The Hunt for Red October jr-3 Read online

  “Scope under.” Ramius stepped away from the instrument after what seemed a long wait. “Down periscope.”

  “Passing forty meters,” Kamarov said.

  “Level off at one hundred meters.” Ramius watched his crewmen now. The first dive could make experienced men shudder, and half his crew were farmboys straight from training camp. The hull popped and creaked under the pressure of the surrounding water, something that took getting used to. A few of the younger men went pale but stood rigidly upright.

  Kamarov began the procedure for leveling off at the proper depth. Ramius watched with a pride he might have felt for his own son as the lieutenant gave the necessary orders with precision. He was the first officer Ramius had recruited. The control room crew snapped to his command. Five minutes later the submarine slowed her descent at ninety meters and settled the next ten to a perfect stop at one hundred.

  “Well done, Comrade Lieutenant. You have the conn. Slow to one-third speed. Have the sonarmen listen on all passive systems.” Ramius turned to leave the control room, motioning Putin to follow him.

  And so it began.

  Ramius and Putin went aft to the submarine’s wardroom. The captain held the door open for the political officer, then closed and locked it behind himself. The Red October’s wardroom was a spacious affair for a submarine, located immediately forward of the galley, aft of the officer accommodations. Its walls were soundproofed, and the door had a lock because her designers had known that not everything the officers had to say was necessarily for the ears of the enlisted men. It was large enough for all of the October’s officers to eat as a group — though at least three of them would always be on duty. The safe containing the ship’s orders was here, not in the captain’s stateroom where a man might use his solitude to try opening it by himself. It had two dials. Ramius had one combination, Putin the other. Which was hardly necessary, since Putin undoubtedly knew their mission orders already. So did Ramius, but not all the particulars.

  Putin poured tea as the captain checked his watch against the chronometer mounted on the bulkhead. Fifteen minutes until he could open the safe. Putin’s courtesy made him uneasy.

  “Two more weeks of confinement,” the zampolit said, stirring his tea.

  “The Americans do this for two months, Ivan. Of course, their submarines are far more comfortable.” Despite her huge bulk, the October’s crew accommodations would have shamed a gulag jailer. The crew consisted of fifteen officers, housed in fairly decent cabins aft, and a hundred enlisted men whose bunks were stuffed into corners and racks throughout the bow, forward of the missile room. The October’s size was deceptive. The interior of her double hull was crammed with missiles, torpedoes, a nuclear reactor and its support equipment, a huge backup diesel power plant, and bank of nickle-cadmium batteries outside the pressure hull, which was ten times the size of its American counterparts. Running and maintaining the ship was a huge job for so small a crew, even though extensive use of automation made her the most modern of Soviet naval vessels. Perhaps the men didn’t need proper bunks. They would only have four or six hours a day to make use of them. This would work to Ramius’ advantage. Half of his crew were draftees on their first operational cruise, and even the more experienced men knew little enough. The strength of his enlisted crew, unlike that of Western crews, resided much more in his eleven michmanyy (warrant officers) than in his glavnyy starshini (senior petty officers). All of them were men who would do — were specifically trained to do — exactly what their officers told them. And Ramius had picked the officers.

  “You want to cruise for two months?” Putin asked.

  “I have done it on diesel submarines. A submarine belongs at sea, Ivan. Our mission is to strike fear into the hearts of the imperialists. We do not accomplish this tied up in our barn at Polyarnyy most of the time, but we cannot stay at sea any longer because any period over two weeks and the crew loses efficiency. In two weeks this collection of children will be a mob of numbed robots.” Ramius was counting on that.

  “And we could solve this by having capitalist luxuries?” Putin sneered.

  “A true Marxist is objective, Comrade Political Officer,” Ramius chided, savoring this last argument with Putin. “Objectively, that which aids us in carrying out our mission is good, that which hinders us is bad. Adversity is supposed to hone one’s spirit and skill, not dull them. Just being aboard a submarine is hardship enough, is it not?”

  “Not for you, Marko.” Putin grinned over his tea.

  “I am a seaman. Our crewmen are not, most never will be. They are a mob of farmers’ sons and boys who yearn to be factory workers. We must adjust to the times, Ivan. These youngsters are not the same as we were.”

  “That is true enough,” Putin agreed. “You are never satisfied, Comrade Captain. I suppose it is men like you who force progress upon us all.”

  Both men knew exactly why Soviet missile submarines spent so little of their time — barely fifteen percent of it — at sea, and it had nothing to do with creature comforts. The Red October carried twenty-six SS-N-20 Seahawk missiles, each with eight 500-kiloton multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles — MIRVs — enough to destroy two hundred cities. Land-based bombers could only fly a few hours at a time, then had to return to their bases. Land-based missiles arrayed along the main East-West Soviet rail network were always where paramilitary troops of the KGB could get at them lest some missile regiment commander suddenly came to realize the power at his fingertips. But missile submarines were by definition beyond any control from land. Their entire mission was to disappear.

  Given that fact, Marko was surprised that his government had them at all. The crew of such vessels had to be trusted. And so they sailed less often than their Western counterparts, and when they did it was with a political officer aboard to stand next to the commanding officer, a second captain always ready to pass approval on every action.

  “Do you think you could do it, Marko, cruise for two months with these farmboys?”

  “I prefer half-trained boys, as you know. They have less to unlearn. Then I can train them to be seamen the right way, my way. My personality cult?”

  Putin laughed as he lit a cigarette. “That observation has been made in the past, Marko. But you are our best teacher and your reliability is well known.” This was very true. Ramius had sent hundreds of officers and seamen on to other submarines whose commanders were glad to have them. It was another paradox that a man could engender trust within a society that scarcely recognized the concept. Of course, Ramius was a loyal Party member, the son of a Party hero who had been carried to his grave by three Politburo members. Putin waggled his finger. “You should be commanding one of our higher naval schools, Comrade Captain. Your talents would better serve the state there.”

  “It is a seaman I am, Ivan Yurievich. Only a seaman, not a schoolmaster — despite what they say about me. A wise man knows his limitations.” And a bold one seizes opportunities. Every officer aboard had served with Ramius before, except for three junior lieutenants, who would obey their orders as readily as any wet-nosed matros (seaman), and the doctor, who was useless.

  The chronometer chimed four bells.

  Ramius stood and dialed in his three-element combination. Putin did the same, and the captain flipped the lever to open the safe’s circular door. Inside was a manila envelope plus four books of cipher keys and missile-targeting coordinates. Ramius removed the envelope, then closed the door, spinning both dials before sitting down again.”

  “So, Ivan, what do you suppose our orders tell us to do?” Ramius asked theatrically.

  “Our duty, Comrade Captain.” Putin smiled.

  “Indeed.” Ramius broke the wax seal on the envelope and extracted the four-page operation order. He read it quickly. It was not complicated.

  “So, we are to proceed to grid square 54–90 and rendezvous with our attack submarine V. K. Konovalov—that’s Captain Tupolev’s new command. You know Viktor Tupolev? No? Viktor will gu
ard us from imperialist intruders, and we will conduct a four-day acquisition and tracking drill, with him hunting us — if he can.” Ramius chuckled. “The boys in the attack submarine directorate still have not figured how to track our new drive system. Well, neither will the Americans. We are to confine our operations to grid square 54–90 and the immediately surrounding squares. That ought to make Viktor’s task a bit easier.”

  “But you will not let him find us?”

  “Certainly not,” Ramius snorted. “Let? Viktor was once my pupil. You give nothing to an enemy, Ivan, even in a drill. The imperialists certainly won’t! In trying to find us, he also practices finding their missile submarines. He will have a fair chance of locating us, I think. The exercise is confined to nine squares, forty thousand square kilometers. We shall see what he has learned since he served with us — oh, that’s right, you weren’t with me then. That’s when I had the Suslov.”

  “Do I see disappointment?”

  “No, not really. The four-day drill with Konovalov will be interesting diversion.” Bastard, he said to himself, you knew beforehand exactly what our orders were — and you do know Viktor Tupolev, liar. It was time.

  Putin finished his cigarette and his tea before standing. “So, again I am permitted to watch the master captain at work — befuddling a poor boy.” He turned towards the door. “I think—”

  Ramius kicked Putin’s feet out from under him just as he was stepping away from the table. Putin fell backwards while Ramius sprang to his feet and grasped the political officer’s head in his strong fisherman’s hands. The captain drove his neck downward to the sharp, metal-edged corner of the wardroom table. It struck the point. In the same instant Ramius pushed down on the man’s chest. An unnecessary gesture — with the sickening crackle of bones Ivan Putin’s neck broke, his spine severed at the level of the second cervical vertebra, a perfect hangman’s fracture.

  The political officer had no time to react. The nerves to his body below the neck were instantly cut off from the organs and muscles they controlled. Putin tried to shout, to say something, but his mouth flapped open and shut without a sound except for the exhalation of his last lungful of air. He tried to gulp air down like a landed fish, and this did not work. Then his eyes went up to Ramius, wide in shock — there was no pain, and no emotion but surprise. The captain laid him gently on the tile deck.

  Ramius saw the face flash with recognition, then darken. He reached down to take Putin’s pulse. It was nearly two minutes before the heart stopped completely. When Ramius was sure that his political officer was dead, he took the teapot from the table and poured two cups’ worth on the deck, careful to drip some on the man’s shoes. Next he lifted the body to the wardroom table and threw open the door.

  “Dr. Petrov to the wardroom at once!”

  The ship’s medical office was only a few steps aft. Petrov was there in seconds, along with Vasily Borodin, who had hurried aft from the control room.

  “He slipped on the deck where I spilled my tea,” Ramius gasped, performing closed heart massage on Putin’s chest. “I tried to keep him from falling, but he hit his head on the table.

  Petrov shoved the captain aside, moved the body around, and leapt on the table to kneel astride it. He tore the shirt open, then checked Putin’s eyes. Both pupils were wide and fixed. The doctor felt around the man’s head, his hands working downward to the neck. They stopped there, probing. The doctor shook his head slowly.

  “Comrade Putin is dead. His neck is broken.” The doctor’s hands came loose, and he closed the zampolit’s eyes.

  “No!” Ramius shouted. “He was alive only a minute ago!” The commanding officer was sobbing. “It’s my fault. I tried to catch him, but I failed. My fault!” He collapsed into a chair and buried his face in his hands. “My fault,” he cried, shaking his head in rage, struggling visibly to regain his composure. An altogether excellent performance.

  Petrov placed his hand on the captain’s shoulder. “It was an accident, Comrade Captain. These things happen, even to experienced men. It was not your fault. Truly, Comrade.”

  Ramius swore under his breath, regaining control of himself. “There is nothing you can do?”

  Petrov shook his head. “Even in the finest clinic in the Soviet Union nothing could be done. Once the spinal cord is severed, there is no hope. Death is virtually instantaneous — but also it is quite painless,” the doctor added consolingly.

  Ramius drew himself up as he took a long breath, his face set. “Comrade Putin was a good shipmate, a loyal Party member, and a fine officer.” Out the corner of his eye he noticed Borodin’s mouth twitch. “Comrades, we will continue our mission! Dr. Petrov, you will carry our comrade’s body to the freezer. This is — gruesome, I know, but he deserves and will get an honorable military funeral, with his shipmates in attendance, as it should be, when we return to port.”

  “Will this be reported to fleet headquarters?” Petrov asked.

  “We cannot. Our orders are to maintain strict radio silence.” Ramius handed the doctor a set of operations orders from his pocket. Not those taken from the safe. “Page three, Comrade Doctor.”

  Petrov’s eyes went wide reading the operational directive.

  “I would prefer to report this, but our orders are explicit: Once we dive, no transmissions of any kind, for any reason.”

  Petrov handed the papers back. “Too bad, our comrade would have looked forward to this. But orders are orders.”

  “And we shall carry them out.”

  “Putin would have it no other way,” Petrov agreed.

  “Borodin, observe: I take the comrade political officer’s missile control key from his neck, as per regulations,” Ramius said, pocketing the key and chain.

  “I note this, and will so enter it in the log,” the executive officer said gravely.

  Petrov brought in his medical corpsman. Together they took the body aft to the medical office, where it was zippered into a body bag. The corpsman and a pair of sailors then took it forward, through the control room, into the missile compartment. The entrance to the freezer was on the lower missile deck, and the men carried the body through the door. While two cooks removed food to make room for it, the body was set reverently down in the corner. Aft, the doctor and the executive officer made the necessary inventory of personal effects, one copy for the ship’s medical file, another for the ship’s log, and a third for a box that was sealed and locked up in the medical office.

  Forward, Ramius took the conn in a subdued control room. He ordered the submarine to a course of two-nine-zero degrees, west-northwest. Grid square 54–90 was to the east.

  THE SECOND DAY

  SATURDAY, 4 DECEMBER

  The Red October

  It was the custom in the Soviet Navy for the commanding officer to announce his ship’s operational orders and to exhort the crew to carry them out in true Soviet fashion. The orders were then posted for all to see — and be inspired by — outside the ship’s Lenin Room. In large surface ships this was a classroom where political awareness classes were held. In Red October it was a closet-sized library near the wardroom where Party books and other ideological material were kept for the men to read. Ramius disclosed their orders the day after sailing to give his men the chance to settle into the ship’s routine. At the same time he gave a pep talk. Ramius always gave a good one. He’d had a lot of practice. At 0800 hours, when the forenoon watch was set, he entered the control room and took some file cards from an inside jacket pocket.

  “Comrades!” he began, talking into the microphone, “this is the captain speaking. You all know that our beloved friend and comrade, Captain Ivan Yurievich Putin, died yesterday in a tragic accident. Our orders do not permit us to inform fleet headquarters of this. Comrades, we will dedicate our efforts and our work to the memory of our comrade, Ivan Yurievich Putin — a fine shipmate, an honorable Party member, and a courageous officer.

  “Comrades! Officer and men of Red October! We have orders from the R
ed Banner Northern Fleet High Command, and they are orders worthy of this ship and this crew!

  “Comrades! Our orders are to make the ultimate test of our new silent propulsion system. We are to head west, past the North Cape of America’s imperialist puppet state, Norway, then to turn southwest towards the Atlantic Ocean. We will pass all of the imperialist sonar nets, and we will not be detected! This will be a true test of our submarine and his capabilities. Our own ships will engage in a major exercise to locate us and at the same time to befuddle the arrogant imperialist navies. Our mission, first of all, is to evade detection by anyone. We will teach the Americans a lesson about Soviet technology that they will not soon forget! Our orders are to continue southwest, skirting the American coast to challenge and defeat their newest and best hunter submarines. We will proceed all the way to our socialist brothers in Cuba, and we will be the first ship to make use of a new and supersecret nuclear submarine base that we have been building for two years right under their imperialist noses on the south coast of Cuba. A fleet replenishment vessel is already en route to rendezvous with us there.

  “Comrades! If we succeed in reaching Cuba undetected by the imperialists — and we will! — the officers and men of Red October will have a week—a week—of shore leave to visit our fraternal socialist comrades on the beautiful island of Cuba. I have been there, comrades, and you will find it to be exactly what you have read, a paradise of warm breezes, palm trees, and comradely good fellowship.” By which Ramius meant women. “After this we will return to the Motherland by the same route. By this time, of course, the imperialists will know who and what we are, from their slinking spies and cowardly reconnaissance aircraft. It is intended that they should know this, because we will again evade detection on the trip home. This will let the imperialists know that they may not trifle with the men of the Soviet Navy, that we can approach their coast at the time of our choosing, and that they must respect the Soviet Union!