Odessa Sea

PROLOGUE DREAD SILENCE REPOSES

White lights danced on the horizon like beacons of death. Captain Vadim Rostov of the Imperial Russian Navy counted five orbs, each from a separate Ottoman warship standing picket at the entrance to the Bosphorus Strait. His orders on this crisp, cold night were simple. He was to engage the enemy with his destroyer and disrupt the picket line. The task, he knew, was akin to crawling through a den of hungry lions with a slaughtered lamb tied to his back.

He bit tighter on the dry stump of a Turkish cigar between his crooked teeth. The dark, hardened eyes, set in a weather-beaten face, had seen the effects of ill-conceived battle plans before — during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, and again in the Black Sea campaign of the past four years. Rostov was nudging thirty years of service in the Imperial Russian Navy, but all he had known and trusted in those decades was now dissolving. Perhaps it was not so inglorious to end his career in a suicide mission.

He ordered a young lieutenant to find him a signalman, then turned to the living shadow beside him. The guest was a towering soldier, standing proud in the uniform of a Leib, or Imperial Guard, of the elite Preobrazhensky Regiment.

“The designs of fate will soon be revealed and the futility of our mission confirmed,” Rostov said.

“There will be no deviation of the directive,” the soldier replied.

Rostov had to admire the man. He had stood like a pillar beside him, rifle firm in his grip, since boarding the destroyer with the ship’s orders in Odessa. Orders, the captain noted, that had been personally signed by no less than Admiral Kolchak, the commander of the Imperial Navy. The soldier, Rostov thought, had surely witnessed the upper echelons of power, but he was ignorant of the world at hand. Imperial Russia would soon be nothing more than a memory, vanquished by the forces of revolution. The guard’s place in the universe was about to vanish. Word on the docks of Odessa was that the Bolsheviks had already signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers, including Turkey. Rostov chuckled to himself. Perhaps the Ottoman ships ahead would let them pass — and shower them with wine and figs in the process.

Such notions were dispelled by a faint whistling overhead as a five-inch naval shell proceeded to crash into the sea behind them.

“The Turkish gunners are not as proficient as the Germans,” Rostov said, “but they will find their mark soon enough.”

“The enemy is inferior, and you are an expert tactician,” the soldier said.

Rostov smiled. “An expert tactician would flee overwhelming odds to fight another day.”

The ship’s signalman appeared, a raw draftee in an ill-fitting uniform. “Sir?” he said.

“Signal our companion. Tell them to proceed on their mission while we try to draw the enemy off to the west. And wish them luck.”

“Yes, sir.” The sailor exited the bridge.

Rostov turned to the guardsman. “Perhaps somebody will wish us luck as well?”

The guard gave the captain a steely look but said nothing.

Rostov stepped to the bridge wing and watched the signalman flash a message to a low-lying vessel off the port flank. As the blinking reply came from the other vessel, the specter of death raced through his mind. It was all madness. Perhaps he should turn the destroyer hard over and ram the neighboring boat. Just sink it himself, knowing what it carried. How many more must die for the vanity of the Tsar?

He cursed his own foolish honor. The truth was, no loyalty remained in the Navy’s ranks. The mutiny on the Potemkin proved as much. And that was a decade before the current revolution. Many of the fleet’s ships had already pledged allegiance to the Bolsheviks. The loyalty of his own crew was in question, but at least they hadn’t shown any signs of mutiny — yet. They knew as well as he that the Imperial Navy was all but finished. Rostov shook his head. He should have walked off the ship in Odessa and disappeared into the Carpathian Mountains, as some wiser officers had done.

Another shell whistled overhead. Duty took reign in the face of the enemy fire, and he marched stiffly back onto the bridge. Duty, he thought. Another word for death.

The bridge crew stood at their posts, looking at him with anticipation.

“Give me maximum speed,” he told the junior officer. “Helm, set a course bearing two-four-zero degrees.”

“Gun batteries report at the ready, sir.” The lieutenant rang a brass handle on the bridge telegraph, relaying the change in speed to the engine room.

“Inform all batteries to target the last ship in line to the east,” Rostov ordered.

The Russian destroyer’s funnel belched black plumes of smoke. The Kerch, as she was named, shuddered under the strain as its steam turbines spun at their maximum revolutions.

The change in course and speed threw off the enemy guns, and their shells fell harmlessly behind the destroyer. Rostov gazed at the lights of the Turkish vessels, which now appeared off the port wing as the ship steamed west. Five-to-one, he thought. The odds had been less intimidating two days earlier when they left Odessa in the company of the Gnevny, another light destroyer. But the Gnevny had developed shaft problems and turned back. Rostov had no such luck. He would have to face the enemy force alone.

The captain waited to open fire until an incoming shell hit the water ten meters off his beam, showering the deck with seawater. All four of the destroyer’s four-inch guns fired simultaneously in return, spitting flames into the night sky.

Through skill and good luck, one of the Russian shells struck its target, piercing the vessel’s magazine. Rostov raised his binoculars as a fireball erupted from the trailing Ottoman ship.

“Concentrate fire on the next vessel to the west,” he told the lieutenant. It had been an extremely lucky hit. His strategy — and prayer — was to disable or damage the two ships guarding the eastern approach, then attack the remaining vessels in pursuit. It was the only hope for the mission to succeed.

The night became alight with fire and thunder. The remaining Ottoman ships opened up with broadside after broadside, countered by the full punch of the destroyer. The Russian ship was surprisingly fast and kept a healthy cushion ahead of the Turkish gunners. But the gap narrowed as two of the Ottoman ships turned to close with the Kerch.

“A hit! On the second vessel,” the lieutenant cried.

Rostov nodded. He had the most experienced gun crew in the Black Sea Fleet and it was showing. He turned to the Leib Guard, who was peering at the distant inferno. “Your royal odyssey may have a chance after all.”

The guard smiled slightly, the first indication of humanity he had shown in two days. Then he vanished in an exploding veil of black smoke.

A Turkish shell had struck the lip of the port deck. The occupants of the bridge were knocked from their feet as a shower of flame shot skyward.

“Helm! Set heading to three-six-zero degrees,” Rostov shouted before he staggered back to his feet. To his left, the guard lay facedown on the deck, a twisted piece of shrapnel protruding from his back.

The helmsman acknowledged his order, pulled himself upright by the ship’s wheel, and spun it hard to the right. But the evasive move came too late. The Turks had finally found their mark, and another volley rained down. A leading shell blew off the destroyer’s prow, while another struck amidships and ripped open the hull. The vessel shook as water poured into the forward compartments, lifting the stern and its spinning propellers out of the water.

Rostov found a megaphone and shouted for the crew to abandon ship. The lieutenant scrambled to launch a lifeboat on the starboard deck. Returning to the bridge, Rostov found the helmsman standing fixed at the wheel, his knuckles white against the wooden spokes.

“Sasha, find a life jacket and get off the ship,” Rostov said gently. He stepped over and swung a backhand against the boy’s cheek.

Broken from his fear, the helmsman staggered off the bridge, muttering, “Yes, Captain. Yes, Captain.”

Rostov stood alone on the bridge now as a loud bang near the stern rattled the ship. A fuel tank had ruptured and ignited. Rostov stumbled to keep his balance, groping along the deck for his binoculars. Raising them to his smoke-burnt eyes, he gazed aft past the wall of flames to a point in the distant sea.

He saw it, just for an instant. A single mast that seemed to protrude directly from the water was cutting a thin white wake toward the Bosphorus. A whistling overhead grew loud as the captain nodded at the vanishing apparition. “Duty served,” he muttered.

A second later, the twin shells struck, obliterating the bridge and sending the warship’s shattered hulk to the seafloor.

Ice blue lightning flashed before Dimitri Sarkhov’s weary eyes. The pilot blinked away the spots that pranced before his retinas and refocused on an expansive panel of gauges and dials. The altimeter fluctuated around the twenty-six-hundred-meter mark. A sudden external buffeting pulled at the yoke, and, in less than a heartbeat, the big plane dropped thirty meters.

“Wretched storm.” The copilot, a moonfaced man named Medev, wiped a spilled mug of coffee from his leg.

Sarkhov shook his head. “The weather office calls this a light, low-pressure front.” Thick raindrops pelted the windscreen, rendering the night sky around them impenetrable.

“They don’t know a thunderstorm from spit. They’re real geniuses at wing command, sending us on a training mission through this weather. Especially given what we’re carrying.”

“I’ll take us down five hundred meters and see if the air is more stable.” Sarkhov fought the yoke controls.

They lumbered through the storm in a Tupolev Tu-4, a massive, four-engine bomber with a wingspan as long as a tall building. Over the roar of the engines, the airframe creaked and groaned. A sudden burst of turbulence jolted the craft, prompting a flashing red light on the instrument panel.

“Bomb bay door,” Sarkhov said. “Probably jarred the sensor.”

“Or our usual faulty electronics.” Medev called the bombardier to investigate but got no response. “Vasily is probably asleep again. I’ll go back and take a look. If the bomb bay door is open, maybe I’ll kick him out.”

Sarkhov gave a tight grin. “Just don’t drop anything else.”

Medev climbed from his seat and snaked his way back through the fuselage. He returned to the cockpit a few minutes later. “The doors are sealed and appear fine, the payload secure. And Vasily was indeed asleep. Now he has a print from my boot on his backside.”

The plane suddenly pitched and plunged. A loud bang sounded from the rear of the craft, while Medev was flung into an overhead instrument cluster. The copilot crumpled into his seat, his legs jamming against the starboard engines’ throttle controls.

“Ivan?” Sarkhov called. There was a trickle of blood on Medev’s forehead. He reached over and tried to pull back on the throttle controls. But fighting against the bulk of the unconscious copilot and his tightly wedged legs, he had only limited success.

Sarkhov’s entire world seemed to explode. The instrument panel ignited with flashing lights and alarms, and his headset burst with cries from the flight crew. The bomber had entered the worst of the storm and was being pummeled from all sides. As he fought the flight controls, Sarkhov detected an acrid odor. The cacophony of voices in his headset settled into one panicked voice.

“Captain, this is the navigator. We have a fire. I repeat, we have a fire in the auxiliary flight generator. Navigation and communication stations are—”

“Navigator, are you there? Vasily? Fodorsky?”

No reply.

Smoke began billowing into the cockpit, burning Sarkhov’s eyes. Through the haze, he noticed a new array of warning lights. The high-revving starboard engines were dangerously overheating, aided by a ruptured oil line.

The pilot shoved the nose down as he pulled the starboard throttles hard against Medev’s limp legs. Keeping one eye on the altimeter, he watched as the bomber descended. He intended to level off at a thousand meters and order the crew to bail out. But a bright flash out the side window dictated otherwise. Overheated and starved of oil, the inside starboard engine erupted in a mass of flames.

Sarkhov throttled back the port engines, but it mattered little. As he descended, the turbulence only got worse. He called for the flight crew to bail out but had no idea if anyone could hear. At the thousand-meter mark, the cabin filled with black smoke. At five hundred meters, he could feel the heat of the flames behind the cockpit.

Sweat dripped from his brow, not from the heat but from the stress of trying to control the massive plane in its rapid descent. There was no thought of bailing out himself, not with the wall of flames he’d have to cross and the need to leave Medev behind. His only thought was to will the plane down, fearing the rudder and aileron controls would vanish under the lick of the flames. He pushed the yoke harder, trying to get beneath the storm and find a place to ditch.

At one hundred meters, he turned on the landing lights, but the heavy rain still obscured his vision. Were they over land? He thought he glimpsed a black, featureless plain.

The flames entered the cabin, igniting the flight plans dangling from a clipboard. Taking a deep breath, Sarkhov cut the power to the three remaining engines and felt the plane surge lower.

From afar, the bomber appeared to be a glowing comet, a fury of flames spitting from its midsection. The fireball descended through the black, wet night until it plunged into the sea, vanishing as if it had never existed.