The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan, #3)

by Tom Clancy

To the unschooled observer, the photographs showed the standard nuclear missile submarine. The steel hull was blunt at one end, tapered at the other. The workmen standing on the floor of the dock provided scale—she was huge. There were twin bronze propellers at the stern, on either side of a flat appendage which the Russians called a beaver tail, or so the intelligence reports said. With the twin screws the stern was unremarkable except in one detail. “What are these doors for?” Casimir asked. “Hmm. She’s a big bastard.” Davenport evidently hadn’t heard. “Forty feet longer than we expected, by the look of her.” “Forty-four, roughly.” Ryan didn’t much like Davenport, but the man did know his stuff. “Somers can calibrate that for us. And more beam, two meters more than the other Typhoons. She’s an obvious development of the Typhoon class, but—” “You’re right, Captain,” Davenport interrupted. “What are those doors?” “That’s why I came over.” Ryan had wondered how long this would take. He’d caught on to them in the first five seconds. “I don’t know, and neither do the Brits.” The Red October had two doors at the bow and stern, each about two meters in diameter, though they were not quite circular. They had been closed when the photos were shot and only showed up well on the number four pair.