To Kill the Potemkin (18 page)

"And
who might that be?"

"Me,"
Fogarty said.

Sorensen
looked from Fogarty to Davic. Fogarty turned his head.

"A
fight?" Sorensen asked.

Willie
Joe
replied quickly, "No, nothing like that. A little demonstration."

"Karate?"
Sorensen said to Fogarty. "You?"

Fogarty
nodded. "It's not karate. It's
tae kwan do
. It's
Korean."

The
sailors
stared at Fogarty with new
respect. "I don't smash bricks, if that's what you're wondering," he
said to Sorensen.

Sorensen
looked
at Davic's swollen wrist.
"You'd better go see Dr. Luther, tough guy. Looks to me like you
slipped
and fell into a bulkhead during the collision."

With
a drop-dead
look at Fogarty, Davic went
out.

"What
was that
all about?" Sorensen
asked.

"You
got me."
Fogarty shrugged.
"Davic is nuts."

Willie
Joe put
his arm around Sorensen's
shoulders. "You're a hero of the people, boy. Ain't that so,
Fogarty?"

Fogarty
looked at
the sailors hanging out of
their bunks. "You said it, Willie Joe. Sorensen saved our ass."

Willie
Joe made a
show of digging around in
his locker until he came up with a Coca-Cola bottle that he presented
to
Sorensen.

"Looky
here," he
said. "I been
savin' this for a long time. Ace. It's for you."

It
was dark rum.
Sorensen held it up. Looking
at Fogarty, he said, "Here's to all the dead comrades. Cheers." He
chugged two swallows and passed the bottle to Willie Joe. The rum went
around
the compartment and came back to Sorensen, who finished it and rinsed
out the
bottle. Willie Joe passed out Sen Sens to everyone who had had a drink.

Sorensen
then put
on a tape of Jerry Lee
Lewis, and a moment later the compartment was full of sailors singing
along,
"You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain..."

"Attention
all
hands, this is the
captain. We have been ordered to put into the naval station at Rota for
repairs. Transit time will be forty-eight hours. Our depth will be
restricted
to two hundred feet. Prepare for maneuvering. That is all."

In
the torpedo
room Chief Lopez discovered
that Zapata was missing. He cleaned up the broken glass from the cage
and
searched the compartment thoroughly, but the scorpion was nowhere to be
found.
Lopez felt queasy. A sub had thousands of nooks and crannies where a
bug could
hide. It was only a matter of time before someone got stung. Lopez was
sure it
would be him.

Several
hours
after they were underway, Lopez
reported Zapata to the XO as "missing in action."

Pisaro
blinked,
not sure whether to laugh or
show concern. The scorpion was not all that dangerous. Its sting was
hardly
worse than a bee's.

"How
long can
that thing live with
nothing to eat, Chief?"

"Months,
Commander. Maybe a year."

"You're
shitting
me."

"No,
sir."

"All
right.
Organize a search. Give the
crew something to take their minds off the collision."

Lopez
drew a
crude picture of a scorpion
adorned with a Mexican sombrero and crossed cartridge belts and printed
a
wanted poster on the ship's mimeograph machine. He offered a reward of
twenty-five dollars for the return of Zapata, dead or alive, and
organized
search-and-destroy patrols. For twenty-four hours sailors armed with
flashlights and hastily constructed nets systematically ripped out
every panel,
emptied every locker, tossed every bunk. By the time they reached
Gibraltar
every cubic inch of the ship had been searched twice, but Zapata
remained AWOL.

Lopez
now
reported Zapata's continued absence
to Pisaro, who shrugged it off. "Leave him to the guys on the drydock
at
Rota," he said. "It'll keep them on their toes."

"I
think he's
still in the torpedo room,
sir. I don't see how he could get out. The hatch has been closed since
the
collision except when someone goes in or out."

"Don't
worry
about it. Chief. Zapata is
a survivor, I'd bet on it."

The
ship locked
onto a NATO submarine beacon and passed
submerged through the Strait of Gibraltar into the
Atlantic. As
Barracuda
turned north toward the Bay
of Cádiz and the huge
Spanish naval base
at Rota, the word was passed that most of the crew would get
three days' liberty.

At
dawn the sub
reduced speed and began to
rise from cruising depth.

Springfield
went
aloft to pilot the ship into
the harbor. As they followed a radar beacon into the inner harbor a
cool mist
rose off the bay, shrouding the giant navy base. Just outside Cadiz the
crew of
a Russian trawler,
Deflektor
,
on permanent station in the bay, trained glasses and electronics on the
passing
sub. Inside the breakwater at Rota, opposite Cadiz, the Spanish
aircraft
carrier
Dédalo
,
her deck covered
with antisubmarine helicopters,
loomed over the smaller ships and tugs that lined the piers.

A
tug pushed
Barracuda
against a
massive floating drydock, and lines were secured fore and aft. Two days
had
passed since the collision, and the Russians had not uttered a word
about their
missing sub.

The
collision had sent men and machinery flying about like poltergeists
inside
Potemkin
. Kurnachov
had
cracked his head against a periscope housing and fallen unconscious to
the
deck.

Potemkin
had revolved 360 degrees around her keel, turning
completely upside down. The reactor had scrammed, plunging the ship
into total
darkness for several seconds before the emergency electrical power
kicked in.
The prop no longer was turning, but the stern planes were angled down
and the
ship was in a state of negative buoyancy.
Potemkin
was sinking. Dazed
men struggled for footing. Much of the instrumentation had gone blank,
and
acrid smoke from an electrical fire billowed through the after-hatch
into the
control room.

Federov
had groped his way out of his cabin through the darkened passageway and
into
the control room. There, after stumbling over the prostrate Kurnachov,
he
discovered the lights on the diving panel were still green—the pressure
hull
was intact.

"Stern
planes up to zero degrees," Federov ordered. "Seal the hatches. Get
those fires out. I want damage reports."

Federov's
return to the control room inspired the crew to shake off their daze
and follow
orders.

The
intercom still operated. "This is the steering machinery room. Portside
stern plane fails to respond. Attempting to operate manually."

"This
is
electrical engineering. All
systems functioning on emergency power."

"This
is reactor
control. We have steam.
Injection pressure normal, but we have a scram."

"Blow
after
ballast tank. Not too fast.
Don't make any noise. We've got time."

The
instruments
popped back to life. With a
glance, Federov realized that the most serious danger came from the
atmosphere
machinery. The carbon dioxide scrubber and carbon monoxide burners were
not
functioning.

"All
hands put on
gas masks and oxygen
tanks."

Slowly
air was
bled into the ballast tank,
and the bubble in the buoyancy gauge rose to the center. The rate of
descent
slackened.

At
three thousand
feet the engineers were
able to crank the stern plane up to zero degrees. The fires were out
and the
carbon monoxide burners were reignited. Only the carbon dioxide
scrubber
remained out of action.

"Torpedo
room,
load decoy number five.
Flood tanks. Sonar, where is the American sub?"

"Rising,
Captain,
almost on the
surface."

"Fire
decoy,
maximum speed, down angle
twenty degrees. All hands prepare for decoy concussion."

When
Kurnachov
woke up in his cabin, his head
was bandaged and his left arm encased in plaster. He gazed without
comprehension at the displays in the console next to his bunk.
Ordinarily the
readouts gave him the ship's position—speed, depth, reactor status and
atmosphere condition. Now even the chronometers were blank. He had no
idea how
long he had been unconscious.

At
first
Kurnachov thought the display system
had been damaged in the collision. The ship was moving ahead slowly,
but at
what depth and direction he had no way of knowing. He picked up the
intercom
telephone. It was dead.

When
he tried to
sit up he discovered the
manacle on his ankle. The chain that secured him to his bunk was
wrapped in
rags to keep it quiet.

His
cabin was
stripped of papers, books and
charts. All insignia of rank had been removed from his uniform. Even
his gold
Komsomol pin was gone. Kurnachov sank back onto his bunk to consider
his fate...

Several
hours
later Federov brought him a
tray of sausage and kasha.

"Release
me,"
Kurnachov demanded.
"I am still master of this ship."

Federov
set down
the tray and stood in
silence over the former first officer.

"Where
is my
Komsomol pin? I demand that
it be returned to me."

Federov
began to
speak, but loathing choked
his voice. Finally he got out, "The crew voted. You've been expelled
from
Komsomol."

"They
can't do
that, they have no
right—"

"Former
Captain
Second Rank
Kurnachov"—he spit the words—"you have demonstrated an incredible
lack of seamanship, killed one of my men, provoked the Americans,
compromised
the secrecy of
Potemkin
and abused your authority.
All these will be
included in the charges against you. But what galls me, you son of a
bitch, is
that all you can think of is your fucking status in the Party. Enjoy
your
breakfast. Choke on it."

Federov
emerged
from Kurnachov's cabin to
find the surgeon waiting in the corridor.

"Captain,"
he
said, his voice
urgent, "it's Polokov. He's bleeding internally. He needs blood."

"Give
it to him.
Ask for
volunteers."

"Yes,
sir."

"And
Bolinki?"

"Still
in a coma."

"How
much IV
solution do you have
left?"

"Enough
for five
days."

"Do
what you can.
Send the chief
engineer to my cabin."

"Yes,
sir."

Chief
Engineer
Alexis Rolonov, son of a
Leningrad shipyard worker, had spent a large part of his life covered
with
grease. As he sat in Federov's cabin, a swatch of black streaked across
his
forehead, his hands were coated with a fine film of oil.

"How
goes the
portside stern
plane?" the captain asked.

"The
hydraulic
system is ruined but it
can be operated manually."

"The
reactor?"

"We
can start it
any time."

"And
the carbon
dioxide scrubber?"

"That's
going to
get serious. It wasn't designed to be turned upside down. The
lithium hydroxide filters were
spilled and scattered. We have
only partial function."

"No
spares?"

"Nikolai,
how can
I say this? Some son
of a bitch in Murmansk stored a spare packet of what he thought was
lithium
hydroxide, and Kurnachov checked it off. This is it." Alexis tossed a
plastic bag full of white crystals onto the desk. It looked like rock
salt.
"It isn't lithium hydroxide. It's lithium
chloride
.
We use it to make—"

"Mineral
water,"
Federov said,
closing his eyes. He took a series of deep breaths, shrugged. "Lithium
chloride... Are you thirsty, Comrade Chief Engineer?" Federov's eyes
were open now and full of anger. "How much time do we have?"

"Normal
carbon
dioxide concentration is
two percent. We're now up to three percent. Without filters, four days,
five at
the most, then it's going to be carbon dioxide narcosis. They say it's
rather
pleasant."

Federov
tried to
vent his fury with a joke.
"Perhaps we should stop at Gibraltar and borrow some lithium hydroxide.
We
can give the English Kumachov in exchange. They can try him in their
Admiralty
Court for dereliction of duty and banging into one of their subs."

The
notion of
Kurnachov standing in front of
a wigged British judge made Alexis smile. "Your honor... your honor...
," he stammered, "I plead guilty as charged. I plead guilty to any
charge. Convict me, hang me, just don't hand me over to the KGB."

Alexis
stopped
joking and cleared his throat.
Federov reached for a tin of cigars, then changed his mind. "The air is
thick enough." He pulled out his flask of vodka, swallowed two
mouthfuls
and passed it to Alexis.

"How
are Bolinki
and Polokov?" the
engineer asked.

"They're
going to
die if we don't get
them off this ship, which we can't do in the immediate future. Gorshov
wanted a
one-hundred-day cruise and he's going to get it, but we may all be
dead."

"Well,
we are
making history—"

"Fuck
history.
Potemkin
was
rushed through production too quickly. Inadequate sea trials,
insufficient
training for the crew, too many gadgets, and no backup systems. In
another
three years these titanium subs will own the seas, but now, thanks to
our
comrade political officer, we've tipped our hand. I want to strangle
him with
my bare hands."

"Relax,
Captain.
At least because of our
difficulties the next series of ships will be better. After all, we
have a
titanium submarine, which the Americans have been unable to
manufacture."