To Kill the Potemkin Read Online Free PDF

steering machinery
room. Machinist's Mate Barnes was
standing his watch amid the jungle of pipes and compressors that moved
the
rudder and stern planes. Barnes worked at an exquisitely compact lathe,
turning
parts for the constant
maintenance and repair of the ship's intricate
machinery. From the engine room came the high whine of turbines and the
throttling noises of high pressure steam.
    "Howdy,
Barnes."
    It
was Sorensen,
standing in the hatch in a
pair of red Bermuda shorts, thongs and wraparound sunglasses. He held
out a set
of schematic diagrams. "I'll need this in Naples."
    Barnes
shifted
his goggles to his forehead
and looked at the diagrams. "No sweat. Ace. Throw it on the bench."
He turned back to his lathe.
    "Barnes."
    "Yeah."
    "Don't
fuck it
up."
    Portside
was a
small door with a brass plaque
that shone brilliantly amid the flat navy gray of the compartment:
"WELCOME TO SORENSEN'S BEACH. NO VOLLEYBALL ALLOWED. PLEASE KNOCK."
Sorensen went in without knocking.
    Designated
in the
ship's plans as storage
space for electronic parts, Sorensen's Beach was barely six and a half
feet
long by four feet wide. Stooping under the low tapered ceiling, he
switched on
a pair of bright sunlamps and pulled a plastic mat and wooden beach
chair from
a cabinet. Taped to the door was a travel poster. Santa Cruz,
California. Sun,
surf, sand, pier, golden bodies.
    "Surf's
up."
    He
turned on the
tape recorder and out flowed
the mellow tones of Dave Brubeck's "Home at Last."
    From
a pile of
magazines he grabbed the one
on top, a dogeared Playboy. Tapping his feet, he
flipped through the
pages to the centerfold.
    After
a while the
same old tits and ass
became monotonous. He dropped Playboy and picked up Newsweek. Bad
news. Riot, revolution, war, assassination. A general strike in France.
He
liked the naked women better.
    The
chaos of life
ashore made him crazy.
Millions of half-wits running around in confusion, like an ant colony
gone
amok. Greed, selfishness, corruption, lives without passion, without
purpose.
    Underwater,
the
madness disappeared. Inside Barracuda 's pressure hull Sorensen had found a purpose and an
identity. On
the ship life was orderly, pure, simple, and defined only by the
implacable
laws of physics. The sub demanded total discipline and absolute
dedication.
Every man had a job to do and did it with his whole being or not at all.
    Few
could give
that much, but certain men
blossomed and thrived in the artificial environment of a submarine. For
Sorensen it was liberation. He had joined the navy on his eighteenth
birthday
and never looked back, never wondered what his life might have been
like under
open skies. Now, after ten years, he realized that he couldn't stay
below
forever. For one thing, navy regulations were against it and eventually
he
would be promoted to chief and stuck in a sonar school where he'd
probably
drink himself to death...
    He
dropped the
magazine and put on a whale
tape. He liked whales and recorded them frequently. On this tape the
whales
were hooting up a storm. What could interest a bunch of whales so much,
he
wondered. Lunch? Whale sex?
----
    In
the torpedo
room Chief Lopez was feeding a
fly to his pet, a brown Mexican scorpion named Zapata. The scorpion
lived in a
glass cage mounted over the firing console and was the subject of many
whispered rumors and legends.
    Lopez
dimmed the lights in the compartment and switched on an ultraviolet
bulb in the
cage. The scorpion glowed an iridescent blue. Lopez leaned his full
face closer
to the cage, sweat running into his heavy beard, eyes flaring like an aficionado de toros awaiting the kill. The fly buzzed around,
banged into
the glass and finally dropped to the sand. The scorpion moved. Lopez
imagined
he could see a drop of venom leaking from its tail.
    The
rest
of the watch stood around quietly while Lopez acted out the ceremonial
feeding.
The torpedo-men knew better than to make smart remarks about Lopez and
his bug.
----
    In
the
galley the Filipino