Mokrenko stood and saluted, pleased that his officer was not only doing the smart thing, he wasn’t dilly dallying about it anymore. “Natalya, you want to witness this?”
Life returned; the girl smiled grimly, answering, “Absolutely, Sergeant.”
“Go up on deck, Natalya,” Mokrenko said, “and order the sails furled and the men in the rigging to come down. Tell Visaitov to guard them carefully. Then meet me by the foremast, below. When we bring out the crew stand back out of the way. They may get violent?”
“Okay, Sergeant.”
Once she was gone, the sergeant mustered everyone but Timashuk, the medic, now at the wheel, the lieutenant, Shukhov, Babin, and Visaitov, now guarding Timashuk and the few of the crew working the rigging.
He ordered Shukhov, the sapper, to report to Turgenev. The remainder he assembled—Corporal Koslov, Novarikasha, Lavin, and Sarnof—around the forward mast by the passenger cabins. “This has to be quick,” he warned, “without any warning, forceful, decisive, and final. A cornered rat will fight, desperately. Koslov, Novarikasha; you’re the seizure team. You bring them out one at a time. Club them if you must. Lavin, you’re the binder. When the prisoners are brought out, you tie their hands fast and tight. Don’t worry about discomfort; they won’t feel it for long. Sarnof, you and I will be armed, watching over the other three. Got it?”
“Sure, Sergeant… yes… seems kind of cold blooded to me… still… didn’t like the bastards anyway.”
“Back here in five minutes with everything you need. Go!”
“So, Shukhov,” the lieutenant began, “we need a way to burn or explode the ship, with a longish delay, maybe two or three hours, to give us time to get away. It would be better if it looked spontaneous, an accident. Can you do this? How?”
“Well, I’m sure I can, sir, but without nosing around I’m not sure yet exactly how. Can you give me a little time, to see what I can come up with?”
“Sure. Once you figure it out, let me know what will work.”
The crew, when not on duty, were kept in a cargo hold below, filthy, wet, and rat-infested. Mokrenko, is his most forcefully guttural Russian, gave the orders while the girl translated.
“All right, you filthy swine, we’re going to scuttle the ship. With you, we’re putting you into a boat to row to shore. Or, if you don’t like that, you can try to swim or stay here and just drown. Don’t like either of those ideas? Good. Come up one at a time.”
The first one out, first by virtue of having the sheer bulk to force his way to the ladder, was the ship’s cook. As soon as he had his feet on deck, standing under the unwavering pistols of Mokrenko and Sarnof, Lavin spun him about, pulled his hands together, and bound them firmly at the wrist. Then the cook was pushed to the nearest ladder leading upward.
“Do we need to put a rope around your neck to keep you upright?” Natalya asked sweetly. The cook merely snarled and began climbing the steep ladder without any aid.
“Next!”
When all nine members of the crew who still remained were up on deck and bound, Natalya translated, “On your knees and pray to God. We’re going to kill you now.”
Naturally, this raised something of a ruckus among the condemned men. One man shouted, “You said we’d have a chance at life if we performed for you.”
“A chance is only a chance,” the girl replied, “not a certainty.” She hadn’t bothered to translate any of that.
“What did we do to deserve this?” that same sailor asked of Turgenev. “It was the others who attacked you?”
“It was not the others who attacked me,” Natalya said. “That’s actually what you’re to be executed for, rape, over and over and over again. Don’t you remember?”
“You said we’d be put in a boat and allowed to row to shore.”
“We lied.”
Zamfir stumbled over to kneel in front of the girl. “I never touched you, not so much as the lightest finger. Tell them, for the love of God tell them, to spare me.”
“Silence is consent,” she replied. “When you were on watch did that not free another man to rape me?”
“Please, Natalya?”
She shook her head, without showing the least sign of pity.
“Start tossing them,” Mokrenko ordered. He’d considered cutting their throats first, but had his doubts the men would consent to be mere butchers. The four men of his detail, by twos, began lifting and tossing the captives overboard. Some struggled; some wept. Most begged. The cook stumbled to his feet and ran across the deck.
For the nonce, Mokrenko ignored the cook. Natalya concentrated on watching the doomed men splash overboard, then their short struggles before they sank beneath the waters.
“Okay, let’s get fat boy,” said the sergeant.
“Nooooo!” shrieked the cook as four men surrounded him.
Hmmmm… wonder what that big splash was, thought Shukhov, puttering through the galley for material he could use to blow up or burn the ship.
The engineer found a full-sized barrel, loaded with sugar. Not caring much for the niceties, he found a hammer belonging to the cook and began to beat in the wooden top. Well, that’s a start. Now let’s see…
“I can do it, Lieutenant,” the sapper said. “I’ll be working a good deal of the night setting it up, but I can do it.”
“How?”
“Well, sir, I’ll set it up—except for a couple of key steps—before we drop anchor. Water drip into a bucket that tips a pot. The pot will contain lye; there’s plenty aboard. The pot will tip into one of the big ceramic bowls in the galley. That will be surrounded by four bowls with gasoline from the fuel tank, and all of it will be by the fuel tank. Last minute, I pull the batteries from the engine and pour the acid into the central bowl, then pull out the stopper to get the water drip going.
“When enough water has dripped, the lye in the pot gets tipped into the battery acid. That starts a fire—big fire, really—hot enough to set off the other bowls containing gasoline. Those, between them, torch off the fuel tank—I’ll puncture the tank to make sure there’s plenty of gasoline for the purpose. That all causes a… hmmm… this is more complex to explain.”
Accompanied by hand gestures, the engineer explained the mechanics of a boiling liquid-expanding vapor explosion. Two hands, spaced with the fingers and thumbs pointed toward each other provided the core of the diagram.
“When you’ve got a fire going outside of a fuel tank, fed by the fuel in the tank, the fuel inside gets heated.” Here, the fingers writhed, indicating rising temperature and boiling liquid. “The more heated it gets, the more the pressure inside rises.” Fingers and hands spread. “The more the pressure rises, the faster it pushes out fuel, which in turn causes a bigger, hotter fire.” Hands almost joined as fingers interlaced. “At some point in time, the tank can’t hold the pressure. It blows up”—hands and fingers spread widely—“releasing hot, misting fuel to the fire. Then… well, the blast is enormous.” The engineer’s hands fell to his sides, with finality.
“Enough to sink the ship?” the lieutenant asked.
“Sir, it’s going to be like thirty or forty tons of high explosive going off; I’m not sure there’ll be enough left of the ship to actually sink.”
“Okay, get it set up.”
“Yes, sir. And thus all but one of my demolition life’s ambitions will be satisfied,” said Shukhov.
“What’s the other one?” the lieutenant asked.
“I want to blow up a safe, a real safe. Preferably in a bank but anywhere will do. I’ve blown down trees and blown up bunkers, houses and bridges… and soon a ship… ah, but a good safe? That would be something to tell the grandchildren of.”