Tom Clansy - Hunt for Red October

To help out with this, the Tarawa was bringing a pair of Apache attack helicopters, which carried lasers, air-to-air missiles, and their own air-to-surface missiles; they were antitank weapons expected to work well against small warships. His ships would be exposed to missile fire, but he didn't fear for his flagship. Unless the Russians were carrying nuclear warheads, their antiship missiles would not be able to damage his ship gravely - the New Jersey had upwards of a foot of class B armor plate. They would, however, play hell with his radar and communications gear, and worse, they would be lethal to his thin-hulled escorts. His ships carried their own antiship missiles, Harpoons and Tomahawks, though not as many as he would have liked. And what about a Russian sub hunting them? Eaton had been told of none, but you never knew where one might be hiding. Oh well - he couldn't worry about everything. A submarine could sink the New Jersey, but she would have to work at it. If the Russians were really up to something nasty, they'd get the first shot, but Eaton would have enough warning to launch his own missiles and get off a few rounds of gunfire while calling for air support - none of which would happen, he was sure. He decided that the Russians were on some sort of fishing expedition. His job was to show them that the fish in these waters were dangerous. Naval Air Station, North Island, California The oversized tractor-trailer crept at two miles per hour into the cargo bay of the C-5 A Galaxy transport under the watchful eyes of the aircraft's loadmaster, two flight officers, and six naval officers. Oddly, only the latter, none of whom wore aviator's wings, were fully versed in the procedure. The vehicle's center of gravity was precisely marked, and they watched the mark approach a particular number engraved on the cargo bay floor. The work had to be done exactly. Any mistake could fatally impair the aircraft's trim and imperil the lives of the flight crew and passengers. "Okay, freeze it right there," the senior officer called. The driver was only too glad to stop. He left the keys in the ignition, set all the brakes, and put the truck in gear before getting out. Someone else would drive it out of the aircraft on the other side of the country. The loadmaster and six airmen immediately went to work, snaking steel cables to eyebolts on the track and trailer to secure the heavy load. Shifting cargo was something else an aircraft rarely survived, and the C-5A did not have ejection seats. The loadmaster saw to it that his ground crewmen were properly at work before walking over to the pilot. He was a twenty-five-year sergeant who loved the C-5s despite their blemished history. "Cap'n, what the hell is this thing?" "It's called a DSRV, Sarge, deep submergence rescue vehicle." "Says Avalon on the back, sir," the sergeant pointed out. "Yeah, so it has a name. It's a sort of a lifeboat for submarines. Goes down to get the crew out if something screws up." "Oh." The sergeant considered that. He'd flown tanks, helicopters, general cargo, once a whole battalion of troops on his - he thought of the aircraft as his - Galaxy before. This was the first time he had ever flown a ship. If it had a name, he reasoned, it was a ship. Damn, the Galaxy could do anything! "Where we takin' it, sir?" "Norfolk Naval Air Station, and I've never been there either." The pilot watched the securing process closely. Already a dozen cables were attached. When a dozen more were in place, they'd put tension on the cables to prevent the minutest shift. "We figure a trip of five hours, forty minutes, all on internal fuel. We got the jet stream on our side today. Weather's supposed to be okay until we hit the coast. We lay over for a day, then come back Monday morning." "Your boys work pretty fast," said the senior naval officer, Lieutenant Ames, coming over. "Yes, Lieutenant, another twenty minutes." The pilot checked his watch. "We ought to be taking off on the hour." "No hurry, Captain. If this thing shifts in flight, I guess it would ruin our whole day. Where do I send my people?" "Upper deck forward. There's room for fifteen or so just aft of the flight deck." Lieutenant Ames knew this but didn't say so. He'd flown with his DSRV across the Atlantic several times and across the Pacific once, every time on a different C-5. "May I ask what the big deal is?" the pilot inquired. "I don't know," Ames said. "They want me and my baby in Norfolk." "You really take that little bitty thing underwater, sir?" the loadmaster asked. "That's what they pay me for. I've had her down to forty-eight hundred feet, almost a mile." Ames regarded his vessel with affection. "A mile under water, sir? Jesus - uh, pardon me, sir, but I mean, isn't that a little hairy - the water pressure, I mean?" "Not really. I've been down to twenty thousand aboard Trieste. It's really pretty interesting down mere. You see all kinds of strange fish." Though a fully qualified submariner, Ames' first love was research. He had a degree in oceanography and had commanded or served in all of the navy's deep-submergence vehicles except the nuclear-powered NR-1. "Of course, the water pressure would do bad things to you if anything went wrong, but it would be so fast you'd never know it. If you fellows want a check ride, I could probably arrange it. It's a different world down there." "That's okay, sir." The sergeant went back to swearing at his men. "You weren't serious," the pilot observed. "Why not? It's no big deal. We take civilians down all the time, and believe me, it's a lot less hairy than riding this damned white whale during a midair refueling." "Uh-huh," the pilot noted dubiously. He'd done hundreds of those. It was entirely routine, and he was surprised that anyone would find it dangerous. You had to be careful, of course, but, hell, you had to be careful driving every morning. He was sure that an accident on this pocket submarine wouldn't leave enough of a man to make a decent meal for a shrimp. It takes all kinds, he decided. "You don't go to sea by yourself in that, do you?" "No, ordinarily we work off a submarine rescue ship, Pigeon or Ortolan. We can also operate off a regular submarine. That gadget you see there on the trailer is our mating collar. We can nest on the back of a sub at the after escape trunk, and the sub takes us where we need to go." "Does this have to do with the flap on the East Coast?" "That's a good bet, but nobody's said anything official to us. The papers say the Russians have lost a sub. If so, we might go down to look at her, maybe rescue any survivors. We can take off twenty or twenty-five men at a time, and our mating collar is designed to fit Russian subs as well as our own." "Same size?" "Close enough." Ames cocked an eyebrow. "We plan for all kinds of contingencies." "Interesting." The North Atlantic The YAK-36 Forger had left the Kiev half an hour before, guided first by gyro compass and now by the ESM pod on the fighter's stubby rudder fin. Senior Lieutenant Viktor Shavrov's mission was not an easy one. He was to approach the American B-3A Sentry radar surveillance aircraft, one of which had been shadowing his fleet for three days now. The AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft had been careful to circle well beyond SAM range, but had stayed close enough to maintain constant coverage of the Soviet fleet, reporting every maneuver and radio transmission to their command base. It was like having a burglar watching one's apartment and being unable to do anything about it. Shavrov's mission was to do something about it. He couldn't shoot, of course. His orders from Admiral Stralbo on the Kirov had been explicit about that. But he was carrying a pair of Atoll heat-seeking missiles which he would be sure to show the imperialists. He and his admiral expected that this would teach them a lesson: the Soviet Navy did not like having imperialist snoopers about, and accidents had been known to happen.Читать дальше