Tom Clancy - The Hunt for Red October

‘Sea buoy in sight, Captain.’ Kamarov pointed. The red lighted buoy was riding actively on the waves.

‘Control room, what is the sounding?’ Ramius asked over the bridge telephone.

‘One hundred metres below the keel, Comrade Captain.’

‘Increase speed to two-thirds, come left ten degrees.’ Ramius looked at Kamarov. ‘Signal our course change to Purga, and hope he doesn’t turn the wrong way.’

Kamarov reached for the small blinker light stowed under the bridge coaming. The Red October began to accelerate slowly, her 30,000-ton bulk resisting the power of her engines. Presently the bow wave grew to a three-metre standing arc of water; man-made combers rolled down the missile deck, splitting against the front of the sail. The Purga altered course to starboard, allowing the submarine to pass well clear.

Ramius looked aft at the bluffs of the Kola Fjord. They had been carved to this shape millennia before by the remorseless pressure of towering glaciers. How many times in his twenty years of service with the Red Banner Northern Fleet had he looked at the wide, flat U-shape? This would be the last. One way or another, he’d never go back. Which way would it turn out? Ramius admitted to himself that he didn’t much care. Perhaps the stories his grandmother had taught him were true, about God and the reward for a good life. He hoped so – it would be good if Natalia were not truly dead. In any case, there was no turning back. He had left a letter in the last mailbag taken off before sailing. There was no going back after that.

‘Kamarov, signal to Purga: “Diving at –,”’ he checked his watch, ‘“– 1320 hours. Exercise OCTOBER FROST begins as scheduled. You are released to other assigned duties. We will return as scheduled.”’

Kamarov worked the trigger on the blinker light to transmit the message. The Purga responded at once, and Ramius read the flashing signal unaided: ‘IF THE WHALES DON’T EAT YOU. GOOD LUCK TO RED OCTOBER !’

Ramius lifted the phone again, pushing the button for the sub’s radio room. He had the same message transmitted to fleet headquarters, Severomorsk. Next he addressed the control room.

‘Depth under the keel?’

‘One hundred forty metres. Comrade Captain.’

‘Prepare to dive.’ He turned to the lookout and ordered him below. The boy moved towards the hatch. He was probably glad to return to the warmth below, but took the time for one last look at the cloudy sky, and receding cliffs. Going to sea on a submarine was always exciting, and always a little sad.

‘Clear the bridge. Take the conn when you get below, Gregoriy.’ Kamarov nodded and dropped down the hatch, leaving the captain alone.

Ramius made one last careful scan of the horizon. The sun was barely visible aft, the sky leaden, the sea black except for the splash of whitecaps. He wondered if he were saying good-bye to the world. If so, he would have preferred a more cheerful view of it.

Before sliding down he inspected the hatch seat, pulling it shut with a chain and making sure the automatic mechanism functioned properly. Next he dropped eight metres down the inside of the sail to the pressure hull, then two more into the control room. A michman (warrant officer) shut the second hatch and with a powerful spin turned the locking wheel as far as it would go.

‘Gregoriy?’ Ramius asked.

‘Straight board shut,’ the navigator said crisply, pointing to the diving board. All hull-opening indicator lights showed green, safe. ‘All systems aligned and checked for dive. The compensation is entered. We are rigged for dive.’

The captain made his own visual inspection of mechanical, electrical, and hydraulic indicators. He nodded, and the michman of the watch unlocked the vent controls.

‘Dive,’ Ramius ordered, moving to the periscope to relieve Vasily Borodin, his starpom (executive officer). Kamarov pulled the diving alarm, and the hull reverberated with the racket of a loud buzzer.

‘Flood the main ballast tanks. Rig out the diving planes. Ten degrees down-angle on the planes,’ Kamarov ordered, his eyes alert to see that every crewman did his job exactly. Ramius listened carefully but did not look. Kamarov was the best young seaman he had ever commanded, and had long since earned his captain’s trust.

The Red October ’s hull was filled with the noise of rushing air as vents at the top of the ballast tanks were opened and water entering from the tank floods at the bottom chased the buoying air out. It was a lengthy process, for the submarine had many such tanks, each carefully subdivided by numerous cellular baffles. Ramius adjusted the periscope lens to look down and saw the black water change briefly to foam.

The Red October was the largest and finest command Ramius had ever had, but the sub had one major flaw. She had plenty of engine power and a new drive system that he hoped would befuddle American and Soviet submarines alike, but she was so big that she changed depth like a crippled whale. Slow going up, even slower going down.

‘Scope under.’ Ramius stepped away from the instrument after what seemed a long wait. ‘Down periscope.’

‘Passing forty metres,’ Kamarov said.

‘Level off at one hundred metres.’ Ramius watched his crewmen now. The first dive could make experienced men shudder, and half his crew were farmboys straight from training camp. The hull popped and creaked under the pressure of the surrounding water, something that took getting used to. A few of the younger men went pale but stood rigidly upright.

Kamarov began the procedure for levelling off at the proper depth. Ramius watched with a pride he might have felt for his own son as the lieutenant gave the necessary orders with precision. He was the first officer Ramius had recruited. The control room crew snapped to his command. Five minutes later the submarine slowed her descent at ninety metres and settled the next ten to a perfect stop at one hundred.

‘Well done. Comrade Lieutenant. You have the conn. Slow to one-third speed. Have the sonarmen listen on all passive systems.’ Ramius turned to leave the control room, motioning Putin to follow him.

And so it began.

Ramius and Putin went aft to the submarine’s wardroom. The captain held the door open for the political officer, then closed and locked it behind himself. The Red October ’s wardroom was a spacious affair for a submarine, located immediately forward of the galley, aft of the officer accommodations. Its walls were soundproofed, and the door had a lock because her designers had known that not everything the officers had to say was necessarily for the ears of the enlisted men. It was large enough for all of the October ’s officers to eat as a group – though at least three of them would always be on duty. The safe containing the ship’s orders was here, not in the captain’s stateroom where a man might use his solitude to try opening it by himself. It had two dials. Ramius had one combination, Putin the other. Which was hardly necessary, since Putin undoubtedly knew their mission orders already. So did Ramius, but not all the particulars.

Putin poured tea as the captain checked his watch against the chronometer on the bulkhead. Fifteen minutes until he could open the safe. Putin’s courtesy made him uneasy.

‘Two more weeks of confinement,’ the zampolit said, stirring his tea.

‘The Americans do this for two months, Ivan. Of course, their submarines are far more comfortable.’ Despite her huge bulk, the October ’s crew accommodations would have shamed a gulag jailer. The crew consisted of fifteen officers, housed in fairly decent cabins aft, and a hundred enlisted men whose bunks were stuffed into corners and racks throughout the bow, forward of the missile room. The October ’s size was deceptive. The interior of her double hull was crammed with missiles, torpedoes, a nuclear reactor and its support equipment, a huge backup diesel power plant, and a bank of nickel-cadmium batteries outside the pressure hull, which was ten times the size of its American counterparts. Running and maintaining the ship was a huge job for so small a crew, even though extensive use of automation made her the most modern of Soviet naval vessels. Perhaps the men didn’t need proper bunks. They would only have four or six hours a day to make use of them. This would work to Ramius’ advantage. Half of his crew were draftees on their first operational cruise, and even the more experienced men knew little enough. The strength of his enlisted crew, unlike that of Western crews, resided much more in his eleven michmanyy (warrant officers) than in his glavnyy starshini (senior petty officers). All of them were men who would do – were specifically trained to do – exactly what their officers told them. And Ramius had picked the officers.