Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October (59 page)

They watched him disappear. Greer switched off the tape machine, looking at the key in his hand. “Still want to take him to see the president?”

“No, not a good idea,”
Moore
said. “Boy's half smashed, not that I blame him a bit. Get him on the plane, James. We'll send a team to
London
tomorrow or the next day to finish the debriefing.”

“Good.” Greer looked into his empty glass. “Kind of early in the day for this, isn't it?”

Moore
finished off his third. “I suppose. But then it's been a fairly good day, and the sun's not even up yet. Let's go, Bob. We have an operation of sorts to run.”

Norfolk
Naval Shipyard

Mancuso and his men boarded the
Paducah
before dawn and were ferried back to the
Dallas
. The 688-class attack submarine sailed immediately and was back underwater before the sun rose. The Pogy, which had never entered port, would complete her deployment without her corpsman aboard. Both submarines had orders to stay out thirty more days, during which their crewmen would be encouraged to forget everything they had seen, heard, or wondered about.

The Red October sat alone with the dry dock draining around her, guarded by twenty armed marines. This was not unusual in the Eight-Ten Dock. Already a select group of engineers and technicians was inspecting her. The first items taken off were her cipher books and machines. They would be in National Security Agency headquarters at
Fort
Meade
before
noon
.

Ramius, his officers, and their personal gear were taken by bus to the same airfield Ryan had used. An hour later they were in a CIA safe house in the rolling hills south of
Charlottesville
,
Virginia
. They went immediately to bed except for two men, who stayed awake watching cable television, already amazed at what they saw of life in the
United States
.

Dulles
International
Airport

Ryan missed the dawn. He boarded a TWA 747 that left Dulles on time, at
7:05 A.M.
The sky was overcast, and when the aircraft burst through the cloud layer into sunlight, Ryan did something he had never done before. For the first time in his life, Jack Ryan fell asleep on an airplane.