Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (36 page)

“I don’t think so, Sergey. They’d have to slow down first, but the engines have run steady all night. Means somebody is driving the ship and some of my guys are running the engines.” It’s a bitter thought for Gindin, that the men he trained had so easily betrayed him.

“I wonder what Sablin offered them so that they would go along with the mutiny,” Kuzmin muses. It’s almost as if he is reading Gindin’s mind.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Gindin says. “My guys wouldn’t have gone along with the crazy scheme unless there was something in it for them.” Gindin shakes his head. “Not that it makes much difference to us now.”

“Maybe if we can find out what it was, we can make them a better offer,” Kuzmin suggests.

The two of them get up and go to the hatch, where Gindin places his ear against the steel door. The only sound he hears is the distant hum of the turbines. He looks up and shakes his head.

Kuzmin slams the heel of his hand against the door. Once, twice, three times, and Gindin puts his ear to the door again. Still nothing.

“You out there!” Kuzmin shouts. “Open this door! We want to tell you something!”

The other officers are waking up, because of the noise.

“What’s going on, Boris?” Proshutinsky asks.

“We’re trying to get their attention,” Gindin answers.

“Da,
we can hear that. But why? They’re not going to let us out of here.”

“They might if we can find out what Sablin offered them to go along with the mutiny. Maybe we can make a better offer.”

“I don’t think so,” Proshutinsky says.

“Sir?”

“I can guess exactly what he offered the enlisted crew. The only thing they care about is getting out of the navy and going back home.”

“Sablin doesn’t have that authority” Gindin says.

“True, but those boys probably don’t know that,” Proshutinsky points out.

Kuzmin has been listening at the door. He looks up and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. Nobody’s out there. They’ve gone.”

He and Gindin share a glance, and each knows for a fact what the other is thinking at that moment. If the guards are no longer guarding this hatch, what will happen if the ship is attacked and sinks? No one will be down here to open the door.

They would all drown in these two tiny compartments.

Kosov arrives at his office in a rush, not bothering to wait for his driver to open the car door for him, or return the salute from the guard at the front entrance.

Everything Kosov has done to this point has been by telephone from his house and the mobile radio in his car. He has not bothered encrypting any of his orders; there is no time for that. Party General Secretary Brezhnev has ordered the
Storozhevoy
found and destroyed immediately.

The first part has been accomplished, and now will come the most difficult assignment of Kosov’s long and illustrious career. In effect, his head has been placed on the chopping block. If he succeeds with this business, if the fleet actually catches up with the mutineers before they reach Sweden and if his forces actually stop or destroy the
Storozhevoy,
he might get a medal and a promotion. But if he fails …

He lets that thought trail off as he hurries down the fourth-floor corridor to the operations center, where most of the staff has already arrived. The fleet commander is away on holiday, which leaves Kosov
the senior officer. He might wonder if it’s by chance or by design that he has been placed in such a delicate, difficult situation.

Chief of Operations Captain Third Rank Viktor Badim looks up from the plotting table as Kosov walks in. “Admiral on deck!” Badim shouts.

The eight staffers on duty stiffen to attention.

“As you were,” Kosov grumbles. He glances at the large table on which is a detailed chart of the Baltic, including all of its islands, inlets, rivers, and bases, as well as those of Sweden and other bordering nations.

Every warship that the Soviet navy is tracking is represented as a tiny wooden model on the table, and talkers, connected by headsets with the electronics sensors section, move the pieces around the table as if they were chessmen in a deadly, real game.

Kosov takes his position at the command console that looks down on the table, and one of the ratings brings him a glass of sweet tea, with one small piece of lemon, just as he likes it.

Badim comes up. “The fleet at Riga is underway,” he reports to the admiral. “But there are a lot of questions.”

“Are they clear on their orders?” Kosov demands. He’s not in a very good mood. But then that’s to be expected. No one can be cheerful when he knows that his career is on the line. God help Potulniy if he survives.

“Yes, sir,” Badim says. “They’re to catch up with the
Storozhevoy
and stop him by any means possible.”

“The orders have changed, Viktor. We’re to hunt down the
Storozhevoy
and kill him.”

Badim visibly reacts as if he’s been slapped in the face.

“I spoke with Gorshkov. The order comes from Brezhnev himself. Under no circumstances will the
Storozhevoy
be allowed to reach Swedish waters.”

“But, sir, according to the encrypted transmission, they aren’t defecting. They mean to lay off Leningrad and make more broadcasts. They’re fools, but they’re not defecting.”

Kosov leans forward. “Is there anything unclear about my orders, Captain? Or should I repeat them?”

Badim backs down. “No, sir.”

“Very well. Order as many units of our air wing as you think necessary to help with the hunt.” Kosov has started to spread his responsibility. The more officers under him he can commit to making decisions on their own, the more he will be insulated from retribution in the end.

Badim undersands this game as well, but there’s no countermove he can make. “Yes, sir,” he says, resigned.

“Make it happen now,” Kosov orders.

Badim goes off to order the air wing into action, as Kosov sits back with his tea and watches as the talkers push the fleet that was at anchor in Riga down the river toward the Baltic. The
Storozhevoy
has at least a five-hour head start, and it’s not likely that the fleet will catch up with him before the air wing does.

Sablin and his mutineers will never come within sight of Sweden before they are sent to the bottom, probably in the next few hours.

It’s too bad, Kosov thinks. The
Storozhevoy
was a good-looking ship.

The flight of ten Badger recon/bomber aircraft from Skirotava Naval Airfield outside of Riga rose up through the fog and burst into the star-studded sky well after 0600. Flight Leader Colonel Gennadi Kabatov keyed his throat mike.

“Ground control, this is Zero-one Flight Leader at flight level five. Our ETA for formation is zero-six-twenty. Do you have an update on Bogey-One’s position, course, and speed?”

“Roger Zero-one Flight Leader. We have a visual. Target bears three-zero-five degrees, range two-one-seven kilometers, and opening at three-zero knots. Targets estimated course is now three-two-zero degrees.”

“Acknowledged,” Kabatov radioed. “Zero-one Flight Leader out.”

The big twin-engine jet bomber was more suited to long-range nuclear bombing missions or, closer to Soviet waters, could be used effectively as a strike platform for anti-aircraft carrier operations or attacks against ships much larger than the
Storozhevoy.

When the alert klaxon sounded, bringing Kabatov out of a sound
sleep, he’d not had any deep thoughts. He’d been trained to react first and think later. But in the pilots’ briefing room when he’d been told the target and given his flight’s orders he did a lot of wondering. The best he could figure was that someone in Moscow was shitting in his trousers to order such a massive strike force against a lone, unarmed ASW ship.

With a length of just under forty meters, the Tu-16 was more than one-third as long as the warship he was hunting. Powered by a pair of massive Mikulin AM-3 turbojets, the bomber had a maximum speed in excess of 1,000 kilometers per hour, a range of 7,200 kilometers, and a service ceiling of nearly 13,000 meters. He was capable of carrying conventional and nuclear bombs weighing as much as nine thousand kilograms and was armed with a half-dozen 23mm cannons.

Instead of carrying bombs this early morning, each aircraft had been loaded with either one AS-2 Kipper antiship missile or one AS-6 Kingfish missile.

This was more firepower than was needed to take out an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

To Kabatov’s way of thinking, this was overkill taken to a ridiculously dangerous level. American warships sometimes operated in the Baltic and, along with Swedish radar installations that had undoubtedly detected the flight as soon as it took off, would have to wonder what the hell was going on.

Wars had begun just like this, he thought. Or at least battles had.

He switched to his command frequency, not bothering to use an encrypted channel. He wanted anyone listening in to know that this wasn’t the beginning of an attack on NATO. “Flight One, this is Flight One Lead. Report, over.”

One by one the commanders of the other nine Badgers reported their positions and altitudes, inbound on Kabatov’s aircraft.

“All operators keep a sharp eye for threat radars. I want to know what’s aimed at us out there.”

“My scope is clear,” Kabatov’s own Yen-D search radar operator reported.

“Roger,” Kabatov acknowledged. He glanced over at his copilot, Lieutenant Demin, who shared the same feelings about this morning’s mission and raised an eyebrow.

“We’ve got our orders, Gennadi.”

“Da,”
Kabatov said. “No matter how stupid they are, those are our guys down there. Russians.”

“Mutineers,” Demin pointed out.

“At lot of those boys are going to die before lunch if we follow our orders.”

Demin nodded. “Whatever you want to do, I’ll go along with you.”

“Could mean trouble later on,” Kabatov warned.

Demin grinned, his wide, dark eyes lighting up. “What can they do? Shoot us?”

Kabatov nodded. “They might do just that.”

It’s still too foggy to see much of anything beyond their bows, so Sablin walks out onto the port wing and cocks an ear to listen. Vice Admiral Kosov has probably sent ships out after them and possibly a couple of attack aircraft from Skirotava or maybe even Mamonovo Airfield outside Kaliningrad.

But besides that, this is the open Baltic, an area normally heavily traveled by commercial ships flying flags from a dozen different countries, the occasional warship, sometimes U.S. but most often Swedish or West German, and of course KGB patrol boats.

They are blind and they are going too fast. Sablin can almost sense the presence of other ships out there, although he can’t hear anything over the noise of the 30-knot breeze blowing across the deck and sending an icy spray over the bows when they plow into a trough.

He ducks back onto the bridge. Shein is still there, and under the circumstances Sablin doesn’t think it matters if a guard is stationed below to make sure Potulniy and his officers get out. Besides, Shein looks nervous, even frightened, as well he should be.

“Turn on the radar,” Sablin orders.

Soloviev is clearly relieved, but Maksimenko isn’t sure.

“Won’t they see us?” he asks.

“The fleet already knows where we are,” Sablin says. “The moment we were overflown, our position was pinpointed down to the meter. But now we need the radar; we can’t continue blind like this. If we collide with another ship, someone will get killed. Then we would be in serious trouble, and I don’t want that on my conscience.”

All three crewmen look at their
zampolit
as if he were crazy. How much more trouble can mutineers get into?

Maksimenko turns on the Palm Frond navigation radar and as soon as the set warms up the screen comes alive with targets.

“Eh tvoiu mat,”
Soloviev swears half under his breath.

They are nearly out of the Irben Channel and around the Sörve Peninsula at the southwestern end of Saaremaa Island. From here they are about one hour from international waters, where Sablin believes they will be safe.

If they can make it that far.

“What’s out there?” Sablin demands. “Talk to me.”

It takes an agonizingly long time for Maksimenko to sort out what’s being depicted on the radar screen.

“Ahead of us is nothing but commercial traffic, so far as I can tell,” he says. “We’re not on a collision course with anything, but that’ll change in the next half hour.” He looks up, and at that moment he could be a deer at night caught in the headlights of an onrushing truck.

“What else?” Sablin prompts.

“We’re in trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

“A small ship is coming up fast off our starboard quarter. Less than five hundred meters out now. It’s probably a KGB patrol boat. And just coming out of the river, it looks as if every ship that was moored with us is heading our way.”

The KGB patrol craft probably couldn’t do much damage to them,
and long before the fleet catches up the
Storozhevoy
will be out of Soviet waters. What really matters is what aircraft Fleet Headquarters has sent after them. But he does not want to call CIC again for another radar search.

The trick will be to somehow survive the next hour.

Sablin is taking it as an article of faith that the
Storozhevoy
will not be attacked once he reaches international waters.

Sweden and Russia have been at war with each other for three hundred plus years by this chilly morning of November 9. True, no shots are being exchanged at this moment, and haven’t been for a very long time, but Sweden does not ignore threats.

At times during the history of these two nations, Sweden has been the dominant power, while at other times, like right now, Russia, the Soviet Union, has been the vastly superior force. So when the Russians start moving their warships and military aircraft around the Baltic the Swedes definitely sit up and take notice.