“This is my ship — and I do not like the dark. It was my fault! We should have made a careful counting as the crew left.”
They arrived at the watertight door. “Okay, I’ll go through first.” Ryan stepped through and helped Ramius through backward. The belt had loosened, and the wound was bleeding again.
“Close the hatch and lock it,” Ramius ordered.
It closed easily. Ryan turned the wheel three times, then got under the captain’s arm again. Another twenty feet and they were in the control room. The lieutenant at the wheel was ashen.
Ryan sat the captain in a chair on the port side. “You have a knife, sir?”
Ramius reached in his pocket and came out with a folding knife and something else. “Here, take this. It’s the key for the rocket warheads. They cannot fire unless this is used. You keep it.” He tried to laugh. It had been Putin’s, after all.
Ryan flipped it around his neck, opened the knife, and cut the captain’s pants all the way up. The bullet had gone clean through the meaty part of the thigh. He took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and held it against the entrance wound. Ramius handed him another handkerchief. Ryan placed this against the half-inch exit wound. Next he set the belt across both, drawing it as tight as he could.
“My wife might not approve, but that will have to do.”
“Your wife?” Ramius asked.
“She’s a doc, an eye surgeon to be exact. The day I got shot she did this for me.” Ramius’ lower leg was growing pale. The belt was too tight, but Ryan didn’t want to loosen it just yet. “Now, what about the missile?”
Ramius gave an order to the lieutenant at the wheel, who relayed it through the intercom. Two minutes later three officers entered the control room. Speed was cut to five knots, which took several minutes. Ryan worried about the missile and whether or not he had destroyed whatever boobytrap the agent had installed. Each of the three newly arrived officers took a key from around his neck. Ramius did the same, giving his second key to Ryan. He pointed to the starboard side of the compartment.
“Rocket control.”
Ryan should have guessed as much. Arrayed throughout the control room were five panels, each with three rows of twenty-six lights and a key slot under each set.
“Put your key in number one, Ryan.” Jack did, and the others inserted their keys. The red light came on and a buzzer sounded.
The missile officer’s panel was the most elaborate. He turned a switch to flood the missile tube and open the number one hatch. The red panel lights began to blink.
“Turn your key, Ryan,” Ramius said.
“Does this fire the missile?” Christ, what if that happens? Ryan wondered.
“No no. The rocket must be armed by the rocket officer. This key explodes the gas charge.”
Could Ryan believe him? Sure he was a good guy and all that, but how could Ryan know he was telling the truth?
“Now!” Ramius ordered. Ryan turned his key at the same instant as the others. The amber light over the red light blinked on. The one under the green cover stayed off.
The Red October shuddered as the number one SS-N-20 was ejected upward by the gas charge. The sound was like a truck’s air brake. The three officers withdrew their keys. Immediately the missile officer shut the tube hatch.
The Dallas
“What?” Jones said. “Conn, sonar, the target just flooded a tube — a missile tube? God almighty!” On his own, Jones powered up the under-ice sonar and began high-frequency pinging.
“What the hell are you doing?” Thompson demanded. Mancuso was there a second later.
“What’s going on?” the captain snapped. Jones pointed at his display.
“The sub just launched a missile, sir. Look, Cap’n, two targets. But it’s just hangin’ there, no missile ignition. God!”
The Red October
Will it float? Ryan wondered.
It didn’t. The Seahawk missile was pushed upward and to starboard by the gas charge. It stopped fifty feet over her deck as the October cruised past. The guidance hatch that Ryan had closed was not fully sealed. Water filled the compartment and flooded the warhead bus. The missile in any case had a sizable negative bouyancy, and the added mass in the nose tipped it over. The nose-heavy trim gave it an eccentric path, and it spiraled down like a seedpod from a tree. At ten thousand feet water pressure crushed the seal over the missile blast cones, but the Seahawk, otherwise undamaged, retained its shape all the way to the bottom.
The Ethan Allen
The only thing still operating was the timer. It had been set for thirty minutes, which had allowed the crew plenty of time to board the Scamp, now leaving the area at ten knots. The old reactor had been completely shut down. It was stone cold. Only a few emergency lights remained on from residual battery power. The timer had three redundant firing circuits, and all went off within a millisecond of one another, sending a signal down the detonator wires.
They had put four Pave Pat Blue bombs on the Ethan Alien. The Pave Pat Blue was a FAE (fuel-air explosive) bomb. Its blast efficiency was roughly five times that of an ordinary chemical explosive. Each bomb had a pair of gas-release valves, and only one of the eight valves failed. When they burst open, the pressurized propane in the bomb casings expanded violently outward. In an instant the atmospheric pressure in the old submarine tripled as her every part was saturated with an explosive air-gas mixture. The four bombs filled the Ethan Alien with the equivalent of twenty-five tons of TNT evenly distributed throughout the hull.
The squibs fired almost simultaneously, and the results were catastrophic: the Ethan Alien’s strong steel hull burst as if it were a balloon. The only item not totally destroyed was the reactor vessel, which fell free of the shredded wreckage and dropped rapidly to the ocean floor. The hull itself was blasted into a dozen pieces, all bent into surreal shapes by the explosion. Interior equipment formed a metallic cloud within the shattered hull, and everything fluttered downward, expanding over a wide area during the three-mile descent to the hard sand bottom.
The Dallas
“Holy shit!” Jones slapped the headphones off and yawned to clear his ears. Automatic relays within the sonar system protected his ears from the full force of the explosion, but what had been transmitted was enough to make him feel as though his head had been hammered flat. The explosion was heard through the hull by everyone aboard.
“Attention all hands, this is the captain speaking. What you just heard is nothing to worry about. That’s all I can say.” “Gawd, Skipper!” Mannion said. “Yeah, let’s get back on the contact.” “Aye, Cap’n.” Mannion gave his commander a curious look.
The White House
“Did you get the word to him in time?” the president asked.
“No, sir.” Moore slumped into his chair. “The helicopter arrived a few minutes too late. It may be nothing to worry about. You’d expect that the captain would know enough to get everyone off except for his own people. We’re concerned, of course, but there isn’t anything we can do.”
“I asked him personally to do this, Judge. Me.”
Welcome to the real world, Mr. President, Moore thought. The chief executive had been lucky — he’d never had to send men to their deaths. Moore reflected that it was something easy to consider beforehand, less easy to get used to. He had affirmed death sentences from his seat on an appellate bench, and that had not been easy — even for men who had richly deserved their fates.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, Mr. President. The source this data comes from is more important than any one operation.”
“Very well. What about Senator Donaldson?”
“He agreed to our suggestion. This aspect of the operation has worked out very well indeed.”
“Do you really expect the Russians to buy it?” Pelt asked.
“We’ve left some nice bait, and we’ll jerk the line a little to get their attention. In a day or two we’ll see if they nibble at it. Henderson is one of their all-stars — his code name is Cassius — and their reaction to this will tell us just what sort of disinformation we can pass through him. He could turn out to be very useful, but we’ll have to watch out for him. Our KGB colleagues have a very direct method for dealing with doubles.”
“We don’t let him off the hook unless he earns it,” the president said coldly.
Moore smiled. “Oh, he’ll earn it. We own Mr. Henderson.”
THE FIFTEENTH DAY
FRIDAY, 17 DECEMBER
Ocracoke Inlet
There was no moon. The three-ship procession entered the inlet at five knots, just after midnight to take advantage of the extra-high spring tide. The Pogy led the formation since she had the shallowest draft, and the Dallas trailed the Red October. The coast guard stations on either side of the inlet were occupied by naval officers who had relieved the “coasties.”