Mutiny!: The True Events That Inspired the Hunt for Red October - Hardcover

Hagberg, David; Gindin, Boris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765313502 ISBN 13: 9780765313508

Verlag: Forge, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

In 1984, Tom Clancy released his blockbuster novel, The Hunt for Red October, an edge-of-your seat thriller that skyrocketed him into international notoriety. The inspiration for that novel came from an obscure report by a US naval officer of a mutiny aboard a Soviet warship in the Baltic Sea. The Hunt for Red October actually happened, and Boris Gindin lived through every minute of it. After decades of silence and fear, Gindin has finally come forward to tell the entire story of the mutiny aboard the FFG Storozhevoy, the real-life Red October.

It was the fall of 1975, and the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States were climbing. It seemed the two nations were headed for thermonuclear war, and it was that fear that caused most of the crewman of the FFG Storozhevoy to mutiny. Their goal was to send a message to the Soviet people that the Communist government was corrupt and major changes were needed. That message never reached a single person. Within hours the orders came from on high to destroy the Storozhevoy and its crew members. And this would have happened if it weren't for Gindin and few others whose heroism saved many lives.

Now, with the help of USA Today bestselling author David Hagberg, Gindin relives every minute of that harrowing event. From the danger aboard the ship to the threats of death from the KGB to the fear that forced him to flee the Soviet Union for the United States, Mutiny reveals the real-life story behind The Hunt for Red October and offers an eye-opening look at the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DAVID HAGBERG has spent over thirty years researching and studying US-Soviet relations during the Cold War. During the height of the Cold War, he worked as an Air Force cryptographer. He has published more than twenty novels of suspense, including the bestselling The Kremlin Conspiracy, for which he won the American Book Award, and a string of bestselling thrillers featuring former CIA director Kirk McGarvey, the latest being Dance with the Dragon. He lives in Sarasota, Florida.

BORIS GINDIN was the Chief Engineer and Senior Lieutenant aboard the Soviet anti-submarine warship the FFG Storozhevoy. He is now an American citizen and lives in Stamford, Connecticut.

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Excerpt

The morning of the mutiny the northern winter frost rides heavily on the stiff ocean breezes in the harbor. Not many people are up and about along Eksporta Iela Krastmala Street, which runs along Riga’s waterfront on the Daugava River. Yesterday throngs of people lined up to see the ships of the great Soviet navy on parade to honor the fifty-eighth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, but on this chilly pre-dawn all of Riga, it seems, is sleeping.

Moored in the middle of the river are fourteen Soviet warships: submarines, destroyers, cruisers, tenders, and frigates, all in parade formation, all respectful of the law and order, peace and prosperity, that serving the Motherland—the Rodina—guarantees. It’s a brave new world over which lies a morning haze of wood and coal smoke from the chimneys of homes of people lucky enough to find fuel to waste in late fall merely for heat.

Aboard the frigate Storozhevoy, moored practically on top of an Alpha-class submarine, reveille has sounded. It is time for the two hundred men and officers to rise from their slumbers, dress in trousers and telnyaschka, the long-sleeved blue-and-white-striped undershirts that sailors wear no matter the time of year, and muster on deck for exercises. But yesterday was a holiday, and the mood this morning is almost universally one of indifference toward routine, yet there is a strange undercurrent of anticipation that has permeated the ship, though only two men know the reason.

The Storozhevoy is a low-slung, sleek warship that even tied up at his* moorings looks like a greyhound at the starting block, ready at a moment’s notice to charge forward, to do battle. At over four hundred feet on deck, he is a third longer than a football field, but with a narrow beam of only forty-six feet, flaring bows, a low-slung afterdeck, and midship masts bristling with radar and Electronic Surveillance Measures (ESM) detectors rising seventy-five feet above the water, the ship looks lean and mean. And dangerous.

Down two decks and aft through three sets of watertight doors, open now, and just forward of the engineering spaces, before the midshipmen’s mess, Ordinary Seaman Pavel Fomenko is sound asleep in his bunk while all around him in the cramped, smelly compartment, called a cubrick, his sixteen crewmates are bustling to get dressed and report on deck.

It is 0700, still pitch-black outside. Standing above Seaman Fomenko’s rack is his boss, chief of engineering, Senior Lieutenant Boris Gindin.

At twenty-four, Gindin is a well-trained officer aboard ship, but he’s young and relatively untested. The new men among the seventeen in his gas turbine section do not know him yet. He has a set of ground rules he learned at the academy and on his other postings, but he hasn’t explained himself. He hasn’t proven himself. He will stand up for them and defend them if the need should arise. But he wants to know that they will behave themselves, that they won’t get drunk, that their uniforms will be neat at all times, and, most important, that they will obey orders.

Riga is still asleep. But the crews aboard the other warships moored in the river are coming awake. From here the city’s most famous structure can be seen. It’s the wooden tower of St. Peter’s Church in Vecriga, the old city. Dating back to the fifteenth century, it used to be the tallest wooden building in the world. Even now, rising seventy-two meters above street level, it gives a view all the way out to the Baltic Sea to the northwest. Tourists climb to the top to see the sights, and lovers make the pilgrimage for luck. For the Soviet sailors the tower represents nothing more than another authority figure. It’s always something or someone, towers or officers, looking down on them, ordering them about, sometimes fostering a resentment in a man that can run deep.

Like today.

His crew needs to obey Gindin, but they do not have to know that he comes from nothing more than a middle-class family from Leningrad. Certainly not rich by any standards, certainly not well connected, certainly not favored by the Politburo or the Communist Party.

They don’t have to know he’s a Jew.

Every morning Gindin is up before his men, so that he can make sure they are ready for their mandatory exercises. In the academy, where he learned gas turbine engineering, he was on the weight-lifting team. He is five-feet-nine and stocky, with the round but pleasant face of a Great Russian, obsidian black hair, and blue eyes. It’s obvious that he’s in better physical shape than most of his men, especially Seaman Fomenko, in part because of the luck of the genetic draw but also because Gindin continues to work out and because officers aboard Soviet warships eat much better than enlisted sailors.

Gindin kicks the man’s bunk. “It’s time to get up.”

Fomenko opens one eye and gives his officer a baleful look. He cannot get up with the others. “My father is an alcoholic and I have a hangover, so you see I cannot get up.”

“I don’t appreciate your joke,” Gindin tells the man. “Get out of bed now.”

Several of the seaman’s crewmates have remained behind to watch from the open door. It is the officer against the new troublemaker.

“I have told you that my father is an alcoholic and I have a hangover. Now go away and let me alone.” Fomenko turns over in bed. He means to disobey a direct order.

Gindin glances at the men watching the unfolding drama. He is not a hard man. He does not have a bad temper, as some of the other officers do. He does not treat his men harshly. But he does expect his orders to be obeyed. This is important to him, and to the ship, and especially to the Soviet navy, to which he owes his entire future.

Gindin throws back the thin blanket, grabs Fomenko by the collar of his shirt, hauls him roughly out of bed, and slams him against the wall. “Do you feel better now?”

“No,” the seaman says. He is provoking Gindin to take the situation to the limit or leave him alone, in which case the men will have won a small battle against an officer.

Gindin smashes the seaman against the steel bulkhead again, this time with much greater force. “How do you feel now?” Gindin asks.

“Better but not good enough.”

Gindin lifts the man’s feet completely off the floor and smashes him against the wall again, his head bouncing off the steel. “How about now?”

“I feel much better, sir,” Fomenko says. He is ready to go on deck for morning exercises.

The seventeen men from the motor turbine division make their way topsides, where they join their comrades. Thirty minutes of exercise every morning, seven days per week, at anchor or at sea, rain or snow or shine. Curiously, despite the bland, monotonous food in the crew’s mess and despite the fact that no matter the weather the men dress only in trousers and cotton shirts, no one gets a cold or the flu. These boys are healthy, most of them from the farms or small towns across the Soviet Union, with iron constitutions.

Every morning after exercises the enlisted men are served kasha, which is a gruel made of hulled buckwheat, and a couple thin pieces of bread with a little butter, while the officers are served a special kasha made of processed oatmeal, cheese, kielbasa sausages, and as much good bread and butter as they can eat.

After making sure that his men show up for their...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Forge
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765313502
• ISBN 13: 9780765313508
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 381
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar