The Hunt for Red October

missile officer shut the tube hatch.

The Dallas

“What?” Jones said. “Conn, sonar, the target just flooded a tube — a missile tube? God almighty!” On his own, Jones powered up the under-ice sonar and began high-frequency pinging.

“What the hell are you doing?” Thompson demanded. Mancuso was there a second later.

“What’s going on?” the captain snapped. Jones pointed at his display.

“The sub just launched a missile, sir. Look, Cap’n, two targets. But it’s just hangin’ there, no missile ignition. God!”

The Red October

Will it float? Ryan wondered.

It didn’t. The Seahawk missile was pushed upward and to starboard by the gas charge. It stopped fifty feet over her deck as the October cruised past. The guidance hatch that Ryan had closed was not fully sealed. Water filled the compartment and flooded the warhead bus. The missile in any case had a sizable negative bouyancy, and the added mass in the nose tipped it over. The nose-heavy trim gave it an eccentric path, and it spiraled down like a seedpod from a tree. At ten thousand feet water pressure crushed the seal over the missile blast cones, but the Seahawk, otherwise undamaged, retained its shape all the way to the bottom.

The Ethan Allen

The only thing still operating was the timer. It had been set for thirty minutes, which had allowed the crew plenty of time to board the Scamp, now leaving the area at ten knots. The old reactor had been completely shut down. It was stone cold. Only a few emergency lights remained on from residual battery power. The timer had three redundant firing circuits, and all went off within a millisecond of one another, sending a signal down the detonator wires.

They had put four Pave Pat Blue bombs on the Ethan Allen. The Pave Pat Blue was a FAE (fuel-air explosive) bomb. Its blast efficiency was roughly five times that of an ordinary chemical explosive. Each bomb had a pair of gas-release valves, and only one of the eight valves failed. When they burst open, the pressurized propane in the bomb casings expanded violently outward. In an instant the atmospheric pressure in the old submarine tripled as her every part was saturated with an explosive air-gas mixture. The four bombs filled the Ethan Allen with the equivalent of twenty-five tons of TNT evenly distributed throughout the hull.

The squibs fired almost simultaneously, and the results were catastrophic: the Ethan Allen’s strong steel hull burst as if it were a balloon. The only item not totally destroyed was the reactor vessel, which fell free of the shredded wreckage and dropped rapidly to the ocean floor. The hull itself was blasted into a dozen pieces, all bent into surreal shapes by the explosion. Interior equipment formed a metallic cloud within the shattered hull, and everything fluttered downward, expanding over a wide area during the three- mile descent to the hard sand bottom.

The Dallas

“Holy shit!” Jones slapped the headphones off and yawned to clear his ears. Automatic relays within the sonar system protected his ears from the full force of the explosion, but what had been transmitted was enough to make him feel as though his head had been hammered flat. The explosion was heard through the hull by everyone aboard.

“Attention all hands, this is the captain speaking. What you just heard is nothing to worry about. That’s all I can say.”

“Gawd, Skipper!” Mannion said.

“Yeah, let’s get back on the contact.”

“Aye, Cap’n.” Mannion gave his commander a curious look.

The White House

“Did you get the word to him in time?” the president asked.

“No, sir.” Moore slumped into his chair. “The helicopter arrived a few minutes too late. It may be nothing to worry about. You’d expect that the captain would know enough to get everyone off except for his own people. We’re concerned, of course, but there isn’t anything we can do.”

“I asked him personally to do this, Judge. Me.”

Welcome to the real world, Mr. President, Moore thought. The chief executive had been lucky — he’d never had to send men to their deaths. Moore reflected that it was something easy to consider beforehand, less easy to get used to. He had affirmed death sentences from his seat on an appellate bench, and that had not been easy — even for men who had richly deserved their fates.

“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, Mr. President. The source this data comes from is more important than any one operation.”

“Very well. What about Senator Donaldson?”

“He agreed to our suggestion. This aspect of the operation has worked out very well indeed.”

“Do you really expect the Russians to buy it?” Pelt asked.

“We’ve left some nice bait, and we’ll jerk the line a little to get their attention. In a day or two we’ll see if they nibble at it. Henderson is one of their all-stars — his code name is Cassius — and their reaction to this will tell us just what sort of disinformation we can pass through him. He could turn out to be very useful, but we’ll have to watch out for him. Our KGB colleagues have a very direct method for dealing with doubles.”

“We don’t let him off the hook unless he earns it,” the president said coldly.

Moore smiled. “Oh, he’ll earn it. We own Mr. Henderson.”

THE FIFTEENTH DAY

FRIDAY, 17 DECEMBER

Ocracoke Inlet

There was no moon. The three-ship procession entered the inlet at five knots, just after midnight to take advantage of the extra-high spring tide. The Pogy led the formation since she had the shallowest draft, and the Dallas trailed the Red October. The coast guard stations on either side of the inlet were occupied by naval officers who had relieved the “coasties.”

Ryan had been allowed atop the sail, a humanitarian gesture from Ramius that he much appreciated. After eighteen hours inside the Red October Jack had felt confined, and it was good to see the world — even if it was nothing but dark empty space. The Pogy showed only a dim red light that disappeared if it was looked at for more than a few seconds. He could see the water’s feathery wisps of foam and the stars playing hide-and-seek through the clouds. The west wind was a harsh twenty knots coming off the water.

Borodin was giving terse, monosyllabic orders as he conned the submarine up a channel that had to be dredged every few months despite the enormous jetty which had been built to the north. The ride was an easy one, the two or three feet of chop not mattering a whit to the missile sub’s 30,000-ton bulk. Ryan was thankful for this. The black water calmed, and when they entered sheltered waters a Zodiac-type rubber boat zoomed towards them.

“Ahoy Red October!” a voice called in the darkness. Ryan could barely make out the gray lozenge shape of the Zodiac. It was ahead of a tiny patch of foam formed by the sputtering outboard motor.

“May I answer, Captain Borodin?” Ryan asked, getting a nod. “This is Ryan. We have two casualties aboard. One’s in bad shape. We need a doctor and a surgical team right away! Do you understand?”

“Two casualties, and you need a doc, right.” Ryan thought he saw a man holding something to his face, and thought he heard the faint crackle of a radio. It was hard to tell in the wind. “Okay. We’ll have a doc flown down right away, October. Dallas and Pogy both have medical corpsmen aboard. You want ’em?”

“Damn straight!” Ryan replied at once.