“Vitals?” Noyes fished in his bag for a stethoscope.
“Heart is 110 and thready. Blood pressure’s eighty over forty.”
Noyes moved his stethoscope around Williams’ chest, frowning. “Heart’s in the wrong place. We have a left tension pneumothorax. There must be a quart of fluid in there, and it sounds like he’s heading for congestive failure.” Noyes turned to Ryan. “You get out of here. I’ve got a chest to crack.”
“Take care of him, Doc. He’s a good man.”
“Aren’t they all,” Noyes observed, stripping off his jacket. “Let’s get scrubbed, people.”
Ryan wondered if a prayer would help. Noyes looked and talked like a surgeon. Ryan hoped he was. He went aft to the captain’s cabin, where Ramius was sleeping with the drugs he’d been given. The leg had stopped bleeding, and evidently one of the corpsmen had checked on it. Noyes could work on him next. Ryan went forward.
Borodin felt he had lost control and didn’t like it, though it was something of a relief. Two weeks of constant tension plus the nerve-wrenching change in plans had shaken the officer more than he would have believed. The situation now was unpleasant — the Americans were trying to be kind, but they were so damned overpowering! At least the Red October’s officers were not in danger.
Twenty minutes later the Zodiac was back again. Two sailors went topside to unload a few hundred pounds of frozen food, then helped Jones with his electronic gear. It took several minutes to get everything squared away, and the seamen who took the food forward came back shaken after finding two stiff bodies and a third frozen solid. There had not been time to move the two recent casualties.
“Got everything, Skipper,” Jones reported. He handed the depth gauge dial to the chief.
“What is all of this?” Borodin asked.
“Captain, I got the modulator to make the gertrude.” Jones held up a small box. “This other stuff is a little color TV, a video cassette recorder, and some movie tapes. The skipper thought you gentlemen might want something to relax with, to get to know us a little, you know?”
“Movies?” Borodin shook his head. “Cinema movies?”
“Sure,” Mancuso chuckled. “What did you bring, Jonesy?”
“Well, sir, I got E.T., Star Wars, Big Jake, and Hondo.” Clearly Jones wanted to be careful what parts of America he introduced the Russians to.
“My apologies, Captain. My crewman has limited taste in movies.”
At the moment Borodin would have settled for The Battleship Potemkin. The fatigue was really hitting him hard.
The cook bustled aft with an armload of groceries. “I’ll have coffee in a few minutes, sir,” he said to Borodin on his way to the galley.
“I would like something to eat. None of us has eaten in a day,” Borodin said.
“Food!” Mancuso called aft.
“Aye, Skipper. Let me figure this galley out.”
Mannion checked his watch. “Twenty minutes, sir.”
“We have everything we need aboard?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jones bypassed the pulse control on the sonar amplifier and wired in the modulator. It was even easier than he’d expected. He had taken a radio microphone from the Dallas along with everything else and now connected it to the sonar set before powering the system up. He had to wait for the set to warm up. Jones hadn’t seen this many tubes since he’d gone out on TV repair jobs with his father, and that had been a long time ago.
“Dallas, this is Jonesy, do you copy?”
“Aye.” The reply was scratchy, like a taxicab radio.
“Thanks. Out.” He switched off. “It works. That was pretty easy, wasn’t it?”
Enlisted man, hell! And not even trained on Soviet equipment! the October’s electronics officer thought. It never occurred to him that this piece of equipment was a near copy of an obsolete American FM system. “How long have you been a sonarman?”
“Three and a half years, sir. Since I dropped out of college.”
“You learn all this in three years?” the officer asked sharply.
Jones shrugged. “What’s the big deal, sir? I’ve been foolin’ with radios and stuff since I was a kid. You mind if I play some music, sir?”
Jones had decided to be especially nice. He had only one tape of a Russian composer, the Nutcracker Suite, and had brought that along with four Bachs. Jones liked to hear music while he prayed over circuit diagrams. The young sonarman was in Hog Heaven. All the Russian sets he had listened to for three years — now he had their schematics, their hardware, and the time to figure them all out. Bugayev continued to watch in amazement as Jones’ fingers did their ballet through the manual pages to the music of Tchaikovsky.
“Time to dive, sir,” Mannion said in control.
“Very well. With your permission, Captain Borodin, I will assist with the vents. All hatches and openings are… shut.” The diving board used the same light-array system as American boats, Mancuso noticed.
Mancuso took stock of the situation one last time. Butler and his four most senior petty officers were already tending to the nuclear tea kettle aft. The situation looked pretty good, considering. The only thing that could really go badly wrong would be for the October’s officers to change their minds. The Dallas would be keeping the missile sub under constant sonar observation. If she moved, the Dallas had a ten-knot speed advantage with which to block the channel.
“The way I see it, Captain, we are rigged for dive,” Mancuso said.
Borodin nodded and sounded the diving alarm. It was a buzzer, just like on American boats. Mancuso, Mannion, and the Russian officer worked the complex vent controls. The Red October began her slow descent. In five minutes she was resting on the bottom, with seventy feet of water over the top of her sail.
The White House
Pelt was on the phone to the Soviet embassy at three in the morning. “Alex, this is Jeffrey Pelt.”
“How are you, Dr. Pelt? I must offer my thanks and that of the Soviet people for your action to save our sailor. I was informed a few minutes ago that he is now conscious, and that he is expected to recover fully.”
“Yes, I just learned that myself. What’s his name, by the way?” Pelt wondered if he had awakened Arbatov. It didn’t sound like it.
“Andre Katyskin, a cook petty officer from Leningrad.”
“Good, Alex, I am informed that USS Pigeon has rescued nearly the entire crew of another Soviet submarine off the Carolinas. Her name, evidently, was Red October. That’s the good news, Alex. The bad news is that the vessel exploded and sank before we could get them all off. Most of the officers, and two of our officers, were lost.”
“When was this?”
“Very early yesterday morning. Sorry about the delay, but Pigeon had trouble with the radio, as a result of the underwater explosion, they say. You know how that sort of thing can happen.”
“Indeed.” Pelt had to admire the response, not a trace of irony. “Where are they now?”
“The Pigeon is sailing to Charleston, South Carolina. We’ll have your crewmen flown directly to Washington from there.”
“And this submarine exploded? You are sure?”
“Yeah, one of the crewmen said they had a major reactor accident. It was just good luck that Pigeon was there. She was heading to the Virginia coast to look at the other one you lost. I think your navy needs a little work, Alex,” Pelt observed.
“I will pass that along to Moscow, Doctor,” Arbatov responded dryly. “Can you tell us where this happened?”
“I can do better than that. We have a ship taking a deep-diving research sub down to look for the wreckage. If you want, you can have your navy fly a man to Norfolk, and we’ll fly him out to check it for you. Fair enough?”
“You say you lost two officers?” Arbatov played for time, surprised at the offer.
“Yes, both rescue people. We did get a hundred men off, Alex,” Pelt said defensively. “That’s something.”
“Indeed it is, Dr. Pelt. I must cable Moscow for instructions. I will be back to you. You are at your office?”
“Correct. Bye, Alex.” He hung up and looked at the president. “Do I pass, boss?”
“Work a little bit on the sincerity, Jeff.” The president was sprawled in a leather chair, a robe over his pajamas. “They’ll bite?”
“They’ll bite. They sure as hell want to confirm the destruction of the sub. Question is, can we fool ‘em?”
“Foster seems to think so. It sounds plausible enough.”
“Hmph. Well, we have her, don’t we?” Pelt observed.
“Yep, I guess that story about the GRU agent was wrong, or else they kicked him off with everybody else. I want to see that Captain Ramius. Jeez! Pulling a reactor scare, no wonder he got everybody off the ship!”
The Pentagon
Skip Tyler was in the CNO’s office trying to relax in a chair. The coast guard station on the inlet had had a low-light television, the tape from which had been flown by helicopter to Cherry Point and from there by Phantom jet fighter to Andrews. Now it was in the hands of a courier whose automobile was just pulling up at the Pentagon’s main entrance.