The Red October
Ramius and Kamarov conferred over the chart for several minutes, tracing alternate course tracks before agreeing on one. The enlisted men ignored this. They had never been encouraged to know about charts. The captain walked to the aft bulkhead and lifted the phone.
“Comrade Melekhin,” he ordered, waiting a few seconds. “Comrade, this is the captain. Any further difficulties with the reactor systems?”
“No, Comrade Captain.”
“Excellent. Hold things together another two days.” Ramius hung up. It was thirty minutes to the turn of the next watch.
Melekhin and Kirill Surzpoi, the assistant engineer, had the duty in the engine room. Melekhin monitored the turbines and Surzpoi handled the reactor systems. Each had a michman and three enlisted men in attendance. The engineers had had a very busy cruise. Every gauge and monitor in the engine spaces, it seemed, had been inspected, and many had been entirely rebuilt by the two senior officers, who had been helped by Valintin Bugayev, the electronics officer and on-board genius who was also handling the political awareness classes for the crewmen. The engine room crewmen were the most rattled on the vessel. The supposed contamination was common knowledge — there are no long-lived secrets on a submarine. To ease their loads ordinary seamen were supplementing the engine watches. The captain called this a good chance for the cross-training he believed in. The crew thought it was a good way to get poisoned. Discipline was being maintained, of course. This was owing partly to the trust the men had in their commanding officer, partly to their training, but mostly to their knowledge of what would happen if they failed to carry out their orders immediately and enthusiastically.
“Comrade Melekhin,” Surzpoi called, “I am showing pressure fluctuation on the main loop, number six gauge.”
“Coming.” Melekhin hurried over and shoved the michman out of the way when he got to the master control panel. “More bad instruments! The others show normal. Nothing important,” the chief engineer said blandly, making sure everyone could hear. The whole compartment watch saw the chief engineer whisper something to his assistant. The younger one shook his head slowly, while two sets of hands worked the controls.
A loud two-phase buzzer and a rotating red alarm light went off.
“SCRAM the pile!” Melekhin ordered.
“SCRAMing.” Surzpoi stabbed his finger on the master shutdown button.
“You men, get forward!” Melekhin ordered next. There was no hesitation. “No, you, connect battery power to the caterpillar motors, quickly!”
The warrant officer raced back to throw the proper switches, cursing his change of orders. It took forty seconds.
“Done, Comrade!”
“Go!”
The warrant officer was the last man out of the compartment. He made certain that the hatches were dogged down tight before running to the control room.
“What is the problem?” Ramius asked calmly.
“Radiation alarm in the heat-exchange room!”
“Very well, go forward and shower with the rest of your watch. Get control of yourself.” Ramius patted the michman on the arm. “We have had these problems before. You are a trained man. The crewmen look to you for leadership.”
Ramius lifted the phone. It was a moment before the other end was picked up. “What has happened, Comrade?” The control room crew watched their captain listen to the answer. They could not help but admire his calm. Radiation alarms had sounded throughout the hull. “Very well. We do not have too many hours of battery power left, Comrade. We must go to snorkling depth. Stand by to activate the diesel. Yes.” He hung up.
“Comrades, you will listen to me.” Ramius’ voice was under total control. “There has been a minor failure in the reactor control systems. The alarm you heard was not a major radiation leak, but rather a failure of the reactor rod control systems. Comrades Melekhin and Surzpoi successfully executed an emergency reactor shutdown, but we cannot operate the reactor properly without the primary controls. We will, therefore, complete our cruise on diesel power. To ensure against any possible radiation contamination, the reactor spaces have been isolated, and all compartments, engineering spaces first, will be vented with surface air when we snorkle. Kamarov, you will go aft to work the environmental controls. I will take the conn.”
“Aye, Comrade Captain!” Kamarov went aft.
Ramius lifted the microphone to give this news to the crew. Everyone was waiting for something. Forward, some crewmen muttered among themselves that minor was a word suffering from overuse, that nuclear submarines did not run on diesel and ventilate with surface air for the hell of it.
Finished with his terse announcement, Ramius ordered the submarine to approach the surface.
The Dallas
“Beats me, Skipper.” Jones shook his head. “Reactor noises have stopped, pumps are cut way back, but he’s running at the same speed, just like before. On battery, I guess.”
“Must be a hell of a battery system to drive something that big this fast,” Mancuso observed.
“I did some computations on that a few hours ago.” Jones held up his pad. “This is based on the Typhoon hull, with a nice slick hull coefficient, so it’s probably conservative.”
“Where did you learn to do this, Jonesy?”
“Mr. Thompson looked up the hydrodynamic stuff for me. The electrical end is fairly simple. He might have something exotic — fuel cells, maybe. If not, if he’s running ordinary batteries, he has enough raw electrical power to crank every car in L.A.”
Mancuso shook his head. “Can’t last forever.”
Jones held up his hand. “Hull creaking… Sounds like he’s going up some.”
“Raise snorkle,” Ramius said. Looking through the periscope he verified that the snorkle was up. “Well, no other ships in view. That is good news. I think we have lost our imperialist hunters. Raise the ESM antenna. Let’s be sure no enemy aircraft are lurking about with their radars.”
“Clear, Comrade Captain.” Bugayev was manning the ESM board. “Nothing at all, not even airline sets.”
“So, we have indeed lost our rat pack.” Ramius lifted the phone again. “Melekhin, you may open the main induction and vent the engine spaces, then start the diesel.” A minute later everyone aboard felt the vibration as the October’s massive diesel engine cranked on battery power. This sucked up all the air from the reactor spaces, replacing it with air drawn through the snorkle and ejecting the “contaminated” air into the sea.
The engine continued to crank two minutes, and throughout the hull men waited for the rumble that would mean the engine had caught and could generate power to run the electric motors. It didn’t catch. After another thirty seconds the cranking stopped. The control room phone buzzed. Ramius lifted it.
“What is wrong with the diesel, Comrade Chief Engineer?” the captain asked sharply. “I see. I’ll send men back — oh. Stand by.” Ramius looked around, his mouth a thin, bloodless smile. The junior engineering officer, Svyadov, was standing at the back of the compartment. “I need a man who knows diesel engines to help Comrade Melekhin.”
“I grew up on a State farm,” Bugayev said. “I started playing with tractor engines as a boy.”
“There is an additional problem…”
Bugayev nodded knowingly. “So I gather, Comrade Captain, but we need the diesel, do we not?”
“I will not forget this, Comrade,” Ramius said quietly.
“Then you can buy me some rum in Cuba, Comrade.” Bugayev smiled courageously. “I wish to meet a Cuban comrade, preferably one with long hair.”
“May I accompany you, Comrade?” Svyadov asked anxiously. He had just been going on watch, approaching the reactor room hatch, when he’d been knocked aside by escaping crewmen.
“Let us assess the nature of the problem first,” Bugayev said, looking at Ramius for confirmation.
“Yes, there is plenty of time. Bugayev, report to me yourself in ten minutes.”
“Aye aye, Comrade Captain.”
“Svyadov, take charge of the lieutenant’s station.” Ramius pointed to the ESM board. “Use the opportunity to learn some new skills.”
The lieutenant did as he was ordered. The captain seemed very preoccupied. Svyadov had never seen him like this before.
A Super Stallion
They were traveling at one hundred fifty knots, two thousand feet over the darkened sea. The Super Stallion helicopter was old. Built towards the end of the Vietnam War, she had first seen service clearing mines off Haiphong harbor. That had been her primary duty, pulling a sea sled and acting as a flying minesweeper. Now, the big Sikorski was used for other purposes, mainly long-range heavy-lift missions. The three turbine engines perched atop the fuselage packed a considerable amount of power and could carry a platoon of armed combat troops a great distance.
Tonight, in addition to her normal flight crew of three, she was carrying four passengers and a heavy load of fuel in the outrigger tanks. The passengers were clustered in the aft corner of the cargo area, chatting among themselves or trying to over the racket of the engines. Their conversation was animated. The intelligence officers had dismissed the danger implicit in their mission — no sense dwelling on that — and were speculating on what they might find aboard an honest-to-God Russian submarine. Each man considered the stories that would result, and decided it was a shame that they would never be able to tell them. None voiced this thought, however. At most a handful of people would ever know the entire story; the others would only see disjointed fragments that later might be thought parts of any number of other operations. Any Soviet agent trying to determine what this mission had been would find himself in a maze with dozens of blank walls.