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

by Tom Clancy

“Corporal, I want to see Admiral Painter.” “The admiral’s in flag quarters, sir. Do you require escort?” “No, son. I used to command this ship. Come along, Jack.” Ryan got to carry both bags. “Gawd, sir, you actually used to do this for a living?” Ryan asked. “Night carrier landings? Sure, I’ve done a couple of hundred. What’s the big deal?” Davenport seemed surprised at Ryan’s awe. Jack was sure it was an act.

“Hi ya, Charlie!” Rear Admiral Joshua Painter emerged from the next room, drying his hands with a towel. “How was it coming in?” “Little rocky,” Davenport allowed, shaking hands. “This is Jack Ryan.” Ryan had never met Painter but knew him by reputation. A Phantom pilot during the Vietnam War, he had written a book, Paddystrikes, on the conduct of the air campaigns. It had been a truthful book, not the sort of thing that wins friends. He was a small, feisty man who could not have weighed more than a hundred thirty pounds. He was also a gifted tactician and a man of puritanical integrity. “One of yours, Charlie?” “No, Admiral, I work for James Greer. I am not a naval officer. Please accept my apologies. I don’t like pretending to be what I’m not. The uniform was the CIA’s idea.” This drew a frown. “Oh? Well, I suppose that means you’re going to tell me what Ivan’s up to. Good, I hope to hell somebody knows. First time on a carrier? How did you like the flight in?” “It might be a good way to interrogate prisoners of war,” Ryan said as offhandedly as he could.

“Admiral, this information is only twenty hours old.” He took the briefing folders from his bag and handed them around. His delivery took twenty minutes, during which he managed to consume the two sandwiches and a goodly portion of his cole slaw and spill coffee on his handwritten notes. The two flag officers were a perfect audience, not interrupting once, only darting a few disbelieving looks at him. “God Almighty,” Painter said when Ryan finished. Davenport just stared poker-faced as he contemplated the possibility of examining a Soviet missile sub from the inside. Jack decided he’d be a formidable opponent over cards. Painter went on, “Do you really believe this?” “Yes, sir, I do.” Ryan poured himself another cup of coffee. He would have preferred a beer to go with his corned beef. It hadn’t been bad at all, and good kosher corned beef was something he’d been unable to find in London.

Painter rose and walked to the corner to look out at the stormy sea. “So, what are we supposed to do about all this?” “The exact details of the operation have not been determined. What I expect is that you will be directed to locate Red October and attempt to establish communications with her skipper. After that? We’ll have to figure a way to get her to a safe place. You see, the president doesn’t think we’ll be able to hold on to her once we get her—if we get her.”

“Admiral, I am on your side,” Ryan said quietly. “Sir, you said we’ve given you an impossible task. Why?” “Ryan, finding a boomer that does not want to be found is not the easiest thing in the world. We practice against our own. We damned near always fail, and you say this one’s already passed all the northeast SOSUS lines. The Atlantic’s a rather large ocean, and a missile sub’s noise footprint is very small.” “Yes, sir.” Ryan noted to himself that he might have been overly optimistic about their chances for success. “What sort of shape are you in, Josh?” Davenport asked. “Pretty good, really. The exercise we just ran, NIFTY DOLPHIN, worked out all right. Our part of it,” Painter corrected himself. “Dallas raised some hell on the other side. My ASW crews are functioning very well. What sort of help are we getting?” “When I left the Pentagon, the CNO was checking the availability of P-3s out on the Pacific, so you’ll probably be seeing more of those. Everything that’ll move is putting to sea. You’re the only carrier, so you’ve got overall tactical command, right? Come on, Josh, you’re our best ASW operator.”

“I can transfer my F-18s to shore, and that’ll give us room for twenty more Vikings. I don’t like losing the striking power, but what we’re going to need is more ASW muscle. That means more S-3s. Jack, you know that if you’re wrong, that Russkie surface force is going to be a handful to deal with. You know how many surface-to-surface missiles they’re packing?” “No, sir.” Ryan was certain it was too many. “We’re one carrier, and that makes us their primary target. If they start shooting at us, it’ll get awful lonesome—then it’ll get awful exciting.” The phone rang. “Painter here . . . Yes. Thank you. Well, Invincible just turned around. Good, they’re giving her to us along with two tin cans. The rest of the escorts and the three attack subs are still heading home.” He frowned. “I can’t really fault them for that. That means we have to give them some escorts, but it’s a good trade. I want that flight deck.”

“Okay, gentlemen, let’s get ourselves down to ASW control and try and figure a way to run this circus act. CINCLANT will want to hear what I have in mind. I suppose I’d better decide for myself. We’ll also call Invincible and have them send a bird back to ferry you out, Ryan.”

The USS Dallas

“Thanks, Skipper,” Jones said, more humbly than usual. “I know you’re kinda busy, but I think I got something here. That anomalous contact we had the other day’s been bothering me. I had to leave it after the ruckus the other Russkie subs kicked up, but I was able to come back to it three times to make sure it was still there. The fourth time it was gone, faded out. I want to show you what I worked up. Can you punch up our course track for back then on this baby, sir?” The chart table was interfaced through the BC-10 into the ship’s inertial navigation system, SINS. Mancuso punched the command in himself. It was getting so that they couldn’t flush the head without a computer command . . . The Dallas’ course track showed up as a convoluted red line, with tick marks displayed at fifteen-minute intervals. “Great!” Jones commented. “I’ve never seen it do that before. That’s all right. Okay.” Jones pulled a handful of pencils from his back pocket. “Now, I got the contact first at 0915 or so, and the bearing was about two-six-nine.” He set a pencil down, eraser at Dallas’ position, point directed west towards the target. “Then at 0930 it was bearing a two-six-zero. At 0948, it was two-five-zero. There’s some error built into these, Cap’n. It was a tough signal to lock in on, but the errors should average out. Right about then we got all this other activity, and I had to go after them, but I came back to it about 1000, and the bearing was two-four-two.” Jones set down another pen...

“Okay, sir, we gotta figure he couldn’t be too far away from us, right? I mean, he had to be between us and Iceland. So let’s say he was about halfway between. That gives him a course about like this.” Jones set down some more pencils. “Hold it, Jonesy. Where does the course come from?” “Oh, yeah.” Jones flipped open his clipboard. “Yesterday morning, night, whatever it was, after I got off watch, it started bothering me, so I used the move we made offshore as a baseline to do a little course track for him. I know how, Skipper. I read the manual. It’s easy, just like we used to do at Cal Tech to chart star motion. I took an astronomy course in my freshman year.”

“Skipper, I know it’s against the rules an’ all, but I keep this as a personal record of the tracks the bad guys use. It doesn’t leave the boat, sir, honest. I may be a little off, but all this translates to a course of about two-two-zero and a speed of ten knots. And that aims him right at the entrance of Route One. Okay?” “Go on.” Mancuso had already figured that one. Jonesy was on to something. “Well, I couldn’t sleep after that, so I skipped back to sonar and pulled the tape on the contact. I had to run it through the computer a few times to filter out all the crap—sea sounds, the other subs, you know—then I rerecorded it at ten times normal speed.” He set his cassette recorder on the chart table. “Listen to this, Skipper.” The tape was scratchy, but every few seconds there was a thrum. Two minutes of listening seemed to indicate a regular interval of about five seconds. By this time Lieutenant Mannion was looking over Thompson’s shoulder, listening, and nodding speculatively. “Skipper, that’s gotta be a man-made sound. It’s just too regular for anything else. At normal speed it didn’t make much sense, but once I speeded it up, I had the sucker.” “Okay, Jonesy, finish it,” Mancuso said. “Captain, what you just heard was the acoustical signature of a Russian submarine. He was heading for Route One, taking the inshore track off the Icelandic coast. You can bet money on that, Skipper.”

Ron”—he poked the sonarman in the shoulder—“that’s all right. Damned well done!” “Thanks, Skipper.” Jones’ smile stretched from ear to ear. “Pat, please call Lieutenant Butler to the attack center.” Mannion went to the phones to call the boat’s chief engineer. “Any idea what it is, Jonesy?” Mancuso turned back. The sonarman shook his head. “It isn’t screw sounds. I’ve never heard anything like it.” He ran the tape back and played it again. Two minutes later, Lieutenant Earl Butler came into the attack center. “You rang, Skipper?” “Listen to this, Earl.” Mancuso rewound the tape and played it a third time. Butler was a graduate of the University of Texas and every school the navy had for submarines and their engine systems. “What’s that supposed to be?” “Jonesy says it’s a Russian sub. I think he’s right.” “Tell me about the tape,” Butler said to Jones. “Sir, it’s speeded up ten times, and I washed it through the BC-10 five times. At normal speed it doesn’t sound like much of anything.” With uncharacteristic modesty, Jones did not point out that it had sounded like something to him. “Some sort of harmonic? I mean, if it was a propeller, it’d have to be a hundred feet across, and we’d be hearing one blade at a time. The regular interval suggests some sort of harmonic.” Butler’s face screwed up. “But a harmonic what?”

“Whatever it was, it was headed right here.” Mancuso tapped Thor’s Twins with his pencil. “That makes him a Russian, all right,” Butler agreed. “Then they’re using something new. Again.” “Mr. Butler’s right,” Jones said. “It does sound like a harmonic rumble. The other funny thing is, well, there was this background noise, kinda like water going through a pipe. I don’t know, it didn’t pick up on this. I guess the computer filtered it off. It was real faint to start with—anyway, that’s outside my field.” “That’s all right. You’ve done enough for one day. How do you feel?” Mancuso asked. “A little tired, Skipper. I’ve been working on this for a while.” “If we get close to this guy again, you think you can track him down?” Mancuso knew the answer. “You bet, Cap’n! Now that we know what to listen for, you bet I’ll bag the sucker!” Mancuso looked at the chart table. “Okay, if he was heading for the Twins, and then ran the route at, say twenty-eight or thirty knots, and then settled down to his base course and speed of about ten or so . . . that puts him about here now. Long ways off. Now, if we run at top speed . . . forty-eight hours will put us here, and that’ll put us in front of him. Pat?” “That’s about right, sir,” Lieutenant Mannion concurred. “You’re figuring he ran the route at full speed, then settled down—makes sense. He wouldn’t need the quiet drive in that damned maze. It gives him a free shot for four or five hundred miles, so why not uncrank his engines? That’s wh...

“Pat, get us up to periscope depth. We’re going to call this one into Norfolk right now. Earl, I want you thinking about what’s making that noise.” “Right, Captain.”

Atlantic Fleet Communications

The yeoman keyed up the proper addressee and transmitted the message by dedicated landline to COMSUBLANT Operations, half a mile away.

COMSUBLANT Operations

Z090414ZDEC TOP SECRET THEO FM: USS DALLAS TO: COMSUBLANT INFO: CINCLANTFLT

//NOOOOO//

REDFLEET SUBOPS 1. REPORT ANOMALOUS SONAR CONTACT ABOUT 0900Z 7DEC AND LOST AFTER INCREASE IN REDFLEET SUB ACTIVITY. CONTACT SUBSEQUENTLY EVALUATED AS REDFLEET SSN/SSBN TRANSITING ICELAND INSHORE TRACK TOWARDS ROUTE ONE. COURSE SOUTHWEST SPEED TEN DEPTH UNKNOWN. 2. CONTACT EVIDENCED UNUSUAL REPEAT UNUSUAL ACOUSTICAL CHARACTERISTICS. SIGNATURE UNLIKE ANY KNOWN REDFLEET SUBMARINE. 3. REQUEST PERMISSION TO LEAVE TOLL BOOTH TO PURSUE AND INVESTIGATE. BELIEVE A NE...

“A FLASH priority from Dallas, sir.” “Uh-huh.” Gallery took the yellow form and read it twice. “What do you suppose this means?” “No telling, sir. Looks like he heard something, took his time figuring it out, and wants another crack at it. He seems to think he’s onto something unusual.”

The Dallas

Z090432ZDEC TOP SECRET FM: COMSUBLANT TO: USS DALLAS A. USS DALLAS Z090414ZDEC B. COMSUBLANT INST 2000.5 OPAREA ASSIGNMENT //N04220//

1. REQUEST REF A GRANTED. 2. AREAS BRAVO ECHO GOLF REF B ASSIGNED FOR UNRESTRICTED OPS 090500Z TO 140001Z. REPORT AS NECESSARY. VADM GALLERY SENDS.

“Pat, let’s lower all masts and take her down to twelve hundred feet.” “Aye aye, sir. Lower the masts,” Mannion ordered. A petty officer pulled on the hydraulic control levers. “ESM and UHF masts lowered, sir,” the duty electrician reported. “Very well. Diving officer, make your depth twelve hundred feet.” “Twelve hundred feet, aye,” the diving officer responded. “Fifteen degrees down-angle on the planes.” “Fifteen degrees down, aye.” “Let’s move her, Pat.” “Aye, Skipper. All ahead full.” “All ahead full, aye.” The helmsman reached up to turn the annunciator.

The V. K. Konovalov

Two hundred miles northeast of the Dallas, in the Norwegian Sea, the Konovalov was racing southwest at forty-one knots. Captain Tupolev sat alone in the wardroom rereading the dispatch he’d received two days before. His emotions alternated between rage and grief. The Schoolmaster had done that! He was dumbfounded.

So, Marko had pulled a trick on everyone, not just the Konovalov. Tupolev had been slinking about the Barents Sea like a fool while Marko had been heading the other way. Laughing at everyone, Tupolev was sure.

I have to kill a friend, he thought. Friend? Yes, he admitted to himself, Marko had been a good friend and a fine teacher. Where had he gone wrong? Natalia Bogdanova. Yes, that had to be it. A big stink, the way that had happened. How many times had he had dinner with them, how many times had Natalia laughed about her fine, strong, big sons? He shook his head. A fine woman killed by a damned incompetent fool of a surgeon.

Tupolev bent over the chart he’d brought back. He’d be on his station in five days, in less time if the engine plant held together and Marko wasn’t in too much of a hurry—and he wouldn’t be. Marko was a fox, not a bull. The other Alfas would get there ahead of his, Tupolev knew, but it didn’t matter. He had to do this himself. He’d get ahead of Marko and wait. Marko would try to slink past, and the Konovalov would be there. And the Red October would die.

The North Atlantic

Parker was back in three minutes. “Commander,” he said, “there’s one thing they’ve never put in a fighter, and that’s a bloody toilet. They fill you up with coffee and tea and send you off, and you’ve no place to go.” “I know the feeling. Anything else you have to do?” “No, sir. Your admiral chatted with me on the radio when I was flying in. Looks like your chaps have finished fueling my bird. Shall we be off?” “What do I do with this?” Ryan held up his bag, expecting to have to hold it in his lap. His briefing papers were inside the flight suit, tucked against his chest. “We put it in the boot, of course. Come along, sir.”

“Ready, Commander?” “If you are.” The Harrier was not a large fighter, but it was certainly the loudest. Ryan could feel the engine noise ripple through his body as Parker adjusted his thrust-vector controls. The aircraft wobbled, dipped at the nose, then rose shakily into the air. Ryan saw a man by the island point and gesture to them. The Harrier slid to port, moving away from the island as it gained in height.

“You can get out here,” Parker said. “I have to taxi to the elevator.” A ladder was already in place. He unbuckled and got out. A crewman had already retrieved his bag. Ryan followed him to the island and was met by an ensign—a sublieutenant, the British call the rank. “Welcome aboard, sir.” The youngster couldn’t be more than twenty, Ryan thought. “Let me help you out of the flight suit.”

“Here’s the flag bridge, sir.” The sublieutenant held the door open. “Hello, Jack!” boomed the voice of Vice Admiral John White, eighth earl of Weston. He was a tall, well-built man of fifty with a florid complexion set off by a white scarf at his neck. Jack had first met him earlier in the year, and since then his wife, Cathy, and the countess, Antonia, had become close friends, members of the same circle of amateur musicians. Cathy Ryan played classical piano. Toni White, an attractive woman of forty-four, owned a Guarnieri del Jesu violin. Her husband was a man whose peerage was treated as the convenient afterthought. His career in the Royal Navy had been built entirely on merit. Jack walked over to take his hand. “Good day, Admiral.”

“I have a message for you.” White pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it over. “Greer to Ryan. WILLOW confirmed,” Ryan read. “Basil sends regards. Ends.” Somebody had confirmed WILLOW. Who? Maybe Sir Basil, maybe Ritter. Ryan would not quote odds on that one.

“So, what’s the flap?” “Admiral, the significance of the message you just gave me is that I can tell this to you and three other officers. This is very hot stuff, sir. You’ll want to make your choices accordingly.”

“Captain Carstairs, Captain Hunter, and Commander Barclay—they are, respectively, Invincible’s commanding officer, my fleet operations officer, and my fleet intelligence officer.”

He passed out his two remaining briefing folders and talked from memory. His delivery took fifteen minutes. “Gentlemen,” he concluded, “I must insist that this information be kept strictly confidential. For the moment no one outside this room may learn it.”

“Thank you, Admiral. For the moment our mission is to locate Red October. After that we’re not sure. I imagine just locating her will be hard enough.” “An astute observation, Commander Ryan,” Hunter said. “The good news is that Admiral Painter has requested that CINCLANT assign you control of several U.S. Navy vessels, probably three 1052-class frigates, and a pair of FFG Perrys. They all carry a chopper or two.” “Well, Geoffrey?” White asked. “It’s a start,” Hunter agreed. “They’ll be arriving in a day or two. Admiral Painter asked me to express his confidence in your group and its personnel.” “A whole fucking Russian missile submarine . . .” Barclay said almost to himself. Ryan laughed. “Like the idea, Commander?” At least he had one convert. “What if the sub is heading for the U.K.? Does it then become a British operation?” Barclay asked pointedly. “I suppose it would, but from the way I read the map, if Ramius was heading for England, he’d already be there. I saw a copy of the president’s letter to the prime minister. In return for your assistance, the Royal Navy gets the same access to the data we develop as our guys get. We’re on the same side, gentlemen. The question is, can we do it?” “Hunter?” the admiral asked. “If this intelligence is correct . . . I’d say we have a good chance, perhaps as good as fifty percent. On one hand, we have a missile submarine attempting to evade detection. On the other, we have a great deal of ASW arrayed to locate her, and she will be...

“Be happy for the E-3s.” The admiral smiled. “Hunter, I want to see plans for using all these ships the Yanks are giving us, and how we can cover a maximum area. Barclay, I want to see your evaluation of what our friend Ramius will do. Assume he’s still the clever bastard we’ve come to know and love.” “Aye aye, sir.” Barclay stood with the others. “Jack, how long will you be with us?” “I don’t know, Admiral. Until they recall me to the Kennedy, I guess. From where I sit, this operation was laid on too fast. Nobody really knows what the hell we’re supposed to do.”

The Red October

Every two days the starpom collected the radiation badges. This was part of a semiformal inspection. After seeing to it that every crewman’s shoes were spit-shined, every bunk was properly made, and every footlocker was arranged according to the book, the executive officer would take the two-day-old badges and hand the sailors new ones, usually along with some terse advice to square themselves away as New Soviet Men ought. Borodin had this procedure down to a science.

He took the badges to the ship’s medical officer. “Comrade Petrov, I have a gift for you.” Borodin set the leather bag on the physician’s desk.

“Nichevo!” Petrov breathed. He had to think. His badge was fogged. Its number was 3-4-8: third badge series, frame fifty-four (the medical office, galley section), aft (officers’) accommodations. Though only two centimeters across, the badges were made with variable sensitivity. Ten vertically segmented columns were used to quantify the exposure level. Petrov saw that his was fogged all the way to segment four. The engine room crewmen’s were fogged to segment five, and the torpedomen, who spent all their time forward, showed contamination only in segment one. “Son of a bitch.” He knew the sensitivity levels by heart. He took the manual down to check them anyway. Fortunately, the segments were logarithmic. His exposure was twelve rads. Fifteen to twenty-five for the engineers. Twelve to twenty-five rads in two days, not enough to be dangerous. Not really life threatening, but . . . Petrov went back into his office, careful to leave the films in the labs. He picked up the phone. “Captain Ramius? Petrov here. Could you come aft to my office, please?” “On the way, Comrade Doctor.” Ramius took his time. He knew what the call was about. The day before they sailed, while Petrov had been ashore procuring drugs for his cupboard, Borodin had contaminated the badges with the X-ray machine. “Yes, Petrov?” Ramius closed the door behind him. “Comrade Captain, we have a radiation leak.” “Nonsense. Our instruments would have detected it at once.” Petrov got the films from the lab and hand...

The Pentagon

Lieutenant General Edwin Harris was neither a diplomat nor a service academy graduate, but he was playing peacemaker. An odd position for a marine. “God damn it!” It was the voice of Admiral Blackburn, CINCLANT. Also present was his own operations officer, Rear Admiral Pete Stanford. “Is this any way to run an operation?” The Joint Chiefs were all there, and none of them thought so. “Look, Blackie, I told you where the orders come from.” General Hilton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sounded tired. “I understand that, General, but this is largely a submarine operation, right? I gotta get Vince Gallery in on this, and you should have Sam Dodge working up at this end. Dan and I are both fighter jocks, Pete’s an ASW expert. We need a sub driver in on this.”