Destroy the Kentucky by Bart Davis

Author:Bart Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

* * *

The Black Sea

The crew of the Riga had talked about nothing else since MacKenzie told them about the upcoming duel with the Lenin. There were more opinions about the new captain and his recent actions than in a banya at World Cup time. However, the sides basically broke down to those who had begun to admire MacKenzie, feeling that he had demonstrated good seamanship in besting Karolov during their initial encounter and had showed deeper-than-had-been-suspected character by personally risking himself to get Karolov off their backs—and those who refused to forgive him for putting Karolov there in the first place, not to mention the collision that could have sunk them.

“I tell you that you are misjudging him,” said Purzov, with the rest of the off-duty crew in their quarters. The men were gathering there more often now that it smelled better. “Yes, he can be sukhoi” —“dry,” the word meant, without emotion—“but not because he is without feelings. He just puts them aside to do things. It’s different than the way we are.”

“He doesn’t care a damn about any of us. It is the mission, only the mission,” Kutsky declared. “We are things to be used and then discarded. He wouldn’t risk a finger for one of us.”

“See? He divides us,” said Tartakov. “First you think you’re better than me. Then I think I’m better than you. Soon, what are we? Dogs fighting over scraps of meat and old bones. Just like Americans. Not comrades. Competitors.”

A radio tech named Vasilov shook his head. “I don’t know. All the time the big shots tell us what to do, the nomenklatura get all the good posts, the stores, the upper ranks. It was just like Admiral Karolov to order us out of the way. Like we were just peasants and he was royalty. So what did MacKenzie really do? Told him to go to hell. Get out of my way for once. I tell you, fellows, it made me feel good to do it.”

“But look at the trouble we are in. The navy is a good career these days. Everyone else is starving. Does he care what trouble he has made for us?” demanded Tartakov.

“Already he has gotten the hearing postponed,” argued Purzov. “If we beat the admiral, he will cancel it. The capteen is fighting for us. And he wants us to fight for ourselves. I tell you I think that’s the truth of it.”

“I think we’re going to hell,” said Kutsky flatly.

“I’ll tell you what I feel bad about,” said Vasilov. “We sat there last night and let those bastards from the Lenin beat him up without so much as a shout from us.”

“Raskin couldn’t help him either,” said Tartakov. “There were too many.”

“Raskin tried,” Kutsky said, guilt on his features, too. “They held him. If it had been Raskin they attacked, I’d have done something. Maybe we should have anyway. I have to think more.”

“He is our captain. We should have had more pride,” said Vasilov. “They spit on him, they spit on us.

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