Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October Read Online Free PDF Page A

acknowledged.
    The hull, which had gone momentarily silent, now had a new sound. The engine noises were lower and very different from what they had been. The reactor plant noises, mainly from pumps that circulated the cooling water, were almost imperceptible. The caterpillar did not use a great deal of power for what it did. At the michman's station the speed gauge, which had dropped to five knots, began to creep upward again. Forward of the missile room, in a space shoehorned into the crew's accommodations, the handful of sleeping men stirred briefly in their bunks as they noted an intermittent rumble aft and the hum of electric motors a few feet away, separated from them by the pressure hull. They were tired enough even on their first day at sea to ignore the noise, fighting back to their precious allotment of sleep.
    “Caterpillar functioning normally, Comrade Captain,” Borodin reported.
    “Excellent. Steer two-six-zero, helm,” Ramius ordered.
     “Two-six-zero, Comrade.” The helmsman turned his wheel to the left.
     
     
    The USS
    
     Bremerton
     
    Thirty miles to the northeast, the USS Bremerton was on a heading of two-two-five, just emerging from under the icepack. A 688-class attack submarine, she had been on an ELINT—electronic intelligence gathering—mission in the
    
    
     Kara
    
    
    
    
     Sea
    
    
     when she was ordered west to the
    
     Kola Peninsula
    
    . The Russian missile boat wasn't supposed to have sailed for another week, and the
    
    
     Bremerton
    
    
    's skipper was annoyed at this latest intelligence screw-up. He would have been in place to track the Red October if she had sailed as scheduled. Even so, the American sonarmen had picked up on the Soviet sub a few minutes earlier, despite the fact that they were traveling at fourteen knots.
    “
    
    
     Conn
    
    
    , sonar.”
    Commander Wilson lifted the phone. “Conn, aye.”
    “Contact lost, sir. His screws stopped a few minutes ago and have not restarted. There's some other activity to the east, but the missile sub has gone dead.”
    “Very well. He's probably settling down to a slow drift. We'll be creeping up on him. Stay awake, Chief.” Commander Wilson thought this over as he took two steps to the chart table. The two officers of the fire control tracking party who had just been establishing the track for the contact looked up to learn their commander's opinion.
    “If it was me, I'd go down near the bottom and circle slowly right about here.”
    
    
     Wilson
    
    
     traced a rough circle on the chart that enclosed the Red October's position. “So let's creep up on him. We'll reduce speed to five knots and see if we can move in and reacquire him from his reactor plant noise.”
    
    
     Wilson
    
    
     turned to the officer of the deck. “Reduce speed to five knots.”
    “Aye, Skipper.”
     
     
    Severomorsk
    
    
    
     ,
    
    
    
     USSR
     
    In the Central Post Office building in Severomorsk a mail sorter watched sourly as a truck driver dumped a large canvas sack on his work table and went back out the door. He was late—well, not really late, the clerk corrected himself, since the idiot had not been on time once in five years. It was a Saturday, and he resented being at work. Only a few years before, the forty-hour week had been started in the
    
     Soviet Union
    
    . Unfortunately this change had never affected such vital public services as mail delivery. So, here he was, still working a six-day week—and without extra pay! A disgrace, he thought, and had said often enough in his apartment, playing cards with his workmates over vodka and cucumbers.
    He untied the drawstring and turned the sack over. Several smaller bags tumbled out. There was no sense in hurrying. It was only the beginning of the month, and they still had weeks to move their quota of letters and parcels from one side of the building to the other. In the
    
     Soviet Union
    
     every worker is a government worker, and they have a saying: As long as the bosses pretend