The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy [226]
He couldn't recognize the face four hundred yards away, but it had to be Chambers.
" Dallas, this is Mancuso."
"Skipper, this is Chambers. You guys okay?"
"Yes! But we may need some hands. The bow's all stove in and we took a torpedo midships."
"I can see it, Bart. Look down."
"Jesus!" The jagged hole was awash, half out of the water, and the submarine was heavily down by the bow. Mancuso wondered how she could float at all, but it wasn't the time to question why.
"Come over here, Wally, and get the raft out."
"On the way. Fire and rescue is standing by, I—there's our other friend," Chambers said.
The Pogy surfaced three hundred yards directly ahead of the October.
"Pogy says the area's clear. Nobody here but us. Heard that one before?" Chambers laughed mirthlessly. "How about we radio in?"
"No, let's see if we can handle it first." The Dallas approached the October. Within minutes Mancuso's command submarine was seventy yards to port, and ten men on a raft were struggling across the chop. Up to this time only a handful of men aboard the Dallas had known what was going on. Now everyone knew. He could see his men pointing and talking. What a story they had.
Damage was not as bad as they had feared. The torpedo room had not flooded—a sensor damaged by the impact had given a false reading. The forward ballast tanks were permanently vented to the sea, but the submarine was so big and her ballast tanks so subdivided that she was only eight feet down at the bow. The list to port was only a nuisance. In two hours the radio room leak had been plugged, and after a lengthy discussion among Ramius, Melekhin, and Mancuso it was decided that they could dive again if they kept their speed down and did not go below thirty meters. They'd be late getting to Norfolk.
THE EIGHTEENTH DAY
MONDAY 20, DECEMBER
The Red October
Ryan again found himself atop the sail thanks to Ramius, who said that he had earned it. In return for the favor, Jack had helped the captain up the ladder to the bridge station. Mancuso was with them. There was now an American crew below in the control room, and the engine room complement had been supplemented so that there was something approaching a normal steaming watch. The leak in the radio room had not been fully contained, but it was above the waterline. The compartment had been pumped out, and the October's list had eased to fifteen degrees. She was still down by the bow, which was partially compensated for when the intact ballast tanks were blown dry. The crumpled bow gave the submarine a decidedly asymmetrical wake, barely visible in the moonless, cloud-laden sky. The Dallas and the Pogy were still submerged, somewhere aft, sniffing for additional interference as they neared Capes Henry and Charles.
Somewhere farther aft an LNG (liquified natural gas) carrier was approaching the passage, which the coast guard had closed to all normal traffic in order to allow the floating bomb to travel without interference all the way to the LNG terminal at Cove Point, Maryland—or so the story went. Ryan wondered how the navy had persuaded the ship's skipper to fake engine trouble or somehow delay his arrival. They were six hours late. The navy must have been nervous as all hell until they had finally surfaced forty minutes earlier and been spotted immediately by a circling Orion.
The red and green buoy lights winked at them, dancing on the chop. Forward he could see the lights of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, but there were no moving automobile lights. The CIA had probably staged a messy wreck to shut it down, maybe a tractor-trailer or two full of eggs or gasoline. Something creative.
"You've never been to America before," Ryan said, just to make conversation.
"No, never to a Western country. Cuba once, many years ago."
Ryan looked north and south. He figured they were inside the capes now. "Well, welcome home, Captain Ramius. Speaking for myself, sir, I'm damned glad you're here."
"And happier that you are here," Ramius observed.
Ryan laughed