John Schettler - Men of War

Maud was an old salt, as seasoned as they ever came in the navy, and he knew sea faring men when he saw them. Orlov caught his eye immediately, just as the life boat was tied off and the men came aboard. It was the way he moved on the boat, handled the ropes, reached for all the right places as he climbed, his footing sure and steady while the other men clamored, and slipped, and fairly well looked like a bunch of land-lubbing monkeys—but not Orlov. There was a man who knew the tang of salt in the air, and a man who knew the sea. Maud was sure of it from the moment he set eyes on him. And there was something more… the easy assurance of the man, the sense of presumed authority about him, and the revolver in a side holster that he spied easily enough, though the man was making more than a reasonable effort at concealing the weapon.

Wee Mac, as he was called in the Royal Navy was on to this stranger in a heartbeat, and some inner sense was telling him to be wary. His easy handle was a bit of a misnomer, for Maud was as stout a man as they came, barrel-chested, with a full black beard and the aspect of a pirate on the Barbary coast. He took one look at Orlov, noticed the revolver, and then tapped the Hawthorne cane he always held on the rim of the gunwale to get a warrant officer’s attention.

“See that man there,” he pointed with the cane. “He’s armed. I won’t have armed men on my ship not sworn to the service of his majesty’s Royal Navy. Get round to the Master of Arms and have him see to the matter at once.”

“Very good, sir.”

Orlov was indeed armed, and with a Glock pistol that would not be conceived, designed or built for many decades. It was “Comrade Glock,” the very same pistol he had brandished on the bridge of Kirov as insurance that he and Karpov might pull off their quiet little mutiny without any trouble. The weapon would be seized, in spite of Orlov’s boisterous complaint, putting his hand protectively on the holster and prompting two Royal Marine Guards to quickly chamber rounds and take aim at his chest. Rybakov quickly intervened, whispered to him that they would have it returned once they reached port, and diffused what might have become a very ugly situation. But the revolver was taken to the bridge to satisfy one Lieutenant Commander Colin Douglas Maud, and being a curious man, he had a good long look at it. And so it began.

At firstglance Captain Maud thought the pistol was a Russian TT-33, particularly when he learned the man it was taken from was apparently Russian himself. Yet when he flipped open the holster and slid the weapon out he could see that it wasn’t a Tokarev after all. Very curious. Maud knew something of handguns, and it wasn’t a Polish Vis, or a Browning Colt M1911 either, weapons Tokarev was thought to have relied upon when he designed the TT-33. He had a very long look at the pistol indeed.

It was, in fact, a high performance Glock-31, firing the formidable .357 SIG cartridge from a 15 round clip. The weapon was designed in the mid-1990s, and noted for its considerable stopping power and accuracy over long ranges. It’s name was engraved along the flat barrel siding, though not apparent to the uneducated eye. The first letter of Glock was enlarged and almost looked like a circle, broken at one end where the letters LOCK had been inserted to the interior and rested on the lateral horizontal line that would designate the letter “G.” To the right of this he had his first clue as to the origin of the weapon, for the word ‘AUSTRIA’ was engraved next, and then the weapon caliber of ‘.357’ The same odd Glock logo also appeared on the gun’s handle.

Maud had never seen this make and model, whatever it was, and for good reason. There wasn’t another like it in the entire world—at least the world of 1942, for this particular handgun had been manufactured in 1998, all of fifty-six years in the future. And there was something most unusual mounted along the underside of the barrel… something that looked for all the world like a viewing scope, though it would be impossible to sight through it given its present position, mounted by a pair of clips or brackets forward of the trigger guard. Perhaps it was meant to simply be carried in that position, then removed and re-mounted on top of the barrel when needed, or so he thought.

It was not a view scope of any kind, however. It was a Russian made laser range finder that Orlov had adapted to his weapon some years ago, and it never entered his head that it might seem just a tad perplexing to anyone of this era who might inspect the gun, because he never expected that anyone ever would inspect the gun.

The long list of unanswered questions about this man and his weapon now began to mount up in Captain Maud’s mind, and he quietly told his Executive Officer to have the Russians brought up to the Ward Room, along with a couple of Marine guards. He wanted to start asking his questions, and see what he might learn about these men.

When he finally got a look at the two men he could clearly see the vast difference between them. One man, calling himself Ivan Petrovich Rybakov, clearly had the look of an itinerant sea slug, his hands and face blackened with coal stains, and a raw, unkempt look about him that spoke of a scoundrel. This man managed some broken English, which made things a bit easier for Maud that night, because the man he was interested in could speak only Russian.

His name, he soon learned, was Gennadi Orlov, for the Chief had no qualms about using his real name here. He knew that no one aboard Kirov would ever know of his whereabouts or have any way to possibly find him. Rybakov did most of the talking at first, telling the Captain that they had signed on some time ago as common labor. He said he had come west from Hungary when it seemed likely that the war was going to come east. He wanted to get away from it, slipping beneath the advancing front to make his way through Southern France to Spain.

The other man’s story wasn’t as believable. When questioned, Orlov told Rybakov to say he had been on a Russian merchant ship in the Black Sea, and also tired of the war he had jumped ship in Turkey before catching another tramp steamer west through the Med. That was what he told Maud, but the burly Captain seemed suspicious.

“Well, you’re a long way from home,” said Maud, looking the man over with a careful eye now. It would have been a very hard life to be on a steamer in the Black Sea. The Germans had U-boats there now, or so he had heard. They had disassembled the damn things, rafted them down the Danube and put them back together again in the Black Sea! In fact, they were under the able command of one Helmut Rosenbaum, former Kapitan of U-73 in the Med, the very same submarine Kirov had dueled with off the coast of Menorca. He was only there because Fedorov had given him a life, even though the man had done his best to try and put a torpedo into the Russian battlecruiser.

Yes, thought Maud, it would have been a hard life in the Black Sea, and an even more arduous journey west through the Med to reach Spain, yet this man did not have the gaunt, hungry look of his companion. He was well built, well fed, and had a cocky, self-assured look about him that said many things to Captain Maud as he watched the man. This Orlov was someone accustomed to giving orders, not taking them. He seemed quietly irritated with this interrogation, answering with curt and hard-edged statements in Russian that did not seem to paint a very credible picture. He had forgotten the name of the ship he came west on. He claimed he worked in the fire room the whole long way to Spain, but Maud had seen stokers and knew their look at once. Orlov’s brief few days at the job did not see him get that charred look, hands smudged, fingernails blackened and sometimes impossible to wash. No, he had nothing of the look of a real stoker, or shovel man. In short, he was lying.