Chapter Thirteen
“Comrade” Sabanayev’s Wagon, Taganrog
Barquentine Loredana
The ship’s days were numbered now.
The Loredana had two of the sails of the foremast set. With the wind coming gently from the northwest, these would not only help to push it away from the fleeing boat, but might confuse people, if any were observing, as to the crew’s course and destination. For that matter, it would reduce the chances of anyone spotting it until it was gone.
With the ship moving gently with the wind, the escape boat was being pulled along with it.
If what Shukhov said is true, thought Turgenev, standing at the stern of the boat, and I’ve no reason to doubt it, if we’re not at least two or, better, three or four versta away from that thing when it goes off, it’s likely as not to kill us.
With the crew, all the personal and group baggage as well as what was looted from the Loredana, the ship’s boat was crowded. Indeed, when Shukhov came back from his mission of sabotage, there wasn’t going to be a seat for him except atop a pile of bags.
Mokrenko sat up at the bow, with a shore spike clutched in one hand, the rope holding them to the ship in the other, and his cut-down rifle resting against one thigh. Behind him, the oar crew sat in pairs, port and starboard. From bow to stern, these were Koslov and Lavin, followed by Timashuk and Novarikasha, then Sarnof and Visaitov. The girl, Natalya Sorokin, sat on the middle bench, squeezed between Timashuk and Novarikasha. Lieutenant Babin, likewise, was crammed in between Koslov and Lavin. Lieutenant Turgenev stood at the rear, both to manage the rudder and call the strokes to the oarsmen. The ship’s cat, or the formerly ship’s cat, sat atop Natalya’s lap, reveling in an uncommon two-handed stroking.
Even as he reveled, though, the cat resented that there were rats left on the ship he’d likely never get to hunt down.
Each of the oarsmen likewise had his rifle close to hand.
Turgenev’s eyes shifted restlessly from the dimly seen lights of the town, glowing off the clouds overhead, to the ship, whence he expected to see Shukhov appear at any moment.
The pot was ready, the water source likewise ready to unplug. The engine was running, at low speed, to draw in air to the engine room. The lye and battery acid were both in their appointed stations. All that remained was to puncture the large fuel tank, plug it with canvas, and start the water dripping.
Shukhov, working by the faint light of a ship’s lamp, concentrated on the spot he’d chosen to plunge in the cook’s icepick; that, he’d decided, being a better implement for the purpose than any knife on offer. The pick, itself, was for the most part round and thin, but jutting from a square portion, much thicker, near the handle. With a quick jab, he drove his stout arm forward and up, the icepick angled to take the fuel tank from the curved underside.
“Shit,” the engineer said softly. “I should have known that any fuel tank on any ship owned by that Romanian reprobate would be weak, rusty, and defective.”
In fact, the icepick had gone considerably farther into the tank than he’d expected or wanted. Indeed, it was gone far enough, creating a large enough hole once Shukhov withdrew it, if he did, that he had his doubts he could make a decent plug. Already fuel was, if not quite pouring out, leaking at a rate a lot greater than he felt comfortable with.
“Shit,” he repeated, a little more loudly.
Briefly, the engineer thought about disassembling the entire apparatus and moving it to safety before pulling out the icepick and trying to plug the hole.
“But what if I can’t plug it? What if the swine of a child-raping captain’s fuel tank simply crumbles apart? It might.”
As well as he could, given the need to keep the ship’s lantern far from the leaking gasoline, Shukhov inspected the damage and the flow. It could be worse, he thought. This is maybe twice the flow I wanted. We can still outrun it . . . I think. Better than the alternative? Maybe. I’m going to go with that, anyway.
Mokrenko is never going to let me hear the end of this. On the other hand, if I don’t hurry, I’ll never get the chance to hear the beginning, either.
With a wild scramble, aided by ship’s ropes and the waiting hands of his teammates, Shukhov clambered over the side and down into the boat.
“Sir, you’ve got—we’ve got—to hurry,” said the engineer, rather more loudly and more excitedly than he’d intended.
Before Turgenev could say a word, Mokrenko asked, “Why? What did you fuck up?”
Breathlessly, Shukhov answered, “It was the fucking fuel tank . . . it was weak . . . rusted . . . made a bigger hole than I’d planned on. So we’ve got more gasoline flowing. That means a bigger fire once the water starts everything. It’s going to go off sooner than I’d planned, a lot sooner. We’ve got to get the fuck out of here!”
“Idiot,” Mokrenko muttered under his breath, as the lieutenant pushed the boat from the ship.
Calm yourself, Turgenev, the lieutenant thought. Taking in a breath, he let it loose, swallowed, and took another. Must look and sound confident in front of the men.
“Gentlemen,” Turgenev said, “we can get out of this if we maintain calm and pull our oars as one. You are all guardsmen on the oars, battle tested in some of the fiercest battles of the war, so calm you should be able to handle. The oars . . . well, we will ask God to help us there. So, gentlemen of the oars . . . get ready to row.”
Destroyer Kerch
The ship rocked gently, silent and still. There was no place much to go and nothing much to do, at the moment, so why go there to do it.
“Has that fat tub of a foreign sailor said anything worthwhile yet?” asked Comrade Captain Razin, the former petty officer, coming to the former wardroom, now called, until they could come up with a more revolutionary term, the senior mess.
“Yes, comrade,” answered the executive of the ship, nursing a glass of hot tea. “We found one of the sailors, a good communist, too, who spoke Italian. He said the other language was Romanian, which was about three quarters mutually intelligible.”
“And?” asked Razin, drawing a glass of tea from the samovar bolted to a counter.
“He’s a cook, a ship’s cook off a smuggler, the Loredana. He says the Germans hired the captain to take some Russians home, nine of them. He says they killed the captain and all the rest of the crew. He says, too, that they intended to kill him, but his fat both kept him afloat and insulated him from the cold.”
“Can he describe this Loredana?”
“It’s a barquentine, like any other, Comrade.”
Razin nodded, while thinking aloud. “Now why would the Germans go to all that trouble to send nine Russians back? Did he describe them?”
“Yes, Comrade, but from ignorance. He didn’t know what he was looking at or even looking for. Still . . . Cossacks, either entirely or mostly. Their swords and dagger gave them away.”
Razin sipped at his tea while looking up at the seam of deck and bulkhead, above. “So the Germans sent back Cossacks via a smuggler. Counterrevolutionaries? Seems likely, the bastards. Troublemakers at a minimum, I am sure.
“This cook have any idea where the ship was going after they let them off?”
“He said Taganrog or the nearest shore to Rostov-on-Don, Comrade Captain.”
Razin nodded. “Lay in a course for Mariupol. Stop about ten versts out. Then I want to parallel the coast—remember to watch out for the spit southwest of Sjedove—check out the harbor at Taganrog, then, if they’re not there, continue to as close as we can come to Rostov-on-Don.”
“Dump the cook overboard then, Comrade-Captain?”
“Don’t be an idiot; we’ll need him to identify this barquentine. We can toss him afterwards . . . unless the mess section wants to keep him.”
“They might,” the exec agreed. “I’ll ask. By the way, Comrade Captain, how are we even going to see this ship in this dark?”
“To stop the introduction of dangerous potential counterrevolutionaries into the country? Be serious; we’ll use the searchlights. It’s not, after all, like we have much in the way of threats here.”
“There’s one threat, maybe, Comrade Captain?” Without waiting for Razin even to raise an eyebrow, the exec continued, “Remember those counterrevolutionary officers we executed by drowning not long ago?”
“Sure,” the captain shrugged.
“Well, the Romanian cook thought it likely that the Cossacks had rescued one of them.”
“Shit.”
Barquentine Loredana
The ship’s rat was one of many. None of them had names but this one thought of himself, and was thought of by the others, as Number One Rat.
Chief rat or not, it was used to having to be a bit circumspect in its movements, as well as to having its way barred in many places. Thus, it was somewhat surprised to see the hatch open to what it thought of as “spacenoisystinky.” It was even stinkier now, and the stink a little different, less toxic and almost alluring.
Number One hadn’t gotten to be chief rat by virtue of taking too many chances. If something was alluring, it was also likely very dangerous. Standing on its rear legs by the hatchway’s wooden frame, Number One looked around the spacenoisystinky. There were, he decided, a lot of weird things going on, all of which spelled “danger” in classical rodent. Or would have, if rats could spell . . . and if there’d been such a thing as classical rodent. He decided he wanted nothing to do with any of it. Even though he rather would have liked a drink of water, the enticing drip-drip-dripping wasn’t enough to tempt him, given the strange smell. Instead, Number One turned away and, with faint scratching sounds from his claws on the deck, headed to a hidden passageway he knew of. That, in turn, led to the place he thought of as “foodfeedmeahgood.”
Now that was a treasure trove. Someone had spilt sugar, sliced open bags of grain, left out some meat and beans.
I’ll get the others for the feast after I’ve had my fill, thought Number One. Yummyyummyyummy.
Number One stopped his feasting when the galley porthole was suddenly lit up brightly by some external light source.
Ship’s Boat, Barquentine Loredana
Natalya was the first to really notice. “Lieutenant Turgenev, sir,” she said, “there’s something behind us lighting up what is likely the Loredana.”
The oars almost immediately fouled, nudging everyone lightly toward the bow.
Turgenev swiveled neck and body one hundred and eighty degrees to catch a glimpse. “Is that your little explosive device going, Shukhov?” the lieutenant asked.
“Too bright I think, sir,” Shukhov replied. “Mine should be a mostly dim glow, followed by the sudden rising of the sun. And it should have been over quick. We’d also have heard it by now.”
“Searchlight, I think,” offered Lieutenant Babin, “and a fairly powerful one. Could be . . .”
“Could be what?” asked Turgenev.
“Could be Kerch,” said Babin. “I saw at least one large searchlight aboard before they tossed me overboard.”
Fuck, thought Mokrenko.
“Reach into my pack,” said Turgenev to Babin. “Inside there is a good pair of German binoculars. See if you can make out anything. As for the rest of you, Sergeant Mokrenko?”
“Calm the fuck down, people!” Mokrenko barked. He waited a few moments until he sensed, in the darkness, that he had their attention. “Sir?”
“Once again,” said Turgenev, “get ready to row.” When there was an absence of sound of wood on water or wood, Turgenev decided they were ready. “Now row . . . together. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . one . . . two . . .”
“It’s hard to tell,” said Babin, once he’d had a chance to look through the binoculars, “but if I had to guess . . . that’s the Kerch, come to hunt us down. I can’t make it all out, but I can see the searchlight and I can see part of the bridge, one . . . no, two, of the guns. There are other destroyers out here on the Black Sea, but she was closest. I think it’s the Kerch.”
“Probably not to hunt us down,” said Mokrenko. “They’ve no reason to believe we even exist.”
Destroyer Kerch
“Bring up the fat cook,” Razin ordered, watching the portside searchlight playing back and forth along the hull of the anchored vessel. Bringing the cook took some time. When he arrived, it was without the Italian speaking sailor, which led to still more loss of time as that worthy was hunted down and brought to the bridge.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crew stood to battle stations, manning the four open 102mm deck guns, both of the 57mm antiaircraft guns, the four thirty caliber machine guns, plus the four triple torpedo tubes. There was even a small team, quite needlessly, on the racks toward the stern that held the ship’s eighty naval mines, two of which they’d automatically prepared for laying.
Whatever else might be said of the Kerch, it couldn’t be said she was under-armed for her size.
The searchlight swept the deck of the barquentine. “Nobody at the wheel, Comrade Captain,” announced the exec. “I think she’s been abandoned.”
“Match course and speed. Get a boat over the side and a boarding party—a well-armed boarding party—ready. Also, bring us closer, no more than twenty-five arshin away.”
“We could close to almost hull to hull, Comrade Captain, and save a little time, no?”
“We could,” Razin agreed, “but getting the boarding party back might be difficult. Besides, we’re a frightfully open ship and unarmored, to boot. I wouldn’t want a dozen hand grenades going off on the deck.”
Barquentine Loredana
Aboard the Loredana, Number One had finally summoned his followers to the feast with joyful squeaks and hisses. On the galley’s deck and the counters, six score fat rats plus three gorged themselves on sugar, flour, and all manner of wonderful things. Like a lord, Number One sat atop a counter, enjoying the sight of his underlings feasting due to his own beneficence and boldness.
* * *
The galley sat close to amidships. Farther to the stern, in the engine room, also known as spacenoisystinky, two drips ran continuously. One was of the water, slowly filling a pot that would tip over a good deal of lye into battery acid. This was getting near to full or, at least, full enough. The other was from the fuel tank, where gasoline ran in a small rivulet down to the lowest part of the curve of the tank, and then onto the floor, in a building and spreading puddle.
One thing Shukhov and Turgenev hadn’t considered, since there’d been no obvious reason to consider it, was the action of the rocking of the ship on the entire Rube Goldbergesque self-destruct mechanism. This had been made a little worse with the setting of a few sails, thus allowing the ship to pass ahead of the wind. It hadn’t made much of a difference to the water drip, and it would not make a difference to the lye pour.
But the icepick? To that, it made a difference.
With each roll of the ship, the more heavily weighted handle of the icepick moved, imperceptibly. The ship’s bow rolls upward, going into a wave? The ship’s stern rides over the same wave? With each roll, the pick’s handle goes down. The stern then falls into a trough? With each fall, the handle moves a little up. Rinse and repeat, every minute or so, for some hours. Now add to that the pressure from inside the tank, so far not driven by heat, but still a force not to be discounted.
In short, eventually the ice pick fell out, allowing a much stronger stream of gasoline to leak onto the deck. This was not, so far, a huge problem.
Ah, but then the pot for water filled up enough to tip the lye into the battery acid. A good deal of the lye missed, due to the same roll that had dislodged the icepick. Enough, however, hit the battery acid to start a fire, which spread very quickly to the four bowls filled with gasoline next to it.
The burning bowls did not, directly, torch off the puddle of gasoline on the floor. Rather, the flames from the bowls set the gasoline leaking from the icepick’s hole and running down the tank’s bottom on fire. This burning drip set the gasoline on the deck to burning. The sudden pressure of that had the effect of pushing the hatchway shut. This did not, it should be noted, cut off the supply of oxygen to the fire since the engine was still working to draw in air. What it did do, however, was increase the heat on the tank, quickly and sooner than anyone might have expected. It was not too much longer before the pressure building up inside the tank began forcing gasoline out the hole in a stream. This, too, increased the heat on the tank, hence of the fuel, and hence of the vapor from the fuel.
Even this might not have ruined the timing too badly, but for the worn out, rusty, crappy nature of the tank, itself. Another tank might have held on longer against the rising pressure from the heating fuel, but not this one. With about a third of the tank filled with fumes under high pressure, and the rest filled with fuel just held from boiling by that pressure, something had to give.
It did.
Destroyer Kerch
“That’s her,” said the cook, via the Italian-speaking interpreter.
“Send the boat and boarding party over now,” Razin ordered. The captain had been scanning the ship, bow to stern and then stern to bow again, as the searchlight played across its length. With the launching of the boarding party, the searchlight crew put its focus on just sternward of amidships, at a spot the boarders would be able to climb up the hull. It was, in fact, the same spot where Turgenev, Mokrenko, and company had debarked.
Unlike the Cossacks escaping the Loredana, the Kerch’s boat crew were thoroughly practiced and much, much faster. They reached the barquentine quickly, followed by two men clambering up the sides to tie the Kerch’s boat off. Bearing slung rifles, the boarding party was soon all on deck. Moments later the rifles were in ready hands and the party was beginning to spread out.
The leader of the group was Comrade Pereversev, a clean-cut sort who was also a communist by conviction, and not merely one of convenience or envy. Pereversev sent two men to the bow, likewise two to the stern, and then, with the remainder, descended the ladder down into the darkened passenger and crew deck.
Looking to the bow, Pereversev saw nothing. Looking sternward, there was a faint glow leaking through a few imperfections and gaps in what he suspected was the engine room hatch.
“We’ll start there,” Pereversev ordered, adding, “One man, either side and just behind me. Now, who’s got the lantern? Light it.”
Someone struck a match, the sudden flash showing an open space, with no obvious threats. Within a few seconds, the glow of an oil lamp illuminated the deck.
“Come on.”
Carefully, the boarding party followed their leader toward the stern, heads and eyes scanning left to right, then right to left.
“It’s creepy, you know . . .”
“Shut up and watch,” said Pereversev. Silently, he agreed, It certainly is creepy. One hears stories . . . lost ships and crews . . . doomed men . . . The Flying Dutchman . . . and stop it, right now.
It wasn’t long before the boarding party was at the entrance to the engine room.
What gave was one end of the tank. It simply blew off, the super-heated gasoline suddenly flashing to vapor. The vapor immediately caught fire but so quickly that it was better defined as an explosion. That blew the hatch off the engine room, propelling it forward and carrying Comrade Pereversev forward with it.
Not so far away, Number One looked up from his feasting followers at the oncoming wave of flame. The rat had one unprintable thought before the blast took them all.
The passenger and crew deck instantly filled up with a mixture of air and gasoline vapor. This expanded forward into every cabin, nook, and cranny, as well as down below into the open cargo hold, and likewise into the galley. The fuel-air mix was beginning to escape up the open hatchways to the deck, but the wave of explosion spread outward before this pressure release could be of much use.
The explosive power was nothing like the theoretical that Shukhov had claimed. Rather than being the equivalent of up to forty tons of high explosive, the actual yield was much less, perhaps eight or nine. But eight or nine tons of high explosive, contained within the ship’s hull, was enough to shatter that hull.
Moreover, as more air was added to the mix, previously unspent fuel joined the conflagration. It spread uniformly, in a large brightly lit demi-sphere. Indeed, the sphere was so large that most of Kerch was caught inside it.
The thirty-eight men manning and supervising the guns and mines were the first to go. First, the explosion concussed them, even as it caused inhalation burns in most. Most were then tossed right overboard into the cold water, where it was a race between drowning and being strangled by their own blistering throats.
Up on the bridge, the thick glass shattered, shredding the exec and blinding Captain Razin.
The fuel-air mix really should not have been enough to sink the Kerch. Kill the exposed crew, yes, certainly, but sink the ship? No.
What happened were several things, more or less simultaneously. In the first place, a piece of wreckage from the Loredana struck one or more of the Hertz horns of the mines in the racks to the stern. This released sulfuric acid, which ran down to the battery. After a slight delay, that battery, which had had no acid previously, was charged up enough to send an electrical charge to the detonator. Explosion followed, which then crushed a great many more Hertz Horns, setting off all the rest of the mines, some ten tons worth of high explosive, in all.
That wasn’t all the damage done, though. There were 102mm shells in ready racks at each of the four guns. The fuses still retained their safeties, but the propellant was vulnerable to both blast and heat. Somewhere, one or more of the shells had their brass casings torn off, and their propellant set aflame. Get enough propellant going, and the distinction between it and explosive becomes rather a fine one.
And then there were the very large warheads in the torpedo racks . . .
Ship’s Boat, Barquentine Loredana
“Holy shit!” said Babin, still looking through the binoculars. “That was the Kerch going up with the Loredana.”
This caused Turgenev to turn about, briefly, just in time to catch the sphere of flame and the towering inferno, punctuated by some very sharp blasts. The oarsmen, too, stopped rowing to watch the show.
Shukhov, still perched atop some bags, was about to congratulate himself when he remembered, “Cover your heads everyone. Or, on second thought, maybe not. Anything with enough mass to reach us here isn’t going to be stopped by crossed arms.”
Something did come then, screeching across the sky. It didn’t come close, though; if it had the ship’s boat would never have survived high speed contact with the rear tenth or so of the deck over the former engine room. Still, it made a splash loud enough to hear.
“Okay,” said Mokrenko, “show’s over. Back to your oars.”
The sun was a thin hint on the horizon to the east when the party reached the shore. Mokrenko was first out, leaping over the side and splashing through the water until he ran out of line between the boat and the shore spike. Aided by the oarsmen, he hauled on the rope until the boat was firmly against the sand. Then, raising the spike high overhead, he used both arms to drive it into the shore.
At that point, Turgenev gave the order to ship oars. The entire party then, less Natalya, took hold of the boat, pushing it still farther onto the shoreline.
“All right,” said Mokrenko, “Koslov? Goat, get this son of a bitch unloaded. Sir, I’m going to need a few men and some money—maybe a lot of money—to go get us fifteen horses and a cart or wagon.”
“Take what you think you need, Sergeant,” Turgenev replied. “Don’t forget rations, either.” The lieutenant shook his head in disgust. “It would have been simpler for us if that swine, Vraciu, had kept his word and brought us all the way to Rostov-on-Don. What this will cost us in delay I can’t even guess.”
“A few days, anyway, sir,” Mokrenko said. “Which is a few days more than we have to spare. Visaitov, Lavin, and . . . yes, you, Sarnof; you’re coming with me.”
Taganrog, Russia
They found a stable a few blocks from the old Assumption Cathedral. Mokrenko’d had an urge to look inside. It was an urge that, given the sheer number of armed red guards around the church, he didn’t find especially hard to overcome.
“I’ve no horses to spare, soldier,” the stable master insisted. Long in the face, with a drooping mustache, he looked a bit like the horses he cared for . . . smelled a bit like them, too. Mokrenko instinctively trusted him, something that didn’t come easy to the Cossack.
“No,” the stable master insisted, “not at any price. What the Germans, Austrians, and Cossacks didn’t take, the Reds did. Indeed, the Reds took everything but a bare minimum to move utter necessaries around.”
“Of course they did,” Mokrenko agreed. “And who says I’m a soldier?”
“Soldier,” insisted the stable master. “I was once one, too. Takes one to know one.” The stable master made a quick headcount, “Or to know four of them.”
“We need horses and a wagon,” Mokrenko insisted. “My party is encamped down the coast. We were, yes, soldiers, demobilized and put on a boat to come home. Boat sank, but we managed to save ourselves, our gear, and a couple of others. We’ve got, as mentioned, baggage. A couple of sick, too.”
“Indeed?” the stable master asked in a voice replete with suspicion. “You boat was sinking and yet you managed to save your baggage as well as yourselves? Well, no matter. I’ve got a wagon, a good one, with four old nags to pull it. You interested in hiring me for the job?”
Mokrenko considered that. “How far will you take us?” he asked.
“How far do you want to go?” the stable master replied.
“Rostov-on-Don.”
Shaking his head, the local said, “Now that far I can’t take you. Not only would it take me away from here too long, but the odds are good some different group of Germans or Reds—or bandits, there’s little to choose among them—than the ones hereabouts would just confiscate my wagon and mares.
“I can’t take you,” he repeated, “but, I have a friend or sorts—my first cousin, actually—down by the docks. I think he could. How big did you say your party was?”
“There are eleven of us,” Mokrenko said, “including a refugee girl we’ve acquired—no, stop right there and curb your thoughts; she’s just a young girl who needs help getting to her home—and an officer from a different regiment from ours who wants to get home, too.”
“How much baggage?”
Mokrenko considered this. There were probably about eighty pounds per man, all told, some of which was disposable. He answered, “Maybe a thousand pounds.”
“Tell you what; help me get my mares in harness and I’ll take you to the docks. You can bargain with my cousin for passage up the Don. I won’t take part, mind, because while he’s my cousin, you are soldiers. This leaves me in a terrible ethical dilemma if I get between you. After you’ve worked out passage—pay him no more than half up front, I warn you; he’s a thief—we’ll go pick up the rest of your crew. Fortunately, with the cold, the roads are hard, so we’ll make good time.
“My name is Sabanayev, by the way, Igor Sabanayev; and yours?”
Sabanayev’s brown eyes twinkled as he said, “And so, Comrade Rostislav Alexandrovich—and, once you’re past Germans lines, I advise you and your friends to say ‘comrade’ as often as possible and as publicly as possible; the Reds have eyes and ears everywhere—I see your sick have almost all recovered nicely.”
“Quick healers, the lot, yes,” agreed Mokrenko, dryly.
“A suspicious man, which of course, I am not, would wonder if sickness were claimed in a play for sympathy.”
“One does not need to play for sympathy,” answered Mokrenko, primly, “when dealing with a fellow soldier. One need merely ask.”
In fact, thought the Cossack, I trust you mostly because you spoke of the Reds as if they were “the other.”
“Indeed,” Sabanayev agreed, “it is so.”
The stable master looked over the contents of the wagon, made a quick judgment, and added, “Your young girl, Natalya; she should ride on the wagon. Also that Lieutenant Babin; mark my words, he looks to be coming down with pneumonia. At the very least, he’s had a hard time of it recently.”
“He has,” Mokrenko replied. “Nearly drowned, actually.”
“Put him in the wagon, too, then. As for the rest of you, you should walk. My horses—poor old ladies—are tired and worn, and haven’t been as well fed of late as they’d like. We’ll make better time with the rest of you on foot.”