Jack Ryan 7 - The Sum of All Fears (43 page)

“H
OTLINE
message. There has just been a ground-force attack on a Strategic Rocket Regiment . . . SS-18 base in Central Asia.”

“Launch all the ready bombers right now! Jack, tell the President that I just gave the order.”

“Comm-link failure,” the wall speaker said. “Radio contact with Air Force One has been interrupted.”

“Tell me more!” Jack demanded.

“That's all we have, sir.”

“Where's the Vice President now?” Ryan asked.

“He's aboard Kneecap Alternate, six hundred miles south of Bermuda. Kneecap Prime is four hundred miles ahead of Air Force One, preparing to land in Alaska for the transfer.”

“Close enough to Russia that an intercept is possible . . . but not likely . . . have to be a one-way mission,” Bunker thought aloud. “Unless they strayed over a Soviet warship with SAMs . . . Vice President is temporarily in charge.”

“Sir, I—”

“That's my call to make, Jack. The President is either out of the loop or has had his comm links compromised. SecDef says that the Vice President is in charge until the comm links are reestablished and validated by codeword authentication. Forces are now at D
EF
C
ON
-O
NE
on my authority."

One thing about Dennis Bunker, Ryan thought, the man never stopped being a fighter jock. He makes decisions and sticks to them. He was usually right, too, as he was here.

Ryan's file was a thick one. Almost five inches, Goodley saw in the privacy of his seventh-floor cubbyhole. Half an inch of that was background and security-clearance forms. The academic record was fairly impressive, especially his doctoral work in history at Georgetown University. Georgetown wasn't Harvard, of course, but it was a fairly respectable institution, Goodley told himself. His first Agency job had been as part of Admiral James Greer's Junior Varsity program, and his first report, “Agents and Agencies,” had dealt with terrorism. Odd coincidence, Goodley thought, given what had happened later.

The documents on Ryan's encounter in London occupied thirty double-space pages, mainly police-report summaries and a few news photos. Goodley started making notes. Cowboy, he wrote first of all. Running into things like that. The academic shook his head. Twenty minutes later, he read over the executive summary of Ryan's second CIA report, the one which confidently predicted that the terrorists would probably never operate in America—delivered days before the attack on his family.

Guessed wrong there, didn't you, Ryan?
Goodley chuckled to himself. As bright as they said he was, he made mistakes like everyone else . . .

He'd made a few while working in England, too. He hadn't predicted Chernenko’s succession of Andropov, though he had predicted Narmonov was the coming man well in advance of nearly everyone, except Kantrowitz up at Princeton, who'd been the first to see star quality in Andrey Il’ych. Goodley reminded himself that he'd been an undergraduate then, bedding that girl at Wellesley, Debra Frost . . . wonder what ever happened to her . . . ?

“Son of a bitch . . .” Ben whispered a few minutes later. “Son of a bitch.”

Red October
, a Soviet ballistic missile submarine . . . defected. Ryan was one of the first to suspect it. . . . Ryan, an analyst at London Station had . . . run the operation at sea! Killed a Russian sailor. That was the cowboy part again. Couldn't just arrest the guy, had to shoot him down like something in a movie . . .

Goddamn! A Russian ballistic-missile
defected . . . and they kept it quiet . . . oh, the boat was later sunk in deep water.

Back to London after that for a few more months before rotating home to be Greer's special assistant and heir-apparent. Some interesting work with the arms-control people . . .

That can't be right. The KGB Chairman was killed in a plane crash . . .

Goodley was taking furious notes now. Liz Elliot could not have known any of this, could she?

You're not looking for good stuff about Ryan
, the White House Fellow reminded himself. Elliot had never really said that, of course, but she had made herself clear in a way that he'd understood . . . or thought he'd understood, Goodley corrected himself. He suddenly realized just how dangerous a game this might be.

Ryan kills people.
He'd shot and killed at least three. You didn't get that from talking to the man. Life wasn't a Western. People didn't carry revolvers with notches cut in the handles. Goodley didn't feel a chill over his skin, but he did remind himself that Ryan was someone to be regarded warily. He'd never before met someone who had killed other men, and was not foolish enough to regard such people as heroic or somehow more than other men, but it was something to keep in mind, wasn't it?

There were blank spots around the time of James Greer's death, he noted . . . wasn't that the time when all that stuff was happening down in Colombia? He made some notes. Ryan had been acting DDI then, but just after Fowler took over, Judge Arthur Moore and Robert Ritter had retired to make way for the new presidential administration, and Ryan had been confirmed by the Senate as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. So much for his work record. Goodley closed that portion and opened up the personal and financial side . . .

“Bad call . . .” Ryan said. Twenty minutes too late.

“I think you're right.”

“Too late. What did we do wrong?”

“I'm not sure,” Bunker replied. ”Tell the TR group to disengage and pull back, maybe?"

Ryan stared at the map on the far wall. “Maybe, but we've backed Andrey Il’ych into a corner . . . we have to let him out.”

“How? How do we do that without cornering ourselves?”

“I think there was a problem with this scenario . . . not sure what, though . . .”

“Let's rattle his cage hard,” Ricks thought aloud.

“Like how, Cap’n?” Claggett asked.

“Status on Tube Two?”

“Empty, it was down for maintenance inspection,” the weapons officer replied.

“Is it okay?”

“Yes, sir, completed the inspection half an hour before we got the contact.”

“Okay . . .” Ricks grinned. “I want a water slug out of tube two. Let's give him a real launch transient to wake him up!”

Damn!
Claggett thought. It was almost something Mancuso or Rosselli would have done. Almost . . . “Sir, that's kind of a noisy way to do it. We can shake him up enough with a ‘Tango’ call on the Gertrude.”

“Weps, we have a solution on Sierra-Eleven?” Mancuso wants aggressive skippers, well, I'll show him aggressive—

“Yes, sir!” the weapons officer snapped back at once.

“Firing Point Procedures. Prepare to fire a water-slug on Tube Two.”

“Sir, I confirm torpedo tube two is empty. Weapons in tubes one, three and four are secure.” A call was made to the torpedo room to re-confirm what the electronic displays announced. In the torpedo room, the chief looked through the small glass port to make certain that they wouldn't be launching anything.

“Tube Two is empty by visual inspection. High-pressure air is online,” the chief called over the communications circuit. “We are ready to shoot.”

“Open outer door.”

“Open outer door, aye. Outer door is open.”

“Weps?”

“Locked in.”

“Match generated bearings and . . . SHOOT!”

The weapons officer pushed the proper button. USS Maine shuddered with the sudden pulse of high-pressure air out of the torpedo tube and into the sea.

Aboard USS Omaha, six thousand yards away, a sonarman had been trying for the past few minutes to decide if the trace on his screen was something other than clutter when a dot appeared on the screen.

“Conn, Sonar, transient, transient. Mechanical Transient bearing zero-eight-eight, dead aft!”

“What the hell?” the Officer of the Deck said. He was the boat's navigator, in the third week of duty in the new post. “What's back there?”

“Transient, transient—launch transient bearing zero-eight-eight! I say again, LAUNCH TRANSIENT DEAD AFT!”

“All ahead flank!” the suddenly pale lieutenant said a touch too loudly. “Battle stations! Stand by the five-inch room.” He lifted the command phone for the captain, but the general alarm was already sounding, and the Commanding Officer ran barefoot into the attack center, his coveralls still open.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Sir, we had a launch transient dead aft—Sonar, Conn, what else do you have?”

“Nothing, sir, nothing after the transient. That was a launch-transient, HP air into the water, but . . . sounded a little funny, sir. I show nothing in the water.”

“Right full rudder!” The OOD ordered, ignoring the Captain. He hadn't been relieved yet, and conning the boat was his responsibility. “Make your depth one hundred feet. Five-inch room, launch a decoy now-now-now!”

“Right full rudder, aye. Sir, my rudder is right full, no course given. Speed twenty knots and accelerating,” helmsman said.

“Very well. Come to course zero-one-zero.”

“Aye, coming to new course zero-one-zero!”

“Who’s in this area?” the CO asked in a relaxed voice, though he didn't feel relaxed.

“Maine's around here somewhere,” the navigator answered.

“Harry Ricks.” That asshole, he didn't say. It would have been bad for discipline. “Sonar, talk to me!”

“Conn, Sonar, there is nothing in the water. If there was a torpedo, I'd have it, sir.”

“Nav, drop speed to one-third.”

“Aye, all ahead one-third.”

*     *     *

“I think we scared the piss out of him,” Ricks observed, hovering over the sonar display. Seconds after the simulated launch, the 688 on the scope had floored his power plant, and now there was also the gurgling sound of a decoy.

“Just backed off on the power, sir, blade count is coming down.”

“Yeah, he knows there's nothing after him, now. We'll give him a call on the Gertrude.”

“That dumbass! Doesn't he know that there may be an Akula around here?” the Commanding Officer of USS Omaha growled.

“We don't show him, sir, just a bunch of fishing boats.”

“Okay. Secure from general quarters. We'll let Maine have her little laugh.” He grimaced. “My fault. We should have been trolling along at ten instead of fifteen knots. Make it so.”

“Aye, sir. Where to?”

“The boomer ought to have a feel for what's north of here. Go southeast.”

“Right.”

“Nice reaction, Nav. We might have evaded the fish. Lessons?”

“You said it, sir. We were going too fast.”

“Learn from your captain's mistake, Mr. Auburn.”

“Always, sir.”

The skipper punched the younger man's shoulder on the way out.

Thirty-six thousand yards away, the Admiral Lunin was drifting at three knots just over the thermocline layer, her towed-array sonar drooping under it.

“Well?” her Captain asked.

“We have this burst of noise at one-three-zero,” the sonar officer said, pointing to the display, “and nothing else. Fifteen seconds later, we have another burst of noise here . . . ahead of the first. The signature appears to be an American Los Angeles class going to full power, then slowing and disappearing off our screens.”

“An exercise, Yevgeniy . . . the first transient was an American missile submarine . . . an Ohio-class. What do you think of that?” Captain First Rank Valentin Borissovich Dubinin asked.

“No one has ever detected an Ohio in deep water . . .”

“For all things, there is a first time.”

“And now?”

“We will hover and wait. The Ohio is quieter than a sleeping whale, but at least we know now that there is one in the area. We will not chase after it. Very foolish of the Americans to make noise in this way. I've never seen that happen before.”

The game has changed, Captain,“ the sonar officer observed. It had changed quite a lot. He didn't have to say ”Comrade Captain" anymore.

“Indeed it has, Yevgeniy. Now it is a true game. No one need get hurt, and we can test our skills as in the Olympics.”

“Critique?”

“I would have closed a little before shooting, sir,” the weapons officer said. ”Even money he might have evaded that one."

“Agreed, but we were only trying to shake him up,” Ricks said comfortably.

Then what was the purpose of that exercise?
Dutch Claggett wondered. Oh, of course, to show how aggressive you are.

“I guess we accomplished that,” the XO said to support his captain. There were grins all around the control room. Boomers and fast-attack subs often played games, mostly pre-planned. As usual, the Ohio had won this one, too. They'd known that Omaha was around, of course, and that she was looking for a Russian Akula that the P-3s had lost off the Aleutians a few days before. But the Russian ”Shark" class sub was nowhere to be heard.

“OOD, take her south. We went and made a datum with that launch transient. We'll clear datum back down where Omaha was.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Well done, people.” Ricks walked back to his cabin.

“New course?”

“South,” Dubinin said. ”He'll clear datum by going into the area already swept by the Los Angeles. We'll maintain position just over the layer, leave our ‘tail’ under it, and try to reacquire." There wasn't much chance, the Captain knew, but fortune still favored the bold. Or something like that. The submarine was due to go back to port in another week, and supposedly the new sonar array she was due to receive during his scheduled overhaul was a major improvement over the current one. He'd been here south of Alaska for three weeks. The submarine he'd detected, USS Maine or USS Nevada, if his intelligence reports were correct, would finish this patrol, refit, conduct another, refit again, then yet another patrol in February, which coincided with his deployment schedule after his overhaul. So, the next time he was back, he'd be up against the same captain, and this one had made a mistake. After a refit, Admiral Lunin would be quieter, and would have better sonar, and Dubinin was starting to wonder when he'd be able to play his game against the Americans . . . Wouldn't it be nice, he thought. All the time he'd spent to get here, the wonderful years learning his trade in Northern Fleet under Marko Ramius. What a pity, for such a brilliant officer to have died in an accident. But duty at sea was dangerous, always had been, always would be. Marko had gotten his crew off before scuttling . . . Dubinin shook his head. Today he might have gotten assistance from the Americans. Might? Would have, just as an American ship would get one from a Soviet. The changes in his country and the world made Dubinin feel much better about his job. It had always been a demanding game of skill, but its deadly purpose had changed. Oh, yes, the American missile submarines still had their rockets pointed at his country, and Soviet rockets were pointed at America, but perhaps they would be gone soon. Until they were, he'd continue to do his job, and it seemed ironic indeed that just as the Soviet Navy was on the threshold of becoming competitive—the Akula class was roughly equal with an early Los Angeles class in a mechanical sense—the need for it was diminishing. Like a friendly game of cards, perhaps? he asked himself. Not a bad simile . . .