The Hunt for Red October

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‘Jack, I know I don’t have to say this – but what you have just read, nobody, not the president, not Sir Basil, not God if He asks, nobody learns of it without the authorization of the director. Is that understood?’ Greer had not lost his command voice.

‘Yes, sir.’ Ryan bobbed his head like a schoolboy.

Judge Moore pulled a cigar from his jacket pocket and lit it, looking past the flame into Ryan’s eyes. The judge, everyone said, had been a hell of a field officer in his day. He’d worked with Hans Tofte during the Korean War and had been instrumental in bringing off one of the CIA’s legendary missions, the disappearance of a Norwegian ship that had been carrying a cargo of medical personnel and supplies for the Chinese. The loss had delayed a Chinese offensive for several months, saving thousands of American and allied lives. But it had been a bloody operation. All of the Chinese personnel and all of the Norwegian crewmen had vanished. It was a bargain in the simple mathematics of war, but the morality of the mission was another matter. For this reason, or perhaps another, Moore had soon thereafter left government service to become a trial lawyer in his native Texas. His career had been spectacularly successful, and he’d advanced from wealthy courtroom lawyer to distinguished appellate judge. He had been recalled to the CIA three years earlier because of his unique combination of absolute personal integrity and experience in black operations. Judge Moore hid a Harvard law degree and a highly ordered mind behind the façade of a West Texas cowboy, something he had never been but simulated with ease.

‘So, Dr Ryan, what do you think of this?’ Moore said as the deputy director of operations came in. ‘Hi, Bob, come on over here. We just showed Ryan here the WILLOW file.’

‘Oh?’ Ritter slid a chair over, neatly trapping Ryan in the corner. ‘And what does the admiral’s fair-haired boy think of that?’

‘Gentlemen, I assume that you all regard this information as genuine,’ Ryan said cautiously, getting nods. ‘Sir, if this information was hand delivered by the Archangel Michael, I’d have trouble believing it – but since you gentlemen say it’s reliable …’ They wanted his opinion. The problem was, his conclusion was too incredible. Well, he decided, I’ve gotten this far by giving my honest opinions …

Ryan took a deep breath and gave them his evaluation.

‘Very well, Dr Ryan,’ Judge Moore nodded sagaciously. ‘First I want to hear what else it might be, then I want you to defend your analysis.’

‘Sir, the most obvious alternative doesn’t bear much thinking about. Besides, they’ve been able to do it since Friday and they haven’t done it,’ Ryan said, keeping his voice low and reasonable. Ryan had trained himself to be objective. He ran through the four alternatives he had considered, careful to examine each in detail. This was no time to allow personal views to intrude on his thinking. He spoke for ten minutes.

‘I suppose there’s one more possibility. Judge,’ he concluded. ‘This could be disinformation aimed at blowing this source. I cannot evaluate that possibility.’

‘The thought has occurred to us. All right, now that you’ve gone this far, you might as well give your operational recommendation.’

‘Sir, the admiral can tell you what the navy’ll say.’

‘I sorta figured that one out, boy,’ Moore laughed. ‘What do you think?’

‘Judge, setting up the decision tree on this will not be easy – there are too many variables, too many possible contingencies. But I’d say yes. If it’s possible, if we can work out the details, we ought to try. The biggest question is the availability of our own assets. Do we have the pieces in place?’

Greer answered. ‘Our assets are slim. One carrier, Kennedy. I checked. Saratoga’s in Norfolk with an engineering casualty. On the other hand, HMS Invincible was just over here for that NATO exercise, sailed from Norfolk Monday night. Admiral White, I believe, commanding a small battle group.’

‘Lord White, sir?’ Ryan asked. ‘The Earl of Weston?’

‘You know him?’ Moore asked.

‘Yes, sir. Our wives are friendly. I shot grouse with him in Scotland last September. He makes noises like a good operator, and I hear he has a good reputation.’

‘You’re thinking we might want to borrow their ships, James?’ Moore asked. ‘If so, we’ll have to tell them about this. But we have to tell our side first. There’s a meeting of the National Security Council at one this afternoon. Ryan, you will prepare the briefing papers and deliver the briefing yourself.’

Ryan blinked. ‘That’s not much time, sir.’

‘James here says you work well under pressure. Prove it.’ He looked at Greer. ‘Get a copy of his briefing papers and be ready to fly to London. That’s the president’s decision. If we want their boats, we’ll have to tell them why. That means briefing the prime minister, and that’s your job. Bob, I want you to confirm this report. Do what you have to do, but do not get WILLOW involved.’

‘Right,’ Ritter replied.

Moore looked at his watch. ‘We’ll meet back here at 3:30, depending on how the meeting goes. Ryan, you have ninety minutes. Get cracking.’

What am I being measured for? Ryan wondered. There was talk in the CIA that Judge Moore would be leaving soon for a comfortable ambassadorship, perhaps to the Court of St James’s, a fitting reward for a man who had worked long and hard to reestablish a close relationship with the British. If the judge left, Admiral Greer would probably move into this office. He had the virtues of age – he wouldn’t be around that long – and of friends on Capitol Hill. Ritter had neither. He had complained too long and too openly about congressmen who leaked information on his operations and his field agents, getting men killed in the process of demonstrating their importance on the local cocktail circuit. He also had an ongoing feud with the chairman of the Select Intelligence Committee.

With that sort of reshuffling at the top and this sudden access to new and fantastic information … What does it mean for me? Ryan asked himself. They couldn’t want him to be the next DDI. He knew he didn’t have anything like the experience required for that job – though maybe in another five or six years …

REYKJANES RIDGE

Ramius inspected his status board. The Red October was heading southwest on track eight, the westernmost surveyed route on what Northern Fleet submariners called Gorshkov’s Railroad. His speed was thirteen knots. It never occurred to him that this was an unlucky number, an Anglo-Saxon superstition. They would hold this course and speed for another twenty hours. Immediately behind him, Kamarov was seated at the submarine’s gravitometer board, a large rolled chart behind him. The young lieutenant was chain-smoking, and looked tense as he ticked off their position on the chart. Ramius did not disturb him. Kamarov knew his job, and Borodin would relieve him in another two hours.

Installed in the Red October’s keel was a highly sensitive device called a gradiometer, essentially two large lead weights separated by a space of one hundred yards. A laser-computer system measured the space between the weights down to a fraction of an angstrom. Distortions of that distance or lateral movement of the weights indicated variations in the local gravitational field. The navigator compared these highly precise local values to the values of his chart. With careful use of gravitometers in the ship’s inertial navigation system, he could plot the vessel’s location to within a hundred metres, half the length of the ship.

The mass-sensing system was being added to all the submarines that could accommodate it. Younger attack boat commanders, Ramius knew, had used it to run the Railroad at high speed. Good for the commander’s ego, Ramius judged, but a little hard on the navigator. He felt no need for recklessness. Perhaps the letter had been a mistake … No, it prevented second thoughts. And the sensor suites on attack submarines simply were not good enough to detect the Red October so long as he maintained his silent routine. Ramius was certain of this; he had used them all. He would get where he wanted to go, do what he wanted to do, and nobody, not his own countrymen, not even the Americans, would be able to do a thing about it. That’s why earlier he had listened to the passage of an Alfa thirty miles to his east and smiled.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Judge Moore’s CIA car was a Cadillac limousine that came with a driver and a security man who kept an Uzi submachinegun under the dashboard. The driver turned right off Pennsylvania Avenue onto Executive Drive. More a parking lot than a street, this served the needs of senior officials and reporters who worked at the White House and the Executive Office Building, ‘Old State,’ that shining example of Institutional Grotesque that towered over the executive mansion. The driver pulled smoothly into a vacant VIP slot and jumped out to open the doors after the security man had swept the area with his eyes. The judge got out first and went ahead, and as Ryan caught up he found himself walking on the man’s left, half a step behind. It took a moment to remember that this instinctive action was exactly what the marine corps had taught him at Quantico was the proper way for a junior officer to accompany his betters. It forced Ryan to consider just how junior he was.

‘Ever been in here before, Jack?’

‘No, sir, I haven’t.’

Moore was amused. ‘That’s right, you come from around here. Now, if you came from farther away, you’d have made the trip a few times.’ A marine guard held the door open for them. Inside a Secret Service agent signed them in. Moore nodded and walked on.

‘Is this to be in the Cabinet Room, sir?’

‘Uh-uh. Situation Room, downstairs. It’s more comfortable and better equipped for this sort of thing. The slides you need are already down there, all set up. Nervous?’

‘Yes, sir, I sure am.’

Moore chuckled. ‘Settle down, boy. The president has wanted to meet you for some time now. He liked that report on terrorism you did a few years back, and I’ve shown him some more of your work, and the one on Russian missile submarine operations, and the one you just did on management practices in their arms industries. All in all, I think you’ll find he’s a pretty regular guy. Just be ready when he asks questions. He’ll hear every word you say, and he has a way of hitting you with good ones when he wants.’ Moore turned to descend a staircase. Ryan followed him down three flights, then they came to a door which led to a corridor. The judge turned left and walked to yet another door, this one guarded by another Secret Service agent.

‘Afternoon, Judge. The president will be down shortly.’

‘Thank you. This is Dr Ryan. I’ll vouch for him.’

‘Right.’ The agent waved them in.

It was not nearly as spectacular as Ryan had expected. The Situation Room was probably no larger than the Oval Office upstairs. There was expensive-looking wood panelling over what were probably concrete walls. This part of the White House dated back to the complete rebuilding job done under Truman. Ryan’s lectern was to his left as he went in. It stood in front and slightly to the right of a roughly diamond-shaped table, and behind it was the projection screen. A note on the lectern said the slide projector in the middle of the table was ready loaded and focused, and gave the order of the slides, which had been delivered from the National Reconnaissance Office.

Most of the people were already here, all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defence. The secretary of state, he remembered, was still shuttling back and forth between Athens and Ankara trying to settle the latest Cyprus situation. This perennial thorn in NATO’s southern flank had flared up a few weeks earlier when a Greek student had run over a Turkish child with his car and been killed by a gang minutes later. By the end of the day fifty people had been injured, and the putatively allied countries were once more at each other’s throats. Now two American aircraft carriers were cruising the Aegean as the secretary of state laboured to calm both sides. It was bad enough that two young people had died, Ryan thought, but not something to get a country’s army mobilized for.

Also at the table were General Thomas Hilton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Jeffrey Pelt, the president’s national security adviser, a pompous man Ryan had met years before at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. Pelt was going through some papers and dispatches. The chiefs were chatting amicably among themselves when the commandant of the marine corps looked up and spotted Ryan. He got up and walked over.

‘You Jack Ryan?’ General David Maxwell asked.

‘Yes, sir.’ Maxwell was a short, tough fireplug of a man whose stubbly haircut seemed to spark with aggressive energy. He looked Ryan over before shaking hands.

‘Pleased to meet you, son. I liked what you did over in London. Good for the corps.’ He referred to the terrorist incident in which Ryan had very nearly been killed. ‘That was good, quick action you took, Lieutenant.’

‘Thank you, sir. I was lucky.’

‘Good officer’s supposed to be lucky. I hear you got some interesting news for us.’

‘Yes sir. I think you will find it worth your time.’

‘Nervous?’ The general saw the answer and smiled thinly. ‘Relax, son. Everybody in this damned cellar puts his pants on the same way as you.’ He backhanded Ryan to the stomach and went back to his seat. The general whispered something to Admiral Daniel Foster, chief of naval operations. The CNO looked Ryan over for a moment before going back to what he was doing.

The president arrived a minute later. Everyone in the room stood as he walked to his chair, on Ryan’s right. He said a few quick things to Dr Pelt, then looked pointedly at the DCI.

‘Gentlemen, if we can bring this meeting to order, I think Judge Moore has some news for us.’

‘Thank you, Mr President. Gentlemen, we’re had an interesting development today with respect to the Soviet naval operation that started yesterday. I have asked Dr Ryan here to deliver the briefing.’

The president turned to Ryan. The younger man could feel himself being appraised. ‘You may proceed.’

Ryan took a sip of ice water from a glass hidden in the lectern. He had a wireless control for the slide projector and a choice of pointers. A separate high-intensity light illuminated his notes. The pages were full of errors and scribbled corrections. There had not been time to edit the copy.

‘Thank you, Mr President. Gentlemen, my name is Jack Ryan, and the subject of this briefing is recent Soviet naval activity in the North Atlantic. Before I get to that it will be necessary for me to lay a little groundwork. I trust you will bear with me for a few minutes, and please feel free to interrupt with questions at any time.’ Ryan clicked on the slide projector. The overhead lights near the screen dimmed automatically.

‘These photographs come to us courtesy of the British,’ Ryan said. He now had everyone’s attention. ‘The ship you see here is the Soviet fleet ballistic missile submarine Red October, photographed by a British agent in her dock at their submarine base at Polyarnyy, near Murmansk in northern Russia. As you can see, she is a very large vessel, about 650 feet long, a beam of roughly 85 feet, and an estimated submerged displacement of 32,000 tons. These figures are roughly comparable to those of a World War I battleship.’

Ryan lifted a pointer. ‘In addition to being considerably larger than our own Ohio-class Trident submarines, Red October has a number of technical differences. She carries twenty-six missiles instead of our twenty-four. The earlier Typhoon-class vessels, from which she was developed, only have twenty. October carries the new SS-N-20 sea-launched ballistic missile, the Seahawk. It’s a solid-fuel missile with a range of about six thousand nautical miles, and it carries eight multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, MIRV’s, each with an estimated yield of five hundred kilotons. It’s the same RV carried by their SS-18s, but there are less of them per launcher.

‘As you can see, the missile tubes are located forward of the sail instead of aft, as in our subs. The forward diving planes fold into slots in the hull here; ours go on the sail. She has twin screws; ours have one propeller. And finally, her hull is oblate. Instead of being cylindrical like ours, it is flattened out markedly top and bottom.’

Ryan clicked to the next slide. It showed two views superimposed, bow over stern. ‘These frames were delivered to us undeveloped. They were processed by the National Reconnaissance Office. Please note the doors here at the bow and here at the stern. The British were a little puzzled by these, and that’s why I was permitted to bring the shots over earlier this week. We weren’t able to figure out their function at the CIA either, and it was decided to seek the opinion of an outside consultant.’

‘Who decided?’ the secretary of defence demanded angrily. ‘Hell, I haven’t even seen them yet!’

‘We only got them Monday, Bert,’ Judge Moore replied soothingly. ‘These two on the screen are only four hours old. Ryan suggested an outside expert, and James Greer approved it. I concurred.’

‘His name is Oliver W. Tyler. Dr Tyler is a former naval officer who is now associate professor of engineering at the Naval Academy and a paid consultant to Sea Systems Command. He’s an expert in the analysis of Soviet naval technology. Skip – Dr Tyler – concluded that these doors are the intake and exhaust vents for a new silent propulsion system. He is currently developing a computer model of the system, and we hope to have this information by the end of the week. The system itself is rather interesting.’ Ryan explained Tyler’s analysis briefly.

‘Okay, Dr Ryan.’ The president leaned forward. ‘You’ve just told us that the Soviets have built a missile submarine that’s supposed to be hard for our men to locate. I don’t suppose that’s news. Go on.’

‘Red October’s captain is a man named Marko Ramius. That is a Lithuanian name, although we believe his internal passport designates his nationality as Great Russian. He is the son of a high Party official, and as good a submarine commander as they have. He’s taken out the lead ship of every Soviet submarine class for the past ten years.

‘Red October sailed last Friday. We do not know exactly what her orders were, but ordinarily their missile subs – that is, those with the newer long-range missiles – confine their activities to the Barents Sea and adjacent areas in which they can be protected from our attack boats by land-based ASW aircraft, their own surface ships, and attack submarines. About noon local time on Sunday, we noted increased search activity in the Barents Sea. At the time we took this to be a local ASW exercise, and by late Monday it looked to be a test of October’s new drive system.

‘As you all know, early yesterday saw a vast increase in Soviet naval activity. Nearly all of the blue-water ships assigned to their Northern Fleet are now at sea, accompanied by all of their fast fleet-replenishment vessels. Additional fleet auxiliaries sailed from the Baltic Fleet bases and the western Mediterranean. Even more disquieting is the fact that nearly every nuclear submarine assigned to the Northern Fleet – their largest – appears to be heading into the North Atlantic. This includes three from the Med, since submarines there come from the Northern Fleet, not the Black Sea Fleet. Now we think we know why all this happened.’ Ryan clicked to the next slide. This one showed the North Atlantic, from Florida to the Pole, with Soviet ships marked in red.

‘The day Red October sailed, Captain Ramius evidently posted a letter to Admiral Yuri Ilych Padorin. Padorin is chief of the Main Political Administration of their navy. We do not know what that letter said, but here we can see its results. This began to happen not four hours after that letter was opened. Fifty-eight nuclear-powered submarines and twenty-eight major surface combatants all headed our way. This is a remarkable reaction in four hours. This morning we learned what their orders are.

‘Gentlemen, these ships have been ordered to locate Red October, and if necessary, to sink her.’ Ryan paused for effect. ‘As you can see, the Soviet surface force is here, about halfway between the European mainland and Iceland. Their submarines, these in particular, are all heading southwest towards the US coast. Please note, there is no unusual activity on the Pacific side of either country – except we have information that Soviet fleet ballistic missile submarines in both oceans are being recalled to port.

‘Therefore, while we do not know exactly what Captain Ramius said, we can draw some conclusions from these patterns of activity. It would appear that they think he’s heading in our direction. Given his estimated speed as something between ten and thirty knots, he could be anywhere from here, below Iceland, to here, just off our coast. You will note that in either case he has successfully avoided detection by all four of these SOSUS barriers –’

‘Wait a minute. You say they have issued orders to their ships to sink one of their own submarines?’

‘Yes, Mr President.’

The president looked at the DCI. ‘This is reliable information, Judge?’

‘Yes, Mr President, we believe it to be solid.’

‘Okay, Dr Ryan, we’re all waiting. What’s this Ramius fellow up to?’

‘Mr President, our evaluation of this intelligence data is that Red October is attempting to defect to the United States.’

The room went very quiet for a moment. Ryan could hear the whirring of the fan in the slide projector as the National Security Council pondered that. He held his hands on the lectern to keep them from shaking under the stare of the ten men in front of him.

‘That’s a very interesting conclusion, Doctor.’ The president smiled. ‘Defend it.’

‘Mr President, no other conclusion fits the data. The really crucial thing, of course, is the recall of their other missile boats. They’ve never done that before. Add to that the fact that they have issued orders to sink their newest and most powerful missile sub, and that they are chasing in this direction, and one is left with the conclusion that they think she has left the reservation and is heading this way.’

‘Very well. What else could it be?’

‘Sir, he could have told them that he’s going to fire his missiles. At us, at them, the Chinese, or just about anyone else.’

‘And you don’t think so?’

‘No, Mr President. The SS-N-20 has a range of six thousand miles. That means he could have hit any target in the Northern Hemisphere from the moment he left the dock. He’s had six days to do that, but he has not fired. Moreover, if he had threatened to launch his birds, he would have to consider the possibility that the Soviets would enlist our assistance to locate and sink him. After all, if our surveillance systems detect the launch of nuclear-armed missiles in any direction, things could get very tense, very quickly.’

‘You know he could fire his birds in both directions and start World War III,’ the secretary of defence observed.

‘Yes, Mr Secretary. In that case we’d be dealing with a total madman – more than one, in fact. On our missile boats there are five officers, who must all agree and act in unison to fire their missiles. The Soviets have the same number. For political reasons their nuclear warhead security procedures are even more elaborate than ours. Five or more people, all of whom wish to end the world?’ Ryan shook his head. ‘That seems most unlikely, sir, and again, the Soviets would be well advised to inform us and enlist our aid.’

‘Do you really think they would inform us?’ Dr Pelt asked. His tone indicated what he thought.

‘Sir, that’s more a psychological question than a technical one, and I deal principally with technical intelligence. Some of the men in this room have met their Soviet counterparts and are better equipped to answer that than I am. My answer to your question, however, is yes. That would be the only rational thing for them to do, and while I do not regard the Soviets as entirely rational by our standards, they are rational by their own. They are not given to this sort of high-stakes gambling.’

‘Who is?’ the president observed. ‘What else might it be?’

‘Several things, sir. It could simply be a major naval exercise aimed at testing their ability to close our sea lines of communication and our ability to respond, both on short notice. We reject this possibility for several reasons. It’s too soon after their autumn naval exercise, CRIMSON STORM, and they are only using nuclear submarines; no diesel-powered boats seem to be involved. Clearly speed is at a premium in their operation. And as a practical matter, they do not run major exercises at this time of year.’