Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (30 page)

“Bring us back into the channel,” Sablin orders softly. He’s suddenly not very sure of his voice. His mouth is dry.

Soloviev doesn’t say a word as he brings the
Storozhevoy
back on course.

Away from the lights of downtown Riga, it seems as if the fog has cleared a little. In any event, they are able to pick out the buoys marking the fairway by eye.

Sablin had planned to shut down the ship’s radar once they had
cleared the river and were out into the gulf. He was enough of a naval officer to understand at least rudimentary battle tactics. If their radar sets were banging away, whoever the fleet sent out after them would be able to home in on them. Besides, Maksimenko was too nervous to do a very good job.

“Shut down the radar, Oleg,” Sablin ordered.

“Sir?”

“Turn the radar set off. We don’t want anyone picking up our signals.”

Maksimenko shuts off the power as Sablin picks up the intercom handset and keys the push-to-talk switch.

“This is your
zampolit
speaking.” His voice is broadcast to every compartment aboard ship. “All hands—
boevaya trevoga
—man your battle stations. All hands, man your battle stations.”

“But, sir, we have no rockets or ammunition,” Soloviev points out.

“It’s all right,” Sablin says calmly, the first major crisis behind them. “They need something to keep them busy.”

Standing on the quay watching the
Storozhevoy
disappear into the fog, Firsov figures that if he had not waited so long to abandon ship and sound the alarm, none of this would be happening.

The petty officer who brought Firsov ashore from the submarine is still there on the launch watching the same thing. He and the two sailors on the crew cannot believe what they are witnessing. First the
Storozhevoy
crashed into a mooring bouy, and then he very nearly collided with a gasoline tanker leaving the dock.

The petty officer looks up at Firsov.
“Pizdec,
whoever is in command of your ship is a crazy man. He’s going to get your crewmates killed if he keeps up like that.”

“He’s probably already done so,” Firsov replies. He wants to tell the petty officer that if the skipper of the submarine, Captain Second Rank Leonid Svetlovski, hadn’t been so slow on the uptake, this could have been prevented.

As soon as Firsov had made it to the deck of the submarine, he ran
aft to the sail, where he shouted up to the pair of sailors on the bridge on watch trying to keep warm.

At first they wouldn’t look down. But they must have heard him. He was making enough racket to wake the dead.

“Bljad,
pull your heads out of your asses up there!” he shouted even louder. He glanced back up at the
Storozhevoy’s
bows looming overhead, fearful that someone might realize that he’d jumped ship and spot him down here. God only knows what order Sablin might give.

Finally one of the sailors looked over the coaming and spotted an officer, his uniform filthy from climbing down the mooring line. On the one hand the sailor had a responsibility for the security of his ship, while on the other he had to show respect to an officer. Right then the sailor was caught between a rock and a hard place, which is fairly common in the Soviet navy.

“Sir, do you need some assistance?” the sailor calls down. It’s the only thing he can think to say.

“Is your captain aboard?” Firsov asks.

“Yes, sir.”

“With compliments, tell him that Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Firsov from the
Storozhevoy
is on deck and would like to have a word with him. Tell him it’s urgent.”

“Yes, sir,” the sailor replies, and he disappears, presumably to use the submarine’s interphone to call the captain.

Still no one has come to the
Storozhevoy’s
bow, but Firsov suspects that can’t last much longer.

The sailor is back in a couple of moments. “The captain asks that you come below!” he calls. “Just through the hatch, sir.”

A hatch opens at the base of the sail, and a warrant officer beckons from inside.

Now it begins, Firsov tells himself, not at all sure how this will turn out. But the one thing he’s feared the most turns out to be justified. When he tells his story to the sub’s skipper, Captain Second Rank Svetlovski, he’s met with stunned disbelief.

“A mutiny of the officers is impossible,” Svetlovski fumes. “Such things no longer happen aboard Soviet warships. Where is your KGB officer?”

“He’s been reassigned, sir. The mutiny was ordered by our
zampolit.
He’s arrested Captain Potulniy and a few of the officers who tried to stop him.”

“What, are you crazy? I know your captain. He would never allow such a thing to happen.”

The next two things Svetlovski does are completely predictable given the circumstances and given the general mood in the Soviet navy. First he steps a little closer so that he can smell Firsov’s breath. Accurate or not, it’s been said that half of all Soviet military forces are drunk half of the time. But Firsov has not had a drink all night, though he wishes he had some of Boris’s
spirt.

The second thing the submarine captain does is pass the buck. “I cannot do anything without authorization, Senior Lieutenant,” he tells Firsov. “I’m sending you ashore. You can tell your fantastic story to the duty officer, and it will be up to him. Though if he doesn’t have you shot I’ll be surprised, because God help us all if you’re telling the truth.”

It takes more than a half hour for the launch to be summoned and bring Firsov ashore and several precious minutes longer to convince the security guards on the quay to call the duty officer.

Nobody believes Firsov’s story. Nobody wants to believe him.

Yet the
Storozhevoy
dropped her moorings, nearly collided with the submarine next to her, almost ran down a tanker, and has sailed downriver into the fog.

The security guard comes back from his post. “The duty officer is on his way, sir.”

“Thank you,” Firsov replies politely, though he feels anything but polite at this moment.

The security guard and the crew aboard the launch are looking at him as if he were insane or as if he were a bug under a microscope. None of them has any real idea what he’s been talking about, but to a
man they understand that very big trouble is afoot, and they are thanking their lucky stars that they are not involved.

Another half hour passes before Petty Officer Nikolai Aksenov finally shows up in a
gazik,
which is the same sort of general-purpose military vehicle as the American jeep. He gives Firsov’s filthy uniform a hard stare, then takes in the security guard and the launch and its crew before he offers a salute.

“Senior Lieutenant, I understand that there may be some trouble,” the duty officer says.

Firsov snaps a sketchy salute in return. “There has been a mutiny aboard the
Storozhevoy.”

“How do you know this, sir?”

“He’s my ship. I just came from there!” Firsov shouts. He wants to punch the stupid kid in the mouth. “He just dropped his moorings and headed downriver.”

“What, at this hour? No ships are scheduled to leave until morning.”

“It’s true,” the petty officer aboard the launch says. “We just saw him leave in a big hurry. And he damned near ran down a tanker.”

“I know about the tanker’s schedule,” the petty officer says. He looks downriver, as if he’s trying to spot the departing ship with his own eyes. Of course nothing is to be seen except for the fog and the indistinct hulking shapes of the fleet still at anchor in the middle of the river.

“Well?” Firsov demands.

“I’m sorry, sir, but what do you want me to do?” Aksenov asks. This situation is way beyond him, except that, like the others, he understands there is the potential for a great deal of trouble. He wants to cover his own ass. It’s the sensible thing to do.

“I want you to call the harbormaster and alert him to the situation before it’s too late.”

Aksenov steps back a pace.

“If they make it out to the gulf there’s no telling where they’ll end up!” Firsov shouts.

“I’m sorry, sir, but the harbormaster has given strict instructions that he is not to be disturbed this evening.”

“Bljad,
call somebody!”

Aksenov stares out across the river in the direction the
Storozhevoy
has gone, hoping against hope that either this is a nightmare or the ship would come back. But he’s not asleep in his bunk, dreaming all of this, nor can he see anything moving in the fog.

“Brigade Seventy-eight,” he mutters. It’s the navy detachment here at Riga that is responsible for all military security, especially security for whatever warships happen to be in port. It’s the next step up in the chain of command, and Firsov realizes that he should have thought of that himself. But time is racing by.

“Well, make the call. Now!”

The duty officer hesitates for just a moment longer, hoping that somehow the situation will resolve itself without him. But that’s not going to happen and he knows it.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and he walks to the guard post to make the first call alerting the Soviet navy that a mutiny has occurred aboard one of its ships.

Locked in the forward sonar parts compartment all evening, Potulniy has had time to think about the consequences, for not only Sablin and the crew, but also himself. After the mutiny aboard the
Bounty,
after Captain Bligh was set adrift with some of the crew, after he’d made the impossible voyage in a small open boat halfway across the Pacific, saving the lives of all but one of his men—after all of that—Bligh still faced a court-martial.

Bligh had survived and he was made to answer the same kinds of questions that Potulniy knew he would face if he survived.

“What actions did you take, or what actions did you fail to take, over the course of the previous twelve months, that would have driven your crew to rise up against you?”

“How is it that you failed to become aware of the conditions that led to the mutiny?”

“When the mutineer Captain Third Rank Sablin came to your quarters that evening, claiming that there was a CP belowdecks, why
did you decide to personally handle the situation instead of sending a subordinate, therefore needlessly placing your person in jeopardy?”

“It is clearly documented that you were close to your
zampolit;
why is it we should not believe that you at least played a passive role in the mutiny?”

“Why is it that you did not have the support of the majority of your officers?”

“Why is it that you failed to keep a record of potential troublemakers?”

“Why did you allow your KGB representative to leave the ship before you had secured his replacement?”

“Can you honestly tell this commission that you were and are fit to lead men into a battle to defend the Motherland?”

“Can you honestly swear to this commission that you were and are a good Communist?”

“Why didn’t you give your life in defense of your ship?”

“Why didn’t you make more of an effort to escape and regain control of your ship? Or was it that you did not care about the outcome?”

The biggest blow after Sablin tricked Potulniy into entering the compartment and allowing himself to be locked in was the realization that it wasn’t just his
zampolit
who was guilty of mutiny. A substantial number, if not all, of his officers must have gone along with the insane scheme. Otherwise someone would have come down here to let him out.

There’d been a commotion out in the corridor earlier. He’d recognized Sablin’s voice and he tried to talk some sense into the man. But it hadn’t worked, and now they were under way.

They’d hit something, but as best Potulniy could judge it was just a glancing blow. No water is rushing into his ship from some gash in the bows, but the engines had spooled up way too fast for navigation in the confines of the river. If they hit something at this speed they could very well sink the ship, and he would die down here locked in a compartment with no way to get out.

Like most sailors, Potulniy has a particular aversion to drowning at sea. Getting blown up in some great sea battle or even dying in a train wreck while on leave would be infinitely better than drowning.

There isn’t much in the compartment, except for a section of hefty steel pipe about twenty millimeters in diameter and one meter in length. Two hatches open from this tiny chamber, one out to the corridor and one up to the compartment directly above.

Using the pipe as a pry bar, Potulniy manages to undog the upper hatch and climb up the ladder. This compartment is normally used to stow spare equipment for the electronic gear. But all those parts have been used, and the compartment is empty until they put in for a refit and load a new set.

But there is another hatch to the corridor, and Potulniy sets to work on this latching mechanism. It’s a wheel about the diameter of a big dinner plate. Turning it left causes the locking bars to withdraw from the receivers, allowing the hatch to be opened. But the wheel can be dogged down from the outside, making it impossible to turn.

After a minute or two with the pipe, the locking mechanism comes free, and Potulniy is able to turn the wheel.

The locking bars are withdrawn, but the hatch will not open. Something is blocking it, possibly a shoring beam.

At that point a nearly overwhelming sense of hopelessness and indignation and even rage threatens to overcome Potulniy. He attacks the door like a madman, smashing the heavy steel pipe against the locking mechanism. The racket makes it nearly impossible to think.

Between blows Potulniy hears someone shouting just outside in the corridor and he stops in mid-swing.

“Captain, you must stop!”

It is Seaman Shein. Potulniy recognizes the kid’s voice from the incident earlier this evening. “Let me out of here!” Potulniy shouts. “That is a direct order from your commander!”

“Sir, I can’t do that.”

Potulniy tosses the pipe aside and puts his shoulder into the hatch.