The Hunt for Red October

including the emplacement or repair of SOSUS sensors. On the three-man sub there was little place for bridge discipline. Overton was not well educated or very articulate — at least not politely articulate. His skill at maneuvering the minisub was unsurpassed, however, and Johnsen was just as happy to leave that job to him. It was the lieutenant’s task to manage the mission at hand.

“Air system needs some work,” Johnsen observed.

“Yeah, the filters are about due for replacement. I was going to do that next week. Coulda’ done it this morning, but I figured the backup control wiring was more important.”

“Guess I have to go along with you on that. Handling okay?”

“Like a virgin.” Overton’s smile was reflected in the thick Lexan view port in front of the control seat. The Sea Cliff’s awkward design made her clumsy to maneuver. It was as though she knew what she wanted to do, just not quite how she wanted to do it. “How wide’s the target area?”

“Pretty wide. Pigeon says after the explosion the pieces spread from hell to breakfast.”

“I believe it. Three miles down, and a current to spread it around.”

“The boat’s name is Red October, Captain? A Victor- class attack submarine, you said?”

“That is your name for the class,” Kaganovich said.

“What do you call them?” Johnsen asked. He got no reply. What was the big deal? he wondered. What did the name of the class matter to anybody?

“Switching on locater sonar.” Johnsen activated several systems, and the Sea Cliff pulsed with the sound of the high-frequency sonar mounted on her belly. “There’s the bottom.” The yellow screen showed bottom contours in white.

“Anything sticking up, sir?” Overton asked.

“Not today, Jess.”

A year before they had been operating a few miles from this spot and nearly been impaled on a Liberty ship, sunk around 1942 by a German U-boat. The hulk had been sitting up at an angle, propped up by a massive boulder. That near collision would surely have been fatal, and it had taught both men caution.

“Okay, I’m starting to get some hard returns. Directly ahead, spread out like a fan. Another five hundred feet to the bottom.”

“Right.”

“Hmph. There’s one big piece, ’bout thirty feet long, maybe nine or ten across, eleven o’clock, three hundred yards. We’ll go for that one first.”

“Coming left, lights coming on now.”

A half-dozen high-intensity floodlights came on, at once surrounding the submersible in a globe of light. It did not penetrate more than ten yards in the water, which ate up the light energy.

“There’s the bottom, just where you said, Mr. Johnsen,” Overton said. He halted the powered descent and checked for buoyancy. Almost exactly neutral, good. “This current’s going to be tough on battery power.”

“How strong is it?”

“Knot an’ a half, maybe more like two, depending on bottom contours. Same as last year. I figure we can maneuver an hour, hour an’ a half, tops.”

Johnsen agreed. Oceanographers were still puzzling over this deep current, which seemed to change direction from time to time in no particular pattern. Odd. There were a lot of odd things in the ocean. That’s why Johnsen got his oceanography degree, to figure some of the buggers out. It sure beat working for a living. Being three miles down wasn’t work, not to Johnsen.

“I see somethin’, a flash off the bottom right in front of us. Want I should grab it?”

“If you can.”

They couldn’t see it yet on any of the Sea Cliff’s three TV monitors, which looked straight ahead, forty-five degrees left and right of the bow.

“Okay.” Overton put his right hand on the waldo control. This was what he was really best at.

“Can you see what it is?” Johnsen asked, fiddling with the TV.

“Some kinda instrument. Can you kill the number one flood, sir? It’s dazzlin’ me.”

“Wait one.” Johnsen leaned forward to kill the proper switch. The number one floodlight provided illumination for the bow camera, which went immediately blank.

“Okay, baby, now let’s just hold steady…” The machinist’s mate’s left hand worked the directional propeller controls; his right was poised in the waldo glove. Now he was the only one who could see the target. Overton’s reflection was grinning at itself. His right hand moved rapidly.

“Gotcha!” he said. The waldo took the depth-gauge dial a diver had magnetically affixed to the Sea Cliff’s bow prior to setting out from the Austin’s dock bay. “You can hit the light again, sir.”

Johnsen flicked it on, and Overton maneuvered his catch in front of the bow camera. “Can ya see what it is?”

“Looks like a depth gauge. Not one of ours, though,” Johnsen observed. “Can you make it out, Captain?”

“Da,” Kaganovich said at once. He let out a long breath, trying to sound unhappy. “It is one of ours. I cannot read the number, but it is Soviet.”

“Put it in the basket, Jess,” Johnsen said.

“Right.” He maneuvered the waldo, placing the dial in a basket welded on the bow, then getting the manipulator arm back to its rest position. “Getting some silt. Let’s pick up a little.”

As the Sea Cliff got too close to the bottom the wash from her propellers stirred up the fine alluvial silt. Overton increased power to get back to a twenty-foot height.

“That’s better. See what the current is doin’, Mr. Johnsen? Good two knots. Gonna cut our bottom time.” The current was wafting the cloud to port, rather quickly. “Where’s the big target?”

“Dead ahead, hundred yards. Let’s make sure we see what that is.”

“Right. Going forward…There’s something, looks like a butcher knife. We want it?”

“No, let’s keep going.”

“Okay, range?”

“Sixty yards. Ought to be seeing it soon.”

The two officers saw it on TV the same time Overton did. Just a spectral image at first, it faded like an afterimage in one’s eye. Then it came back.

Overton was the first to react. “Damn!”

It was more than thirty feet long and appeared perfectly round. They approached from its rear and saw the main circle and within it four smaller cones that stuck out a foot or so.

“That’s a missile, Skipper, a whole fuckin’ Russkie nuclear missile!”

“Hold position, Jess.”

“Aye aye.” He backed off on the power controls.

“You said she was a Victor,” Johnsen said to the Soviet.

“I was mistaken.” Kaganovich’s mouth twitched.

“Let’s take a closer look, Jess.”

The Sea Cliff moved forward, up the side of the rocket body. The Cyrillic lettering was unmistakable, though they were too far off to make out the serial numbers. There was a new treasure for Davey Jones, an SS-N-20 Seahawk, with its eight five-hundred-kiloton MIRVs.

Kaganovich was careful to note the markings on the missile body. He’d been briefed on the Seahawk immediately before flying from the Kiev. As an intelligence officer, he ordinarily knew more about American weapons than their Soviet counterparts.

How convenient, he thought. The Americans had allowed him to ride in one of their most advanced research vessels whose internal arrangements he had already memorized, and they had accomplished his mission for him. The Red October was dead. All he had to do was get that information to Admiral Stralbo on the Kirov and the fleet could leave the American coast. Let them come to the Norwegian Sea to play their nasty games! See who would win them up there!

“Position check, Jess. Mark the sucker.”