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

by Tom Clancy

Already under suspicion, this finished him. He paid for his treason with his life.

When it became clear that the colonel could not be extracted from the Soviet Union, he himself urged CARDINAL to betray him. It was the final ironic joke of a brave man that his own death would advance the career of an agent whom he had recruited.

CARDINAL’s job was necessarily as secret as his name. A senior adviser and confidant of a Politburo member, CARDINAL often acted as his representative within the Soviet military establishment. He thus had access to political and military intelligence of the highest order.

The name CARDINAL was known in Washington only to the top three CIA executives.

For fear of cryptographic exposure of his identity, CARDINAL material was hand delivered, never transmitted by radio or landline. CARDINAL himself was a very careful man—Penkovskiy’s fate had taught him that. His information was conveyed through a series of intermediaries to the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station.

Four separate times he had been offered extraction from the Soviet Union. Each time he had refused.

“Jack, I know I don’t have to say this—but what you have just read, nobody, not the president, not Sir Basil, not God if He asks, nobody learns of it without the authorization of the director. Is that understood?” Greer had not lost his command voice.

Judge Moore hid a Harvard law degree and a highly ordered mind behind the facade of a West Texas cowboy, something he had never been but simulated with ease. “So, Dr. Ryan, what do you think of this?” Moore said as the deputy director of operations came in. “Hi, Bob, come on over here. We just showed Ryan here the WILLOW file.” “Oh?” Ritter slid a chair over, neatly trapping Ryan in the corner. “And what does the admiral’s fair-haired boy think of that?” “Gentlemen, I assume that you all regard this information as genuine,” Ryan said cautiously, getting nods. “Sir, if this information was hand delivered by the Archangel Michael, I’d have trouble believing it—but since you gentlemen say it’s reliable . . .” They wanted his opinion. The problem was, his conclusion was too incredible. Well, he decided, I’ve gotten this far by giving my honest opinions . . . Ryan took a deep breath and gave them his evaluation. “Very well, Dr. Ryan,” Judge Moore nodded sagaciously. “First I want to hear what else it might be, then I want you to defend your analysis.”

“I suppose there’s one more possibility, Judge,” he concluded. “This could be disinformation aimed at blowing this source. I cannot evaluate that possibility.”

“What do you think?” “Judge, setting up the decision tree on this will not be easy—there are too many variables, too many possible contingencies. But I’d say yes. If it’s possible, if we can work out the details, we ought to try. The biggest question is the availability of our own assets. Do we have the pieces in place?”

“You’re thinking we might want to borrow their ships, James?” Moore asked. “If so, we’ll have to tell them about this. But we have to tell our side first. There’s a meeting of the National Security Council at one this afternoon. Ryan, you will prepare the briefing papers and deliver the briefing yourself.” Ryan blinked. “That’s not much time, sir.” “James here says you work well under pressure. Prove it.” He looked at Greer. “Get a copy of his briefing papers and be ready to fly to London. That’s the president’s decision. If we want their boats, we’ll have to tell them why. That means briefing the prime minister, and that’s your job. Bob, I want you to confirm this report. Do what you have to do, but do not get WILLOW involved.” “Right,” Ritter replied.

Reykjanes Ridge

Ramius inspected his status board. The Red October was heading southwest on track eight, the westernmost surveyed route on what Northern Fleet submariners called Gorshkov’s Railroad. His speed was thirteen knots.

Installed in the Red October’s keel was a highly sensitive device called a gradiometer, essentially two large lead weights separated by a space of one hundred yards. A laser-computer system measured the space between the weights down to a fraction of an angstrom. Distortions of that distance or lateral movement of the weights indicated variations in the local gravitational field.

He felt no need for recklessness. Perhaps the letter had been a mistake . . . No, it prevented second thoughts. And the sensor suites on attack submarines simply were not good enough to detect the Red October so long as he maintained his silent routine. Ramius was certain of this; he had used them all. He would get where he wanted to go, do what he wanted to do, and nobody, not his own countrymen, not even the Americans, would be able to do a thing about it. That’s why earlier he had listened to the passage of an Alfa thirty miles to his east and smiled.

The White House

“Ever been in here before, Jack?” “No, sir, I haven’t.” Moore was amused.

The Situation Room was probably no larger than the Oval Office upstairs. There was expensive-looking wood paneling over what were probably concrete walls. This part of the White House dated back to the complete rebuilding job done under Truman. Ryan’s lectern was to his left as he went in. It stood in front and slightly to the right of a roughly diamond-shaped table, and behind it was the projection screen. A note on the lectern said the slide projector in the middle of the table was already loaded and focused, and gave the order of the slides, which had been delivered from the National Reconnaissance Office.

The president arrived a minute later. Everyone in the room stood as he walked to his chair, on Ryan’s right. He said a few quick things to Dr. Pelt, then looked pointedly at the DCI.

“Thank you, Mr. President. Gentlemen, we’ve had an interesting development today with respect to the Soviet naval operation that started yesterday. I have asked Dr. Ryan here to deliver the briefing.” The president turned to Ryan. The younger man could feel himself being appraised. “You may proceed.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. Gentlemen, my name is Jack Ryan, and the subject of this briefing is recent Soviet naval activity in the North Atlantic. Before I get to that it will be necessary for me to lay a little groundwork. I trust you will bear with me for a few minutes, and please feel free to interrupt with questions at any time.” Ryan clicked on the slide projector. The overhead lights near the screen dimmed automatically.

“These photographs come to us courtesy of the British,” Ryan said. He now had everyone’s attention. “The ship you see here is the Soviet fleet ballistic missile submarine Red October, photographed by a British agent in her dock at their submarine base at Polyarnyy, near Murmansk in northern Russia. As you can see, she is a very large vessel, about 650 feet long, a beam of roughly 85 feet, and an estimated submerged displacement of 32,000 tons. These figures are roughly comparable to those of a World War I battleship.”

“In addition to being considerably larger than our own Ohio-class Trident submarines, Red October has a number of technical differences. She carries twenty-six missiles instead of our twenty-four. The earlier Typhoon-class vessels, from which she was developed, only have twenty. October carries the new SS-N-20 sea-launched ballistic missile, the Seahawk. It’s a solid-fuel missile with a range of about six thousand nautical miles, and it carries eight multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, MIRVs, each with an estimated yield of five hundred kilotons. It’s the same RV carried by their SS-18s, but there are less of them per launcher. “As you can see, the missile tubes are located forward of the sail instead of aft, as in our subs. The forward diving planes fold into slots ...

“These frames were delivered to us undeveloped. They were processed by the National Reconnaissance Office. Please note the doors here at the bow and here at the stern. The British were a little puzzled by these, and that’s why I was permitted to bring the shots over earlier this week. We weren’t able to figure out this function at the CIA either, and it was decided to seek the opinion of an outside consultant.”

“His name is Oliver W. Tyler. Dr. Tyler is a former naval officer who is now associate professor of engineering at the Naval Academy and a paid consultant to Sea Systems Command. He’s an expert in the analysis of Soviet naval technology. Skip—Dr. Tyler—concluded that these doors are the intake and exhaust vents for a new silent propulsion system. He is currently developing a computer model of the system, and we hope to have this information by the end of the week. The system itself is rather interesting.” Ryan explained Tyler’s analysis briefly.

“Red October’s captain is a man named Marko Ramius. That is a Lithuanian name, although we believe his internal passport designates his nationality as Great Russian. He is the son of a high Party official, and as good a submarine commander as they have. He’s taken out the lead ship of every Soviet submarine class for the past ten years. “Red October sailed last Friday. We do not know exactly what her orders were, but ordinarily their missile subs—that is, those with the newer long-range missiles—confine their activities to the Barents Sea and adjacent areas in which they can be protected from our attack boats by land-based ASW aircraft, their own surface ships, and attack submarines. About noon local time on Sunday, we noted increased search activity in the Barents Sea. At the time we took this to be a local ASW exercise, and by late Monday it looked to be a test of October’s new drive system. “As you all know, early yesterday saw a vast increase in Soviet naval activity. Nearly all of the blue-water ships assigned to their Northern Fleet are now at sea, accompanied by all of their fast fleet-replenishment vessels. Additional fleet auxiliaries sailed from the Baltic Fleet bases and the western Mediterranean. Even more disquieting is the fact that nearly every nuclear submarine assigned to the Northern Fleet—their largest—appears to be heading into the North Atlantic. This includes three from the Med, since submarines there come from the Northern Fleet, not the Black Sea Fl...

“The day Red October sailed, Captain Ramius evidently posted a letter to Admiral Yuri Ilych Padorin. Padorin is chief of the Main Political Administration of their navy. We do not know what that letter said, but here we can see its results. This began to happen not four hours after that letter was opened. Fifty-eight nuclear-powered submarines and twenty-eight major surface combatants all headed our way. This is a remarkable reaction in four hours. This morning we learned what their orders are. “Gentlemen, these ships have been ordered to locate Red October, and if necessary, to sink her.”

“As you can see, the Soviet surface force is here, about halfway between the European mainland and Iceland. Their submarines, these in particular, are all heading southwest towards the U.S. coast. Please note, there is no unusual activity on the Pacific side of either country—except we have information that Soviet fleet ballistic missile submarines in both oceans are being recalled to port. “Therefore, while we do not know exactly what Captain Ramius said, we can draw some conclusions from these patterns of activity. It would appear that they think he’s heading in our direction. Given his estimated speed as something between ten and thirty knots, he could be anywhere from here, below Iceland, to here, just off our coast. You will note that in either case he has successfully avoided detection by all four of these SOSUS barriers—” “Wait a minute. You say they have issued orders to their ships to sink one of their submarines?” “Yes, Mr. President.” The president looked at the DCI. “This is reliable information, Judge?” “Yes, Mr. President, we believe it to be solid.” “Okay, Dr. Ryan, we’re all waiting. What’s this Ramius fellow up to?”

“Mr. President, our evaluation of this intelligence data is that Red October is attempting to d...

“That’s a very interesting conclusion, Doctor.” The president smiled. “Defend it.” “Mr. President, no other conclusion fits the data. The really crucial thing, of course, is the recall of their other missile boats. They’ve never done that before. Add to that the fact that they have issued orders to sink their newest and most powerful missile sub, and that they are chasing in this direction, and one is left with the conclusion that they think she has left the reservation and is heading this way.” “Very well. What else could it be?” “Sir, he could have told them that he’s going to fire his missiles. At us, at them, the Chinese, or just about anyone else.” “And you don’t think so?”

“No, Mr. President. The SS-N-20 has a range of six thousand miles. That means he could have hit any target in the Northern Hemisphere from the moment he left the dock. He’s had six days to do that, but he has not fired. Moreover, if he had threatened to launch his birds, he would have to consider the possibility that the Soviets would enlist our assistance to locate and sink him. After all, if our surveillance systems detect the launch of nuclear-armed missiles in any direction, things could get very tense, very quickly.”

“So, gentlemen, we have a Soviet missile submarine at sea when all the others, in both oceans, are being recalled. We have their fleet at sea with orders to sink that sub, and evidently they are chasing it in our direction. As I said, this is the only conclusion that fits the data.”

“How many men on the sub, Doctor?” the president asked. “We believe 110 or so, sir.” “So, 110 men all decide to defect to the United States at one time. Not an altogether bad idea,” the president observed wryly, “but hardly a likely one.” Ryan was ready for that. “There is precedent for this, sir. On November 8, 1975, the Storozhevoy, a Soviet Krivak-class missile frigate, attempted to run from Riga, Latvia, to the Swedish island of Gotland. The political officer aboard, Valery Sablin, led a mutiny of the enlisted personnel. They locked their officers in their cabins and raced away from the dock. They came close to making it. Air and fleet units attacked them and forced them to halt within fifty miles of Swedish territorial waters. Two more hours and they would have made it. Sablin and twenty-six others were court-martialed and shot. More recently we have had reports of mutinous episodes on several Soviet vessels—especially submarines. In 1980 an Echo-class Soviet attack submarine surfaced off Japan. The captain claimed to have had a fire aboard, but photographs taken by naval reconnaissance aircraft—ours and Japanese—did not show smoke or fire-damaged debris being jettisoned from the submarine. However, the crewmen on deck did show sufficient evidence of trauma to support the conclusion that a riot had taken place aboard. We have had similar, sketchier reports for some years now. While I admit this is an extreme example, our conclusion is decidedly not without precedent.”

“These guys are on a submarine. You can’t see a whole lot. Now, what if the officers—not even all the officers—are doing this? How will the crew know what’s going on?” Foster shook his head. “They won’t. They can’t. Even our guys might not, and our men are trained a lot better than theirs. Their seamen are nearly all conscripts, remember. On a nuclear submarine you are absolutely cut off from the outside world. No radios except for ELF and VLF—and that’s all encrypted; messages have to come through the communications officer. So, he has to be in on it. Same thing with the boat’s navigator. They use inertial navigation systems, same as us. We have one of theirs, from that Golf we lifted off Hawaii. In their machine the data is also encrypted. The quartermaster reads the numbers off the machine, and the navigator gets their position from a book. In the Red Army, on land, maps are classified documents. Same thing in their navy. The enlisted men don’t get to see charts and are not encouraged to know where they are. This would be especially true on missile submarines, right? “On top of all that, these guys are working sailors, nucs. When you’re at sea, you have a job to do, and you do it. On their ships, that means from fourteen to eighteen hours a day. These kids are all draftees with very simple training. They’re taught to perform one or two tasks—and to follow their orders exactly. The Soviets train people to do their jobs by rote, with as little thinking as possible. That’s...

The president took all this in, then turned to Ryan. “Dr. Ryan, you have managed to persuade me that your scenario is a theoretical possibility. Now, what does the CIA think we ought to do about it?” “Mr. President, I’m an intelligence analyst, not—” “I know very well what you are, Dr. Ryan. I’ve read enough of your work. I can see you have an opinion. I want to hear it.” Ryan didn’t even look at Judge Moore. “We grab her, sir.” “Just like that?” “No, Mr. President, probably not. However, Ramius could surface off the Virginia Capes in a day or two and request political asylum. We ought to be prepared for that contingency, sir, and my opinion is that we should welcome him with open arms.”

“Sir, you asked me for an opinion. It will probably not be that easy. These Alfas and Victors appear to be racing for our coast, almost certainly with the intention of establishing an interdiction force—effectively a blockade of our Atlantic coast.” “Blockade,” the president said, “an ugly word.” “Judge,” General Hilton said, “I suppose it’s occurred to you that this is a piece of disinformation aimed at blowing whatever highly placed source generated this report?” Judge Moore affected a sleepy smile. “It has, Gener’l. If this is a sham, it’s a damned elaborate one. Dr. Ryan was directed to prepare this briefing on the assumption that this data is genuine. If it is not, the responsibility is mine.”

The judge went on, “In any case, gentlemen, we will have to respond to this Soviet activity whether our analysis is accurate or not.”

The president was sitting straight, and Ryan noted his voice become crisper. “The judge is correct. We have to react to this, whatever they’re really up to. Gentlemen, the Soviet Navy is heading for our coast. What are we doing about it?” Admiral Foster answered first. “Mr. President, our fleet is pulling to sea at this moment. Everything that’ll steam is out already, or will be by tomorrow night. We’ve recalled our carriers from the South Atlantic, and we are redeploying our nuclear submarines to deal with this threat. We began this morning to saturate the air over their surface force with P-3C Orion patrol aircraft, assisted by British Nimrods operating out of Scotland. General?” Foster turned to Hilton. “At this moment we have E-3A Sentry AWACS-type aircraft circling them along with Dan’s Orions, both accompanied by F-15 Eagle fighters out of Iceland. By this time Friday we’ll have a squadron of B-52s operating from Loring Air Base in Maine. These will be armed with Harpoon air-to-surface missiles, and they’ll be orbiting the Soviets in relays. Nothing aggressive, you understand.” Hilton smiled. “Just to let them know we’re interested. If they continue to come this way, we will redeploy some tactical air assets to the East Coast, and, subject to your approval, we can activate some national guard and reserve squadrons quietly.”

“How many carriers do we have handy?” the president asked. “Only one at the moment, sir, Kennedy. Saratoga stripped a main turbine last week, and it’ll take a month to replace. Nimitz and America are both in the South Atlantic right now, America coming back from the Indian Ocean, Nimitz heading out to the Pacific. Bad luck. Can we recall a carrier from the eastern Med?” “No.” The president shook his head. “This Cyprus thing is still too sensitive. Do we really need to? If anything . . . untoward happens, can we handle their surface force with what we have at hand?” “Yes, sir!” General Hilton said at once. “Dr. Ryan said it: the Atlantic is our ocean. The air force alone will have over five hundred aircraft designated for this operation, and another three or four hundred from the navy. If any sort of shooting match develops, that Soviet fleet will have an exciting and short life.”

“We can’t exactly steal a Russian missile sub.” “Why not!” Foster demanded. “Hell, we have enough of their tanks and aircraft.” The other chiefs agreed. “An aircraft with a crew of one or two is one thing, Admiral. A nuclear-powered submarine with twenty-six rockets and a crew of over a hundred is something else. Naturally, we can give asylum to the defecting officers.”

He turned to the chiefs. “Gentlemen, I want to see contingency plans for dealing with this situation by tomorrow afternoon. We will meet here tomorrow at two. One more thing: no leaks! This information does not go beyond this room without my personal approval. If this story breaks to the press, I’ll have heads on my desk. Yes, General?” “Mr. President, in order to develop those plans,” Hilton said after sitting back down, “we have to work through our field commanders and some of our own operations people. Certainly we’ll need Admiral Blackburn.” Blackburn was CINCLANT, commander in chief of the Atlantic.

“That was all right.” General Maxwell grabbed his hand. He waited until everyone else was a few yards down the hall before going on. “I think you’re crazy, son, but you sure put a burr under Dan Foster’s saddle. No, even better: I think he got a hard-on.” The little general chuckled. “And if we get the sub, maybe we can change the president’s mind and arrange for the crew to disappear. The judge did that once, you know.” It was a thought that chilled Ryan as he watched Maxwell swagger down the hall.

“The judge tells me you know the commander of that British task force.” It was like a sandbag hitting his head. “Yes, sir. Admiral White. I’ve hunted with him, and our wives are good friends. They’re close to the Royal Family.” “Good. Somebody has to fly out to brief our fleet commander, then go on to talk to the Brits, if we get their carrier, as I expect we will. The judge says we ought to let Admiral Davenport go out with you. So, you fly out to Kennedy tonight, then on to Invincible.”

“I like your work. You have a good feel for things, for facts. Good judgment. Now, one reason I got to where I am is good judgment, too, and I think you can handle what I have in mind. The question is, will you do it, or won’t you?” “Do what, exactly, sir?” “After you get out there, you stay put for a few days, and report directly to me. Not through channels, directly to me. You’ll get the cooperation you need. I’ll see to that.” Ryan didn’t say anything. He’d just become a spy, a field officer, by presidential fiat. Worse, he’d be spying on his own side.

CIA Headquarters

Moore lifted his phone again and tapped in five numbers. “I need two words . . . Uh-huh, thank you.” He wrote a few things down. “Okay, gentlemen, you’re calling this Operation MANDOLIN. You, Ryan, are Magi. Ought to be easy to remember, given the time of year. We’ll work up a series of code words based on those while you’re being fitted. Bob, take him down there yourself. I’ll call Davenport and have him arrange the flight.”

And the choice of his code name struck Ryan as singularly inappropriate. He wasn’t anyone’s wise man. The name should have been something more like “Halloween.”

THE SEVENTH DAY

THURSDAY, 9 DECEMBER

The North A...