Red Storm Rising Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1 - The Slow Fuse

  Chapter 2 - Odd Man In

  Chapter 3 - Correlation of Forces

  Chapter 4 - Maskirovka 1

  Chapter 5 - Sailors and Spooks

  Chapter 6 - The Watchers

  Chapter 7 - Initial Observations

  Chapter 8 - Further Observations

  Chapter 9 - A Final Look

  Chapter 10 - Remember, Remember

  Chapter 11 - Order of Battle

  Chapter 12 - Funeral Arrangements

  Chapter 13 - The Strangers Arrive and Depart

  Chapter 14 - Gas

  Chapter 15 - The Bastion Gambit

  Chapter 16 - Last Moves/First Moves

  Chapter 17 - The Frisbees of Dreamland

  Chapter 18 - Polar Glory

  Chapter 19 - Journeys End/Journeys Begin

  Chapter 20 - The Dance of the Vampires

  Chapter 21 - Nordic Hammer

  Chapter 22 - Ripostes

  Chapter 23 - Returns

  Chapter 24 - Rape

  Chapter 25 - Treks

  Chapter 26 - Impressions

  Chapter 27 - Casualties

  Chapter 28 - Breakthroughs

  Chapter 29 - Remedies

  Chapter 30 - Approaches

  Chapter 31 - Demons

  Chapter 32 - New Names, New Faces

  Chapter 33 - Contact

  Chapter 34 - Feelers

  Chapter 35 - Time on Target

  Chapter 36 - Shoot-out at 31 West!

  Chapter 37 - The Race of the Cripples

  Chapter 38 - Stealth on the Rocks

  Chapter 39 - The Shores of Stykkisholmur

  Chapter 40 - The Killing Ground

  Chapter 41 - Targets of Opportunity

  Chapter 42 - The Resolution of Conflict

  Chapter 43 - A Walk in the Woods

  “HARROWING...TENSE...

  A CHILLING RING OF TRUTH.”

  —TIME

  Red Storm Rising

  A chillingly authentic vision of modern war,

  Red Storm Rising is as powerful as it is ambitious.

  Using the latest advancements in military technology

  the world’s superpowers battle on land, sea, and

  air for ultimate global control. It is a story

  you will never forget. Hard-hitting. Suspenseful. And

  frighteningly real.

  “EXCITING...FAST AND FURIOUS.”

  —USA TODAY

  “A RATTLING GOOD YARN...

  LOTS OF ACTION.”

  —THE NEW YORK TIMES

  Novels by Tom Clancy

  THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER

  RED STORM RISING

  PATRIOT GAMES

  THE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN

  CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

  THE SUM OF ALL FEARS

  WITHOUT REMORSE

  DEBT OF HONOR

  EXECUTIVE ORDERS

  RAINBOW SIX

  THE BEAR AND THE DRAGON

  RED RABBIT

  THE TEETH OF THE TIGER

  SSN: STRATEGIES OF SUBMARINE WARFARE

  Created by Tom Clancy

  TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL

  TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: OPERATION BARRACUDA

  TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: CHECKMATE

  TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: FALLOUT

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  The quote on page vii is from Keepers of the Sea, copyright © 1983, U.S. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  RED STORM RISING

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 1986 by Jack Ryan Enterprises Ltd. and Larry Bond.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-00234-6

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Acknowledgments

  It is impossible for Larry and me to thank all those who assisted us in so many ways in the preparation of this book. Were we to try, we would leave out the names of people whose contributions were more than merely important. To all those who gave freely of their time, answering endless questions, then explaining their answers at length—we know who you are and what you did. All of you are in this book. Particular thanks, however, are due to the captain, officers, and the men of FFG-26, who for one marvelous week showed an ignorant landlubber something of what it means to be a sailor.

  From time immemorial, the purpose of a navy has been to influence, and sometimes decide, issues on land. This was so with the Greeks of antiquity; the Romans, who created a navy to defeat Carthage; the Spanish, whose armada tried and failed to conquer England; and, most eminently, in the Atlantic and Pacific during two world wars. The sea has always given man inexpensive transport and ease of communication over long distances. It has also provided concealment, because being over the horizon meant being out of sight and effectively beyond reach. The sea has supplied mobility, capability, and support throughout Western history, and those failing in the sea-power test—notably Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler—also failed the longevity one.

  —Edward L. Beach, in Keepers of the Sea

  Author’s Note

  This book began sometime ago. I got to know Larry Bond through an advertisement in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, when I purchased his war game, “Harpoon.” It turned out to be amazingly useful, and served as a primary source for The Hunt for Red October. I was intrigued enough about it that I drove to a wargamers’ convention that summer (1982) to meet him in person, and we ended up becoming close fr
iends.

  In 1983, while Red October was in pre-production, Larry and I started talking about one of his projects: “Convoy-84,” a macrowargame or “campaign” game which, using the “Harpoon” system, would fight out a new Battle of the North Atlantic. I thought this was fascinating and we began talking about building a book around the idea, since, we both agreed, no one outside the Defense Department had ever examined in adequate detail what such a campaign would be like with modern weapons. The more we talked, the better the idea got. Soon we were fiddling with an outline and trying to find a way to limit the scenario to a manageable scope—but to do so without removing any essential elements from the stage. (This proved to be a problem without a really adequate solution, despite endless discussion and not a few violent disagreements!)

  Although Larry’s name does not appear on the title page, this book is his as much as mine. We never did figure out the division of labor, but what Larry and I accomplished was to complete a book as co-authors when our only contract was a handshake—and have a whole lot of fun doing it! It is for the reader to decide how successful we have been.

  1

  The Slow Fuse

  NIZHNEVARTOVSK, R.S.F.S.R.

  They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia. They were Muslims, though one could scarcely have known it from their speech, which was Russian, though inflected with the singsong Azerbaijani accent that wrongly struck the senior members of the engineering staff as entertaining. The three of them had just completed a complex task in the truck and train yards, the opening of hundreds of loading valves. Ibrahim Tolkaze was their leader, though he was not in front. Rasul was in front, the massive former sergeant in the MVD who had already killed six men this cold night—three with a pistol hidden under his coat and three with his hands alone. No one had heard them. An oil refinery is a noisy place. The bodies were left in shadows, and the three men entered Tolkaze’s car for the next part of their task.

  Central Control was a modern three-story building fittingly in the center of the complex. For at least five kilometers in all directions stretched the cracking towers, storage tanks, catalytic chambers, and above all the thousands of kilometers of large-diameter pipe which made Nizhnevartovsk one of the world’s largest refining complexes. The sky was lit at uneven intervals by waste-gas fires, and the air was foul with the stink of petroleum distillates: aviation kerosene, gasoline, diesel fuel, benzine, nitrogen tetroxide for intercontinental missiles, lubricating oils of various grades, and complex petrochemicals identified only by their alphanumeric prefixes.

  They approached the brick-walled, windowless building in Tolkaze’s personal Zhiguli, and the engineer pulled into his reserved parking place, then walked alone to the door as his comrades crouched in the back seat.

  Inside the glass door, Ibrahim greeted the security guard, who smiled back, his hand outstretched for Tolkaze’s security pass. The need for security here was quite real, but since it dated back over forty years, no one took it more seriously than any of the pro forma bureaucratic complexities in the Soviet Union. The guard had been drinking, the only form of solace in this harsh, cold land. His eyes were not focusing and his smile was too fixed. Tolkaze fumbled handing over his pass, and the guard lurched down to retrieve it. He never came back up. Tolkaze’s pistol was the last thing the man felt, a cold circle at the base of his skull, and he died without knowing why—or even how. Ibrahim went behind the guard’s desk to get the weapon the man had been only too happy to display for the engineers he’d protected. He lifted the body and moved it awkwardly to leave it slumped at the desk—just another swingshift worker asleep at his post—then waved his comrades into the building. Rasul and Mohammet raced to the door.

  “It is time, my brothers.” Tolkaze handed the AK-47 rifle and ammo belt to his taller friend.

  Rasul hefted the weapon briefly, checking to see that a round was chambered and the safety off. Then he slung the ammunition belt over his shoulder and snapped the bayonet in place before speaking for the first time that night: “Paradise awaits.”

  Tolkaze composed himself, smoothed his hair, straightened his tie, and clipped the security pass to his white laboratory coat before leading his comrades up the six flights of stairs.

  Ordinary procedure dictated that to enter the master control room, one first had to be recognized by one of the operations staffers. And so it happened. Nikolay Barsov seemed surprised when he saw Tolkaze through the door’s tiny window.

  “You’re not on duty tonight, Isha.”

  “One of my valves went bad this afternoon and I forgot to check the repair status before I went off duty. You know the one—the auxiliary feed valve on kerosene number eight. If it’s still down tomorrow we’ll have to reroute, and you know what that means.”

  Barsov grunted agreement. “True enough, Isha.” The middle-aged engineer thought Tolkaze liked the semi-Russian diminutive. He was badly mistaken. “Stand back while I open this damned hatch.”

  The heavy steel door swung outward. Barsov hadn’t been able to see Rasul and Mohammet before, and scarcely had time now. Three 7.62mm rounds from the Kalashnikov exploded into his chest.

  The master control room contained a duty watch crew of twenty, and looked much like the control center for a railroad or power plant. The high walls were crosshatched with pipeline schematics dotted with hundreds of lights to indicate which control valve was doing what. That was only the main display. Individual segments of the system were broken off onto separate status boards, mainly controlled by computer but constantly monitored by half the duty engineers. The staff could not fail to note the sound of the three shots.

  But none of them were armed.

  With elegant patience, Rasul began to work his way across the room, using his Kalashnikov expertly and firing one round into each watch engineer. At first they tried to run away—until they realized that Rasul was herding them into a corner like cattle, killing as he moved. Two men bravely got on their command phones to summon a fast-response team of KGB security troops. Rasul shot one of them at his post, but the other ducked around the line of command consoles to evade the gunfire and bolted for the door, where Tolkaze stood. It was Boris, Tolkaze saw, the Party favorite, head of the local kollektiv, the man who had “befriended” him, making him the special pet native of the Russian engineers. Ibrahim could remember every time this godless pig had patronized him, the savage foreigner imported to amuse his Russian masters. Tolkaze raised his pistol.

  “Ishaaa!” the man screamed in terror and shock. Tolkaze shot him in the mouth, and hoped Boris didn’t die too quickly to hear the contempt in his voice: “Infidel.” He was pleased that Rasul had not killed this one. His quiet friend could have all the rest.

  The other engineers screamed, threw cups, chairs, manuals. There was nowhere left to run, no way around the swarthy, towering killer. Some held up their hands in useless supplication. Some even prayed aloud—but not to Allah, which might have saved them. The noise diminished as Rasul strode up to the bloody corner. He smiled as he shot the very last, knowing that this sweating infidel pig would serve him in paradise. He reloaded his rifle, then went back through the control room. He prodded each body with his bayonet, and again shot the four that showed some small sign of life. His face bore a grim, content expression. At least twenty-five atheist pigs dead. Twenty-five foreign invaders who would no longer stand between his people and their God. Truly he had done Allah’s work!

  The third man, Mohammet, was already at his own work as Rasul took his station at the top of the staircase. Working in the back of the room, he switched the room systems-control mode from computer-automatic to emergency-manual, bypassing all of the automated safety systems.

  A methodical man, Ibrahim had planned and memorized every detail of his task over a period of months, but still he had a checklist in his pocket. He unfolded it now and set it next to his hand on the master supervisory control board. Tolkaze looked around at the status
displays to orient himself, then paused.

  From his back pocket he took his most treasured personal possession, half of his grandfather’s Koran, and opened it to a random page. It was a passage in The Chapter of the Spoils. His grandfather having been killed during the futile rebellions against Moscow, his father shamed by helpless subservience to the infidel state, Tolkaze had been seduced by Russian schoolteachers into joining their godless system. Others had trained him as an oil-field engineer to work at the State’s most valuable facility in Azerbaijan. Only then had the God of his fathers saved him, through the words of an uncle, an “unregistered” imam who had remained faithful to Allah and safeguarded this tattered fragment of the Koran that had accompanied one of Allah’s own warriors. Tolkaze read the passage under his hand:

  And when the misbelievers plotted to keep thee prisoner, or kill thee, or drive thee forth, they plotted well; but God plotted, too. And God is the best of plotters.

  Tolkaze smiled, certain that it was the final Sign in a plan being executed by hands greater than his own. Serene and confident, he began to fulfill his destiny.

  First the gasoline. He closed sixteen control valves—the nearest of them three kilometers away—and opened ten, which rerouted eighty million liters of gasoline to gush out from a bank of truck-loading valves. The gasoline did not ignite at once. The three had left no pyrotechnic devices to explode this first of many disasters. Tolkaze reasoned that if he were truly doing the work of Allah, then his God would surely provide.

  And so He did. A small truck driving through the loading yard took a turn too fast, skidded on the splashing fuel, and slid broadside into a utility pole. It only took one spark . . . and already more fuel was spilling out into the train yards.