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

Sablin looks up in time to see at least six jet aircraft bracketing either side of the Storozhevoy, bright pinpoints of lights coming from beneath the aircraft as they fire their cannons. The shells slam into the ship now so fast that it becomes impossible to think, let alone issue an order.

As the jets roar past just a few meters above the level of the bridge the banshee scream of the jet engines all but blots out even the noise of the incoming shells impacting against the ship’s hull.

“They’re attacking!” Soloviev shouts, needlessly.

Sablin wants to get on the radio to tell the pilots that they are making a dreadful mistake. But he cannot move.

The jets were so low and close that he was certain he could see the faces of the crew. Two men in each cockpit.

But the jets are gone now, and the shooting has ceased.

“Is it over—,” Makismenko starts to ask when a tremendous explosion slams into the ship somewhere aft.

This time the blow is so massive that Sablin is actually knocked off his feet.

“It was a bomb!” Maksimenko cries. “Captain, they’re bombing us!”

More jets appear out of the fog, shooting their cannons into the Storozhevoy’s hull, the ship actually shuddering with each hit as if he were a mortally wounded animal.

The ship suddenly begins to turn to the left. Soloviev is fighting the wheel, but it’s having no effect.

Sablin scrambles to his feet. “Come back on course!” he shouts.

“I can’t,” Soloviev says. “I think the rudder has jammed.”

“Captain, we need to stop and surrender before it is too late!” Maksimenko shouts. “We’re going to die here!”

“Nobody’s going to die!” Sablin shouts back, and he reaches for the radio as a second laser-guided 250-kilogram bomb hits the stern, shoving the ship twenty meters off his track.

67. BELOWDECKS

Gindin and the others locked in the sonar compartment can smell smoke coming through the ventilators. Besides cannon fire, the ship has taken at least two indirect hits by bombs somewhere toward the stern.

They suddenly made a turn to port but have not straightened out. The rudder has probably been hit and put out of commission. They are like sitting ducks now.

None of them has any doubt that word has gotten to the Kremlin and the order is to find the Storozhevoy and send him to the bottom with all hands.

“We have to get out of here!” Proshutinsky shouts over the din of the bombs and cannon shells slamming into the ship.

Gindin and Kuzmin have found a couple of screwdrivers and wrenches, and they are desperately trying to dismantle the hinges on the hatch to the corridor. But it’s no use. The job is impossible. What they need is an acetylene torch.

“Can you get the hatch open?” Proshutinsky demands.

Gindin turns to him and is about to shake his head when they hear someone out in the corridor. It sounds like someone shouting something, but Gindin can’t make out what he’s saying over the noise of the attack.

Gindin pounds on the hatch. “Let us out!”

Kuzmin also slams an open palm against the hatch.

Something heavy, maybe a pry bar, falls away and clatters on the deck out in the corridor. The dogging wheel begins to turn.

“Watch out; they probably have guns,” Proshutinsky warns.

At this point Gindin doesn’t care. If the attack continues, the Storozhevoy will sooner or later be struck a mortal blow and sink to the bottom. He’d rather face a few men with pistols than remain locked up down here to drown.

He and Kuzmin step back and prepare to launch a charge the moment the hatch is opened.

“Good luck,” Kuzmin says.

“Da,” Gindin replies as the hatch swings open.

There are three men there, Petty Officer 2nd Class Kopilov and two seamen. Gindin launches himself out into the corridor, slamming into the petty officer and knocking the man backward against the bulkhead.

Kuzmin is right behind Gindin at the same moment another tremendous explosion comes from somewhere aft. The ship is violently shoved sideways.

Kopilov is just a kid and obviously frightened out of his skull. “You have to help us, before he kills us all,” he shouts. “They’re attacking us. We’ll all be killed.”

The other officers and midshipmen are scrambling out of the sonar compartment. “First we need to release the captain,” Proshutinksy orders.

Kopilov leads the way forward to the other sonar compartment. The hatch has been braced shut with a large piece of dunnage, a heavy wooden beam fifteen or twenty centimeters on a side and two or three meters long. It takes Gindin and the sailors to prise the beam away from the hatch and pass it back to the others.

“Captain, it’s Boris; we’re opening the hatch for you!” Gindin shouts. He undogs the hatch and yanks it open.

Potulniy is right there, his face screwed up into a mask of rage. Gindin doesn’t think he’s ever seen a man so angry.

“I’ll kill the bastard!” the captain shouts. He looks at the others, mentally cataloging the faces of everyone with him. “Do we have any weapons?”