The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy [172]
"I heard a shot—no, several shots."
Ramius looked amused as he came a few steps forward. "I think you hear the sounds of the caterpillar engines, and I think it is your first time on a submarine boat, as you said. The first time is always difficult. It was so even for me."
Ryan stood up. "That may be, Captain, but I know a shot when I hear it." He unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out the pistol.
"You will give me that." Ramius held out his hand. "You may not have a pistol on my submarine!"
"Where are Williams and Kamarov?" Ryan wavered.
Ramius shrugged. "They are late, yes, but this is a big ship."
"I'm going forward to check."
"You will stay at your post!" Ramius ordered. "You will do as I say!"
"Captain, I just heard something that sounded like gunshots, and I am going forward to check it out. Have you ever been shot at? I have. I have the scars on my shoulder to prove it. You'd better take the wheel, sir."
Ramius picked up a phone and punched a button. He spoke in Russian for a few seconds and hung up. "I will go to show you that my submarine has no souls—ghosts, yes? Ghosts, no ghosts." He gestured to the pistol. "And you are no spy, eh?"
"Captain, believe what you want to believe, okay? It's a long story, and I'll tell it to you someday." Ryan waited for the relief that Ramius had evidently called for. The rumble of the tunnel drive made the sub sound like the inside of a drum.
An officer whose name he did not remember came into the control room. Ramius said something that drew a laugh—which stopped when the officer saw Ryan's pistol. It was obvious that neither Russian was happy he had one.
"With your permission, Captain?" Ryan gestured forward.
"Go on, Ryan."
The watertight door between control and the next space had been left open. Ryan entered the radio room slowly, eyes tracing left and right. It was clear. He went forward to the missile room door, which was dogged tight. The door, four feet or so high and about two across, was locked in place with a central wheel. Ryan turned the wheel with one hand. It was well oiled. So were the hinges. He pulled the door open slowly and peered around the hatch coaming.
"Oh, shit," Ryan breathed, waving the captain forward. The missile compartment was a good two hundred feet long, lit only by six or eight small glow lights. Hadn't it been brightly lit before? At the far end was a splash of bright light, and the far hatch had two shapes sprawled on the gratings next to it. Neither moved. The light Ryan saw them by was flickering next to a missile tube.
"Ghosts, Captain?" he whispered.
"It is Kamarov." Ramius said something else under his breath in Russian.
Ryan pulled the slide back on his FN automatic to make sure a round was in the chamber. Then he stepped out of his shoes.
"Better let me handle this. Once upon a time I was a lieutenant in the marines." And my training at Quantico, he thought to himself, had damned little to do with this. Ryan entered the compartment.
The missile room was almost a third of the submarine's length and two decks high. The lower deck was solid metal. The upper one was made of metal grates. Sherwood Forest, this place was called on American missile boats. The term was apt enough. The missile tubes, a good nine feet in diameter and painted a darker green than the rest of the room, looked like the trunks of enormous trees. He pulled the hatch shut behind him and moved to his right.
The light seemed to be coming from the farthest missile tube on the starboard side of the upper missile deck. Ryan stopped to listen. Something was happening there. He could hear a low rustling sound, and the light was moving as though it came from a hand-held work lamp. The sound was traveling down the smooth sides of the interior hull plating.
"Why me?" he whispered to himself. He'd have to get past thirteen missile tubes to get to the source of that light, cross over two hundred feet of open deck.
He moved around the first one, pistol in his right hand at waist level, his left hand tracing the cold metal of the tube. Already he was sweating into