The Hunt for Red October

grant your request. Welcome to freedom, gentlemen.”

No one knew that the intercom system in the compartment had been switched on. The indicator light had been unplugged hours before. Two compartments forward the cook listened, telling himself that he had been right to stay behind, wishing he had been wrong. Now what will I do? he wondered. His duty. That sounded easy enough — but would he remember how to carry it out?

“I don’t know what to say about you guys.” Ryan shook everyone’s hand again. “You pulled it off. You really pulled it off!”

“Excuse me, Commander,” Kamarov said. “Do you speak Russian?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant Williams here does, but I do not. A group of Russian-speaking officers was supposed to be here in my place, but their helicopter crashed at sea last night.” Williams translated this. Four of the officers had no knowledge of English.

“And what happens now?”

“In a few minutes, a missile submarine will explode two miles from here. One of ours, an old one. I presume that you told your men you were going to scuttle — Jesus, I hope you didn’t say what you were really doing?”

“And have a war aboard my ship?” Ramius laughed. “No, Ryan. Then what?”

“When everybody thinks Red October has sunk, we’ll head northwest to the Ocracoke Inlet and wait. USS Dallas and Pogy will be escorting us. Can these few men operate the ship?”

“These men can operate any ship in the world!” Ramius said it in Russian first. His men grinned. “So, you think that our men will not know what has become of us?”

“Correct. Pigeon will see an underwater explosion. They have no way of knowing it’s in the wrong place, do they? You know that your navy has many ships operating off our coast right now? When they leave, well, then we’ll figure out where to keep this present permanently. I don’t know where that will be. You men, of course, will be our guests. A lot of our people will want to talk with you. For the moment, you can be sure that you will be treated very well — better than you can imagine.” Ryan was sure that the CIA would give each a considerable sum of money. He didn’t say so, not wanting to insult this kind of bravery. It had surprised him to learn that defectors rarely expect to receive money, almost never ask for any.

“What about political education?” Kamarov asked.

Ryan laughed. “Lieutenant, somewhere along the line somebody will take you aside to explain how our country works. That will take about two hours. After that you can immediately start telling us what we do wrong — everybody else in the world does, why shouldn’t you? But I can’t do that now. Believe this, you will love it, probably more than I do. I have never lived in a country that was not free, and maybe I don’t appreciate my home as much as I should. For the moment, I suppose you have work to do.”

“Correct,” Ramius said. “Come, my new comrades, we will put you to work also.”

Ramius led Ryan aft through a series of watertight doors. In a few minutes he was in the missile room, a vast compartment with twenty-six dark-green tubes towering through two decks. The business end of a boomer, with two-hundred-plus thermonuclear warheads. The menace in this room was enough to make hair bristle at the back of Ryan’s neck. These were not academic abstractions, these were real. The upper deck he walked on was a grating. The lower deck, he could see, was solid. After passing through this and another compartment they were in the control room. The interior of the submarine was ghostly quiet; Ryan sensed why sailors are superstitious.

“You will sit here.” Ramius pointed Ryan to the helmsman’s station on the port side of the compartment. There was an aircraft-style wheel and a gang of instruments.

“What do I do?” Ryan asked, sitting.

“You will steer the ship, Commander. Have you never done this before?”

“No, sir. I’ve never been on a submarine before.”

“But you are a naval officer.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, captain. I work for the CIA.”

“CIA?” Ramius hissed the acronym as if it were poisonous.

“I know, I know.” Ryan dropped his head on the wheel. “They call us the Dark Forces. Captain, this is one Dark Force who’s probably going to wet his pants before we’re finished here. I work at a desk, and believe me on this if nothing else — there’s nothing I’d like better than to be home with my wife and kids right now. If I had half a brain, I would have stayed in Annapolis and kept writing my books.”

“Books? What do you mean?”

“I’m an historian, Captain. I was asked to join the CIA a few years ago as an analyst. Do you know what that is? Agents bring in their data, and I figure out what it means. I got into this mess by mistake — shit, you don’t believe me, but it’s true. Anyway, I used to write books on naval history.”

“Tell me your books,” Ramius ordered.

“Options and Decisions, Doomed Eagles, and a new one coming out next year, Fighting Sailor, a biography of Admiral Halsey. My first one was about the Battle of Leyte Gulf. It was reviewed in Morskoi Sbornik, I understand. It dealt with the nature of tactical decisions made under combat conditions. There’s supposed to be a dozen copies at the Frunze library.”

Ramius was quiet for a moment. “Ah, I know this book. Yes, I read parts of it. You were wrong, Ryan. Halsey acted stupidly.”

“You will do well in my country, Captain Ramius. You are already a book critic. Captain Borodin, can I trouble you for a cigarette?” Borodin tossed him a full pack and matches. Ryan lit one. It was terrible.

The Avalon

The Mystic’s fourth return was the signal for the Ethan Allen and Scamp to act. The Avalon lifted off her bed and motored the few hundred yards to the old missile boat. Her captain was already assembling his men in the torpedo room. Every hatch, door, manhole, and drawer had been opened all over the boat. One of the officers was coming forward to join the others. Behind him trailed a black wire that led to each of the bombs aboard. This he connected to a timing device.

“All ready, Captain.”

The Red October

Ryan watched Ramius order his men to their posts. Most went aft to run the engines. Ramius had the good manners to speak in English, repeating himself in Russian for those who did not understand their new language.

“Kamarov and Williams, will you go forward and secure all hatches.” Ramius explained for Ryan’s benefit. “If something goes wrong — it won’t, but if it does — we do not have enough men to make repairs. So, we seal the entire ship.”

It made sense to Ryan. He set an empty cup on the control pedestal to serve as an ashtray. He and Ramius were alone in the control room.

“When are we to leave?” Ramius asked.

“Whenever you are ready, sir. We have to get to Ocracoke Inlet at high tide, about eight minutes after midnight. Can we make it?”

Ramius consulted his chart. “Easily.”

Kamarov led Williams through the communications room forward of control. They left the watertight door there open, then went forward to the missile room. Here they climbed down a ladder and walked forward on the lower missile deck to the forward missile room bulkhead. They proceeded through the door into the stores compartments, checking each hatch as they went. Near the bow they went up another ladder into the torpedo room, dogging the hatch down behind them, and proceeded aft through the torpedo storage and crew spaces. Both men sensed how strange it was to be aboard a ship with no crew, and they took their time, Williams twisting his head to look at everything and asking Kamarov questions. The lieutenant was happy to answer them in his mother language. Both men were competent officers, sharing a romantic attachment to their profession. For his part, Williams was greatly impressed by the Red October and said as much several times. A great deal of attention had been paid to small details. The deck was tiled. The hatches were lined with thick rubber gaskets. They hardly made any noise at all as they moved about checking watertight integrity, and it was obvious that more than mere lip service had been paid to making this submarine a quiet one.

Williams was translating a favorite sea story into Russian as they opened the hatch to the missile room’s