with three Orions to sanitize the area.
“Pigeon, this is Dallas, radio check, over.”
“Dallas, this is Pigeon. Read you loud and clear, over,” the rescue ship’s captain replied on the secure radio channel.
“The package is here. Out.”
“Captain, on Invincible we had an officer send the message with a blinker light. Can you handle the blinker light?” Ryan asked.
“To be part of this? Are you kidding?”
The plan was simple enough, just a little too cute. It was clear that the Red October wanted to defect. It was even possible that everyone aboard wanted to come over—but hardly likely. They were going to get everyone off the Red October who might want to return to Russia, then pretend to blow up the ship with one of the powerful scuttling charges Russian ships are known to carry. The remaining crewmen would then take their boat northwest into Pamlico Sound to wait for the Soviet fleet to return home, sure that the Red October had been sunk and with the crew to prove it. What could possibly go wrong? A thousand things.
The Red October
Ramius looked through his periscope. The only ship in view was the USS Pigeon, though his ESM antenna reported surface radar activity to the north, a pair of frigates standing guard over the horizon. So, this was the plan. He watched the blinker light, translating the message in his mind.
Norfolk Naval Medical Center
“Thanks for coming down, Doc.” The intelligence officer had taken over the office of assistant hospital administrator. “I understand our patient woke up.”
“About an hour ago,” Tait confirmed. “He was conscious for about twenty minutes. He’s asleep now.”
“Does that mean he’ll make it?”
“It’s a positive sign. He was reasonably coherent, so there’s no evident brain damage. I was a little worried about that. I’d have to say the odds are in his favor now, but these hypothermia cases have a way of souring on you in a hurry. He’s a sick kid, that hasn’t changed.” Tait paused. “I have a question for you, Commander: Why aren’t the Russians happy?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Kind of hard to miss. Besides, Jamie found a doctor on staff who understands Russian, and we have him attending the case.”
“Why didn’t you let me know about that?”
“The Russians don’t know either. That was a medical judgment, Commander. Having a physician around who speaks the patient’s language is simply good medical practice.” Tait smiled, pleased with himself for having thought up his own intelligence ploy while at the same time adhering to proper medical ethics and naval regulations. He took a file card from his pocket. “Anyway, the patient’s name is Andre Katyskin. He’s a cook, like we thought, from Leningrad. The name of his ship was the Politovskiy.”
“My compliments, Doctor.” The intelligence officer acknowledged Tait’s maneuver, though he wondered why it was that amateurs had to be so damned clever when they butted into things that didn’t concern them.
“So why are the Russians unhappy?” Tait did not get an answer. “And why don’t you have a guy up there? You knew all along, didn’t you? You knew what ship he escaped from, and you knew why she sank…So, if they wanted most of all to know what ship he came from, and if they don’t like the news they got—does that mean they have another missing sub out there?”
CIA Headquarters
Moore lifted his phone. “James, you and Bob get in here right now!”
“What is it, Arthur?” Greer asked a minute later.
“The latest from CARDINAL.” Moore handed xeroxed copies of a message to both men. “How quick can we get word out?”
“That far out? Means a helicopter, a couple of hours at least. We have to get this out quicker than that,” Greer urged.
“We can’t endanger CARDINAL, period. Draw up a message and get the navy or air force to relay it by hand.” Moore didn’t like it, but he had no choice.
“It’ll take too long!” Greer objected loudly.
“I like the boy, too, James. Talking about it doesn’t help. Get moving.”
Greer left the room cursing like the fifty-year sailor he was.
The Red October
“Comrades. Officers and men of Red October, this is the captain speaking.” Ramius’ voice was subdued, the crewmen noticed. The incipient panic that had started a few hours earlier had driven them to the brittle edge of riot. “Efforts to repair our engines have failed. Our batteries are nearly flat. We are too far from Cuba for help, and we cannot expect help from the Rodina. We do not have enough electrical power even to operate our environmental control systems for more than a few hours. We have no choice, we must abandon ship.
“It is no accident that an American ship is now close to us, offering what they call assistance. I will tell you what has happened, comrades. An imperialist spy has sabotaged our ship, and somehow they knew what our orders were. They were waiting for us, comrades, waiting and hoping to get their dirty hands on our ship. They will not. The crew will be taken off. They will not get our Red October! The senior officers and I will remain behind to set off the scuttling charges. The water here is five thousand meters deep. They will not have our ship. All crewmen except those on duty will assemble in their quarters. That is all.” Ramius looked around the control room. “We have lost, comrades. Bugayev, make the necessary signals to Moscow and to the American ship. We will then dive to a hundred meters. We will take no chance that they will seize our ship. I take full responsibility for this—disgrace! Mark this well, comrades. The fault is mine alone.”
The Pigeon
“Signal received: ‘SSS,’” the radioman reported.
“Ever been on a submarine before, Ryan?” Cook asked.
“Nope, I hope it’s safer ’n flying.” Ryan tried to make a joke of it. He was deeply frightened.
“Well, let’s get you down to Mystic.”
The Mystic
The DSRV was nothing more than three metal spheres welded together with a propeller on the back and some boiler plating all around to protect the pressure-bearing parts of the hull. Ryan was first through the hatch, then Williams. They found seats and waited. A crew of three was already at work.
The Mystic was ready for operation. On command, the Pigeon’s winches lowered her to the calm water below. She dived at once, her electric motors hardly making any noise. Her low-power sonar system immediately acquired the Russian submarine, half a mile away, at a depth of three hundred feet. The operating crew had been told that this was a straightforward rescue mission. They were experts. The Mystic was hovering over the missile sub’s forward escape trunk within ten minutes.
The directional propellers worked them carefully into place and a petty officer made certain that the mating skirt was securely fastened. The water in the skirt between Mystic and Red October was explosively vented into a low-pressure chamber on the DSRV. This established a firm seal between the two vessels, and the residual water was pumped out.
“Your ball now, I guess.” The lieutenant motioned Ryan to the hatch in the floor of the middle segment.
“I guess.” Ryan knelt by the hatch and banged a few times with his hand. No response. Next he tried a wrench. A moment later three clangs echoed back, and Ryan turned the locking wheel in the center of the hatch. When he pulled the batch up, he found another that had already been opened from below. The lower perpendicular hatch was shut. Ryan took a deep breath and climbed down the ladder of the white painted cylinder, followed by Williams. After reaching the bottom Ryan knocked on the lower hatch.
The Red October
It opened at once.
“Gentlemen, I am Commander Ryan, United States Navy. Can we be of assistance?”
The man he spoke to was shorter and heavier than himself. He wore three stars on his shoulder boards, an extensive set of ribbons on his breast, and a broad gold stripe on his sleeve. So, this was Marko Ramius…
“Do you speak Russian?”
“No sir, I do not. What is the nature of your emergency, sir?”
“We have a major leak in our reactor system. The ship is contaminated aft of the control room. We must evacuate.”
At the words leak and reactor Ryan felt his skin crawl. He remembered how positive he had been that his scenario was correct. On land, nine hundred miles away, in a nice, warm office, surrounded by friends—well, not enemies. The looks he was getting from the twenty men in this compartment were lethal.
“Dear God! Okay, let’s get moving then. We can take off twenty-five men at a time, sir.”
“Not so fast, Commander Ryan. What will become of my men?” Ramius asked loudly.
“They will be treated as our guests, of course. If they need medical attention, they will get it. They will be returned to the Soviet Union as quickly as we can arrange it. Did you think we’d put them in prison?”
Ramius grunted and turned to speak with the others in Russian. On the flight from the Invincible Ryan and Williams had decided to keep the latter’s knowledge of Russian secret for a while, and Williams was now dressed in an American uniform. Neither thought a Russian would notice the different accent.
“Dr. Petrov,” Ramius said, “you will take the first group of twenty-five. Keep control of the men, Comrade Doctor! Do not let the Americans speak to them as individuals, and let no man wander off alone. You will behave correctly, no more, no less.”
“Understood, Comrade Captain.”
Ryan watched Petrov count the men off as they passed through the hatch and up the ladder. When they were finished, Williams secured first the Mystic’s hatch and then the one on the October’s escape truck. Ramius had a michman check it. They heard the DSRV disengage and motor off.
The silence that ensued was as long as it was awkward. Ryan and Williams stood in one corner of the compartment, Ramius and his men opposite them. It made Ryan think back to high school dances where boys and girls gathered in separate groups and there was a no-man’s-land in the middle. When an officer fished out a cigarette, he tried breaking the ice.
“May I have a cigarette, sir?”
Borodin jerked the pack, and a cigarette came part way out. Ryan took it, and Borodin lit it with a paper match.
“Thanks. I gave it up, but underwater in a sub with a bad reactor, I don’t think it’s too dangerous, do you?” Ryan’s first experience with a Russian cigarette was not a happy one. The black coarse tobacco made him dizzy, and it added an acrid smell to the air around them, which was already thick with the odor of sweat, machine oil, and cabbage.
“How did you come to be here?” Ramius asked.
“We were heading towards the coast of Virginia, Captain. A Soviet submarine sank there last week.”
“Oh?” Ramius admired the cover story. “A Soviet submarine?”
“Yes, Captain. The boat was what we call an Alfa. That’s all I know for sure. They picked up a survivor, and he’s in the Norfolk naval hospital. May I ask your name, sir?”
“Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius.”
“Jack Ryan.”
“Owen Williams.” They shook hands all around.
“You have a family, Commander Ryan?” Ramius asked.
“Yes, sir. A wife, a son, and a daughter. You, sir?”
“No, no family.” He turned and addressed a junior officer in Russian. “Take the next group. You heard my instructions to the doctor?”
“Yes, Comrade Captain!” the young man said.
They heard the Mystic’s electric motors overhead. A moment later came the metallic clang of the mating collar gripping the escape trunk. It had taken forty minutes, but it had seemed like a week. God, what if the reactor really was bad? Ryan thought.
The Scamp
Two miles away, the Scamp had halted a few hundred yards from the Ethan Allen. Both submarines were exchanging messages on their gertrudes. The Scamp sonarmen had noted the passage of the three submarines an hour earlier. The Pogy and Dallas were now between the Red October and the other two American subs, their sonar operators listening intently for any interference, any vessel that might come their way. The transfer area was far enough offshore to miss the coastal traffic of commercial freighters and tankers, but that might not keep them from meeting a stray vessel from another port.
The Red October
When the third set of crewmen left under the control of Lieutenant Svyadov, a cook at the end of the line broke away, explaining that he wanted to retrieve his cassette tape machine, something he had saved months for. No one noticed when he didn’t return, not even Ramius. His crewmen, even the experienced michmanyy, jostled one another to get out of their submarine. There was only one more group to go.
The Pigeon
On the Pigeon, the Soviet crewmen were taken to the crew’s mess. The American sailors were observing their Russian counterparts closely, but no words passed. The Russians found the tables set with a meal of coffee, bacon, eggs, and toast. Petrov was happy for that. It was no problem keeping control of the men when they ate like wolves. With a junior officer acting as interpreter, they asked for and got plenty of additional bacon. The cooks had orders to stuff the Russians with all the food they could eat. It kept everyone busy as a helicopter landed from shore with twenty new men, one of whom raced to the bridge.
The Red October
“Last group,” Ryan murmured to himself. The Mystic mated again. The last round trip had taken an hour. When the pair of hatches was opened, the lieutenant from the DSRV came down.
“Next trip will be delayed, gentlemen. Our batteries have about had it. It’ll take ninety minutes to recharge. Any problem?”
“It will be as you say,” Ramius replied. He translated for his men and then ordered Ivanov to take the next group. “The senior officers will stay behind. We have work to do.” Ramius took the young officer’s hand. “If something happens, tell them in Moscow that we have done our duty.”
“I will do that, Comrade Captain.” Ivanov nearly choked on his answer.
Ryan watched the sailors leave. The Red October’s escape trunk hatch was closed, then the Mystic’s. One minute later there was a clanging sound as the minisub lifted free. He heard the electric motors whirring off, fading rapidly away, and felt the green-painted bulkheads closing in on him. Being on an airplane was frightening, but at least the air didn’t threaten to crush you. Here he was, underwater, three hundred miles from shore in the world’s largest submarine, with only ten men aboard who knew how to run her.
“Commander Ryan,” Ramius said, drawing himself to attention, “my officers and I request political asylum in the United States—and we bring you this small present.” Ramius gestured toward the steel bulkheads.
Ryan had already framed his reply. “Captain, on behalf of the president of the United States, it is my honor to grant your request. Welcome to freedom, gentlemen.”
No one knew that the intercom system in the compartment had been switched on. The indicator light had been unplugged hours before. Two compartments forward the cook listened, telling himself that he had been right to stay behind, wishing he had been wrong. Now what will I do? he wondered. His duty. That sounded easy enough—but would he remember how to carry it out?
“I don’t know what to say about you guys.” Ryan shook everyone’s hand again. “You pulled it off. You really pulled it off!”
“Excuse me, Commander,” Kamarov said. “Do you speak Russian?”
“Sorry, Lieutenant Williams here does, but I do not. A group of Russian-speaking officers was supposed to be here in my place, but their helicopter crashed at sea last night.” Williams translated this. Four of the officers had no knowledge of English.
“And what happens now?”
“In a few minutes, a missile submarine will explode two miles from here. One of ours, an old one. I presume that you told your men you were going to scuttle—Jesus, I hope you didn’t say what you were really doing?”
“And have a war aboard my ship?” Ramius laughed. “No, Ryan. Then what?”
“When everybody thinks Red October has sunk, we’ll head northwest to the Ocracoke Inlet and wait. USS Dallas and Pogy will be escorting us. Can these few men operate the ship?”
“These men can operate any ship in the world!” Ramius said it in Russian first. His men grinned. “So, you think that our men will not know what has become of us?”
“Correct. Pigeon will see an underwater explosion. They have no way of knowing it’s in the wrong place, do they? You know that your navy has many ships operating off our coast right now? When they leave, well, then we’ll figure out where to keep this present permanently. I don’t know where that will be. You men, of course, will be our guests. A lot of our people will want to talk with you. For the moment, you can be sure that you will be treated very well—better than you can imagine.” Ryan was sure that the CIA would give each a considerable sum of money. He didn’t say so, not wanting to insult this kind of bravery. It had surprised him to learn that defectors rarely expect to receive money, almost never ask for any.
“What about political education?” Kamarov asked.
Ryan laughed. “Lieutenant, somewhere along the line somebody will take you aside to explain how our country works. That will take about two hours. After that you can immediately start telling us what we do wrong—everybody else in the world does, why shouldn’t you? But I can’t do that now. Believe this, you will love it, probably more than I do. I have never lived in a country that was not free, and maybe I don’t appreciate my home as much as I should. For the moment, I suppose you have work to do.”
“Correct,” Ramius said. “Come, my new comrades, we will put you to work also.”
Ramius led Ryan aft through a series of watertight doors. In a few minutes he was in the missile room, a vast compartment with twenty-six dark-green tubes towering through two decks. The business end of a boomer, with two-hundred-plus thermonuclear warheads. The menace in this room was enough to make hair bristle at the back of Ryan’s neck. These were not academic abstractions, these were real. The upper deck he walked on was a grating. The lower deck, he could see, was solid. After passing through this and another compartment they were in the control room. The interior of the submarine was ghostly quiet; Ryan sensed why sailors are superstitious.
“You will sit here.” Ramius pointed Ryan to the helmsman’s station on the port side of the compartment. There was an aircraft-style wheel and a gang of instruments.
“What do I do?” Ryan asked, sitting.
“You will steer the ship, Commander. Have you never done this before?”
“No, sir. I’ve never been on a submarine before.”
“But you are a naval officer.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, captain. I work for the CIA.”
“CIA?” Ramius hissed the acronym as if it were poisonous.
“I know, I know.” Ryan dropped his head on the wheel. “They call us the Dark Forces. Captain, this is one Dark Force who’s probably going to wet his pants before we’re finished here. I work at a desk, and believe me on this if nothing else—there’s nothing I’d like better than to be home with my wife and kids right now. If I had half a brain, I would have stayed in Annapolis and kept writing my books.”
“Books? What do you mean?”
“I’m an historian, Captain. I was asked to join the CIA a few years ago as an analyst. Do you know what that is? Agents bring in their data, and I figure out what it means. I got into this mess by mistake—shit, you don’t believe me, but it’s true. Anyway, I used to write books on naval history.”
“Tell me your books,” Ramius ordered.
“Options and Decisions, Doomed Eagles, and a new one coming out next year, Fighting Sailor, a biography of Admiral Halsey. My first one was about the Battle of Leyte Gulf. It was reviewed in Morskoi Sbornik, I understand. It dealt with the nature of tactical decisions made under combat conditions. There’s supposed to be a dozen copies at the Frunze library.”
Ramius was quiet for a moment. “Ah, I know this book. Yes, I read parts of it. You were wrong, Ryan. Halsey acted stupidly.”
“You will do well in my country, Captain Ramius. You are already a book critic. Captain Borodin, can I trouble you for a cigarette?” Borodin tossed him a full pack and matches. Ryan lit one. It was terrible.
The Avalon
The Mystic’s fourth return was the signal for the Ethan Allen and Scamp to act. The Avalon lifted off her bed and motored the few hundred yards to the old missile boat. Her captain was already assembling his men in the torpedo room. Every hatch, door, manhole, and drawer had been opened all over the boat. One of the officers was coming forward to join the others. Behind him trailed a black wire that led to each of the bombs aboard. This he connected to a timing device.
“All ready, Captain.”
The Red October
Ryan watched Ramius order his men to their posts. Most went aft to run the engines. Ramius had the good manners to speak in English, repeating himself in Russian for those who did not understand their new language.
“Kamarov and Williams, will you go forward and secure all hatches.” Ramius explained for Ryan’s benefit. “If something goes wrong—it won’t, but if it does—we do not have enough men to make repairs. So, we seal the entire ship.”
It made sense to Ryan. He set an empty cup on the control pedestal to serve as an ashtray. He and Ramius were alone in the control room.
“When are we to leave?” Ramius asked.
“Whenever you are ready, sir. We have to get to Ocracoke Inlet at high tide, about eight minutes after midnight. Can we make it?”
Ramius consulted his chart. “Easily.”
Kamarov led Williams through the communications room forward of control. They left the watertight door there open, then went forward to the missile room. Here they climbed down a ladder and walked forward on the lower missile deck to the forward missile room bulkhead. They proceeded through the door into the stores compartments, checking each hatch as they went. Near the bow they went up another ladder into the torpedo room, dogging the hatch down behind them, and proceeded aft through the torpedo storage and crew spaces. Both men sensed how strange it was to be aboard a ship with no crew, and they took their time, Williams twisting his head to look at everything and asking Kamarov questions. The lieutenant was happy to answer them in his mother language. Both men were competent officers, sharing a romantic attachment to their profession. For his part, Williams was greatly impressed by the Red October and said as much several times. A great deal of attention had been paid to small details. The deck was tiled. The hatches were lined with thick rubber gaskets. They hardly made any noise at all as they moved about checking watertight integrity, and it was obvious that more than mere lip service had been paid to making this submarine a quiet one.
Williams was translating a favorite sea story into Russian as they opened the hatch to the missile room’s upper deck. When he stepped through the hatch behind Kamarov, he remembered that the missile room’s bright overhead lights had been left on. Hadn’t they?
Ryan was trying to relax and failing at it. The seat was uncomfortable, and he recalled the Russian joke about how they were shaping the New Soviet Man—with airliner seats that contorted an individual into all kinds of impossible shapes. Aft, the engine room crew had begun powering up the reactor. Ramius was speaking over the intercom phone with his chief engineer, just before the sound of moving reactor coolant increased to generate steam for the turboalternators.
Ryan’s head went up. It was as though he felt the sound before hearing it. A chill ran up the back of his neck before his brain told him what the sound had to be.
“What was that?” he said automatically, knowing already what it was.
“What?” Ramius was ten feet aft, and the caterpillar engines were now turning. A strange rumble reverberated through the hull.
“I heard a shot—no, several shots.”
Ramius looked amused as he came a few steps forward. “I think you hear the sounds of the caterpillar engines, and I think it is your first time on a submarine boat, as you said. The first time is always difficult. It was so even for me.”
Ryan stood up. “That may be, Captain, but I know a shot when I hear it.” He unbottoned his jacket and pulled out the pistol.
“You will give me that.” Ramius held out his hand. “You may not have a pistol on my submarine!”
“Where are Williams and Kamarov?” Ryan wavered.
Ramius shrugged. “They are late, yes, but this is a big ship.”
“I’m going forward to check.”
“You will stay at your post!” Ramius ordered. “You will do as I say!”
“Captain, I just heard something that sounded like gunshots, and I am going forward to check it out. Have you ever been shot at? I have. I have the scars on my shoulder to prove it. You’d better take the wheel, sir.”
Ramius picked up a phone and punched a button. He spoke in Russian for a few seconds and hung up. “I will go to show you that my submarine has no souls—ghosts, yes? Ghosts, no ghosts.” He gestured to the pistol. “And you are no spy, eh?”
“Captain, believe what you want to believe, okay? It’s a long story, and I’ll tell it to you someday.” Ryan waited for the relief that Ramius had evidently called for. The rumble of the tunnel drive made the sub sound like the inside of a drum.
An officer whose name he did not remember came into the control room. Ramius said something that drew a laugh—which stopped when the officer saw Ryan’s pistol. It was obvious that neither Russian was happy he had one.
“With your permission, Captain?” Ryan gestured forward.
“Go on, Ryan.”
The watertight door between control and the next space had been left open. Ryan entered the radio room slowly, eyes tracing left and right. It was clear. He went forward to the missile room door, which was dogged tight. The door, four feet or so high and about two across, was locked in place with a central wheel. Ryan turned the wheel with one hand. It was well oiled. So were the hinges. He pulled the door open slowly and peered around the hatch coaming.
“Oh, shit,” Ryan breathed, waving the captain forward. The missile compartment was a good two hundred feet long, lit only by six or eight small glow lights. Hadn’t it been brightly lit before? At the far end was a splash of bright light, and the far hatch had two shapes sprawled on the gratings next to it. Neither moved. The light Ryan saw them by was flickering next to a missile tube.
“Ghosts, Captain?” he whispered.
“It is Kamarov.” Ramius said something else under his breath in Russian.
Ryan pulled the slide back on his FN automatic to make sure a round was in the chamber. Then he stepped out of his shoes.
“Better let me handle this. Once upon a time I was a lieutenant in the marines.” And my training at Quantico, he thought to himself, had damned little to do with this. Ryan entered the compartment.
The missile room was almost a third of the submarine’s length and two decks high. The lower deck was solid metal. The upper one was made of metal grates. Sherwood Forest, this place was called on American missile boats. The term was apt enough. The missile tubes, a good nine feet in diameter and painted a darker green than the rest of the room, looked like the trunks of enormous trees. He pulled the hatch shut behind him and moved to his right.
The light seemed to be coming from the farthest missile tube on the starboard side of the upper missile deck. Ryan stopped to listen. Something was happening there. He could hear a low rustling sound, and the light was moving as though it came from a hand-held work lamp. The sound was traveling down the smooth sides of the interior hull plating.
“Why me?” he whispered to himself. He’d have to get past thirteen missile tubes to get to the source of that light, cross over two hundred feet of open deck.
He moved around the first one, pistol in his right hand at waist level, his left hand tracing the cold metal of the tube. Already he was sweating into the checkered hard-rubber pistol grips. That, he told himself, is why they’re checkered. He got between the first and second tubes, looked to port to make sure nobody was there, and got ready to move forward. Twelve to go.
The deck grating was welded out of eighth-inch metal bars. Already his feet hurt from walking on it. Moving slowly and carefully around the next circular tube, he felt like an astronaut orbiting the moon and crossing a continuous horizon. Except on the moon there wasn’t anybody waiting to shoot you.
A hand came down on his shoulder. Ryan jumped and whirled around. Ramius. He had something to say, but Ryan put his fingertips on the man’s lips and shook his head. Ryan’s heart was beating so loudly that he could have used it for sending Morse code, and he could hear his own breathing—so why the hell hadn’t he heard Ramius?
Ryan gestured his intention to go around the outboard side of each missile. Ramius indicated that he would go around the inboard sides. Ryan nodded. He decided to button his jacket and turn the collar up. It would make him a harder target. Better a dark shape than one with a white triangle on it. Next tube.
Ryan saw that words were painted on the tubes, with other inscriptions forged onto the metal itself. The letters were in Cyrillic and probably said No Smoking or Lenin Lives or something similarly useless. He saw and heard everything with great acuity, as though someone had taken sandpaper to all his senses to make him fantastically alert. He edged around the next tube, his fingers flexing nervously on the pistol grip, wanting to wipe the sweat from his eyes. There was nothing here; the port side was okay. Next one…
It took five minutes to get halfway down the compartment, between the sixth and seventh tubes. The noise from the forward end of the compartment was more pronounced now. The light was definitely moving. Not by much, but the shadow of the number one tube was jittering ever so slightly. It had to be a work light plugged into a wall socket or whatever they called that on a ship. What was he doing? Working on a missile? Was there more than one man? Why didn’t Ramius do a head count getting his crew into the DSRV?
Why didn’t I? Ryan swore to himself. Six more to go.
As he went around the next tube he indicated to Ramius that there was probably one man all the way at the far end. Ramius nodded curtly, having already reached that conclusion. For the first time he noticed that Ryan’s shoes were off, and, thinking that was a good idea, he lifted his left foot to take off a shoe. His fingers, which felt awkward and stiff, fumbled with the shoe. It fell on a loose piece of grating with a clatter. Ryan was caught in the open. He froze. The light at the far end shifted, then went dead still. Ryan darted to his left and peered around the edge of the tube. Five more to go. He saw part of a face—and a flash.
He heard the shot and cringed as the bullet hit the after bulkhead with a clang. Then he drew back for cover.
“I will cross to the other side,” Ramius whispered.
“Wait till I say.” Ryan grabbed Ramius’ upper arm and went back to the starboard side of the tube, pistol in front. He saw the face and this time he fired first, knowing he’d miss. At the same moment he pushed Ramius left. The captain raced to the other side and crouched behind a missile tube.
“We have you,” Ryan said aloud.
“You have nothing.” It was a young voice, young and very scared.
“What are you doing?” Ryan asked.
“What do you think, Yankee?” This time the taunt was more effective.
Probably figuring a way to set off a warhead, Ryan decided. A happy thought.
“Then you will die too,” Ryan said. Didn’t the police try to reason with barricaded suspects? Didn’t a New York cop say on TV once, “We try to bore them to death?” But those were criminals. What was Ryan dealing with? A sailor who stayed behind? One of Ramius’ own officers who’d had second thoughts? A KGB agent? A GRU agent covered as a crewman?
“Then I will die,” the voice agreed. The light moved. Whatever he was doing, he was trying to get back to it.
Ryan fired twice as he went around the tube. Four to go. His bullets clanged uselessly as they hit the forward bulkhead. There was a remote chance that a carom shot—no…He looked left and saw that Ramius was still with him, shading to the port side of the tubes. He had no gun. Why hadn’t he gotten himself one?
Ryan took a deep breath and leaped around the next tube. The guy was waiting for this. Ryan dove to the deck, and the bullet missed him.
“Who are you?” Ryan asked, raising himself on his knees and leaning against the tube to catch his breath.
“A Soviet patriot! You are the enemy of my country, and you shall not have this ship!”
He was talking too much, Ryan thought. Good. Probably. “You have a name?”
“My name is of no account.”
“How about a family?” Ryan asked.
“My parents will be proud of me.”
A GRU agent. Ryan was certain. Not the political officer. His English was too good. Probably some kind of backup for the political officer. He was up against a trained field officer. Wonderful. A trained agent, and just like he said, a patriot. Not a fanatic, a man trying to do his duty. He was scared, but he’d do it.
And blow this whole fucking ship up, with me on it.
Still, Ryan knew he had an edge. The other guy had something he had to do. Ryan only had to stop him or delay him long enough. He went to the starboard side of the tube and looked around the edge with just his right eye. There was no light at his end of the compartment—another edge. Ryan could see him more easily than he could see Ryan.
“You don’t have to die, my friend. If you just set the gun down…” And what? End up in a federal prison? More likely just disappear. Moscow could not learn that the Americans had their sub.
“And CIA will not kill me, eh?” the voice sneered, quavering. “I am no fool. If I am to die, it will be to my purpose, my friend!”
Then the light clicked off. Ryan had wondered how long that would take. Did it mean that he was finished whatever the hell he was doing? If so, in an instant they’d be all gone. Or maybe the guy just realized how vulnerable the light made him. Trained field officer or not, he was a kid, a frightened kid, and probably had as much to lose as Ryan had. Like hell, Ryan thought, I have a wife and two kids, and if I don’t get to him fast, I’ll sure as hell lose them.
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.”
“Do you really expect the Russians to buy it?” Pelt asked.
“We’ve left some nice bait, and we’ll jerk the line a little to get their attention. In a day or two we’ll see if they nibble at it. Henderson is one of their all-stars—his code name is Cassius—and their reaction to this will tell us just what sort of disinformation we can pass through him. He could turn out to be very useful, but we’ll have to watch out for him. Our KGB colleagues have a very direct method for dealing with doubles.”
“We don’t let him off the hook unless he earns it,” the president said coldly.
Moore smiled. “Oh, he’ll earn it. We own Mr. Henderson.”