Ryan had been allowed atop the sail, a humanitarian gesture from Ramius that he much appreciated. After eighteen hours inside the Red October Jack had felt confined, and it was good to see the world — even if it was nothing but dark empty space. The Pogy showed only a dim red light that disappeared if it was looked at for more than a few seconds. He could see the water’s feathery wisps of foam and the stars playing hide-and-seek through the clouds. The west wind was a harsh twenty knots coming off the water.
Borodin was giving terse, monosyllabic orders as he conned the submarine up a channel that had to be dredged every few months despite the enormous jetty which had been built to the north. The ride was an easy one, the two or three feet of chop not mattering a whit to the missile sub’s 30,000-ton bulk. Ryan was thankful for this. The black water calmed, and when they entered sheltered waters a Zodiac-type rubber boat zoomed towards them.
“Ahoy Red October!” a voice called in the darkness. Ryan could barely make out the gray lozenge shape of the Zodiac. It was ahead of a tiny patch of foam formed by the sputtering outboard motor.
“May I answer, Captain Borodin?” Ryan asked, getting a nod. “This is Ryan. We have two casualties aboard. One’s in bad shape. We need a doctor and a surgical team right away! Do you understand?”
“Two casualties, and you need a doc, right.” Ryan thought he saw a man holding something to his face, and thought he heard the faint crackle of a radio. It was hard to tell in the wind. “Okay. We’ll have a doc flown down right away, October. Dallas and Pogy both have medical corpsmen aboard. You want ‘em?”
“Damn straight!” Ryan replied at once.
“Okay. Follow Pogy two more miles and stand by.” The Zodiac sped forward, reversed course, and disappeared in the darkness.
“Thank God for that,” Ryan breathed.
“You are be — believer?” Borodin asked.
“Yeah, sure.” Ryan should not have been surprised by the question. “Hell, you gotta believe in something.”
“And why is that, Commander Ryan?” Borodin was examining the Pogy through oversized night glasses.
Ryan wondered how to answer. “Well, because if you don’t, what’s the point of life? That would mean Sartre and Camus and all those characters were right — all is chaos, life has no meaning. I refuse to believe that. If you want a better answer, I know a couple priests who’d be glad to talk to you.”
Borodin did not respond. He spoke an order into the bridge microphone, and they altered course a few degrees to starboard.
The Dallas
A half mile aft, Mancuso was holding a light-amplifying night scope to his eyes. Mannion was at his shoulder, struggling to see.
“Jesus Christ,” Mancuso whispered.
“You got that one right, Skipper,” Mannion said, shivering in his jacket. “I’m not sure I believe it either. Here comes the Zodiac.” Mannion handed his commander the portable radio used for docking.
“Do you read?”
“This is Mancuso.”
“When our friend stops, I want you to transfer ten men to her, including your corpsman. They report two casualties who need medical attention. Pick good men, Commander, they’ll need help running the boat — just make damned sure they’re men who don’t talk.”
“Acknowledged. Ten men including the medic. Out.” Mancuso watched the raft speed off to the Pogy. “Want to come along, Pat?”
“Bet your ass, uh, sir. You planning to go?” Mannion asked.
Mancuso was judicious. “I think Chambers is up to handling Dallas for a day or so, don’t you?”
On shore, a naval officer was on the phone to Norfolk. The coast guard station was crowded, almost entirely with officers. A fiberglass box sat next to the phone so that they could communicate with CINCLANT in secrecy. They had been here only two hours and would soon leave. Nothing could appear out of the ordinary. Outside, an admiral and a pair of captains watched the dark shapes through starlight scopes. They were as solemn as men in a church.
Cherry Point, North Carolina
Commander Ed Noyes was resting in the doctor’s lounge of the naval hospital at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, North Carolina. A qualified flight surgeon, he had the duty for the next three nights so that he’d have four days off over Christmas. It had been a quiet night. This was about to change.
“Doc?”
Noyes looked up to see a marine captain in MP livery. The doctor knew him. Military police delivered a lot of accident cases. He set down his New England Journal of Medicine.
“Hi, Jerry. Something coming in?”
“Doc, I got orders to tell you to pack everything you need for emergency surgery. You got two minutes, then I take you to the airfield.”
“What for? What kind of surgery?” Noyes stood.
“They didn’t say, sir, just that you fly out somewhere, alone. The orders come from topside, that’s all I know.”
“Damn it, Jerry, I have to know what sort of surgery it is so I know what to take!”
“So take everything, sir. I gotta get you to the chopper.”
Noyes swore and went into the trauma receiving room. Two more marines were waiting there. He handed them four sterile sets, prepackaged instrument trays. He wondered if he’d need some drugs and decided to grab an armful, along with two units of plasma. The captain helped him on with his coat, and they moved out the door to a waiting jeep. Five minutes later they pulled up to a Sea Stallion whose engines were already screaming.
“What gives?” Noyes asked the colonel of intelligence inside, wondering where the crew chief was.
“We’re heading out over the sound,” the colonel explained. “We have to let you down on a sub that has some casualties aboard. There’s a pair of corpsmen to assist you, and that’s all I know, okay?” It had to be okay. There was no choice in the matter.
The Stallion lifted off at once. Noyes had flown in them often enough. He had two hundred hours piloting helicopters, another three hundred in fixed-wing aircraft. Noyes was the kind of doctor who’d discovered too late that flying was as attractive a calling as medicine. He went up at every opportunity, often giving pilots special medical care for their dependents to get backseat time in an F-4 Phantom. The Sea Stallion, he noted, was not cruising. It was running flat out.
Pamlico Sound
The Pogy came to a halt about the time the helicopter left Cherry Point. The October altered course to starboard again and halted even with her to the north. The Dallas followed suit. A minute after that the Zodiac reappeared at the Dallas’ side, then approached the Red October slowly, almost wallowing with her cargo of men.
“Ahoy Red October!”
This time Borodin answered. He had an accent but his English was understandable. “Identify.”
“This is Bart Mancuso, commanding officer of USS Dallas. I have our ship’s medical representative aboard and some other men. Request permission to come aboard, sir.”
Ryan saw the starpom grimace. For the first time Borodin really had to face up to what was happening, and he would have been less than human to accept it without some kind of struggle.
“Permission is — yes.”
The Zodiac edged right up to the curve of the hull. A man leaped aboard with a line to secure the raft. Ten men clambered off, one breaking away to climb up the submarine’s sail.
“Captain? I’m Bart Mancuso. I understand you have some hurt men aboard.”
“Yes,” Borodin nodded, “the captain and a British officer, both shot.”
“Shot?” Mancuso was surprised.
“Worry about that later,” Ryan said sharply. “Let’s get your doc working on them, okay?”
“Sure, where’s the hatch?”
Borodin spoke into the bridge mike, and a few seconds later a circle of light appeared on deck at the foot of the sail.
“We haven’t got a physician, we have an independent duty corpsman. He’s pretty good, and Fogy’s man will be here in another couple minutes. Who are you, by the way?”
“He is a spy,” Borodin said with palpable irony.
“Jack Ryan.”
“And you, sir?”
“Captain Second Rank Vasily Borodin. I am — first officer, yes? Come over into the station, Commander. Please excuse me, we are all very tired.”
“You’re not the only ones.” There wasn’t that much room. Mancuso perched himself on the coaming. “Captain, I want you to know we had a bastard of a time tracking you. You are to be complimented for your professional skill.”
The compliment did not elicit the anticipated response from Borodin. “You were able to track us. How?”
“I brought him along, you can meet him.”
“And what are we to do?”
“Orders from shore are to wait for the doc to arrive and dive. Then we sit tight until we get orders to move. Maybe a day, maybe two. I think we could all use the rest. After that, we get you to a nice safe place, and I will personally buy you the best damned Italian dinner you ever had.” Mancuso grinned. “You get Italian food in Russia?”