Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [1]
Vasska put up a valiant fight as he dictated these orders to the appropriate stations, but despite himself his cheeks turned rosy and his shoulders shook. “They have been green, haven’t they, Comrade Captain?” he muttered toward Reykov, keeping his voice low and his eye on the other bridge officers.
The captain smiled. “And tell them to be sure to get dressed before they come out on deck. Those American satellites can count your leg hairs.”
“Haven’t you heard the latest intelligence?” Vasska tossed back. “Bureaucrats have no leg hair.”
Reykov leaned toward him in a manner so natural it had almost become unnoticeable after their years together. “They should put the bureaucrats in a gulag. Then things might get done.”
Vasska smirked at him and gave him a delicate glance. “You used to be one of those.”
“Yes,” the captain said, “and they should’ve gagged me. Perhaps by now you’d be captain and I’d be on the Politburo.”
“I don’t want to be captain. When all the shooting starts, I like somebody to hide behind.”
Reykov turned up one corner of his mouth. “That’s all right. It’s my secret desire never to sit on the Politburo. Are the drone targets operational for the tests? Have they been checked?”
“Several of them. We sent out two this morning, and one malfunctioned. Let’s hope we have better odds for the demonstrations.”
“In the old days,” Reykov commented with his usual dryness, “there would’ve been self-destructs on the targets. Just in case we missed.”
The two men shared a chuckle.
“The Teardrop missiles have been checked and rechecked. This batch is probably going to fire as it’s supposed to, I hope. All this target practice and nothing to shoot at,” Vasska said as he watched the sea crash past Gorshkov’s vast prow.
“Mmmm,” Reykov agreed, his lips pressed flat. “You know, Timofei, I’ve served almost thirty years and I’ve never been fired at even once.”
Vasska straightened, his boyish face tight with a restrained grin. “Then how do you know you won’t break under attack?”
“You’ve met my wife.”
Vasska clasped his hands behind his back and lowered his voice again. “What’s the situation with Borka?”
“I talked to him … I got him alone.”
“Did you make progress?”
Reykov bobbed his brows and shrugged. “He can’t be watched every minute. It’s those times he’s out of sight that make me worry.”
“What have you tried?”
“Reasoning … threats … rewards … nothing works. I’m afraid the time is coming for severe action.”
Vasska nodded sympathetically. “Be firm, Kady. I wish I could be there. This is what comes from too much permissiveness. Rebellion. Time will take care of it, though. Borka will eventually make his own decision, and then you can proudly say your grandson isn’t wearing diapers anymore.”
Even as he said it, Vasska fixed his eyes on his captain’s thick dark hair with its tinge of silver just over his left brow, and had difficulty imagining Arkady Reykov as a grandfather. The captain’s face was almost unlined, his eyes every bit as clear and vital as the day Vasska first saw him eight-or was it nine?- years ago, while Vasska was still a pilot and Reykov was flight officer on the small carrier Moscow. It hadn’t been a bad eight years, at least not after the first two, when they finally believed they could speak candidly to each other. That is a day which in many relationships never comes at all.
“Be sure there are no other aircraft in the area, Comrade Vasska. Launch the target aircraft and let’s proceed with this performance before we all get hungry and can’t do our jobs.”
“Shall we wait until the political commissar notifies us that the dignitaries are watching?”
A reed-thin smile stretched across Reykov’s face as he measured and tasted each alternative several times before finally narrowing his eyes on his privilege as captain. He leaned toward Vasska for another of those private