Men of War (2013) (27 page)

What
they were doing was quietly dropping a few mines off the stern, leaving a
little web of bristling iron behind them to hopefully ensnare the silent enemy
beneath the sea. Orlov smiled inwardly when the boat master gave the order, but
let them play, saying nothing. T-492 had no depth charges or sonar equipment of
any kind, so the boat could not actively go after the enemy U-boat. It had to
wait until the enemy showed himself again, or simply run. This was a clear case
where discretion was the better part of valor, but Orlov admired the pluck and courage
of these men. They were stupidly dropping sea mines as if they had any chance
of hitting this sub, but they were determined.

“That’s
a waste of time,” he said eventually to the boat master.

“You
have a better idea?” The grizzled man shot back.

The
clock was ticking on, and the tension winding up. It had been nearly an hour
and a half now since those first wild moments. That was life at sea—hurry up
and wait. One minute it was chaos and adrenaline, then long minutes or hours of
doldrums. But soon the wait was over.

“Torpedo!”
a watchman shouted. “Starboard side and close!”

“
Sookin
sin!”
The boat master swore as he labored to
turn the wheel.
Kamkov’s
eyes were white with fear,
but Orlov seemed calm and unconcerned. “Don’t worry,” he whispered to his friend.
“It’s a dud.”

He
reached out and took hold of the man’s wrist to see his watch. The enemy was
right on schedule. Svetlana had whispered her truth, and Orlov only hoped she
had been correct, that the history still held true as recorded. The dates were
off but the little details like the time seemed perfect to the second. Now he
again knew why Fedorov was so edgy when he thought
Kirov
would do
something to upset the thin, fragile scrawl of history in his books and
records. Orlov’s life depended on it running true, just at this second torpedo
was again running true, right at the heart of the trawler.

They
could hear it, a distant whine in the sea getting louder and louder. A man
shouted, another cursed, pointing at the sea. The torpedo came lancing in and
struck the boat dead on this time, and right amidships. There was a hard thump
on the hull, and every man around him instinctively closed their eyes, their
faces strained with fear. All except Orlov, for the curse on
U-24
was
still holding the enemy in its firm grip. Peterson’s second shot was indeed a
dud, just as Svetlana had told Orlov it would be, and just as Orlov had told
Kamkov it would be. The devil was in the details.

Kamkov
opened his eyes, looking at the boat master, who was exhaling heavily with
relief, then at Orlov, a strange look on his face.

“How
did you know?” he breathed.

Orlov
cocked his head to one side nonchalantly. “I can hear it.” He pointed to his
ear. “Yes, I’ve spent some time on destroyers. You get a very good
ear
for these things after a while. I knew the first one
was running deep too,” a little
lozh
now to put icing on his cake. “And
I knew this one was going to misfire. Don’t get yourselves all worked up. He’s
got one more fish in the tank, but he won’t hit anything with it. Then you get
your chance later. Relax. It will be a long wait this time.”

“You
sound very sure of yourself,” said Kamkov.

“I’m
always sure,” said Orlov with a grin. “That’s why I took your shirt at poker,
eh? I’m going below. The moon will be up soon and you’ll feel better. Wake me
at midnight, will you Kamkov?”

Svetlana
had whispered it all in his ear, and Orlov knew what was coming next. He had
plenty of time, so he settled into the hammock below, trying to doze off again,
but bothered by the sound of heavy footfalls on the deck above as the men of
T-492 kept up their fitful watch. They were still stupidly fooling around with
the mines on the aft deck, trying to rig them with weights to set their depth,
and just listening to them made him laugh. It was a god-like feeling of power
to know the fate of these men tonight, right down to the minutes and seconds.
There they were, blundering about in the night on the cold wet deck above,
their hands raw on ropes and chains, or tight on the wheel of the boat as T-492
wended her way slowly east towards Poti, leaving a wake of mines behind her
that would now probably cause more problems for local shipping than they would
for the unseen German U-boat.

A
little after midnight Kamkov stuck his head down the hatch and called him.
“Wake up, Orlov. The moon is up, just like you said. But there’s no sign of
that submarine.”

Orlov
climbed back up, yawning and reaching for another cigarette, which he shared
with Kamkov this time. The crew seemed much more at ease now. The long three
hour wait had lulled them with a sense of false security. Some were lounging on
deck, talking quietly with one another, the men by the deck gun were sitting on
the ammo crates, one of the NKVD guards was slowly pacing back and forth, his
submachine gun slung over his shoulder, black Ushanka tilting this way and that
as he watched the slivered moonlight glimmer on the sea.

Orlov
had his quiet smoke as the time slipped by. Then it began again. One of the men
working the mining operation at the back of the ship shouted with alarm. There
was another torpedo inbound off their port quarter, and every man on the ship
was up with sudden energy, heads craned to look, eyes squinting, tensely
alert—all except Orlov. The torpedo missed, just as Orlov said it would.

Aboard
U-24
, Klaus Peterson’s luck had run out, for that was his last torpedo.
He cursed inwardly, angry to think that he had put his first two torpedoes
right on the mark and neither one could score a hit.

“Damn
unlucky boat,” said Otto on his left as Peterson lowered the periscope, clearly
upset.

“To
hell with that,” said the Oberleutnant. “We’re behind him now. Surface at once
and we go after him with the AA gun!”

“That’s
not a very good idea,” said Otto. “They have a deck gun!” But he could see the
steely eye of determination in Peterson now, and he seconded the order.

U-24
surfaced in a white swell of bubbles and the hatch opened, men scrambling
forward to the twin 20mm AA gun forward of the conning tower. Peterson followed
them up, standing in the tower with his field glasses, and shouting at the men
to be quick on the gun. He had nothing more than these 20mm rounds to throw at
the enemy now, and he knew his executive officer had been correct. This was
just a stupid act of defiance, but when the gun fired he took some heart, and
some satisfaction in seeing the tracers chew up the water near the back of the
enemy ship. A damn minesweeper, he thought. We can’t even sink a damn mining
trawler!

The
AA guns barked as the trawler’s boat master spun the wheel hard to bring his
bow around and give his 76mm deck gun a chance for another shot, but Orlov knew
it would come to naught. What he did
not
know, however, was that
Peterson’s stubborn act of defiance would have consequences he did not expect.
The 20mm rounds raked the trawler, some skidding off the metal siding of the
pilot house as Orlov instinctively crouched low. One of the rounds had found a
target, and he looked, astonished to see that Kamkov had fallen hard and was
now slumped on the deck beside him, shot through the chest. Then the enemy fire
halted and Orlov could see the distant silhouette of the Germans working their
gun.

Svetlana’s
words came back to him, playing again in his mind as he recalled the history
record he had called up.
“After U-24 had fired and missed with her last
torpedo at 00:38 hrs, the boat surfaced and exchanged fire with the 20mm AA
gun…”

It
seemed there were a lot of little details written between the broad strokes of
history. Svetlana had said nothing whatsoever about Kamkov, he thought, and he
realized that those rounds could just have easily raked across his own chest.
Now Kamkov was quite dead, and Orlov was quite angry. He stood up, glaring at
the German U-Boat as he heard the 76mm deck gun fire in futile rage, its shot
well over the enemy boat and missing by a wide margin.

Infuriated,
Orlov strode over to the NKVD guard where he crouched behind the gunwale, and
in one swift motion he snatched away the man’s submachine gun.
“Piz-da!”
He
cursed at the U-boat, flipping off the safety and opening up on the Germans,
pleased to see his machine gun fire snapping off the conning tower in a shower
of sparks. His cigarette butt was still between his pursed lips as he fired,
sneering at his enemy.

“Don’t
fuck
with me you stupid sons of bitches!” he shouted, spitting out the
cigarette butt and grinning evilly when he saw the Germans secure their AA gun
and run for the deck hatches. The little battle on the Black Sea was over, and
he knew why. Svetlana had told him the whole story: “…
the boat surfaced and
exchanged fire with the 20mm AA gun, which malfunctioned shortly afterwards,
forcing U-24 to break off the attack with light machine gun damage to the
conning tower.”

Orlov
smirked inwardly, handing the smoking submachine gun back to the astonished
NKVD man, who looked at him with awe and respect when he saw the German U-Boat
quickly vanish beneath the sea again.

“Watch
for torpedoes!” the boat master shouted, but Orlov simply laughed. He had
written his little line in the history, with a PPD-40 submachine gun firing
Tokarev
7.62x25mm pistol rounds, but it was enough.

“Don’t
worry,” he shouted back at the boat master. “If they had any more torpedoes do
you think they would have come up to shoot with us? It’s over. Get some rest.”

For
Klaus Peterson, it was a very frustrating night. His boat was now toothless,
and little more than a scouting unit. He would have to slink back to Constanza
with nothing to show for his first war patrol here, but he would learn a lesson
from the incident. Now he recalled Wohlfarth’s story of the impotence he felt
when he had to watch the
Bismarck
sink with no torpedoes to use to
defend her.

Peterson’s
fate was not so unkind, but he would have to wait nine long months before he
would get another target in his sights, for it was truly slim pickings in the
Black Sea. On that night, in June of 1943, he would find and sink a 441 ton
Soviet fleet minesweeper, much like this one that would now escape his grasp.
It was boat 411-
Zashchitnik
(No. 26), and he would get it with a spread
of two torpedoes, never trusting to a single shot again.

Peterson
didn’t get his kill against T-492 that night, but he had unknowingly achieved
much more. His inexperience, a torpedo running deep, and another a dud along
with that jammed AA deck gun had all conspired to do one essential thing—they
spared the life of Gennadi Orlov, though Kamkov was stone cold dead. Now none
of the other NKVD guards assigned to bring Orlov to Poti knew a thing about
that diplomatic pouch, or anything it might have contained.

Chapter 21

Tashkent
was new to the Lend Lease run into Vladivostok that year. Built in 1914 by
Maryland Steel, she was actually owned by the American Hawaiian Steamship Company
for their Panama Canal Line, and licensed through the Far East State Shipping
Company. In June of 1942, however, the ship had been re-flagged with the hammer
and sickle and turned over to the U.S.S.R. to carry Lend-Lease shipments into
Vladivostok. Amazingly, over 8,400,000 tons of food, arms trucks and planes had
been delivered through open sea lanes on the Sea of Okhotsk, or flown in from
Alaska, as Russia was effectively a “neutral” in the Pacific conflict of WWII.
Tashkent
was one of the intrepid general cargo ships bringing home the bacon.

The
ship had borrowed the name from a real Russian transport ship that had been
sunk in a German air attack on
Fedosia
on new year’s
day of 1942. Now the resurrected name was quietly passed on to the American owned
boat, and no one was the wiser.

That
day, in September of 1942, the ship also had a curious young seaman aboard,
Jimmy Davis. An Able Seaman and cargo handler, he had just finished offloading
some containers to the quays of the Golden Horn Harbor, Vladivostok, when he
happened to witness a very strange scene.

A
man came running down
Kalinina
Street, crossing the
old railroad tracks and hurrying toward the quay, and it was soon clear that he
was being pursued by several uniformed military police. Davis heard their
shrill whistles as they chased the man, and shouts to other men coming down
along the rail where a line train of cars waited to receive
Tashkent’s
much needed stores. The man stumbled and fell, and some papers slipped from his
back pocket as he struggled to his feet again. Then he was up, rushing along
the quay right past Davis, his eyes wide with fear.

He
stopped, breathing heavily, an anguished look on his face and stared out into
the harbor. Then he put both hands to his head as though he was trying to keep
his mind in one piece and retain his sanity, screaming something unintelligible
Russian. There was a crack, and Davis jerked around to see that a Soviet MP had
fired a pistol. The man fell to his knees, then slumped forward on the quay,
unconscious as the three policemen rushed to the scene. Davis gawked at them
for a while, then thought the better of sticking around, as there would likely
be questions. As he was set to leave and head back up the gangway to
Tashkent
,
his eye fell on the papers the man had lost, and he slipped behind an empty
wooden cargo container to have a look. He picked it up, first thinking it might
be something ferreted out by a spy. Seeing it was only a Russian, magazine he
almost discarded it. Then he thought some of the Russian crewmen might like it,
so he took it with him hastening back to the ship.