The Hunt for Red October

In the reactor spaces aft, Lieutenant Butler had his enginemen acknowledge the command and gave the necessary orders. The reactor coolant pumps went to fast speed. An increased amount of hot, pressurized water entered the exchanger, where its heat was transferred to the steam on the outside loop. When the coolant returned to the reactor it was cooler than it had been and therefore denser. Being denser, it trapped more neutrons in the reactor pile, increasing the ferocity of the fission reaction and giving off yet more power. Farther aft, saturated steam in the “outside” or nonradioactive loop of the heat exchange system emerged through clusters of control valves to strike the blades of the high-pressure turbine. The Dallas’ huge bronze screw began to turn more quickly, driving her forward and down.

The engineers went about their duties calmly. The noise in the engine spaces rose noticeably as the systems began to put out more power, and the technicians kept track of this by continuously monitoring the banks of instruments under their hands. The routine was quiet and exact. There was no extraneous conversation, no distraction. Compared to a submarine’s reactor spaces, a hospital operating room was a den of libertines.

Forward, Mannion watched the depth gauge go below six hundred feet. The diving officer would wait until they got to nine hundred feet before starting to level off, the object being to zero the dive out exactly at the ordered depth. Commander Mancuso wanted the Dallas below the thermocline. This was the border between different temperatures. Water settled in isothermal layers of uniform stratification. The relatively flat boundary where warmer surface water met colder depth water was a semipermeable barrier which tended to reflect sound waves. Those waves that did manage to penetrate the thermocline were mostly trapped below it. Thus, though the Dallas was now running below the thermocline at over thirty knots and making as much noise as she was capable of, she would still be difficult to detect with surface sonar. She would also be largely blind, but then, there was not much down there to run into.

Mancuso lifted the microphone for the PA system. “This is the captain speaking. We have just started a speed run that will last forty-eight hours. We are heading towards a point where we hope to locate a Russian sub that went past us two days ago. This Russkie is evidently using a new and rather quiet propulsion system that nobody’s run across before. We’re going to try and get ahead of him and track on him as he passes us again. This time we know what to listen for, and we’ll get a nice clear picture of him. Okay, I want everyone on this boat to be well rested. When we get there, it’ll be a long, tough hunt. I want everybody at a hundred percent. This one will probably be interesting.” He switched off the microphone. “What’s the movie tonight?”

The diving officer watched the depth gauge stop moving before answering. As chief of the boat, he was also manager of the Dallas’ cable TV system, three video-cassette recorders in the mess room which led to televisions in the wardroom, and various other crew accommodations. “Skipper, you got a choice. Return of the Jedi or two football tapes: Oklahoma-Nebraska and Miami-Dallas. Both those games were played while we were on the exercise, sir. It’ll be like watching them live.” He laughed. “Commercials and all. The cooks are already making the popcorn.”

“Good. I want everybody nice and loose.” Why couldn’t they ever get Navy tapes, Mancuso wondered. Of course, Army had creamed them this year…

“Morning, Skipper.” Wally Chambers, the executive officer, came into the attack center. “What gives?”

“Come on back to the wardroom, Wally. I want you to listen to something.” Mancuso took the cassette from his shirt pocket and led Chambers aft.

The V. K. Konovalov

Two hundred miles northeast of the Dallas, in the Norwegian Sea, the Konovalov was racing southwest at forty-one knots. Captain Tupolev sat alone in the wardroom rereading the dispatch he’d received two days before. His emotions alternated between rage and grief. The Schoolmaster had done that! He was dumbfounded.

But what was there to do? Tupolev’s orders were explicit, the more so since, as his zampolit had pointed out, he was a former pupil of the traitor Ramius. He, too, could find himself in a very bad position. If the slug succeeded.

So, Marko had pulled a trick on everyone, not just the Konovalov. Tupolev had been slinking about the Barents Sea like a fool while Marko had been heading the other way. Laughing at everyone, Tupolev was sure. Such treachery, such a hellish threat against the Rodina. It was inconceivable — and all too conceivable. All the advantages Marko had. A four-room apartment, a dacha, his own Zhiguli. Tupolev did not yet have his own automobile. He had earned his way to a command, and now it was all threatened by — this! He’d be lucky to keep what he had.

I have to kill a friend, he thought. Friend? Yes, he admitted to himself, Marko had been a good friend and a fine teacher. Where had he gone wrong?

Natalia Bogdanova.

Yes, that had to be it. A big stink, the way that had happened. How many times had he had dinner with them, how many times had Natalia laughed about her fine, strong, big sons? He shook his head. A fine woman killed by a damned incompetent fool of a surgeon. Nothing could be done about it, he was the son of a Central Committee member. It was an outrage the way things like that still happened, even after three generations of building socialism. But nothing was sufficient to justify this madness.

Tupolev bent over the chart he’d brought back. He’d be on his station in five days, in less time if the engine plant held together and Marko wasn’t in too much of a hurry — and he wouldn’t be. Marko was a fox, not a bull. The other Alfas would get there ahead of his, Tupolev knew, but it didn’t matter. He had to do this himself. He’d get ahead of Marko and wait. Marko would try to slink past, and the Konovalov would be there. And the Red October would die.

The North Atlantic

The British Sea Harrier FRS.4 appeared a minute early. It hovered briefly off the Kennedy’s port beam as the pilot sized up his landing target, the wind, and sea conditions. Maintaining a steady thirty-knot forward speed to compensate for the carrier’s forward speed, he side- slipped his fighter neatly to the right, then dropped it gently amidships, slightly forward of the Kennedy’s island structure, exactly in the center of the flight deck. Instantly a gang of deck crewmen raced for the aircraft, three carrying heavy metal chocks, another a metal ladder which he set up by the cockpit, whose canopy was already coming open. A team of four snaked a fueling hose towards the aircraft, eager to demonstrate the speed with which the U.S. Navy services aircraft. The pilot was dressed in an orange coverall and yellow life jacket. He set his helmet on the back of the front seat and came down the ladder. He watched briefly to be sure his fighter was in capable hands before sprinting to the island. He met Ryan at the hatch.

“You Ryan? I’m Tony Parker. Where’s the loo?” Jack gave him the proper directions and the pilot darted off, leaving Ryan standing there in a flight suit, holding his bag and feeling stupid. A white plastic flight helmet dangled from his other hand as he watched the crewmen fueling the Harrier. He wondered if they knew what they were doing.

Parker was back in three minutes. “Commander,” he said, “there’s one thing they’ve never put in a fighter, and that’s a bloody toilet. They fill you up with coffee and tea and send you off, and you’ve no place to go.”

“I know the feeling. Anything else you have to do?”

“No, sir. Your admiral chatted with me on the radio when I was flying in. Looks like your chaps have finished fueling my bird. Shall we be off?”

“What do I do with this?” Ryan held up his bag, expecting to have to hold it in his lap. His briefing papers were inside the flight suit, tucked against his chest.

“We put it in the boot, of course. Come along, sir.”

Parker walked out to the fighter jauntily. The dawn was a feeble one. There was a solid overcast at one or two thousand feet. It wasn’t raining, but looked as though it might. The sea, still rolling at about eight feet, was a gray, crinkled surface dotted with whitecaps. Ryan could feel the Kennedy moving, surprised that something so huge could be made to move at all. When they got to the Harrier, Parker took the duffle in one hand and reached for a recessed handle on the underside of the fighter. Twisting and pulling the lever, he revealed a cramped space about the size of a small refrigerator. Parker stuffed the bag into it, slamming the door shut behind it, making sure the locking lever was fully engaged. A deck crewman in a yellow shirt conferred with the pilot. Aft a helicopter was revving its engines, and a Tomcat fighter was taxiing towards a midships catapult. On top