The Dallas
“Score one for the bad guys,” the sonar chief said. The Dallas was running too fast to make proper use of her sonar, but the explosion was impossible to miss. The whole crew heard it through the hull.
In the attack center Chambers plotted their position two miles from where the October had been. The others in the compartment looked at their instruments without emotion. Ten of their shipmates had just been hit, and the enemy was on the other side of the wall of noise.
“Slow to one-third,” Chambers ordered.
“All ahead one-third,” the officer of the deck repeated.
“Sonar, get me some data,” Chambers said.
“Working on it, sir.” Chief Laval strained to make sense of what he heard. It took a few minutes as the Dallas slowed to under ten knots. “Conn, sonar, the boomer took one hit. I don’t hear her engines … but there ain’t no breakup noises. I say again, sir, no breakup noises.”
“Can you hear the Alfa?”
“No, sir, too much crud in the water.”
Chamber’s face screwed into a grimace. You’re an officer, he told himself, they pay you to think. First, what’s happening? Second, what do you do about it? Think it through, then act.
“Estimated distance to target?”
“Something like nine thousand yards, sir,” Lieutenant Goodman said, reading the last solution off the fire control computer. “She’ll be on the far side of the ensonified zone.”
“Make your depth six hundred feet.” The diving officer passed this on to the helmsman. Chambers considered the situation and decided on his course of action. He wished Mancuso and Mannion were here. The captain and navigator were the other two members of what passed for the Dallas’ tactical management committee. He needed to exchange some ideas with other experienced officers — but there weren’t any.
“Listen up. We’re going down. The disturbance from the explosion will stay fairly steady. If it moves at all, it’ll go up. Okay, we’ll go under it. First we want to locate the boomer. If she isn’t there, then she’s on the bottom. It’s only nine hundred feet here, so she could be on the bottom with a live crew. Whether or not she’s on the bottom, we gotta get between her and the Alfa.” And, he thought on, if the Alfa shoots then, I kill the fucker, and rules of engagement be damned. They had to trick this guy. But how? And where was the Red October?
She was diving more quickly than expected. The explosion had also ruptured a trim tank, causing more negative buoyancy than they had at first allowed for.
The leak in the radio room was bad, but Melekhin had noted the flooding on his damage control board and reacted immediately. Each compartment had its own electrically powered pump. The radio room pump, supplemented by a master-zone pump that he had also activated, was managing, barely, to keep up with the flooding. The radios were already destroyed, but no one was planning to send any messages.
“Ryan, all the way up, and come right full rudder,” Ramius said.
“Right full rudder, all the way up on the planes,” Ryan said. “We going to hit the bottom?”
‘Try not to,” Mancuso said. “It might spring the leak worse.”
“Great,” Ryan growled back.
The October slowed her descent, arcing east below the en-sonified zone. Ramius wanted it between himself and the Alfa. Mancuso thought that they might just survive after all. In that case he’d have to give this boat’s plans a closer look.
The Dallas
“Sonar, give me two low-powered pings for the boomer. I don’t want anybody else to hear this, Chief.”
“Aye.” Chief Laval made the proper adjustments and sent the signals out. “All right! Conn, sonar, I got her! Bearing two-zero-three, range two thousand yards. She is not, repeat not, on the bottom, sir.”
“Left fifteen degrees rudder, come to two-zero-three,” Chambers ordered.
“Left fifteen degrees rudder, aye!” the helmsman sang out. “New course two-zero-three. Sir, my rudder is left fifteen degrees.”
“Frenchie, tell me about the boomer!”
“Sir, I got… pump noises, I think… and she’s moving a little, bearing is now two-zero-one. I can track her on passive, sir.”
“Thompson, plot the boomer’s course. Mr. Goodman, we still have that MOSS ready for launch?” “Aye aye,” responded the torpedo officer.
The V. K. Konovalov
“Did we kill him?” the zampolit asked.
“Probably,” Tupolev answered, wondering if he had or not. “We must close to be certain. Ahead slow.”
“Ahead slow.”
The Pogy
The Pogy was now within two thousand yards of the Konovalov, still pinging her mercilessly.
“He’s moving, sir. Enough that I can read passive,” Sonar Chief Palmer said.
“Very well, secure pinging,” Wood said.
“Aye, pinging secured.”
“We got a solution?”
“Locked in tight,” Reynolds answered. “Running time is one minute eighteen seconds. Both fish are ready.”
“All ahead one-third.”
“All ahead one-third, aye.” The Pogy slowed. Her commanding officer wondered what excuse he might find for shooting.
The Red October
“Skipper, that was one of our sonars that pinged us, off north-north-east. Low-power ping, sir, must be close.”
“Think you can raise her on gertrude?”
“Yes sir!”
“Captain?” Mancuso asked. “Permission to communicate with my ship?”
“Yes.”
“Jones, raise her right now.”
“Aye. This is Jonesy calling Frenchie, do you copy?” The sonarman frowned at the speaker. “Frenchie, answer me.”
The Dallas
“Conn, sonar, I got Jonesy on the gertrude.”
Chambers lifted the control room gertrude phone. “Jones, this is Chambers. What is your condition?”
Mancuso took the mike away from his man. “Wally, this is Bart,” he said. “We took one midships, but she’s holding together. Can you run interference for us?”
“Aye aye! Starting right now, out.” Chambers replaced the phone. “Goodman, flood the MOSS tube. Okay, we’ll go in behind the MOSS. If the Alfa shoots at it, we take her out. Set it to run straight for two thousand yards, then turn south.”
“Done. Outer door open, sir.”
“Launch.”
“MOSS away, sir.”
The decoy ran forward at twenty knots for two minutes to clear the Dallas, then slowed. It had a torpedo body whose forward portion carried a powerful sonar transducer that ran off a tape recorder and broadcast the recorded sounds of a 688-class submarine. Every four minutes it changed over from loud operation to silent. The Dallas trailed a thousand yards behind the decoy, dropping several hundred feet below its course track.
The Konovalov approached the wall of bubbles carefully, with the Pogy trailing to the north.
“Shoot at the decoy, you son of a bitch,” Chambers said quietly. The attack center crew heard him and nodded grim agreement.
The Red October
Ramius judged that the ensonified zone was now between him and the Alfa. He ordered the engines turned back on, and the Red October proceeded on a north-easterly course.
The V. K. Konovalov
“Left ten degrees rudder,” TUpolev ordered quietly. “We’ll come around the dead zone to the north and see if he is still alive when we turn back. First we must clear the noise.”
“Still nothing,” the michman reported. “No bottom impact, no collapse noises… New contact, bearing one-seven-zero… Different sound, Comrade Captain, one propeller… Sounds like an American.”
“What heading?”
“South, I think. Yes, south… The sound’s changing. It is American.”
“An American sub is decoying. We ignore it.”
“Ignore it?” the zampolit said.
“Comrade, if you were heading north and were torpedoed, would you then head south? Yes, you would — but not Marko. It is too obvious. This American is decoying to try to take us away from him. Not too clever, this one. Marko would do better. And he would go north. I know him, I know how he thinks. He is now heading north, perhaps northeast. They would not decoy if he was dead. Now we know that he is alive but crippled. We will find him, and finish him,” Tupolev said calmly, fully caught up in the hunt for Red October, remembering all he had been taught. He would prove now that he was the new master. His conscience was still. Tupolev was fulfilling his destiny.
“But the Americans — “
“Will not shoot, Comrade,” the captain said with a thin smile. “If they could shoot, we would already be dead from the one to the north. They cannot shoot without permission. They must ask for permission, as we must — but we already have the permission, and the advantage. We are now where the torpedo struck him, and when we clear the disturbance we will find him again. Then we will have him.”
The Red October
They couldn’t use the caterpillar. One side was smashed by the torpedo hit. The October was moving at six knots, driven by her propellers, which made more noise than the other system. This was much like the normal drill of protecting a boomer. But the exercise always presupposed that the escorting attack boats could shoot to make the bad guy go away…