The Hunt for Red October

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.

THE EIGHTEENTH DAY

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.”