Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (40 page)

All three of them jump to it immediately. They help Sablin to his feet and between them hustle him out the hatch and belowdecks to his cabin, leaving Potulniy alone on the bridge of his wounded ship for the moment.

He looks out the window and can see dozens of jets circling overhead like angry bees. A group breaks off from the swarm and starts its final attack run.

Potulniy snatches the handset for the ship’s comm from its cradle and calls Engineering.

“Boris, are you there?” he shouts. But there is no answer.

Gindin has managed to arm himself with a pistol as he races belowdecks to his engine room. He can actually see daylight coming through a series of baseball-sized holes in the hull from the cannon fire.

Sailors are everywhere, running down corridors and up companion-ways like ants boiling out of their disturbed nests. But nobody notices the officer with the pistol racing past. Sometimes he has to shove his way through a knot of frightened kids, but even then no one tries to stop him.

He slams open the hatch and barges into the engineering space where the main control panels are located.

Five of his crew are there, running the engines, checking the control panel, and Gindin’s blood boils. He trained these men. He stood up for them when the captain complained about missing potatoes, when they didn’t want to get out of bed, and when they got Dear John letters from their girlfriends. He even got them early leaves when they finished installing the five new diesel engines at the last refit.

This is how they have repaid him.

He raises his gun and points it at the ones near the control panel.

At this point he is drenched with sweat, and he thinks that it won’t take much of a push to start him firing.

“Get away from the panel!” he shouts over the din of the turbines.

All the sailors look up when they hear his voice.

“Get away from the panel!” Gindin shouts again. “Over by the wall. Move it!”

All five immediately follow his orders, with relief, now that an officer is in charge again, mixed with fear.

As soon as they are standing facing the wall, Gindin leaps to the control panel and starts shutting down the engines. Immediately the whine of the turbines begins to decrease and the deafening noise winds down.

Keeping the pistol trained on his five sailors, he snatches the ship’s comm handset from its bracket. “Bridge, Engineering.”

Potulniy answers immediately. “Is everything okay down there?”

“Captain, I’ve shut down the engines.”

“Any casualties?”

“No, sir,” Gindin says. “Not yet. What about Captain Sablin?”

“He’s been neutralized, and I’m in command again.”

“Have you contacted Fleet Headquarters yet?”

“There’s no time! We’re under attack!”

“You have to call them, Captain!” Gindin shouts. “Before it’s too late!”

“Stay at your post, Boris,” Potulniy orders. “I may need the engines in a big hurry.”

“Yes, sir,” Gindin replies, and he replaces the handset.

He’s in a quandary just then. He can’t run his engines without the help of his crew, yet he can’t trust them. They’ve stabbed him in the back.

He wants to lash out with frustration. Like Potulniy, he suspects that his naval career is over. There’s nothing any of them can do now to change what has happened.

Gindin glances toward the overhead. He hopes that the captain can convince the fleet that he’s back in charge and to stop the attack.

Potulniy is their best hope for survival.

“Do you mean to sink him?” Ryzhkov asks.

Makarov looks over at his copilot/weapons officer and nods. “We have our orders.”

They’re flying low and slow, a few hundred meters above the waves, at around 400 knots. They cannot miss. The
Storozhevoy
is on fire and circling to port a couple of miles to the west. Perhaps the ship is slowing down, but at this speed and angle it’s hard for Makarov to be sure. Anyway, what he’s told his weaps is true; they do have their orders to stop the traitors.

If it means sinking the ship and killing the officers and crew, then so be it. The air force did not create this situation.

Makarov keys his helmet mike. “Unit Three, on my lead, let’s finish this.”

They are the next wave of attack jets that have not dropped their laser-guided bombs.

This time the
Storozhevoy
has no chance whatsoever to survive.
Within a few minutes he and his crew will be at the bottom of the Baltic.

“Fighter squadrons attacking the
Storozhevoy,
this is Captain Anatoly Potulniy.”

Makarov slams his stick hard right and full forward, ignoring the urgent voice in his headset, and his jet peels off to starboard in a steep dive toward the ship he means to kill.

In thirty seconds it will be mission accomplished.

It’s obvious that the commander of the strike force heading toward the
Storozhevoy
either didn’t receive Potulniy’s radio message or has chosen to ignore it. Either way, five Su-24s are heading right at his bows and will be in a position to release their bombs in a matter of seconds.

His rage toward Sablin has been replaced with fear for his ship. Not fear for his own life but a genuine concern for the
Storozhevoy
and all who’ve sailed him—including the mutineers.

He keys the VHF radio again. “Baltic Fleet Headquarters, this is Captain Anatoly Potulniy. The mutiny has been put down. Cease fire; cease fire! I am in command of the ship!”

“Who is this?” the radio blares.

Potulniy recognizes the voice of the chief of staff. “Admiral Kosov, it’s me: Potulniy. Can you recognize my voice?”

The radio is silent for several ominous seconds. Potulniy is staring out the windows, the jets looming ever larger.

“Report your situation,” the admiral demands.

“The mutiny has been put down, and I have regained command,”

Potulniy says in a rush. “My engines have been shut down and we are slowing to a stop. Call off the attack!”

Again the radio is ominously silent.

The jets are less than one hundred meters out.

“Break off the attack! Break off the attack!” a voice is shouting in Makarov’s headset.

“Ready for weapons release,” Ryzhkov reports.

Seconds.

“Break off the attack!” The same voice is in Makarov’s headset.

He keys his mike. “This is Sukhoi-24 Squadron Leader Captain Makarov. Identify yourself,” he demands.

“This is Vice Admiral Kosov. Break off the attack now!”

They have reached the
Storozhevoy.
Makarov can see a man on the bridge, looking up at him.

“Weapons release now possible,” Ryzhkov reports.

“Nyet,”
Makarov replies. “Unit Three, Unit Three, break off. I repeat, break off.” He hauls the heavy jet hard over to starboard and pulls back on the stick, sending them climbing into the crystal-clear blue sky. They have accomplished their mission. Time now to go home.

The
Storozhevoy
finally comes to a complete halt in the middle of the Baltic, nearly all the way to Swedish waters. It’s a little past 10:30 in the morning, local time, and a sudden hush has descended on the warship.

Once the jets broke off their attack, Potulniy had time to study the images on the radar screen. It looks as if the entire Russian navy has them surrounded.

Now it begins, he thinks.

He keys the VHF radio. “This is Captain Potulniy. We are standing by to be boarded. Which side do you prefer?”

“Port,” the terse reply comes back.

Potulniy gets on the 1MC. “Attention, all hands, this is the captain speaking. If you have weapons, put them down. We will be boarded in a couple of minutes. Anyone caught with a weapon will be forcibly disarmed and placed under immediate arrest.”

“Bridge, Acoustics,” Proshutinsky calls on the ship’s comm.

“Yes, Nikolay?” Potulniy replies. At the moment Proshutinksy is the second-ranking officer aboard.

“Shall I order a damage control party?”

“Nyet,”
Potulniy says. “That will be up to the KGB when they come aboard.” Even as he speaks the initials a chill comes over him. It’s unknowable how this will all turn out. But it will not end well for any of them.

This summer afternoon nearly two years after the mutiny the gentle Pacific breezes blow unusually warm in the harbor. A lot of people are out and about along the Korabelnaya Naberezhnaya Ulitsa, the main thoroughfare right on Golden Horn Bay. The winter was long and bitter, so no one wants to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary. Vendors are selling everything from ice cream to kvass, a mildly alcoholic drink, like watery beer.

The ships and submarines are lined up in precise rows at their docks on the Pacific Fleet base, their flags snapping crisply even in the light breeze, activity bustling on nearly every deck.

Gindin has been demoted one rank to lieutenant and has been assigned to work at the navy fire department in Kaliningrad. He was accused of being a coward, a disgrace to the Rodina, for not doing a better job training his men, for allowing himself to be arrested and locked up, for not making a better effort to stop the mutiny, for not willingly giving his life to save the ship.

The captain and all the other officers who had voted with the black
backgammon pieces were demoted to sailors, got the same sort of punishment, except for Firsov, who was blackballed. Most of the enlisted men got exactly what Sablin had promised them: They were held for several months but then were discharged from the navy and allowed to go home. Only Alexander Shein was given an eight-year sentence at hard labor and a small fine.

Immediately after the incident, when they were taken back to Riga for their initial questioning, Gindin met his roommate, Vladimir Firsov, at the KGB’s Riga headquarters. The meeting was short and awkward, although the two men embraced warmly.

Standing on the dock now, looking at the warships, Gindin wonders why he didn’t ask his friend what had happened that night. Why had he voted to go along with Sablin’s mutiny, and then later why had he jumped ship?

Even though Gindin called Vladimir’s parents in Leningrad and asked that a message be passed along, he hasn’t seen or heard from Firsov since then. Perhaps it’s for the best.

After the dust had settled from thirty days of interrogations, Gindin and the others were made to sign a classified document promising never to talk to anyone about the mutiny. It was a KGB order, so everyone, including Gindin, took it seriously and signed without hesitation.

He has been assigned to be a fireman; it is a dead-end career in the navy that will lead to nothing as a civilian. All of his plans, all of his hard work at the academy and out in the fleet, have gone down the drain. Blotted out by the insane act of one man.

Gindin has taken a leave and come out here to the Far East to visit with his sister, Ella, and her husband, Vladimir Simchuk, his brother-in law just a few years ahead of him who had recommended the academy.

No one knows why Boris has been reassigned from his job as an engineer aboard a ship to a job as a commander of a small fire station, but rumors are still flying through the fleet about an
incident
aboard a Baltic Fleet ASW ship.

Gindin can’t explain his side of the story, of course, but if his brother-in-law knows or suspects something, he’s shown no sign of it. In fact, Vladimir has been just as open and kind and loving toward Boris as his sister has been. Family ties are very strong here.

Vladimir, who is a captain third rank, with a Ph.D. in military engineering, has invited Gindin to come to the base and take a tour of the ships. He’s left Boris’s name with the guards at the gate, to whom Gindin shows his military ID. He’s been allowed inside and has been directed to the docks.

But he’s standing, slack jawed, his heart in his throat, his stomach burning, looking up at a ship. No pride has been taken by the captain or crew. Rust weeps from fittings here and there. The paint has faded in big splotches, and nothing has been done about it. Patches have been sloppily welded into the steel plating of the hull. And his flags don’t seem to be as bright or snap as crisply as those on the other ships.

For just a moment Gindin was happy to see the ship.

“For that second or two it was like a reunion of old friends,” Gindin recalls. “We were happy to see each other after so long a time separated us.”

But then everything comes back in a sad, hopeless rush, and Gindin wants to turn away, but he can’t. He’s mesmerized by the ship and by his memories.

The numbers have been changed, but the name on the hull near the stern is the same.
Storozhevoy.

No one had been hurt in the attacks that morning, except for Sablin, who received the gunshot wound in his leg. And after everything was over, Gindin had heard by rumors that Sablin had been tried and found guilty of treason and gotten his nine ounces from the KGB.