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The Hunt for Red October
Tom Clancy
The runaway international No.1 bestseller that launched Tom Clancy’s spectacular career – became a blockbuster film – and introduced Jack Ryan.THE HUNT IS ON…Silently, beneath the chill Atlantic waters, Russia’s ultra-secret missile submarine, the Red October, is heading west.The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. With all-out war only seconds away, the superpowers race across the ocean on the most desperate mission of a lifetime.
COPYRIGHT (#)
All the characters in this book, with the exception of Sergey Gorshkov, Yuri Padorin, Oleg Penkovskiy, Valery Sablin, Hans Tofte, and Greville Wynne, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The names, incidents, dialogue and opinions expressed are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Nothing is intended or should be interpreted as expressing or representing the views of the US Navy or any other department or agency of any government body.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1985
First published in the USA by Naval Institute Press 1984
Copyright © Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd 1984
Tom Clancy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2018 ISBN: 9780007375059
SOURCE ISBN: 9780008279530
Version 2018-11-15
PRAISE FOR TOM CLANCY: (#)
‘He constantly taps the current world situation for its imminent dangers and spins them into an engrossing tale’
New York Times
‘Heart-stopping action … entertaining and eminently topical’
Washington Post
‘Exhilarating. No other novelist is giving so full a picture of modern conflict’
Sunday Times
‘A brilliantly constructed thriller that packs a punch like Semtex’
Daily Mail
‘A virtuoso display of page-turning talent’
Sunday Express
DEDICATION (#)
For Ralph Chatham,
a sub driver who spoke the truth,
and for all the men who wear dolphins
Cover (#uee5ac14a-1FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Title Page (#uee5ac14a-2FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474)
Copyright (#)
Praise (#)
Dedication (#)
The First Day: Friday, 3 December (#)
The Second Day: Saturday, 4 December (#)
The Third Day: Sunday, 5 December (#)
The Fourth Day: Monday, 6 December (#)
The Fifth Day: Tuesday, 7 December (#)
The Sixth Day: Wednesday, 8 December (#)
The Seventh Day: Thursday, 9 December (#)
The Eighth Day: Friday, 10 December (#)
The Ninth Day: Saturday, 11 December (#)
The Tenth Day: Sunday, 12 December (#)
The Eleventh Day: Monday, 13 December (#)
The Twelfth Day: Tuesday, 14 December (#)
The Thirteenth Day: Wednesday, 15 December (#)
The Fourteenth Day: Thursday, 16 December (#)
The Fifteenth Day: Friday, 17 December (#)
The Sixteenth Day: Saturday, 18 December (#)
The Seventeenth Day: Sunday, 19 December (#)
The Eighteenth Day: Monday, 20 December (#)
Acknowledgements (#)
About the Author (#)
Also by Tom Clancy (#)
About the Publisher (#)
THE FIRST DAY (#)
Friday, 3 December (#)
THE RED OCTOBER
Captain First Rank Marko Ramius of the Soviet Navy was dressed for the Arctic conditions normal to the Northern Fleet submarine base at Polyarnyy. Five layers of wool and oilskin enclosed him. A dirty harbour tug pushed his submarine’s bow around to the north, facing down the channel. The dock that had held his Red October for two interminable months was now a water-filled concrete box, one of the many specially built to shelter strategic missile submarines from the harsh elements. On its edge a collection of sailors and dockyard workers watched his ship sail in stolid Russian fashion, without a wave or a cheer.
‘Engines ahead slow, Kamarov,’ he ordered. The tug slid out of the way, and Ramius glanced aft to see the water stirring from the force of the twin bronze propellers. The tug’s commander waved. Ramius returned the gesture. The tug had done a simple job, but done it quickly and well. The Red October, a Typhoon-class sub, moved under her own power towards the main ship channel of the Kola Fjord.
‘There’s Purga, Captain.’ Gregoriy Kamarov pointed to the icebreaker that would escort them to sea. Ramius nodded. The two hours required to transit the channel would tax not his seamanship but his endurance. There was a cold north wind blowing, the only sort of north wind in this part of the world. Late autumn had been surprisingly mild, and scarcely any snow had fallen in an area that measures it in metres; then a week before a major winter storm had savaged the Murmansk coast, breaking pieces off the Arctic icepack. The icebreaker was no formality. The Purga would butt aside any ice that might have drifted overnight into the channel. It would not do at all for the Soviet Navy’s newest missile submarine to be damaged by an errant chunk of frozen water.
The water in the fjord was choppy, driven by the brisk wind. It began to lap over the October’s spherical bow, rolling back down the flat missile deck which lay before the towering black sail. The water was coated with the bilge oil of numberless ships, filth that would not evaporate in the low temperatures and that left a black ring on the rocky walls of the fjord as though from the bath of a slovenly giant. An altogether apt simile, Ramius thought. The Soviet giant cared little for the dirt it left on the face of the earth, he grumbled to himself. He had learned his seamanship as a boy on inshore fishing boats, and knew what it was to be in harmony with nature.
‘Increase speed to one-third,’ he said. Kamarov repeated his captain’s order over the bridge telephone. The water stirred more as the October moved astern of the Purga. Captain Lieutenant Kamarov was the ship’s navigator, his last duty station having been harbour pilot for the large combatant vessels based on both sides of the wide inlet. The two officers kept a weather eye on the armed icebreaker three hundred metres ahead. The Purga’s after deck had a handful of crewmen stomping about in the cold, one wearing the white apron of a ship’s cook. They wanted to witness the Red October’s first operational cruise, and besides, sailors will do almost anything to break the monotony of their duties.
Ordinarily it would have irritated Ramius to have his ship escorted out – the channel here was wide and deep – but not today. The ice was something to worry about. And so, for Ramius, was a great deal else.
‘So, my Captain, again we go to sea to serve and protect the Rodina!’ Captain Second Rank Ivan Yurievich Putin poked his head through the hatch – without permission, as usual – and clambered up the ladder with the awkwardness of a landsman. The tiny control station was already crowded enough with the captain, the navigator, and a mute lookout. Putin was the ship’s zampolit (political officer). Everything he did was to serve the Rodina (Motherland), a word that had mystical connotations to a Russian and, along with V. I. Lenin, was the Communist Party’s substitute for a godhead.
‘Indeed, Ivan,’ Ramius replied with more good cheer than he felt. ‘Two weeks at sea. It is good to leave the dock. A seaman belongs at sea, not tied alongside, overrun with bureaucrats and workmen with dirty boots. And we will be warm.’
‘You find this cold?’ Putin asked incredulously.
For the hundredth time Ramius told himself that Putin was the perfect political officer. His voice was always too loud, his humour too affected. He never allowed a person to forget what he was. The perfect political officer, Putin was an easy man to fear.
‘I have been in submarines too long, my friend. I grow accustomed to moderate temperatures and a stable deck under my feet.’ Putin did not notice the veiled insult. He’d been assigned to submarines after his first tour on destroyers had been cut short by chronic seasickness – and perhaps because he did not resent the close confinement aboard submarines, something that many men cannot tolerate.
‘Ah, Marko Aleksandrovich, in Gorkiy on a day like this, flowers bloom!’
‘And what sort of flowers might those be, Comrade Political Officer?’ Ramius surveyed the fjord through his binoculars. At noon the sun was barely over the southeast horizon, casting orange light and purple shadows along the rocky walls.
‘Why, snow flowers, of course,’ Putin said, laughing loudly. ‘On a day like this the faces of the children and the women glow pink, your breath trails behind you like a cloud, and the vodka tastes especially fine. Ah, to be in Gorkiy on a day like this!’
The bastard ought to work for Intourist, Ramius told himself, except that Gorkiy is a city closed to foreigners. He had been there twice. It had struck him as a typical Soviet city, full of ramshackle buildings, dirty streets, and ill-clad citizens. As it was in most Russian cities, winter was Gorkiy’s best season. The snow hid all the dirt. Ramius, half Lithuanian, had childhood memories of a better place, a coastal village whose Hanseatic origin had left rows of presentable buildings.
It was unusual for anyone other than a Great Russian to be aboard – much less command – a Soviet naval vessel. Marko’s father, Aleksandr Ramius, had been a hero of the Party, a dedicated, believing Communist who had served Stalin faithfully and well. When the Soviets first occupied Lithuania in 1940, the elder Ramius was instrumental in rounding up political dissidents, shop owners, priests, and anyone else who might have been troublesome to the new regime. All were shipped off to fates that now even Moscow could only guess at. When the Germans invaded a year later, Aleksandr fought heroically as a political commissar, and was later to distinguish himself in the Battle of Leningrad. In 1944 he returned to his native land with the spearhead of the Eleventh Guards Army to wreak bloody vengeance on those who had collaborated with the Germans or been suspected of such. Marko’s father had been a true Soviet hero – and Marko was deeply ashamed to be his son. His mother’s health had been broken during the endless siege of Leningrad. She died giving birth to him, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother in Lithuania while his father strutted through the Party Central Committee in Vilnius, awaiting his promotion to Moscow. He got that, too, and was a candidate member of the Politburo when his life was cut short by a heart attack.
Marko’s shame was not total. His father’s prominence had made his current goal a possibility, and Marko planned to wreak his own vengeance on the Soviet Union, enough, perhaps, to satisfy the thousands of his countrymen who had died before he was ever born.
‘Where we are going, Ivan Yurievich, it will be colder still.’
Putin clapped his captain’s shoulder. Was his affection feigned or real? Marko wondered. Probably real. Ramius was an honest man, and he recognized that this short, loud oaf did have some human feelings.
‘Why is it, Comrade Captain, that you always seem glad to leave the Rodina and go to sea?’
Ramius smiled behind his binoculars. ‘A seaman has one country, Ivan Yurievich, but two wives. You never understand that. Now I go to my other wife, the cold, heartless one that owns my soul.’ Ramius paused. The smile vanished. ‘My only wife, now.’
Putin was quiet for once, Marko noted. The political officer had been there, had cried real tears as the coffin of polished pine rolled into the cremation chamber. For Putin the death of Natalia Bogdanova Ramius had been a cause of grief, but beyond that the act of an uncaring God whose existence he regularly denied. For Ramius it had been a crime committed not by God but the State. An unnecessary, monstrous crime, one that demanded punishment.
‘Ice.’ The lookout pointed.
‘Loose-pack ice, starboard side of the channel, or perhaps something calved off the east-side glacier. We’ll pass well clear,’ Kamarov said.
‘Captain!’ The bridge speaker had a metallic voice. ‘Message from fleet headquarters.’
‘Read it.’
‘“Exercise area clear. No enemy vessels in vicinity. Proceed as per orders. Signed, Korov, Fleet Commander.”’
‘Acknowledged,’ Ramius said. The speaker clicked off. ‘So, no Amerikantsi about?’
‘You doubt the fleet commander?’ Putin inquired.
‘I hope he is correct,’ Ramius replied, more sincerely than his political officer would appreciate. ‘But you remember our briefings.’
Putin shifted on his feet. Perhaps he was feeling the cold.
‘Those American 688-class submarines, Ivan, the Los Angeleses. Remember what one of their officers told our spy? That they could sneak up on a whale and bugger it before it knew they were there? I wonder how the KGB got that bit of information. A beautiful Soviet agent, trained in the ways of the decadent West, too skinny, the way the imperialists like their women, blonde hair …’ The captain grunted amusement. ‘Probably the American officer was a boastful boy, trying to find a way to do something similar to our agent, no? And feeling his liquor, like most sailors. Still. The American Los Angeles class, and the new British Trafalgars, those we must guard against. They are a threat to us.’
‘The Americans are good technicians. Comrade Captain,’ Putin said, ‘but they are not giants. Their technology is not so awesome. Nasha lutcha,’ he concluded. Ours is better.
Ramius nodded thoughtfully, thinking to himself that zampoliti really ought to know something about the ships they supervised, as mandated by Party doctrine.
‘Ivan, didn’t the farmers around Gorkiy tell you it is the wolf you do not see that you must fear? But don’t be overly concerned. With this ship we will teach them a lesson, I think.’
