A Turkish shell had struck the lip of the port deck. The occupants of the bridge were knocked from their feet as a shower of flame shot skyward.
“Helm! Set heading to three-six-zero degrees,” Rostov shouted before he staggered back to his feet. To his left, the guard lay facedown on the deck, a twisted piece of shrapnel protruding from his back.
The helmsman acknowledged his order, pulled himself upright by the ship’s wheel, and spun it hard to the right. But the evasive move came too late. The Turks had finally found their mark, and another volley rained down. A leading shell blew off the destroyer’s prow, while another struck amidships and ripped open the hull. The vessel shook as water poured into the forward compartments, lifting the stern and its spinning propellers out of the water.
Rostov found a megaphone and shouted for the crew to abandon ship. The lieutenant scrambled to launch a lifeboat on the starboard deck. Returning to the bridge, Rostov found the helmsman standing fixed at the wheel, his knuckles white against the wooden spokes.
“Sasha, find a life jacket and get off the ship,” Rostov said gently. He stepped over and swung a backhand against the boy’s cheek.
Broken from his fear, the helmsman staggered off the bridge, muttering, “Yes, Captain. Yes, Captain.”
Rostov stood alone on the bridge now as a loud bang near the stern rattled the ship. A fuel tank had ruptured and ignited. Rostov stumbled to keep his balance, groping along the deck for his binoculars. Raising them to his smoke-burnt eyes, he gazed aft past the wall of flames to a point in the distant sea.
He saw it, just for an instant. A single mast that seemed to protrude directly from the water was cutting a thin white wake toward the Bosphorus. A whistling overhead grew loud as the captain nodded at the vanishing apparition. “Duty served,” he muttered.
A second later, the twin shells struck, obliterating the bridge and sending the warship’s shattered hulk to the seafloor.
APRIL 1955
THE BLACK SEA
Ice blue lightning flashed before Dimitri Sarkhov’s weary eyes. The pilot blinked away the spots that pranced before his retinas and refocused on an expansive panel of gauges and dials. The altimeter fluctuated around the twenty-six-hundred-meter mark. A sudden external buffeting pulled at the yoke, and, in less than a heartbeat, the big plane dropped thirty meters.
“Wretched storm.” The copilot, a moonfaced man named Medev, wiped a spilled mug of coffee from his leg.
Sarkhov shook his head. “The weather office calls this a light, low-pressure front.” Thick raindrops pelted the windscreen, rendering the night sky around them impenetrable.
“They don’t know a thunderstorm from spit. They’re real geniuses at wing command, sending us on a training mission through this weather. Especially given what we’re carrying.”
“I’ll take us down five hundred meters and see if the air is more stable.” Sarkhov fought the yoke controls.
They lumbered through the storm in a Tupolev Tu-4, a massive, four-engine bomber with a wingspan as long as a tall building. Over the roar of the engines, the airframe creaked and groaned. A sudden burst of turbulence jolted the craft, prompting a flashing red light on the instrument panel.
“Bomb bay door,” Sarkhov said. “Probably jarred the sensor.”
“Or our usual faulty electronics.” Medev called the bombardier to investigate but got no response. “Vasily is probably asleep again. I’ll go back and take a look. If the bomb bay door is open, maybe I’ll kick him out.”
Sarkhov gave a tight grin. “Just don’t drop anything else.”
Medev climbed from his seat and snaked his way back through the fuselage. He returned to the cockpit a few minutes later. “The doors are sealed and appear fine, the payload secure. And Vasily was indeed asleep. Now he has a print from my boot on his backside.”
The plane suddenly pitched and plunged. A loud bang sounded from the rear of the craft, while Medev was flung into an overhead instrument cluster. The copilot crumpled into his seat, his legs jamming against the starboard engines’ throttle controls.
“Ivan?” Sarkhov called. There was a trickle of blood on Medev’s forehead. He reached over and tried to pull back on the throttle controls. But fighting against the bulk of the unconscious copilot and his tightly wedged legs, he had only limited success.
Sarkhov’s entire world seemed to explode. The instrument panel ignited with flashing lights and alarms, and his headset burst with cries from the flight crew. The bomber had entered the worst of the storm and was being pummeled from all sides. As he fought the flight controls, Sarkhov detected an acrid odor. The cacophony of voices in his headset settled into one panicked voice.
“Captain, this is the navigator. We have a fire. I repeat, we have a fire in the auxiliary flight generator. Navigation and communication stations are—”
“Navigator, are you there? Vasily? Fodorsky?”
No reply.
Smoke began billowing into the cockpit, burning Sarkhov’s eyes. Through the haze, he noticed a new array of warning lights. The high-revving starboard engines were dangerously overheating, aided by a ruptured oil line.
The pilot shoved the nose down as he pulled the starboard throttles hard against Medev’s limp legs. Keeping one eye on the altimeter, he watched as the bomber descended. He intended to level off at a thousand meters and order the crew to bail out. But a bright flash out the side window dictated otherwise. Overheated and starved of oil, the inside starboard engine erupted in a mass of flames.
Sarkhov throttled back the port engines, but it mattered little. As he descended, the turbulence only got worse. He called for the flight crew to bail out but had no idea if anyone could hear. At the thousand-meter mark, the cabin filled with black smoke. At five hundred meters, he could feel the heat of the flames behind the cockpit.