Ignatova quickly scanned the message before looking up at Bocharkov. “Damn!” His eyes went back down and this time he read each word. Ignatova pulled the metal top of the message board down, holding the board away from the communicator when Vyshinsky reached for it. “One moment, Lieutenant.”
Ignatova looked at Bocharkov. “We have to finish this mission tonight and get the hell out of Subic Bay.”
Bocharkov nodded. “You are right.” The clock showed ten twenty five. “By this time tomorrow I want to be at least a hundred kilometers away from Subic Bay. Make sure the department heads are aware of this.”
“Sir,” Vyshinsky stuttered. “It is a top secret message.”
Bocharkov grunted. “Won’t matter if the Americans catch us here and know the same thing Moscow does, now will it?”
“No, sir,” the communicator answered, his Adam’s apple rising and falling.
“XO, I want the K-122 in deep water by this time tomorrow.”
“They do pick their times, don’t they?” Ignatova said sharply. He handed the message board to Vyshinsky, who quickly left the control room.
“Too bad we don’t have allies with any sense of patience,” Ignatova said. “Maybe we can send Dolinski and Golovastov to them.”
EIGHT
Dolinski slammed the hatch behind him as he stomped into the forward torpedo room. Starshina Cheslav Zosimoff, squatting near the hatch, stood. Shaking his head, he spun the wheel securing the watertight hatch behind Dolinski.
Squatting on the deck around the opened containers were Lieutenant Motka Gromeko, Chief Ship Starshina Burian Fedulova, and Dimitry Malenkov, the only petty officer who spoke accent-free American. The boat’s Spetsnaz team had been hard at work preparing for tonight’s mission.
Gromeko stood, brushing his hands together. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Dolinski crossed his arms. “Looks as if you did not wait long. Have you found what you were looking for?”
Gromeko shook his head. “Not sure what we are supposed to be looking for, Uri.” He started around the small compartment, pointing at each box as he turned. “Here we have the electronics, which are unfamiliar to all of us, but I know this coil of wire will turn into the antenna. That is why—”
“Why I am here, comrade? You don’t know what you are looking for because I am the technician.” Dolinksi looked around the crowded room. “Without me, there is no mission, and if you start screwing around with this stuff and break anything, lose something, or cause it to malfunction, then, the mission is kaput.”
“This box has uniforms in it,” Gromeko continued, ignoring the outburst. “I presume they are American Navy uniforms, but we are not sure how to wear them or when.…”
“That is my job to show you.”
“And this box has weapons. We have weapons on board the K-122, but these weapons…”
“… are designed to work underwater, if we need them,” Dolinski finished. He uncrossed his arms. “If you had waited until I returned, we could have done this more orderly.”
“Since we did not know where you had gone or what you were doing, I decided — as the senior lieutenant on the team — to start preparations.”
Dolinski’s eyes widened. “So we do not have any problems ashore, comrade, while on board the K-122 you are the senior officer. Seniority among lieutenants is like virtue in a whorehouse. It matters little.” He pointed to the escape trunk above them. “Once we enter the escape trunk, I become the senior officer for this mission. I was not sent here as an advisor.”
The silence in the torpedo room seemed to last forever before Gromeko cleared his throat. “You are the technician. I will value your advice, comrade. Seniority may be like virtue in a whorehouse, but in this whorehouse I am the madam,” he said as he stood. Then he added, “But we will discuss the operation with the captain before we depart, to get his advice. He is ultimately responsible.”
Dolinski opened his mouth to argue, but seemed to think better of it and shut it.
“Shall we go over your plan?” Gromeko asked, squatting again. He was nervous about this. Surely Dolinski and the GRU had some sort of plan for what they were going to do once ashore. They had not rehearsed the operation, not even to go over it in detail. Just words about sailing into the harbor, sitting on the bottom — which the captain quickly dismissed — and then frogmanning it ashore. What then?
“You worry too much, Motka,” Dolinski said as he unbuttoned his shirt pocket. From the pocket he pulled a black pouch and tossed it on the makeshift table created by the tops of the crates. “Here is the chart of the American base.”
Gromeko picked up the black pouch and unzipped it. Unfolding thin sheets of paper, he laid them on the crate tops and smoothed out the creases. The map was barely readable, but was sufficient to guide them to the target, if it was accurate. Small boxes represented buildings and block Cyrillic lettering identified what each building was.
Dolinski squatted down beside them. He shifted the papers slightly so the diagram faced him. “Right here,” he said, tapping a small building on it. “Right here is where we are going to go. It is their telephone point of presence — a PoP as the Americans call it. Right here, every telephone on the base and every temporary telephone hooked up to every ship in the harbor transect each other. It is the heart and soul of the telephones supporting the American’s Subic Naval Base. Right here is their vulnerability and our opportunity.”
Starshina Zosimoff now stood looking over Dolinski’s shoulder at the map.
Gromeko and the blond-haired Chief Ship Starshina Fedulova exchanged questionable glances. Dolinski chuckled. “It’s not complicated, comrades.” His finger walked the path between lines of warehouses, from the telephone switching building back to the harbor. “We will come out somewhere along here — the south side of the harbor.” His finger moved to the right. “See this mark here?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“That is a huge drainage pipe. It is here we will leave our tanks and suits, and put on the American dungaree uniform.”
“Dungarees? Like blue jeans?” Zosimoff asked. “Can we keep them afterward?”
Dolinski looked up, and then back at the paper. “Not the same thing. They call their working uniforms ‘dungarees.’ ”
“Are we sure they will fit us?” Fedulova asked, lifting up one of the shirts. There are exactly five here and there are five of us.”
Dolinski shrugged. “Mine fits. We have your uniform measurements at headquarters, Chief Ship Starshina Fedulova. Unless you have put on great weight, yours should fit you well.”
Fedulova rubbed his fingers on the fabric. “Which is which?”
Dolinski flinched.
“We will try them on later, Chief, and mark them accordingly,” Gromeko said.
Fedulova dropped the shirt back onto the pile and nodded. “They are not much to look at it.”
“We need to try them on now, Comrade Lieutenant,” Starshina Malenkov said quietly.
“Why?” Dolinski demanded.
Malenkov stood to attention. “Because, Comrade Lieutenant Dolinski and Comrade Lieutenant Gromeko, if we have to make alterations to them, we will have time. The Americans are very attentive to things in uniform. They will recognize something out of place, and if it is one of their starshina chief petty officers who see us, he will surely stop and comment on what he sees.”
“It will be dark,” Fedulova offered.
Malenkov shrugged. “It is only my opinion. I may be wrong.”
“He could be wrong,” Gromeko said, raising his hand. “And if he is wrong, so be it, but it will not hurt us to try on the uniforms and make sure they fit, make sure they are accurate.” He looked at Malenkov. “Do you know how an American uniform should look on the person wearing it?”