The Hunt for Red October

THE NINTH DAY

A female yeoman first class held the door open for Tyler. He walked in to find General Harris standing alone over the large chart table pondering the placement of tiny ship models.

“You must be Skip Tyler.” Harris looked up.

“Yes, sir.” Tyler was standing as rigidly at attention as his prosthetic leg allowed. Harris came over quickly to shake hands.

“Greer says you used to play ball.”

“Yes, General, I played right tackle at Annapolis. Those were good years.” Tyler smiled, flexing his fingers. Harris looked like an iron-pumper.

“Okay, if you used to play ball, you can call me Ed.” Harris poked him in the chest. “Your number was seventy-eight, and you made All American, right?”

“Second string, sir. Nice to know somebody remembers.”

“I was on temporary duty at the Academy for a few months back then, and I caught a couple games. I never forget a good offensive lineman. I made All Conference at Montana — long time ago. What happened to the leg?”

“Drunk driver clipped me. I was the lucky one. The drunk didn’t make it.”

“Serves the bastard right.”

Tyler nodded agreement, but remembered that the drunken shipfitter had had his own wife and family, according to the police. “Where is everybody?”

“The chiefs are at their normal — well, normal for a weekday, not a Saturday — intelligence briefing. They ought to be down in a few minutes. So, you’re teaching engineering at Annapolis now, eh?”

“Yes, sir. I got a doctorate in that along the way.”

“Name’s Ed, Skip. And this morning you’re going to tell us how we can hold onto that maverick Russian sub?”

“Yes, sir — Ed.”

“Tell me about it, but let’s get some coffee first.” The two men went to a table in the corner with coffee and donuts. Harris listened to the younger man for five minutes, sipping his coffee and devouring a couple of jelly donuts. It took a lot of food to support his frame.

“Son of a gun,” the J-3 observed when Tyler finished. He walked over to the chart. “That’s interesting. Your idea depends a lot on sleight of hand. We’d have to keep them away from where we’re pulling this off. About here, you say?” He tapped the chart.

“Yes, General. The thing is, the way they seem to be operating we can do this to seaward of them—”

“And do a double shuffle. I like it. Yeah, I like it, but Dan Foster won’t like losing one of our own boats.”

“I’d say it’s worth the trade.”

“So would I,” Harris agreed. “But they’re not my boats. After we do this, where do we hide her — if we get her?”

“General, there are some nice places right here on the Chesapeake Bay. There’s a deep spot on the York River and another on the Patuxent, both owned by the navy, both marked Keep Out on the charts. Nice thing about subs, they’re supposed to be invisible. You just find a deep enough spot and flood your tanks. That’s temporary, of course. For a more permanent spot, maybe Truk or Kwajalein in the Pacific. Nice and far from any place.”

“And the Soviets would never notice the presence of a sub tender and three hundred submarine technicians there all of a sudden? Besides, those islands don’t really belong to us anymore, remember?”

Tyler hadn’t expected this man to be a dummy. “So, what if they do find out in a few months? What will they do, announce it to the whole world? I don’t think so. By that time we’ll have all the information we want, and we can always produce the defecting officers in a nice news conference. How would that look for them? Anyway, it figures that after we’ve had her for a while, we’ll break her up. The reactor’ll go to Idaho for tests. The missiles and warheads will get taken off. The electronics gear will be taken to California for testing, and the CIA, NSA, and navy will have gunfights over the crypto gear. The stripped hulk will be taken to a nice deep spot and scuttled. No evidence. We don’t have to keep this a secret forever, just for a few months.”

Harris set his cup down. “You’ll have to forgive me for playing devil’s advocate. I see you’ve thought this out. Fine, I think it’s worth a hard look. It means coordinating a lot of hardware, but it doesn’t really interfere with what we’re already doing. Okay, you have my vote.”

The Joint Chiefs arrived three minutes later. Tyler had never seen so many stars in one room.

“You wanted to see all of us, Eddie?” Hilton asked.

“Yes, General. This is Dr. Skip Tyler.”

Admiral Foster came over first to take his hand. “You got us that performance data on Red October that we were just briefed on. Good work, Commander.”

“Dr. Tyler thinks we should hold onto her if we get her,” Harris said deadpan. “And he thinks he has a way we can do it.”

“We already thought of killing the crew,” Commandant Maxwell said. “The president won’t let us.”

“Gentlemen, what if I told you that there was a way to send the crewmen home without them knowing that we have her? That’s the issue, right? We have to send the crewmen back to Mother Russia. I say there’s a way to do that, and the remaining question is where to hide her.”

“We’re listening,” Hilton said suspiciously.

“Well, sir, we’ll have to move quickly to get everything in place. We’ll need Avalon from the West Coast. Mystic is already aboard the Pigeon in Charleston. We need both of them, and we need an old boomer of our own that we can afford to do without. That’s the hardware. The real trick, however, is the timing — and we have to find her. That may be the hardest part.”

“Maybe not,” Foster said. “Admiral Gallery reported this morning that Dallas may be onto her. Her report dovetails nicely with your engineering model. We’ll know more in a few days. Go on.”

Tyler explained. It took ten minutes since he had to answer questions and use the chart to diagram time and space constraints. When he was finished, General Barnes was at the phone calling the commander of the Military Airlift Command. Foster left the room to call Norfolk, and Hilton was on his way to the White House.

Except for those on watch, every officer was in the wardroom. Several pots of tea were on the table, all untouched, and again the door was locked.

“Comrades,” Petrov reported, “the second set of badges was contaminated, worse than the first.”

Ramius noted that Petrov was rattled. It wasn’t the first set of badges, or the second. It was the third and fourth since sailing. He had chosen his ship’s doctor well.

“Bad badges,” Melekhin growled. “Some bastard of a trickster in Severomorsk — or perhaps an imperialist spy playing a typical enemy trick on us. When they catch the son of a bitch I will shoot him myself — whoever he is! This sort of thing is treasonous!”

“Regulations require that I report this,” Petrov noted. “Even though the instruments show safe levels.”

“Your adherence to the rules is noted, Comrade Doctor. You have acted correctly,” Ramius said. “And now regulations stipulate that we make yet another check. Melekhin, I want you and Borodin to do it personally. First check the radiation instruments themselves. If they are working properly, we will be certain that the badges are defective — or have been tampered with. If so, my report on this incident will demand someone’s head.” It was not unknown for drunken shipyard workers to be sent to the gulag. “Comrades, in my opinion there is nothing at all to concern us. If there were a leak, Comrade Melekhin would have discovered it days ago. So. We all have work to do.”

They were all back in the wardroom half an hour later. Passing crewmen noticed this, and already the whispering started.

“Comrades,” Melekhin announced, “we have a major problem.”

The officers, especially the younger ones, looked a little pale. On the table was a Geiger counter stripped into a score of small parts. Next to it was a radiation detector taken off the reactor room bulkhead, its inspection cover removed.

“Sabotage,” Melekhin hissed. It was a word fearsome enough to make any Soviet citizen shudder. The room went deathly still, and Ramius noted that Svyadov was holding his face under rigid control.

“Comrades, mechanically speaking these instruments are quite simple. As you know, this counter has ten different settings. We can choose from ten sensitivity ranges, using the same instrument to detect a minor leak or to quantify a major one. We do that by dialing this selector, which engages one of ten electrical resistors of increasing value. A child could design this, or maintain and repair it.” The chief enginer tapped the underside of the selector dial. “In this case the proper resistors have been clipped off, and new ones soldered on. Settings one to eight have the same impedance value. All of our counters were inspected by the same dockyard technician three days before we sailed. Here is his inspection sheet.” Melekhin tossed it on the table contemptuously.

“Either he or another spy sabotaged this and all the other counters I’ve looked at. It would have taken a skilled man no more than an hour. In the case of this instrument.” The engineer turned the fixed detector over. “You see that the electrical parts have been disconnected, except for the test circuit, which was rewired. Borodin and I removed this from the forward bulkhead. This is skilled work; whoever did this is no amateur. I believe that an imperialist agent has sabotaged our ship. First he disabled our radiation monitor instruments, then he probably arranged a low-level leak in our hot piping. It would appear, comrades, that Comrade Petrov was correct. We may have a leak. My apologies, Doctor.”

Petrov nodded jerkily. Compliments like this he could easily forego.

“Total exposure, Comrade Petrov?” Ramius asked.

“The greatest is for the enginemen, of course. The maximum is fifty rads for Comrades Melekhin and Svyadov. The other engine crewmen run from twenty to forty-five rads, and the cumulative exposure drops rapidly as one moves forward. The torpedomen have only five rads or so, mostly less. The officers exclusive of engineers run from ten to twenty-five.” Petrov paused, telling himself to be more positive. “Comrades, these are not lethal doses. In fact, one can tolerate a dose of up to a hundred rads without any near-term physiological effects, and one can survive several hundred. We do face a serious problem here, but it is not yet a life-threatening emergency.”

“Melekhin?” the captain asked.

“It is my engine plant, and my responsibility. We do not yet know that we have a leak. The badges could still be defective or sabotaged. This could all be a vicious psychological trick played on us by the main enemy to damage our morale. Borodin will assist me. We will personally repair these and conduct a thorough inspection of all reactor systems. I am too old to have children. For the moment, I suggest that we deactivate the reactor and proceed on battery. The inspection will take us four hours at most. I also recommend that we reduce reactor watches to two hours. Agreed, Captain?”

“Certainly, Comrade. I know that there is nothing you cannot repair.”

“Excuse me, Comrade Captain,” Ivanov spoke up. “Should we report this to fleet headquarters?”

“Our orders are not to break radio silence,” Ramius said.

“If the imperialists were able to sabotage our instruments…What if they knew our orders beforehand and are attempting to make us use the radio so they can locate us?” Borodin asked.

“A possibility,” Ramius replied. “First we will determine if we have a problem, then its severity. Comrades, we have a fine crew and the best officers in the fleet. We will see to our own problems, conquer them, and continue our mission. We all have a date in Cuba that I intend to meet — to hell with imperialist plots!”

“Well said,” Melekhin concurred.

“Comrades, we will keep this secret. There is no reason to excite the crew over what may be nothing, and at most is something we can handle on our own.” Ramius ended the meeting.

Petrov was less sure, and Svyadov was trying very hard not to shake. He had a sweetheart at home and wanted one day to have children. The young lieutenant had been painstakingly trained to understand everything that went on in the reactor systems and to know what to do if things went awry. And it was some consolation to know that most of the solutions to reactor problems to be found in the book had been written by some of the men in this room. Even so, something that could neither be seen nor felt was invading his body, and no rational person would be happy with that.

The meeting adjourned. Melekhin and Borodin went aft to the engineering stores. A michman electrician came with them to get the proper parts. He noted that they were reading from the maintenance manual for a radiation detector. When he went off duty an hour later, the whole crew knew that the reactor had been shut down yet again. The electrician conferred with his bunkmate, a missile maintenance technician. Together they discussed the reason for working on a half dozen Geiger counters and other instruments, and their conclusion was an obvious one.

The submarine’s bosun overheard the discussion and pondered the conclusion himself. He had been on nuclear submarines for ten years. Despite this he was not an educated man and regarded any activity in the reactor spaces as something to the left of witchcraft. It worked the ship, how he did not know, though he was certain that there was something unholy about it. Now he began to wonder if the devils he never saw inside that steel drum — were coming loose? Within two hours the entire crew knew that something was wrong and that their officers had not yet figured out a way to deal with it.

The cooks bringing food forward from the galley to the crew spaces were seen to linger in the bow as long as they could. Men standing watch in the control room shifted on their feet more than usual, Ramius noted, hurrying forward at the change of watch.

It took some getting used to, Commodore Zachary Eaton reflected. When his flagship was built, he was sailing boats in a bathtub. Back then the Russians were allies, but allies of convenience, who shared a common enemy instead of a common goal. Like the Chinese today, he judged. The enemy then had been the Germans and the Japanese. In his twenty-six-year career, he had been to both countries many times, and his first command, a destroyer, had been home-ported at Yokoshuka. It was a strange world.

There were several nice things about his flagship. Big as she was, her movement on the ten-foot seas was just enough to remind him that he was at sea, not at a desk. Visibility was about ten miles, and somewhere out there, about eight hundred miles away, was the Russian fleet. His battleship was going to meet them just like in the old old days, as if the aircraft carrier had never come along. The destroyers Caron and Stump were in sight, five miles off either bow. Further forward, the cruisers Biddle and Wainwright were doing radar picket duty. The surface action group was marking time instead of proceeding forward as he would have preferred. Off the New Jersey coast, the helicopter assault ship Tarawa and two frigates were racing to join up, bringing ten AV-8B Harrier attack fighters and fourteen ASW helicopters to supplement his air strength. This was useful, but not of critical concern to Eaton. The Saratoga’s air wing was now operating out of Maine, along with a goodly collection of air force birds working hard to learn the maritime strike business. HMS Invincible was two hundred miles to his east, conducting aggressive ASW patrols, and eight hundred miles east of that force was the Kennedy, hiding under a weather front off the Azores. It slightly irked the commodore that the Brits were helping out. Since when did the U.S. Navy need help defending the American coast? Not that they didn’t owe us the favor, though.

The Russians had split into three groups, with the carrier Kiev easternmost to face the Kennedy’s battle group. His expected responsibility was the Moskva group, with the Invincible handling the Kirov’s. Data on all three was being fed to him continuously and digested by his operations staff down in flag plot. What were the Soviets up to? he wondered.

He knew the story that they were searching for a lost sub, but Eaton believed that as much as if they’d explained that they had a bridge they wanted to sell. Probably, he thought, they want to demonstrate that they can trail their coats down our coast whenever they want, to show that they have a seagoing fleet and to establish a precedent for doing this again.

Eaton did not like that.

He did not much care for his assigned mission either. He had two tasks that were not fully compatible. Keeping an eye on their submarine activity would be difficult enough. The Saratoga’s Vikings were not working his area, despite his request, and most of the Orions were working farther out, closer to the Invincible. His own ASW assets were barely adequate for local defense, much less active sub hunting. The Tarawa would change that, but also change his screening requirements. His other mission was to establish and maintain sensor contact with the Moskva group and to report at once any unusual activity to CINCLANTFLT, the commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet. This made sense, sort of. If their surface ships did anything untoward, Eaton had the means to deal with them. It was being decided now how closely he should shadow them.

The problem was whether he should be nearby or far away. Near meant twenty miles — gun range. The Moskva had ten escorts, none of which could possibly survive more than two of his sixteen-inch projectiles. At twenty miles he had the choice of using full-sized or subcaliber rounds, the latter guided to their targets by a laser designator installed atop the main director tower. Tests the previous year had determined that he could maintain a steady firing rate of one round every twenty seconds, with the laser shifting fire from one target to another until there were no more. But this would expose the New Jersey and her escorts to torpedo and missile fire from the Russian ships.

Backing farther off, he could still fire sabot rounds from fifty miles, and they could be directed to the target by a laser designator aboard the battlewagon’s helicopter. This would expose the chopper to surface-to-air missile fire and to Soviet helicopters suspected of having air-to-air missile capability. To help out with this, the Tarawa was bringing a pair of Apache attack helicopters, which carried lasers, air-to-air missiles, and their own air-to-surface missiles; they were antitank weapons expected to work well against small warships.

His ships would be exposed to missile fire, but he didn’t fear for his flagship. Unless the Russians were carrying nuclear warheads, their antiship missiles would not be able to damage his ship gravely — the New Jersey had upwards of a foot of class B armor plate. They would, however, play hell with his radar and communications gear, and worse, they would be lethal to his thin-hulled escorts. His ships carried their own antiship missiles, Harpoons and Tomahawks, though not as many as he would have liked.

And what about a Russian sub hunting them? Eaton had been told of none, but you never knew where one might be hiding. Oh well — he couldn’t worry about everything. A submarine could sink the New Jersey, but she would have to work at it. If the Russians were really up to something nasty, they’d get the first shot, but Eaton would have enough warning to launch his own missiles and get off a few rounds of gunfire while calling for air support — none of which would happen, he was sure.

He decided that the Russians were on some sort of fishing expedition. His job was to show them that the fish in these waters were dangerous.

The oversized tractor-trailer crept at two miles per hour into the cargo bay of the C-5A Galaxy transport under the watchful eyes of the aircraft’s loadmaster, two flight officers, and six naval officers. Oddly, only the latter, none of whom wore aviator’s wings, were fully versed in the procedure. The vehicle’s center of gravity was precisely marked, and they watched the mark approach a particular number engraved on the cargo bay floor. The work had to be done exactly. Any mistake could fatally impair the aircraft’s trim and imperil the lives of the flight crew and passengers.

“Okay, freeze it right there,” the senior officer called. The driver was only too glad to stop. He left the keys in the ignition, set all the brakes, and put the truck in gear before getting out. Someone else would drive it out of the aircraft on the other side of the country. The loadmaster and six airmen immediately went to work, snaking steel cables to eyebolts on the truck and trailer to secure the heavy load. Shifting cargo was something else an aircraft rarely survived, and the C-5A did not have ejection seats.

The loadmaster saw to it that his ground crewmen were properly at work before walking over to the pilot. He was a twenty-five-year sergeant who loved the C-5s despite their blemished history.

“Cap’n, what the hell is this thing?”

“It’s called a DSRV, Sarge, deep submergence rescue vehicle.”

“Says Avalon on the back, sir,” the sergeant pointed out.

“Yeah, so it has a name. It’s a sort of a lifeboat for submarines. Goes down to get the crew out if something screws up.”

“Oh.” The sergeant considered that. He’d flown tanks, helicopters, general cargo, once a whole battalion of troops on his — he thought of the aircraft as his — Galaxy before. This was the first time he had ever flown a ship. If it had a name, he reasoned, it was a ship. Damn, the Galaxy could do anything! “Where we takin’ it, sir?”

“Norfolk Naval Air Station, and I’ve never been there either.” The pilot watched the securing process closely. Already a dozen cables were attached. When a dozen more were in place, they’d put tension on the cables to prevent the minutest shift. “We figure a trip of five hours, forty minutes, all on internal fuel. We got the jet stream on our side today. Weather’s supposed to be okay until we hit the coast. We lay over for a day, then come back Monday morning.”

“Your boys work pretty fast,” said the senior naval officer, Lieutenant Ames, coming over.

“Yes, Lieutenant, another twenty minutes.” The pilot checked his watch. “We ought to be taking off on the hour.”

“No hurry, Captain. If this thing shifts in flight, I guess it would ruin our whole day. Where do I send my people?”

“Upper deck forward. There’s room for fifteen or so just aft of the flight deck.” Lieutenant Ames knew this but didn’t say so. He’d flown with his DSRV across the Atlantic several times and across the Pacific once, every time on a different C-5.

“May I ask what the big deal is?” the pilot inquired.

“I don’t know,” Ames said. “They want me and my baby in Norfolk.”

“You really take that little bitty thing underwater, sir?” the loadmaster asked.

“That’s what they pay me for. I’ve had her down to forty-eight hundred feet, almost a mile.” Ames regarded his vessel with affection.

“A mile under water, sir? Jesus — uh, pardon me, sir, but I mean, isn’t that a little hairy — the water pressure, I mean?”

“Not really. I’ve been down to twenty thousand aboard Trieste. It’s really pretty interesting down there. You see all kinds of strange fish.” Though a fully qualified submariner, Ames’ first love was research. He had a degree in oceanography and had commanded or served in all of the navy’s deep-submergence vehicles except the nuclear-powered NR-1. “Of course, the water pressure would do bad things to you if anything went wrong, but it would be so fast you’d never know it. If you fellows want a check ride, I could probably arrange it. It’s a different world down there.”

“That’s okay, sir.” The sergeant went back to swearing at his men.

“You weren’t serious,” the pilot observed.

“Why not? It’s no big deal. We take civilians down all the time, and believe me, it’s a lot less hairy than riding this damned white whale during a midair refueling.”

“Uh-huh,” the pilot noted dubiously. He’d done hundreds of those. It was entirely routine, and he was surprised that anyone would find it dangerous. You had to be careful, of course, but, hell, you had to be careful driving every morning. He was sure that an accident on this pocket submarine wouldn’t leave enough of a man to make a decent meal for a shrimp. It takes all kinds, he decided. “You don’t go to sea by yourself in that, do you?”

“No, ordinarily we work off a submarine rescue ship, Pigeon or Ortolan. We can also operate off a regular submarine. That gadget you see there on the trailer is our mating collar. We can nest on the back of a sub at the after escape trunk, and the sub takes us where we need to go.”

“Does this have to do with the flap on the East Coast?”

“That’s a good bet, but nobody’s said anything official to us. The papers say the Russians have lost a sub. If so, we might go down to look at her, maybe rescue any survivors. We can take off twenty or twenty-five men at a time, and our mating collar is designed to fit Russian subs as well as our own.”

“Same size?”

“Close enough.” Ames cocked an eyebrow. “We plan for all kinds of contingencies.”

“Interesting.”

The YAK-36 Forger had left the Kiev half an hour before, guided first by gyro compass and now by the ESM pod on the fighter’s stubby rudder fin. Senior Lieutenant Viktor Shavrov’s mission was not an easy one. He was to approach the American E-3A Sentry radar surveillance aircraft, one of which had been shadowing his fleet for three days now. The AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft had been careful to circle well beyond SAM range, but had stayed close enough to maintain constant coverage of the Soviet fleet, reporting every maneuver and radio transmission to their command base. It was like having a burglar watching one’s apartment and being unable to do anything about it.

Shavrov’s mission was to do something about it. He couldn’t shoot, of course. His orders from Admiral Stralbo on the Kirov had been explicit about that. But he was carrying a pair of Atoll heat-seeking missiles which he would be sure to show the imperialists. He and his admiral expected that this would teach them a lesson: the Soviet Navy did not like having imperialist snoopers about, and accidents had been known to happen. It was a mission worthy of the effort it took.

This effort was considerable. To avoid detection by the airborne radar Shavrov had to fly as low and slow as his fighter could operate, a bare twenty meters above the rough Atlantic; this way he would get lost in the sea return. His speed was two hundred knots. This made for excellent fuel economy, though his mission was at the ragged edge of his fuel load. It also made for very rough flying as his fighter bounced through the roiled air at the wave tops. There was a low-hanging mist that cut visibility to a few kilometers. So much the better, he thought. The nature of the mission had chosen him, rather than the other way around. He was one of the few Soviet pilots experienced in low-level flying. Shavrov had not become a sailor-pilot by himself. He’d started flying attack helicopters for frontal aviation in Afghanistan, graduating to fixed-wing aircraft after a year’s bloody apprenticeship. Shavrov was an expert in nap-of-the-earth flying, having learned it by necessity, hunting the bandits and counterrevolutionaries that hid in the towering mountains like hydrophobic rats. This skill had made him attractive to the fleet, which had transferred him to sea duty without his having had much say in the matter. After a few months he had no complaints, his perqs and extra pay being more attractive than his former frontal aviation base on the Chinese border. Being one of the few hundred carrier-qualified Soviet airmen had softened the blow of missing his chance to fly the new MiG-27, though with luck, if the new full-sized carrier were ever finished, he’d have the chance to fly the naval version of that wonderful bird. Shavrov could wait for that, and with a few successful missions like this one he might have his squadron command.

He stopped daydreaming — the mission was too demanding for that. This was real flying. He’d never flown against Americans, only against the weapons they gave to the Afghan bandits. He had lost friends to those weapons, some of whom had survived their crashes only to be done to death by the Afghan savages in ways that would have made even a German puke. It would be good to teach the imperialists a lesson personally.

The radar signal was growing stronger. Beneath his ejection seat a tape recorder was making a continuous record of the signal characteristics of the American aircraft so that the scientific people would be able to devise a means of jamming and foiling the vaunted American flying eye. The aircraft was only a converted 707, a glorified passenger plane, hardly a worthy opponent for a crack fighter pilot! Shavrov checked his chart. He’d have to find it soon. Next he checked his fuel. He’d dropped his last external tank a few minutes earlier, and all he had now was his internal fuel. The turbofan was guzzling fuel, something he had to keep an eye on. He planned to have only five or ten minutes of fuel left when he returned to his ship. This did not trouble him. He already had over a hundred carrier landings.

There! His hawk’s eyes caught the glint of sun off metal at one o’clock high. Shavrov eased back on his stick and increased power gently, bringing his Forger into a climb. A minute later he was at two thousand meters. He could see the Sentry now, its blue paint blending neatly into the darkening sky. He was coming up beneath its tail, and with luck the empennage would shield him from the rotating radar antenna. Perfect! He’d blaze by her a few times, letting the flight crew see his Atolls, and—

It took Shavrov a moment to realize that he had a wingman.

Two wingmen.

Fifty meters to his left and right, a pair of American F-15 Eagle fighters. The visored face of one pilot was staring at him.

“YAK-106, YAK-106, please acknowledge.” The voice on the SSB (single side band) radio circuit spoke flawless Russian. Shavrov did not acknowledge. They had read the number off his engine intake housing before he had known they were there.

“106, 106, this is the Sentry aircraft you are now approaching. Please identify yourself and your intentions. We get a little anxious when a stray fighter comes our way, so we’ve had three following you for the past hundred kilometers.”

Three? Shavrov turned his head around. A third Eagle with four sparrow missiles was hanging fifty meters from his tail, his “six.”

“Our men compliment you on your ability to fly low and slow, 106.”

Lieutenant Shavrov was shaking with rage as he passed four thousand meters, still eight thousand from the American AWACS. He had checked his six every thirty seconds on the way in. The Americans must have been riding back there, hidden in the mist, and vectored in on him by instructions from the Sentry. He swore to himself and held course. He’d teach that AWACS a lesson!

“Break off, 106.” It was a cool voice, without emotion except perhaps a trace of irony. “106, if you do not break off, we will consider your mission to be hostile. Think about it, 106. You are beyond radar coverage of your own ships, and you are not yet within missile range of us.”

Shavrov looked to his right. The Eagle was breaking off — so was the one to the left. Was it a gesture, taking the heat off of him and expecting some courtesy in return? Or were they clearing the way for the one behind him — he checked, still there — to shoot? There was no telling what these imperialist criminals would do; he was at least a minute from the fringe of their missile range. Shavrov was anything but a coward. Neither was he a fool. He moved his stick, curving his fighter a few degrees to the right.

“Thank you, 106,” the voice acknowledged. “You see, we have some trainee operators aboard. Two of them are women, and we don’t want them to get rattled their first time out.” Suddenly it was too much. Shavrov thumbed the radio switch on his stick.

“Shall I tell you what you can do with your women, Yankee?”

“You are nekulturny, 106,” the voice replied softly. “Perhaps the long overwater flight has made you nervous. You must be about at the limit of your internal fuel. Bastard of a day to fly, what with all these crazy, shifting winds. Do you need a position check, over?”

“Negative, Yankee!”

“Course back to Kiev is one-eight-five, true. Have to be careful using a magnetic compass this far north, you know. Distance to Kiev is 318.6 kilometers. Warning — there is a rapidly moving cold front moving in from the southwest. That’s going to make flying a little rough in a few hours. Do you require an escort back to Kiev?”

“Pig!” Shavrov swore to himself. He switched his radio off, cursing himself for his lack of discipline. He had allowed the Americans to wound his pride. Like most fighter pilots, he had a surfeit of that.

“106, we did not copy your last transmission. Two of my Eagles are heading that way. They will form up on you and see that you get home safely. Have a happy day, Comrade. Sentry-November, out.”

The American lieutenant turned to his colonel. He couldn’t keep a straight face any longer. “God, I thought I’d strangle talking like that!” He sipped some Coke from a plastic cup. “He really thought he’d sneak up on us.”

“In case you didn’t notice, he did get within a mile of Atoll range, and we don’t have authorization to shoot at him until he flips one at us — which might wreck our day,” the colonel grumped. “Nice job of twisting his tail, Lieutenant.”

“A pleasure, Colonel.” The operator looked at his screen. “Well, he’s heading back to momma, with Cobras 3 and 4 on his six. He’s going to be one unhappy Russkie when he gets home. If he gets home. Even with those drop tanks, he must be near his range limit.” He thought for a moment. “Colonel, if they do this again, how ’bout we offer to take the guy home with us?”

“Get a Forger — what for? I suppose the navy’d like to have one to play with, they don’t get much of Ivan’s hardware, but the Forger’s a piece of junk.”

Shavrov was tempted to firewall his engine but restrained himself. He’d already shown enough personal weakness for one day. Besides, his YAK could only break Mach 1 in a dive. Those Eagles could do it straight up, and they had plenty of fuel. He saw that they both carried FAST-pack conformal fuel cells. They could cross whole oceans with those. Damn the Americans and their arrogance! Damn his own intelligence officer for telling him he could sneak up on the Sentry! Let the air-to-air armed Backfires go after them. They could handle that famed overbred passenger bus, could get to it faster than its fighter guardians could react.

The Americans, he saw, were not lying about the weather front. A line of cold weather squawls racing northeast was just on the horizon as he approached the Kiev. The Eagles backed off as he approached the formation. One American pilot pulled alongside briefly to wave goodbye. His head bobbed at Shavrov’s return gesture. The Eagles paired up and turned back north.

Five minutes later he was aboard the Kiev, still pale with rage. As soon as the wheels were chocked he jumped to the carrier deck, stomping off to see his squadron commander.

The city of Moscow was justly famous for its subway system. For a pittance, people could ride nearly anywhere they wanted on a modern, safe, garishly decorated electric railway system. In case of war, the underground tunnels could serve as a bomb shelter for the citizens of Moscow. This secondary use was the result of the efforts of Nikita Khrushchev, who when construction was begun in the mid-thirties had suggested to Stalin that the system be driven deep. Stalin had approved. The shelter consideration had been decades ahead of its time; nuclear fission had then only been a theory, fusion hardly thought of at all.

On a spur of the line running from Sverdlov Square to the old airport, which ran near the Kremlin, workers bored a tunnel that was later closed off with a ten-meter-thick steel and concrete plug. The hundred-meter-long space was connected to the Kremlin by a pair of elevator shafts, and over time it had been converted to an emergency command center from which the Politburo could control the entire Soviet empire. The tunnel was also a convenient means of going unseen from the city to a small airport from which Politburo members could be flown to their ultimate redoubt, beneath the granite monolith at Zhiguli. Neither command post was a secret to the West — both had existed far too long for that — but the KGB confidently reported that nothing in the Western arsenals could smash through the hundreds of feet of rock which in both places separated the Politburo from the surface.

This fact was of little comfort to Admiral Yuri Ilych Padorin. He found himself seated at the far end of a ten-meter-long conference table looking at the grim faces of the ten Politburo members, the inner circle that alone made the strategic decisions affecting the fate of his country. None of them were officers. Those in uniform reported to these men. Up the table to his left was Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, who had disassociated himself from this affair with consummate skill, even producing a letter in which he had opposed Ramius’ appointment to command the Red October. Padorin, as chief of the Main Political Administration, had successfully blocked Ramius’ transfer, pointing out that Gorshkov’s candidate for command was occasionally late in paying his Party dues and did not speak up at the regular meetings often enough for an officer of his rank. The truth was that Gorshkov’s candidate was not so proficient an officer as Ramius, whom Gorshkov had wanted for his own operations staff, a post that Ramius had successfully evaded for years.

Party General Secretary and President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Andre Narmonov shifted his gaze to Padorin. His face gave nothing away. It never did, unless he wished it to — which was rare enough. Narmonov had succeeded Andropov when the latter had suffered a heart attack. There were rumors about that, but in the Soviet Union there are always rumors. Not since the days of Laventri Beria had the security chieftain come so close to power, and senior Party officials had allowed themselves to forget that. It would not be forgotten again. Bringing the KGB to heel had taken a year, a necessary measure to secure the privileges of the Party elite from the supposed reforms of the Andropov clique.

Narmonov was the apparatchik par excellence. He had first gained prominence as a factory manager, an engineer with a reputation for fulfilling his quota early, a man who produced results. He had risen steadily by using his own talents and those of others, rewarding those he had to, ignoring those he could. His position as general secretary of the Communist Party was not entirely secure. It was still early in his stewardship of the Party, and he depended on a loose coalition of colleagues — not friends, these men did not make friends. His succession to this chair had resulted more from ties within the Party structure than from personal ability, and his position would depend on consensus rule for years, until such time as his will could dictate policy.

Narmonov’s dark eyes, Padorin could see, were red from tobacco smoke. The ventilation system down here had never worked properly. The general secretary squinted at Padorin from the other end of the table as he decided what to say, what would please the members of this cabal, these ten old, passionless men.

“Comrade Admiral,” he began coldly, “we have heard from Comrade Gorshkov what the chances are of finding and destroying this rebellious submarine before it can complete its unimaginable crime. We are not pleased. Nor are we pleased with the fantastic error in judgment that gave command of our most valuable ship to this slug. What I want to know from you, Comrade, is what happened to the zampolit aboard, and what security measures were taken by your office to prevent this infamy from taking place!”

There was no fear in Narmonov’s voice, but Padorin knew it had to be there. This “fantastic error” could ultimately be laid at the chairman’s feet by members who wanted another in that chair — unless he were able somehow to separate himself from it. If this meant Padorin’s skin, that was the admiral’s problem. Narmonov had had men flayed before.

Padorin had prepared himself for this over several days. He was a man who had lived through months of intensive combat operations and had several boats sunk from under him. If his body was softer now, his mind was not. Whatever his fate might be, Padorin was determined to meet it with dignity. If they remember me as a fool, he thought, it will be as a courageous fool. He had little left to live for in any case. “Comrade General Secretary,” he began, “the political officer aboard Red October was Captain Ivan Yurievich Putin, a stalwart and faithful Party member. I cannot imagine—”

“Comrade Padorin,” Defense Minister Ustinov interrupted, “we presume that you also could not imagine the unbelievable treachery of this Ramius. You now expect us to trust your judgment on this man also?”

“The most disturbing thing of all,” added Mikhail Alexandrov, the Party theoretician who had replaced the dead Mikhail Suslov and was even more determined than the departed ideologue to be simon-pure on Party doctrine, “is how tolerant the Main Political Administration has been toward this renegade. It is amazing, particularly in view of his obvious efforts to construct his own personality cult throughout the submarine service, even in the political arm, it would seem. Your criminal willingness to overlook this — this obvious aberration from Party policy — does not make your judgment appear very sound.”

“Comrades, you are correct in judging that I erred badly in approving Ramius for command, and also that we allowed him to select most of Red October’s senior officers. At the same time, we chose some years ago to do things in this way, to keep officers associated with a single ship for many years, and to give the captain great sway over their careers. This is an operational question, not a political one.”

“We have already considered that,” Narmonov replied. “It is true that in this case there is enough blame for more than one man.” Gorshkov didn’t move, but the message was explicit: his effort to separate himself from this scandal had failed. Narmonov didn’t care how many heads it took to prop up his chair.

“Comrade Chairman,” Gorshkov objected, “the efficiency of the fleet—”

“Efficiency?” Alexandrov said. “Efficiency. This Lithuanian half-breed is efficiently making fools of our fleet with his chosen officers while our remaining ships blunder about like newly castrated cattle.” Alexandrov alluded to his first job on a state farm. A fitting beginning, it was generally thought, for the man who held the position of chief ideologue was as popular in Moscow as the plague, but the Politburo had to have him or one like him. The ideological chieftain was always the kingmaker. Whose side was he on now — in addition to his own?

“The most likely explanation is that Putin was murdered,” Padorin continued. “He alone of the officers left behind a wife and family.”

“That’s another question, Comrade Admiral.” Narmonov seized this issue. “Why is it that none of these men are married? Didn’t that tell you something? Must we of the Politburo supervise everything? Can’t you think for yourselves?”

As if you want us to, Padorin thought. “Comrade General Secretary, most of our submarine commanders prefer young, unmarried officers in their wardrooms. Duty at sea is demanding, and single men have fewer distractions. Moreover, each of the senior officers aboard is a Party member in good standing with a praiseworthy record. Ramius has been treacherous, there is no denying that, and I would gladly kill the son of a bitch with my own hands — but he has deceived more good men than there are in this room.”

“Indeed,” Alexandrov observed. “And now that we are in this mess, how do we get out of it?”

Padorin took a deep breath. He’d been waiting for this. “Comrades, we have another man aboard Red October, unknown to either Putin or Captain Ramius, an agent of the Main Political Administration.”

“What?” Gorshkov said. “And why did I not know of this?”

Alexandrov smiled. “That’s the first intelligent thing we’ve heard today. Go on.”

“This individual is covered as an enlisted man. He reports directly to our office, bypassing all operational and political channels. His name is Igor Loginov. He is twenty-four, a—”

“Twenty-four!” Narmonov shouted. “You trust a child with this responsibility?”

“Comrade, Loginov’s mission is to blend in with the conscripted crewmen, to listen in on conversations, to identify likely traitors, spies, and saboteurs. In truth he looks younger still. He serves alongside young men, and he must be young himself. He is, in fact, a graduate of the higher naval school for political officers at Kiev and the GRU intelligence academy. He is the son of Arkady Ivanovich Loginov, chief of the Lenin Steel Plant at Kazan. Many of you here know his father.” Narmonov was among those who nodded, a flickering of interest in his eyes. “Only an elite few are chosen for this duty. I have met and interviewed this boy myself. His record is clear, he is a Soviet patriot without question.”

“I know his father,” Narmonov confirmed. “Arkady Ivanovich is an honorable man who has raised several good sons. What are this boy’s orders?”

“As I said, Comrade General Secretary, his ordinary duties are to observe the crewmen and report on what he sees. He’s been doing this for two years, and he is good at it. He does not report to the zampolit aboard, but only to Moscow or to one of my representatives. In a genuine emergency, his orders are to report to the zampolit. If Putin is alive — and I do not believe this, comrades — he would be part of the conspiracy, and Loginov would know not to do this. In a true emergency, therefore, his orders are to destroy the ship and make his escape.”

“This is possible?” Narmonov asked. “Gorshkov?”

“Comrades, all of our ships carry powerful scuttling charges, submarines especially.”

“Unfortunately,” Padorin said, “these are generally not armed, and only the captain can activate them. Ever since the incident on Storozhevoy, we in the Main Political Administration have had to consider that an incident such as this one was indeed a possibility, and that its most damaging manifestation would involve a missile-carrying submarine.”

“Ah,” Narmonov observed, “he is a missile mechanic.”

“No, Comrade, he is a ship’s cook,” Padorin replied.

“Wonderful! He spends all his day boiling potatoes!” Narmonov’s hands flew up in the air, his hopeful demeanor gone in an instant, replaced with palpable wrath. “You wish your bullet now, Padorin?”

“Comrade Chairman, this is a better cover assignment than you may imagine.” Padorin did not flinch, wanting to show these men what he was made of. “On Red October the officers’ accommodations and galley are aft. The crew’s quarters are forward — the crew eat there since they do not have a separate messroom — with the missile room in between. As a cook he must travel back and forth many times each day, and his presence in any particular area will not be thought unusual. The food freezer is located adjacent to the lower missile deck forward. It is not our plan that he should activate the scuttling charges. We have allowed for the possibility that the captain could disarm them. Comrades, these measures have been carefully thought out.”

“Go on,” Narmonov grunted.

“As Comrade Gorshkov explained earlier, Red October carries twenty-six Seahawk missiles. These are solid-fuel rockets, and one has a range-safety package installed.”

“Range safety?” Narmonov was puzzled.

Up to this point the other military officers at the meeting, none of them Politburo members, had kept their peace. Padorin was surprised when General V.M. Vishenkov, commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, spoke up. “Comrades, these details were worked out through my office some years ago. As you know, when we test our missiles, we have safety packages aboard to explode them if they go off course. Otherwise they might land on one of our own cities. Our operational missiles do not ordinarily carry them — for the obvious reason, the imperialists might learn a way to explode them in flight.”

“So, our young GRU comrade will blow up the missile. What of the warheads?” Narmonov asked. An engineer by training, he could always be distracted by technical discourse, always impressed by a clever one.

“Comrade,” Vishenkov went on, “the missile warheads are armed by accelerometers. Thus they cannot be armed until the missile reaches its full programmed speed. The Americans use the same system, and for the same reason, to prevent sabotage. These safety systems are absolutely reliable. You could drop one of the reentry vehicles from the top of the Moscow television transmitter onto a steel plate and it would not fire.” The general referred to the massive TV tower whose construction Narmonov had personally supervised while head of the Central Communications Directorate. Vishenkov was a skilled political operator.

“In the case of a solid-fuel rocket,” Padorin continued, recognizing his debt to Vishenkov, wondering what he’d ask for in return, and hoping he’d live long enough to deliver, “a safety package ignites all of the missile’s three stages simultaneously.”

“So the missile just takes off?” Alexandrov asked.

“No, Comrade Academician. The upper stage might, if it could break through the missile tube hatch, and this would flood the missile room, sinking the submarine. But even if it did not, there is sufficient thermal energy in either of the first two stages to reduce the entire submarine to a puddle of molten iron, twenty times what is necessary to sink it. Loginov has been trained to bypass the alarm system on the missile tube hatch, to activate the safety package, set a timer, and escape.”

“Not just to destroy the ship?” Narmonov asked.

“Comrade General Secretary,” Padorin said, “it is too much to ask a young man to do his duty, knowing that it means certain death. We would be unrealistic to expect this. He must have at least the possibility of escape, otherwise human weakness might lead to failure.”

“This is reasonable,” Alexandrov said. “Young men are motivated by hope, not fear. In this case, young Loginov would hope for a considerable reward.”

“And get it,” Narmonov said. “We will make every effort to save this young man, Gorshkov.”

“If he is truly reliable,” Alexandrov noted.

“I know that my life depends on this, Comrade Academician,” Padorin said, his back still straight. He did not get a verbal answer, only nods from half the heads at the table. He had faced death before and was at the age where it remains the last thing a man need face.

Arbatov came into the Oval Office at 4:50 P.M. He found the president and Dr. Pelt sitting in easy chairs across from the chief executive’s desk.

“Come on over, Alex. Coffee?” The president pointed to a tray on the corner of his desk. He was not drinking today, Arbatov noted.

“No, thank you, Mr. President. May I ask—”

“We think we found your sub, Alex,” Pelt answered. “They just brought these dispatches over, and we’re checking them now.” The adviser held up a ring binder of message forms.

“Where is it, may I ask?” The ambassador’s face was deadpan.

“Roughly three hundred miles northeast of Norfolk. We have not located it exactly. One of our ships noted an underwater explosion in the area — no, that’s not right. It was recorded on a ship, and when the tapes were checked a few hours later, they thought they heard a submarine explode and sink. Sorry, Alex,” Pelt said. “I should have known better than to read through all this stuff without an interpreter. Does your navy talk in its own language, too?”

“Officers do not like for civilians to understand them,” Arbatov smiled. “This has doubtless been true since the first man picked up a stone.”

“Anyway, we have ships and aircraft searching the area now.”

The president looked up. “Alex, I talked to the chief of naval operations, Dan Foster, a few minutes ago. He said not to expect any survivors. The water there’s over a thousand feet deep, and you know what the weather is like. They said it’s right on the edge of the continental shelf.”

“The Norfolk Canyon, sir,” Pelt added.

“We are conducting a thorough search,” the president continued. “The navy is bringing in some specialized rescue equipment, search gear, all that sort of thing. If the submarine is located, we’ll get somebody down to them on the chance there might be survivors. From what the CNO tells me it is just possible that there might be if the interior partitions — bulkheads, I think he called them — are intact. The other question is their air supply, he said. Time is very much against us, I’m afraid. All this fantastically expensive equipment we buy them, and they can’t locate one damned object right off our coast.”

Arbatov made a mental record of these words. It would make a worthwhile intelligence report. The president occasionally let—

“By the way, Mr. Ambassador, what exactly was your submarine doing there?”

“I have no idea, Dr. Pelt.”

“I trust it was not a missile sub,” Pelt said. “We have an agreement to keep those five hundred miles offshore. The wreck will of course be inspected by our rescue craft. Were we to learn that it is indeed a missile sub…”

“Your point is noted. Still, those are international waters.”

The president turned and spoke softly. “So is the Gulf of Finland, Alex, and, I believe, the Black Sea.” He let this observation hang in the air for a moment. “I sincerely hope that we are not heading back to that kind of situation. Are we talking about a missile submarine, Alex?”

“Truly, Mr. President, I have no idea. Certainly I should hope not.”

The president could see how carefully the lie was phrased. He wondered if the Russians would admit that there was a captain out there who had disregarded his orders. No, they would probably claim a navigation error.

“Very well. In any case, we will be conducting our own search and rescue operation. We’ll know soon enough what sort of vessel we’re talking about.” The president looked suddenly uneasy. “One more thing Foster talked about. If we find bodies — pardon the crudity on a Saturday afternoon — I expect that you will want them returned to your country.”

“I have had no instructions on this,” the ambassador answered truthfully, caught off guard.

“It was explained to me in too much detail what a death like this does to a man. In simple terms, they’re crushed by the water pressure, not a very pretty thing to see, they tell me. But they were men, and they deserve some dignity even in death.”

Arbatov conceded the point. “If this is possible, then, I believe that the Soviet people would appreciate this humanitarian gesture.”

“We’ll do our best.”

And the American best, Arbatov remembered, included a ship named the Glomar Explorer. This notorious exploration ship had been built by the CIA for the specific purpose of recovering a Soviet Golf-class missile submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. She had been placed in storage, no doubt to await the next such opportunity. There would be nothing the Soviet Union could do to prevent the operation, a few hundred miles off the American coast, three hundred miles from the United States’ largest naval base.

“I trust that the precepts of international law will be observed, gentlemen. That is, with respect to the vessel’s remains and the crew’s bodies.”

“Of course, Alex.” The president smiled, gesturing to a memorandum on his desk. Arbatov struggled for control. He’d been led down this path like a schoolboy, forgetting that the American president had been a skilled courtroom tactician — not something that life in the Soviet Union prepares a man for — and knew all about legal tricks. Why was this bastard so easy to underestimate?

The president was also struggling to control himself. It was not often that he saw Alex flustered. This was a clever opponent, not easily caught off balance. Laughing would spoil it.

The memorandum from the attorney general had arrived only that morning. It read:

“International law will be observed, Alex,” the president promised. “In all particulars.” And whatever we get, he thought, will be taken to the nearest port, Norfolk, where it will be turned over to the receiver of wrecks, an overworked federal official. If the Soviets want anything back, they can bring action in admiralty court, which means the federal district court sitting in Norfolk, where, if the suit were successful—after the value of the salvaged property was determined, and after the U.S. Navy was paid a proper fee for its salvage effort, also determined by the court — the wreck would be returned to its rightful owners. Of course, the federal district court in question had, at last check, an eleven-month backlog of cases.

Arbatov would cable Moscow on this. For what good it would do. He was certain the president would take perverse pleasure in manipulating the grotesque American legal system to his own advantage, all the time pointing out that, as president, he was constitutionally unable to interfere with the working of the courts.

Pelt looked at his watch. It was about time for the next surprise. He had to admire the president. For a man with only limited knowledge of international affairs only a few years earlier, he’d learned fast. This outwardly simple, quiet-talking man was at his best in face to face situations, and after a lifetime’s experience as a prosecutor, he still loved to play the game of negotiation and tactical exchange. He seemed able to manipulate people with frighteningly casual skill. The phone rang and Pelt got it, right on cue.

“This is Dr. Pelt speaking. Yes, Admiral — where? When? Just one? I see…Norfolk? Thank you, Admiral, that is very good news. I will inform the president immediately. Please keep us advised.” Pelt turned around. “We got one, alive, by God!”

“A survivor off the lost sub?” The president stood.

“Well, he’s a Russian sailor. A helicopter picked him up an hour ago, and they’re flying him to the Norfolk base hospital. They picked him up 290 miles northeast of Norfolk, so I guess that makes it fit. The men on the ship say he’s in pretty bad shape, but the hospital is ready for him.”

The president walked to his desk and lifted the phone. “Grace, ring me Dan Foster right now…Admiral, this is the president. The man they picked up, how soon to Norfolk? Another two hours?” He grimaced. “Admiral, you get on the phone to the naval hospital, and you tell them that I say they are to do everything they can for that man. I want him treated like he was my own son, is that clear? Good. I want hourly reports on his condition. I want the best people we have in on this, the very best. Thank you, Admiral.” He hung up. “All right!”

“Maybe we were too pessimistic, Alex,” Pelt chirped up.

“Certainly,” the president answered. “You have a doctor at the embassy, don’t you?”

“Yes, we do, Mr. President.”

“Take him down, too. He’ll be extended every courtesy. I’ll see to that. Jeff, are they searching for other survivors?”

“Yes, Mr. President. There’s a dozen aircraft in the area right now, and two more ships on the way.”

“Good!” The president clapped his hands together, enthusiastic as a kid in a toystore. “Now, if we can find some more survivors, maybe we can give your country a meaningful Christmas present, Alex. We will do everything we can, you have my word on that.”

“That is very kind of you, Mr. President. I will communicate this happy news to my country at once.”

“Not so fast, Alex.” The chief executive held his hand up. “I’d say this calls for a drink.”