Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (14 page)

At 0600 reveille sounds and everyone in bed gets up. The ship’s day
has begun, and for the next thirty minutes everyone who can be spared from duty comes up on deck for exercises, no matter the weather. These are push-ups, jogging in place, stretches, and sit-ups. Afterward the men have a half hour to clean up and get dressed for duty.

Showers aboard a Soviet warship are almost as rare as democratic elections. Freshwater is very scarce, so everyone, even officers, is allowed to take a shower only every few weeks, perhaps once a month. It’s just a fact of life aboard that no one questions.

After the first week at sea everyone stinks to high heaven—but it’s
everyone,
so after a while no one seems to notice. But when you do get to take a shower and change into clean clothes you suddenly realize that everyone else smells really bad.

Since Lieutenant Gindin is in charge of the water makers and water-heating equipment he can be one of the more popular officers aboard.

Breakfast starts at 0700 and can last as long as forty-five or fifty minutes. It’s when everyone gets to talk about the coming duty day or perhaps problems on the overnight shifts or about family and kids and letters from home. And it’s the time to tell jokes—but never about a man’s wife or girlfriend. It is an unwritten rule. Duty at sea is tough enough without worrying about your wife because one of your fellow officers told an off-color joke and put an idea into your head.

If Potulniy or Novozilov or even Sablin is in the officers’ dining hall while they are in port, the jokes cease and everyone finishes eating as quickly as possible and gets back to work.

“We had to prove that we didn’t have any extra time on our hands,” Gindin says.

But at sea the atmosphere, at least in the dining hall, is more relaxed, even when the captain is there. Everyone tells jokes, because the pressure on them is enormous and a good belly laugh provides a little relief.

Even Potulniy isn’t above playing a little practical joke. The
Storozhevoy
had a new dietary officer assigned to the crew. His main
job was to take charge of all the food and miscellaneous supplies aboard. According to the duty roster, he was listed as an assistant to the captain. This dietary officer had never gone to any naval academy to learn a profession; he got his rank in an army college before he was sent out to the fleet, but as a captain’s assistant he thought that he was a pretty big deal.

So a few days out, Potulniy sends the dietary officer to do a complete inventory of all the food and supplies, and when he is finished he bumps into Boris in a corridor.

“The inventory is finished, Comrade Lieutenant,” the big shot says, a self-important smile plastered on his rat face.

But Boris has caught on right away. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean? I checked everything!”

“But not the lifeboats. They have to be checked for supplies such as chocolate and
spirt.
You know, in case we have to abandon ship we’ll need those things in order to survive. But a lot of the time the sailors get into the lifeboats and steal everything.”

Of course this is simply not true. Lifeboats are hermetically sealed in canisters and open automatically when they are launched into the water.

“I’ll take care of it immediately, Comrade.”

“But you’ll need the captain’s permission first,” Boris reminds the young officer.

The next day at lunch in the officers’ dining hall Potulniy introduces the new dietary officer to the others. “How do you like this?” the captain says. “Our new lieutenant has never seen a ship before, except in a picture, and now he wants my permission to open all our lifeboats to check the supplies. What do you think?”

The joke is on the hapless lieutenant, and the other officers have a good laugh, in part because the guy was such a self-important ass but also because the captain has just shown them that he’s human after all.

At 0800 everyone not stuck at their duty stations assembles on deck to salute the raising flag. This is another time that the crew, especially
the officers, is feeling a wave of patriotism. It’s the same in every navy; some of the crew are happy to salute their flag, while others couldn’t be bothered. And all of the patriots pretty well know who’s in the other group.

The first four-hour duty shift begins at midnight, the second at 0400, and the third at 0800. So it is right after the flag ceremony when the oncoming crews assemble in the dining areas, where they meet their officers, who escort them to their duty stations to conduct the first equipment checks of their shift.

During each twenty-four-hour period one officer and a sailor-assistant are assigned the responsibility for the entire ship. It’s their job to make sure that the proper officers show up at their assigned times. During the evening hours, from ten at night until six in the morning, it’s the sailor’s job to go up to each duty officer’s cabin and remind him that his shift is coming up. During the daytime hours, it’s the officer in charge who makes the announcements over the 1MC, the ship’s intercom.

The officers not on duty from 0900 until noon on alternate Mondays are expected to teach political classes to the sailors in their divisions. No one likes this job except for Sablin, who often volunteers to handle it for the officers. No one turns down the
zampolit.

On all other days, from 0900 to noon, the standby officers make sure that their areas of responsibility are clean and conduct training sessions for their sailors on the equipment and on their military duties and responsibilities.

From noon to 1300 is lunch, and afterward until 1400 is something called admiral’s hour. It’s when everyone aboard ship who isn’t on duty gets to relax. It’s about the only time in the day that anyone gets a real break, although some officers find little things for their sailors to finish up, and of course the inventive sailors make damned sure they’re nowhere in sight when their officer comes looking. It is
admiral’s
hour, after all.

The 1400 period starts with a glass of juice for every sailor aboard,
followed by two hours of training on emergency procedures: military actions including biological or chemical attack—the
Storozhevoy
is a warship—as well as the usual emergency procedures covering fires, man overboards, and other accidents.

From 1600 to 1800, more ship cleaning—this time not only the duty stations but every square centimeter of the ship is washed and polished. That includes the crew’s
cubricks
and the officers’ cabins.

From 1800 to 1900 is dinner, and from 1900 until 2030 is another free period. But this is one of the times when sailors and officers alike are expected to play catch-up with whatever they didn’t have a chance to finish earlier. And there’s always some of that.

A
warship at sea, even in time of peace, is an extremely high-maintenance master that demands loving care and attention every minute of every day.

From 2030 until 2100 everyone aboard is served evening tea. The sailors get one slice of bread while the officers get bread, butter, and cookies.

Then until 2200 hours, or 10:00
P.M.,
it’s time to prepare for bed, when it’s lights-out, except for the officer of the day and his sailor-assistant, the on-duty officers and the sailors in their divisions, and the on-call officers who are expected to take over if the duty officers need to step away from their posts for whatever reasons.

In an emergency, like what happened in the Mediterranean Sea when the
Storozhevoy
was on the way to Cuba, everyone is on duty; no one rests. At any other given time one-third of the ship’s personnel are on duty, one-third are on call, and one-third are off duty.

When Boris goes on duty just after the morning’s flag ceremony, he collects his crew of seven sailors and one midshipman in the midshipmen’s mess and after a few words leads them down to the machinery spaces. Among his crew are a pair of diesel specialists who watch over the engines that generate the ship’s electricity, one electrician who makes sure the power distribution equipment and panels are maintained in working order, one steam specialist who makes certain that
the equipment and piping to create and manage steam for heating water and the ship’s compartments work, one fuel specialist who not only monitors how much fuel the ship is using and how much is left but also makes sure that the fuel pumps are up to par, and one midshipman who is in training for a job like Gindin’s.

The last two of Boris’s crew are the gas turbine specialists whose job is to make sure that the two marching engines and the pair of boost engines are doing what they’re supposed to do. As soon as these two guys get to the engine room and before the old crew is relieved, the specialists check the books. Each of the engines has its own log in which the gas turbine specialists record the oil pressure, temperature, RPMs, air pressure, and a host of other readings, along with any problems that may have cropped up during the shift. Then they physically inspect all four engines, making sure that nothing is wrong, nothing is leaking, and all the gauges are reading what they’re supposed to be reading, and then they finally sign the books. That means these two guys have accepted responsibility for the engines, under Gindin’s supervision, and the old crew can go on standby for the next four hours.

Of course if it’s one of the alternate Mondays the officer will have to take his crew up to their
cubrick
and teach them about Marx and Lenin and how the great Soviet experiment is a model for all mankind. It doesn’t matter if the men had worked nonstop their entire shift and are filthy dirty, covered in oil and grease, and just want to get a little sleep; Marx and Lenin come first.

The worst part is when Potulniy decides that he wants to conduct a uniform inspection on deck. It’s usually on these occasions when, covered in oil, Boris is rushing to his sailors’
cubricks
to make sure that they are cleaned up and their uniforms are in order and ready for inspection that he runs into a fellow officer, all spick-and-span.

“So, Boris, how is it going, then?” the officer asks sarcastically, knowing full well
exactly
how it’s going. He’s been there himself before and will probably be in the same spot again before long. It’s just a little joke they have with each other.
“Poshel na khyi”
(go fuck yourself), Boris says tiredly but good-naturedly.

During the shift, nothing at all might happen, except that his sailors will check the gauges and log the readings every hour. Especially the late-night and early-morning shifts. If nothing goes wrong with the equipment and the bridge does not ring for a change in the RPMs, Gindin and his crew might actually catch a few minutes of sleep now and then. Or maybe some of his more inventive crew might find a diversion, like stealing potatoes and cooking them. Or stealing some of the
spirt
they are supposed to use to clean equipment and hiding it in a fire extinguisher. Every now and then on their off-duty time, if Boris isn’t watching, they might pause in front of the fire extinguisher for just a second. Plenty of time for a little sip. Makes a night pass a little faster.

Besides making sure that his sailors are doing their jobs, Boris has his own rounds every hour, during which he listens to each turbine using what amounts to a stethoscope to make sure nothing inside the engines is starting to go bad.

Smoking isn’t allowed in the engine room, so from time to time one of the other off-duty officers will stop by to relieve Boris for a few minutes. He goes up on deck and grabs a quick smoke. From time to time he returns the favor. It’s another of the military systems that are not in the regulations but seem to work just fine.

Then there is the almost continuous training. It’s up to Gindin to make sure all the sailors in his section know their jobs. That means, besides maintaining the gas turbines and other equipment, he has to take each of his sailors step-by-step through every single procedure from starting the engines to shutting them down and everything in between. That also means that Boris must intimately know every single nut, bolt, lever, and knob, shaft and gear in his entire section. It’s a very important responsibility that Boris has taken to heart from the day he graduated from the academy. His job is 24/7, and besides teaching his sailors he keeps himself up-to-date.

Other than Captain Potulniy, Boris Gindin probably knows the ship better than anyone else aboard.

There is perhaps a little fog beginning to form along the Daugava River, curling in wispy tendrils in and among the warships at anchor. Elsewhere in the assembled fleet sailors and officers not on duty are relaxing in their
cubricks
or cabins, maybe reading or watching television in one of the dining halls. This is the Gulf of Riga, on the same latitude as northern Newfoundland, protected from the open Baltic Sea only by the island of Saaremaa, so it is a very cold place in November. This is not Gindin’s home, and there have been times since his father’s death, like right now, that Boris feels a crushing sense of loneliness. He wants to get this meeting over with, he wants to get the
Storozhevoy
to the shipyard for his refit, he wants to sail back to base, and then he wants to spend some time with his mother and sister and other relatives. Then, if everything goes as he hopes it will, he will get the shoreside job that Potulniy has promised to help with, so that he can find a wife, settle down, have children, and get on with the rest of his life.

It’s a happy prospect for him, yet he cannot shake the sense of doom that has been riding over his shoulder like a mid-Atlantic squall ready to pounce.

The windowless midshipmen’s dining hall with fluorescent lights casting a sickly flat light is on the starboard side, just aft of the flaring bow. It’s a plain, dull compartment with no pictures on the pale green walls and linoleum on the steel deck. Two long dining tables, with gray plastic covers, seat three or four in chairs along one side and, curiously, sofas with dark blue covers on the other. A small plastic table with a brown plastic bin is positioned on the left side of the room, and in the center is another small table where Sablin is standing in his uniform. Along the back wall is a tiny room that holds the movie projector.