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

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The locking bars are withdrawn, but the hatch will not open.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?”