The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

“Yes, Comrade Captain!” the young man said.

They heard the Mystic’s electric motors overhead. A moment later came the metallic clang of the mating collar gripping the escape trunk. It had taken forty minutes, but it had seemed like a week. God, what if the reactor really was bad? Ryan thought.

The Scamp

Two miles away, the Scamp had halted a few hundred yards from the Ethan Alien. Both submarines were exchanging messages on their gertrudes. The Scamp sonarmen had noted the passage of the three submarines an hour earlier. The Pogy and Dallas were now between the Red October and the other two American subs, their sonar operators listening intently for any interference, any vessel that might come their way. The transfer area was far enough offshore to miss the coastal traffic of commercial freighters and tankers, but that might not keep them from meeting a stray vessel from another port.

The Red October

When the third set of crewmen left under the control of Lieutenant Svyadov, a cook at the end of the line broke away, explaining that he wanted to retrieve his cassette tape machine, something he had saved months for. No one noticed when he didn’t return, not even Ramius. His crewmen, even the experienced michmanyy, jostled one another to get out of their submarine. There was only one more group to go.

The Pigeon

On the Pigeon, the Soviet crewmen were taken to the crew’s mess. The American sailors were observing their Russian counterparts closely, but no words passed. The Russians found the tables set with a meal of coffee, bacon, eggs, and toast. Petrov was happy for that. It was no problem keeping control of the men when they ate like wolves. With a junior officer acting as interpreter, they asked for and got plenty of additional bacon. The cooks had orders to stuff the Russians with all the food they could eat. It kept everyone busy as a helicopter landed from shore with twenty new men, one of whom raced to the bridge.

The Red October

“Last group,” Ryan murmured to himself. The Mystic mated again. The last round trip had taken an hour. When the pair of hatches was opened, the lieutenant from the DSRV came down.

“Next trip will be delayed, gentlemen. Our batteries have about had it. It’ll take ninety minutes to recharge. Any problem?”

“It will be as you say,” Ramius replied. He translated for his men and then ordered Ivanov to take the next group. “The senior officers will stay behind. We have work to do.” Ramius took the young officer’s hand. “If something happens, tell them in Moscow that we have done our duty.”

“I will do that, Comrade Captain.” Ivanov nearly choked on his answer.

Ryan watched the sailors leave. The Red October’s escape trunk hatch was closed, then the Mystic’s. One minute later there was a clanging sound as the minisub lifted free. He heard the electric motors whirring off, fading rapidly away, and felt the green-painted bulkheads closing in on him. Being on an airplane was frightening, but at least the air didn’t threaten to crush you. Here he was, underwater, three hundred miles from shore in the world’s largest submarine, with only ten men aboard who knew how to run her.

“Commander Ryan,” Ramius said, drawing himself to attention, “my officers and I request political asylum in the United States — and we bring you this small present.” Ramius gestured toward the steel bulkheads.

Ryan had already framed his reply. “Captain, on behalf of the president of the United States, it is my honor to grant your request. Welcome to freedom, gentlemen.”

No one knew that the intercom system in the compartment had been switched on. The indicator light had been unplugged hours before. Two compartments forward the cook listened, telling himself that he had been right to stay behind, wishing he had been wrong. Now what will I do? he wondered. His duty. That sounded easy enough — but would he remember how to carry it out?

“I don’t know what to say about you guys.” Ryan shook everyone’s hand again. “You pulled it off. You really pulled it off!”

“Excuse me, Commander,” Kamarov said. “Do you speak Russian?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant Williams here does, but I do not. A group of Russian-speaking officers was supposed to be here in my place, but their helicopter crashed at sea last night.” Williams translated this. Four of the officers had no knowledge of English.

“And what happens now?”

“In a few minutes, a missile submarine will explode two miles from here. One of ours, an old one. I presume that you told your men you were going to scuttle — Jesus, I hope you didn’t say what you were really doing?”

“And have a war aboard my ship?” Ramius laughed. “No, Ryan. Then what?”

“When everybody thinks Red October has sunk, we’ll head northwest to the Ocracoke Inlet and wait. USS Dallas and Pogy will be escorting us. Can these few men operate the ship?”

“These men can operate any ship in the world!” Ramius said it in Russian first. His men grinned. “So, you think that our men will not know what has become of us?”

“Correct. Pigeon will see an underwater explosion. They have no way of knowing it’s in the wrong place, do they? You know that your navy has many ships operating off our coast right now? When they leave, well, men we’ll figure out where to keep this present permanently. I don’t know where that will be. You men, of course, will be our guests. A lot of our people will want to talk with you. For the moment, you can be sure that you will be treated very well — better than you can imagine.” Ryan was sure that the CIA would give each a considerable sum of money. He didn’t say so, not wanting to insult this kind of bravery. It had surprised him to learn that defectors rarely expect to receive money, almost never ask for any.

“What about political education?” Kamarov asked.

Ryan laughed. “Lieutenant, somewhere along the line somebody will take you aside to explain how our country works. That will take about two hours. After that you can immediately start telling us what we do wrong — everybody else in the world does, why shouldn’t you? But I can’t do that now. Believe this, you will love it, probably more than I do. I have never lived in a country that was not free, and maybe I don’t appreciate my home as much as I should. For the moment, I suppose you have work to do.”

“Correct,” Ramius said. “Come, my new comrades, we will put you to work also.”

Ramius led Ryan aft through a series of watertight doors. In a few minutes he was in the missile room, a vast compartment with twenty-six dark-green tubes towering through two decks. The business end of a boomer, with two-hundred-plus thermonuclear warheads. The menace in this room was enough to make hair bristle at the back of Ryan’s neck. These were not academic abstractions, these were real. The upper deck he walked on was a grating. The lower deck, he could see, was solid. After passing through this and another compartment they were in the control room. The interior of the submarine was ghostly quiet; Ryan sensed why sailors are superstitious.

“You will sit here.” Ramius pointed Ryan to the helmsman’s station on the port side of the compartment. There was an aircraft-style wheel and a gang of instruments.

“What do I do?” Ryan asked, sitting.

“You will steer the ship, Commander. Have you never done this before?”

“No, sir. I’ve never been on a submarine before.”

“But you are a naval officer.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, captain. I work for the CIA.”

“CIA?” Ramius hissed the acronym as if it were poisonous.

“I know, I know.” Ryan dropped his head on the wheel. “They call us the Dark Forces. Captain, this is one Dark Force who’s probably going to wet his pants before we’re finished here. I work at a desk, and believe me on this if nothing else — there’s nothing I’d like better than to be home with my wife and kids right now. If I had half a brain, I would have stayed in Annapolis and kept writing my books.”

“Books? What do you mean?”

“I’m an historian, Captain. I was asked to join the CIA a few years ago as an analyst. Do you know what that is? Agents bring in their data, and I figure out what it means. I got into this mess by mistake — shit, you don’t believe me, but it’s true. Anyway, I used to write books on naval history.”

‘Tell me your books,” Ramius ordered.

“Options and Decisions, Doomed Eagles, and a new one coming out next year, Fighting Sailor, a biography of Admiral Halsey. My first one was about the Battle of Leyte Gulf. It was reviewed in Morskoi Sbornik, I understand. It dealt with the nature of tactical decisions made under combat conditions. There’s supposed to be a dozen copies at the Frunze library.”