To Kill the Potemkin (27 page)

Sorensen
snapped
on the overhead speakers.
The sub was extremely quiet, but they could hear the freshwater still
operating. "If that was a Russian boat, they'd shut everything down,
including their still. Anyone, identification?"

Fogarty
replied
instantly, "HMS
Valiant
."

"Correct.
One
brownie point for Fogarty.
The Brits are on the job."

"Dirty
limeys,"
said Davic, the all
all-American.

Sorensen
didn't
bother to respond. What was
the point? Their newest ethnic was the biggest bigot. Apparently he
thought it
made him more American to hate all non-Americans. Fuck him.

For
two days
Springfield ran the crew through
repeated combat drills, using the endless
stream of ships as
simulated targets. As the third day began, Willie Joe was spending his
watch
tracking a giant container ship and feeding data to Hoek, who was
sitting at
the weapons console. Hoek thought he'd died and gone to weapons
officers'
heaven. In two days he had pretended to sink more tonnage than was sunk
in all
the wars of the twentieth century.

The
container ship passed a mile away, the cavitation of her giant screws
and the
whoosh of her bow wave obliterating every other sound for ten minutes.
Hoek
simulated her destruction, sending tens of thousands of Japanese
televisions to
the bottom.

The
rest
of the sonar gang were in the mess for dinner. They filed through the
chow
line, carried trays of roast chicken, giblet gravy, peas and mashed
potatoes to
one of the tables and squeezed in next to the torpedomen.

It
was a
lively mess. There was talk of home, of wives and girlfriends and kids.

"Say,
Fogarty," Sorensen said, "you have any plans for the thirty days'
liberty we have coming up?"

"I
thought I'd go home and see my dad."

"You
ever been to Japan?" Sorensen asked.

"Nope."

"Ever
think about going?"

"Nope.
Too far away."

"Hey,
man, you're in the navy. You can hop a military flight anywhere, any
time. I
went to Tokyo and came back in two and a half days, no sweat. This time
there's
no hurry. Look, I want a new tape recorder. Wanna go with me?"

"Maybe.
I'll think about it."

"Well,
you do that. Think about having a little fun. A woman walking on your
back with
tiny feet is very nice."

"For
chrissake, Sorensen, don't talk about women right now."

Sorensen's
eyes twinkled, "Tell me, Fogarty, was the Brit a good lay?"

"Yes,
sure. But why get people upset with talk about women? By the way, don't
you
ever go home, Sorensen?"

"Home?"

"Oakland."

"This
is home, Fogarty. I don't recommend it for everybody. But it's got its
advantages... Most of these guys have families, or did. They all
have
trouble with their wives and more than half get divorced. They have
kids they
never see and parents who don't know where they are. Home for them is
mostly
some tract house on a Navy base with a busted washing machine and a
Pontiac
that burns oil. Their heads are full of Russians but they can't talk
about it
to anybody. It drives a man bananas. I tried it and it didn't work. Up
there
I'm a misfit. Down here I'm at least a well-adjusted misfit."

That
drew
a few knowing guffaws from the table. Sorensen went on to describe a
night on
Tokyo's Ginza that began in a massage parlor and ended in a sushi bar
where the
chef carved raw fish into erotic figures. Tunafish penis, octopus
vagina.
Everyone listened except Davic, who propped a Russian magazine against
a water
tumbler and methodically turned the pages, leaving greasy fingerprints
on the
paper and ink on his fingers.

Watching
Davic, Fogarty picked at his chicken and let his curiosity grow. When
Sorensen
finished his story, Fogarty asked, "What are you reading, Davic?"

"An
article on Czechoslovakia."

"That's
interesting. What's it say?"

Sorensen
now turned to listen.

"It
says, 'The
Soviet cultural attache
left the Spring Art Festival in Prague in indignation after he learned
that the
colorful abstractions presented by several artists could be interpreted
as
anti-Soviet propaganda.' "

"My
goodness, how
rude," cried
Sorensen.

Fogarty
clapped
his hand to his forehead.

"What
happened to
the artists?"

"It
doesn't say.
But for them, the
gulag."

"Hey,
Davic,"
Sorensen asked,
"aren't you from New York?"

"I've
lived
there, why?"

"You
ever been to
Greenwich
Village?"

"No."

"How
about Coney
Island? You been
there?"

"No."

"You
ever go to
Yankee Stadium?"

Davic shook
his
head. "No, no sports for
me. Except once I saw Moscow Dynamo play ice hockey at Madison Square
Garden."

"Who'd
they play?"

"Some
Canadians,
I think."

"Who
won?"

"I
don't know.
They made me leave."

"For
what?"

"I
threw
firecrackers at the Russians.
Bang bang bang. It was wonderful."

"Davic,
you're a
fucking nut case, you
know that?" Sorensen laughed. "Did you get arrested?"

"Sure,
I've been
arrested many times. At
the UN, at the Russian consulate, at the Russian embassy in Washington.
The KGB
used to follow me home."

"How
do you know
it was the KGB? Why
would they bother with you?"

"It
was them."

"Davic,"
Sorensen
said, "I
know a lot of guys who don't like the
Russians, but you, it's
like an obsession with you."

Davic folded
up his magazine and leaned across the table.

"Does
that bother you, Sorensen?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"We're
supposed to be professionals. Too much emotion can foul up our
decisions. You
should know that."

"You
want to know why I hate them?"

"Shoot."

"They
killed my father in Budapest in nineteen fifty-six when I was twelve
years
old."

"During
the Hungarian uprising, the Freedom Fighters and all that?"

"Yes."

"Well.
I can understand that. What happened?"

"Do
you really want to know or do you want to make some kind of joke?"

"You've
got the floor, Davic." Sorensen felt a little sheepish.

No
one had
ever heard Davic say much more than a couple of words at a time—usually
a bitch
of some kind. When he saw that all hands at the table were listening,
he
decided he'd go ahead and tell his story. He also decided he'd kill
anyone who
made fun of him...

"My
family had a small grocery store on the ground floor of a new apartment
building. It was a newly rebuilt part of Budapest. When the Russian
tanks
entered the city my father tried to keep me inside, but I wanted to
watch the
tanks and hear the roar of the guns. I was across the street when the
first
tank came down our block.

"A
gang of boys attacked the tank with rocks.
One threw a Molotov cocktail that just smashed against the tread of the
huge
tank and shattered. The gunner fired one shot over their heads to
frighten them
away.

"The
shell landed
in the store. Two
soldiers climbed out of the tank and went in. When they came out, their
arms
were full of groceries, as much as they could carry. A ham, cans of
fruit, jars
of honey, bags of rice. I watched them go back again and again. When
the tank
finally left I went into the store. They didn't even move my father's
body out
of the way. They just pushed a few broken crates over him to get at the
rest..."

Davic said
these
last words in a quavering
voice.

"That's
real bad, Davic," Sorensen
said quietly. "But even for that you can't want to nuke all the people
in
Moscow—"

"Yes,"
Davic said, "and Leningrad and Kiev and Odessa too. The Russians have
been
doing the same thing for hundreds of years. The communists are no
different
from the czars. They rule through fear. They treat the whole world like
my
father's grocery store."

Sorensen
now had
to fight to keep his own
temper under control. "You want revenge, Davic, an eye for an eye?
That's
how we got into this bind in the first place."

"The
Russians
understand revenge."

"Everybody
understands revenge, you
peabrain. Look what we did to the Japanese. We nuked 'em. Twice. But if
we
attack the Russians, that makes us just like the Japs when they
sneak-bombed
Pearl Harbor. Besides, when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we saved
millions
of American lives. Or at least so they said. And remember, ethics and
shit
aside, they didn't have any atomic bombs to throw back at us. The
Russians
do." Sorensen took a deep breath, sort of pleased with his lecture. He
hoped it got through to Davic and any others aboard who thought like he
did.

Davic shook
his
head violently. "You're
wrong
, Sorensen.
They are
very patient. They will wait for their moment, and when it comes they
will
recognize it and they will strike. If they think they can win, they
will
launch. What's the matter with you, Sorensen? Are you blind? We sit and
watch
their power grow every day. More ships, more weapons, more men. Like
this new
Alpha. The only way to save ourselves is to stop them now..."

Davic sat
back
and looked around the mess.
All conversation had ceased. Every sailor was looking at him.

Johnson,
sitting
at the far end of the table
among the torpedomen, leaned over and said, "Right on, Davic."

Davic nodded
and
smiled. It was the first
show of approval since he'd been aboard and it was heady stuff.
Sorensen
thought he caught a couple more heads nod, torpedomen. Fogarty stood up
and was
about to walk out of the mess.

"Stay
put, kid.
Look the old monster in
the eye. It's the best way to put it back in its cage. Besides, Davic
is doing
us a favor, helping some of the guys face their worst nightmares and
maybe get
rid of them."

Pisaro,
passing
through the galley, had
overheard some of the exchange, then pushed through the hatch.

"Attention!"
Sorensen ordered.

Pisaro
smiled and
rubbed his hands over his
scalp. "Gentlemen, let's try to keep it cool. You too, Davic."

"Yes,
sir. Aye
aye, sir."

"World
War Three
hasn't started yet. Our
job is to see that it doesn't," and he left the mess, shaking his head.

In
sonar Willie
Joe was chatting over the
intercom with Hoek. "How many is that, Lieutenant?"

"Let's
see. That
makes one eight eight.
That's hulls, not tonnage. The last one was a big one."

"When's
the next
sub scheduled to come
through?"

"We've
got an
Italian due in three
hours."

"Okay,
I've got a
tanker on the screen.
Big sucker. Let's take it."

"My
treat," said
the lieutenant,
and three minutes later enough hypothetical crude was spilled to
pollute the
Strait for a hundred years.

As
the noise from
the tanker faded away, a
bright streak flashed across Willie Joe's screen. He blinked and
rechecked the
list of submarines scheduled to pass through the Strait. Through his
earphones
he heard distinct propulsion noises. An unscheduled submarine was
approaching
the Strait from the west at high speed.

"Do
you see him,
Lieutenant?"

"I
do."

"That's
not our
Italian."

"Agreed."

"Sonar
to
control, we have a contact.
Bearing two five five, course one two one, speed three zero knots,
range ten
miles and closing."

"Control
to
sonar. Do you have identification?"

"Sonar
to
control. Soviet November
class. It's
Arkangel
."

"Control
to
sonar, we have him on the
repeater. Attention all hands. Attention all hands. General quarters.
general
quarters. Man battle stations, man battle stations. Control to radio,
send up a
buoy."

In
ten seconds
the mess was empty. Sorensen
and Fogarty were in the sonar room.

Willie
Joe stood
up. "She's all yours,
Ace."

"Who
is it?"
Sorensen asked,
sitting down.

"Who
else?
Arkangel
,"
said
Willie Joe on his way
out. "If she's after
Vallejo
,
she's three days late."

As
Sorensen sat
down, a second streak
appeared on the screen, diverging at a slight angle.

"Sonar
to
control, we have another
contact. Same bearing, same course, same speed."

Then
a third
streak appeared. The sound of
the three subs together was as loud as Niagara Falls.

Sorensen
had
never heard anything like it.
"This is a wolfpack assault on the Strait," he said to Fogarty.
"The Russians are storming into the Mediterranean like—"

"Like
Cossacks?"
Said with a
straight face.

"Yeah.
Sonar to
control."

"Sonar,
this is
the captain, we see her.
Thank you. We see all of them."

The
Russians were
following the eastbound
NATO beacon through the Strait, the lead ship,
Arkangel
,
directly astride it, the others
following on either side.

Sorensen
sat back
in his chair, staring at
the screen as the subs passed from right to left three miles south. The
Russians blew through the Strait and into the Mediterranean in a
remarkable
display of arrogance and power.

Fogarty
hunched
over and watched his screen.
"If this were chess," he said, "I'd say this looks like a
sacrifice."