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

Disaster loomed just on the horizon for Russia’s Pacific Fleet, which responded to a growing threat from Japan. But the path to that war was complicated by alliances that seemed to ebb and flow with the tides. First Russians and Chinese moved to the verge of war, before the Chinese backed off. Next the Japanese were building a powerful army and navy because they wanted a foothold on the Asian mainland. Russia, now allied with France and Germany to help China resist the Japanese, sent its Pacific squadron to the region, and Japan backed off. For the moment.

But war was coming, and everybody knew it, so the Russians started building ships at a breakneck pace, which they based on the Kwantung Peninsula, which they leased from the Chinese. That included a fortress at Port Arthur.

On the morning of January 27, 1904, the main body of Japan’s naval forces, under the command of Vice-Admiral Togo Heihachiro, appeared like an apparition out of the darkness off Port Arthur, very much like their surprise attack against another enemy less than forty years in the future. Nineteen months later the war was over, with Russia the loser in more than one way. More than five thousand Russian sailors were killed and six thousand taken prisoner.

And so it continued right up through World War I, with more good Russian men and boys going to the bottom of the sea, until the new Bolshevik regime declared peace with Germany, and for a brief period the bells of Moscow were silent.

But in the years that followed, under the Communists, babushkas and mothers and wives and sweethearts who had marched off to church to weep and pray for their sailors lost at sea could only cry silently and pray in their hearts, because God and churches were no longer permitted. A darkness began to settle over the land. Maybe the sailors who had given their lives for the Rodina were the lucky ones after all.

7. AT THE READY

Standing at the rail, Gindin finishes the last of his cigarette and flicks it in a long arc down toward the dirty water between the Storozhevoy and the Alpha sub moored just below them. He’s having some trouble shaking off the sense of foreboding he’s been getting all morning, with Seaman Fomenko’s defiance in the cubrick, with the group of sullen sailors huddling in the corridor, and with Sablin’s strangely animated mood in the officers’ dining hall.

Gindin hesitates a moment longer in the crisp morning air before turning and heading belowdecks and aft to his machinery spaces. It’s his day off, but he’s restless. Anyway, there’s not a day goes by that he doesn’t check in with his engineering crew and machinery. He helped build the ship and, like Captain Potulniy, feels a sense of, if not ownership, at least pride.

Gindin has also been working on a maintenance and repair plan for when they get to the Yantar Shipyard in Kaliningrad tomorrow. They’ll have a couple of weeks there to get the Storozhevoy ready for his next six-month rotation, and Gindin wants to make sure not only that everything in engineering that needs to be fixed, rebuilt, or replaced is done, but also that he can get all the spare parts he needs. This time he doesn’t think Potulniy will offer any serious objections if the ship rides below his waterline.

After those two weeks they’ll dock at Baltiysk, their home base, for regular shoreside duty until it’s time to head to sea again. Gindin will get some time off so that he can see his mother and sister and try to put his father’s death in some kind of perspective. But that will be tough, and the more Boris thinks about never seeing his dad again, the tougher it gets for him.

Gindin comes around a corner belowdecks and practically runs headlong into Sergey, who is one of his crewmen. He’s a tall, dark guy with a mustache who usually kept everything to himself. If Boris needed something, Sergey would never volunteer, even though he had good mechanical skills. He was a loner and didn’t talk much. And this morning, when Gindin comes around the corner, Sergey looks up like a frightened animal caught in headlights, hesitates for just a second, and then turns on his heel and tries to get away, but Gindin stops him.

Sergey is supposedly on duty right now, so Gindin is more than a little concerned. “What’s going on?” he asks.

Sergey doesn’t want to look up, let alone answer any stupid questions. He is clutching something in his left hand, and it looks as if he is on the verge of tears.

“Look, I’m your superior officer,” Gindin says mildly. “I want to know what’s wrong, and that’s an order.”

“I just got a letter from my mother,” Sergey says. He’s having real trouble not bursting into tears. “She says Larissa is going around town with some other guy.” His eyes are wide. “We’re engaged to be married, Senior Lieutenant.”