Whole fleet is chasing after you . . .Proceed to 33N 75W.  What the hell was going on? Mancuso wondered, catching the end of the second signal.

"Conn, sonar.  Getting hull popping noises from the target.  His depth is changing.  Engine noise increasing."

"Down scope."  Mancuso lifted the phone.  "Very well, sonar.  Anything else, Jones?"

"No, sir.  The helicopters are gone, and there aren't any emissions from the surface ships.  What gives, sir?"

"Beats me."  Mancuso shook his head as Mannion brought the Dallas back in pursuit of the Red October.  What the hell was happening here? the captain wondered.  Why was a Brit carrier signaling to a Russian submarine, and why were they sending her to a rendezvous off the Carolinas?  Whose subs were blocking her path?  It couldn't be.  No way.  It just couldn't be . . .

The Invincible

Ryan was in the Invincible's communications room.  "MAGI TO OLYMPUS," he typed into the special encoding device the CIA had sent out with him, "PLAYED MY MANDOLIN TODAY.  SOUNDED PRETTY GOOD.  I'M PLANNING A LITTLE CONCERT, AT THE USUAL PLACE.  EXPECT GOOD CRITICAL REVIEWS.  AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS."  Ryan had laughed before at the code words he was supposed to use for this.  He was laughing now, for a different reason.

The White House

"So," Pelt observed, "Ryan expects the mission will be successful.  Everything's going according to plan, but he didn't use the code group for certain success."

The president leaned back comfortably.  "He's honest.  Things can always go wrong.  You have to admit, though, things do look good."

"This plan the chiefs came up with is crazy, sir."

"Perhaps, but you've been trying to poke a hole in it for several days now, and you haven't succeeded.  The pieces will all fall in place shortly."

The president was being clever, Pelt saw.  The man liked being clever.

The Invincible

"OLYMPUS TO MAGI.  I LIKE OLD-FASHIONED MANDOLIN MUSIC.  CONCERT APPROVED," the message said.

Ryan sat back comfortably, sipping at his brandy.  "Well, that's good.  I wonder what the next part of the plan is."

"I expect that Washington will let us know.  For the moment," Admiral White said, "we'll have to move back west to interpose ourselves between October and the Soviet fleet."

The Avalon

Lieutenant Ames surveyed the scene through the tiny port on the Avalon's bow.  The Alfa lay on her port side.  She had obviously hit stern first, and hard.  One blade was snapped off the propeller, and the lower rudder fin was smashed.  The whole stern might have been knocked off true; it was hard to tell in the low visibility.