The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy [183]
"I'm Doctor Noyes," the commander said to Mancuso in the control room. He had never been on a submarine before, and when he looked around he saw a compartment full of instruments all in a foreign language. "What ship is this?"
"Krazny Oktyabr," Borodin said, coming over. In the centerpiece of his cap there was a gleaming red star.
"What the hell is going on here?" Noyes demanded.
"Doc," Ryan took him by the arm, "you have two patients aft. Why not let's worry about them?"
Noyes followed him aft to sick bay. "What's going on here?" he persisted more quietly.
"The Russians just lost a submarine," Ryan explained, "and now she belongs to us. And if you tell anybody—"
"I read you, but I don't believe you."
"You don't have to believe me. What kind of cutter are you?"
"Thoracic."
"Good," Ryan turned into sick bay, "you have a gunshot wound victim who needs you bad."
Williams was lying naked on the table. A sailor came in with an armful of medical supplies and set them on Petrov's desk. The October's medical locker had a supply of frozen plasma, and the two corpsmen already had two units running into the lieutenant. A chest tube was in, draining into a vacuum bottle.
"We got a nine-millimeter in this man's chest," one of the corpsmen said after introducing himself and his partner. "He's had a chest tube in the last ten hours, they tell me. The head looks worse than it is. Right pupil is a little blown, but no big deal. The chest is bad, sir. You'd better take a listen."
"Vitals?" Noyes fished in his bag for a stethoscope.
"Heart is 110 and thready. Blood pressure's eighty over forty."
Noyes moved his stethoscope around Williams' chest, frowning. "Heart's in the wrong place. We have a left tension pneumothorax. There must be a quart of fluid in there, and it sounds like he's heading for congestive failure." Noyes turned to Ryan. "You get out of here. I've got a chest to crack."
"Take care of him, Doc. He's a good man."
"Aren't they all," Noyes observed, stripping off his jacket. "Let's get scrubbed, people."
Ryan wondered if a prayer would help. Noyes looked and talked like a surgeon. Ryan hoped he was. He went aft to the captain's cabin, where Ramius was sleeping with the drugs he'd been given. The leg had stopped bleeding, and evidently one of the corpsmen had checked on it. Noyes could work on him next. Ryan went forward.
Borodin felt he had lost control and didn't like it, though it was something of a relief. Two weeks of constant tension plus the nerve-wrenching change in plans had shaken the officer more than he would have believed. The situation now was unpleasant—the Americans were trying to be kind, but they were so damned overpowering! At least the Red October's officers were not in danger.
Twenty minutes later the Zodiac was back again. Two sailors went topside to unload a few hundred pounds of frozen food, then helped Jones with his electronic gear. It took several minutes to get everything squared away, and the seamen who took the food forward came back shaken after finding two stiff bodies and a third frozen solid. There had not been time to move the two recent casualties.
"Got everything, Skipper," Jones reported. He handed the depth gauge dial to the chief.
"What is all of this?" Borodin asked.
"Captain, I got the modulator to make the gertrude." Jones held up a small box. "This other stuff is a little color TV, a video cassette recorder, and some movie tapes. The skipper thought you gentlemen might want something to relax with, to get to know us a little, you know?"
"Movies?" Borodin shook his head. "Cinema movies?"
"Sure," Mancuso chuckled. "What did you bring, Jonesy?"
"Well, sir, I got E.T., Star Wars, Big Jake, and Hondo." Clearly Jones wanted to be careful what parts of America he introduced the Russians to.
"My apologies, Captain. My crewman has limited taste in movies."
At the moment Borodin