Tom Clancy: The Hunt for Red October

‘How does breakfast grab you?’

‘Might as well. If we can finish up on the Afghanistan stuff, maybe I can fly back tomorr – tonight.’

‘You still might. Maybe this way you’ll learn to sleep on the plane.’

Breakfast was sent up twenty minutes later. Both men were accustomed to big ones, and the food was surprisingly good. Ordinarily CIA cafeteria food was government-undistinguished, and Ryan wondered if the night crew, with fewer people to serve, might take the time to do their job right. Or maybe they had sent out for it. The two men sat around until Davenport phoned at quarter to seven.

‘It’s definite. All the boomers are heading towards port. We have good tracks on two Yankee s, three Delta s , and a Typhoon. Memphis reported in when her Delta took off for home at twenty knots after being on station for five days, and then Gallery queried Queenfish. Same story – looks like they’re all headed for the barn. Also we just got some photos from a Big Bird pass over the fjord – for once it wasn’t covered with clouds – and we have a bunch of surface ships with bright infrared signatures, like they’re getting steam up.’

‘How about Red October ? ’ Ryan asked.

‘Nothing. Maybe our information was bad, and she didn’t sail. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘You don’t suppose they’ve lost her?’ Ryan wondered aloud.

Davenport had already thought of that. ‘That would explain the activity up north, but what about the Baltic and Med business?’

‘Two years ago we had that scare with Tullibee, ’ Ryan pointed out. ‘And the CNO was so furious he threw an all-hands rescue drill on both oceans.’

‘Maybe,’ Davenport conceded. The blood in Norfolk was supposed to have been ankle deep after that fiasco. The USS Tullibee , a small one-of-a-kind attack sub, had long carried a reputation for bad luck. In this case it had spilled over onto a lot of others.

‘Anyway, it looks a whole lot less scary than it did two hours back. They wouldn’t be recalling their boomers if they were planning anything against us, would they?’ Ryan said.

‘I see that Ryan still has your crystal ball, James.’

‘That’s what I pay him for, Charlie.’

‘Still, it is odd,’ Ryan commented. ‘Why recall all of the missile boats? Have they ever done this before? What about the ones in the Pacific?’

‘Haven’t heard about those yet,’ Davenport replied. ‘I’ve asked CINCPAC for data, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet. On the other question, no, they’ve never recalled all their boomers at once, but they do occasionally reshuffle all their positions at once. That’s probably what this is. I said they’re heading towards port, not into it. We won’t know that for a couple of days.’

‘What if they’re afraid they’ve lost one?’ Ryan ventured.

‘No such luck,’ Davenport scoffed. ‘They haven’t lost a boomer since that Golf we lifted off Hawaii, back when you were in high school, Ryan. Ramius is too good a skipper to let that happen.’

So was Captain Smith of the Titanic, Ryan thought.

‘Thanks for the info, Charlie.’ Greer hung up. ‘Looks like you were right, Jack. Nothing to worry about yet. Let’s get that data on Afghanistan in here – and just for the hell of it, we’ll look at Charlie’s pictures of their Northern Fleet when we’re finished.’

Ten minutes later a messenger arrived with a cart from central files. Greer was the sort who liked to see the raw data himself. This suited Ryan. He’d known of a few analysts who had based their reports on selective data and been cut off at the knees for it by this man. The information on the cart was from a variety of sources, but to Ryan the most significant were tactical radio intercepts from listening posts on the Pakistani border, and, he gathered, from inside Afghanistan itself. The nature and tempo of Soviet operations did not indicate a backing off, as seemed to be suggested by a pair of recent articles in Red Star and some intelligence sources inside the Soviet Union. They spent three hours reviewing the data.

‘I think Sir Basil is placing too much stock in political intelligence and too little in what our listening posts are getting in the field. It would not be unprecedented for the Soviets not to let their field commanders know what’s going on in Moscow, of course, but on the whole I do not see a clear picture,’ Ryan concluded.

The admiral looked at him. ‘I pay you for answers, Jack.’

‘Sir, the truth is that Moscow moved in there by mistake. We know that from both military and political intelligence reports. The tenor of the data is pretty clear. From where I sit, I don’t see that they know what they want to do. In a case like this the bureaucratic mind finds it most easy to do nothing. So, their field commanders are told to continue the mission, while the senior Party bosses fumble around looking for a solution and covering their asses for getting into the mess in the first place.’

‘Okay, so we know that we don’t know.’

‘Yes, sir. I don’t like it either, but saying anything else would be a lie.’

The admiral snorted. There was a lot of that at Langley, intelligence types giving answers when they didn’t even know the questions. Ryan was still new enough to the game that when he didn’t know, he said so. Greer wondered if that would change in time. He hoped not.

After lunch a package arrived by messenger from the National Reconnaissance Office. It contained the photographs taken earlier in the day on two successive passes by a KH-11 satellite. They’d be the last such photos for a while because of the restrictions imposed on orbital mechanics and the generally miserable weather on the Kola Peninsula. The first set of visible light shots taken an hour after the FLASH signal had gone out from Moscow showed the fleet at anchor or tied to the docks. On infrared a number of them were glowing brightly from internal heat, indicating that their boilers or gas-turbine engines were operating. The second set of photos had been taken on the next orbital pass at a very low angle.

Ryan scrutinized the blowups. ‘Wow! Kirov, Moskva, Kiev, three Kara s, five Kresta s, four Krivak s, eight Udaloy s, and five Sovremenny s.’

‘Search and rescue exercise, eh?’ Greer gave Ryan a hard look. ‘Look at the bottom here. Every fast oiler they have is following them out. That’s most of the striking force of the Northern Fleet right there, and if they need oilers, they figure to be out for a while.’

‘Davenport could have been more specific. But we still have their boomers heading back in. No amphibious ships in this photo, just combatants. Only the new ones, too, the ones with range and speed.’

‘And the best weapons.’

‘Yeah,’ Ryan nodded. ‘And all scrambled in a few hours. Sir, if they had this planned in advance, we’d have known about it. This must have been laid on today. Interesting.’

‘You’ve picked up the English habit of understatement, Jack.’ Greer stood up to stretch. ‘I want you to stay over an extra day.’

‘Okay sir.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Mind if I phone the wife? I don’t want her to drive out to the airport for a plane I’m not on.’

‘Sure, and after you’ve finished that, I want you to go down and see someone at DIA who used to work for me. See how much operational data they’re getting on this sortie. If this is a drill, we’ll know soon enough, and you can still take your Surfing Barbie home tomorrow.’

It was a Skiing Barbie, but Ryan didn’t say so.