The Hunt for Red October

gave more right rudder. They were supposed to pass within three hundred yards of the ship, no more, no less. His Hog would blaze past the bow, the others past the stern and either beam. He didn’t want to cut it too close. The major checked to be certain that his bomb and cannon controls were locked in the safe position. No sense getting carried away. About now in a real attack he’d trigger his cannon and a stream of solid slugs would lance the light armor of the Kirov’s forward missile magazines, exploding the SAM and cruise missiles in a huge fireball and slicing through the superstructure as if it were thin as newsprint.

At five hundred yards, the captain reached down to arm the flare pod, attached next to the LANTIRN.

Now! He flipped the switch, which deployed half a dozen high-intensity magnesium parachute flares. All four Linebacker aircraft acted within seconds. Suddenly the Kirov was inside a box of blue-white magnesium light. Richardson pulled back on his stick, banking into a climbing turn past the battle cruiser. The brilliant light dazzled him, but he could see the graceful lines of the Soviet warship as she was turning hard on the choppy seas, her men running along the deck like ants.

If we were serious, you’d all be dead now — get the message?

Richardson thumbed his radio switch. “Linebacker Lead to Sentry-Delta,” he said in the clear. “Robin Hood, repeat, Robin Hood. Linebacker flight, this is lead, form up on me. Let’s go home!”

“Linebacker flight, this is Sentry-Delta. Outstanding!” the controller responded. “Be advised that Kiev has a pair of Forgers in the air, thirty miles east, heading your way. They’ll have to hustle to catch up. Will advise. Out.”

Richardson did some fast arithmetic in his head. They probably could not catch up, and even if they did, twelve Phantoms from the 107th Fighter Interceptor Group were ready for it.

“Hot damn, lead!” Linebacker 4, the crop duster, moved gingerly into his slot. “Did you see those turkeys pointing up at us? God damn, did we rattle their cage!”

“Heads up for Forgers,” Richardson cautioned, grinning ear to ear inside his oxygen mask. Second-line flyers, hell!

“Let ’em come,” Linebacker 4 replied. “Any of those bastards closes me and my thirty, it’ll be the last mistake he ever makes!” Four was a little too aggressive for Richardson’s liking, but the man did know how to drive his Hog.

“Linebacker flight, this is Sentry-Delta. The Forgers have turned back. You’re in the clear. Out.”

“Roger that, out. Okay, flight, let’s settle down and head home. I guess we’ve earned our pay for the month.” Richardson looked to make sure he was on an open frequency. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Barry Friendly,” he said, using the in-house U.S. Air public relations joke that had become a tradition in the 175th. “I hope you have enjoyed your flight, and thank you for flying Warthog Air.”

The Kirov

On the Kirov, Admiral Stralbo raced from the combat information center to the flag bridge, too late. They had acquired the low-level raiders only a minute from the outer screen. The box of flares was already behind the battle cruiser, several still burning in the water. The bridge crew, he saw, was rattled.

“Sixty to seventy seconds before they were on us, Comrade Admiral,” the flag captain reported, “we were tracking the orbiting attack force and these four — we think, four — racing in under our radar coverage. We had missile lock on two of them despite their jamming.”

Stralbo frowned. That performance was not nearly good enough. If the strike had been real, the Kirov would have been badly damaged at least. The Americans would gladly trade a pair of fighters for a nuclear powered cruiser. If all American aircraft attacked like this…

“The arrogance of the Americans is fantastic!” The fleet zampolit swore.

“It was foolish to provoke them,” Stralbo observed sourly. “I knew that something like that would happen, but I expected it from Kennedy.”

“That was a mistake, a pilot error,” the political officer replied.

“Indeed, Vasily. And this was no mistake! They just sent us a message, telling us that we are fifteen hundred kilometers from their shore without useful air cover, and that they have over five hundred fighters waiting to pounce on us from the west. In the meantime Kennedy is stalking us to the east like a rabid wolf. We are not in an attractive position.”

“The Americans would not be so brash.”

“Are you sure of that, Comrade Political Officer? Sure? What if one of their aircraft commits a ‘pilot error’? And sinks one of our destroyers? And what if the American president gets a direct link to Moscow to apologize before we can ever report it? They swear it was an accident and promise to punish the stupid pilot — then what? You think the imperialists are so predictable this close to their own coastline? I do not. I think they are praying for the smallest excuse to pounce on us. Come to my cabin. We must consider this.”

The two men went aft. Stralbo’s cabin was a spartan affair. The only decoration on the wall was a print of Lenin speaking to Red Guards.

“What is our mission, Vasily?” Stralbo asked.

“To support our submarines, help them to conduct the search—”

“Exactly. Our mission is to support, not to conduct offensive operations. The Americans do not want us here. Objectively, I can understand this. With all our missiles we are a threat to them.”

“But our orders are not to threaten them,” the zampolit protested. “Why would we want to strike their homeland?”

“And, of course, the imperialists recognize that we are peaceful socialists! Come now, Vasily, these are our enemies! Of course they do not trust us. Of course they wish to attack us, given the smallest excuse. They are already interfering with our search, pretending to help. They do not want us here — and in allowing ourselves to be provoked by their aggressive actions, we fall into their trap.” The admiral stared down at his desk. “Well, we shall change that. I will order the fleet to discontinue anything that may appear the least bit aggressive. We will end all air operations beyond normal local patrolling. We will not harass their nearby fleet units. We will use only normal navigational radars.”

“And?”

“And we will swallow our pride and be as meek as mice. Whatever provocation they make, we will not react to it.”

“Some will call this cowardice, Comrade Admiral,” the zampolit warned.

Stralbo had expected that. “Vasily, don’t you see? In pretending to attack us they have already victimized us. They force us to activate our newest and most secret defense systems so they can gather intelligence on our radars and fire control systems. They examine the performance of our fighters and helicopters, the maneuverability of our ships, and most of all, our command and control. We shall put an end to that. Our primary mission is too important. If they continue to provoke us, we will act as though our mission is indeed peaceful — which it is as far as they are concerned — and protest our innocence. And we make them the aggressors. If they continue to provoke us, we shall watch to see what their tactics are, and give them nothing in return. Or would you prefer that they prevent us from carrying out our mission?”

The zampolit mumbled his consent. If they failed in their mission, the charge of cowardice would be a small matter indeed. If they found the renegade submarine, they’d be heroes regardless of what else happened.

The Dallas

How long had he been on duty? Jones wondered. He could have checked easily enough by punching the button on his digital watch, but the sonarman didn’t want to. It would be too depressing. Me and my big mouth—you bet, Skipper, my ass! he swore to himself. He’d detected the sub at a range of about twenty miles, maybe, had just barely gotten her — and the fuckin’ Atlantic Ocean was three thousand miles across, at least sixty footprint diameters. He’d need more than luck now.

Well, he did get a Hollywood shower out of it. Ordinarily a shower on a freshwater-poor ship meant a few seconds of wetting down and a minute or so of lathering, followed by a few more seconds of rinsing the suds off. It got you clean but was not very satisfying. This was an improvement over the old days, the oldtimers liked to say. But back then, Jones often responded, the sailors had to pull oars — or run off diesel and batteries, which amounted to the same thing. A Hollywood shower is something a sailor starts thinking about after a few days at sea. You leave the water running, a long, continuous stream of wonderfully warm water. Commander Mancuso was given to awarding this sensuous pastime in return for above-average performance. It gave people something tangible to