Fallen Angels: 9 Days Falling, Volume II

Chapter 1

Ziggy Sprague signed off and placed the handset in its overhead cradle. So it wasn’t over yet, he thought. Some son-of-a-bitch wanted to carry on the fight. First Babe Brown gets mixed up in a surface action and loses ships without ever setting eyes on the enemy… Now this. I send five Hellcats up to have a look around and not one comes back. Sprague turned to the ship’s Captain, William Sinton, where he was standing by the flag plot.

The celebration on the news of Japan’s unconditional surrender the previous evening was apparently premature. Sprague was reading the communiqué, shaking his head. ‘…it is according to the dictates of time and fate that We have resolved, by enduring the unendurable and bearing the unbearable, to pave the way for a grand peace for all generations to come.’ Time and fate, he thought. They had nothing to do with it. The US Navy decided the matter, but apparently something was left undone.

“Looks like we hit the bottle a little early,” said Sprague.

“Admiral?” Captain Sinton had just returned to the bridge and was checking the positions and status of other units in the task group as TF.38.3 steamed north off Hokkaido. He had been with the ship six months after relieving Captain Dixie Kiefer, who had been seriously wounded by a Japanese kamikaze attack in January. Two planes hit the ship and caused serious harm, one on the flight deck and a second right on the superstructure of the island. Ticonderoga had to steam all the way home to Puget Sound after that. When the repair job was finished, the lines of her “measure 33 dazzle scheme” camouflage had been painted over with new slate gray. Yet even without her old war paint or skipper, “Big T” was still a hard fighting ship.

Captain Sinton worked into his new position well enough, bright, competent, and eager to please. But with an Admiral on board you never quite warm the seat in a command position. Sprague was an old salt, with as much raw experience as any man in the fleet, and Sinton admired him greatly, though he did tend to feel he was always walking in his shadow.

“We lost Redeye One,” Sprague said flatly.

“The whole flight?”

“Sounds that way. I was just on the TBS with Mulholland on the Benner.” He was referring to the “Talk Between Ship” radio system in use late in the war. “Five planes, five missing. That’s lousy math any way we look at it, Captain. So now we put some real iron in the sky and get up there and see about this business.”

“You figure the Japs are still fighting, Admiral?”

“Someone is, and on this watch I do the fighting.”

“Scuttlebutt says the Russians might be involved.”

“Yeah, I heard that too. Well, I don’t care if it’s the Russians or the Japanese. We’re going north in force and if we have to knock a few heads together, so be it. Would you get down to Flight One and Brief Ingalls and Kanaga on this?”

“Of course, sir…. But what are we looking for, Admiral?”

“Anything with a rising sun painted on it. You see any meatballs—they get the deep six, no questions asked. As for the Russians, that’s a different matter. Word is they’re involved in amphibious operations up in the Kuriles, but Halsey thinks they’re getting pushy over Hokkaido. We don’t want Russian troops of any sort on the main Japanese islands. That’s official, so that’s the line on this one, Captain. If we see evidence the Russians are planning such a landing we let them know, in no uncertain terms, that it will be opposed by the United States Navy.”

Sinton raised an eyebrow at that. “I hear Patton was spitting tacks and ready to go after the Russians in Germany a while back,” he said. “Now here we are facing them down over Japan. It seems to me we could send this message via radio.”

Sprague nodded. “Something tells me we’re going to be holding the line in both places for a good long while, Mister Sinton, and it starts right here. This is my watch, and I intend to lay down the law. If we can do it on the radio, well and good. If not, I want Helldivers and Avengers in the air, and well escorted. Coordinate this operation with Wasp as well. No fooling around this time. Have the flight crews ready in thirty minutes.”

“I understand, sir, but what exactly are the rules of engagement here?”

“Get up there and find out who put five of my planes and airmen in the deep blue sea. Cover any search and rescue operation being mounted by Benner and Sutherland. If we find as much as a Japanese fishing boat out there, it goes down. If we find Russians, then here are the rules of engagement—just one— either they back off or we come in shooting. We order them to do a 360 and stay 20 miles off the coast of Hokkaido at all times. Any ship that crosses the line will be presumed hostile and engaged. End of story.”

The Fighting 87th was the air wing assigned to Ticonderoga, comprised of four squadrons: two fighter squadrons, one dive bomber, and one torpedo squadron, eighty-six planes in all. Lt. Commander Chuck Ingalls was already hopping mad after the news that he had lost five planes and airmen before noon that day. All the planes were from VF-87, F-6F5 Hellcats on a simple recon operation up north. That left him with 24 more planes, and 12 in reserve with VBF-87. He was told to have 18 ready to go within the hour, half his total fighter force. Ingalls men would be escorting Helldivers, the business end of Ticonderoga’s air wing that day, with all of thirty two dive bombers reporting ready for action. There would also be a dozen TBM-3 Avengers from VT-87.

The dive bombers of VB-87 were the first to get the word whenever the ship wanted to flex some muscle. The squadron had been busy in recent days, and was ready for action. In previous weeks they had flown strikes against the surviving Imperial Japanese Fleet units at Kure on July 24 and 28, and then bombed factories near Tokyo. When “Big T” led the task force north in August the squadron hit targets at Aomori and Ominato, their final strike being mounted just a few days ago against the Yokohama docks on the 13th.

One lucky pilot, Lt. JG Everett Wheeler, received the Navy Cross for gallantry in the face of intense anti-aircraft fire, holding steady to put a 1000 pound bomb right smack on the forward deck of the Japanese heavy cruiser Tone, another ship with lines of fate deeply entangled in this strange new twist of history’s rope. The dour Captain Iwabuchi was not present when Tone was finally put out of action. He had already slit his belly open in the last awful hours of the massacre in Manila, refusing to surrender to the bitter end.

After a taste of the bubbly, the pilots of the 87th thought they would be on Easy Street for a while until word came down to assemble in the briefing room for yet another mission. Lt. Vern Higman was already seated and ready for the briefing as a number of other pilots reported in. His wing mate, Wendell Stevens spied him in his old favorite chair and was quick to his side.

“What do you make of this one Higgs,” said Stevens. “Word is the Russkies are mixed up in this brawl now.”

“Russians? They’re a little late to the party, I’d say.”

“Me too, but that’s what I heard in the radio room. That recon flight thought they were overflying three Russian ships in the Kuriles up north. They made one pass, then came round a second time for the photo run and bam, one of those bastards lit up Billy Watts, and he went right into the drink. Flight leader was so pissed he swung round for a strafing run, but that was the last they heard from any of them.”

Higman didn’t like the sound of that. The Hellcat was a fast, reliable, and sturdy workhorse that could take a good deal of punishment and still come home in one piece. To lose five like that was reason for raised eyebrows, but he said nothing, arms folded on his chest as he watched the other pilots finding seats. He still remembered that harrowing day when a Japanese ship put a 4 inch shell right through his wing and fuselage near the canopy. His baby, “Round Trip Ticket” had a hard ride home after that, but the plane lived up to its name and brought him safely back to his carrier.

Now Stevens had more to say.

“Heard something else, Higgs,” he always called Higman that, and the other man instinctively leaned his head to one side as Stevens lowered his voice.

“More scuttlebutt, or was this from the radio room intercepts?”

“This stuff was right in the clear! The pilots on those Hellcats said something about rockets before they went down.”

“Rockets?”

“Damn right. How you figure it? I mean, we use ‘em ourselves. Old Holy Moses packs quite a punch.” He was referring to the HVAR, or High Velocity Aircraft Rocket, a 5 inch (127mm) weapon that was unguided, but could penetrate four feet of reinforced concrete.

“Yeah, but I’ve never heard much about ships using the damn things,” said Higman.

“Brits use ‘em. They’ve got a thing they call the Three Stooges, or something like that. I hear they named ‘em Curley, Larry and Moe.”

“They call it the Stooge,” Higman corrected him. “Probably because you have to be stupid to use the damn things. I saw one once on one of their carriers a while back when I had to land there. The Brits tried those out on the Kamikazes, but they only had six, or so I heard. You can’t do a whole hell of a lot with six rockets, and good luck hitting anything with those anyway. Ask me and I’d just as soon stick with my MGs and a good 1000 pound bomb.”

“Tried and true,” said Stevens, yet he was still thinking about those rockets, and wondering what it would be like to get a couple Tiny Tims under his wings. They were much bigger than the HVAR rockets, and hit much harder. Before he could say anything else Lt. Commander Ingalls called the briefing to order and laid it out, plain and simple.

“Alright, listen up,” he began. “Somebody took down Billy Watts and Tom Haley’s group. Bushwhacked the whole bunch on a photo run. You find me a Jap ship still floating and I’ll believe it was Tojo trying to paddle his way north out of harm’s way. So we think this might have been a group of Russian ships. The damn commies are getting a little too big for their britches, so we’re going up to say hello and let them know who’s running the show around here.”

This received an enthusiastic murmur in response, and Ingalls nodded his considered approval. “Alright,” he continued. “These ships were flying a white naval ensign with a blue letter X across the whole field. Someone says that could be Russian Navy, at least on the colors, but we’ll see soon enough.”

“Yeah, soon enough, LTC,” Stevens piped up. “We get rockets this time out, or do we just sink ‘em like Higgs says here and use the old dead lead?”

“Use whatever they put on your plane, Stevens, but nobody drops an egg on these ships unless Iron Mike or I give the say so. We’re to find them, and then I’ll do the talking from that point on.”

“What if they give you some lip, LTC? Russkies speak English these days?”

“If I can’t raise them on radio we’ll show them the whole damn formation and see if they feel like taking any more sucker punches like that. If they get stupid, I’ve got authorization to plaster them.”

More murmurs, all happily raring to go. “And one other thing,” said Ingalls. “Benner and Sutherland are heading north to look for our downed pilots, which is another reason nobody needs to get trigger happy unless I give the word. They’re watching these ships on radar, and we’ll handle the rest. Now, suit up and be up on the flight deck in twenty flat. Dismissed.”

Stevens was excited and ready to go. After all, he thought, this may be the last chance he would get to plaster somebody with anything. But he was about to learn more about rockets than he ever wanted to know.

Far to the north US destroyer pickets Benner and Sutherland had joined up and were steaming together towards the site of the action. It was their intention to get in and rescue their downed pilots in the water before the sharks or the cold finished them off. If need be they could also find and shadow the ships the US Navy wanted to hold responsible for the incident. Each destroyer was fast at 35 knots, and packed six 5 inch guns along with a set of five torpedo tubes on one side of the ship with 533mm fish. The other torpedo mount had been removed for electronic and radar equipment to give Benner and Sutherland better eyes. Commander John Mulholland, the squadron leader on Benner, figured he still had enough punch to move in close and get the contact in his field glasses for a good long look. He had heard the order from Ziggy Sprague, “steady as you go,” and he knew the whole of TF.38.3 was right behind him.

Sprague was as tough a fighting Admiral as anyone, he thought. He knew that the four carriers in the main body would most likely have planes up within the hour, riding his locator beacon signal north. A man like Ziggy Sprague at your back did a lot to bolster confidence. And behind Sprague there was another fighting admiral out there in Bull Halsey. He commanded Vice Admiral McCain’s TF 38.1, Ballentine’s 38.2, and Radford’s 38.4, all mustering for the surrender ceremony being planned in Sagami Bay off Tokyo. In all there were four fast carrier task forces in theater, and the British would throw in another with their TF.37. It was more naval power than the world would ever see amassed in one location like this, and intended to make the strongest possible show of force when the fleet anchored off Tokyo.

This is what we have left after we put your whole damn navy on the bottom of the sea, thought Mulholland as he spoke inwardly to the Japanese. So if the Russians want to play now, they had better realize just what they’re dealing with.

The problem was—neither Mulholland, nor Sprague, nor Halsey himself had any real idea what they were dealing with, or that the dictates of time an fate would indeed have a great say in the events about to transpire. One man had a strong suspicion that day, and he was already on a plane heading for the USS Independence, steaming just a few hundred yards off the starboard bow of “Mighty Mo,” the Fleet Flagship, BB Missouri.

His name was Admiral Bruce Fraser, and he had made an urgent call to see Halsey right away. As soon as the plane landed Fraser was piped aboard with all due ceremony, but he waved off the welcoming committee and wasted no time getting into a launch to take the short ride over to Missouri.

Halsey was watching him come across from the weather deck off the bridge, and had a welcoming committee of his own down on the lower deck in dress whites to receive him. Fraser had been there just a few days ago to deliver the thanks of his grateful nation to Halsey in the form of an official pronouncement admitting the Admiral to a very exclusive order. He was now officially a Knight of the British Empire.

Something tells me that Sir Bruce isn’t here for tea and company with a fellow Knight, thought Halsey as he watched. Fraser was a fighting Admiral too. He had fought in the Med and then went after the Germans again 1943 when he put the battlecruiser Scharnhorst at the bottom of the sea to finally avenge the loss of his old command, HMS Glorious, which met her end under the guns of that same German ship.

He had also heard that Fraser had been involved in some top secret Royal Navy operations over the years. Word gets around, even if it has to go all the way across the Pacific. Halsey had heard the British had a scrap with something in the Med, and Fraser was there. Then there was that intelligence out of FRUMMEL HQ down under about a battle the Japanese fought during the Guadalcanal campaign. FRUMMEL said it involved an entire Jap carrier division and a couple battleships, but the details were sketchy. What irked him about it was this: Halsey had been in nominal command of that campaign, even if he was laid up in sick bay. He nonetheless had reports of every action by US subs, ships, or carriers, and there was nothing at all about these engagements. Who were the Japanese fighting, he wondered? And who took a pot shot at Babe Brown up north? Who took down Ziggy Sprague’s recon flight?

It probably has something to do with the Russians, he thought, and he had the distinct feeling that the British Admiral was bringing him bad news.

He was correct.

Chapter 2

“Suffice it to say, Admiral, that we may be dealing with more here than meets the eye.” Admiral Fraser met Halsey’s eye now, a look of frank seriousness there, and a bit of a warning.

Halsey was of no mind to be frightened by anything his British colleague was saying here. Dour faced and well blooded in battle over long years of combat at sea, Bull Halsey was as hard as they came. His eyes had a sparkle in them, beneath bristling grey eyebrows when he smiled, but when he frowned in anger there was a steely resolve there that was a good part of the reason why his fleet was waiting to receive the surrender of the Japanese Empire.

“You’re telling me the Russians are behind this?” he said. “And you’re sure of this? What possible reason would the Soviet government have to pick a fight with us now?”

“This may not have anything to do with the Soviet government at all,” said Fraser, a bit delicately, as if tiptoeing around something more unsaid, and Halsey noticed it immediately.

“What do you mean by that? Are you saying this is a renegade ship responsible for this attack? I suppose I could believe the Russians might do something like this to get our attention and make sure they have a seat at the table next week. A stunt like that would be just like them, but a renegade?”

“That may very well be a good word for it, Admiral Halsey,” said Fraser. “In point of fact, we have some knowledge of this ship, if I’m not mistaken about it now. I saw the damn thing with my own eyes once. We gave it a code word back then. A word you Yanks will be familiar with I suppose—Geronimo—a renegade indeed.”

“Geronimo…” Halsey had heard rumors of a ship given that name. “Yes, I did catch something about that some years ago.” This was it, he thought. This was that secret operation in the Med.

“Indeed,” said Fraser. “Well, let me share a few things about it with you, Admiral. The first and foremost thing is this—the ship is dangerous. It’s fast, possesses advanced weaponry, and seems to have no qualms about using everything it has if it comes to a scrap at sea.”

“Any good fighting sea Captain would do the same,” said Halsey. “I don’t have to tell you that this ship is dangerous as well.” He was referring to the Fleet Flagship, the battleship Missouri, one of America’s superb new fast battleships.

Fraser considered what to say next, knowing there were limits to what he could discuss here. How to convince a man like Halsey that this situation needs a good long look and careful consideration—real caution? How to redefine the word dangerous for him here in a way that would make it stick?

“Admiral…” he began, still thinking. “I’m sure you recall the incident in the North Atlantic before Roosevelt declared war.”

“You mean that business with the Germans? Well, they caught us flat footed out there and jumped on the Wasp while she was ferrying unarmed planes to Iceland. You don’t forget something like that.”

“Yes, well if you were briefed on the incident then you’ll know what also happened to the Mississippi.”

Halsey frowned. “I was in the Pacific at the time, aboard CV Enterprise and worrying more about the Japanese. Yes, we heard Mississippi went down but, to be frank, I never knew the details. Thank God we got the bastard, that’s all. The boys of Desron 7 did us all proud, and one thing more. They got us into this war when most of the country was too blind to see it coming. So whatever happened out there it was all for the good in the end.”

“I see…” This gave Fraser pause. If the American government had not seen fit to inform a man like Bull Halsey of what really happened in the Atlantic, then he wondered if he was making a mistake here. Yet he knew that Halsey was the man on the scene now. It would be his word commanding the forces most likely to be involved if this was indeed another ‘incident’ in the making. Something told him to proceed with caution, yet at the same time there was an obvious urgency about the situation.

“May I ask if you have any further information on this incident with your scouting force?”

“You mean Babe Brown’s group? He’s back in the fold, Admiral, but hasn’t been able to tell us very much. I haven’t seen the full report yet, but those were a couple old cruisers on patrol up there, both of them ready for the scrap heap. He claims they were closing on a surface contact when they were hit by kamikazes, but we’ve seen no sign of Japanese activity off of Hokkaido since.”

“And your reconnaissance?”

“Bushwhacked on a photo run, and whoever did that is going to pay for it—Japanese, Russians, I could care less. You say it was the Russians, then I’ll believe you, but it won’t make any difference. I sent Admiral Sprague up to see about it, and we’ll settle the matter. If this is some kind of political hot potato, I’m afraid I’m not the sort to play those games, Admiral Fraser. Call me rash, even bull headed, but I’ve been called worse. The Russians don’t get a pass from me if they take to shooting down American planes.”

“I understand how you feel, Admiral, but one thing in this report set my mind on this and prompted me to get over here and see you. Is it true that your reconnaissance flight reported the use of naval rocketry in that incident?”

“Rocketry? Like those Stooges you’ve been experimenting with?”

“Something of that sort.”

Halsey wondered what Fraser was driving at. He seemed to be nibbling about the edges of something, and the Bull was not one to be indirect. “Yes there was some mention of rockets in the radio intercept. Our radar picket was monitoring the flight when those ships opened up on our boys. You would think, Admiral, that if these were Russian ships, our allies, that they would be a little more discreet in picking their targets.”

“Might they have suspected your planes were Japanese?”

“You and I both know that’s a load of bull feathers,” Halsey brushed the notion aside. “We were flying big blue Hellcats with a bright white star of the wings. All five planes overflew the contact, so those ships must have gotten a real good look at them. Our boys came around for a photo run and they opened up on them, and that’s the end of it. Now, I don’t care if they have some kind of amphibious operation up there in the Kuriles or not. We have no interest in that. Hell, we even gave the Russians the goddamned troop transports so they could land on the islands! This is one hell of a way to say thank you. Nimitz thinks they have plans to land on Hokkaido, and I’m sorry to say that they will do nothing of the kind.”

Fraser realized that none of this was getting him where he needed to go. He’d come all this way to see if he could gain more information on this incident, and to possibly let the Americans know what they might be dealing with, but Halsey seemed as clueless about the situation as anyone else. He had to find a way to convey the real danger in the moment, and now he began to see that half truths and innuendo would simply not do. A man like Halsey wanted it straight and undiluted, like a good shot of whiskey. He decided he had better fill his glass.

“Admiral, suppose I told you that your Desron 7 had nothing whatsoever to do with the outcome of that incident in the North Atlantic. There was no heroic sacrifice by your gallant destroyers as reported in your newspapers. Suppose I told you that the ship you believed was a German raider was nothing of the sort, and that it wasn’t sunk that day—the day your Mississippi went down. Suppose I told you that you lost that ship, and the others in TF.16, when it was hit by a weapon of unimaginable power, enough TNT to take out an entire fleet if it was concentrated like that, or to obliterate an entire city. I think you know what I may mean when I describe a weapon like this. You Americans have been working on them; so have we.”

Halsey leaned back, arms folded, eyes narrowed under his wrinkled brow and heavy eyebrows. The British Admiral had unloaded quite a bit just now, one hell of a broadside. The look in his eye was quite different. He wasn’t mincing words any longer, which is just the way Halsey liked it. But what was he saying here?

“Are you talking about the bomb?”

That was what they called it now—the bomb. There were a hundred different kinds of bombs, and millions had already been dropped over Europe and Asia in the last seven years, but this one was so different, so frightening that it overshadowed them all. It was the bomb, the atomic bomb, and only a very few senior officers even knew it existed. It was hell in the belly of a B-29, waiting on an airstrip at Tinian, though thankfully it had not been necessary to use it in battle. The Japanese had come to their senses and finally surrendered.

“What else could I be talking about with that kind of power?”

“But we’ve only just deployed the damn things—though let’s keep that between the two of us.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been fully briefed.”

“Well that was 1941 when Mississippi went down. Nobody had the bomb back then. And another thing…. what did you mean this was no German raider? What else could it have been?”

“That’s exactly what we first thought, Admiral. What else could it have been? It came out of the Norwegian Sea and ran the Denmark Strait, not two months after we sank the Bismarck. We thought it was Tirpitz at first, then Graf Zeppelin, but it was neither, because it wasn’t a German ship at all. And when it hit your TF.16 with that weapon we worried for months the next one would land right on London.”

“You’re saying this ship actually had an atomic weapon? In 1941?”

“Precisely.”

“And it wasn’t sunk? Then what happened to it? What happened to Desron 7?”

“If you were to nose around and dig deep enough you would find that five ships from that destroyer group reported back to Argentia Bay twelve days after they disappeared. The crews were interviewed, dispersed all over the fleet, and the ships were stricken from the register, repainted, renumbered, and are still in service today. It was covered up pretty well—even you didn’t know about it—and then the onset of the war pushed it under a fairly thick carpet. It’s still there if you know where to look, and I’m afraid there’s more to this story. It wasn’t until we ran into an unknown ship in the Med that we really found out the truth of the matter.”

“In the Med? This ship got clean away and ran east for the Med?”

“It turned up in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to be more precise. We got a good look at it, and some rather telling photos. Then it ran west for Gibraltar, and raised bloody hell the whole way.”

“It slipped into the Med without being spotted?” This was the operation Halsey had been wondering about. Fraser was getting down to brass tacks with him now.

“Apparently. But as I say, we got a very good look at it after that. In fact I was personally involved in that incident, on HMS Rodney. She was riding side by side with Admiral Syfret in HMS Nelson. Good ships, the both of them. Slow as molasses compared to a ship like your Missouri here, but well gunned with nine sixteen inchers. It was just our luck that we were well ahead of this raider and managed to cut it off as it ran west—or nearly so. There was a battle…”

“I heard about this,” said Halsey raising a finger, the light of interest in his eyes. “Something about a renegade French battlecruiser. You were there?”

“I was indeed. Though upon reflection I might say it was just our bad luck we caught up with this ship—and it wasn’t French. We learned that first hand. Our Admiral John Tovey took the wise precaution of reinforcing Gibraltar with Home Fleet the moment we got word of this ship in the Med, and it looked like it was coming down to one of your classic Western showdowns. Then the other side agreed to parley.”

“Amazing,” said Halsey.

“Indeed. Well our Admiral Tovey met with the commander of this ship on a small islet near Gibraltar. He was Russian! The entire crew was Russian, only they denied any affiliation with the Soviet government at the time.”

“This was the same ship you mixed it up with in the North Atlantic?”

“We are ninety-eight percent sure of that. The other two percent suggested it came out of the Black Sea and that these were actually two different vessels, but that was flatly contradicted by this Russian Admiral himself.”

“What happened?”

“We made an arrangement. They accepted quarantine at the Island of St. Helena in exchange for safe passage there. Then the ship simply vanished. We had two fast cruisers in escort, planes overhead, yet the ship sailed into a bank of low clouds and slipped away. We never saw it again, though we believe the Japanese did.”

“The Japanese?” Halsey felt like a boxer kept constantly off balance by a good stiff jab from his opponent. Each time he began to settle into some understanding of what Fraser was telling him, the story leapt ahead in some startling new direction.

“The Japanese. They ran across it very soon after it disappeared off St. Helena,” said Fraser. “It happened during your Operation Watchtower.”

“That was on my beat,” said Halsey. “I was in nominal command of that operation, but the truth is I was down for the count with a skin ailment that put me in the hospital for months. I didn’t get back in the saddle until October of…well that was 1942, Admiral. TF.16 was hit in late 1941 just before we got into this mess.”

“Quite so,” said Fraser. “There was a considerable time lapse before we found this ship again in the Med.”

“A year? I find that hard to swallow. How could a ship with that kind of attitude remain undetected for a whole goddamned year?”

“We don’t know, but as we learned this Russian Admiral claimed he wanted nothing more to do with our war, we concluded that the ship must have dropped anchor somewhere in the South Atlantic or Indian Ocean, well away from sea lanes in some isolated area. We’re not sure how it managed to slip into the Med undetected, but we do get some very foggy nights off Gibraltar, and this vessel has seemed a bit of a phantom at times. Well, to make matters short, it eventually turned up on the coast of Australia and ran into the Japanese.”

Fraser wasn’t telling Halsey the entire story now—that the ship was spotted off Australia not two days after it vanished at St Helena, a journey of thousands of miles that it could not possibly have sailed in that brief time. That had been the one salient clue that had led Bletchley Park, and a very select group of men, to some very startling conclusions about this ship and its true origins. That information might extend the bounds of credulity just a wee bit too far in this conversation, and he felt himself lucky enough to have dragged this bull out of the pen and into the field with what he had already revealed.

Halsey rolled his eyes, thinking. “Yes…we did hear that there was some kind of engagement in the Coral Sea, right smack dab in the middle of our operations against Guadalcanal. Yet I never got any report on the matter. None of our ships were involved.”

“Geronimo was the culprit. It gave the Japanese hell this time. They paid a very high price when they tangled with this ship. In fact, that may have worked to your favor. It seems at least two Japanese fleet carriers were involved in action with this ship, and therefore unable to reinforce the Japanese counterattack against your Guadalcanal landings. It also left a Jap battleship stranded like a beached whale on a coral reef, and after that it locked horns with Yamamoto himself on the Yamato.”

“Yamato? We didn’t even know the Japanese had that ship until very late in the war!”

“Yes, well British intelligence is very good, Admiral. We knew about it, but as it was laid up for extensive repairs there was no need to pass that on until the ship re-entered service.”

Halsey took that in for a moment, the conclusion obvious from what Fraser had said. “This ship—this Geronimo as you call it, it fought with Yamato and got the better of it?”

“That’s putting it mildly, Admiral Halsey. It beat the Yamato to a flaming wreck. The Japs managed to get it back to the home islands and it was in dry dock for two years before your Ziggy Sprague made the acquaintance again in that battle off Samar. Does the word dangerous say enough about this ship now, or must I look for another word?”

“A Russian ship beat Yamato…” Halsey shook his head. “That’s hard to believe.”

“I’ll agree with that, but we have the intelligence. I can see that you receive a copy of the file if you wish. The fact is, Admiral, this is no ordinary ship. As I said earlier, it’s fast, it has advanced weaponry—naval rocketry in fact—and it can strike from a great distance, even beyond the range of those big sixteen inch guns out there. It looks like a battleship if you ever lay eyes on the damn thing, as I did one black night. There wasn’t a gun on it bigger than a QF five incher, but it could pound a ship like Yamato to near scrap. Needless to say, this is an extraordinary vessel, and so are the men that built and crew this ship.”

“There are no extraordinary men,” said Halsey, “just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.”

“Well I’m afraid that we have exactly that on our hands here—extraordinary circumstances—very extraordinary. The only question now is how do a pair of ordinary blokes like us deal with the matter?”

“We deal with it the same way we dealt with the Japanese, Admiral. We put more steel and fire in the sky and on the sea than the Russians could possibly imagine. I don’t care how good this ship of theirs is, or even how they managed to build it for that matter. Old Uncle Joe Stalin may have been holding some cards close to his chest, or he may have even stacked the deck. None of that matters. No matter how big and tough they build them, ships sink. You just ask the Japs what they know about that. They floated a couple of real monsters in Yamato and Musashi, and we put both of them at the bottom of the sea. Now, I’ve got Sprague’s TF.38.3 up there looking for this ship. In fact he’s probably got planes in the air at this moment.”

“Planes in the air?” Fraser had a worried look on his face now. “They’re going up after Geronimo? Admiral, you must recall them, at once!”

“Recall them? What for? The Russians asked for it. Now they’ll take a few lumps and we’ll finish all this hubbub over Hokkaido once and for all.”

“It’s not the Russians I’m worried about, Admiral. It’s your planes. Get them out of there—before it’s too late!”

Chapter 3

The planes were forming up over Sprague’s fast carrier group, mostly off Ticonderoga and Wasp. The “Big T” was sending 18 Hellcats, 24 Helldivers, and 12 Avengers, 54 planes in all, with 30 in reserve. These were joined by 15 Helldivers and an equal number of Avengers off CV Wasp from Air Group 86. They were escorted by another 24 Corsairs, the F4U-4 model, to bring the total formation to 108 planes. It was only about 40% of his total air wing, but Sprague deemed this more than sufficient for a show of force, and the planes were already on their way. If need be he could throw another 60 aircraft up off Ticonderoga and Wasp, and then he still held another 90 planes split between the two smaller carriers in his group, Bataan and Monterey. Both these ships were converted light cruisers that had become the Independence class carrier that played such a vital role alongside their bigger Essex class fast fleet carriers.

Chuck Malkasian was on his way to his duty shift in the Wasp’s engine room that morning as a water tender. He was passing a couple of seamen putting the final touches on the carrier’s “scorecard” for its effort thus far in the war. It was mounted on the forward bulkhead, of the hangar deck level, just behind the forecastle, and laid out the tally. CV Wasp had destroyed 14 enemy planes in the air with her own gunfire, and her air groups had taken down another 230. They also caught 405 on the ground and put them out of action, a total of 649 planes.

“Let’s hope they get one more,” said Malkasian. “650 is a nice round number.”

“Ain’t nothin’ flying for the Japs these days,” said one man as he dabbed paint on a kill flag symbol. “They get many more and we’ll have to find more space on this bulkhead.” Beneath the air flag toll there were score marks for 114 ships sunk, and another 234 ships damaged, a fairly impressive tally. The tonnage of bombs and rockets dropped and fired was also compiled. It was ample evidence that the carrier was the preeminent weapon of war in the world, a template that would hold true for decades to come.

“You’re going to have to repaint all those numbers if things get hot today, and save room for more ships too,” said Malkasian. “Only paint the next three red. Scuttlebutt says we’re going after the damn Russians now.”

“The Russians? What are they getting into it for?”

“Beats me, but our boys will finish the job.”

Seaman James Long scratched his head. “I got room here for two more ships, and that’s it. Someone tell the flyboys to lay off the Russkies and let Big T handle them. Then they can spend another hour revising their scorecard.”

“Right,” said Malkasian. Then he was off to the engine room, expecting another dull day at sea keeping the big turbines cool.

Wasp, (CV-18) was a short hulled Essex unlike her companion Ticonderoga, the first of the long hulled carriers in that class. The flight deck had been busy that morning as the planes were spotted and launched, but the air crews were feeling light hearted. There had only been fifty-four planes to arm and spot and the air crews were accustomed to running out the whole ship’s compliment of nearly a hundred planes, so the work seemed light that day.

Originally slated to be named the Oriskany, the Wasp was, of course, renamed in honor of the venerable CV-7, sunk just before the war in the Atlantic off Iceland. There was another plaque near the scorecard on the bulkhead that read: “Dedicated to the men of CV-7, who never got their chance.” The men of CV-18 were going to get their chance today, and more than they imagined.

Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class Alfred J. Lewis was also going to get his chance as he reported for duty that morning. He was a “Plank Holder,” on the ship with an official certificate to prove it, #408. He displayed it proudly above his bunk below decks where it read: “To all sailors of the sea and aviators of the sky wherever ye may be—Greetings! Know ye by these presents that: Alfred James Lewis, Gunner’s Mate Third Class, was a member of the original crew which commissioned the USS Wasp and is therefore entitled to all the rights and privileges of a Plank Holder on said ship, including a clear and unencumbered title to one plank in the flight deck.” It was signed by C.A.F. “Ziggy” Sprague, right next to the buxom mermaid in the corner and the two fish giving her ample chest a wide eyed appraisal. Silhouettes of all three plane types adorned the certificate, and the image of the Wasp herself was drawn at the top.

AJ, as the rest of the crew called him, was also known as “Lucky Lewis” for his skill at cards. He had already staked out his claim to a plank on the carrier’s flight deck, a place he often liked to sit with his buddy “Ski” Kotoski, right up near the bow. Now he was settling in behind a quad 40mm and looking into the clear skies up ahead.

It was finally over, he thought, or very nearly so. If it were really over then why would he be sitting behind these four steel barrels? If it were really over he’s be out on his plank on the bow taking in the sun and sea with Ski. The Emperor had thrown in the towel and made his announcement, but there were many who would refuse the order to surrender in Japan. At that very moment dissident Japanese airmen were flying over Tokyo and dropping leaflets urging revolt and a continuation of the war. Their actions prompted officers loyal to the Emperor to order all Japanese warplanes disarmed and drained of their fuel, but some slipped away, the last of the Kamikazes led by Admiral Ukagi.

“You figure this thing is ever really going to end?” AJ asked his buddy.

“Everything ends, Lucky,” said Ski. “Don’t worry. The day will come when you’ll miss your time on this ship.”

“Well I’m taking that plank with me when I go,” said Lewis.

“Who says they’ll retire the ship as soon as we make port, AJ?”

“Well if they don’t I’ll leave it here on lend-lease, but nobody scraps this baby without checking with me first. I get my plank, one way or another.”

Karpov was staring at the big Plexiglas display illuminated in luminescent green, blue, and red to indicate the position of all surface traffic in the vicinity.

“I knew they would push things,” he said to Rodenko, his acting Starpom. “That’s a sizable task group heading our way.”

“What’s the plan, sir? Are you thinking to engage or avoid conflict here?”

Karpov thought for a moment, then took a deep breath. “If we’re going to start changing things it may as well begin here.”

“We could just as easily sail due east if you need more time to consider the situation, sir.”

“Yes, we could sail east, but that won’t stop what you just reported Rodenko, will it? Those are planes in the air, and heading our way. Every time I turn around someone is flying an air strike my way. I just beat off the best the US had on CVN Washington. Now these little men want to pick a bone with me. What does our SAM inventory look like?”

“We used half our S-400s and a good number of other missiles in that last defensive action before the Demon blew its top. That leaves us with 100 medium range missiles on the Klinok system, but only 32 long range S-400s. Close in Kashtan system fired 12 missiles, leaving us with 52 there. That means we have exactly 184 SAMs of all types for this ship.”

“Have the other ships reported in?”

“Yes, sir. Orlan was in the inner screen with S-400s as well. They fired only 16 missiles and have a substantial inventory remaining, 180 in all. These are the 9M96E and E2 missiles, sir. They will only range out between 40 and 120 kilometers. The long range S-400s are with us, the 40N6Es, but Orlan’s missiles are lightning fast—Mach 15 and capable of thrust vectored high G maneuvers. The damn things can pull 60 Gs at sea level and 20 Gs at 30,000 meters!”

“A superb air defense ship,” said Karpov. “I want her station keeping on our bow at all times.”

“One more thing, sir. This is a hit to kill weapon system. Orlan is going to have to put a missile on every plane they take down.”

“No proximity fragmentation warheads?”

“Not on this particular version, sir. We have them, but not Orlan. That said, I’ll guarantee one thing—they’ll hit what they fire at.”

Karpov thought about that, then decided he would also cover his undersea battle space. “Admiral Golovko will be out on the starboard side as an ASW picket, and I trust Tasarov has the horse tail sonar out behind us.”

“He does, sir.”

“I’ll want a KA-40 up as well.”

“It will be ready in ten minutes, sir.”

“Good. Golovko, is not configured for air defense. They have Kashtans, but I’ll use the frigate for some good SSM punch if we need it. That means we’ll have to provide the air umbrella along with Orlan.”

“Feels a little different this time, Captain, now that we’ve got company here.”

“It does, but I have no idea how the officers and crew on the other two ships are responding to this situation. We may have convinced the two Captains, but the rest of the crew will have a lot to learn.”

“It took us all a good long while to come to grips with this,” said Rodenko, “and for the life of me none of us still really know why this is happening.”

“We were in the wrong place at the right time,” said Karpov. “Or you can look at it the other way around if you like to feel better about it. I say we were in exactly the right place at a decisive time. Now we’ll see what we can do about the situation.”

“Well sir, with Orlan and our own inventory, we’ll have 364 SAMs. Throw in the Kashtans on Golovko and we’re looking at over 400 missiles in the flotilla.”

“More than sufficient,” Karpov nodded.

“For the time being, sir,” said Rodenko, with just the slightest edge of a warning in his voice. He remembered all too well those tense moments as the ship’s SAM inventory dwindled away to nothing. “When we made port in Vladivostok there wasn’t a single SAM left on board, and we had exactly eleven surface action missiles left. We would not have had even those if not for the reloads we were carrying for live fire exercises. Our missiles are the one great advantage we have now.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Karpov said quickly. “So here we are back in the same old borscht. I’ll have to conserve that missile inventory as much as possible, but realize that the Americans will have something to say about it as well. If they get pushy, we’ll have to respond.”

Rodenko nodded. “We had the KA-226 up with good long range feeds earlier, Captain. There’s a considerable naval presence in this region at the moment.”

“Yes… I’ve been reading Fedorov’s book. Nikolin has also identified this force here from radio traffic as the American TF.38.3. The history notes it is commanded by an Admiral Sprague.”

“I’m reading at least six large capital ships in the core, sir, and then two large groups in the outer screen—looks like a great many destroyers and light cruisers.”

“I can name them all for you, if that book holds true.”

“And they have planes in the air now, Captain. We have about twenty minutes to make a decision here. The Fregat is indicating over a 100 aircraft.”

“The Japanese hit us with that many planes on two occasions.”

“And those attacks drained a considerable percentage of our SAMs, sir. Even so, we took a near fatal hit. If that plane had struck us anywhere other than the aft citadel, things could have been very bad.”

Karpov recalled those attacks, the Japanese screaming in on the ship from all compass headings, missiles firing in selected barrages, the Gatling guns burning down the rest. But they had to be 100% accurate. They had to get them all. If even one got through to deliver its bomb or torpedo…

“I intend to warn those planes off,” he said. “They’ll probably pay no attention, but it’s worth a try. I owe Fedorov at least that much.”

“I understand, sir. But if we had not engaged that smaller American scouting force earlier…”

“What’s done is done, Rodenko.” The Captain walked briskly over to the communications station where Nikolin was monitoring radio traffic.

“They’re very chatty,” he said. “Everyone has two names.”

“Nicknames, Mister Nikolin. The Americans love them.”

“Yes, sir. I believe one of the flight leaders is called “Iron Mike.”

“Can you broadcast on that band?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Then warn those planes off. State that we are on a diplomatic mission to Sagami Bay. We are not to be overflown by armed planes, and if any attempt to do so they will be opposed.”

Nikolin translated and broadcast the message, but the voice on the other end of the line didn’t seem too accommodating. “He says they have orders to investigate the downing of five American planes, and that’s what they intend to do, sir. And he doesn’t sound impressed by our threat to oppose an overflight. He wants us to identify ourselves.”

That was expected, thought Karpov. Identify ourselves. Just who in God’s name are we in this world now? Could he say he was on a mission from the Soviet government? That may provide some thin cover for a time, until inquiries were made and it was denied. How could he possibly explain his situation and intent to a fighter pilot named “Iron Mike?” He might just as well try to explain it all to a dog, or so he thought in that moment. The notion that he was bigger, better, more evolved and definitely more powerful than the men behind those radar blips on the ship’s screens was evident to him now.

“Tell them this is Captain Vladimir Karpov on an independent diplomatic mission, and that if they do not break off and alter heading within ten minutes we must assume hostile intent.”

The word came back a minute later. “He says they have no intention of altering course and advises us to reduce speed and prepare to be overflown. He says boarding parties will be dispatched from nearby ships and we can take up our diplomatic request with the proper authorities.”

The proper authorities, thought Karpov. As if I am answerable to these men for my presence and actions here! Their immediate assumption is that they hold all authority, that they are the law and rule the day. There was a brief flash of anger in his mind, and his next words reflected his mood well enough.

“You tell Iron Mike that he has no authority over this ship, over these waters, or anything else in this region. We will not be boarded, nor will we be overflown by armed aircraft. He has about five minutes to divert his heading.”

Nikolin listened intently, turning to Karpov, his brown eyes large under this head phones now. “He’s talking to his superiors now sir…Here he is again…” He translated as he listened. “Captain Carp, or whoever you are, might makes right, and we have both, as you will soon bear witness. The United States Navy is presently the sole authority in all these waters now. You’ll give way and heave to for boarding and inspection or be damned. If it is found that you are not an authorized agent of an allied government, then you and your crew will be arrested, the ship impounded, and your case heard before a properly formed military tribunal. We will not divert.”

“The United States Navy…” Karpov’s tone carried the obvious disdain he felt now. “They’re all the same,” he breathed. “This one is no different than Captain Tanner was eighty years hence. They will hound us from this moment until that volcano erupts. This is where it all started, but not this time; not on my watch.”

Rodenko gave the Captain a wide eyed look, but said nothing. He knew what was likely to happen here, and feared the worse from the moment he saw those radar returns on the incoming planes.

“Mister Nikolin. Contact destroyer Orlan. Signal Air Alert One and prepare to oppose incoming strike wave. Tell them to track and prepare to fire at any target crossing the100 kilometer range line. They are to use their medium range S-400 system, salvos of eight until I give the order to cease fire. Admiral Golovko is to hold fire and observe unless directly attacked. They should be especially vigilant for any sign of undersea activity. Once you receive confirmation of that order from Captain Yeltsin, contact this Iron Mike again and tell him if he moves inside the 100 kilometer range line, then he and his planes will be presumed hostile and will be fired upon and opposed with deadly force.”

Rodenko looked at his screen. The planes were 140 kilometers out now and moving at about 400kph. In six minutes they would cross the 100 kilometer range line. He informed Karpov of this, and the Captain nodded. “Tell them they must break off in five minutes or we must assume they intend to attack.”

Nikolin translated again, and there was a long minute before he had an answer.

“What was their response?”

“They say we can go to hell, sir. They’re coming.”

Karpov’s eyes narrowed. “We can go to hell, is it? Very well, gentlemen. Let’s show them what the real estate there looks like.”

Chapter 4

“Cruise missiles positively identified now, sir,” said Haley on the Argos Fire. The radar man was at the Sampson system, his head and hands protected by white flash proof headpiece and gloves as he worked. “Those are SS-N-27s, subsonic and coming in at 15,000 feet. Looks like they’re targeting Princess Irene, and they’re getting close. They’ll be diving soon, sir.”

A good play, thought Captain MacRae. Princess Irene is still north of Poti and we’re down here well to the south. I didn’t think they’d make this move, but here it is. Some bastard has decided he hasn’t enough arrows in his quiver to get us all, so he’s using his longest range asset to go after the closest target.

“Iron Duke is firing more Sea Ceptors, sir!” Haley’s voice was edged with the excitement of battle.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet had been ready for mothballs for years, but now it came out to fight like an old boxer with new legs. The old flagship, Moskva, was renamed Slava and sent to Severomorsk in 2018 where its most significant accomplishment had been towing and placing target barges for live fire exercises. The cruiser Kerch was retired, leaving only two old Krivak class frigates that had been rusting away for years. To save face, however, the Russians delivered three new frigates, the Admiral Grigorovich, the first of its class, along with Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov.

Built in Kaliningrad, they were laid down between 2010 and 2012 and delivered to the fleet by 2018. Much more had been planned and promised, but never came. So the Black Sea Fleet was in no position to do much of anything in a general war. Its best play would have been to stand on defense, but seeing an opportunity to hurt the West by further restricting its access to oil and gas supplies, Captain Sergei Pomilov took his three new frigates out that day for a trial by fire, with the two old Krivaks in the vanguard of his tiny fleet. The Captain didn’t have much to shoot with on his five ships, but there were some fairly inviting targets to his south, three fat oil tankers escorted by a pair of British warships, and he had a few missiles that could hurt them badly. He sortied to take a position NNE of Poti, just under 300 kilometers, approaching the maximum range of his cruise missiles.

True to form, he coordinated a combined air/sea operation that day, sending in all that was left of his 43rd Independent Naval Shturmovik Air Assault Squadron. They were flying SU-24s on a saturation SEAD mission to try and suppress the enemy radars in the two British escorts. One had been identified as the frigate Iron Duke, and the other was simply reported as a Daring class destroyer. To see British ships this close to Russian home waters was rare down here. They held the line against the Northern Fleet in the Atlantic, but seldom entered the Black Sea. Pomilov planned to make them pay a high price of admission this time, and he set his sights on the nearest oil tanker, seeing it as easy prey.

The SU-24s came in with the element of surprise, but the British were not sleeping and were quick into action with their newest SAM defense systems. They proved more than capable, and the SU-24 pilots were not able to get anything through for a hit, losing one plane for their trouble. Yet Pomilov had also let loose with a salvo of anti-ship missiles.

The three new frigates had eight missiles each, four speedy Oniks at Mach 2.5 and four of the subsonic 3M-54E Klub cruise missiles, the same P-900 “Sizzler” as on Kirov, with improved range to 370 kilometers. He fired the cruise missiles first from all three ships, a salvo of twelve missiles heading south through the dark skies.

Captain Ian Williams on HMS Iron Duke was point man in the battle now. His ship was standing picket duty about twenty kilometers NNE of Princess Irene, close enough to cover the tanker with his Sea Ceptors. He was also about 300 kilometers southeast of the Russian formation, feeling just a little lonesome as he considered the tactical situation.

He read five ships in the Russian formation, three newer frigates, and two old Krivaks that were of no concern. They were ASW ships and most likely only there to form a screen. His XO was keen to point that out as they studied the chart plot board, ready to engage. Williams took a long draw on his pipe, filling the air around them with the aromatic smell of Top Black Cherry. He seemed calm and unruffled, in spite of the fact that they had just been in the thick of it, beating off a SEAD strike by a gaggle of Russian SU-24s, and now they were tracking a salvo of cruise missiles closing on their position at just under Mach 1.

“Sea Ceptors engaging this salvo now, sir,” said XO Lt. Commander Colin Firth. The missiles were a ‘soft launch’ system, piston ejected from the forward deck VLS canisters and then turned over by gas jets before their main engine would ignite to send them on their way. Iron Duke had the new ‘Quad Pack’ that housed four missiles in each of her 32 firing tubes, giving her a considerable inventory of 128 missiles. They had fired 32 of these already to repulse the SEAD attack off those SU-24s, and Williams was more than pleased with the results.

Now he watched another salvo firing, but the target had already completed its subsonic cruise phase and was diving steeply for the deck to begin its final supersonic run. It was missile against missile now, each about the same speed, one with active radar seekers probing the darkness to find its prey, the other executing a series of pre-programmed maneuvers as it settled into its sea skimming run and rapidly accelerated towards Mach 2.5 They had to get them all as they came in, and Williams watched as they recorded kill after kill. Yet the range was diminishing rapidly and two of the twelve were good enough to evade the defensive salvo. Williams saw them streak by the ship in the distance, two bright fiery tails well off his port quarter. They were obviously bearing down on Princess Irene, and they were well out of range of the ship’s close in gun systems.

“Once again, gentlemen,” he said, “and be quick about it.”

Four more Sea Ceptors were launched, accelerating rapidly in pursuit, but the Sizzlers were now burning full out and were reaching their maximum speed. The Ceptors could not catch them, and both hit their target with a thundering explosion. The heavy warhead blew through the outer hull and their kinetic impact started a raging fire in the tanker’s fuel compartments. The combined force of the two missiles put 800 kilograms of explosive power on the ship, and the rest of the damage was done by the burning oil. It was a fire that would not be put out by any means, and the ship was doomed. Fairchild had lost its youngest daughter, and the bridge crew on the Russian flagship, Admiral Gigorivich, clenched their fists in a victory cheer. First blood in the battle was their claim now, black oily blood spreading over the sea near the stricken tanker and surrounding it in a halo of fire.

But it was far from over.

Captain Gordon MacRae got the bad news a few minutes later and considered what to do. The damn Russians had one thing on him in this engagement—range. Their missiles had long reach, exceeding his own anti-ship systems by just enough to matter. That was the deadly calculus of modern war at sea. The speed and range of a missile could make all the difference in the engagement. If he wanted to repay the Black Sea Fleet in kind he had to get up north with Iron Duke and close the range a bit.

Fairchild had pressed a new ship-to-ship missile prototype into sea trials on the Argos Fire, the GB-7, or Gealbhan for ‘Sparrow.’ It was faster than the Harpoons on the Iron Duke, and had range almost equivalent to their Block 1D version at 320 kilometers, but he was too far south. The Duke could fire back now and their Captain Williams was doing so, but the frigate only had enough for one good punch, just eight Harpoons.

“Come about to 340 degrees and ahead full,” he said grimly. “We just paid a high price for a chance at getting at the oil quickly. Now it’s out there burning on Princess Irene.”

His Executive Officer Dean had a troubled look on his face. Iron Duke was alone, fighting the brave fight while Argos Fire was escorting the core of what remained of the Fairchild flotilla, two larger tankers with a million barrels each in their holds. MacRae reasoned that he could defend the tankers as long as he kept them inside the circle of his air defense umbrella, and the ship’s Sea Vipers could range out 120 kilometers.

Argos Fire surged ahead, her engines quickly developing 30 knots. With the Russians still heading southeast at 25 knots, the two sides would be closing at just over 100 kilometers per hour. That would put his Gealbhans within range in just a few minutes, and he was ready to engage.

“Wake up the birds,” he said to Dean. “Salvo of eight. Iron Duke has na’ but a handful of those Harpoons, and they’ll be lucky if they get even one through.”

Ten minutes later the Argos Fire engaged, but Captain Pomilov was ready with his final salvo of Oniks missiles as well. His three new frigates were able to get their salvo off before they had to go defensive and switch to SAM systems. He soon had another twelve P-800s in the air and targeted at the Iron Duke this time, intent on taking out a warship after his initial salvo had found and killed its commercial target.

The Oniks was the missile that had eventually been merged into the Yakhont/BraMos project for the Indian Navy. It was a successor to the original SS-N-22 Sunburns, fast, furious, and with a 250kg warhead. It’s ideal flight trajectory over the 300 kilometer range was a high altitude approach followed by a rapid descent to sea level for the final 40 kilometers. So while the eight Harpoons off Iron Duke forged in on the deck, low and slow, the Russian response was climbing high.

The frigate was firing with her Sea Ceptors and the deadly dance was on again in the midnight black of the starlit sky. Bright new shooting stars clawed the heavens as the missiles engaged, and all the while the Gealbhans off Argos Fire accelerated to join the fray.

The Harpoons found an old Krivak and two got through to break its back that night. A third made it through to hit Admiral Grigorovich. Yet the Russian missiles were fast and, in spite of a violent defense from her 30mm Mark 34 Bushmaster IIs, Iron Duke took a hit on her aft quarter, igniting the helo deck area in a torrid fire.

Captain Williams was on the bridge in command of the action, pipe in one hand, the other steadying himself against the roll of the ship. He shunned the Captain’s chair, preferring to stand out his watch whenever he was on the bridge. There was a lot going on in the heat of combat, but Williams was a steady rock, with typical British reserve and a well of calm in his gut that would not be rattled. He felt the ship quaver with the missile hit, but a raised eyebrow was the only outward sign of reaction.

“Took one on our backside,” he said calmly to his XO Lt. Commander Colin Firth.”

“That we did, sir.”

There were two other near misses, one spoofed by ECM and chaff, the other bearing in, right amidships.

“Mister Simms, look to your Bushmasters,” said Williams firmly.

The rattle of the frigate’s two automated cannons scored a lucky hit, igniting the last missile not thirty feet shy of the frigate. The clatter of shrapnel striking the hull was evident to them all, and a junior midshipman exhaled loudly with obviously relief. The demonstration drew a stern eye from Captain Williams, who quietly reached into his pocket and found his tobacco tamp.

Then the Gealbhans broke through the Russian defense to get the second Krivak and put another missile into Grigorovich that would make a fiery end to that ship’s brief career. A third found the Essen, striking amidships, and the Black Sea Fleet had had enough.

Back aboard Argos Fire radar man Haley turned to report .

“The remaining ships are executing a high speed turn, sir. They’re coming around on a new heading of 340.”

“They’re turning tail and running for home,” said MacRae. “But they’ve already done their worst. Miss Fairchild won’t like the news tonight. We just lost twenty percent of our oil, and a good ship and crew with it.”

“Aye, sir. Lucky Iron Duke had its Westland Merlin helo up on ASW watch. They’re vectoring it to Princess Irene for rescue operations. Chances are we’ll bring a good many home.”

The entire action had taken little more than an hour. It would end with three Russian ships on the bottom of the sea, and both Iron Duke and Princess Irene hit and burning. Captain Williams was on the radio from Iron Duke with his report.

“Well, we took one on the fantail,” he said “But it looks a whole lot worse than it is…. Sorry about Princess Irene. We’ll get to the crew, but may have to send our Merlin your way until we sort things out here. Those damn Sizzlers…We took down ten, but two got through.”

“Aye, Captain,” said MacRae. “You’ve given your best, and we sent them home three ships light with a fourth on fire. I don’t think we’ll see much more of the Black Sea Fleet from here on out.”

“Seen more of it than we needed already,” said Williams. “Damn bloody business.”

“If you can still make way would you join us off the Turkish coast? We’re coming up to give you just a wee bit more missile umbrella.”

“Much obliged, Argos Fire. We can only make 20 knots at the moment, but that should get us south well enough. Iron Duke over and out.”

That night the survivors aboard Admiral Grigorovich lowered the body of Captain Pomilov into the last launch and made way to join Makarov, the only ship in the fleet that had come through the battle unscathed. The flotilla leader would burn for another three hours before it keeled over and sank, joining the two Krivaks that had already gone down.

Command fell to Captain Tsukov on the Essen, senior officer in the fleet after Pomilov’s death. His ship had taken significant damage, but was still seaworthy and could make 25 knots. The flotilla had expended its entire SSM missile inventory in the brief, violent action. So now he turned and led what was left of the Black Sea Fleet home to Novorossiysk, his war over for the moment.

In his wake, far to the south, Princess Irene would burn all night before her hull gave way and she listed heavily into the massive oil slick blighting the sea. Turkish ships were out on a rescue operation, trying to fish as many of the crew out of the sea as possible. Half a million barrels of oil would go down with her, and now the hopes of the Fairchild company rested on those two last tankers, slowly creeping west along the Anatolian coast and soon joined by two more Turkish Frigates in escort. NATO was late to the game, but they were welcome, as were the flights of Turkish fighters up now to provide additional air cover.

By dawn of the fourth day of the war, Argos Fire had but one last charge to recover. The ship still had three of her X-3 helos and thirty Argonauts in the Caspian Sea region, and each minute that passed extended the range and stretched the tether of safe recovery thinner and thinner. Captain MacRae headed to the Executive cabin to see the company CEO and explain what had happened. He was determined to push for the immediate extraction of the Argonauts and a speedy run for the Bosporus before the Russians could scrape up more aircraft for another attack.

When he got there the little nightmare of naval combat that had darkened his watch was about to deepen to yet another shade of black.

Chapter 5

“Steady on that winch!” said Dobrynin, hands on his hips as he supervised the loading operation. They had a crane up on the upper roof of the Anatoly Alexandrov, and they were hoisting up a long metal tube that might resemble a missile canister to any watchful eyes. Cover of darkness and overhead clouds would prevent satellites from looking in, but they had seen NATO drones earlier, and it was obvious that someone was taking an interest in the operation being mounted on the Caspian coast.

Dobrynin watched until the tube was safely hoisted up and lowered into an ordnance mover. It wasn’t a missile canister, but a radiation safe container housing some very special cargo, a fresh delivery from Admiral Volsky that had been flown all the way from Severomorsk up north. The Admiral had spoken to him an hour ago on a very secure channel.

“Is Rod-25 mounted, Dobrynin?”

“Yes sir, and I have the reactor up and ready for operations.”

“Good news. Well, I’m sending you a backup.” The Admiral went on to explain the complex new twist in the mission they had planned, and the longer Dobrynin listened, the more he began to silently shake his head.

“1945?” he said incredulously. “How could it happen, Admiral? We had Rod-25 safe with us here.”

Volsky explained what he could, but the fact remained that it was all still a mystery. Kirov was gone, and so were Orlan and Admiral Golovko. Aside from his submarines he now had no Red Banner Pacific Fleet to speak of, and the Black Sea Fleet had just been gutted and largely neutralized as an effective fighting force in a scrap with the British. Everything was now riding on this mission, Volsky explained. It wasn’t only to try and bring Fedorov home again, or even Orlov. Now there were three ships and over 1500 officers and crew to worry about as well.

“I’m sending you a big helicopter and a lot of extra aviation fuel.”

“But Admiral, we can’t bring the ships home with that. What is this for?”

Volsky explained, and Dobrynin’s eyes got wider and wider. “As for your part,” the Admiral concluded, “you just focus on Fedorov. Bukin is going to handle the mission involving the Mi-26. My question to you is this—can the landing pad on Anatoly Alexandrov hold up if we land the Mi-26 there?”

“Yes sir. It’s a heavy, reinforced structure. In fact we used Mi-26 helos to load the reactor elements and other equipment and supplies last year when we commissioned the barge.”

“Very good. Carry on, Chief. I’m counting on you. You may launch your mission when ready. Remember our briefing. Your first task is to discover the year and date!”

Yes, yes, Dobrynin remembered the briefing. The key dates were September 30 thru October 5, 1942. He was to secure the Anatoly Alexandrov, then get a scouting detail ashore north of Makhachkala and begin his search. Troyak would be broadcasting his position, and he had the exact frequency so he could monitor it 24/7. Once a signal was received he was to put men ashore in force with any of the equipment that made it back with him, and use any means necessary to secure his objective and get safely home. Yet two more control rods had been received, one from Vladivostok and this last one from Severomorsk. They were to be loaded on the helicopter the Admiral mentioned. What was in the Admiral’s vodka this time?

The Mi-26 had been used to move in the last of their equipment, and was now at rest, its enormous bulk squatting on the roof of Anatoly Alexandrov like a giant bug, the eight long props drooping toward the landing pad like enormous spider legs. Bukin had been promoted from Corporal to Sergeant and he was now in charge of a small detachment of Marines, five men. One was a pilot, and the others stood in as flight engineers, but all were trained for combat, and armed to the teeth. They had supplies consisting mostly of food and ammunition, and the entire cargo section of the helo was packed with as much aviation fuel as the Mi-26 could carry.

Wherever they are going it must be some good long way, thought Dobrynin. He had enough to worry about getting the reactor certified and ready for use. Let Bukin handle the helicopter mission.

Now Volsky sat in the deep underground bunker beneath Naval Headquarters Fokino, a precaution given the steady buildup of American bomber assets in the Pacific. That and the rain of ash fall from the Demon volcano had cast a pall over the entire region, imposing a lull on operations as nature revealed her awesome temper. It was humbling to look out and see the titanic column of smoke and ash billowing up into the atmosphere, even to the edge of space. The first night after the eruption had been black beyond measure, as if the sky itself had been broiled to char. No moonlight could penetrate the thickening air, and a muffled silence fell over the sea and land as more and more material billowed up into the brimstone night. It created a deeply ominous feeling in the gut, a sense of warning and desperate urgency settling over the Admiral’s mind.

This war was a ragged and haphazard affair, he thought, and a tempest in a teacup compared to that Demon. Hokkaido Island is being inundated with ash, and the Americans have pulled everything they had out of Misawa in northernmost Honshu for bases on the main island further south. China seems single mindedly focused on Taiwan, and now the North Koreans are launching missiles for the Americans to shoot down.

The great standoff with the American fleet was suddenly held in abeyance. CVBG Nimitz had altered course and was now steaming to join the stricken Washington strike group in the Marianas. The third carrier, CVBG Eisenhower had also diverted from its course and was heading east through the Sulu Sea and into the Philippines, apparently also bound for Guam. They were moving their principle assets to a secure forward base to reorganize prior to resuming operations.

Karpov had beaten the Washington group with his daring and aggressive tactic of getting in that all important first salvo. Volsky wondered what he might have accomplished if he had carried out the remainder of his plan. After code Longarm sent the last of their longer range missiles out after the carrier, the fleet itself was going to execute a hard right and make a high speed rush south. Karpov planned to use the initial plume from the smaller eruption of the volcano as top cover, surging south beneath the pall to get his ships inside the 300 kilometer range. At that point he had P-900s on all three ships in the core fleet for another massed barrage of 42 missiles. These would fire even as the fleet continued south at their best speed, and if they got inside 200 kilometers the Moskit-II Sunburns on Kirov would fire next, followed by the high speed MOS-III Starfires, 30 more missiles with another eight P-800s on Golovko. After that it would be down to deck guns.

Against a single carrier battlegroup we had the force to prevail, he thought. But the US Navy was not just a single battlegroup. They could bring that same force to the battle five times over here in the Pacific. We have fleet enough to hold our own credibly against only 20% of their real naval power here. Satellites were already picking up movement west from the 3rd Fleet sector on the US Pacific coast. CVBG Ford was coming.

Against that I’ve got Admiral Kuznetsov hiding up in the Sea of Okhotsk to get away from that ashfall and have the benefit of land based air cover. Perhaps I can keep that ship afloat for another week. The two Udaloys that made it back to Vladivostok are useless in an offensive role. All I have left are the submarines, safe from the Demon’s wrath as they cruised deep beneath the sea.

Reports there had been mixed. The Americans had found and killed an Oscar after the Russian subs revealed their position when they fired at the carrier. The other Oscar fled north, and Yasen was also still alive, but running silent. He did not know what the Americans had beneath the sea, but there were probably a fistful of deadly hunter killer subs on the prowl by now. What to do next? The battle was over for the time being, and his thoughts drifted to the operation underway in the Caspian.

If I had it to do over I would have put that control rod we found in Vladivostok on a submarine. Then it would have been right here to find Karpov and surface to deliver the rod. Perhaps it could have hovered beneath the ship and come home when Kirov shifted, but the more he thought about his plan the wilder it seemed. How do we even know these new rods will work? Kapustin had been very confident, and his revelation the previous night had been very telling.

“Because I told you,” he told them with certainty. “I know everything there is to know about these control rods, where they were manufactured, where they were shipped and stored, and one thing more—where the materials used in their manufacture came from…” He let that dangle, a teasing look in his eyes.

“Very well,” said Kamenski, “enlighten us, Gerasim.”

“There’s nothing unusual about the manufacturer,” Kapustin continued. “Rosatomica makes a good percentage of our control rods, but I ran down the materials composition and source data, and found something very interesting. It may be nothing, but then again…”

“Yes, yes, what is it?”

“Well the materials are sampled for purity, of course, and any residual elements or minerals are documented. That’s what caught my eye, because this Rod-25 seems to have a higher reading for calcite and calcium carbonate particles.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kamenski.

“I’m not sure I do either,” Kapustin admitted. “But that reading led me to check the materials source. These rods are basically steel tubes housing materials that easily absorb neutrons without undergoing fission. They use lots of things, silver, indium, cadmium, boron, cobalt and a witch’s brew of other elements, many I’ve never even heard of. The Americans use something called hafnium in their naval reactors—very rare—but we’ve been experimenting with some new substances and alloys of various sorts, like dysprosium titanate. The engineers note it has a much higher melting point and is very stable, producing almost no radioactive waste. It’s a ceramic material, a kind of spin ice with magnetic properties. And this is interesting, the readings that caught my eye were for a material called Silverberg. It’s also called Iceland Spar because it was originally mined in Iceland, and they called it silver-rock there. If you had a lump in your hand it would look like a big crystal, and it has some very interesting properties in addition to magnetic effects. It splits light! Some say it was used as a navigation aid centuries ago.”

“A navigation aid?” Volsky did not follow him.

“Yes, yes,” said Kamenski. “I have heard of this. The Vikings called it Sunstone. They could hold the crystal up under a completely overcast sky, and by moving it across the sky and observing the stone they could find the position of the sun. It can polarize light—even infrared. In effect, it’s a doubly refracting Calcite. They use it with lasers in our day and who know what else.”

“You mean something like a prism?” Volsky had some grasp on it now.

“I think more like a doubling effect of the light. It takes the light rays and decomposes them into two rays. Double or nothing, eh?”

“This material is in Rod-25?” asked Volsky.

“Yes,” said Kapustin, “and in very high residual quantities relative to other impurities listed. And now comes the real surprise. I ran down the purchase orders to find out where these materials were mined. This particular batch had a significant shipment from a mining operation just north of Vanavara, a little strip mine right on the river there.” He tapped his pen on the computer screen as if to indicate the place.

Kamenski’s eyes seemed to glitter, the light of his thinking doubled as the Inspector went on, but the Admiral had a clueless expression on his face, and it was clear he was not seeing the importance of any of this.

“Vanavara? And the name of the river where this strip mine is located?” Kamenski asked the question as if he already knew the answer, and Kapustin smiled.

“I knew you would make the connection, Pavel.”

“What river?” said Volsky.

“The Stony Tunguska.” Kapustin folded his arms, a satisfied grin on his face.

“Tunguska? You mean the place where that asteroid fell?”

“Correct,” said Kapustin. “In fact, the mine is located right on the outer rim of the area scientists have delineated as the perimeter of the explosion. They’ve been looking for exotic materials there for some time now.”

“Very interesting,” said Kamenski, the light of recollection in his eyes. “A team of Italian researchers think Cheko Lake is the actual impact site there, and they have been trying to take samples of compressed material beneath the lake that may be from the asteroid itself. So what you are telling us is that this Rod-25 has a high percentage of residual material—this Iceland Spar Calcite—and it was mined along the Stony Tunguska River north of Vanavara?”

“Precisely, and it may have come from the same mysterious object that exploded over Tunguska.”

“And this Iceland Spar is refractive; it splits and doubles light rays passing through it.”

“Correct.” Kapustin smiled. “It’s distributed all through this particular control rod, scattered like powder. If it can split light rays, who knows what else it might be doing when exposed to the radiation within a nuclear reactor?”

“Amazing,” said Kamenski. “The other two rods from this batch, do they also show this same residual material?”

“Of course. Like father and son. In fact, the one we had stored here had even higher readings than Rod-25. So these other control rods may exhibit the very same properties and effects, unless all of this is completely irrelevant. Who knows?”

“I don’t understand the science,” said Volsky, “but there is no denying the effects. I’ve lived them. It was mere happenstance that we eventually came to see the twelve day shift pattern aboard Kirov, and mate it with Dobrynin’s maintenance schedule on the reactor. And you have already told me that a significant nuclear explosion produces time displacement. That alone is cause for amazement.”

“Or a massive geothermal explosion,” Kamenski put in. “Perhaps this control rod redoubles the effects of nuclear fission in some way when it is inserted into the reactor,” Kamenski held up a finger, thinking about it further. “We won’t figure all this out here, but let’s put some good minds to work on this—quietly. In the meantime, we have already seen the effects produced by this control rod, and seeing is believing. If these other two rods also have this material in them, and they work as we hope they will, then we may have made one of the greatest discoveries in human history. Congratulations, Gerasim! You may have just discovered the secret of time travel!”

Volsky recalled the look on the Inspector’s face, a restrained jubilation, clouded by a squall of confusion and surprise. Yet he realized now what Kamenski was saying—they could now willfully create these control rods, experimenting with different materials and quantities of this strange substance mined from the perimeter of the Tunguska explosion, and yes, they would figure this all out in time. In time…Assuming they had any to spare in the enterprise.

What have we done? If these other control rods also work…if these effects can be duplicated any time we wish…What have we done? The implications of the discovery loomed like a massive eruption of that volcano in his mind, clouding his thoughts with the ashfall of a thousand generations.

Chapter 6

“You want us to attack the operation?” MacRae had an astonished look on his face. “With three helicopters and thirty men?”

“Can it be done?” Elena Fairchild knew that if she wanted it done something would happen, but she wanted to know what her odds were.

“That depends,” the big Scott folded his arms, thinking. “What does Mack Morgan have for us on the situation?”

“They’re up to something. That much is clear. The activity is centered on this floating nuclear reactor site, the Anatoly Alexandrov I told you about earlier. Mack says they’ve moved in hovercraft from the naval base at Kaspiysk, and set up additional SAM batteries there. Now he’s learned there’s a contingent of Russian Naval Marines out on that ship, barge, whatever it is. And they’ve moved in a big helicopter as well. Drones got a good look at it before the Russians painted them with targeting radars and NATO pulled out. They’re loading a lot of aviation fuel, and something that looks like missile canisters.”

“Well there’s a war on, and you may have noticed that when Princess Irene went down.” MacRae was frustrated, and still bothered by his failure on that score. “Why and God’s name do we have to get involved? To even the score?” Now he realized his remark was a bit too pointed, and he apologized.

“Don’t worry about that, Gordon,” said Elena. “The oil doesn’t matter now.”

That took MacRae by surprise. “It doesn’t matter? Don’t tell me you’re giving up the ghost on this mission because we lost Princess Irene. Look, we’ve still got two million barrels of oil on the other two tankers, and we’re well protected now that the Turks have thrown in with their naval/air assets. And Mack tells me they were able to get a significant amount of oil off Princess Royal and pump it into another empty tanker. No room to bunker it at Fujairah now. The Iranians made a mess of the whole storage sector, and they’ll be fighting fires there for weeks. But we got a goodly amount off and you can count that toward your debt to Chevron. With the oil at $300 a barrel now you’ve still got good margins here.”

“That may be so, but there’s something else involved.” She seemed to hesitate, as if about to say something and then catching herself. He could see her thinking, wondering, as if she desperately wanted to tell him something but was holding back.

MacRae decided he had enough good will in the bank after his years of service to press her. “What is it, Elena?” There, he’d did it. He finally used her first name, dropping the veil of propriety and protocol now and taking the matter to a personal level.

She could hear it in his voice, the softening of his tone, and see it in his eyes now as he looked at her. He had the look of a man who would do anything he could to take the burden from her shoulders, and she had seen it in the eyes of few other men in her life. Deep down, she wanted to think she saw love there, real love, not mere concern and dutiful attendance from a subordinate in her employ. And when she looked at him her heart ached to tell him more, to tell him everything, and to finally feel that the burden she carried might be shared by the two of them, up on his broad shoulders where she knew he could carry it easily—everything she had dragged about in her life for decades, all in his big arms. And they’d carry it together.

The two of them…

“I… I can’t say more, Gordon. You’ll have to trust me on this.” The words stumbled out, even as she chided herself inwardly for not going further, for not reaching for what she longed to take hold of in her mind and heart. Gordon MacRae, she thought in a wink of her soul. My God, I love the man…

MacRae looked at her, seeing more there than she realized she had shown him. He put his hands in his jacket pocket, surprised to feel the note he had received from the Black Line days ago warning of the imminent attack on Princess Royal in the Gulf. He realized he was still wearing dress whites! One thing had led to another and he never found time to switch out to his navy blues. Now he stood there, his mind alert enough and perceptive enough to know that she was hiding something she dearly wanted to reveal. And the only big mystery in the woman’s life is right behind that movable bulkhead on the other side of the room, he thought. Then he spoke his mind.

“It’s that damn red phone back there, isn’t it?”

She looked at him, lips tightening.

“Another call came in, am I right? What is it, Elena? Is it government business? The Prime Minister chewing on your ear for something? Well, the Royal Navy has been able to see to the Crown’s business for the last thousand years well enough. What in God’s name have we got to do with this? It was good of them to lend a hand here with the Iron Duke, but we’ve no need to repay the favor.”

“It’s something more,” she said it before she could stop herself. “And it has a long, long tail, Gordon.”

“Yes, and you’ve had hold of that tiger since the first day I set foot on this ship. What is it, Elena? What’s so damn important about that red phone?”

She lowered her head, eyes glassy, her hand on her brow. The stress of these last days had been heavy on her, and she needed sleep. Her head suddenly felt as light as her heart as she imagined herself telling him everything, opening up the doors and letting him in at long last. Then she did what women have done for generations when there was simply no other way to cross that last impossible gulf between a man and woman so obviously drawn into the well of one another, but forever harried by the curse of forbidden love.

She fainted.

“Elena!” MacRae saw her legs go limp and stepped forward quickly as she fell, taking her in his arms. He lifted her easily, carrying her to the nearby sofa and laying her gently down. As he did so her eyes fluttered open again, unfocused, and she felt the heat of the moment, a sheen of perspiration on her forehead.

“You’re not well,” said MacRae. “Fainted dead away on me. Here, let me get you some water.”

He was up and over to the wet bar and soon had a glass of cool ice water in hand. He put one big hand behind her head to help her as she took a long sip. Then she closed her eyes, flushed with embarrassment, yet somehow feeling she had just leapt over a great crevasse between them.

“Oh Gordon,” she said softly. “If you only knew what I know…”

“What? About this business in the Caspian? Alright, so you’ve got your private line there and the Government leans on you from time to time for special favors. I understand. You’ve called in a number of favors yourself in your day, or why else is Iron Duke out there watching our backside, eh? What’s the big secret this time? You want me to send those men out there in after this Anatoly Alexandrov? Why? Has the government gotten wind of something? What’s itching the Prime Minister’s backside this time?”

She smiled. “No, it isn’t that,” she said skirting the edge of the hidden truth again. “It’s not the government. Neither Whitehall nor Ten Downing Street has anything to do with it.”

“What then? Will you at least give me that much before I give the order. Can we hit this operation? Yes we can, but we’ll likely lose good men if we do this, not to mention the X-3s. Tell me why Fairchild Inc. needs to get in on this bar fight, Elena? You tell me that and I’ll move heaven and earth for you. You know I will, but I’ve been mucking about in the dark all these years, carrying on behind these Captain’s stripes. Ours is not to reason why…You know the drill. I’d give you the world if I could hold it in my arms, but you’re a damn hard woman to love…”

My god, he thought. I’ve said it.

And she heard it at once, heard what she had been longing to tell him for years. She did something that surprised him now, though it seemed a natural thing to do in the situation, reaching up and touching the side of his face, her hand soft on his cheek, a longing in her eyes, and the beginning of tears. “Gordon MacRae,” she started.

Words came to him, in the old tongue he still loved and knew so well: “Tá sé níos fearr chun iarracht a dhéanamh ná mar a súil,” he said. “It’s better to try than to hope.” Then he did something that surprised himself even more, and he leaned down and kissed her…

Captain MacRae got his answer, though he sat for a good long hour trying to understand what it meant. Lieutenant Ryan with the X-3 Helo contingent got his orders soon after. He was out on the tarmac at Buzachi airfield north of Fort Shevchenko, watching as the air crews finished up the refueling operation and were rolling the tanker truck away. It wasn’t much of an airfield, just a single hanger and fuel station and a simple asphalt runway. A thin, dull brown road led west toward the Caspian coast and the oil worker’s settlement. His three sleek X-3s sat like birds of prey on the landing strip, the only aircraft there that day, and though he knew he had one of his men over in the number three bird watching radar returns, he still found himself looking north with apprehension.

The Russians, he thought…They let loose on the company and put Princess Irene on the bottom of the sea. I hope to God we gave them a bloody nose for that one. Word is they have a reinforced rifle division up on the Kazakh border ready to roll on a moment’s notice. If they do move, that will mean they’ll have air cover up as well, and they know exactly where every airfield in the region is now. The longer he sat there on the tarmac the more vulnerable he felt, and he was itching to get his men aboard the X-3s and heading home—until the call came in from Captain MacRae on Argos Fire.

“Well now,” he said, his Irish blood riled. “A bar fight, Tommy.” His co-pilot Tom Wicks was checking one of the twin turbo-prop engines on the nearest X-3. “Looks like somebody got her skirts ruffled over that incident in the Black Sea.”

“What skirts?” said Wicks. “She’s got a pair of legs on her, no question about that, but her ladyship never gives us a look at them. Always prancing about in those pants suits and all.”

“You have it in for the CEO, Tommy?”

“Me? I’ll have it in anywhere I get a welcome,” he smiled. “What’s this all about, Lieutenant?”

“I can’t say as I know,” said Ryan. “Just like us Irish. We never know what we want, but we’re prepared to fight to the death until we get it.”

“Is Fairchild Irish? I thought she was proper British.”

“That she is, but there’s a wee bit of good Irish honey in her blood, and those lips have kissed the blarney stone, eh? Why else would she plant the company flag on the Isle of Man, right smack in the Irish Sea?”

“Missing Bradytown, are you?”

“Aye, we’re a long way from home out here, Tommy. Now we get this new mission and something tells me a good many of us may not ever get home again.”

Wicks thought that one over, his eyes drifting to one of the rifle squads resting in the open hanger across the way. “What is it we’re supposed to do, exactly?”

“There’s a Russian base on the other side of that big lake out there.”

“Lake? You mean the Caspian Sea?”

“Right-O. Well, we’re paying them a visit, if you know what I mean. Mack Morgan thinks they’re ready to run some kind of Spetsnaz operation from an anchorage just off shore. They want us to crash the party.”

“Lord almighty! What are we up against?”

“Not much off shore. Just a big floating power plant, but the Russians seem to be using it as a staging base for some pending operation. They want us to shoot the damn thing up before they get it underway.”

“Where is the place?”

“About 15 klicks off the coast near that naval base at Kaspiysk. I make it about 350 kilometers from here.”

“That sounds like a run and gun mission, Lieutenant. We taking the Argonauts?”

“Well we’ve got to get them home some way, right? But you’re right, we won’t much need them on a mission like this. My plan is to get them down to Baku—that’s a 500 kilometer run, so we’ll need to refuel there again at the BP facility. Then we run up the coast, go in fast and low, paint the target, and let the missiles do the rest. We can pick the Argonauts up on the way back.”

“If we make it back,” said Wicks with a shrug. “We’re packing Hydra-70s in the rocket pods. Their effective range is 8,000 meters, and they’re unguided, so we’ll have to be pretty damn close. You think the Russians might know we’re coming? They’ll sure as hell have radar and SAM batteries at that naval base. We’ve got a fairly small radar cross section, but they’ll see us in time.”

“Aye, and they won’t be happy when they do. Things are getting pretty dicey now. Russians beefed up the 414th Naval Infantry at Kaspiysk. There’s a motorized column from their 58th Army heading for Makhachkala. Could be trouble, and Morgan thinks they mean to make a move on Baku, and grab the Kashagan superfields up here while they’re at it.”

“What’s this world coming to, Lieutenant?”

“No good,” said Ryan. “Well, the birds are all fueled and ready to go. Let’s get the Argonauts loaded and get on with it.”

“What about those Chevron people?”

“What, Flack and the rest? They come too, at least as far as, Baku. The birds will be heavy but we’ll lift them easily enough. That will take more fuel, which is why we top off at Baku again after we get back. It’ll be another thousand kilometer run back to Argos in the Black Sea. So take a good look at the Caspian while we’re here, Tommy. And I hope to God we never see the damn place again.”

Ryan turned to the open hanger and gave a loud whistle, waving at the men there. The Argonauts had done what they came for. It was no problem scaring off the local militias near the oil fields. One look at these dangerous looking men in jet black military garb was enough to convince them that their little oil war would best be conducted some other day. They melted away, and Lieutenant Ryan was able to pull out good number of Chevron workers and get them safely back to Buzachi. They were shutting down. The place was just too dangerous now to contemplate any further operations. There had already been a brief air duel between Russian fighter patrols and the Kazakh air force, and it was looking like the conflict would get rolling on the ground any moment.

They’re just waiting on fuel and equipment, he knew. Once they do move, however, they’ll come hard and fast, and that Kazakh Ready Brigade will have its hands full. Who knows, perhaps this Spetsnaz outfit off the Caspian coast is figuring to be part of that attack. Mack Morgan says they’re moving in a big fat helicopter as part of the force. So I guess we’ll see what kind of sting my X-3s have after all.

He looked at them, three of his four little darlings, one of the fastest helicopters he’s ever flown. He could fly circles around the Apache in his X-3, but when he thought about the Russian SAM batteries his bravado was quashed. There’s one thing the damn Russians get right, me boyo, he thought, and that’s missiles. We’re going to be out there alone with the gods, and the night will flame with fire.

And that soon…

Chapter 7

Airman J.D. Pickett was scouring the seas ahead in his Helldiver, leading in a section of five planes that morning. Behind him were the lines of the remainder of the squadron, two more flights of five SB2C-5 Helldivers like his own, followed by three groups of five TBM-3 Avenger torpedo bombers. A thousand feet above them were the Hellcats, long lines of fighters, and many with 500 pound bombs under their wings in the fighter/bomber role. Others carried the HVAR Rocket System the men called “Holy Moses” due to the reaction they had when the airmen first saw the weapons fire and streak in towards their targets.

They were about to see something an order of magnitude better, and then some. Pickett spotted it, coming up at the formation with impossible speed. “What in God’s name is that?” he called through his headset. “Coming up on my twelve o clock! Rocket! Rocket!”

The explosion said the rest as the rocket flashed in and struck a Corsair flying off the rightmost wing of his flight. He craned his neck to see the bright yellow fireball consume the plane and saw the smoldering remnant falling from the sky.

“Holy shit!” he yelled, all thoughts of Moses blown from his mind by that fireball. “Did you see that? Anybody see what fired that? I don’t have anything on radar. Can’t see a thing.”

The first missile was a warning shot. Karpov had ordered Orlan to fire this single missile at the first planes they could track inside 100 kilometers. He was back on the radio to see if Iron Mike might have a change of heart, but the effect of the missile shot was a bit like poking a stick into a hornet’s nest. The Americans quickly shook off the shock and they were calling to one another, orders barked sharply over the airwaves.

“Louis! Get your Avengers down on the deck! Pickett, you peel off to your left and swing round on 290. Everybody upstairs get ready to rumble!”

Vern Higman heard the order and reached in to pat the dash board of his plane—‘Round Trip Ticket.’ They were going in again, but even though he had seen planes shot up pretty bad he always came through in one piece. This would be no different. He looked out his cockpit window and saw Wendell Stevens and Lowell Chamberlain both give him the thumbs up. The others were itching to dive the instant they laid eyes on the target—Bob Nouall, Mike Hallard, J.G. Wheeler, who already had one Navy Cross on his chest for blasting the Japanese Cruiser Tone a while back.

“Let’s get down and dirty,” Higman called to his Helldiver flight mates. “I’ve got me a round trip ticket to the action and a thousand pounds of metal in my belly that I plan to put right on Ivan’s foredeck! You ready Pickett? Lead the charge!”

Pickett was ready, but so was Orlan.

“Fools rush in,” said Karpov, shaking his head as he watched Orlan firing off his starboard bow.

“Where Angels fear to tread,” said Rodenko at his side, the duty on his radar assigned to a Lieutenant. He was acting Starpom now, and promoted to Captain Lieutenant. When the ship was at action stations he was up and at Karpov’s side, inwardly proud of his promotion and ready for both the new authority and responsibility it brought him. Always a level headed man, Rodenko remained cool under fire and was a natural leader for all the junior officers in his section during the ship’s earlier ordeals. While he had never mustered the courage to confront Karpov in the beginning when he opposed Admiral Volsky, he regretted that now that he knew what it felt like to be standing in command level officer’s shoes.

When Fedorov had been promoted to Starpom, and then ship’s Captain during Karpov’s rehabilitation in the Med, Rodenko never fretted or felt passed over. He saw how the young Fedorov was struggling to assume his new role, seeing he was over his head in many ways, and tried to help him as much as he could. The cooperative relationship he managed to forge with Karpov was inspiring to the entire bridge crew, and with Orlov gone, things seemed much more stable on the ship. Now his tactical sense, overall situational awareness born of his years as a radar man, and his general competence made him perfect for the role as the ship’s Starpom, Executive Officer and second in command after Karpov on the fleet’s flagship.

He admired the Captain’s skill at the helm, particularly in combat, and it was true that Karpov had saved the ship many times in tight situations. But Rodenko had seen, and knew well, the darker side of Karpov, and now that the ship had regressed again in time, he began to perceive the Captain’s shadow thickening on the deck of the bridge again, and flashes of his old self—his ambition and yes, his arrogance was apparent at times, particularly after their battle with the US Captain Tanner and CVBG Washington.

Rodenko knew that had been a real threat, and that circumstances and strong support from both the Naval Air Arm and the undersea boats had been decisive in the engagement. If the fleet had faced the Americans without them, things might have been very different. The initial eruption of that volcano had also forced the Americans to divert left and right to avoid the ashfall. While Karpov was clever in moving the ship south beneath the ash cloud that morning, they had still seen a Harpoon come within a whisker of striking the ship. Varyag had saved the day, and then all hell broke loose when that volcano erupted again.

Now, thrown back into the same impossible situation as before, Karpov seemed to regress in his behavior, his own inner Demon restlessly awakening in the heat of imminent battle. Rodenko had seen how both Volsky and Fedorov had served as strong counterfoils to Karpov before, and wondered how he would measure up to that task. In the end he realized it was his job to give the Captain his best judgment in any situation they encountered, and his best effort at the helm.

“They have no idea what they’re facing,” said Karpov. “And that’s why they seem so brave, I suppose. If they knew there was no way they could penetrate our SAM defenses, they might fear the skies over this ship.”

“But they don’t know,” said Rodenko. “Which is why it hurts a bit to watch this.”

Karpov turned his head, lowering his field glasses, but said nothing. The light in his eyes was lit by the flames of battle. The action had moved inside the 50 kilometer range circle, and radar reported that the formation was pressing doggedly forward. Orlan had fired three salvos of eight, and she was near perfect. Two of the missiles had consumed the same plane when they tracked in on fireballs, moving too fast to switch to a new target in time. They had listened to the reports on radio from Orlan. 22 kills, and yet they came. Karpov was holding all his precious S-400s in reserve and letting Orlan do the fighting at this point, but now he turned to communications with an order.

“Mister Nikolin, signal the flotilla. Tell Captain Yeltsin aboard Orlan that they have led the way ably and we will now join the action with our Klinok system while they switch to short range munitions. Admiral Golovko will continue to hold fire unless directly attacked, and then they are authorized to use their close in defense systems.”

“Aye, sir, signaling now.”

“Medium range SAM system, Samsonov; salvos of eight. Track and fire when ready.”

“Sir! Firing now.” Victor Samsonov was only too eager to get into the fight. The aft deck of Kirov sounded off the loud warning claxon, and the hatches opened. The missiles were up soon after, jetting away on fiery tails with ash-white smoke in their wake.

Four…Eight…Twelve…Sixteen…the weapon was called the Klinok shipboard multi-channel self-defense system, NATO designation SA-N-92 Gauntlet, and the pilots of the oncoming strike wave would soon be running the gauntlet of fire and steel. The short reaction time and high rate of fire for the missiles made it ideal in this role, and the missiles Kirov fired had much improved range over the initial system developed two decades earlier. It was a tried and true multi-channel tracking system with the ability to use laser, TV, or radar to find targets. Each radar could simultaneously prosecute eight targets, and reassign remaining live missiles in the salvo to new missions if their original target was destroyed.

Karpov turned to Rodenko, who was keeping one eye on the Plexiglas situation plot adjacent to the radar systems. “How far away is the main body?”

“About 250 kilometers southwest of our position, sir. Speed thirty knots, heading due north at 360 degrees.”

“Fools rush in. Very well, let’s send them a message that should give them something to think about. How soon before we have them in SSM range?”

“You’re moving to a surface action, sir?”

“A preemptive action, Rodenko. If we give them a hard shove on the shoulder now, it could spare us a much more involved battle later. If I can get them to back off here, all the better. At the moment they may be under the illusion that we are nothing more than a small surface flotilla—Soviet ships, or even Japanese. I want them to know we can hit them at range, strike them like an aircraft carrier. It should give them something to think about, and perhaps it will take the starch out of their collars down there and we can talk sense.”

Rodenko nodded his agreement, though he still wondered what the Captain had in mind for that conversation. What was he thinking to say to the Americans now? Yet this was not the time or place for that discussion, so he considered their surface action missile loads. They had left Vladivostok with a standard load of ten P-900 Sizzlers, ten MOS-III Starfires, and twenty Moskit-IIs. Four P-900s were expended earlier against American patrols in the Kuriles.

“Sir, we can fire the P-900s now, but we have only six remaining for that system. The Moskit-II system should be in range momentarily. At our present speed due south, the range is diminishing by about 100 kilometers per hour. We can fire in about fifteen minutes.”

“Very well. Mister, Samsonov. Ready a half salvo on the P-900 system—four missiles please. Target the core of the enemy fleet. Set ship target profile preference to aircraft carrier. On my command fire at thirty second intervals.”

“Ready on P-900 system, sir.” The deadly missiles could be programmed to seek out a specific target profile, analyzing a ship’s silhouette to determine the target type. They could also fly evasive low level approach runs to avoid screening targets to get to their primary, an evolution that made them particularly effective.

“Are these missiles reprogrammed for plunging fire?”

“I’m sorry sir, they are all in standard configuration. We have had no time to reprogram the overall attack profile.”

“Nor did we have any reason to in 2021,” said Karpov. “No matter, the sea skimming approach should do. There are four aircraft carriers down there, and my guess is that they will have more planes than we have seen thus far. I want to make their lives a little more difficult and discourage any further launches. Sorry if we have to spoil their lunch.”

Karpov was jaunty, pacing back and forth in front of the citadel view screens, the ocean beyond clear and calm. The sound of the SAM defense batteries was loud in the air, and their white tails scored the sky as they sped away, but as yet not one of the distant American planes they were seeking had come within visual range. It was Beyond Visual Range naval combat, and they could not see the carnage they were inflicting some thirty kilometers away now, only the green blips on the radar turning red when a missile hit its target.

Yet Rodenko was at least encouraged by the fact that Karpov was fighting the engagement in a measured way. He could have sent a withering saturation barrage at the American ships, and inflicted tremendous damage. By using only four missiles he would give them a stiff, painful jab in the face, and still preserve the ship’s vital missile inventory.

Even as he thought that, Rodenko realized those missiles would more than likely run out again, and perhaps sooner than they thought. And without our missiles, he thought, we are nothing more than a fast cruiser, and not a particularly well armored one either. Karpov was taking things slowly here, and at least they were not alone this time. They still had Orlan and Admiral Golovko, but what else did the Americans have down there, and were they prepared to use it? Would they negotiate with Karpov after an engagement like this; after losing planes and men, or even a carrier when Samsonov lets loose that salvo?

Orlan was particularly effective with its lethal missiles traveling so fast at Mach 15 that the pilots had no time to even react once they caught sight of the approaching contrails. It was hideous, and in Higman’s flight they were two planes light already, with Nuall and Hallard both dead and gone into the sea. But Higgy Higman was still there in Round Trip Ticket, bravely pressing his Helldiver forward. He thought he saw something on the distant horizon now—yes, there was a ship, then another, and those damn rocket trails pointed out the way.

“Ships at eleven-o-clock!” he shouted. “Pickett? You still up front?”

“Yeah, I see ‘em. Going in now!” Pickett was there, bravely leading the charge, and it was already one for the record books. Of the 54 planes off Ticonderoga, only 22 remained. There were seven Helldivers, five Avengers and the rest were fighters. The squadrons off Wasp had also been ravaged by the deadly precision rockets that had claimed one plane after another in a hellish nightmare in the skies. But the American pressed on.

Higman grimaced and shirked when he saw Stevens plane hit above him. It was a near miss, but a small fragment of shrapnel struck his windshield on the right side and he could see the glass spider out in a crack. He pulled the stick and threw his helldiver over to get ready to dive. Then he heard something he had never once heard before in battle. It sounded like Iron Mike Mulligan was throwing in the towel!

“All units; all flights, this is Mulligan. We have orders to abort. I repeat, break off and do a 360. They want us out of here on the double.”

Hot damn, thought Higman. I’ve got the bastards right in front of me and lost two good men getting here, and now they want us to bug out and fly home? What kind of stew was Mulligan serving up today? The same thing had happened over Tokyo a few days ago. Maybe the brass had negotiated a settlement to this conflict, but it sure didn’t look like it from his point of view.

“What’s up, Big Mike? Why we turning tail?”

“Orders from Flag! Pull on it and get out of there, before one of those rockets lights your ass on fire!”

Higman shook his head, distressed, angry, but knowing he couldn’t take the fight to the enemy alone. It would be all he could do to get what was left of his squadron back to Ticonderoga, and there would be a lot of empty chairs at the flight debriefing this afternoon. Hell! They must have lost thirty planes in ten minutes. He had never seen anything like it. At the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” they had taken down over 500 Japanese planes while losing only 23 on the first day. By that stage in the war the fine edge of pilot training, tactics, and the new planes the US deployed was enough to make for a decisive and overwhelming victory in the most lopsided aerial duel in history. It had been a long time since the US took a licking in the skies over the Pacific.

There was something not right about this, thought Higman. It just isn’t right. Those aren’t planes we’re fighting out there. They aren’t men. We’re up against some kind of slick new rocket system, and it’s eating us alive. Who knows how many we lost today? Whatever the Russians had up there on the horizon, it was a real game changer. We’re going to have to hit them with every goddamned thing we have to get through a defense like that… Everything we have.

Chapter 8

Back on Ticonderoga that was the new consensus too, though Ziggy Sprague wasn’t happy about it one bit. He wanted to press on up north and settle the score, but word came in from Halsey on the Missouri—pull the boys out.

Apparently some starchy British Admiral had chewed on his ear and convinced him the Russians might have more up north than we bargained for, he thought. Well how in God’s name would they ever know that unless we get up there after them? The fleet had nothing on surface radar returns, but the two radar pickets were still in tight on this Russian task force, though they reported it was difficult to track them. The ships came and went on the radar screens.

He could not know that the architecture on the two newer ships, Orlan and Admiral Golovko, incorporated reduced radar cross section features, odd angles and special reflective tiling and paint that made the ships very slippery when even modern radars tried to finger them. Sprague’s two radar pickets would get a contact on Kirov, see other ships nearby, and then they would vanish again.

Yet orders were orders. Halsey wanted to coordinate with the British and was also moving up his own task force. The Russians were playing hardball, and it looked like the Bull wanted to double up on them to make sure they got the message. That was the only way Sprague could figure it…until the missiles came in.

They had nothing on radar. Then one man thought he saw something. The P-900s were just too fast to track on their terminal run at Mach 2.5, over 3000 kph. The US antenna swept the horizon once every ten seconds. If an operator managed to get a lucky return blip on the missile, by the time the system swept around for another look the Sizzlers would have traveled eight and a half kilometers. Instead of a steady inward approach like the aircraft they were used to tracking, the blip would seem to hop across the screen sweep after sweep, covering over 50 kilometers range in a single minute! By the time the radar operator interpreted this as a threat instead of a glitch, it was too late. Even as he turned his head to report the anomaly, something came at the fleet, low and fast, and it found the Wasp about a thousand yards off the starboard side of Ticonderoga.

The ship just blew up in an angry orange fireball forward of the island, and all Sprague could think of when he saw it was that some rogue Japanese submarine had slipped inside his destroyer screen and put a torpedo into the carrier. A minute later the second Sunburn came in, and this time Sprague had his field glasses up and saw something blur in on Bataan. That ship was hit amidships, and a huge column of smoke billowed up to mark the kill. He looked up, thinking he might see Kamikazes diving on the task group, but he could only see his fighter reserve on combat air patrol over the carriers. What was going on here?

Wasp was hit again. He literally saw a Hellcat blown apart on the forward flight deck and a segment of the wing spin up through a red-black fist of fire and smoke.

“Signal Wasp!” He shouted. “How bad is it over there?”

The fourth Sizzler executed a late stage popup maneuver and struck the island flush, and the explosion was terrific. Wasp seemed to list from the shock alone, then slowly righted herself and continued wobbling forward through smoke and fire.

When the first missile hit, it struck right beneath the forward 5 inch gun battery and smashed on through the armor plating. The missile delivered a 400 kilogram warhead, and the additional kinetic impact was severe. Thankfully most of the missile’s fuel had been expended, but the shock and fire were immediate.

Seaman Ernest Bird had been on a ladder right near the impact site just a minute before the missile hit home. In that time he had casually climbed up to the flight deck, and strolled over to chat with Gunner’s Mate Ralph Cella. They called Ernie the “Lucky Bird” because fate had spared him a gruesome end earlier that year when his relief had been late, keeping him at his post instead of seeing him off to the mess hall that day. A thousand pound bomb came flaming in through the deck that morning, and uninvited guest for breakfast. Ernie’s luck was still good, but he was still close enough to the forward battery to be knocked on his ass by the concussion and shock when the missile hit.

The battery was soon embroiled in a raging fire, with hot jets of flame piercing through holes in the deck around the gun mount. Seaman Bird struggled to his feet and ran to do his job—fire control. He was going to be a very busy man that day.

When the second missile hit Chuck Malkasian had made it down to his post in the engine room. He was water tender on the boilers that morning, but soon had more water on his hands than he would ever need. A four inch thick steel bulkhead blew apart and the ocean came raging in.

“Close all water tight doors!” It was Chief Warrant Officer Woody Morrow. The ‘Wood Man’ was standing tall at his post, his deep voice clear even over the roaring rush of seawater. Crewmen rushed to the doors, struggling to get them shut against the force of the inrushing water from the adjacent compartment, their knuckles white on the iron securing wheels.

“Hey Wood Man!” Malkasian yelled back. “How the hell we gonna’ get out of here if we shut this last hatch?”

“Can it, Malkasian. Take the ladder up behind the boilers.”

“Well it’s hot as hell back there, Chief!”

Malkasian didn’t have to explain any further. The boiler exploded and he was knocked to the deck. He saw boiler man Red Riley thrown against a bulkhead by the explosion and killed instantly, his broken body lifeless on the deck as the water surged in. Chief Morrow was dazed but the rest of the crew in the compartment were all alive. Malkasian struggled up on his knees grabbed the Chief by his collar and began dragging him towards the safety of the still open hatch.

“Come on! Come On, Everybody out! There’s nothing we can do here. Get through and seal this last hatch!”

They made it through, tired, wet and shaking with shock and adrenaline. Malkasian was leaning forward, hands on his knees, amazed by what he had seen.

“I ain’t no water tender down here no more,” he said, breathing hard, then looked over his shoulder as a seaman came down a ladder.

“Up on deck!” the man shouted. It was Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class Alfred J. Lewis. “Hey Malkasian, grab a fire hose.”

“What are you doing here, Lewis. They hit the forward flight deck too. Your plank is out there.”

“The forward flight deck?” Lewis put his hands on his hips, the light of anger in his eyes now. My goddamned plank is on that deck!” Lewis was off at a run for the nearest ladder up. He was supposed to be on his gun at 09:00 hours, but his gun was blown to hell now. Nobody was going to burn up his plank while he was still alive on this ship. Nobody!

He was up on deck and stunned by what he saw. The main island was hit square in the middle, and ragged metal shards gaped from the wound while damage control teams sent arcs of water into the fiery breach. Forward of that, the 5 inch battery was completely enveloped in fire and smoke, and he knew no one in there was getting out alive. The flight deck was tilted at least ten degrees off the horizontal, and the ship was listing. The main elevator was blocked by damage and fire, and out on the forward flight deck he saw what he had came to prevent, a fire raging, and very near the place where he imagined his cherished plank resided!

Lord almighty! We took three bad hits! He hadn’t seen anything like this since that bomb that almost killed Lucky Bird Ernie, and he was off at a run to help manhandle a fire hose forward to fight the fire.

“Let’s move it!” he shouted. “That’s my plank out there!”

The damage control team fought its way forward behind two fire hoses, slowly getting good streams of water on the fires. Twenty minutes later they had doused the fire well, but it was still smoking badly, and in that time the ship had listed another five degrees.

“Hey, where you going, Lewis?” It was Merle Hart from the plumbing shop.

“I’m going up there to get my goddamned plank,” said Lewis. “Can’t you see this list? Why aren’t you down below with a wrench plugging leaks, Merle? This isn’t looking good here. Another five degrees and we could tip right over. Look how they’re trying to secure those planes!” He pointed at a crew of five airmen who were desperately trying to stabilize three Corsairs on the aft flight deck.

Lewis had taken up a crow bar in his strong right arm and went forward through the blowing smoke, his feet unsteady on the wet, tilted deck. He managed to keep his footing until he worked his way very near the torn metal gridding near the fire they had been fighting. There, beneath a segment of overlaid metal grills, he saw the original wooden flight deck.

This place is as good as any other, he thought, and he knelt down to wedge his crowbar into the deck where a wood plank seemed nice and loose. He was going to get his plank, one way or another. Then he was going to go back to his bunk and get the certificate of ownership too!

As for CV-18, her proud career would soon be over. The damage below decks when the boiler exploded had compromised two more bulkheads, and they collapsed under the searing heat of the fires. The Captain, Wendel G. “Windy” Switzer, had seen enough to realize the ship was down for the count. He gave the order to flood all magazines and to try counter-flooding to correct the list but the fire in the main island had now merged with the inferno below the forward 5 inch battery, and those magazines could not be flooded. They exploded not long after Lewis had retreated below decks with his plank, and the damage to the port side of the ship was now fatal.

CV Wasp was going to sink again, and Captain Vladimir Karpov now had the dubious distinction of sinking the same carrier, at least by name, twice. She would not be present years later when the Gemini capsules returned to earth, and another US carrier would have to pluck Stafford, Lovell and other intrepid Gemini Astronauts from the sea. The Union Minerals and Alloys Corp. of New York City, would have to buy some other ship in 1973 when the venerable lady was decommissioned and sold for scrap. There would never be another ship in the US Navy by that name again—it was officially retired.

The sinking of the Wasp put a set of strange bookends on the war, with CV-7 sunk just before it began to herald its terrible onset, and CV-18 sunk just after it ended, warning of a new conflict in the making at that very moment. Just what that conflict might entail, no man knew at that moment. In fact, all history was waiting for the outcome of the battle now engaged, for it would all be re-written from this moment forward. None of this had ever happened in the timeline that had brought Kirov through the war and safely into Vladivostok in the year 2021. This was all new.

As for Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class Alfred J. Lewis, he made it to his bunk, and also made it off the ship with his plank. In fact, it kept him afloat until he could be picked up by a destroyer, and he held on to it for dear life—all his life, along with his certificate of ownership.

The hit to Bataan was not as bad, though they did lose five Hellcats on the flight deck there. That said, Ziggy Sprague was shocked to realize that he had suddenly lost a fleet carrier and was watching another escort carrier burn, and this without even knowing who or what it was that had attacked his task group! He was furious and on the radio to Halsey at once.

“Goddammit Bull! We just got hit up here! Wasp is a burning wreck and I think we’ll lose her. She’s listing bad and they can’t seem to correct it. Windy Switzer is giving the order to abandon ship. What the hell’s going on? Why are you coming out to the mound now when we’re right in the middle of this thing?”

“Sorry, Ziggy. It has nothing to do with you, but I’ve got two more task groups in the bullpen, if that’s what you mean. Recover your strike wave and hold tight. I’m bringing the whole shit and shebang up north to reinforce you. Admiral Fraser has opened my eyes on what this threat may be up north. Apparently it’s a fast battlecruiser with advanced rocket weapons, and it’s been giving the Brits nightmares.”

“Yeah? Well I’ve got some bad dreams to deliver as well. There’s nothing wrong with the rest of my group, particularly North Dakota and South Carolina. Suppose I let the big guns roll on up north for a closer look? And I’ve still got ninety planes in reserve—at least until we got hit just now. We can recover our first strike wave, refuel and rearm in a couple hours and be ready to rumble again.”

“Did you see what hit Wasp?”

“Hell if I know. Didn’t see but a blur just before she went up in smoke. We had nothing on radar either. It just came out of nowhere.”

“That’s what Admiral Fraser told me. Look, Ziggy, this varmint has one hell of an anti-air defense too, and you have to swarm it to get anything through—just like we did with Yamato. We threw 380 planes against that ship. We do the same with this one when I get there. Fraser is bringing TF.37 up around the other side of Hokkaido as well. Between the three of us we’ll have damn near a thousand planes, and more behind them if we need to get Ballentine, McCain or anyone else up there. I’ve got over 300 ready aircraft right now. More coming.”

“Well don’t be all day about it. How far out are you?”

“We make it to be just under 150 miles south of you, and we’re coming fast. Look Ziggy, get your destroyers in tight on the carriers. Fraser laid a boatload on me as to how the Brits planned to fight this ship. Screen the carriers. Send your battleships northeast. We’re going to form a fast battleship task force and ram it down their throats while we hit them with every goddamn plane we have.”

“Now you’re talking,” said Sprague. “How’s my namesake doing?” He was referring to the odd quirk that had seen two men rise through the ranks to command fast carrier task groups, unrelated, but both bearing the surname Sprague. The second was Rear Admiral Thomas Sprague in carrier division three, also a part of Halsey’s fleet. The two ‘Spragues’ had also graduated from the same class at Naval Academy, and both served with distinction.

“We’ll call on Tom Sprague’s carriers if we need them,” said Halsey. “He’s replenishing now with Ballentine.”

“What in heaven’s name do the Russians think they’re doing, Bull? Are they flying these damn suicide rockets like the Japanese?”

“We don’t know. Which is why I want you and the other task group commanders aboard Missouri for a powwow ASAP. I’ll send you the details later. In the meantime, hold tight until we reinforce. Fraser says if you go in piecemeal this damn ship will cut you to pieces.”

“Our air group took a pretty hard knock, and the planes never even got close enough to the enemy to let them have it. Now it sure looks like we’re going to lose Wasp.”

“Plenty more coming,” Halsey reassured him. “I won’t let you down this time, Ziggy.”

Halsey was referring to that disastrous battle Sprague had fought off Samar when he commanded Taffy 3 while Halsey had the fleet carriers off on a wild goose chase. It wouldn’t happen that way this time. The Bull was lowering his head, snorting loud, and pawing the ground hard before he charged. But when he did go in, Halsey planned to raise hell over Hokkaido, one way or another.

Chapter 9

Karpov received the report from the radar man with some gratification. His message had been delivered. Rodenko looked over the contacts and noted that they struck two ships in the core, most likely both carriers. The strike wave had turned back just inside the thirty kilometer mark and was withdrawing south. Karpov ordered all ships to cease fire at once, wanting to conserve as much ammunition as possible.

“Now perhaps they will listen to me when I contact them, and I can get someone senior to this ‘Iron Mike’ on the radio.” Karpov grinned.

“What do you plan to do, sir?” Rodenko was with the Captain in the briefing room off the main citadel bridge.

“A good question. I’ve given it some thought, but as you can see, these are dangerous waters. We’ve let events push us into action sooner than I might have desired. I heard what you said about those early engagements with the Americans in the Kuriles. Perhaps I was rash, particularly with the heat of the fight with CVBG Washington still getting my blood up.”

“I understand, sir. That Demon Volcano shook us all up as well. How did the other Captains come to grips with what has happened?”

“That remains to be seen. They performed well just now, particularly Orlan, but I can imagine they are all still scratching their heads and trying to figure this whole situation out. At the moment, they are doing their duty under extraordinary circumstances, but this last engagement was mere target practice. We aren’t facing supersonic jet aircraft and fast moving missiles now. The planes here are like drones—slow and witless. They have no ECM to speak of, and we can start jamming their radar in the next few hours, for all the good it does them now.”

Rodenko thought about that. “They came because of what they didn’t know,” he suggested. “Their scouting detachments ran into trouble, and this seemed more like a reconnaissance in force. But sir, Nikolin picked up some radio chatter. The American attack was called off by their Fleet Commander.”

“Yes, Admiral Halsey. You’ve heard the name. Halsey, Nimitz—these are the men they name ships for, even as we choose our old admirals to do the same. Well, they’re up against more than they realize now. At least they came to their senses and called off that attack. This gives me hope that we might be able to talk some sense into them now.”

“But what will we say, sir? Are you going to present yourself as affiliated with the Soviet government here?”

“Another good question,” said Karpov, quickly. “The Soviets would deny this, of course, unless we contact them first and come to some arrangement. But I do not think we could be very persuasive to the powers that be in Russia now without putting in an appearance. We would have to sail to Vladivostok, and it would be just like the nonsense we went through earlier. They would send officials to look us over. They’ll want to ‘interview’ us; find out who we are, where we came from. Our ships would certainly raise some eyebrows, eh? We would have to reveal everything to gain their full cooperation. It could take months and I’m not about to stand for that any longer.”

“I still don’t understand what we are doing then, Captain.”

“Perhaps I don’t either, Rodenko. But my guess is that the Soviet government will not believe a word of what we might tell them. They will only believe what they see. They understand power, and they definitely understand how to use it to get what they want. I can show them power unlike anything they can imagine. The same may be true for the Americans here. We just showed them that they can’t send in a wave of strike planes and win the day. We showed them how vulnerable their precious carriers are now. They are dealing with something extraordinary, a force to be reckoned with, as they might put it. I want them to stew in that borscht for a while, and we might have to make a further demonstration of our power before we can get them to back down here and listen to our demands.”

“Our demands, sir?”

“In the end we will have to support the Soviet government in this post war environment. How can we do anything else? It’s our country. Stalin may be the great dark shadow on the land at the moment, but Russia survives Josef Stalin, and all the others. The question is this—will Russia survive NATO and that damn war we found ourselves in before that volcano sent us back here again? What do you think the allies were doing when we first showed up here? Churchill and Roosevelt were planning a secret meeting at Argentia Bay that would end up forming the basis of the NATO alliance. They called it the Atlantic Charter, and you will take note that Stalin wasn’t invited. And what are they doing now? At this very moment the Allies are getting ready to set their watch on Russia and stand behind the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall until they come tumbling down and they finally go after us in our day. I’ll tell you this, Rodenko. The world once thought we built those walls to keep people in and control them. The fact is that we built them to keep the Americans out! We’ve seen it, Rodenko. We know what they’re going to do—all of it. There will be the big standoff over Cuba until Khrushchev backs down, and then they’ll bleed us in Afghanistan, ride us and harry us until the old Soviet system finally collapses. But now we have the power to change all that.”

“Do we, sir? I mean no disrespect of course. This ship certainly has power unlike anything in the world. But that power has limits as well as potentials. Orlan took the burden and fired thirty missiles in that engagement. They have 150 SAMs left in inventory. We fired sixteen medium range SAMs just now and that leaves us with 168. After using those four P-900s we have 30 SSMs remaining. Those aboard Golovko and Orlan combine for 32 more. We may have hit and badly hurt a ship just now. But it took multiple hits. And remember what happened during that fight with the Japanese battleship?”

“Yamato? Yes, that was quite a battle.”

“We hit that ship with eight missiles and two torpedoes, and it still survived the battle to fight later in the war! Well I think the Americans have battleships here too, Captain. There are at least two in this task group approaching us.”

“Yes, the obvious limitations of our conventional weapons will begin to weigh on us if this thing draws out much longer. We can hit them before they even know where we are, and very hard, but only for a limited time. So we are faced with the very same decisions we debated earlier. We either run out to sea and try to get away from the allied navies here and hide somewhere, or we do something with the power we have in hand at the moment, limited as it may be. We have what the American President Theodore Roosevelt might call a very big stick. I intend to speak softly in the beginning, but if I have to raise my voice to be heard, or use that stick, I intend to do so.”

“Yet look what happened before, sir,” Rodenko suggested plaintively. “We even used a nuclear warhead, and I say we used it, not you alone, sir. I was on this ship—on the bridge here, and I did nothing to impede that. I’m as responsible for what happened as you are, so I don’t raise this point with any recrimination in mind.”

Karpov wasn’t sure he took much solace in that, though it seemed that Rodenko was saying it that way to sweeten the tea they were now drinking together. “So what is your point?”

“Well sir, we used a warhead and it got us nothing, geopolitically that is. The war actually started early, and the Americans gained an even better position in Europe, or so Fedorov tells me. But by and large our action had little real effect.”

“Oh, it had an effect, Rodenko. I’ve thought about this for some time, and discussed it with Fedorov too. He’s of a mind that the world we returned to in Vladivostok was not the same one we left. Our actions in the past changed things, and our foreknowledge of the third world war to come also gave us a decided advantage. And I’ll tell you another thing…” He lowered his voice now, implying the information he would now disclose would be confidential. “We lost men on our little safari through the Second World War. Well, it turns out that in the world we returned to they never lived!”

“I don’t understand.”

“They never lived, Rodenko. They were never even born. Think about that for a moment.” He told Rodenko what he had discussed with Fedorov and Admiral Volsky, and his new Starpom was finally impressed.

“So something we did changed the history enough to affect men on this very ship?”

“It appears so, and it also appears that time found a way to account for that. We did something—who knows what? We killed men that may have lived, and spared others that should have died. It was enough to affect the personal lines of fate for crewmen on this ship—every man that died in action, except Orlov.”

“Orlov?”

“That’s the big deal now. Fedorov’s mission involving that floating nuclear reactor ship. It was all to go back and find Orlov. But now they have much more than the former Operations Chief to worry about. We’re here, with nearly 1500 souls aboard these three ships and no way to get home.”

Rodenko was silent for a time, considering this, and trying to sort the puzzle through in his mind. If this were true, if they had already changed history more than once, then what might happen this time?

“What if we change things again, sir?”

“That’s the point of this discussion, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but what if we do something that also affects our personal fates, like those men you say were never born. You said time got rid of them somehow. Is that why they died in battle?”

“Fedorov thinks this is so. I, for one, do not think Grandfather Time is up there somewhere keeping score on everything we do. Call it God, or Fate, or whatever you choose. We speak of heaven and hell, Rodenko, but figuratively. Those places are simply the ends of our own desires, or our own mistakes. What we really know, deep down, is that we make our own heaven or hell by the choices we take in the here and now—right here on this earth. Every time we make a decision we affect our own personal time line—our own fate. I can’t live my life wondering whether something I do, or something I fail to do, will make an end of me one day. This world will make an end of us all. None of us asked to be here, but here we are, unless something happens as it did before.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I used that warhead, we vanished to a distant future soon after. I was in the brig at the time, but I learned what happened. I saw what was left of the world, I could see it from the port hole.”

“But I thought we moved because of the control rods in our own reactor system.”

“Yes, that’s the way Fedorov figured it out with Dobrynin. But we really don’t know. First we thought it was the nuclear detonations blowing a hole in time. Perhaps it was. Look what that volcano just did to us! Then we thought it was simply a matter of time, and no pun intended. Volsky and Fedorov saw an interval of twelve days between each time displacement. It was only then that Volsky and Dobrynin remembered those odd flux events in the reactors and mated that time interval to Dobrynin’s maintenance routine. So we came round to thinking this control rod was responsible—Rod-25. It suddenly became our own personal magic wand, except we never knew what would happen—where we would move in time if we used it. Then Fedorov began to take note of the fact that we always seemed to return to the approximate same time period in the past. It was his guess that Rod-25 would then allow him to go back to the 1940s and by god, his plan worked!”

“You mean the mission with Troyak and the others?”

“Yes…Fedorov got back safely. He left a letter for Volsky in an old storage bin, just as we did a few days ago.”

“Then the Admiral knows we’re here!”

“I hope so. He may get that letter, but who can say?”

“Well if he does, sir, wouldn’t he be trying to find a way to help us get home again?”

“I’d like to think so, Rodenko, but what could he do? They shipped that control rod to the Caspian to try and rescue Fedorov and Orlov. Then we pulled our latest disappearing act and I don’t think they could send Rod-25 back to us again. We’re in 1945! How would they find us? Even if we still had it aboard at this moment there’s no guarantee that we could move all three ships back home again. But that is irrelevant. We don’t have the damn thing any longer, and if we need that control rod to move in time, then we’re stuck here. This is what I tell myself now. We’re stuck here in the middle of the Pacific in 1945 with the American fleet at our throats. We get to fight the battle we just started in 2021 all over again here, though I like our odds much better now.”

“Who knows, sir? The allied navy had enormous resources at this time in the war.”

“I’ve read all about it. Well it will come down to fight or flight, the same primal instincts that have influenced human choice since we clawed ourselves up from the jungle floor and learned to stand on two feet. I’ll tell you one thing I’ve decided. I’m going to fight.”

“But what if they see what they’re up against and combine their forces for a massive attack, sir? They may even be doing that at this moment? Why would this Admiral Halsey call off that attack?”

“Who knows? But you are probably correct, Captain Lieutenant. Do you like how that new title sounds, Rodenko? Well let me tell you something…You could be very much more than that in due course. We all could. With the power we have at our fingertips we can be real men of war now, not mere pawns in the game. We can re-write history, and put our names in those books where Fedorov always had his nose buried. We have only to make that choice, and then figure how to use the power we have to achieve the most decisive result.”

“It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this, sir.”

“That I have, Rodenko… That I have, and I’ll tell you what’s going to happen here. They are going to regroup and come back at us in force next time, and I’m going to meet that attack with equal force. Understand?”

Rodenko looked down for a moment, then he met the Captain’s eyes. “Are you speaking of nuclear weapons now, sir?”

“There are five tactical warheads aboard this ship. Orlan has three, and Admiral Golovko has one. As acting Fleet Tactical Commander I was informed of this by Admiral Volsky before we left port. That’s nine warheads under our control at the moment. With those we could be very persuasive, wouldn’t you say? They could make for the worst nine days the allies could ever possibly imagine. That’s what they did to Japan in the world we left behind at Severomorsk. They hit Hiroshima—a black day for Japan indeed. But when that wasn’t enough they hit Nagasaki before the message got through. Fedorov tells me that never happened in the world we returned to at Vladivostok, so in one sense our actions, my actions, may have spared a great many lives. But we have nine warheads, Rodenko—nine days of hell on earth at our disposal if we have to send a message of our own.”

“Nine days falling…” said Rodenko, his voice somewhat forlorn and distant.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Satan fell for nine days when he was cast out of heaven, at least insofar as Dante and Milton told the story. He fell one day through each of the nine circles of hell. It was required reading at the university before I came to the navy.”

Karpov smiled. “Nine days falling… I like that. The only question I have now is this: who is taking that ride to hell? Will it be us or the Americans?”

Chapter 10

Ben Flack sat in the crowded rear compartment of the helo, staring out the window at platform Medusa. He had spent the last year and a half sweating the drilling and production operations there, supervising new rigs and equipment installations, pouring over lateral drilling schemes with the engineers, listening to complaints from the wildcatters, mudmen, down hole drillers, pump station crews, and the worst that the Boyz at corporate HQ back in Bollinger Canyon could throw at him. The Kashagan superfield was Chevron’s last and biggest play in the great game, and now it looked like it was over, at least for the foreseeable future. Now the world belonged to men like those crammed into the compartment with him.

They sat there, in two rows, dressed out in black and charcoal cammo fatigues and cinder dark berets. Their jackets were bulging with ammo clips, and other accouterments of war, and each one carried an automatic weapon. Some had heavier equipment that Flack imagined useful against tanks or APCs, small hand held blowpipes with satchels of lethal sabot armor piercing rounds.

The world was theirs now. The fight had passed from men like Ben Flack to the Sergeants and Corporals in these dark uniforms. Rumors had it that the Russians rolled over the northern border into Kazakhstan early that morning with elements of their 58th Army. It was a tough outfit dating back to the Second World War when it had once been named the Third Tank Army. The NKVD fleshed out the rank and file of several divisions back then, and was responsible for security and order in the restive provinces that were now modern day Chechnya and Azerbaijan. It was blooded in two wars there against the Chechens, and again in the incursion into Ossetia and Georgia in 2008.

The Russians had crossed in force, with the whole of the 19th Motor Rifle Division supported by the 67th Anti-Aircraft rocket Brigade, the 1128th Anti-Tank Regiment, the fast moving helicopters of the 487th Regiment and the 11th Engineers. They were joined by the 7th Air Assault Mountain Division out of the major Russian port at Novorossiysk, with regiments based in that location and in Stavropol. The 108th Guards Cossack ‘Kuban’ Regiment was leading the assault, swarming over the border in dark helicopters flanked by sleek Mi-24 attack choppers. They were now sweeping down the Black Sea coast towards the same terminals the Fairchild tankers had used to secure their oil cargos. What they could not accomplish at sea or in the skies they would accomplish on land, and this time NATO had nothing there to stop them. The whole region was their back yard, and they would soon have a stranglehold on all the oil and gas.

Flack had worried about security, fretted over KAZPOL, haggled with Mercs like the men he was riding with now, but all that was over. It was going to take a major operation on the ground to dislodge the Russians now—something on the scale of the Persian Gulf wars that bridged the 20th and 21st centuries with such fire and violence. He knew back then that it was all going to burn one day. All of it.

Flack was close enough to the pilot’s cabin to listen in on the radio feed being monitored and it did not sound good. The Russians were hitting hard in typical fashion. There had been a heavy rain of artillery all along the border before the skies blackened with helicopters and aircraft high overhead to cover the operation. Against this the Kazakh Army had initially moved the 35th Air-Mobile brigade as a blocking force to give them time to muster additional forces from the reserve motor rifle brigades assigned to various military districts of the sprawling nation. But the Russians were moving fast, engaging and then bypassing the blocking forces and quickly securing the oil rich Tengiz and Kashagan superfields by airborne envelopment.

The X-3s of Fairchild Inc. had slipped away with only hours to spare, and now they were flying low over the Caspian on the approach to British Petroleum facilities in Baku. Flack gave his sidekick Ed Murdoch a wan glance. “Looks like we’re out of a job Mudman,” he said dejectedly. “We kept bellyaching for military support out here, and now look at it. From what I’ve heard on that radio the Russians are raising hell at Kashagan. The folks back home are in for a real surprise now.”

“What? You mean the damn Russians are just taking the place over?”

“Sure sounds like it to me.”

“How can they do that, Flackie? All that equipment—all those rigs—that’s Chevron property. Where’s the damn Army when you need ‘em?”

“Yeah, where was KAZPOL when we ever needed them? It’s the same old story, Eddie. The Banks will cover their bets on the equipment and operations, but they never stop to think about security. It was easy enough to get the Army and Navy to stand a watch in the Persian Gulf, right? They had lots of bad guys there like Saddam and the Ayatollah. Now that Ghawar has run drier than a bone and the action moved up here, we’ve got nothing in the area to stop the Russians. They’ll take the whole place, lock, stock and oil barrel. That new platform we sweat to get moved up from Baku—the Russkies will own it by nightfall. That along with Medusa and all the others. Wait until corporate HQ realizes what happened. The game is finally over here.”

“You mean we ain’t comin’ back?”

“Take a look around, Mudman! See these guys in black here with the assault rifles? They were all that was between us and an early grave. The shit has hit the fan, my friend! Persian Gulf is shut down by the Iranians, and missiles are raining down all over the region. Gulf of Mexico is a real mess after Thunder Horse went down, and I heard that the Russians did that deliberately with a submarine. All Hurricane Victor did was spread the oil from the spill out, nice and thick. It’ll be months before they can get operations there back to normal—if ever. They shut down the BTC pipeline, and my bet is that they’ll cut the Trans-Georgia line to the Black Sea coast within 24 hours. All we have now is our rigs in the Niger Delta.”

“Well shit, Flackie. Where in God’s name are we going to get the flow to keep all those cars running on the freeways back home? Friggin’ frackin’?”

“Fracking? We sure as hell won’t get it from the Bakken Oil Shales, or that bullshit operation at Eagle Ford Texas. Media served up a crock of shit to the public and made it seem like we could squeeze oil out of shale indefinitely, and they could all rest easy and keep shopping at Wal-Mart. What a load of bull that was. My guess is that right about now the lines at the gas stations are starting to look pretty darn long. They’ll do the odd-even thing for a while, and talk more bullshit with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but that won’t last out the year without regular deliveries. That’s what these guys are all about.” Flack thumbed at one of the dour faced sergeants in the nine man squad they were riding with.

“Did we get enough bunkered in Baku for this Fairchild group?”

“Yeah, we made our quota alright,” Flack shrugged. “But that’s the last feather in my cap for the foreseeable future, that is until the men with guns sort this business out. It’s looking like another god-damned world war, Mudman. They’ll fight for the crude all over the globe, unless they blow themselves to hell first with nukes.”

Mudman gave him a wide eyed look. “Nukes?”

“Christ yes! The Chinese were talking that line in the UN last week. Now they’re out after Taiwan and there was a big naval battle in the Pacific. One of our aircraft carriers was damn near sunk! Then that volcano blew its top and things settled down a bit. But this isn’t over, Mudman. Its only just beginning. Someone’s got a serious hair up their ass over oil and gas, and that’s where the fighting will be until they start throwing the ICBMs. I’ll tell you one thing…” Flack looked over the rim of his wire frame glasses. “It’s going to be one lousy Christmas shopping season this year. Folks back home are going to be boarding up their track homes in a matter of weeks and hunkering down.”

“You a Prepper, Flackie?”

“A what?”

“A Prepper—you know, one of those guys with a bunker and stockpiles of food and ammo waiting for the zombies or Nibiru or some other shit to happen.”

“Nibiru? That was all baloney. We don’t need zombies or rogue planets to bring it all down, Mudman. We seem to be doing the job well enough ourselves.”

“Well… What are we going to do now? What are you gonna do when we get home?”

“Me? I’m fixin’ to buy one of those new Quantum Sleepers. I’ll load the damn thing up with Snickers Bars, popcorn and a couple cases of beer, and crank up the music nice and loud.”

“What the hell’s a Quantum Sleeper?”

“Haven’t you seen the ads in the magazines and Internet? It’s a nifty self contained sleeping chamber, big as a California King if you want to lay out the bucks for one. Damn things have TV, stereo, Internet, food and water, and they close up tight as a clam shell—bullet proof too. They even have filters for gas and radiation contaminates. Yup, that’s what I’ll do if we make it back to the States. I’ll get me one of those Quantum Sleepers, and then the world can go to hell and I’ll watch it on TV and eat popcorn the whole damn time. It’s what most of them have been doing over there the last 20 years anyway, so I may as well join the party.”

“Shit, Flackie! Sounds like a gilded tomb!”

“Not too far off the mark, Mudman. They can bury my ass in a titanium lined sleeper, and that’ll be that. But hey, if you have to check out, you may as well do so in style, eh?”

“Big enough to fit in some babes?”

“I should be so lucky. Nope. I’ll be stuck in there with my wife…Hummm, on second thought I may just buy one for her too. Then she won’t have to hear me burping through my beer foam.”

It was as good a plan as anything else Flack could conceive at that moment, and amazingly, not too far off the mark for some in the US. The nation had gone into a kind of holiday weekend shopping mentality. Not since 9/11 or the openings days of the two Gulf Wars had there been anything quite so riveting on the news crawl. People were out at the shopping markets and malls stockpiling and panic buying as if the Chinese were about to mount a full scale invasion at any moment. News of the battle in the Pacific and the damage to several US Navy ships, including a big aircraft carrier, had people spooked.

Yup, thought Flack. The folks back home are going to realize that they are now just hours, days at best, from the plug being pulled. And everything ran on the juice coming through that plug. America, land of the free, was about to go dark. The entire cellophane crackle of people’s lives was about to be suddenly reduced to a very few simple common denominators: guns, ammo, gold, food, water, shelter.

And the more he thought about it the more he also realized that he could shorten that list easily by throwing out the gold. You couldn’t eat it. You might use it to trade for really useful things in the short run, but in a matter of weeks people would realize the gold was really useless. It depended on a functioning financial sector to be redeemed, and the banks wouldn’t survive another month. It depended on the hope of a future where it would once again be traded into dollars for that never ending trip to Costco and the shopping malls. It was just a hunk of rock that primates fancied because it was shiny; nothing more than a gentlemen’s agreement. It had no inherent value beyond a few industrial applications. So now it was just guns, ammo, food, water, shelter, or it would be in a matter of days.

Maybe Mudman was on to something with this zombie shit he was talking. He was kidding him earlier, but that Quantum Sleeper was sounding better and better every minute.

Chapter 11

The alarm woke Robert Wagner promptly at 7:30 AM, the digital numbers seeming to flick on the radio, merging the last fleeting strands of a dream with the voice of the announcer. He lolled for a moment in the plush warmth of his Tempur-Pedic memory foam mattress, hearing that dollar days were almost over at his local Ford dealer. He had to hurry so he would not miss out on the biggest savings event of the year, a blockbuster 1.9% APR and $2000 factory cash back after signing!

He opened his eyes, seeing the familiar pale blue glow of the interior light above him. He was still nestled in the enclosed space of his bedtime cocoon—the Quantum Sleeper he had installed last fall when the terror alert level reached Orange again. It was a special bed, with an outer shell that closed overhead like the roof of a convertible car and created an environment that was completely safe and secure from the outside world. The titanium frame and polycarbonate siding of the outer shell was finished off with finely lacquered wood. Once sealed, however, it created an impregnable refuge, air-tight, water-tight, and with every comfort a person could desire to sustain them through the night, or a long, lazy morning should they care to linger in the protective shell before rising for the day.

The Quantum Sleeper had a console that activated a flat screen plasma television on the upper roof, so he could watch HDTV or DVD movies while he rested in bed. The interior lighting and temperature could be completely controlled, and the air was filtered and conditioned so well that the unit was entirely safe from bio-threats, noxious gas, smoke or any other airborne threat—and that included dust, pollen, animal dander, mold, bacteria, and even airborne viruses! H1N1 would find no refuge here. He had been astonished to learn that the air inside his home could be up to fifty times more polluted than the air outside. It just made good sense to know that he could rest all night in a safe and filtered environment like his Quantum Sleeper.

Beyond this, the twin storage tanks hidden behind the headboard held up to three days of cool, pristine water, with hot and cold taps accessible on the panel behind his pillow where a little splash sink could be pulled out from the headboard. A small microwave oven was also installed there, along with an all band radio, CD/MP3 player with stereo speakers, and cabinet space for snack food and reading materials. There were even emergency side compartments in the unit that could hold additional food, water, medical supplies and anything else deemed an urgent necessity. And the whole unit was backed up with a reserve battery that would last a full eight hours if the power ever failed.

And one day it would fail… soon…

Robert rolled over, unwilling to move from the satiny warmth of his pillows and blankets, noticing that his wife, Liz, has already opened her side of the unit and slipped out to start her morning. The mechanism of the outer shell was so whisper quiet that he had not even stirred when the other side of Sleeper had opened and closed. He considered having breakfast alone in the Sleeper that morning. There were still three breakfast entrees in the unit’s refrigerator. He could pop one in to the microwave, activate the automated coffee maker, and have scrambled eggs, French toast, hash browns, milk, juice, or anything else he desired. He thought the better of it, wanting a nice hot shower now more than food. Besides, he was going to have to restock the sleeper soon. The world was going to hell.

Rob stretched, reaching up reluctantly to press a small silver button on the top of the enclosure, and waiting while the Quantum Sleeper opened, the top arching up and back, folding itself as it did to fit snugly at the baseboard of the bed when fully opened. He stumbled out of bed, scratching listlessly as he made his way over the thick wool carpeting to the marble tiled bathroom. The air was fresh and sweet with the scent of Fresh Burst, jasmine and lemon. It was a medley of odors meant to evoke the pristine fragrance of a summer morning, or at least that is what the label on the scent dispenser unit promised.

Rod stripped off his silk boxer shorts, pausing to admire his hard, lean body in the mirror. His smooth, nearly hairless chest was strong and well contoured, tapering down to a six-pack abdomen that he worked hard on to keep well cut. He turned, admiring the round firmness of his buttocks and the tanned flanks of his thighs. The workout in the gym yesterday seemed to have done him some good. He was following the patented Slim in Six program, where he gained the entire benefit of a full six month workout program in only six weeks. He had seen the ad on TV a few months back, and had been following the easy, programmed weight loss system, complete with aerobic exercise, power yoga, Pilates toning moves and, best of all, he had not paid three thousand dollars for guided training and diet counseling, or even three hundred dollars—even though he would have expected to pay much more anywhere else. No, not Robert. He was too smart for that. By calling right away when he saw the TV ad, he was able to totally reshape his body, complete with a free six day maintenance plan and step by step guidebook, for only three easy payments of $19.95. And he had obtained three special bonuses at no extra charge in the deal—all sent to him by rush delivery.

Fitness was an obligation that had been broadcast at him for decades and, by now, it had become a reflexive habit. His entire self image, his manhood, his sexuality itself, rested on the notion that he could still draw those envious stares from the receptionist at the office. What a difference the Slim in Six program had made!

He flexed a bicep, admiring the peak as he tightened the muscle of his upper arm. He needed to do just a little more work on his back, he thought. He wasn’t into heavy muscle building, but he wanted his body firm and hard, two words that most men aspired to when it came to things physical. He watched his diet with the Slim in Six program, headed off the threat of saddle bagging in his mid section, got regular exercise, and made sure that he gave his body a good maintenance workout at least once a week.

Rod imagined that all his hard work would be well appreciated by everyone at the office. Yes, he was happily married, but it never hurt to know that you could turn the heads of the office girls, or even the other men there, and he often thought of how they were probably stealing glances at his firm tush when he strolled by the stock trading workstations to let them all know he was doing a first rate job as their supervisor. He enjoyed the thought that his infrared suntan, another feature he had built in to his Quantum Sleeper, would draw compliments from the pale white co-workers who shared his unit. He relished the idea that his pearly white smile, bought from a thousand dollar visit to the dentist last December, would never fail to please.

He stretched again, and stepped into the shower. A moment later his body was awash in refreshing jets of steamy water, and he was lavishing a thick palm full of Lever 2000 body wash over his well muscled frame, frothing it up to a rich, luxuriant lather so he would be sure to get the best possible day-long deodorant control for all of his 2000 parts.

Drying off with the fresh cotton towel, he heard his wife Liz switch on the plasma digital television downstairs in the living room. The cavalcade of announcements floated up the steps with the distant sound and smell of Maxwell House gurgling though the filter of the coffee machine in the kitchen. He passed a moment of brief longing for old Juan Valdez, the mythical coffee grower from South America who had ensured that the beans picked for grinding were the richest crop in a decade. Juan was fired when the competition from new coffee blends coming out of Southeast Asia had deflated prices and Maxwell House had been forced to pull its TV ad campaign. Such a loss, he mused.

Now the TV announcer was extolling the virtues of the Magic-Kan, an amazing new plastic container for your household trash. He focused on the words, mindlessly, reflexively, hearing that it was a must have for the kitchen, with a sophisticated design that was guaranteed to match any décor while keeping your trash neat, odorless, and out of sight.

His attention was soon pulled to the marble sink basin where he splashed a bit of lukewarm water on his face to prepare for shaving. What would it be today, he thought as he reached for the Edge protective shaving foam? The gel oozed out into his palm and soon bloomed up into a cool fragrant lather. Would it be the Schick Quattro or the M3 Power Razor? The Quattro sported four blades, so just one swipe of his razor would do twice the work of any normal double bladed razor. But the M3 had all the awesome power than any man could possibly crave. It’s mini-vibe mechanism, operated by a AA battery in the handle, pulsed and vibrated as he stroked the blade, raising even the most stubborn stubble for the three bladed razor to whisk away. With the M3, five-o-clock shadow was a thing of the past.

He chose the awesome power, selecting the M3 and making short work of the whiskers on his neck and chin. He finished up, slapping on a bracing aftershave at the end of his routine. A bit of super-gloss hair gel would be all he would need today, and he quickly ran his glistening fingers through his hair, letting the shape and style have just that touch of the tousled look that was so popular today. Soon he was ready to dress and take on the day.

Liz was channel surfing again. As Robert slipped on his robe and shuffled down the stairs, he saw that the ubiquitous ads had been suddenly interrupted by a hair-raising scene from the Middle East. Christ, was the oil still burning there? Lucky for him he filled the tank on his Lexus the previous day, though it was costing him a fortune to drive these days. Liz clicked her remote, moving on to the local channel to take in the morning news bytes.

…. A mass murder suspect in Bakersfield, the crazed 2020 Olympic Bomber trial, new cases of SARS at a hotel—mostly bottom of the hour filler before the breaking news headlines yet to come. Robert sighed as the news cast rolled on. The stock report crowded on the heels of that headline, and the ‘tale of the tape’ seemed bright this morning, as advances outpaced decliners by a hefty margin, mostly in the distressed energy sector. The transportation sector was getting hammered, however. It was no longer cheap or easy to fly anywhere these days. America was no longer “free to move about the country” as one airline put it in their TV ads. Below this, in the slow, steady crawl of the news ticker at the bottom of the screen, Robert saw that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was continuing unabated, the war in Asia was heating up again after that volcano imposed a brief time out, the Maine Potato Blossom Fest was in full swing and featuring a ladies’ bikini mashed potatoes wrestling contest! Food to wrestle in, he thought. What a country.

The news segment wound up, but the cordial host threw out a teaser to keep everyone waiting for more. "Another threat from Al Qaeda," she said glibly, "We’ll tell you which city needs to be on the alert when we come back."

The hook was in, with just a little barb of fear at the end. So now they would just have to wait. Robert thought how easy it would have been for her to simply reveal the city’s name, but then the lure of the tease would be lost. Now the whole nation would have to wait breathlessly through the next commercial segment to find out if they were the threatened city. And the commercial would most likely be a slick presentation by a drug company. They loved to litter the news segments and pushed the drugs hard and heavy each evening news hour. What would NBC do without Pfizer to bankroll them with all that commercial money?

From the sound of things the news was going from bad to worse but, whatever it was, the danger could not be all that great, because the commercials started rolling, with one fifteen second spot crowding after another—like people squeezing into a bus at a quick stop. The TV volume increased by 30% and the announcer stared out at the unseen audience with more dire warnings. “You could be missing out! It’s a fact: Mortgage rates are at an all time low, but they could go up at any moment.” It was time, therefore, to refinance the $750,000 home he lived in, thought Robert. With all the distress in the market he was probably well underwater by now. The announcer confirmed that fact with a clear directive: “Do it now!”

He resisted the urge to go to the phone and begin dialing, even though he knew that operators were standing by, waiting for his call. They would just have to wait a little longer, he thought. Then the next commercial elbowed its way onto the screen, and this offer made the last one pale. He learned that he could enter the new Capital One giveaway contest just by using his credit card for regular every day expenses and purchases. He could instantly win his own island—yes, a complete island that he could wander at his leisure any time he choose, a place to create his own paradise away from the hustle of city life, a lush tropical getaway. He passed a moment’s reflection on the disastrous investments made in Dubai, but nonetheless made a mental note to make sure to charge as much as he could on that card this weekend. This was even better than the monthly promise of endless riches at the Lotto! Yes, the 29.9% interest rate might pinch a bit, But he’d sell a few shares of the AIG stock he bottom fished for the other day when it took off again, and make all well.

An ad for Glad Plug-Ins soon followed, with a great new feature! The new sleek design would not block your electrical outlets. Now he could have a summer fresh home all day and never have to worry about getting something plugged in again! Gerber was next, with fat, happy babies getting their doughy cheeks stuffed fatter yet with the processed puree of plenitude in a convenient new package that you could take with you anywhere you went.

Herbal Essence quickly demonstrated how easy it would be to apply sun-golden streaks to any hair style. Oil of Olay wanted everyone to know how complicated and confusing skin care was, and that loss of firmness was as bad as wrinkles for spoiling that smooth, youthful complexion we all strive for. Thankfully, they now had an automated computer program standing ready to make expert recommendations on which Olay products he needed to buy. Then a white garbed chef was taking the perfect boccacia bread from the oven—just what you needed for a scrumptious chicken sandwich. As if taking a cue, the next ad showed mounds of steaming crab legs on special for the Lobster House Cajun Week. A happy black couple was beaming as they stuffed the succulent crab meat into their smiling mouths, wiping a dribble of thick, rich butter away with a wink and a nod. Half the world was starving, but not in the good old USA.

The images of endless food on colorfully prepared serving platters made him very hungry, but Robert didn’t need to worry. Whenever he wanted to come up with a quick snack, or cook an easy satisfying breakfast, all he had to do was turn on his Express Cooker, a Teflon coated appliance that streamlined his meal preparation by providing even heating from both above and below. Instead of frying or baking, he could fully enclose his fresh cracked eggs in the Express Cooker, with two convenient cooking bays that whipped up breakfast for two in no time at all.

He wandered in to the kitchen, and did exactly that. His Easy Chopper quickly consumed a few slices of onion and green pepper, and he threw the whole lot into the Express Cooker for a perfect omelet in just three minutes. Other people might be out rushing to breakfast, waiting in line, struggling with confusing menus, and paying exorbitant prices, but not Robert. He had 101 convenient recipes in a little booklet that came with his cooker, and he had picked the whole thing up at the “As Seen on TV store” at the mall. A few moments later he had his delicious breakfast in hand and was off to the den to check his e-mail before heading to work in his SUV Explorer.

The iPad was waiting patiently in the nook by the kitchen. He settled into the chair and tapped the icon to activate his blazing fast cable modem Internet account. A moment later his only concern was the rush of unwanted SPAM messages littering his inbox.

As if timed by fate itself, the TV ad in the next room was showing a spot where another young man was settling in to read his e-mail, just as Robert was. An errant fly alighted impudently on the screen. Just as it was flicked away, three more arrived, then a dozen more, until the screen was darkened by flies as if it were a reenactment of some black evil from the exorcist.

“Bugged by junk e-mail and pop-up ads?” The TV announcer asked. Robert swiveled to pay attention, in full agreement. Thankfully, the solution was close at hand. “Why not try our fast new Internet service, with free pop-up blocker, SPAM filter and virus checker, so you never have to wait to read your e-mail again.”

Those damn flies were now all over the house in the TV ad, chased frantically by the lovely couple on the screen, their arms flailing about with frustration and annoyance. Robert pivoted back to his own screen, inwardly flicking at the litany of junk messages there… Advertisements claiming he could increase the size of his penis and keep it constantly erect with Viagra. He could unleash the power of his digital cable, fulfill all his pharmacy needs, visit with college co-eds as they stripped for the cameras, and so much more. Flies, he thought, damn little annoying flies buzzing about his screen.

But on second thought, he decided to click on the link to those teenage strippers. His wife would never have to know.

It was what he didn’t know that would soon bring an end to the sumptuous pixel driven life of luxury he had been enjoying. The markets didn’t like the news cycle, and that was just the beginning. The Chinese were dumping more than missiles on Taiwan. It was going to get much, much worse.

Chapter 12

There was much more than war and oil on the news that morning. Other dark matter was being discussed that was going to cut close to the bone for Robert. The Treasury Secretary was huddling with bankers again, only days after another massive fund infusion supporting the banking industry. This time it was Wall Street investment house Goldman Sachs on the rocks, the maestros of the market who had heretofore navigated the roiling waters of the financial tempest with uncanny skill. They had made a killing in 2008-2009, selling investors bogusly rated AAA securities at one desk while aggressively hedging this with a raft of shorts on those same securities at another desk. When other houses like Lehman failed and AIG was on the ropes, they were able to extract 100 cents on the dollar for their swap deals. Then they deftly morphed into a “bank” in a few days time and went merrily on with yet more government bailout money that almost directly equaled their enormous bonus payouts that year.

But it wasn’t the news from the troubled Caspian superfields or the outbreak of fighting in the Black Sea that was vexing the bankers now. This time something had happened in the wine dark sea of derivatives, where Goldman’s exposure was astronomical. Word was that the Chinese were backing out of derivatives contracts, en masse, simply ordering their people to default and describing the whole scheme in the clearest possible terms—fraud. It was deemed part of their ‘war effort’ but the fact remained that it was now going to have a tremendous effect on the financial markets.

One by one other counterparties to the extensive web of derivatives agreements began to follow suit, emboldened by the statements emanating from Beijing. For years these trades had been accomplished in “dark pools” where pricing, transparency and reporting requirements were virtually nonexistent. As long as the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing, the Goldman magic act could continue unabated. But now someone had called them on the sham they had made of securities trading, and the game was over.

Goldman was in trouble. Puts became calls, and razor thin margins melted away. They needed cash to offset their leverage and staunch the gaping wounds in their trading schemes. The firm was teetering at the edge of the abyss and desperately seeking a financial support. And since they basically ran the U.S. government as it was, Uncle Sam was being called in once more as the patsy buyer of last resort.

A run on other independent broker dealers like Morgan Stanley or even majors like Citigroup was now a distinct possibility as the shadow banking system, the other dark energy supply driving the nation, was also effectively ‘shut in’ just like the oil, with a paralysis gripping the derivatives trading desks. The dark pools had gone cold and stagnant. The financial system had relied on these unregulated trades to keep the wheels turning. Many investment houses were leveraged at impossible ratios, some as high as 80 or 100 to 1, but Goldman’s position was far worse. As these positions became more and more untenable, the unwinding was ravaging the meager real capital base that supported the shadow trades.

So as Houston sat in the dark, the Gulf of Mexico bled oil, and the Russians moved on the Kashagan superfields, the Fed once again convened emergency meetings with the heads of all major Wall Street firms trying to find a way to prevent the avalanche of default that threatened to tear the system apart. The counterparties had to be persuaded to keep their stakes in the game at all cost, but that cost would soon be seen to be beyond the means of all of Wall Street’s most venerable names, beyond even the power of the government itself to forestall the inevitable collapse. The whole system shuddered, like financial pipelines shutting down, one after another.

The dark matter of derivatives comprising the shadow banking system amounted to over $680 trillion dollars, a sum exceeding the gross domestic product of the entire nation for the next 60 years. The energy flows had come to a near complete halt, with nervous investors unwilling to risk capital. Banks stopped lending to other banks. Loans became almost impossible to arrange. It was a freezing deflationary scenario, potentially much worse than the Great Depression, but no one really knew what the consequences would be, and with war looming as a real event now, no one cared either.

The massive derivatives market opened in a rare weekend session to allow investors to try and limit their exposure to damage should Goldman fall into bankruptcy the following Monday. Good money was scrambling after bad money, in a desperate effort to stop the losses.

The average person on the street knew little of the real danger. They were lined up behind the cash registers at Wal-Mart with shopping carts full of the last shipments of junk that would arrive from China for the foreseeable future. Robert read the news intently that morning, wondering if he should act immediately to protect his own meager investment portfolio. He had a substantial slice of Goldman, and sent in a sell order to an old pit buddy, hoping to get out the back door in cash just before the building collapsed.

Somehow, images of those few survivors coming down the stairwells in the World Trade Center just before the first tower fell played on a haunting canvass in the back of his mind. He wanted to be one of them. What a metaphor, carved in reality now, he thought. But Jimmy, his contact in the trading pits this morning, wouldn’t let him down.

When the call came in from the trading desk, he answered his cell phone quickly.

“Jimmy, my main man! I hope you’ve got some good news.”

“Hey, Robert. Things are really dicey down here, brother. I’ve got sell orders stacked up from here to Cleveland, and no buyers in sight.”

“But you got me out, right? You sell it all?”

“That’s just it,” there was a harried edge to the other man’s voice. “I can’t move shit right now. Fat cats are three rungs ahead of me on the trading ladder, front running like crazy. I’ve got banks, insurance companies and fund managers hogging the wire. Every time I key something I get a bounce. These buggers have the whole system damn near locked up. And this is just a two hour special trading session. The big Boyz have the inside track.”

“What do you mean locked up? Come on Jimmy, I‘ve got too much riding on this. I need to unwind this shit right now!”

“Hey, man. I’ll do whatever I can, but this is some serious fuckin’ shit going down here this afternoon. Never seen anything like it, not even when Lehman got thrown to the wolves. Gotta go, man. Somethin’s up!”

Robert heard a chorus of pit shouting just before the line went dead. He sat there staring at the screen on his cell phone, stunned. If he couldn’t unwind this position he was definitely going to crash and burn. He’d lose everything!.

He awoke that morning, safely cocooned in his Quantum Sleeper, but the bad news was still filtering through the stereo speakers, through the endless commercials interlaced with the constant flow of advertising that never seemed to stop, and it had finally hit home.

His pit trader friend never called him back. Jimmy let him down. The news that Goldman had failed spread like a toxin, and fund after fund had taken staggering losses, some losing 90% of their nominal value in a matter of hours. The near two thousand point drop in the markets that followed further decimated Robert’s meager stock positions. As the radio announcer yammered on about one special offer or another, he found himself simply losing himself in the media stream, the commercials washing over his weary mind one after another like old familiar friends…

Still ahead! The biggest little sale of the year… Final clearance! No payments and interest until February. Free delivery, usually in 4 hours or less! Don’t wait call now! And now this…Aqua Fresh whitening power is even better! Use every day for whitening teeth… Then…Tonight--A distillation of the very best, the weirdest, the wildest on NBC…

The commercials piled one on top of another, with one presenting a saccharine pastoral scene of a grandfather playing with a toddler and dog while a voiceover intoned a litany of horrific drug side effects for the latest concoction being foisted on the public. What happened to the simple, direct interrogation of the dairy industry commercial, he thought. It was just two words—Got Milk? A quiet tone interrupted the commercial stream, and the volume lowered 30%. The digital messaging system in the Quantum Sleeper had a message for him from the other room.

“Good morning,” the voice intoned in the smooth, soft tones of a fresh young co-ed, and quietly announced that there was a fault reading on the central AC unit in the basement. “A quick service call should take care of it today!” the voice concluded. The Sleeper was hard wired to a device that checked on all his major appliances, letting him know when anything needed attention.

“What would you like to do?” The girl asked with sweet exuberance. “Press one to initiate a service call… Press zero to cancel.”

Robert didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted to forget the AC unit, the advertising, and the fact that he was now basically bankrupt, with every nickel of his retirement flushed down the toilet of Wall Street.

“What would you like to do?” The girl persisted in the same voice. “Press one to initiate a service call… Press zero to cancel.”

Harried and angry, stormed into the bedroom and reached in to press the zero button on the overhead input panel.

“Thank you,” said the girl. “I’ll be sure to remind you about this situation tomorrow. Until then, have a wonderful day!”

Up yours, thought Robert, though that was a real push-pull for him. The girl’s voice was so sweetly compelling that if he awakened that morning to find her next to him in the Sleeper instead of Liz he would have taken out his frustration by other means. But she was only a digital recording, one he had chosen from a panel of six different voice options, all for just $4.95 extra on his Sleeper monthly service package.

The radio came back up to volume, and the inevitably conservative slant on the show featured a commentator selling the new government bailout of AIG as good for business. “These assets will recover in time,” he pronounced. “The government may even stand to make money on this deal. Let me be clear—this time AIG will not be obligated to Goldman Sachs for any and all insurance swaps written to protect the derivatives the Chinese and others have repudiated. We should be turning the corner on this situation in a matter of weeks, and things will be improving soon.”

Robert couldn’t agree. The crisis might be over for AIG, defaulting on its swap obligation just as the Chinese had defaulted on the trash Goldman sold them, he thought, but it’s not over for the rest of us, by any measure you could find. People were going to see virtually every last nickel of “equity” evaporate from their home, phantom wealth that was used as collateral for home consumer loans to buy new appliances, granite counter tops, plasma TVs, cars, vacations—now nothing more than a massive debt liability. So much for the dream and the false perception of benefit from home ownership, he thought. He suddenly realized that he never really owned anything but the debt related to the things he bought! The bank owned their home from the day he and his wife moved in, and then passed on the lien to some investor in Asia. Robert bought a place to live, and a massive debt. They could have rented a similar place to live at half the rate of home ownership, avoiding property taxes, maintenance, and all that interest!

What was happening to the world he had taken for granted for so very long? He knew there were millions of people like him waking up to the same bad news, the same despair, as the realization that all they had now was a paycheck if they were lucky enough to still be employed, a meager checking balance, and a little open space on a few credit cards finally sunk in.

Then something odd occurred to him…So what? The friggin’ Chinese were going to war in the Pacific, the Russian were going to war everywhere else, the Iranians were blasting the Persian Gulf with missile after missile. What did his mortgage payment matter? Did he actually think there would be a bank waiting for it in 30 days or a pointy headed banker pouring over his account as he contemplated foreclosure? Hell no!

Now it was coming down to just three things, he realized—food, fuel and security. That was it. He’d be swiping the cards at Ralph’s Market and putting all the gasoline on his Mobile card he could find—that is, if the banks didn’t decapitate the credit lines before he got to the front of the line at the pumps.

“Christ almighty,” he breathed. Depression chased the optimism he had started the day with. He had no idea what to do, and hung on the news channel, thinking about that food and gasoline. Tonight he would join his wife in the Quantum Sleeper, he thought. Safer there with shit like this going on.

He was making a mental list of things they would need, food items, water, extra batteries. Somewhere he had a list of the hundred things to disappear first, and oddly, toilet paper was one of them. The once called it “mountain money” when they would go camping, one of those little necessities that you never gave a second thought. What else was he overlooking? Should he take the pistol with him when he went out? Where did he keep the ammo?

He sat down in his office, dejected, flustered, and beset with the feeling that he had a thousand things to do and too little time to get any of them done. Think! He imposed a moment of quiet on his mind. Sit down and think this through. What do you really need? It wasn’t Zest, or that new power shaver. It wasn’t Aqua Fresh, those 50 unforgettable getaways or a mid-sized sedan. It wasn’t a new iPad or HDTV. All those desires had been swept away in a single moment in his mind.

It was just three things now: Food, Fuel and security.