Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October

36. SABLIN

The problem Sablin faces is that if this business of his fails, he and his crew will either be destroyed at sea or fall into the hands of the KGB. The only hope is to get out into the open sea and send his tape by radio over the public broadcast bands to anybody who will listen. At that point their fate will rest in the hands of the people.

He signals for all ahead slow, and almost immediately the two marching engines spool up and the Storozhevoy begins to move.

Seaman Oleg Maksimenko is standing by at the navigation radar to help them pick their way downriver in the fog. But first they have to get out of the tight spot they are in, wedged between the Alpha submarine and a frigate, plus all the other warships and tenders at anchor or on moorings downriver. The tide is running out now, giving them a 6-knot boost in speed in return for taking away some of their maneuverability.

Petty Officer First Class Viktor Soloviev is steering the ship, and although he’s the best helmsman aboard, he is extremely nervous. All of them are a hairbreadth away from disaster, and he more than anyone else aboard knows it. A collision with another boat under these conditions is almost certain.

“We must go slower, Captain,” Soloviev tells Sablin. “I can’t see a bloody thing.”

“Steady,” Sablin orders. “Are we clear?” he asks Maksimenko at the radar.

“I can’t tell yet!” the seaman shouts. He is nervous as hell. This job normally would be done by a petty officer or even a warrant officer, not a rating. Maksimenko wants to be home planting potatoes in the garden, not taking responsibility for an entire ship like this. He looks up and Sablin is saying something. Maksimenko figures the only way he’ll ever get home to the garden is to do what he’s told.

“Can we turn?” Sablin shouts.

Maksimenko tries to make some sense of what he is seeing on the radar screen, but everything is confusing. “Da!” he calls out. “We may turn now.”

Sablin is also caught up in the moment, and he doesn’t stop to think that perhaps the sailor is merely telling him what he wants to hear. “Turn hard to port now,” he gives the order to Soloviev, who puts the wheel hard over.

The Storozhevoy’s bows come around smartly and there is a collision. They have hit something! Not such a hard blow that they will have to stop here or even sink in the river, but they have hit something.

The ship seems to shudder, then shrug off the hit, and immediately begins to accelerate into the left turn, which will put their bows facing downriver.

Sablin cannot live with the possibility that by his actions he not only has damaged a Soviet navy ship but also might have hurt someone. He tears open the hatch on the starboard side and rushes out onto the wing and looks over the side. They are rapidly leaving their mooring barrel and the Alpha submarine rocking in their wake. They evidently struck a glancing blow to the blue-striped barrel, but so far as Sablin can tell no damage has been done, and it’s not even likely that the crew aboard the submarine has taken notice of the small wake. He takes a deep breath of the cold night air, as if it’s his last.

He steps back inside, relief washing over him at least for the moment. But they have a long way to go before they’re out of trouble. “Tell me when we’re lined up with the channel,” he orders Maksimenko. The buoys marking the path downriver will show up clearly on the radar screen.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” the sailor stammers. The collision was his fault and he is afraid of the consequences for himself.

“Don’t worry about it, Oleg. Just tell me when we are lined up with the channel. This is very important.”

“Da,” Maksimenko responds, and he turns back to his radar set as the Storozhevoy’s bows continue to swing around to the north.

The bridge door is open to the corridor that leads aft and down. Even this far up Sablin can hear the commotion below. Each time the Storozhevoy got under way there was a great deal of activity as the crew jumped to their stations and carried out their duties. But this sounds different to Sablin. Not as ordered. More chaotic. It’s disquieting, and certainly not how he imagined their departure on what he thinks is a grand and noble endeavor.

“We’re coming into the channel now, sir!” Maksimenko calls out.

“Very well,” Sablin says. “Ease your helm, Viktor.” It’s the same kind of command Sablin has heard Potulniy give countless times before, only the captain never used an ordinary sailor’s first name.

Soloviev straightens the helm, and the Storozhevoy slips into the groove that will guide them the fifteen kilometers or so to the mouth of the river. From there they will have to get around the islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa before they will be well out into the gulf and where Sablin figures he will be able to breathe a real sigh of relief.

Firsov’s jumping ship bothers Sablin more than he cares to admit at this moment; he’s just too busy to think about it. But it’s there, like a nagging toothache that will not go away. Conning a ship the size of the Storozhevoy in the open sea is a piece of cake. Simply set a course and speed, dial in the autopilot, and keep a sharp radar and visual lookout. But driving a ship down a narrow river, at night, in the fog, with a heavy current running, while all around are moored vessels and God only knows what other hazards on and below the surface, is something else entirely. This sort of an endeavor takes not only the cooperation of the entire bridge and engine room crew but also a knowledgeable, experienced man in command, whose entire mind is on the job at hand.

It’s something Sablin is not, and he is acutely aware of his lacking.

“We’re lined up with the fairway, sir!” Maksimenko calls out. He’s lined up the buoys on the radar screen.

“Are you certain?” Sablin demands.

“Yes, sir!”

Sablin reaches over to the engine telegraph and signals for all ahead full. It takes several moments for the gas turbine crew to respond, and he is just about to pick up the phone to call down there when the answering bells sound. The Storozhevoy’s engines spool up and their speed quickly rises.

In calm seas the two main engines can drive the ship to around 24 knots, but with the current propelling them downriver their actual speed over the bottom rises to 30 knots.

“We’re going way too fast, Captain,” Soloviev warns.

There is no other choice. They have to get out of here as soon as humanly possible. “Steady as you go, Viktor,” Sablin orders. “Keep us in the channel!” he calls to Maksimenko.

Sablin feels like a maniac on a carnival ride that has run amok. There is no way to get off.

Soloviev is muttering something under his breath. He is peering out the big forward windows trying to spot the lit buoys before they run over them or, worse yet, drift out of the channel. If he drives the Storozhevoy aground at this speed, not only will the ship sustain crippling damage, but it’s also a safe bet that there will be casualties among the crew. Possibly even deaths.

Maksimenko suddenly looks up from the hooded radar screen as if he’s just stuck his finger in an electric socket. “Eb tvoiu mat,” he swears, and he reaches up for a handhold to brace himself.

Sablin’s blood runs cold. “What is it?” he demands.

“A ship!” the sailor stammers weakly.

Soloviev spots the looming shape of a big ship directly in their path at the same time as Sablin and, before the order can be given, hauls the wheel hard over to the right.

The Storozhevoy heels sharply to starboard, probably well past twenty degrees, which is extreme even for a warship, and Sablin is only just in time to grab a handhold to stop from being propelled across the bridge and dashed against the bulkhead.

From below they can hear the sounds of equipment and loose gear flying all over the place, crashing into stanchions and walls with tremendous noises. Men are shouting in anger.

If they were under battle stations orders they would have taken preparations for such violent evasive maneuvers, but they’d been given no warning.

Sablin manages to regain his balance as the Storozhevoy looks to clear the very large ship now sliding rapidly off to port. He is a tanker leaving the dock and just coming into the fairway to head out to sea.

If Soloviev had not been paying attention they would have slammed their bows directly into the side of the ship. It would have been a disaster. The tanker would probably have exploded, and there almost certainly would have been the bodies of a lot of incinerated sailors floating in the river, but there would have been civilian casualties ashore as well.

“Bring us back into the channel,” Sablin orders softly. He’s suddenly not very sure of his voice. His mouth is dry.

Soloviev doesn’t say a word as he brings the Storozhevoy back on course.

Away from the lights of downtown Riga, it seems as if the fog has cleared a little. In any event, they are able to pick out the buoys marking the fairway by eye.

Sablin had planned to shut down the ship’s radar once they had cleared the river and were out into the gulf. He was enough of a naval officer to understand at least rudimentary battle tactics. If their radar sets were banging away, whoever the fleet sent out after them would be able to home in on them. Besides, Maksimenko was too nervous to do a very good job.

“Shut down the radar, Oleg,” Sablin ordered.

“Sir?”

“Turn the radar set off. We don’t want anyone picking up our signals.”

Maksimenko shuts off the power as Sablin picks up the intercom handset and keys the push-to-talk switch.

“This is your zampolit speaking.” His voice is broadcast to every compartment aboard ship. “All hands—boevaya trevoga—man your battle stations. All hands, man your battle stations.”

“But, sir, we have no rockets or ammunition,” Soloviev points out.

“It’s all right,” Sablin says calmly, the first major crisis behind them. “They need something to keep them busy.”

37. FIRSOV

Standing on the quay watching the Storozhevoy disappear into the fog, Firsov figures that if he had not waited so long to abandon ship and sound the alarm, none of this would be happening.

The petty officer who brought Firsov ashore from the submarine is still there on the launch watching the same thing. He and the two sailors on the crew cannot believe what they are witnessing. First the Storozhevoy crashed into a mooring bouy, and then he very nearly collided with a gasoline tanker leaving the dock.

The petty officer looks up at Firsov. “Pizdec, whoever is in command of your ship is a crazy man. He’s going to get your crewmates killed if he keeps up like that.”

“He’s probably already done so,” Firsov replies. He wants to tell the petty officer that if the skipper of the submarine, Captain Second Rank Leonid Svetlovski, hadn’t been so slow on the uptake, this could have been prevented.

As soon as Firsov had made it to the deck of the submarine, he ran aft to the sail, where he shouted up to the pair of sailors on the bridge on watch trying to keep warm.

At first they wouldn’t look down. But they must have heard him. He was making enough racket to wake the dead.

“Bljad, pull your heads out of your asses up there!” he shouted even louder. He glanced back up at the Storozhevoy’s bows looming overhead, fearful that someone might realize that he’d jumped ship and spot him down here. God only knows what order Sablin might give.

Finally one of the sailors looked over the coaming and spotted an officer, his uniform filthy from climbing down the mooring line. On the one hand the sailor had a responsibility for the security of his ship, while on the other he had to show respect to an officer. Right then the sailor was caught between a rock and a hard place, which is fairly common in the Soviet navy.

“Sir, do you need some assistance?” the sailor calls down. It’s the only thing he can think to say.

“Is your captain aboard?” Firsov asks.

“Yes, sir.”

“With compliments, tell him that Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Firsov from the Storozhevoy is on deck and would like to have a word with him. Tell him it’s urgent.”

“Yes, sir,” the sailor replies, and he disappears, presumably to use the submarine’s interphone to call the captain.

Still no one has come to the Storozhevoy’s bow, but Firsov suspects that can’t last much longer.

The sailor is back in a couple of moments. “The captain asks that you come below!” he calls. “Just through the hatch, sir.”

A hatch opens at the base of the sail, and a warrant officer beckons from inside.

Now it begins, Firsov tells himself, not at all sure how this will turn out. But the one thing he’s feared the most turns out to be justified. When he tells his story to the sub’s skipper, Captain Second Rank Svetlovski, he’s met with stunned disbelief.

“A mutiny of the officers is impossible,” Svetlovski fumes. “Such things no longer happen aboard Soviet warships. Where is your KGB officer?”

“He’s been reassigned, sir. The mutiny was ordered by our zampolit. He’s arrested Captain Potulniy and a few of the officers who tried to stop him.”

“What, are you crazy? I know your captain. He would never allow such a thing to happen.”

The next two things Svetlovski does are completely predictable given the circumstances and given the general mood in the Soviet navy. First he steps a little closer so that he can smell Firsov’s breath. Accurate or not, it’s been said that half of all Soviet military forces are drunk half of the time. But Firsov has not had a drink all night, though he wishes he had some of Boris’s spirt.

The second thing the submarine captain does is pass the buck. “I cannot do anything without authorization, Senior Lieutenant,” he tells Firsov. “I’m sending you ashore. You can tell your fantastic story to the duty officer, and it will be up to him. Though if he doesn’t have you shot I’ll be surprised, because God help us all if you’re telling the truth.”

It takes more than a half hour for the launch to be summoned and bring Firsov ashore and several precious minutes longer to convince the security guards on the quay to call the duty officer.

Nobody believes Firsov’s story. Nobody wants to believe him.

Yet the Storozhevoy dropped her moorings, nearly collided with the submarine next to her, almost ran down a tanker, and has sailed downriver into the fog.

The security guard comes back from his post. “The duty officer is on his way, sir.”

“Thank you,” Firsov replies politely, though he feels anything but polite at this moment.

The security guard and the crew aboard the launch are looking at him as if he were insane or as if he were a bug under a microscope. None of them has any real idea what he’s been talking about, but to a man they understand that very big trouble is afoot, and they are thanking their lucky stars that they are not involved.

Another half hour passes before Petty Officer Nikolai Aksenov finally shows up in a gazik, which is the same sort of general-purpose military vehicle as the American jeep. He gives Firsov’s filthy uniform a hard stare, then takes in the security guard and the launch and its crew before he offers a salute.

“Senior Lieutenant, I understand that there may be some trouble,” the duty officer says.

Firsov snaps a sketchy salute in return. “There has been a mutiny aboard the Storozhevoy.”

“How do you know this, sir?”

“He’s my ship. I just came from there!” Firsov shouts. He wants to punch the stupid kid in the mouth. “He just dropped his moorings and headed downriver.”

“What, at this hour? No ships are scheduled to leave until morning.”

“It’s true,” the petty officer aboard the launch says. “We just saw him leave in a big hurry. And he damned near ran down a tanker.”

“I know about the tanker’s schedule,” the petty officer says. He looks downriver, as if he’s trying to spot the departing ship with his own eyes. Of course nothing is to be seen except for the fog and the indistinct hulking shapes of the fleet still at anchor in the middle of the river.

“Well?” Firsov demands.

“I’m sorry, sir, but what do you want me to do?” Aksenov asks. This situation is way beyond him, except that, like the others, he understands there is the potential for a great deal of trouble. He wants to cover his own ass. It’s the sensible thing to do.

“I want you to call the harbormaster and alert him to the situation before it’s too late.”

Aksenov steps back a pace.

“If they make it out to the gulf there’s no telling where they’ll end up!” Firsov shouts.

“I’m sorry, sir, but the harbormaster has given strict instructions that he is not to be disturbed this evening.”

“Bljad, call somebody!”

Aksenov stares out across the river in the direction the Storozhevoy has gone, hoping against hope that either this is a nightmare or the ship would come back. But he’s not asleep in his bunk, dreaming all of this, nor can he see anything moving in the fog.

“Brigade Seventy-eight,” he mutters. It’s the navy detachment here at Riga that is responsible for all military security, especially security for whatever warships happen to be in port. It’s the next step up in the chain of command, and Firsov realizes that he should have thought of that himself. But time is racing by.

“Well, make the call. Now!”

The duty officer hesitates for just a moment longer, hoping that somehow the situation will resolve itself without him. But that’s not going to happen and he knows it.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and he walks to the guard post to make the first call alerting the Soviet navy that a mutiny has occurred aboard one of its ships.

38. POTULNIY

Locked in the forward sonar parts compartment all evening, Potulniy has had time to think about the consequences, for not only Sablin and the crew, but also himself. After the mutiny aboard the Bounty, after Captain Bligh was set adrift with some of the crew, after he’d made the impossible voyage in a small open boat halfway across the Pacific, saving the lives of all but one of his men—after all of that—Bligh still faced a court-martial.

Bligh had survived and he was made to answer the same kinds of questions that Potulniy knew he would face if he survived.

“What actions did you take, or what actions did you fail to take, over the course of the previous twelve months, that would have driven your crew to rise up against you?”

“How is it that you failed to become aware of the conditions that led to the mutiny?”

“When the mutineer Captain Third Rank Sablin came to your quarters that evening, claiming that there was a CP belowdecks, why did you decide to personally handle the situation instead of sending a subordinate, therefore needlessly placing your person in jeopardy?”

“It is clearly documented that you were close to your zampolit; why is it we should not believe that you at least played a passive role in the mutiny?”

“Why is it that you did not have the support of the majority of your officers?”

“Why is it that you failed to keep a record of potential troublemakers?”

“Why did you allow your KGB representative to leave the ship before you had secured his replacement?”

“Can you honestly tell this commission that you were and are fit to lead men into a battle to defend the Motherland?”

“Can you honestly swear to this commission that you were and are a good Communist?”

“Why didn’t you give your life in defense of your ship?”

“Why didn’t you make more of an effort to escape and regain control of your ship? Or was it that you did not care about the outcome?”

The biggest blow after Sablin tricked Potulniy into entering the compartment and allowing himself to be locked in was the realization that it wasn’t just his zampolit who was guilty of mutiny. A substantial number, if not all, of his officers must have gone along with the insane scheme. Otherwise someone would have come down here to let him out.

There’d been a commotion out in the corridor earlier. He’d recognized Sablin’s voice and he tried to talk some sense into the man. But it hadn’t worked, and now they were under way.

They’d hit something, but as best Potulniy could judge it was just a glancing blow. No water is rushing into his ship from some gash in the bows, but the engines had spooled up way too fast for navigation in the confines of the river. If they hit something at this speed they could very well sink the ship, and he would die down here locked in a compartment with no way to get out.

Like most sailors, Potulniy has a particular aversion to drowning at sea. Getting blown up in some great sea battle or even dying in a train wreck while on leave would be infinitely better than drowning.

There isn’t much in the compartment, except for a section of hefty steel pipe about twenty millimeters in diameter and one meter in length. Two hatches open from this tiny chamber, one out to the corridor and one up to the compartment directly above.

Using the pipe as a pry bar, Potulniy manages to undog the upper hatch and climb up the ladder. This compartment is normally used to stow spare equipment for the electronic gear. But all those parts have been used, and the compartment is empty until they put in for a refit and load a new set.

But there is another hatch to the corridor, and Potulniy sets to work on this latching mechanism. It’s a wheel about the diameter of a big dinner plate. Turning it left causes the locking bars to withdraw from the receivers, allowing the hatch to be opened. But the wheel can be dogged down from the outside, making it impossible to turn.

After a minute or two with the pipe, the locking mechanism comes free, and Potulniy is able to turn the wheel.

The locking bars are withdrawn, but the hatch will not open. Something is blocking it, possibly a shoring beam.

At that point a nearly overwhelming sense of hopelessness and indignation and even rage threatens to overcome Potulniy. He attacks the door like a madman, smashing the heavy steel pipe against the locking mechanism. The racket makes it nearly impossible to think.

Between blows Potulniy hears someone shouting just outside in the corridor and he stops in mid-swing.

“Captain, you must stop!”

It is Seaman Shein. Potulniy recognizes the kid’s voice from the incident earlier this evening. “Let me out of here!” Potulniy shouts. “That is a direct order from your commander!”

“Sir, I can’t do that.”

Potulniy tosses the pipe aside and puts his shoulder into the hatch.

Once, twice, a third time, and he is rewarded with the noise of the wood beam falling away and the door budging open a few centimeters.

“Captain, no!” Shein cries. “I have a gun; but I don’t want to shoot you!”

Someone else is out in the corridor with Shein. Potulniy can hear them scrambling around. “Do you understand what you are doing?” he shouts. “You will face a firing squad.”

“No, Captain!” one of the other crewmen shouts, but Potulniy doesn’t recognize his voice.

Potulniy puts his shoulder against the door again, but this time nothing budges. They have replaced the shoring timber. There is no way he’s going to get out of there, and he knows it.

39. GINDIN

The mood among Gindin’s companions locked in the sonar compartment changed the moment the engines were started and changed again when the Storozhevoy actually got under way.

“Until that point the rest of them were dismissive of the entire incident,” Gindin says. “Nothing terrible was going to happen. In a few hours they would be released and everything would get back to normal.”

Sablin and Shein and some of the others would be placed under arrest, and Captain Potulniy would come down on them like a ton of bricks for not doing something to stop Sablin. Heads would definitely roll.

But now that they were actually under way, to God only knew where, everything had changed. Now they were in the middle of a full-blown mutiny. And the punishment for that crime was more severe than a slap on the wrist or even a few weeks in the gaubvachta—the brig. Men could be shot for such a crime. Men could lose their lives for simply not doing enough to stop the mutiny.

All of them locked in the compartment began to realize that they were in deep trouble now. This was no longer an exercise in which passive resistance would do any good. Simply having voted with a black backgammon piece wouldn’t be enough to convince a military tribunal that they were innocent officers who had been duped by their zampolit.

But the situation was hopeless. They were locked in a belowdecks compartment, and even if they could somehow get the hatch open and rush out into the corridor, there was at least one sailor with a weapon standing guard. They would be cut down before they took two steps. There wasn’t a damn thing they could do. They had sealed their fate with the vote in the midshipmen’s mess.

Gindin walks to the hatch that opens into the smaller compartment and stares at the pump mechanism in the dark corner.

“My career was spent learning how to fix things,” Gindin says. “How to keep a warship’s mechanical equipment operating in perfect condition. I’d never dreamed about sabotage, except how to recognize it and how to fix something that had been deliberately wrecked.”

“What is it, Boris?” Captain Lieutenant Proshutinsky asks, coming over. “Have you thought of something?”

Gindin looks over his shoulder at the officer, almost afraid of what he’s about to suggest. “All our drinking water comes from the main tank in the bow.”

“Okay,” Proshutinsky says after a beat. “What of it?”

“A ship can’t get far without drinking water for the crew.”

“That’s true.”

Gindin nods toward the mechanism in the corner. “That’s the pump that draws the water out of the main tank.”

Understanding dawns on Proshutinsky all at once. “Eb tvoiu mat,” he swears softly. “Can you do it?”

“I can do it,” Gindin says. “The question is: Should I do it?”

“Of course. Whatever it takes to stop Sablin and the other maniacs you must do, and I will back you up one hundred percent if there are any questions.”

Gindin has to laugh inwardly. Proshutinsky still doesn’t get it. There’ll be questions, for whoever survives this business. And Gindin suspects that none of them will be very easy to answer.

“What can we do to help you?” Proshutinsky asks.

“Just make sure that one of the guards doesn’t decide to come in here and find out what’s going on.”

Gindin rolls up his shirtsleeves and quickly goes through the drawers of tools and spare parts, finding a couple of screwdrivers, an adjustable wrench, and a socket set. It’s all he needs.

It takes him about forty-five minutes, working in the dim light, to shut down the pump and disassemble it. From now on there’ll be no freshwater anywhere on the ship, and it won’t be long before one of Gindin’s crewmen figures out what has probably happened and comes to investigate.

Gindin sits back on his haunches and looks at the pump parts spread out all over the place. At least four guys on his crew had the knowledge and skills to come in here and within an hour or two have the pump put back together and running again.

If they could find the parts.

“Are you done in there?” Proshutinksy asks from the open hatch.

Gindin looks up. “No more water for the ship,” he says. “I want to keep it that way. Give me a hand, please, sir.”

“Sure.”

Gindin pulls up a couple sections of the deck grating that opens to the bilges. As Proshutinsky passes him the parts from the pump, Boris drops them into the bilge, tossing some of them farther aft and some farther forward. Now if someone comes to put the pump back together it won’t be such an easy job. First he’ll have to find all the parts, including a lot of small nuts, bolts, washers, springs, gaskets, C-clips, and gears and impellers. It won’t be such an easy job, and it’ll take a lot of time.

Time, Gindin hopes, for Sablin to come to his senses, or for someone to come to their rescue.

Someone taps on the forward bulkhead. It sounds to Gindin like a piece of metal, perhaps a pipe, being banged against the steel wall.

“What the hell is that?” Proshutinsky demands.

Gindin holds up a hand for silence. The banging starts again, then stops.

“Someone is trying to communicate with us,” Proshutinksy says.

Gindin picks up a wrench and taps a couple of times against the bulkhead.

Almost immediately someone calls out from the other side, “Who is it?”

“My God, it’s the captain,” Gindin says. “Captain Potulniy!” he shouts. “Can you hear me, sir? Are you okay?”

“Boris, is that you?” Potulniy’s voice is muffled but understandable.

“Yes, sir. Are you a prisoner? Have you been hurt?”

“I’m fine, but they’ve locked me in the forward sonar supply compartment. Are you alone?”

“No, there are nine of us,” Gindin replies. Now the others have joined Proshutinsky at the hatch. “We’re locked in, and there’s no way of getting out. But I disabled the freshwater pump, so there’s no drinking water anywhere aboard ship.”

“Very good, Boris.”

“Ask him what happened,” Proshutinsky says.

“What happened, sir?” Gindin calls out. He wants to shout loudly enough so that the captain can hear him, and yet he doesn’t want to alert the guards outside in the corridor.

“It was Valery. He told me that some sailors were drinking down here, so I went with him to find out what was going on. Before I could do anything he had me locked in.”

“We’re on our way downriver, I think,” Gindin shouts.

“Yes, I know,” Potulniy replies. “Is there a possibility of you getting out of there and releasing me?”

“I don’t know, Captain. But we’ll try to think of something.”

“You’d better hurry, Boris, because I don’t think we have much time.”

“Sir?”

“Someone must know that we have sailed too early, and they’ll be trying to contact us,” Potulniy explains. “If Sablin can’t give them a good answer, and if he actually makes it out to the gulf, they’ll come after us. Someone will give the order to find us and sink us.”

No matter what happens, from this point the lives of all the men aboard the Storozhevoy will be forever changed, and mostly not for the better.