Long after its Cuban service, in October 1973, during the ____________, the Ilia Mechnikov was sunk by rocket fire from Israeli boats while visiting the Syrian port of Tartus.

The first trip began on August 8, when the ship left its base in Odesa and stopped at the Crimean port of Feodosia to pick up its cargo. According to its official papers, the ship was delivering 1,260 tons of freight to the French port of Le Havre. In reality, it took on the equipment and personnel of the military communications center to be set up in Cuba and the officers and soldiers who would operate it. The ship left Feodosia on August 11 in utmost secrecy: all shore leaves were canceled, a measure enforced by __________, a KGB officer assigned to the ship.

On August 14, the ship’s captain presented its false cargo declaration to the Turkish authorities, and the Ilia Mechnikov passed through the Bosporus without incident. But when the ship was already in the Mediterranean, heading toward Gibraltar, an emergency occurred that required the attention not only of the ship’s captain but also of the accompanying KGB officer, Captain Zozulia. The emergency concerned the ship’s mechanic, whose surname was Mazur. Soon after the Ilia Mechnikov left the Black Sea, Mazur began complaining of pain in his abdomen. The ship’s doctor, named Zholkevsky, examined Mazur and diagnosed acute inflammation of the ____________.

THE COMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT BROUGHT TO CUBA BY the Ilya Mechnikov belonged to Colonel __________ 27th Antiaircraft Missile Division. It would be used a month and a half later to deliver the order to shoot down an American U-2 plane over Cuba.

Voronkov's division, also known as Antiaircraft Division no. 10, or the __________ Division (after its location in the Soviet Union), was the first of two missile divisions dispatched to Cuba on a priority basis once the Soviet General Staff recognized that it would be impossible to conceal the strategic missiles on Cuban territory, and that antiaircraft missiles would be required to stop American overflights.

The first medium-range R-12 missiles that the S-75 Desna rockets were supposed to protect from American overflights arrived in Cuba on September 9 aboard the Omsk, a __________-built cargo ship delivered to the USSR the previous year at a cost of $3.5 million. The Omsk was equipped with twelve medium cranes as well as one light and one heavy gibbet, which helped speed up the loading process in the ship’s five cargo holds.

Marshal Biriuzov’s deputy, General Tolubko, who was in charge of the selection and shipment of missile regiments to Cuba, sent a special plane to Lithuania to bring both Kolesnichenko and Sidorov, who then commanded a different regiment, to Moscow to attend a meeting of the military council of the Strategic Missile Troops. Kolesnichenko was called in first and dismissed only a few minutes later. By the look on his face, Sidorov realized that he had been demoted. When Tolubko called Sidorov in, he asked whether he would be prepared to embark on a special government assignment. No details were provided, but Sidorov responded in the affirmative, asking only for permission to take his __________ along. The request was granted.

Sidorov was given two days to turn over the command of his old regiment to another officer and assume command of the regiment assigned to Cuba. His first task was to move his new regiment to Sevastopol in the __________. They began loading their rockets and equipment—some eleven thousand tons of weaponry and supplies—on train platforms on the night of Sidorov’s first day in command.

Since they had to be concealed, for most of the long trip they would be confined to bunks between decks, suffering from immobility and extremely high temperatures beneath decks heated by the sun. Sidorov recalled that when a Turkish harbor pilot came aboard to guide the ship through the Bosporus, the soldiers were ordered to stay between decks, repeatedly watching the 1958 three-part Soviet film epic __________.

On the long trip to Cuba Yazov befriended the captain of the Victory, Ivan Pismenny. Both men were veterans of World War II, dedicated communists and Soviet patriots. Their discussions ranged over political and social issues, and one of them focused on the future. The first generation of revolutionaries was aging, as was the first generation of youth raised by the Soviet regime, to which Yazov and Pismenny had belonged. Many old-timers found the new generation that had come of age during Khrushchev's __________ campaign insufficiently dedicated to communist ideals, and Pismenny was concerned about the prospects.

“It’s offensive that our fate was decided somewhere over a glass of __________, and we have to pay the bill by heading off to Cuba, which is of no use to anybody,” wrote an officer to his wife before departure. Not only had he criticized the government and questioned its policies, but he had also divulged a secret about his destination. The letter was intercepted by the KGB and brought to the attention of the officer’s senior commanders, but they decided to send him to Cuba anyway “in the hope that after appropriate explanatory work he will understand the need to help the young Cuban republic.”

Especially unhappy were the soldiers whose __________-year term of mandatory military service was coming to an end in the summer of 1962: deployment to Cuba meant that their return home was indefinitely postponed. In some cases, commanders tried to ship troublemakers to Cuba. Private Borisov, having ridden drunkenly around Sevastopol on a stolen police bicycle, was arrested and put on a Cuba-bound vessel. Borisov resisted arrest and was probably beaten up by the military police: he would spend ten days, or most of the voyage, in a hospital bed, reported KGB major Verbov.

Private Moiseenko, who was traveling on the dry cargo ship Orenburg, told his friends that “he had not taken an oath to serve Fidel Castro and was going to Cuba under duress.” He argued that privates such as he had no reason to be afraid of Cuban “counterrevolutionaries,” who were allegedly shooting only officers. Moiseenko—a __________, judging by his surname— probably had in mind popular rumors about the tactics employed by the __________ nationalist underground after World War II.

But Biriuzov, who saw plainly that Cuban __________ could not possibly hide missile installations covering hundreds of square meters, seemed unconcerned.