The Stallion lifted off at once. Noyes had flown in them often enough. He had two hundred hours piloting helicopters, another three hundred in fixed-wing aircraft. Noyes was the kind of doctor who’d discovered too late that flying was as attractive a calling as medicine. He went up at every opportunity, often giving pilots special medical care for their dependents to get backseat time in an F-4 Phantom. The Sea Stallion, he noted, was not cruising. It was running flat out.
The Pogy came to a halt about the time the helicopter left Cherry Point. The October altered course to starboard again and halted even with her to the north. The Dallas followed suit. A minute after that the Zodiac reappeared at the Dallas’ side, then approached the Red October slowly, almost wallowing with her cargo of men.
“Ahoy Red October!”
This time Borodin answered. He had an accent but his English was understandable. “Identify.”
“This is Bart Mancuso, commanding officer of USS Dallas. I have our ship’s medical representative aboard and some other men. Request permission to come aboard, sir.”
Ryan saw the starpom grimace. For the first time Borodin really had to face up to what was happening, and he would have been less than human to accept it without some kind of struggle.
“Permission is — yes.”
The Zodiac edged right up to the curve of the hull. A man leaped aboard with a line to secure the raft. Ten men clambered off, one breaking away to climb up the submarine’s sail.
“Captain? I’m Bart Mancuso. I understand you have some hurt men aboard.”
“Yes,” Borodin nodded, “the captain and a British officer, both shot.”
“Shot?” Mancuso was surprised.
“Worry about that later,” Ryan said sharply. “Let’s get your doc working on them, okay?”
“Sure, where’s the hatch?”
Borodin spoke into the bridge mike, and a few seconds later a circle of light appeared on deck at the foot of the sail.
“We haven’t got a physician, we have an independent duty corpsman. He’s pretty good, and Pogy’s man will be here in another couple minutes. Who are you, by the way?”
“He is a spy,” Borodin said with palpable irony.
“Jack Ryan.”
“And you, sir?”
“Captain Second Rank Vasily Borodin. I am — first officer, yes? Come over into the station, Commander. Please excuse me, we are all very tired.”
“You’re not the only ones.” There wasn’t that much room. Mancuso perched himself on the coaming. “Captain, I want you to know we had a bastard of a time tracking you. You are to be complimented for your professional skill.”
The compliment did not elicit the anticipated response from Borodin. “You were able to track us. How?”
“I brought him along, you can meet him.”
“And what are we to do?”
“Orders from shore are to wait for the doc to arrive and dive. Then we sit tight until we get orders to move. Maybe a day, maybe two. I think we could all use the rest. After that, we get you to a nice safe place, and I will personally buy you the best damned Italian dinner you ever had.” Mancuso grinned. “You get Italian food in Russia?”
“No, and if you are accustomed to good food, you may find Krazny Oktyabr not to your liking.”
“Maybe I can fix that. How many men aboard?”
“Twelve. Ten Soviet, the Englishman, and the spy.” Borodin glanced at Ryan with a thin smile.
“Okay.” Mancuso reached into his coat and came out with a radio. “This is Mancuso.”
“We’re here, Skipper,” Chambers replied.
“Get some food together for our friends. Six meals for twenty-five men. Send a cook over with it. Wally, I want to show these men some good chow. Got it?”
“Aye aye, Skipper. Out.”
“I got some good cooks, Captain. Shame this wasn’t last week. We had lasagna, just like momma used to make. All that was missing was the Chianti.”
“They have vodka,” Ryan observed.
“Only for spies,” Borodin said. Two hours after the shootout Ryan had had the shakes badly, and Borodin had sent him a drink from the medical stores. “We are told that your submarine men are greatly pampered.”
“Maybe so,” Mancuso nodded. “But we stay out sixty or seventy days at a time. That’s hard enough, don’t you think?”
“How about we go below?” Ryan suggested. Everyone agreed. It was getting cold.
Borodin, Ryan and Mancuso went below to find the Americans on one side of the control room and the Soviets on the other, just like before. The American captain broke the ice.
“Captain Borodin, this is the man who found you. Come here, Jonesy.”
“It wasn’t very easy, sir,” Jones said. “Can I get to work? Can I see your sonar room?”
“Bugayev.” Borodin waved the ship’s electronics officer over. The captain-lieutenant led the sonarman aft.
Jones took one look at the equipment and muttered, “Kludge.” The face plates all had louvers on them to let out the heat. God, did they use vacuum tubes? Jones wondered. He pulled a screwdriver from his pocket to find out.
“You speak English, sir?”
“Yes, a little.”
“Can I see the circuit diagrams for these, please?”
Bugayev blinked. No enlisted man, and only one of his michmanyy, had ever asked for it. Then he took the binder of schematics from its shelf on the forward bulkhead.
Jones matched the code number of the set he was checking with the right section of the binder. Unfolding the diagram, he noted with relief that ohms were ohms, all over the world. He began tracing his finger along the page, then pulled the cover panel off to look inside the set.
“Kludge, megakludge to the max!” Jones was shocked enough to lapse into Valspeak.
“Excuse me, what is this ‘kludge’?”
“Oh, pardon me, sir. That’s an expression we use in the navy. I don’t know how to say it in Russian. Sorry.” Jones stifled a grin as he went back to the schematic. “Sir, this one here’s a low-powered high-frequency set, right? You use this for mines and stuff?”
It was Bugayev’s turn to be shocked. “You have been trained in Soviet equipment?”
“No, sir, but I’ve sure heard a lot of it.” Wasn’t this obvious? Jones wondered. “Sir, this is a high-frequency set, but it doesn’t draw a lot of power. What else is it good for? A low-power FM set you use for mines, for work under ice, and for docking, right?”
“Correct.”
“You have a gertrude, sir?”
“Gertrude?”
“Underwater telephone, sir, for talking to other subs.” Didn’t this guy know anything?
“Ah, yes, but it is located in control, and it is broken.”
“Uh-huh.” Jones looked over the diagram again. “I think I can rig a modulator on this baby, then, and make it into a gertrude for ya. Might be useful. You think your skipper would want that, sir?”
“I will ask.” He expected Jones to stay put, but the young sonarman was right behind him when he went to control. Bugayev explained the suggestion to Borodin while Jones talked to Mancuso.
“They got a little FM set that looks just like the old gertrudes in sonar school. We have a spare modulator in stores, and I can probably rig it up in thirty minutes, no sweat,” the sonarman said.
“Captain Borodin, do you agree?” Mancuso asked.
Borodin felt as if he were being pushed too fast, even though the suggestion made perfectly good sense. “Yes, have your man do it.”