Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October (54 page)

“We left the sound in daylight. What if somebody saw us then?” Ryan asked.

“I didn't see anything, but if anybody was there, all he'd have seen was three sub conning towers with no numbers on them.” They had left in daylight to take advantage of a “window” in Soviet satellite coverage.

Ryan lit another cigarette. His wife would give him hell for this, but he was tense from being on the submarine. Sitting at the helmsman's station left him with nothing to do but stare at the handful of instruments. The sub was easier to hold level than he had expected, and the only radical turn he had attempted showed how eager the sub was to change course in any direction. Thirty-some-thousand tons of steel, he thought—no wonder.

The
Pogy/The Red October

The Pogy stormed past the
Dallas
at thirty knots and continued for twenty minutes, stopping eleven miles beyond her—and three miles from the Konovalov, whose crew was scarcely breathing now. The Pogy's sonar, though lacking the new BC-10/SAPS signal-processing system, was otherwise state of the art, but it was impossible to hear something that made no noise at all, and the Konovalov was silent.

The Red October passed the
Dallas
at 1500 hours after receiving the latest all-clear signal. Her crew was tired and looking forward to arriving at
Norfolk
two hours after sundown. Ryan wondered how quickly he could fly back to
London
. He was afraid that the CIA would want to debrief him at length. Mancuso and the crewmen of the
Dallas
wondered if they'd get to see their families. They weren't counting on it.

The
V. K. Konovalov

“Whatever it is, it is big, very big, I think. His course will take him within five kilometers of us.”

“An
Ohio
, as
Moscow
said,” Tupolev commented.

“It sounds like a twin-screw submarine, Comrade Captain,” the michman said.

“The
Ohio
has one propeller. You know that.”

“Yes, Comrade. In any case, he will be with us in twenty minutes. The other attack submarine is moving at thirty-plus knots. If the pattern holds, he will proceed fifteen kilometers beyond us.”

“And the other American?”

“A few kilometers seaward, drifting slowly, like us. I do not have an exact range. I could raise him on active sonar, but that—”

“I am aware of the consequences,” Tupolev snapped. He went back to the control room.

“Tell the engineers to be ready to answer bells. All men at battle stations?”

“Yes, Comrade Captain,” the starpom replied. “We have an excellent firing solution on the American hunter sub—the one moving, that is. The way he runs at full speed makes it easy for us. The other we can localize in seconds.”

“Good, for a change,” Tupolev smiled. “You see what we can do when circumstances favor us?”

“And what shall we do?”

“When the big one passes us, we will close and ream his asshole. They have played their games. Now we shall play ours. Have the engineers increase power. We will need full power shortly.”

“It will make noise, Comrade,” the starpom cautioned.

“True, but we have no choice. Ten percent power. The
Ohio
cannot possibly hear that, and perhaps the near hunter sub won't either.”

The
Pogy

“Where did that come from?” The sonar chief made some adjustments on his board. “
Conn
, sonar, I got a contact, bearing two-three-zero.”

“Conn, aye,” Commander Wood answered at once. “Can you classify?”

“No, sir. It just came up. Reactor plant and steam noises, real faint, sir. I can't quite read the plant signature . . . ” He flipped the gain controls to maximum. “Not one of ours. Skipper, I think maybe we got us an Alfa here.”

“Oh, great! Signal
Dallas
right now!”

The chief tried, but the
Dallas
, running at thirty-two knots, missed the five rapid pings. The Red October was now eight miles away.

The
Red October

Jones' eyes suddenly screwed shut. “Mr. Bugayev, tell the skipper I just heard a couple of pings.”

“Couple?”

“More 'n one, but I didn't get a count.”

The
Pogy

Commander Wood made his decision. The idea had been to send the sonar signals on a highly directional, low-power basis so as to minimize the chance of revealing his own position. But the
Dallas
hadn't picked that up.

“Max power, Chief. Hit
Dallas
with everything.” “Aye aye.” The chief flipped his power controls to full. It took several seconds until the system was ready to send a hundred-kilowatt blast of energy.
Ping
ping
ping
ping
ping!

The
Dallas

“Wow!” Chief Laval exclaimed. “
Conn
, sonar, danger signal from Pogy!”

“All stop!” Chambers ordered. “Quiet ship.”

“All stop.” Lieutenant Goodman relayed the orders a second later. Aft, the reactor watch reduced steam demand, increasing the temperature in the reactor. This allowed neutrons to escape out of the pile, rapidly slowing the fission reaction.

“When speed gets to four knots, go to one-third speed,” Chambers told the officer of the deck as he went aft to the sonar room. “Frenchie, I need data in a hurry.”

“Still going too fast, sir,”
Laval
said.

The
Red October

“Captain Ramius, I think we should slow down,” Mancuso said judiciously.

“The signal was not repeated,” Ramius disagreed. The second directional signal had missed them, and the
Dallas
had not relayed the danger signal yet because she was still traveling too fast to locate the October and pass it along.

The
Pogy

“Okay, sir, Dallas has killed power.”

Wood chewed on his lower lip. “All right, let's find the bastard. Yankee search, Chief, max power.” He went back to control. “Man battle stations.” An alarm went off two seconds later. The Pogy had already been at increased readiness, and within forty seconds all stations were manned, with the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Tom Reynolds, as fire control coordinator. His team of officers and technicians were waiting for data to feed into the Mark 117 fire control computer.

The sonar dome in the Pogy's bow was blasting sound energy into the water. Fifteen seconds after it started the first return signal appeared on Chief Palmer's screen.

“
Conn
, sonar, we have a positive contact, bearing two-three-four, range six thousand yards. Classify probable Alfa class from his plant signature,” Palmer said.

“Get me a solution!” Wood said urgently.

“Aye.” Reynolds watched the data input as another team of officers was making a paper and pencil plot on the chart table. Computer or not, there had to be a backup. The data paraded across the screen. The Pogy's four torpedo tubes contained a pair of Harpoon antiship missiles and two Mark 48 torpedoes. Only the torpedoes were useful at the moment. The Mark 48 was the most powerful torpedo in the inventory; wire-guided—and able to home in with its own active sonar—it ran at over fifty knots and carried a half-ton warhead. “Skipper, we got a solution for both fish. Running time four minutes, thirty-five seconds.”

“Sonar, secure pinging,” Wood said.

“Aye aye. Pinging secured, sir.” Palmer killed power to the active systems. “Target elevation-depression angle is near zero, sir. He's about at our depth.”

“Very well, sonar. Keep on him.” Wood now had his target's position. Further pinging would only give it a better idea of his own.

The
Dallas

“Pogy was pinging something. They got a return, bearing one-nine-one, about,” Chief Laval said. “There's another sub out there. I don't know what. I can read some plant and steam noises, but not enough for a signature.”

The
Pogy

“The boomer's still movin', sir,” Chief Palmer reported.

“Skipper,” Reynolds looked up from the paper tracks, “her course takes her between us and the target.”

“Terrific. All ahead one-third, left twenty degrees rudder.” Wood moved to the sonar room while his orders were carried out. “Chief, power up and stand by to ping the boomer hard.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Palmer worked his controls. “Ready, sir.”

“Hit him straight on. I don't want him to miss this time.”

Wood watched the heading indicator on the sonar plot swing. The Pogy was turning rapidly, but not rapidly enough to suit him. The Red October—only he and Reynolds knew that she was Russian, though the crew was speculating like mad—was coming in too fast.

“Ready, sir.”

“Hit it.”

Palmer punched the impulse control.

Ping
ping
ping
ping
ping!

The
Red October

“Skipper,” Jones yelled. “Danger signal!”

Mancuso jumped to the annunciator without waiting for Ramius to react. He twisted the dial to All Stop. When this was done he looked at Ramius. “Sorry, sir.”

“All right.” Ramius scowled at the chart. The phone buzzed a moment later. He took it and spoke in Russian for several seconds before hanging up. “I told them that we have a problem but we do not know what it is.”

“True enough.” Mancuso joined Ramius at the chart. Engine noises were diminishing, though not quickly enough to suit the American. The October was quiet for a Russian sub, but this was still too noisy for him.

“See if your sonarman can locate anything,” Ramius suggested.

“Right.” Mancuso took a few steps aft. “Jonesy, find what's out there.”

“Aye, Skipper, but it won't be easy on this gear.” He already had the sensor arrays working in the direction of the two escorting attack subs. Jones adjusted the fit of his headphones and started working on the amplifier controls. No signal processors, no SAPS, and the transducers weren't worth a damn! But this wasn't the time to get excited. The Soviet systems had to be manipulated electromechanically, unlike the computer-controlled ones he was used to. Slowly and carefully, he altered the directional receptor gangs in the sonar dome forward, his right hand twirling a cigarette pack, his eyes shut tight. He didn't notice Bugayev sitting next to him, listening to the same input.

The
Dallas

“What do we know, Chief?” Chambers asked.

“I got a bearing and nothing else. Pogy's got him all dialed in, but our friend powered back his engine right after he got lashed, and he faded out on me. Pogy got a big return off him. He's probably pretty close, sir.”

Chambers had only moved up to his executive officer's posting four months earlier. He was a bright, experienced officer and a likely candidate for his own command, but he was only thirty-three years old and had only been back in submarines for those four months. The year and a half prior to that he'd been a reactor instructor in
Idaho
. The gruffness that was part of his job as Mancuso's principal on-board disciplinarian also shielded more insecurity than he would have cared to admit. Now his career was on the line. He knew exactly how important this mission was. His future would ride on the decisions he was about to make.

“Can you localize with one ping?”

The sonar chief considered this for a second. “Not enough for a shooting solution, but it'll give us something.”

“One ping, do it.”

“Aye.”
Laval
worked on his board briefly, triggering the active elements.

The
V. K. Konovalov

Tupolev winced. He had acted too soon. He should have waited until they were past—but then if he had waited that long, he would have had to move, and now he had all three of them hovering nearby, almost still.

The four submarines were moving only fast enough for depth control. The Russian Alfa was pointed southeast, and all four were arrayed in a roughly trapezoidal fashion, open end seaward. The Pogy and the
Dallas
were to the north of the Konovalov, the Red October was southeast of her.

The
Red October

“Somebody just pinged her,” Jones said quietly. “Bearing is roughly northwest, but she isn't making enough noise for us to read her. Sir, if I had to make a bet, I'd say she was pretty close.”

“How do you know that?” Mancuso asked.

“I heard the pulse direct—just one ping to get a range, I think. It was from a BQQ-5. Then we heard the echo off the target. The math works out a couple of different ways, but smart money is he's between us and our guys, and a little west. I know it's shaky, sir, but it's the best we got.”

“Range ten kilometers, perhaps less,” Bugayev commented.

“That's kinda shaky, too, but it's as good a starting place as any. Not a whole lot of data. Sorry, Skipper. Best we can do,” Jones said.

Mancuso nodded and returned to control.

“What gives?” Ryan asked. The plane controls were pushed all the way forward to maintain depth. He had not grasped the significance of what was going on.

“There's a hostile submarine out there.”

“What information do we have?” Ramius asked.

“Not much. There's a contact northwest, range unknown, but probably not very far. I know for sure it's not one of ours.
Norfolk
said this area was cleared. That leaves one possibility. We drift?”

“We drift,” Ramius echoed, lifting the phone. He spoke a few orders.

The October's engines were providing the power to move the submarine at a fraction over two knots, barely enough to maintain steerage way and not enough to maintain depth. With her slight positive buoyancy, the October was drifting upward a few feet per minute despite the plane setting.

The
Dallas

“Let's move back south. I don't like the idea of having that Alfa closer to our friend than we are. Come right to one-eight-five, two-thirds,” Chambers said finally.

“Aye aye,” Goodman said. “Helm, right fifteen degrees rudder, come to new course one-eight-five. All ahead two thirds.”