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

Kopilov pulls a Makarov pistol from his belt under his tunic and hands it to Potulniy.

“I’m going to the bridge to put an end to this,” the captain tells them. “The rest of you get to one of the the armories and see if you can find some other weapons. I want half of you to cover the ship from somewhere aft and the other half to go forward. But be careful; I don’t want you getting shot up.”

“I’ll take the stern,” Proshutinsky volunteers.

“Good,” Potulniy says. He turns to Gindin. “Get down to the engine room, and see what you can do to talk some sense into your men. We’re probably going to have company real soon, unless they mean to sink us.”

“Captain, I don’t think Captain Sablin is a traitor,” Gindin says. “I think he somehow got his head up his ass. He’s naive, not a criminal.”

“Naive or not, the bastard’s going to get us all killed.”

Another bomb hits somewhere aft, and the ship shudders from stem to stern.

“Go!” Potulniy orders, and he turns on his heel and heads for the bridge as fast as he can move.

Heading down to the engineering spaces, Gindin has to think, God help anyone who tries to get in the captain’s way now. And God help Sablin.

68. THE BRIDGE

On the way up from deep within the ship, Potulniy encounters a half-dozen sailors but no officers and no one with any guns. The kids are all clearly frightened and have no idea what they’re supposed to do.

The murderous rage continues to build inside him. He wants very badly to lash out at someone, something, for what is being done to his ship. But not these kids.

“Return to your duty stations,” he orders.

The attacks seem to have stopped, at least for the moment, when Potulniy reaches the bridge deck. He pulls up short just around the corner from the open hatch. From where he’s standing he can see one of the seamen by the radar set and can hear Sablin talking frantically on the radio, but it’s difficult to make out who the zampolit is talking to or what he’s saying. But he sounds just as frightened as the rest of the crew.

As well as the bastard should be, Potulniy thinks. Naive, my ass.

His own naval career is finished. He will never be able to explain to a court-martial board how he came to lose command of his ship. Or why he wasn’t able to stop the destruction of his vessel.

But Sablin has another reason to be afraid. Potulniy means to kill him. Right now.

The captain thumbs the pistol’s safety catch to the off position and steps around the corner and onto the bridge.

The seamen at the radar set and the two standing at the now useless helm all look up, first in alarm and then in relief.

“Captain,” Soloviev says.

Sablin begins to turn as Potulniy raises the pistol, his finger tightening on the trigger. But then the man holding the microphone is just Valery, married to Nina, with a son, Misha. Sablin is a fellow officer, misguided, foolish, and, da, naive, but not a criminal.

“Captain—,” Sablin blurts.

Potulniy lowers his aim and fires one shot, catching the zampolit in the left leg, just above the knee.

Sablin cries out in pain and falls to the deck. He reaches for the pistol in his belt holster, but Potulniy gets to him and takes the gun away.

For a long moment the two men stare at each other across a chasm of more than just a meter or so. What Sablin has done is treason. It goes against every fiber of Potulniy’s being.

He wants to ask why, but he knows that if Sablin tries to convince him that the mutiny was the right thing to do, he might fire again and this time kill the zampolit.

“Eb tvoiu mat,” Potulniy swears softly. “Take this bastard to his cabin and see that he remains there,” he tells the seamen. “If he tries anything, kill him.”

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.

69. ENGINE ROOM

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.