Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October (53 page)

Jones had taken an hour—when he was supposed to be sleeping—to explore the submarine. Mr. Mannion had joined him. They started in the bunkroom. The individual footlockers didn't lock—probably so that officers could rifle through them. Jones and Mannion did just that. There was nothing of interest. Even the sailor porn was junk. The poses were just plain dumb, and the women—well, Jones had grown up in
California
. Garbage. It was not at all hard for him to understand why the Russians wanted to defect.

The missile had been interesting. He and Mannion opened an inspection hatch to examine the inside of the missile. Not too shabby, they thought. There was a little too much loose wiring, but that probably made testing easier. The missile seemed awfully big. So, he thought, that's what the bastards have been aiming at us. He wondered if the navy would hold onto a few. If it was ever necessary to flip some at old Ivan, might as well include a couple of his own. Dumb idea, Jonesy, he said to himself. He didn't ever want those goddamned things to fly. One thing was for sure: everything on this bucket would be stripped off, tested, taken apart, tested again—and he was the navy's number one expert on Russian sonar. Maybe he'd be present during the analysis . . .  It might be worth staying in the navy a few extra months for.

Jones lit a cigarette. “Want one of mine, Mr. Bugayev?” He held his pack out to the electronics officer.

“Thank you, Jones. You were in university?” The lieutenant took the American cigarette that he'd wanted but been too proud to ask for. It was dawning on him slowly that this enlisted man was his technical equal. Though not a qualified watch officer, Jones could operate and maintain sonar gear as well as anyone he'd known.

“Yes, sir.” It never hurt to call officers sir, Jones knew. Especially the dumb ones. “California Institute of Technology. Five semesters completed. A average. I didn't finish.”

“Why did you leave?”

Jones smiled. “Well, sir, you gotta understand that Cal Tech is, well, kinda a funny place. I played a little trick on one of my professors. He was working with strobe lights for highspeed photography, and I rigged a little switch to work the room lights off the strobe. Unfortunately there was a short in the switch, and it started this little electrical fire.” Which had burned out a lab, destroying three months of data and fifteen thousand dollars of equipment. “That broke the rules.”

“What did you study?”

“I was headin' for a degree in electrical engineering, with a strong minor in cybernetics. Three semesters to go. I'll get it, then my masters, then my doctorate, and then I'll go back to work for the navy as a civilian.”

“Why are you a sonar operator?” Bugayev sat down. He had never spoken like this with an enlisted man.

“Hell, sir, it's fun! When something's going on—you know, a war game, tracking another sub, like that—I am the skipper. All the captain does is react to the data I give him.”

“And you like your commander?”

“Sure thing! He's the best I've had—I've had three. My skipper's a good guy. You do your job okay, and he doesn't hassle you. You got something to say to him, and he listens.”

“You say you will go back to college. How do you pay for it? They tell us that only the ruling class sons go to university.”

“That's crap, sir. In
California
if you're smart enough to go, you go. In my case, I've been saving my money—you don't spend much on a sub, right?—and the navy pitches in, too. I got enough to see me all the way through my masters. What's your degree in?”

“I attended a higher naval school. Like your
Annapolis
. I would like to get a proper degree in electronics,” Bugayev said, voicing his own dream.

“No sweat. I can help you out. If you're good enough for Cal Tech, I can tell you who to talk to. You'd like
California
. That is the place to live.”

“And I wish to work on a real computer,” Bugayev went on, wishful.

Jones laughed quietly. “So, buy yourself one.”

“Buy a computer?”

“Sure, we got a couple of little ones, Apples, on
Dallas
. Cost you about, oh, two thousand for a nice system. That's a lot less than what a car goes for.”

“A computer for two thousand dollars?” Bugayev went from wishful to suspicious, certain that Jones was leading him on.

“Or less. For three grand you can get a really nice rig. Hell, you tell Apple who you are, and they'll probably give it to you for free, or the navy will. If you don't want an Apple, there's the Commodore, TRS-80, Atari. All kinds. Depends on what you want to use it for. Look, just one company, Apple, has sold over a million of 'em. They're little, sure, but they're real computers.”

“I have never heard of this—Apple?”

“Yeah, Apple. Two guys started the company back when I was in junior high. Since then they've sold a million or so, like I said—and they are some kinda rich! I don't have one myself—no room on a sub—but my brother has his own computer, an IBM-PC. You still don't believe me, do you?”

“A working man with his own computer? It is hard to believe.” He stabbed out the cigarette. American tobacco was a little bland, he thought.

“Well, sir, then you can ask somebody else. Like I said,
Dallas
has a couple of Apples, just for the crew to use. There's other stuff for fire control, navigation, and sonar, of course. We use the Apples for games—you'll love computer games, for sure. You've never had fun till you've tried Choplifter—and other things, education programs, stuff like that. Honest, Mr. Bugayev, you can walk into most any shopping center and find a place to buy a computer. You'll see.”

“How do you use a computer with your sonar?”

“That would take a while to explain, sir, and I'd probably have to get permission from the skipper.” Jones reminded himself that this guy was still the enemy, sort of.

The
V. K. Konovalov

The Alfa drifted slowly at the edge of the continental shelf, about fifty miles southeast of
Norfolk
. Tupolev ordered the reactor plant chopped back to about five percent of total output, enough to operate the electrical systems and little else. It also made his submarine almost totally quiet. Orders were passed by word of mouth. The Konovalov was on a strict silent ship routine. Even ordinary cooking was forbidden. Cooking meant moving metal pots on metal grates. Until further notice, the crew was on a diet of cheese sandwiches. They spoke in whispers when they spoke at all. Anyone who made noise would attract the attention of the captain, and everyone aboard knew what that meant.

SOSUS Control

Quentin was reviewing data sent by digital link from the two Orions. A crippled missile boat, the USS Georgia, was heading into
Norfolk
after a partial turbine failure, escorted by a pair of attack boats. They had been keeping her out, the admiral had said, because of all the Russian activity on the coast, and the idea now was to get her in, fixed, and out as quickly as possible. The
Georgia
carried twenty-four Trident missiles, a noteworthy fraction of the country's total deterrent force. Repairing her would be a high priority item now that the Russians were gone. It was safe to bring her in, but they wanted the Orions first to check and see if any Soviet submarines had lingered behind in the general confusion.

A P-3B was cruising at nine hundred feet about fifty miles southeast of
Norfolk
. The FLIR showed nothing, no heat signature on the surface, and the MAD gear detected no measurable disturbance in the earth's magnetic field, though one aircraft's flight path took her within a hundred yards of the Alfa's position. The Konovalov's hull was made of non-magnetic titanium. A sonobuoy dropped seven miles to the south of her position also failed to pick up the sound of her reactor plant. Data was being transmitted continuously to
Norfolk
, where Quentin's operations staff entered it into his computer. The problem was, not all of the Soviet subs had been accounted for.

 Well, the commander thought, that figures. Some of the boats had taken the opportunity to creep away from their charted loci. There was the odd chance, he had reported, that one or two strays were still out there, but there was no evidence of this. He wondered what CINCLANT had working. Certainly he had seemed awfully pleased with something, almost euphoric. The operation against the Soviet fleet had been handled pretty well, what he'd seen of it, and there was that dead Alfa out there. How long until the Glomar
Explorer came out of mothballs to go and get that? He wondered if he'd get a chance to look the wreck over. What an opportunity!

Nobody was taking the current operation all that seriously. It made sense. If the
Georgia
were indeed coming in with a sick engine she'd be coming slow, and a slow
Ohio
made about as much noise as a virgin whale, determined to retain her status. And if CINCLANTFLT were all that concerned about it, he would not have detailed the delousing operation to a pair of P-3s piloted by reservists. Quentin lifted the phone and dialed CINCLANTFLT Operations to tell them again that there was no indication of hostile activity.

The
Red October

Ryan checked his watch. It had been five hours already. A long time to sit in one chair, and from a quick glance at the chart it appeared that the eight-hour estimate had been optimistic—or he'd misunderstood them. The Red October was tracing up the shelf line and would soon begin to angle west for the
Virginia
Capes
. Maybe it would take another four hours. It couldn't be too soon. Ramius and Mancuso looked pretty tired. Everybody was tired. Probably the engine room people most of all—no, the cook. He was ferrying coffee and sandwiches to everyone. The Russians seemed especially hungry.

The
Dallas
/The Pogy

The
Dallas
passed the Pogy at thirty-two knots, leapfrogging again, with the October a few miles aft. Lieutenant Commander Wally Chambers, who had the conn, did not like being blind on the speed run of thirty-five minutes despite word from the Pogy that everything was clear.

 The Pogy noted her passage and turned to allow her lateral array to track on the Red October.

“Noisy enough at twenty knots,” the Pogy's sonar chief said to his companions. “
Dallas
doesn't make that much at thirty.”

The
V. K. Konovalov

“Some noise to the south,” the michman said.

“What, exactly?” Tupolev had been hovering at the door for hours, making life unpleasant for the sonarmen.

“Too soon to say, Comrade Captain. Bearing is not changing, however. It is heading this way.”

Tupolev went back to the control room. He ordered power reduced further in the reactor systems. He considered killing the plant entirely, but reactors took time to start up and there was no telling yet how distant the contact might be. The captain smoked three cigarettes before going back to sonar. It would not do at all to make the michman nervous. The man was his best operator.

“One propeller, Comrade Captain, an American, probably a
Los Angeles
, doing thirty-five knots. Bearing has changed only two degrees in fifteen minutes. He will pass close aboard, and—wait . . .  His engines have stopped.” The forty-year-old warrant officer pressed the headphones against his ears. He could hear the cavitation sounds diminish, then stop entirely as the contact faded away to nothing. “He has stopped to listen, Comrade Captain.”

Tupolev smiled. “He will not hear us, Comrade. Racing and stopping. Can you hear anything else? Might he be escorting something?”

The michman listened to the headphones again and made some adjustments on his panel. “Perhaps . . .  there is a good deal of surface noise, Comrade, and I—wait. There seems to be some noise. Our last target bearing was one-seven-one, and this new noise is  . . .  one-seven-five. Very faint, Comrade Captain—a ping, a single ping on active sonar.”

“So.” Tupolev leaned against the bulkhead. “Good work, Comrade. Now we must be patient.”

The
Dallas

Chief Laval pronounced the area clear. The BQQ-5's sensitive receptors revealed nothing, even after the SAPS system had been used. Chambers maneuvered the bow around so that the single ping would go out to the Pogy, which in turn fired off her own ping to the Red October to make sure the signal was received. It was clear for another ten miles. The Pogy moved out at thirty knots, followed by the U.S. Navy's newest boomer.

The
V. K. Konovalov

“Two more submarines. One single screw, the other twin screw, I think. Still faint. The single-screw submarine is turning much more rapidly. Do the Americans have twin-screw submarines, Comrade Captain?”

“Yes, I believe so.” Tupolev wondered about this. The difference in signature characteristics was not all that pronounced. They'd see in any case. The Konovalov was creeping along at two knots, one hundred fifty meters beneath the surface. Whatever was coming seemed to be coming right for them. Well, he'd teach the imperialists something after all.

The
Red October

“Can anybody spell me at the wheel?” Ryan asked.

“Need a stretch?” Mancuso asked, coming over.

“Yeah. I could stand a trip to the head, too. The coffee's about to bust my kidneys.”

“I relieve you, sir.” The American captain moved into Ryan's seat. Jack headed aft to the nearest head. Two minutes later he was feeling much better. Back in the control room, he did some knee bends to get circulation back in his legs, then looked briefly at the chart. It seemed strange, almost sinister, to see the
U.S.
coast marked in Russian.

“Thank you, Commander.”

“Sure.” Mancuso stood.

“It is certain that you are no sailor, Ryan.” Ramius had been watching him without a word.

“I have never claimed to be one, Captain,” Ryan said agreeably. “How long to
Norfolk
?”

“Oh, another four hours, tops,” Mancuso said. “The idea's to arrive after dark. They have something to get us in unseen, but I don't know what.”