Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October (58 page)

The October was now passing twenty knots.

“Range to the Alfa is seven hundred fifty yards, bearing two-two-five. The torpedo is close, sir, a few more seconds.” Jones cringed, staring at the screen.

Klonk
!

The torpedo struck the Red October dead center in her hemispherical bow. The safety lock still had another hundred meters to run. The impact broke it into three pieces, which were batted aside by the accelerating missile submarine.

“A dud!” Jones laughed. “Thank you, God! Target still bearing two-two-five, range is seven hundred yards.”

The
V. K. Konovalov

“No explosion?” Tupolev wondered.

“The safety locks!” The starpom swore. He'd had to set it up too fast.

“Where is the target?”

“Bearing zero-four-five, Comrade. Bearing is constant,” the michman replied, “closing rapidly.”

Tupolev blanched. “Left full rudder, all ahead flank!”

The
Red October

'Turning, turning left to right,“ Jones said. ”Bearing is now two-three-zero, spreading out a little. Need a little right rudder, sir."

“Ryan, come right five degrees.”

“Rudder is right five,” Jack answered.

“No, rudder ten right!” Ramius countermanded his order. He had been keeping a track with pencil and paper. And he knew the Alfa.

“Right ten degrees,” Ryan said.

“Near-field effect, range down to four hundred yards, bearing is two-two-five to the center of the target. Target is spreading out left and right, mostly left,” Jones said rapidly. “Range  . . . three hundred yards. Elevation angle is zero, we are level with the target. Range two hundred fifty, bearing two-two-five to target center. We can't miss, Skipper.”

“We're gonna hit!” Mancuso called out.

Tupolev should have changed depth. As it was he depended on the Alfa's acceleration and maneuverability, forgetting that Ramius knew exactly what these were.

“Contact spread way the hell out—instantaneous return, sir!”

“Brace for impact!”

Ramius had forgotten the collision alarm. He yanked at it only seconds before impact.

The Red October rammed the Konovalov just aft of midships at a thirty-degree angle. The force of the collision ruptured the Konovalov's titanium pressure hull and crumpled the October's bow as if it were a beer can.

Ryan had not braced hard enough. He was thrown forward, and, his face struck the instrument panel. Aft, Williams was catapulted from his bed and caught by Noyes before his head hit the deck. Jones' sonar systems were wiped out. The missile submarine bounded up and over the top of the Alfa, her keel grating across the upper deck of the smaller vessel as the momentum carried her forward and upward.

The
V. K. Konovalov

The Konovalov had had full watertight integrity set. It did not make a difference. Two compartments were instantly vented to the sea, and the bulkhead between the control room and the after compartments failed a moment later from hull deformation. The last thing that Tupolev saw was a curtain of white foam coming from the starboard side. The Alfa rolled to port, turned by the friction of the October's keel. In a few seconds the submarine was upside down. Throughout her length men and gear tumbled about like dice. Half the crew were already drowning. Contact with the October ended at this point, when the Konovalov's flooded compartments made her drop stern first toward the bottom. The political officer's last conscious act was to yank at the disaster beacon handle, but it was to no avail: the sub was inverted, and the cable fouled on the sail. The only marker on the Konovalov's grave was a mass of bubbles.

The Red October

“We still alive?” Ryan's face was bleeding profusely.

“Up, up on the planes!” Ramius shouted.

“All the way up.” Ryan pulled back with his left hand, holding his right over the cuts.

“Damage report,” Ramius said in Russian.

“Reactor system is intact,” Melekhin answered at once. “The damage control board shows flooding in the torpedo room—I think. I have vented high-pressure air into it, and the pump is activated. Recommend we surface to assess damage.”

“Da!” Ramius hobbled to the air manifold and blew all tanks.

The
Dallas

“Jesus,” the sonar chief said, “somebody hit somebody. I got breakup noises going down and hull-popping noises going up. Can't tell which is which, sir. Both engines are dead.” “Get us up to periscope depth quick!” Chambers ordered.

The
Red October

It was 1654 local time when the Red October broke the surface of the
Atlantic Ocean
for the first time, forty-seven miles southeast of
Norfolk
. There was no other ship in sight.

“Sonar is wiped out, Skipper.” Jones was switching off his boxes. “Gone, crunched. We got some piddly-ass lateral hydrophones. No active stuff, not even the gertrude.”

“Go forward, Jonesy. Nice work.”

Jones took the last cigarette from his pack. “Any time, sir—but I'm gettin' out next summer, depend on it.”

Bugayev
followed him forward, still deafened and stunned from the torpedo hit.

The October was sitting still on the surface, down by the bow and listing twenty degrees to port from the vented ballast tanks.

The
Dallas

“How about that,” Chambers said. He lifted the microphone. “This is Commander Chambers. They killed the Alfa! Our guys are safe. Surfacing the boat now. Stand by the fire and rescue party!”

The
Red October

“You okay, Commander Ryan?” Jones turned his head carefully. “Looks like you broke some glass the hard way, sir.”

“You don't worry till it stops bleeding,” Ryan said drunkenly.

“Guess so.” Jones held his handkerchief over the cuts. “But I sure hope you don't always drive this bad, sir.”

“Captain Ramius, permission to lay to the bridge and communicate with my ship?” Mancuso asked.

“Go, we may need help with the damage.”

Mancuso got into his jacket, checking to make sure his small docking radio was still in the pocket where he had left it. Thirty seconds later he was atop the sail. The
Dallas
was surfacing as he made his first check of the horizon. The sky had never looked so good.

He couldn't recognize the face four hundred yards away, but it had to be Chambers.

“
Dallas
, this is Mancuso.”

“Skipper, this is Chambers. You guys okay?”

“Yes! But we may need some hands. The bow's all stove in and we took a torpedo midships.”

“I can see it, Bart. Look down.”

“Jesus!” The jagged hole was awash, half out of the water, and the submarine was heavily down by the bow. Mancuso wondered how she could float at all, but it wasn't the time to question why.

“Come over here, Wally, and get the raft out.”

“On the way. Fire and rescue is standing by, I—there's our other friend,” Chambers said.

The Pogy surfaced three hundred yards directly ahead of the October.

“Pogy says the area's clear. Nobody here but us. Heard that one before?” Chambers laughed mirthlessly. “How about we radio in?”

“No, let's see if we can handle it first.” The
Dallas
approached the October. Within minutes Mancuso's command submarine was seventy yards to port, and ten men on a raft were struggling across the chop. Up to this time only a handful of men aboard the
Dallas
had known what was going on. Now everyone knew. He could see his men pointing and talking. What a story they had.

Damage was not as bad as they had feared. The torpedo room had not flooded—a sensor damaged by the impact had given a false reading. The forward ballast tanks were permanently vented to the sea, but the submarine was so big and her ballast tanks so subdivided that she was only eight feet down at the bow. The list to port was only a nuisance. In two hours the radio room leak had been plugged, and after a lengthy discussion among Ramius, Melekhin, and Mancuso it was decided that they could dive again if they kept their speed down and did not go below thirty meters. They'd be late getting to
Norfolk
.

MONDAY, 20 DECEMBER

The
Red October

Ryan again found himself atop the sail thanks to Ramius, who said that he had earned it. In return for the favor, Jack had helped the captain up the ladder to the bridge station. Mancuso was with them. There was now an American crew below in the control room, and the engine room complement had been supplemented so that there was something approaching a normal steaming watch. The leak in the radio room had not been fully contained, but it was above the waterline. The compartment had been pumped out, and the October's list had eased to fifteen degrees. She was still down by the bow, which was partially compensated for when the intact ballast tanks were blown dry. The crumpled bow gave the submarine a decidedly asymmetrical wake, barely visible in the moonless, cloud-laden sky. The
Dallas
and the Pogy were still submerged, somewhere aft, sniffing for additional interference as they neared Capes Henry and Charles.

Somewhere farther aft an LNG (liquified natural gas) carrier was approaching the passage, which the coast guard had closed to all normal traffic in order to allow the floating bomb to travel without interference all the way to the LNG terminal at Cove Point, Maryland—or so the story went. Ryan wondered how the navy had persuaded the ship's skipper to fake engine trouble or somehow delay his arrival. They were six hours late. The navy must have been nervous as all hell until they had finally surfaced forty minutes earlier and been spotted immediately by a circling Orion.

The red and green buoy lights winked at them, dancing on the chop. Forward he could see the lights of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, but there were no moving automobile lights. The CIA had probably staged a messy wreck to shut it down, maybe a tractor-trailer or two full of eggs or gasoline. Something creative.

“You've never been to
America
before,” Ryan said, just to make conversation.

“No, never to a Western country.
Cuba
once, many years ago.”

Ryan looked north and south. He figured they were inside the capes now. “Well, welcome home, Captain Ramius. Speaking for myself, sir, I'm damned glad you're here.”

“And happier that you are here,” Ramius observed.

Ryan laughed out loud. “You can bet your ass on that. Thanks again for letting me up here.”

“You have earned it, Ryan.”

“The name's Jack, sir.”

“Short for John, is it?” Ramius asked. “John is the same as Ivan, no?”

“Yes, sir, I believe it is.” Ryan didn't understand why Ramius' face broke into a smile.

“Tug approaching.” Mancuso pointed.

The American captain had superb eyesight. Ryan didn't see the boat through his binoculars for another minute. It was a shadow, darker than the night, perhaps a mile away.

“Sceptre, this is tug
Paducah
. Do you read? Over.”

Mancuso took the docking radio from his pocket. “
Paducah
this is Sceptre. Good morning, sir.” He was speaking in an English accent.

“Please form up on me, Captain, and follow us in.”

“Jolly good,
Paducah
. Will do. Out.”

HMS Sceptre was the name of an English attack submarine. She must be somewhere remote, Ryan thought, patrolling the
Falklands
or some other faraway location so that her arrival at
Norfolk
would be just another routine occurrence, not unusual and difficult to disprove. Evidently they were thinking about some agent's being suspicious of a strange sub's arrival.

The tug approached to within a few hundred yards, then turned to lead them in at five knots. A single red tuck light showed.

“I hope we don't run into any civilian traffic,” Mancuso said.

“But you said the harbor entrance was closed,” Ramius said.

“Might be some guy in a little sailboat out there. The public has free passage through the yard to the
Dismal Swamp
Canal
, and they're damned near invisible on radar. They slip through all the time.”

“This is crazy.”

“It's a free country, Captain,” Ryan said softly. “It will take you some time to understand what free really means. The word is often misused, but in time you will see just how wise your decision was.”

“Do you live here, Captain Mancuso?” Ramius asked.

“Yes, my squadron is based in
Norfolk
. My home is in
Virginia Beach
, down that way. I probably won't get there anytime soon. They're going to send us right back out. Only thing they can do. So, I miss another Christmas at home. Part of the job.”

“You have a family?”

“Yes, Captain. A wife and two sons. Michael, eight, and Dominic, four. They're used to having daddy away.”

“And you, Ryan?”

“Boy and a girl. Guess I will be home for Christmas. Sorry, Commander. You see, for a while there I had my doubts. After things get settled down some I'd like to get this whole bunch together for something special.”

“Big dinner bill,” Mancuso chuckled.

“I'll charge it to the CIA.”

“And what will the CIA do with us?” Ramius asked.

“As I told you, Captain, a year from now you will be living your own lives, wherever you wish to live, doing whatever you wish to do.”

“Just so?”

“Just so. We take pride in our hospitality, sir, and if I ever get transferred back from
London
, you and your men are welcome in my home at any time.”

“Tug's turning to port.” Mancuso pointed. The conversation was taking too maudlin a turn for him.

“Give the order, Captain,” Ramius said. It was, after all, Mancuso's harbor.

“Left five degrees rudder,” Mancuso said'into the microphone.

“Left five degrees rudder, aye,” the helmsman responded. “Sir, my rudder is left five degrees.”

“Very well.”

The
Paducah
turned into the main channel, past the
Saratoga
, which was sitting under a massive crane, and headed towards a mile-long line of piers in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The channel was totally empty, just the October and the tug. Ryan wondered if the
Paducah
had a normal complement of enlisted men or a crew made entirely of admirals. He would not have given odds either way.

Norfolk
,
Virginia

Twenty minutes later they were at their destination. The Eight-Ten Dock was a new dry dock built to service the Ohio-class fleet ballistic missile submarines, a huge concrete box over eight hundred feet long, larger than it had to be, covered with a steel roof so that spy satellites could not see if it were occupied or not. It was in the maximum security section of the base, and one had to pass several security barriers of armed guards—marines, not the usual civilian guards—to get near the dock, much less into it.

“All stop,” Mancuso ordered.

“All stop, aye.”

The Red October had been slowing for several minutes, and it was another two hundred yards before she came to a complete halt. The
Paducah
curved around to starboard to push her bow round. Both captains would have preferred to power their own way in, but the damaged bow made maneuvering tricky. The diesel-powered tug took five minutes to line the bow up properly, headed directly into the water-filled box. Ramius gave the engine command himself, the last for this submarine. She eased forward through the black water, passing slowly under the wide roof. Mancuso ordered his men topside to handle the lines tossed them by a handful of sailors on the rim of the dock, and the submarine came to a halt exactly in its center. Already the gate they had passed through was closing, and a canvas cover the size of a clipper's mainsail was being drawn across it. Only when cover was securely in place were the overhead lights switched on. Suddenly a group of thirty or so officers began screaming like fans at a ballgame. The only thing left out was the band.

“Finished with the engines,” Ramius said in Russian to the crew in the maneuvering room, then switched to English with a trace of sadness in his voice. “So. We are here.”

The overhead traveling crane moved down toward them and stopped to pick up the brow, which it brought around and laid carefully on the missile deck forward of the sail. The brow was hardly in place when a pair of officers with gold braid nearly to their elbows walked—ran—across it. Ryan recognized the one in front. It was Dan Foster.

The chief of naval operations saluted the quarterdeck as he got to the edge of the gangway, then looked up at the sail. “Request permission to come aboard, sir.”

“Permission is—”

“Granted,” Mancuso prompted.

“Permission is granted,” Ramius said loudly.

Foster jumped aboard and hurried up the exterior ladder on the sail. It wasn't easy, since the ship still had a sizable list to port. Foster was puffing as he reached the control station.

“Captain Ramius, I'm Dan Foster.” Mancuso helped the CNO over the bridge coaming. The control station was suddenly crowded. The American admiral and the Russian captain shook hands, then Foster shook Mancuso's. Jack came last.

“Looks like the uniform needs a little work, Ryan. So does the face.”

“Yeah, well, we ran into some trouble.”

“So I see. What happened?”

Ryan didn't wait for the explanation. He went below without excusing himself. It wasn't his fraternity. In the control room the men were standing around exchanging grins, but they were quiet, as if they feared the magic of the moment would evaporate all too quickly. For Ryan it already had. He looked for the deck hatch and climbed up through it, taking with him everything he'd brought aboard. He walked up the gangway against traffic. No one seemed to notice him. Two hospital corpsmen were carrying a stretcher, and Ryan decided to wait on the dock for Williams to be brought out. The British officer had missed everything, having only been fully conscious for the past three hours. As Ryan waited he smoked his last Russian cigarette. The stretcher, with Williams tied onto it, was manhandled out. Noyes and the medical corpsmen from the subs tagged along.

“How are you feeling?” Ryan walked alongside the stretcher toward the ambulance.

“Alive,” Williams said, looking pale and thin. “And you?”

“What I feel under my feet is solid concrete. Thank God for that!”

“And what he's going to feel is a hospital bed. Nice meeting you, Ryan,” the doctor said briskly. “Let's move it, people.” The corpsmen loaded the stretcher into an ambulance parked just inside the oversized doors. A minute later it was gone.

“You Commander Ryan, sir?” a marine sergeant asked after saluting.

Ryan returned the salute. “Yes.”

“I have a car waiting for you, sir. Will you follow me, please?”

“Lead on, Sergeant.”

The car was a gray navy Chevy that took him directly to the Norfolk Naval Air Station. Here Ryan boarded a helicopter. By now he was too tired to care if it were a sleigh with reindeer attached. During the thirty-five-minute trip to Andrews Air Force Base Ryan sat alone in the back, staring into space. He was met by another car at the base and driven straight to
Langley
.

CIA Headquarters

It was four in the morning when Ryan finally entered Greer's office. The admiral was there, along with Moore and Ritter.

 The admiral handed him something to drink. Not coffee, Wild Turkey bourbon whiskey. All three senior executives took his hand.

“Sit down, boy,”
Moore
said.

“Damned well done.” Greer smiled.

“Thank you.” Ryan took a long pull on the drink. “Now what?”

“Now we debrief you,” Greer answered.

“No, sir. Now I fly the hell home.”

Greer's eyes twinkled as he pulled a folder from a coat pocket and tossed it in Ryan's lap. “You're booked out of Dulles at
7:05 A.M.
First flight to
London
. And you really should wash up, change your clothes, and collect your Skiing Barbie.”

Ryan tossed the rest of the drink off. The sudden slug of whiskey made his eyes water, but he was able to refrain from coughing,

“Looks like that uniform got some hard use,” Ritter observed.

“So did the rest of me.” Jack reached inside the jacket and pulled out the automatic pistol. “This got some use, too.”

“The GRU agent? He wasn't taken off with the rest of the crew?”
Moore
asked.

“You knew about him? You knew and you didn't get word to me, for Christ's sake!”

“Settle down, son,”
Moore
said. “We missed connections by half an hour. Bad luck, but you made it. That's what counts.”

Ryan was too tired to scream, too tired to do much of anything. Greer took out a tape recorder and a yellow pad full of questions.

“Williams, the British officer, is in a bad way,” Ryan said, two hours later. “The doc says he'll make it, though. The sub isn't going anywhere. Bow's all crunched in, and there's a pretty nice hole where the torpedo got us. They were right about the Typhoon, Admiral, the Russians built that baby strong, thank God. You know, there may be people left alive on that Alfa . . .”

“Too bad,”
Moore
said.

Ryan nodded slowly. “I figured that. I don't know that I like it, sir, leaving men to die like that.”

“Nor do we,” Judge Moore said, “nor do we, but if we were to rescue someone from her, well, then everything we've—everything you've been through would be for nothing. Would you want that?”

“It's a chance in a thousand anyway,” Greer said.

“I don't know,” Ryan said, finishing off his third drink and feeling it. He had expected
Moore
to be uninterested in checking the Alfa for signs of life. Greer had surprised him. So, the old seaman had been corrupted by this affair—or just by being at the CIA—into forgetting the seaman's code. And what did this say about Ryan? “I just don't know.”

“It's a war, Jack,” Ritter said, more kindly than usual, “a real war. You did well, boy.”

“In a war you do well to come home alive,” Ryan stood, “and that, gentlemen, is what I plan to do, right now.”

“Your things are in the head.” Greer checked his watch. “You have time to shave if you want.”

“Oh, almost forgot.” Ryan reached inside his collar to pull out the key. He handed it to Greer. “Doesn't look like much, does it? You can kill fifty million people with that. 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings! Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'” Ryan headed for the washroom, knowing he had to be drunk to quote Shelley.