Mancuso took the mike away from his man. "Wally, this is Bart," he said. "We took one midships, but she's holding together. Can you run interference for us?"

"Aye aye! Starting right now, out." Chambers replaced the phone. "Goodman, flood the MOSS tube. Okay, we'll go in behind the MOSS. If the Alfa shoots at it, we take her out. Set it to run straight for two thousand yards, then turn south."

"Done. Outer door open, sir."

"Launch."

"MOSS away, sir."

The decoy ran forward at twenty knots for two minutes to clear the Dallas, then slowed. It had a torpedo body whose forward portion carried a powerful sonar transducer that ran off a tape recorder and broadcast the recorded sounds of a 688-class submarine. Every four minutes it changed over from loud operation to silent. The Dallas trailed a thousand yards behind the decoy, dropping several hundred feet below its course track.

The Konovalov approached the wall of bubbles carefully, with the Pogy trailing to the north.

"Shoot at the decoy, you son of a bitch," Chambers said quietly. The attack center crew heard him and nodded grim agreement.

The Red October

Ramius judged that the ensonified zone was now between him and the Alfa. He ordered the engines turned back on, and the Red October proceeded on a north-easterly course.

The V. K. Konovalov

"Left ten degrees rudder," Tupolev ordered quietly. "We'll come around the dead zone to the north and see if he is still alive when we turn back. First we must clear the noise."

"Still nothing," the michman reported. "No bottom impact, no collapse noises . . . New contact, bearing one-seven-zero . . . Different sound, Comrade Captain, one propeller . . . Sounds like an American."

"What heading?"

"South, I think. Yes, south . . . The sound's changing. It is American."

"An American sub is decoying. We ignore it."

"Ignore it?" the zampolit said.

"Comrade, if you were heading north and were torpedoed, would you then head south? Yes, you would—but not Marko. It is too obvious. This American is decoying to try to take us away from him. Not too clever, this one. Marko would do better. And he would go north. I know him, I know how he thinks. He is now heading north, perhaps northeast. They would not decoy if he was dead. Now we know that he is alive but crippled. We will find him, and finish him," Tupolev said calmly, fully caught up in the hunt for Red October, remembering all he had been taught. He would prove now that he was the new master. His conscience was still. Tupolev was fulfilling his destiny.

"But the Americans—"