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?”