Kirov Read Free

incompetency.
    As
she completed the second decade of the twenty-first century, Russia was still a
nation still struggling up off her knees, a population deeply distrustful of
authority, but who nonetheless submitted to it for fear of change and the uncertainty
that is at the very heart of that process. Change was uncomfortable, except for
the very young, and always went hand in hand with the notion of threat and
instability. So the Russians adapted, and they endured the hard change of
recent years, always hoping for better times, but always expecting things to
get worse.
    Volsky
shook these sad thoughts from his mind, glad at least that Kirov was
here beneath him in spite of these difficulties. It took all the nation’s
technical resources, and the cannibalization of several older vessels, to build
the ship the Admiral was standing upon now. As for Orel, he thought,
that old submarine should have been mothballed years ago. The day of the Oscar
had come and was long since gone. Construction had been halted on the last
three in her class, and there would be no further development.
    The
same could be said for the submarine’s crew, he thought. Mounting the wrong
ordnance was sheer stupidity. Such a misstep would be unthinkable in time of
crisis, which was exactly what this exercise was supposed to be simulating. It
spoke of gross incompetence, disorderly procedures, and poor leadership. He had
seen all too much of that in his time in the navy, and was tireless in trying
to root it out. If he had been aboard that boat, he would have the Captain in a
pot for soup. But instead it was the Admiral who was stewing, shifting
restlessly in his chair, his eyes ever on the barometer at the far wall of the bridge
citadel, dark flashing glances that spoke volumes. Leonid Volsky was worried
about something.
    For
two days now he had been bothered with an ache in a tooth that always seemed to
signal bad weather. Now the sallow grey skies, rising winds, and slowly surging
seas also spoke the same to him. He could ask Rodenko about it, his able radar
man, but he would learn nothing more than he already knew. The Arctic seas were
vast and fickle, dangerous and temperamental. They could lull you with a sea of
glass under a thick icy fog one minute, and then blow with a force nine gale
the next. The current situation had all the hallmarks of big storm brewing on
the horizon. Rodenko would tell him the front was 60 miles out and moving at 30
knots, leaving him plenty of time to complete this exercise and batten down for
rougher seas, but the smell of the air, that dull, empty, icy cold Arctic air,
told him everything he needed to know. He could sense the storm, taste it, feel
it as the pressure slowly dropped. His ears would ring, his eyes begin to water
from the chill, his sinuses dry and irritated.
    And
the Admiral was irritated as well. It was something more that was bothering him
now, a vague unrest, a veiled inner thrum of anxiety, an off sense of
foreboding that he could not quite localize in his mind. Yes, he had good
reason to worry now with tensions on the rise and war games in the offing
again. The frost of a new cold war was blowing in like that distant threatening
weather front. Yet this was something more. He could feel the unease in his
bridge crew as well, sense their quiet apprehension. Karpov was, of course, the
worst of the lot. The Captain was pacing, his hands clasped behind his back,
his face hard beneath the thick wool fringed Ushanka that he always wore when
on duty.
    Then,
like a pot that had finally reached its boiling point, the Admiral launched
himself into a long, unhappy discourse.
    “What
does Rudnikov have to say now?” Volsky said to his radioman Nikolin. “Tell them
we are fifteen minutes behind schedule. In that much time an American task
force could have twenty Tomahawk cruise missiles bearing down on us, or worse.
We would have lost the element of surprise, completely mishandled our approach
to the target, and