Fallen Angels: 9 Days Falling, Volume II

Chapter 25

“Any response, Nikolin?” Karpov was hovering over the communications station, an anxious uncertainty in his eyes.

“No, sir. There has been no reply to our last message.”

“Send it one more time. Tell them this is the last warning they will receive. They either grant my request for negotiation and make those arrangements to my satisfaction, or we will settle the matter in battle at sea.”

“Very well, sir. Sending now.”

Karpov paced as he waited, his footfalls seeming loud in the silence of the bridge. The tension was evident there, though the bridge crews were alert and confident at their posts. They had seen Karpov in combat before, and came to respect and admire his ability. Yet there was no way to bury the obvious emotion they felt as the prospect of another big fight loomed ahead of them. The Captain had just made a tremendous show of force. Ten minutes after his conversation with the American Admiral he had fired a MOS-III, programming it to make a run to a point some twenty kilometers northwest of the Halsey task force. The weapon it carried was only a 15 kiloton warhead, but that was nearly the size of the bomb the Americans dropped at Hiroshima, at least in one iteration of this history, the world still chronicled in Fedorov’s old books. It would detonate over a hundred kilometers to the south at a designated point, well over their horizon.

Minutes later, however, they could see the evil mushroom cloud, rising ever higher in the distance from beyond the deceptively placid curve of the earth, and it put well deserved fear into the gut of every man who looked at it. Would the Captain use another if the Americans did not back down? Nikolin’s voice had just the hint of a plea in it as he broadcast in English. There was only silence in return.

“They don’t answer, sir,” he said dejectedly. “I’ve sent the message three times now.”

Karpov seemed angry. “What is wrong with them? Don’t they see what we’re capable of?”

“Perhaps the detonation affected their communications.” Rodenko was at the Captain’s side now, arms folded, considering the situation.

“Mister Nikolin?”

“Possible, but not likely, sir. They don’t have advanced electronics, and in many ways their systems would be much less vulnerable to EMP effects.”

“I agree,” said Rodenko. “That was a very low altitude airburst. There was no significant EMP burst in any case.”

“Then they are deliberately maintaining radio silence,” Karpov concluded. “Which means they could be planning something—some surprise attack.”

“They won’t be able to surprise us, sir. We have helicopters up and we’ll see any launch operation from their carriers.”

“How soon will they be reporting in?”

“Any minute now, Captain.”

Tasarov shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his brow furrowed, and obvious concentration on his face. Karpov caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, a wary look on his face. He had seen that look before, and knew that Tasarov was processing something, a hidden signal return picked up on the ship’s sonar. He waited, watching his sonar man intently until Tasarov looked in his direction.

“Con, sonar. Undersea contact, possible submarine, confidence high. I think this is a diesel electric boat, sir. Bearing 240 degrees, range approximate at 18,000 meters; speed six knots and closing on our position.”

“Someone is creeping up on us,” said Karpov looking at Rodenko. “That doesn’t sound very friendly. Do we have another KA-40 ready for launch?”

“Yes sir, the second helo is on ready alert.”

“Launch immediately. Overfly the contact and refine its position with sonobuoys. They may think they can sneak up on us like this, but we’ll soon show them otherwise.”

USS Archer-Fish was the unhappy recipient of Karpov’s attention that day. The boat had been out on its seventh and final war time patrol, assigned to provide life guard services for B-29 crews should any be lost in the last days over Japan. For Commander Joseph, Francis Enright, it was lackluster duty compared to the old glory days earlier in the year when he had stuck one of the largest feathers any submarine commander could ever earn in his cap discovering a formation of five ships, a carrier with four escorts.

After a heady race to get ahead of the Japanese flotilla and achieve firing position, Archer-Fish dealt a spread of six torpedoes from her forward tubes and, quite amazingly, scored six hits on the target. He would soon get credit for the sinking of Shinano, the world’s largest aircraft carrier at the time. Originally laid down as the third Yamato Class hull, work was stopped on the battleship and she was wisely converted to an aircraft carrier. Now Enright was slated to receive a Presidential Citation for his effort, and the kill filled the crew with pride and enthusiasm for battle.

Their next patrol had not been so glorious. Enright found himself in a small three boat wolfpack dubbed “Joes Jugheads” in the South China Sea. In one brief engagement the boat believed they hit and sank a Japanese submarine, though the kill would later be stricken as unconfirmed. Finally, on her last patrol, the war ended as the boat was cruising just off the southernmost tip of Hokkaido, Cape Erimo Saki. The jubilation on the announcement was well earned, but short-lived as well. Archer-Fish was heading for Tokyo Bay to join the planned surrender ceremony when she received orders to make an abrupt about face and head north.

There was a gaggle of loose subs around Hokkaido at the time. Two others were nearby to join the unusual operation, the Atule under Commander John Maurer and the old Gato, first boat in her class, under Lt. Commander Richard Farell. Together they had accounted for a few Japanese coastal corvettes and a sub chaser in the waters off Hokkaido as the war ended, but now they were to join Enright and the esteemed Archer-Fish in a new wolfpack heading north to look for Russians! It was a most unusual order, which had a good number of jaws wagging in the crew compartments as the boat turned north.

Enright wasn’t happy about the duty. He had been all set to lay eyes on Tokyo Bay, and now here he was, still sweltering in the boat with his fluky air conditioning. So much for the grease monkeys. They were supposed to fix the damn thing but whatever they did only made things worse. He had made a point of delicately mentioning that in his log: “The air conditioning alteration decreased rather than increased the habitability of the ship.” It wouldn’t matter much if they could make a steady surface approach, but for some reason the orders had emphasized that they were to proceed submerged, surfacing only to make scheduled radar checks, and to look for three Russian ships.

He swiped his brow with a handkerchief, looking over at Lt. Commander L.G. Bernard near the periscope. The protocol was to make periscope depth and check radar returns at thirty minute intervals. Then they would submerge deeper, alter heading, and proceed toward any contacts. They had been creeping up the east coast of Hokkaido and were now about 20 miles northeast of Shikotan Island. The long gray profiles of the southern Kuriles were evident in the distance when they surfaced.

“Still reading that interference on the APR?” Enright checked with Bernard on some unusual readings they had during the last radar sweep.

“It’s not on the same band width and pulse as any Jap radar,” said Bernard. “Suddenly stopped about five minutes ago. Now we’re getting pings. Sounds like something is up there nosing around.”

“Sonar has no screw noise close in, just that dull rumble at long range we took to be our target contact.”

“There was also that Typhoon warning. We bumped into something a couple hours ago, but there was no apparent damage. That said, the storm might be stirring things up enough to move a lot of debris our way.”

“I wouldn’t worry about the storm way up here. I heard it might delay the ceremony in Tokyo bay, which is fine by me. I wanted to be there for that—then we got this duty.”

“Well if the Japs have surrendered why are they still jamming?”

“Get a clue, Lieutenant Commander. We aren’t up here looking for Japs anymore. It’s the Russians this time out.”

“Yeah? Well that doesn’t make much sense either. That said, sonar has hold of something, sir. They just can’t read it through this interference. Suppose we get up and look for Gato. They were due for surface radar sweep about now.”

Enright looked at his watch, nodding. “Alright,” he said with a shrug. “Fire two smoke bombs and surface. Maybe the Radar will help sort this mess out.”

The boat was up in a few minutes and the radar man had three pips on his scope soon after. One was identified as the Gato on the IFF, the other two were both unknown—one airborne and coming in from the north, a second surface contact that was lost soon after it was first reported.

Enright climbed up the ladder to have a look with binoculars, but what he saw was unlike any aircraft he had ever laid eyes on. It moved slow, almost seemed to hover stationary at times, then moved again in the distance. What in god’s name was that?

Enright wasn’t sticking around in his rapidly dissipating smoke screen to find out anything more. He had a contact bearing and ordered a quick dive to set a new course with Gato to the northeast. A brief VHF call had confirmed that Atule was also in the vicinity, due west of Gato’s position.

“Something is up there alright,” he said to Bernard. “Strangest thing I ever saw. Well…now we have three bad boys out here in a good position to sweep north. So that’s just what we’ll do.” It was a mistake he would live to regret, but orders were orders, and he ordered a five point turn and ahead full.

Torpedo man Don Sweeney was on the Atule stowing some personal effects in his duffel bag when the alarm sounded. He had been looking over his certificates, and thinking of home back in Illinois. One was his “Sacred Order Of The Golden Dragon,” which he picked up last month on the 8th of July when the boat crossed the 180th Meridian in to Japanese home waters. Everybody got one, but to the folks back home it might seem a pretty big deal. He could display it with the Asiatic-Pacific WWII Victory Medal that he would get as soon as they made port again. He’d frame those two with the boat’s insignia patch of the torpedo toting fish, and it would make a real nice keepsake—or so he had been telling virtually everyone on the boat the last three days.

“Look Sweeney,” said his mate Paul Dunn. “Stow that crap and let’s get forward. Can’t you hear that alarm?”

The two men rushed to their post, surprised to find the duty crews already loading the forward tubes as though combat was imminent.

“Hey, what’s going on?” asked Sweeney. “We run into something?”

“Who knows, Sweeney. Just lend a hand and help run that 21 incher up to the kill tube. They got something on radar and we’ve got a job to do, Kapish?”

“Well, hell,” Sweeney protested. “Isn’t the war over? You’d think the Japs would know they were beat by now.”

“These ain’t Japs. Didn’t you hear? It’s Russian ships we’re after now, or maybe they’re after us. It’s the same both ways. Run that fish up!”

“Con contact confirmed by KA-40 with visual sighting and hard location on sonobuoy. Three submarines. Designating Alpha One, Two and Three.” The ship was at action stations and Tasarov was coordinating the effort with Admiral Golovko and the helos via live data link.

Karpov seemed edgy, pacing, his attention still torn between Nikolin where he was broadcasting his message to the Americans and the ongoing developments at the sonar station. Now it was not just a single contact, but three. The silence from the Americans was damning, at least in his mind. If this was their only response, to attempt a stealthy submarine attack after the massive demonstration of his firepower, then the Americans were more foolish than he could imagine. He would let them know he was well aware of their little ploy, and in no uncertain terms.

“Tasarov…Select one of the enemy contacts and order the KA-40 to put a torpedo on it. This has gone on long enough. If they will not listen to reason, then we’ll speak to them in another language.”

The language was the APR-hydrojet acoustic homing torpedo dropped by the KA-40. It fell swiftly into the water, listened to locate its contacts and then responded to Tasarov’s random selection of one target—the Atule. It was soon moving at 80 kilometers per hour, with a kill probability of over 90% that did not disappoint.

Weeks later a young Japanese boy named Kanji Akiro would be wading in the surf on the northern coast of Hokkaido Island when he saw something bright orange floating in the water. The tide brought it nearer, and he reached to grasp it before the sea could claim it again, peering at the curious image of a yellow dragon on an orange background surrounded by what appeared to be braided rope. The markings were strange and unfamiliar to him, and barely readable on the sodden paper.

It was a certificate assuring membership the “Sacred Order Of The Golden Dragon,” and if Kenji Akiro could have read the English he would have seen it belonged to Donald M. Sweeney. The duffel bag it had been hastily stuffed into when the last battle stations alert was sounded for the Atule would be floating in on the surf in another five minutes.

Atule’s war was over, but the next war was just getting started. Word of the sub’s sinking passed from Enright’s watch on the Archer-Fish and right up the chain of command through HQ Submarine Squadron Ten, Commander Submarine Force, Pacific, and from there on to Commander In Chief, Pacific Fleet, Chester Nimitz.

The Admiral shook his head, clearly distressed, and simmering with obvious anger. The Russians had just crossed a line in his mind and there was no going back now. If the attack on Wasp was not reason enough for reprisal, this deliberate sinking of a US sub on a recon mission was the last straw. His message to his fighting front line Admiral Halsey was brief and to the point.

“Get up there and sink the bastards—and do it now.”

Chapter 26

Haselden listened intently, hearing the odd thumping from the dark edge of the night and passing that uncomfortable moment between sound and sense when you hear something, try to locate and identify it, and cannot do so. The others could hear it as well, a deep thumping that seemed to grow louder with each passing second. Their eyes seemed to search this way and that as they listened. What was it?

They had been discouraged to find that the truck column passed through Makhachkala, thinking it would not stop, but then their hopes were bolstered. The column began to slow, and come to a halt. “Bloody hell,” said Haselden. “We’ve come much farther south than I had hoped, we’re near the harbor!”

“Who would have thought they would just keep on like this,” said Sutherland. “Now what? It’s nearly dawn and the place will be crawling with Russian military. There was supposed to be a big operation underway here to jimmy the oil rigs and move all the equipment to Kazakhstan, at least according to our briefing.”

The land here formed a great isthmus that served as a breakwater for the harbor. They were very near the base of that isthmus close to the coast where the road passed the railway station and oil loading depot.

“Things may get dicey,” said Haselden. “We may have to get off quick and try to melt away and get to some cover before the others discover they’ve lost three soldiers. We’ll work out what to do next once we know what we’re looking at.”

Haselden peered out the back tarp and saw obvious signs of war here. Some of the buildings had been bombed and burned, and one industrial district had been razed by the Russians themselves to destroy equipment and remove drilling rigs.

All he could think of was the mission, and what they had to do to get this man Orlov and try to save their own hides in the process. At long last the column came down to the edge of the city, very near the water. They could smell the tang of the Caspian Sea, the brine on the quay and hear the occasional sound of a bell on small fishing boats out early for the morning catch.

“Shouldn’t be any trouble finding a boat here,” said Haselden.

“Maybe so,” said Sutherland, but getting it north and over the Caspian to Fort Shevchenko again will be a tall order, Jock, particularly if the Russians have anything to say about it.”

“Hush up, I think they’re slowing down to stop here. Get the lead out of your legs, boys. This is where we get off. There’s a warehouse off the right side of the road. Make for that and be quick about it!”

The three men eased the tarp open, Haselden leading the way as they slipped out. One quick jump and he was down off the truck on the road, and he stood there until the other two men joined him before they made for the warehouse. In the dull pre-dawn hours the city seemed softly asleep, the wide bay quiet and still, with only two boats out that Haselden could see.

They reached the warehouse and slipped in through a half open door, finding plenty of old crates and barrels to conceal them from curious eyes. Haselden picked a location where they could still keep an eye on the trucks, hoping he was correct in his hunch that the column was finally stopping here. Where else could they be going?

He was not disappointed. The squeal of brakes offended the morning calm, and the trucks stopped, shutting off their engines one by one. Haselden was sizing up the situation, studying the buildings all around them now. Then, to his chagrin, he saw that the gate of the fortress opened and out came a troop of NKVD, each man wearing a grey overcoat and black Ushanka. They approached the trucks, the leader soon speaking with the colonel commanding the column, and then the women and children, and the man they had been sent to bring safely home to Great Britain, were all herded away.

“Blast!” he hissed in the dark. “They’ve taken the whole bloody lot into that fortress there. It looks like a detention facility.”

Sutherland strained to have a look, shaking his head. “Fat chance getting inside that,” he thumbed dejectedly. “We’ve come all this way to try and break into a prison?”

“Hush, up Davey,” Haselden warned. “We’ll think of something. There’s a couple ways we could play this now. These uniforms and hats we’ve got will see us off well enough with that sort. Maybe we could slip in somehow.”

“Right, and maybe we can’t. Suppose one of those buggers gets a close look at us, or starts asking questions.”

“Then we may end up getting inside another way.”

“Another way? How do you figure it? Is there some kind of secret passage on your map?”

“No secret passages, Davey. But if they do find us out, then where do you think they’d put us, eh? Right there in that hell hole of a prison.”

Sutherland looked at him, annoyed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Can you think of any easier way in? You want to try and storm that gate with a couple pistols and the Stens?”

Sutherland looked to Sergeant Terry for support, amazed at Haselden’s proposal now. “You’re really figuring to get us inside as…as prisoners? Then what? You plan to just excuse yourself and ask if you could please be let out with this Orlov we’re after? ”

“Don’t talk nonsense. If we do get inside there might be a way to make contact with this man.”

“You speak Russian now, do ya? Open your mouth in there and they’ll hear you speaking the King’s English and think they have a nice little spy on their hands.”

“Queen’s English now,” said Haselden. “Shame about old King George going the way he did. But yes, Lieutenant. Remember, we’re allies and such. Why, we might even ditch these uniforms now and just go tromping up to that gate in our khakis.”

“And introduce ourselves?”

Sergeant Terry was smiling now as Sutherland played the good devil’s advocate. Here they were trying to figure a way to get thrown into prison, and then once inside they’d have to figure a way back out.

“Suppose we did just up and say hello at the gate. What would they make of us? We could fuss about like visiting officers for the lend lease program like we did at Fort Shevchenko and see what happens. We ask to see their commandant and they’ll eventually find someone who can communicate with us. One way or another, we have to get inside that prison.”

“We came all this way to get thrown in the hole?” Sutherland made one last attempt at arguing the matter.

“If it was good enough for the likes of a man like Admiral Fraser, then it’s good enough for our lot.”

“Admiral Fraser? What’s he got to do with anything?” Sutherland was now aware of the fact that Fraser had served in this region with thirty Royal Navy sailors in 1920 when they were all taken by the Bolsheviks and thrown into prison in Baku. It was long months and cruel days before they were eventually released.

The sound came before Haselden had a chance to explain, that distant thumping that seemed so odd to them all, and impossible to place. It was getting louder and louder, coming from above them, and Haselden leaned around a crate to have a look outside, eyes puckered against the slate grey of the pre-dawn sky. Low clouds obscured everything above them but there was obviously an aircraft of some sorts up there, coming in over the bay. He had deduced that much, but it was unlike any plane he had ever heard before. He thought he saw a massive dark shadow deepen the gray to black at one point, and something swirling in the sky. What in God’s name was up there?

“There it is!” Zykov gave Troyak the thumbs up. “I’ve got his signal! They’re down there on that road, and it looks like they’re heading right into the city.

At last, thought Fedorov with great relief. They had spent a good long while, consuming precious fuel while they searched all the way from Kizlyar and south along the road. There was no sign of Orlov’s signal, but what they had seen there was cause for some alarm. Troyak thought he spied a column of trucks and armored vehicles, and Fedorov took a closer look with night vision binoculars. The powerful opticals revealed more than he expected.

“My God!” he said quickly. Those are Germans! It’s an armored column. I was even able to make out insignias on some of the vehicles, mostly trucks and light APCs, but a few tanks as well. What in the world are they doing here?”

Something had changed, he thought quickly. The Germans got as far as Ishcherskaya east of Mozdok on the Terek when elements of 3rd Panzer Division made a daring cross river assault there. But they only held the bridgehead for a few days in the history Fedorov had studied before the mission. Apparently that was not the case any longer. The column was well south of the Terek and moving swiftly on through the grey morning. The history had changed! Now the Germans had outflanked the defense at Grozny, and it looked like this column was pressing on to the Caspian coast and Makhachkala.

Suddenly Zykov thought he had a brief IFF return well south, near that city, but it vanished. They turned in that direction, somewhat leery of overflying the city itself. Even at night the sound of the Mi-26 would certainly arouse curiosity and draw unwanted attention if they flew low enough to pick up Orlov’s jacket signal if it was in passive mode. Fedorov ordered the pilot to move off shore and hovered about three kilometers off the coast before deciding to ease around south of the city. Then Zykov suddenly had a signal, and Fedorov’s heart leapt. They found him!

They were soon pouring over maps, noting the position and trying to hone down the exact location. “It looks to be right near the coast on the bay,” said Fedorov. “Right on the wharfs…could they be moving him to a ship? Let’s get lower. I need to see the surrounding area.”

“A ship would be good,” said Troyak. “Easy to find once it leaves port and easy to take him there. If we get much lower we’ll wake up the locals,” he warned.

“It can’t be helped. Pilot, see if you can get down under this cloud deck so I can have a look at the city.”

The pilot nodded and the helo descended, the signal strengthening as it did so. As they lost altitude they were soon beneath the low clouds. His mind returned to the urgency of the moment, eyes scanning the ground below. There was a column of trucks on the road near the harbor quays and he was surprised by how different the area seemed now. Fedorov had been to Makhachkala before, but this wasn’t 2021, it was 1942. They were looking at a squat, yet well built structure that looked like an old prison there and now he suddenly realized what had happened.

“Take us up, and quickly. Get us back under cloud cover!” He realized they could not linger there, an enormous hovering helicopter beating the skies with its massive props.

Troyak gave him a questioning look. “What do we do, Colonel?”

“See that structure there? I’m willing to bet the signal is coming from that location. That’s looks to be a detention camp or prison. I could see guards and barbed wire on the walls. Orlov is there! But we can’t very well just land here with a single squad. We’ve already drawn the attention of those guards. Let’s get higher.”

“What then?”

Fedorov’s mind was working quickly. They brought only a single squad. There would be guards, perhaps a full battalion of NKVD here. This was a prison, and access would be very restricted. He would need more resources if they were to consider taking the place to rescue Orlov, and the longer they lingered here with the helicopter…

No, he could not risk the Mi-26. If anything happened to it then there would be no way to attempt the delivery of those remaining two control rods to Karpov. He knew what he had to do.

“Can you activate his jacket from here?”

“I believe so.”

“Then get it to broadcast its IFF location beacon signal. You say that will range out to 50 kilometers and we should be able to pick him up again easily. But at the moment, we need to get this big fat helicopter out of here. Head for the Anatoly Alexandrov. We’ll need more resources.”

“And then what, sir?”

“Then we take that prison, find Orlov, and go home.”

Troyak took one last glance at the prison and the surrounding area now before they were swallowed by the cloud deck again. “Very well,” he said confidently.

“You think we can take the place and hold it for a while?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“But Troyak…From the looks of that column we saw back there the Germans could be here soon. There doesn’t seem to be any organized defense here. Something has changed in the history. They weren’t suppose to get this far south.”

“Well, sir. We can do something about that if you wish. I can stop that column.”

“You can stop it?”

“We have a full company of Marines on the Anatoly Alexandrov, and then some.”

“So we have,” said Fedorov thinking. Intervention would be risky, even rash, but then it occurred to him that they might set right whatever had gone wrong and save Makhachkala and the precious oil beyond at Baku. If the Germans were to take it who knows what the consequences might be.

He was torn for a time, reluctant to do anything to cause yet more alterations in the history, but at the same time he was looking at an invading army overrunning his homeland down there. The memory of Orlov’s note came to him now…

“Fedorov, are you reading this? Are you listening? I know you must have spent many long nights in your search. Well here I am! Yes, Gennadi Orlov, the Chief, the one who bruised your cheek that day in the officer’s mess… I always did have a Bolshevik heart. It’s not that I am not afraid to die. I worked my ass off in the service because I love my people, my country, my Motherland. I want to tell my comrades in arms that I have never known cowardice or panic. I left you all to find a life here on my own, and one I never could have before. I do not know what may have happened to you and the ship and crew I once served. My dying wish is that you destroy our enemies once and for all. Be heroes, be valiant men of war so that history will remember you as defenders of the Rodina. Should you ever find this, and learn my fate, I hope that you, courageous Russian sailors, will avenge my death.”

“Sergeant Troyak,” he said slowly. “You will lead the assault.”

“My pleasure, sir!” Troyak’s smile lifted a good bit of weight from Fedorov’s soul. They were going to war.

Chapter 27

Admiral Fraser sat in the wardroom aboard Duke of York, thinking. His eye fell on the long sword and gilded scabbard, which he always kept close with his sea chest and other personal effects. It was a very special gift, and one he always wore on special occasions and ceremonial events. He had intended to wear it for the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay aboard Missouri, but all that was on hold now. The war was not yet over. He could not yet put away the sword for good.

As he looked at it, the memories returned, the adventure of it all, and the hardship. Back then he was only Commander Fraser, but newly promoted and so very proud, a young man of thirty one-years. They had just backed down the Germans in the First World War, on land and by sea, and he had been part of the Royal Navy supervision of the internment of the German Fleet. It was a heady time, with England rising to meet any challenge in the world, and prevailing. So it was that he volunteered for the first cherry assignment to come along, a stint with the White Russian Caspian Fleet to see if he could help get their ships in fighting order.

Fraser led a small group of Royal Navy Sailors on a long trek from the Dardanelles, across the Black Sea to Batumi where they took to a train heading east for the Caspian. He was beginning to feel just a little bit like T. E. Lawrence, the daring British officer who had raised such a ruckus in the Middle East during the war. It was all to be a grand adventure, but it didn’t turn out that way. The train was ambushed and the engineer refused to go any farther, which forced Fraser to literally back-track and return to Batumi. The only ship they could find was bound for Izmir far to the west on the coast of Turkey, but he gave it a go.

From there they took another train through Turkey this time bound for Baghdad, but once they arrive there no further transport could be found beyond a few horses and camels. So Lawrence of Arabia it was, he thought, and pressed on overland by horse, camel and foot. He and his party crossed Persia with a small Gurkha escort and eventually arrived at their destination, a small run down hovel with a single pier on the Caspian Sea called Enzeli.

The ships they were to inspect and refit were thick with rust and of no real military use, so Fraser determined to get himself north to Baku where he hoped to find the bulk of the White Russian Caspian Fleet. What he found instead was a few miserable floating hulks, rusting away without any regular maintenance. Yet with typical British pluck and a can-do spirit, Commander Fraser set himself to the task of refitting the small fleet… Until the Bolsheviks arrived.

The Reds did not take kindly to outside interference in their revolution, particularly those aiding the Whites. Fraser’s whole contingent was captured, stripped and bound on the quays while their clothing was searched, and then re-dressed only to be thrown into prison. The facilities were hardly accommodating, lice infested, unfurnished cells with bare earth floors. By day a wan light filtered through the metal grid on the ceiling, their only source of light and fresh air. Water was restricted to a single running tap for thirty minutes each day. There was no latrine, nor bedding of any kind, and the harsh conditions and poor nutrition with little more than watery soup, rice, and black bread laced with straw to eat soon undermined the men’s health and morale.

Worse than that were the atrocious psychological abuse they were subjected to, marched out and forced to watch executions, disembowelments of condemned prisoners, particularly the women. On one occasion the Armenian warden in charged ordered the summary execution of nearly ninety locals, who were shot with rifles then slowly finished off with pistols while the British were forced to watch. Whole families were condemned and died in this manner, though sometimes young children were left alive to wander aimlessly about the prison halls crying for their lost parents for days on end before they disappeared.

Commissars questioned the British, inquiring into their politics, religion or other beliefs, and many were told they would soon suffer the same fate as those they had seen die. As it turned out, it was all a gruesome bluff intended to heighten the stress and suffering of the men, and so it was no surprise to Fraser when the first man to die, Seaman Marsh, was found to have slit his own wrists with a piece of glass. The Bolsheviks fought over the clothing, then left the body to rot in the two small sixteen by sixteen foot cells where all the men were quartered together. It stayed there for four days, raising a horrid stench before the guards finally removed it. Four others died this way.

Commander Fraser and all his men were presumed dead, but when they learned one of their men was to be released as an interpreter to aid prisoner exchange with the Georgian army to the south they hatched a daring plot to get word home to England. If the man’s word was not good enough, he swallowed a locket with a picture of Fraser’s mother within as proof he was alive.

Great Britain was not called that without reason, particularly as she rose into her imperial prime after her victory in the First World War. The Crown’s displeasure with the plight of their sailors soon led to their release. They had been marooned two long years in what came to be known as the “Black Hole of Baku.” Twelve of the thirty men survived, Fraser among them.

In a strange twist of fate the ship that greeted them when they were returned to Batumi by train was HMS Iron Duke, the same name as that of a certain Royal Navy frigate that had fought Russians of another generation in the Black Sea of 2021. In that year, economics had temporarily trumped politics. Britain’s interest in the Caspian was purely for the oil that remained there. In fact, the offices of the British Petroleum Corporation in Baku were just a few short blocks away from the old prison site where Fraser and his men had suffered so much. And at that very moment, the black berets of the Fairchild’s Argonauts waited there for the return of Lieutenant Ryan’s last X-3 helicopter and a ride back to the Argos Fire.

But that was another world, and one that Admiral Fraser would never see or know. This world seemed more than enough for any man to manage.

Fraser had revisited the nightmare on many a dark and lonesome night in later years. Then came the war and he saw himself rise to positions of increasing responsibility. Few men would know it to see him in his Admiral’s cap and dress whites, but behind that pleasant and smiling face was a steely resolve born of those long nights in the Black Hole of Baku, listening to the moaning sobs of his men as they suffered there. As for the sword, the focal point that had triggered this avalanche of bitter memories in the Admiral’s mind, it was the last gift of the men who survived, given to Fraser when they all were returned safely home. He kept it close ever thereafter.

The Russians, he thought. Churchill was correct about them, wasn’t he? Our alliance made us strange bedfellows with Hitler and Tojo in the mix. Now that we’ve beaten them, we wake up and stare at one another wondering how in the world we’ll ever get on together. What are they up to now with this bloody damn ship and its weapons from hell? If Tovey and Turing have it right… If this ship is from another time, then we may reap the whirlwind if we let it loose on the seas of our world again. What was going to happen if they threw the combined might of the allied fleets against it? This time there would be no parley. This time it was war.

He gazed out the port hole and saw King George V steaming proudly off his starboard side. We’ve tangled with this monster once before, you and I, he thought. Perhaps Tovey should have made an end of it long ago when he had the chance. I’d think my odds were good for a victory with this battlegroup alone against that ship—man to man, steel against steel, and the rockets be damned.

Even as he thought that he remembered the bomb and imagined one going off right in the heart of his task group, rending his ships apart with unimaginable power. He had advised Admiral Nimitz to give the Russians fair warning: if they wanted to play that card, we could deal them the same death and destruction as well. Perhaps that would sober them up a bit and prevent the worst here.

Even as he thought that he knew what he would do in this Karpov’s shoes. He’s going to look out and see a wave of fire and steel coming at him, and he’ll do everything in his power to save his ship and crew… Everything…

It was into the darkness of a similar prison that Orlov found himself walking now, though he knew nothing of the horrific legacy of the detention camps in this region, nor did he care. He had learned that the commissar in charge was the man he had been hunting, which was the only reason he permitted these little men to take him on the long truck ride south to Baku in the first place. They would bring him right to the man he wanted, and then he would kill him. It was all very simple in his mind, though he did not expect what happened that night as the truck column slowed and the engines turned off one by one.

He had been listening to something, a familiar noise in the background behind the grumble of the trucks on the road. Now, in the relative silence when the trucks stopped, he heard a sound that shocked him alert, a steady, deep thumping. He immediately looked up, knowing the sound was coming from the skies above. The NKVD Sergeant in his truck was watching him closely, and when he saw Orlov looking up at the unseen sky beyond the tarp of the truck, he leaned out the back and scanned the grey shelf of low clouds overhead.

Then Orlov felt his inner service jacket vibrate quietly, a sensation only he could perceive, like a cell phone that had been set to quiet mode. In an instant he knew what had happened. Someone had paged his service jacket! Now the meaning of the sound overhead was starkly apparent to him. It was a helicopter! His heart beat faster with the realization. Kirov… somehow they had found him! They were searching for him, but how was it possible? He was deep in the interior of Central Asia at the edge of an inland sea. Could they have tracked him here by tuning in to his service jacket? That much seemed obvious, yet none of the KA-40s could possibly reach this distance unless the ship was in the Black Sea! He was astounded, but he knew what he was hearing.

When he last left the ship it was approaching Spain, bound for Gibraltar. Could they have reversed course to head east again and enter the Black Sea? Then he remembered the night he had drunk half a bottle of vodka and tapped out that message in Morse code to Nikolin. My God, he thought! They must have picked it up! They’re trying to find me!

Now he had to decide what to do about it.

He could activate his jacket from the collar pip and broadcast his exact location if he wished. Then again, he could also take it and throw it in the nearest fire. The more he considered his situation the more the idea of rejoining the ship and crew appealed to him. The track he was on now led to a sure and perilous cliff. This place was obviously a prison of sorts. He would certainly be searched, issued new prison clothing, and then he would be stuck here until he got close enough to Molla to choke the breath out of the man. After that he was a probably a dead man if he couldn’t find his way out of the place. He would at least have the satisfaction of killing Molla, but for that he would forfeit the life of privilege and power he imagined he might have in years to come.

Now, however, with Kirov in the mix again he might just have his cake and eat it too! Life aboard Kirov did not seem all that bad in such cold harsh light. All he would have to put up with is petty disciplinary measures for jumping ship and going AWOL. No one would know he killed the pilot of the KA-226.

Then he remembered that pulse pounding jump from the helo when he saw the S-300s coming up for him. They were trying to kill me! They did not want to take the risk of leaving me at large. That was surely Karpov. This must be Fedorov, he realized now. He’s the only one prissy enough to fuss and bother over his history. He was probably afraid I would do something here and spoil the show.

A sullen anger returned to him and, as he brooded over it, he was paying no attention to the Sergeant from his truck when the man yammered at him to get a move on and head for the prison entrance with the others.

“You hear me, you big oaf! Get moving!”

Orlov felt a hard shove on his shoulder and he turned, glaring at the Sergeant, vast and threatening. “Touch me again and I will kill you,” he said clearly, and the Sergeant’s bravado seemed to melt under Orlov’s menacing stare. Then Orlov turned and headed for the gate.

Let Fedorov try to find me in here, he thought. What will they do, land a helicopter in the courtyard and send in a few Marines? This place looks like a fortress. Troyak had a twenty man Marine contingent aboard, but they would not be nearly enough to get inside this prison and control it long enough to conduct a search, particularly since I won’t have my jacket for very much longer.

He thought about that, recalling Svetlana’s whispers in his earbuds, words that could make him the most powerful man alive in this pitiful situation. He would be the man who knew tomorrow. That knowledge would certainly make him rich. Yes, they will take the jacket, and it will likely go to the Commissar, given its unusual quality and workmanship. In fact, I’m counting on that. It will make the man very curious. It will get me very close. I will kill him, and then I will call Fedorov and see what we can do.

The sound of the helicopter receded now, high overhead, and he knew they had gained altitude to avoid being seen. They know where I am, he thought. Well enough. I have work to do here before they come for me, if they dare.

Chapter 28

The American submarines dove to 150 feet and hovered silently in the deep, unaware that Kirov’s sophisticated sonar was still listening. A diesel-electric boat can be very quiet, but not by the standards of modern sonar systems, and the men that operated them. Tasarov had listened intently to the movement of the subs, giving Karpov easy course and speed guidelines to avoid contact. For his part, Karpov was no longer concerned about the undersea threat. Admiral Golovko was a superb ASW frigate on his starboard flank, and Orlan was steaming off the port quarter. Each had a helicopter in the air to keep a close watch on potential threats. He was confident that nothing would get close enough to cause any harm, particularly given the short range of torpedoes of this era.

Now his Fregat mind swept south, like a watchful radar, trying to ascertain what the Americans were up to. His KA-226 had them under surveillance, a little over 150 kilometers to the south, just beyond the surface range of the ship’s systems. The contacts were piling up and he was representing the situation on the optical Plexiglas screen, which was now cluttered with contact points. His battle in 2021 had been against a single US carrier and a handful of escorting ships. Now he was facing a real armada, upwards of 60 discrete contacts reported, and more massing to the south.

Rodenko seemed very edgy about it, watching the threat grow beyond the far horizon with obvious worry. The Captain’s demonstration had produced nothing more than silence from the enemy. Thus far the American fleet had not attempted to close, but Karpov had stubbornly remained in place, cruising in a wide circle as he sized up the situation.

The Captain could see Rodenko’s restrained concern, and he stepped to his side. “Well? What is it Rodenko? Why the long face?”

His new Starpom shrugged, and he spoke in a low voice so the other bridge crew would not hear. “Steep odds this time, Captain. That’s a very big force out there.”

Karpov folded his arms, saying nothing for a time. Then he turned to Rodenko and confided in him. “I’ll admit this silence is somewhat unnerving. I would have expected at least some response to the message we sent.”

“I’m afraid we will have their response soon enough,” said Rodenko. “Those fleets will move on us soon. You can count on it.”

“You think they would dare attack us again after what I just showed them?”

“I do, sir. I think we have only stiffened their resolve. Why else would they refuse to answer our radio calls for negotiation?”

Karpov considered that. Then asked another question that Rodenko did not expect. “What would you do, Rodenko? How would you handle the situation if you were the Americans?”

Rodenko raised his eyebrows, surprised Karpov would solicit his opinion this way. “Well, sir. I think I would have no other option than a single massed attack, on a very wide front, widely dispersed. They know that if they attempt to concentrate we can inflict heavy damage, so they will have to disperse.

“And how would you react to such a tactic?”

“Get further east. Given the present position of their battlegroups to the south, I would want to be able to access the Pacific if necessary. The KA-226 is getting returns from the west as well, beyond Hokkaido in the Sea of Japan. I think we will soon learn there are forces moving up behind us there.”

“Access the Pacific?”

“To be on their right flank, sir. The disadvantage of a dispersed line formation is that we can maneuver to its flank, leaving the bulk of the line too far away to effectively close the range when we attempt to break through. We just can’t sit here and sail in circles. They have enough ships to form a pretty good net if they sweep north suddenly. Remaining in the center of the line like this is dangerous.”

“Yes, but they will regret trying to pull these fish in. We have three fast sharks here, Rodenko, with teeth sharp enough to bite through that net if they get so bold.”

“Agreed, sir, but if we move east we have other options. We retain the advantage of maneuver, and our speed and endurance come into play as well. We also move away from their forces to the southwest, thinning the odds somewhat. It’s a big ocean out there. If we have to fight, we can move, hit, move, like a skillful boxer.”

“And the Americans will try to get us on the ropes,” Karpov pointed to the Plexiglas screen now. “They will try to force us back on the Kuriles and into the Sea of Okhotsk.”

“I believe so, sir, at least if we stay here.”

They did not have time to continue the discussion. The KA-226 radar feeds were now indicating a significant change. “Sir, AEW One reports new movement from the Halsey Group, now steaming north at 25 knots.”

Rodenko gave Karpov a knowing look. “It’s begun. They are coming. I have little doubt we’ll see movement from the Sprague group within ten minutes as well.”

“Radar, how many discrete contacts on that new heading?”

“I’m reading eighteen surface contacts, extended on a wide front now, sir. Three contacts are leading that group some fifteen kilometers ahead.”

“Those will be radar pickets,” Karpov decided. “Begin jamming on all bandwidths we identified earlier. Isolate any new radar signals we can detect and begin jamming those as well.”

“Aye, sir.”

Rodenko had been correct. The American ships were advancing north, closing the range, and soon the ship began to get direct surface returns at extreme range, with additional contacts advancing on the left of the Halsey group. Ziggy Sprague was on the move as well.

“Yet the numbers we’re seeing in this maneuver do not represent the whole surface fleet to the south. Perhaps they are forming an advanced screen.” Karpov studied his Tactical board with the positions of every contact glowing softly. “They must be holding something back, at least a third of their force.”

“The carriers, sir,” Rodenko suggested. “They would not want to advance with those ships.”

“Yes, and they most likely left a screen of smaller destroyer class units with them. That means the ships we are seeing in this advance would be their heavier class units, perhaps accompanied by more destroyers and radar pickets. “

“They’re trying to get in close so they can then make a rush at us for a gun battle,” Rodenko pointed at the screen, gesturing with his finger.

“Of course, Mister Rodenko, they have no Moskit-IIs. And I believe the reason why their carriers have not launched yet is because they wish to try and coordinate the air attack with a surface engagement. If they can find us with their surface ships first, then those units can vector in their air groups.”

Rodenko nodded his agreement, and Karpov considered the situation, stroking his chin as he looked at the tactical board. They had been cruising at fifteen knots, and now the Captain turned to the comm station.

“Mister Nikolin. Signal the flotilla to assume a heading 90 degrees due east and increase to 30 knots. Orlan will lead, with Admiral Golovko off the starboard side.” The Captain looked at Rodenko, and winked at him. “Let’s get some breathing room.”

“Sir, aye,” said Rodenko, and he repeated the order to the helmsman.

Karpov was still thinking. The carriers must be the contacts hovering beyond their surface radar range. At the moment they were still the real threat in his mind. Old and slow as these aircraft were, a massed air strike by hundreds of planes could be very difficult to handle. But I still have S-400’s, he thought. I can hit them even as they launch as long as the KA-226 can remain aloft in an AEW role. They will have no idea we can fire at such range, and it could deliver a nasty shock as they form up over their carriers, and before they disperse as Rodenko suggests.

The light of battle was in his eyes now, and he knew it would not be long before it was kindled in the fiery tails of his missiles. They remain silent in the face of my demonstration of overwhelming power. Very well, two can play that game. Let us see how long it is before they are calling me on the radio.

He turned to Rodenko again, and saw he was watching him, a curious look on his face. “Mister Rodenko,” he said. “Bring the ship to battle stations and signal same to the fleet.”

“Battle stations. Aye, sir. Signaling now.” Then another thought occurred to him and he approached the Captain with a question. “Sir, what about those two radar pickets in close?”

Sprague’s group still had two ships very near the Russians. They had been shadowing at a range of fifteen kilometers for some time, yet had never attempted to come any closer.

“Time to lose our shadow,” said Karpov. “We’ll give our young Captain on Admiral Golovko a taste of battle. He could use the experience. Tell Ryakhin I want him to put one P-800 Oniks on each of those shadowing ships.”

Known as the Yakhont on the export markets, the missile was a fast supersonic sea skimmer much like the original Moskit. Karpov knew his order was provocative, another jab at the raging bull to the south, but he could not allow those ships to stay within visual range. He ordered Nikolin to warn them off and, when they saw no compliance, the signal to fire was sent over to Admiral Golovko.

The battle was finally joined.

Sprague was out on the weather deck watching the air crews spotting the Helldivers on the flight deck below. Movement at last, he thought. The word had come down from on high just minutes ago, and flashed to all fleet Task Groups in theater. The massive naval juggernaut was turning north; not just a few radar pickets this time, or a single strike wave off a few carriers. No, this time they were going in force to say hello to Uncle Joe up north and put the Russians in their place.

He had seen the massive detonation hours ago on the far horizon to the northeast. The evil looking mushroom cloud had loomed up in the distance, towering higher by the minute, and it took hours for the upper level winds to shear off its top and blow the colossal war cloud into a pallid smear over the sea. Whatever had caused it had been massive, an explosion far greater than anything he had ever seen in his life. He had heard the rumors of another event in the north Atlantic, though he was not there to see it firsthand. This war is going to end just like it started, he thought. We lost the Wasp in ’41, and then it was said some kind of massive bomb sent Mississippi and TF 16 to their doom. Now we lose the Wasp again, and look what’s on my horizon—another bomb.

There was a dull echo to it all, a hollow ring that spoke of impending doom. No matter, he thought. We’re going up to see about it. I’ve got the fast cruisers and destroyers out in front, four light cruisers with the eight destroyers in Desron 62. Halsey has even better ships in his front scrimmage line—five cruisers, three of them heavy, and Desron 50. Behind them come the real heavy hitters. I’m sending South Dakota and North Carolina, Halsey has Missouri and Iowa. Let any one of them get in range of these Russian ships and you can call it a day. All it will take is one battleship to get in close.

We’ve been through tough situations before. The Japanese threw four battleships led by Yamato at me off Samar, along with eight cruisers and eleven destroyers, and all I had was a hand full of destroyer escorts with 5 inch pop guns to protect the jeep carriers. But we held the enemy at bay, and licked them in the end. That’s exactly what we’ll do now, he thought. We’re going to ram an iron fist into the Russians and end this war once and for all.

He looked at his watch. They were ordered to spot strike groups and be ready for takeoff by 16:00 hours. He had been ready for the last ten minutes. With Wasp gone and casualties from the first sortie up north he was light on aircraft, but 180 of his original force of 260 planes were still crammed onto the decks of his three remaining carriers. Halsey had another 350. Let them have a look at over 500 planes darkening their skies when the order comes in. Even as he thought this he also knew the Brits were coming as well. Admiral Fraser was taking TF.37 around the north cape of Hokkaido, watching the far left flank in case the Russians had anything left in Vladivostok. He had four more carriers, 27 surface ships, including two more good battleships, and another 260 strike planes.

Any way he added it up, it spelled a swift and overwhelming victory, but it was a new world now. That distant cloud on the horizon loomed over the sea with a threat of utter extinction at its root. The world went absolutely crazy these last years, he thought. My God… Look what we did to Tokyo when Curtis Lemay let the bombers loose. The world went insane, and now we’ve really got the means to end it all if it comes to another general war.

So the Russians have the bomb… I’m told we’ve got one too. That was top secret. The men out on Tinian tending the airfields didn’t even know about it, but Nimitz had sent the word through on a secure channel. They throw another one our way and we’re going to repay them in spades. That was the terrible logic of war. Here we were ready for champagne, celebration, and a long ride home. Now this. The crews were working smartly, the planes armed and spotted. All we need now is the go sign, then God help the Russians, because we’ll send them straight to hell.

It was then that the midshipman rushed in with a message. John Mulholland was under attack. He had been shadowing the Russians with his two radar pickets, Benner and Sutherland. Something came at them out of nowhere, like a couple lone kamikazes that had managed to slip through to dive on the ships for a kill. Sprague was on the radio immediately to ascertain his situation.

“Both ships hit,” came the voice, harried and urgent. “Bad fires amidships and Sutherland is dead in the water. Radar is all whacky. Can’t read a thing now, and there’s no way we can close or keep up with the bogies. They have just turned on a new heading. They’re running east at high speed now.”

“Good enough, Commander. See to your men and withdraw south. We’ll take it from here.” Sprague had a look of real anger on his face now.

He turned to Captain William Sinton by the plotting table. “They just sucker punched John Mulholland,” he said hotly. “I’ve had about all I’m going to take from those bastards. “What’s the closest destroyer on the inner screen?”

“That would be McKee there off our starboard bow.”

“Signal McKee to come along side. I’m going for a little ride.”

“Sir? You’re transferring the flag?”

“Correct, Captain. Admiral Ballentine is still replenishing his carriers south near Tokyo Bay. We need speed, fire and steel on the front line now, so he was kind enough to send me a little present in compensation for Wasp, the battleship Wisconsin. I was considering transferring to the Showboat, but Wisky is a good bit faster, and that’s just what we need now to run these brigands down.”

The “Showboat” was the nickname for the most decorated battleship in the fleet, with 15 battle stars awarded to BB North Carolina thus far in the war. Yet at a top speed of 26 knots she was slower than the newer Wisconsin, an Iowa class ship that could run at 30 knots. They called her “Wisky” and spelled it exactly that way, without the letter H. Sprague heard what Mulholland said about the Russians running east, and thought that extra speed would soon matter a great deal. Wisconsin would give him that, and plenty of fire and steel along with her two sister ships, Missouri and Iowa.

“Big-T is yours, Bill. Your decks are spotted and the boys are ready to go. I’m going up there personally, and we’ll give it to Stalin, right on the chin.”

“Very well, sir. Good hunting.” Sinton snapped off a crisp salute.

Another voice whispered from within as Sprague was piped off the bridge, more sobering, and steeped in the wisdom this long war had instilled in him. It left off the bravado and thirst for revenge and settled on the heart of the matter, because any way he looked at it now he knew men were going to die here today.… God help us all, it whispered to him, God help us all.

Chapter 29

Oberleutnant Ernst Wellman, commander of Panzergrenadier Schützen-Regiment 3 looked the man over as he slowly pulled on his gloves. “You say the Russians have collapsed?” He was speaking to a broad shouldered Cossack, Lieutenant Koban of the 1st troop of the 82nd Cossack Squadron.

Russian Cossacks fighting for the German Army, thought Wellman, and they have been damn useful. This particular unit had been formed from prisoners swept up in the lightning advance toward Stalingrad, months ago at Millerovo. The Germans had taken some 18,000 prisoners, and were trying to find a way to herd them to holding areas behind the front line. An enterprising officer who spoke Russian knew that many were not happy over their fate in the Russian Army, and were very receptive to the Germans when they came. He hit on the idea of rounding up stray horses and mounting them to form a makeshift escort for the rest of the prisoners. As amazing as that sounded, it worked. The dissident Cossacks were only too glad to switch sides and join the German advance, and now several units had been formed to serve as security and reconnaissance troops in the wide ranging steppes of the Caucasus. They were familiar with the land, could infiltrate Russian lines easily with their language skills, and brought back valuable intelligence.

“I’ve had patrols out all night on horseback,” said Koban. “The NKVD have thrown up a few roadblocks as a delaying force. They are falling back on Makhachkala. Take that and the road to Baku is yours.”

“How strong is the enemy ahead of us?”

“Battalion strength at best, Oberleutnant. If you move quickly with your armored cars, you can be in the city by nightfall.”

Wellman looked at the man, his fair hair wild with the wind, field coat sodden with the recent rain, face reddened by the sting of the cold after long hours in the saddle. These Cossacks had been with them when they made the cross-river assault at Ishcherskaya, and fought bravely, side by side with his Panzergrenadiers. They had proved themselves reliable a hundred times over.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll push on all morning and we’ll see if we can break through. The Russians are still fighting hard for Grozny, but here we have them flanked. Westhoven had given me permission to move the entire regiment up—Liebenstein’s Panzers in support. I’ll lead with my column, and you, Lieutenant Koban, you will show us the way.”

“Bukin is going on the Mi-26 mission,” said Fedorov. “So I’m assigning you overall command of the rescue mission here.”

“Very well, sir.” Troyak folded his brawny arms, ready and willing.

“Now that we know where Orlov is, what do you advise?”

“A small team will be no good,” said Troyak. “We’ll have to take the place and hold it to conduct a search and get Orlov safely out.” He had a map of the city and spread it out on a work table. “The problem is the Germans. They have been pushing down this road where we saw that column. They could reach the harbor soon, unless we stop them.”

“Can you stop them?”

“I believe we could, sir. We have lots of equipment here, even hand-held anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, not to mention the two tanks and APCs.”

“Where would you land our main force?”

“Here, sir, right at the harbor. We can use this wide beach area on the isthmus. It puts us very near the facility where Orlov is, and all we would have to do is close these roads leading to the port district. I’ll send up blocking forces and we’ll stop the Germans in their tracks.”

It seemed as good a plan as any. They had the force at hand for the job, and they were Russians. He worried that the sudden appearance of hovercraft, and modern Naval Marines would be unsettling, but what could be more disturbing than the war the Germans pushed south on them like an oncoming wall of fire.

“It may be that the local defense forces would see us as reinforcements in a desperate hour,” said Fedorov. “After all, we’re Russian troops, just as you said, Troyak. All we have to do is say we were sent from Baku with the best new equipment available to stop the Germans.”

“And that is just what we will do, sir. There’s no trouble out there we can’t handle,” Troyak said confidently.

“I suppose you are correct, but if we were to just go with the helo, how would you operate with the Mi-26, Troyak? Could it be protected?” That was the key factor now. They could not afford to have the helicopter damaged or lost, and the fuel issue remained another problem.

“We would just land on the tip of this sharp isthmus here,” said Troyak pointing at the map. Then we take the company in for a lightning fast assault, leaving one squad with the helo. It should be safe there.” The Sergeant could see that Fedorov was very worried about the helicopter.

“Which plan is best, to go in with force or try the lightning swift rescue with the helicopter?”

“You can never have too much combat power at hand for any mission,” said Troyak. If the Germans do come in force, we will want our assets ashore and ready to oppose them. If we go with the helo, we can take up to 90 men, only half the force, and no APCs. In that case we’ll need to rely on speed. I would suggest an amphibious assault with the entire force. We cave tanks and APCs that will be very useful.”

“Yes, but we can’t leave anything behind here, Troyak. All the equipment must be safely withdrawn—and all our men. If any man falls, he must he brought out safely. We can leave no man behind.”

“Sir, we never leave a man behind. Rest assured.”

“Very well…prepare your mission. I want the option to use those hovercraft and the heavy assets they can carry. We must be in a position to attack in a matter of hours. I’ll square things with Bukin on the command change.”

“It won’t bother him, sir. He still thinks I’m his Gunnery Sergeant.”

The Mi-26 was soon squatting on the deck of Anatoly Alexandrov again, the Marines finishing up the loading of their equipment as evening folded he land with gray. Dobrynin had scoured the ship for any further reserve they could find, and the big helo had her tanks topped off for the long haul. He thought they would want to leave for the Pacific coast immediately, but Fedorov had pulled him aside earlier to tell him of the sudden change of plans.

“You’re taking the Mi-26 south again?”

“Not if I can avoid it, but I want the helo available in case we run into any problems. It can’t be helped, Chief.” Fedorov explained.

“But the Admiral said this mission east was very urgent, Fedorov. It’s a very long way. Why delay?”

“You act like the mission is running late, but remember, it’s 1942 here, and we have nearly three years before we need to be on the Pacific coast.”

“Mister Fedorov, we have two Kalmar assault class hovercraft here, each one carrying a PT-76 amphibious tank, and a contingent of 60 Marines. And over there we have an even bigger “Aist” Class hovercraft, with three more APCs and more Marines. You will have an assault contingent of 180 men! Why can’t they get the job done? Why do you still need the helicopter?”

Fedorov could see Dobrynin was worried about everything, and the stress of planning the mission lay heavily on him. “I want the helo in reserve until the outcome here is decided. I know you are worried about Bukin’s mission, but we’ll get it all done—this mission and the job out east,” he reassured him. “I’ll also have to leave some force with you here to protect the Anatoly Alexandrov. We cannot afford to lose this ship and its reactors. Otherwise none of the control rods will be worth anything at all. Leave things to me.”

He did not confide his remaining concerns—a deep inner worry over those two control rods. He had no idea whether they would even work, and he had been thinking about the situation for some time.

Suppose we conclude this mission safely, he thought. Suppose we then use Rod-25 here and all goes as we expect. We end up in the year 2021, and then what? Then we will know whether that helicopter out there ever really makes it to the Pacific coast and manages to contact Kirov. It will all be history by the time we get home. And what if I learn the mission failed—for lack of fuel because I had to stubbornly insist on using the Mi-26 to find Orlov. Keeping it here is just going to tempt me to use it again. The mobility it provides is very desirable…But if I’m the reason it fails to reach Karpov, what then? What does Karpov do here, marooned in the past with three of the most powerful ships in the world?

He struggled with that, wondering what would happen if push came to shove and another battle started in the Pacific with the Americans. The situation will be too tempting for Karpov, and he has the power to change everything now. Even if we do reach him, and supposing these two new rods work as we hope, where will it send Kirov and the other ships this time? The Admiral just assumes that they will all be brought home to the year 2021, but that is by no means certain. They could go anywhere, even further back into the past!

He ran into that same dead end in his thinking again. There was just no way to know. All they could do was stumble about like blind men in the dark. They had no comprehension of the forces they were playing with now, and no way to really control these time displacements.

Then there was that incident on the back stairs of Ilanskiy. What really happened there, he wondered? Was there a rift in time that I walked through, or was it something about me that caused that displacement? Troyak went down those stairs and nothing happened to him. But Mironov came up them and moved from 1908 to 1942! It was maddening.

If it was a rift, a tear in the fabric of time caused by the Tunguska event, then it clearly allowed displacement between those two points on the continuum. June 30, 1908 was hotwired and linked to August of 1942. It was a gap of thirty-four years. What if I went back up those stairs from this point in time? Would it take me forward, perhaps by another interval of time equal to thirty-four years? Would I end up in 1976? Again, there was no way to know, so this was all useless speculation. The only thing he could control for the moment was this mission, and so he shook himself from his reverie as Troyak came up, saluting.

“Sir, the men are ready.”

“Very well, Sergeant. Let’s get moving.”

Troyak looked over the gunwale of the main deck to the pilot in the hovercraft below and rotated his hand overhead to signal engine startup. There was a high pitch whine, then a lower growl as the big engines started. With tremendous noise.

Fedorov had briefed the men, telling them what was at stake. “I know that we may be opposed, but do not harm the Russians if it can be avoided. If it is possible to take prisoners and hold them while we find Orlov, all the better. But the mission must not fail. No man can be left behind. Not one piece of equipment either.” He left that out there, and each man considered what he might have to do now, facing their own countrymen in a potential conflict here, as well as the Germans.

“I just hope my Great Grandfather isn’t here,” Corporal Subakin jibed, and the other men laughed.

They were on their way.

Orlov heard the footsteps in the hall, and smiled inwardly. At last, he thought. The Commissar was finally here. Once inside the prison they had taken his overcoat, cap and service jacket, just as he expected, and they were hanging on the coat rack in the corner, objects of curiosity or evidence to be fodder for the interrogation that was coming next. Orlov was suddenly reminded of that first session with Loban under the Rock of Gibraltar. He wondered if this Molla would get curious and meet Svetlana the way Loban had?

The door opened and a man stepped in, medium build, and dressed in a plain NKVD uniform with side pistol holstered and two thin leather straps crossed on his chest. Right over the place where the man’s heart was missing, thought Orlov. Yet as nondescript as his dress was, the man’s face and eyes were quite revealing. He was much younger than Orlov had expected him to be, and there was a cold, arrogant air about him, the character of a young man who had come into too much authority and power before he had lived enough to know how to use it. His eyes seemed to squint as he looked Orlov over, narrowed slits with obsidian ice behind them.

The Commissar walked to his desk, his footfalls loud on the old wood floor, but he did not sit down, He stood, regarding Orlov with those cold black eyes, one hand on his left hip. Then he calmly drew his pistol, raising it to the level of his cheek to take aim square at Orlov’s head.

“Name,” Molla’s voice was flat and terse, edged with impatience.

“Orlov.”

“Where did you get that uniform?”

Orlov looked at him, a glow of defiance on his cheeks as he sized up the situation. He needed to get the man closer to him.

“I took it from a dead man. He had little use for it, and I thought it would get me to my destination a little easier.”

“Dead man? You killed this man?”

“Of course,” Orlov returned quickly. “I don’t think he would have given me his uniform otherwise.”

“You killed an NKVD Officer?” Molla’s voice was loaded with recrimination now, the slits of his eyes more pronounced.

“Yes, I killed him. He insisted on taking me to Novorossiysk, and I did not wish to go there.”

Molla’s hand never wavered as he held the pistol, and now he slowly moved his finger tight on the trigger. It was a Nagant M1895, an old, reliable revolver dating back to the days of the last Tsar. Orlov could clearly see the bullet laden cylinder, and knew a round was chambered and ready to fire with one squeeze of Molla finger, but he was heedless of the danger. All he could think of was getting Molla closer.

“They say you claimed to have orders for me?”

“That was a lie.”

“Of course it was. No one gives me orders here, except perhaps Beria, and he is not around at the moment.”

“Lucky for us both,” said Orlov with a shrug.

Molla sensed something in the man, a strange kinship that was evident in his devil may care attitude. He was holding a pistol on the man, and yet he did not think the frank and direct answers he was receiving were born of fear. Most men would be clearly intimidated, eyes averted, with that pathetic pleading look as they struggled to find a way to prove their innocence. But not this man. No. He’s is unlike any man we’ve hauled in for a good long while now. This one is a fallen angel, just like me, dark seraphim, bound for hell and determined to start the fires now while he lives. It’s as if he thought he was invulnerable!

“This NKVD man was wearing that jacket?” Molla nodded to Orlov’s service jacket now.

“No, that was mine. All I took was the overcoat and hat.”

“It was yours you say? I have never seen anything quite like it.”

“That was what Loban said at Gibraltar.” Orlov baited his line, wondering if the Commissar would nibble.

“Loban? You were at Gibraltar?”

“How do you think the NKVD got hold of me in the first place? They had me under that stinking Rock of theirs and Loban sent me on a little cruise.”

“I see…” Molla obviously knew who Loban was, which was exactly what Orlov was hoping. “You said the NKVD man wanted to take you to Novorossiysk?”

“I suppose he wanted to turn me over to the military there. I’m a deserter.”

“A deserter?”

“Navy. That’s where I got that service jacket.”

“You were an officer?”

“Chief of the boat.”

“Of course you know what we do with deserters. Yes? But a few more questions before I kill you. Or perhaps I should leave you for the Germans, coward. Loban sent nothing more?”

“Oh, he sent a good deal more, but I had no use for it. I’ve come a long way and I left the attaché behind.”

“I see…” The commissar slowly lowered his pistol, resting his arm at his side, and sat on the edge of his desk, just a little closer to Orlov now. “Just where did you think you were going, Orlov? What were you doing at Kizlyar? Are you a German sympathizer? A Spy? Were you trying to get through our lines to get to those pigs?”

“Of course not,” said Orlov hotly. “I’m Russian! I was looking for the pigs on this side of the wire, men who roust women and children out of their homes and truck them off to places like this in the night. Men like you, Commissar.”

Molla stood up very quickly, his hand tight on the revolver again. He had killed a hundred men for far less cause than this man just gave him; interrogated thousands more with seared and severed flesh. He was brash, young, and full of himself, and now he had a strong sense that the man he had before him was of the same dark order, a demon of a man who could kill without remorse, without conscience. These were the most dangerous men in the world, he thought. I could use a man like this…if I could control him. Then his righteous anger flared, as he realized just what the man had said to him. Bound for hell or not, we still keep order.

“You stinking piece of shit!” Molla swore at Orlov now. “Tell me…Which eye should I put the first bullet through?” He raised his pistol again, pointing it right at Orlov’s forehead.

“Tell me,” Orlov said darkly, looking him square in those icy black eyes. “How long can you breathe when I get both hands around your neck?”

Chapter 30

The Duke sat at his desk, hands folded, a light in his eyes that signaled determination. He regarded the man before him favorably, good deportment, of seeming sound character, adequately trained and possessed of skills that would be most useful. Now down to the matter at hand.

“Mister Thomas, good of you to come so quickly.”

“My pleasure, your Grace.”

“Indeed. Well, I have a matter to put before you, the long term assignment I mentioned to you at our last meeting. By the way, your delivery was certified and accepted for processing and completion by tomorrow. I’m very pleased.”

“Thank you, your Grace.”

“Now then. I’m going to be taking a little trip. I suppose I should say a rather long trip, and I would like to ask you to accompany me. Your role would be to insure my safety, and secure certain effects I plan of transporting with me. You will also act as my agent in all ways—my right hand man, as it were. Might you be interested in such a position?”

“Sir… I’m honored to even be considered.”

“Excellent. But I must tell you, Mister Thomas, that this would be for a very extended period of time. There would be no termination date. You would have to consider the assignment indefinite. Given those circumstances the compensation would be commensurate.”

“Thank you, sir. I deeply appreciate your consideration and I would be most interested.”

“The situation would also find us incommunicado for the duration of the assignment. Should you have any pressing matters that would require your personal attention…”

The Duke’s raised an eyebrow, something Thomas had seen him do on a number of occasions when his mind had reached an absolute conclusion on something. He was telling him that there was no alternative. The position would require his full commitment. Lord, he thought. A full time position with the Elvington estate! Right hand man to his Grace, Duke Roger Ames! He was quick to clear the field of any potential obstacle to such an appointment.

“I am entirely at your disposal, sir.”

“Good then. We’ll be leaving very soon. Shall we say forty-eight hours? I have made all the arrangements, however, if you have to settle any personal affairs, please do so. I’m afraid I can’t be more specific as to the nature of the assignment, or the duration at the moment. It will all be apparent to you in good time.”

“I shall look forward to it, sir. And thank you for your gracious consideration.”

“Well enough. You’ll be given information on where to meet me. I shall provide for all your needs in regards to clothing. The secretary will ask you for sizing, but if there are any personal effects you cannot be without, a small attaché would be suitable. Thank you, Mister Thomas. We shall meet again in a few days time.”

Thomas lowered his head in a polite bow and withdrew. The Duke watched him go, smiling quietly. If you only knew what I’ve just given you, he thought. Compensation indeed! The world we know will not last another week. It’s been a marvelous experiment, a grand play, but now I’m afraid there is trouble in heaven that cannot be resolved. Time for the Angels to make their leap to freedom, and you, my Dear Mister Thomas, have just been given something few men on this earth will have here in days to come—your life.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, fingering the object there where he was fond of keeping it. I shall have to find a more secure way to keep it handy, he thought. A nice chain, simple, yet durable should fill the bill. The cool touch of metal was very reassuring, and he took the object in his pocket out and held it up to the light, smiling at the expert craftsmanship of the key. It looked like a small black iron skeleton key, the outer metal weathered nicely to simulate age, yet he knew the inside was a smoothly machined chamber that housed something very special, something he would now rely on for his very life.

The anomaly he learned of earlier had been very curious. He looked over the data very carefully, and it was certainly suspicious, so much so that he flew to London immediately to see it firsthand. The Duke was a trustee of the British Museum, and had made lavish donations over time. He was fond of the place, and would often spend long hours just wandering the halls and delighting to the exhibits. There he could lose himself for a time, forgetting the mundane modernity of the world outside and dwelling in better times in his mind. Better times.

So it was that he received a most unusual call about one of the especial exhibits—the Eglin Marbles—and he went to see about it directly. Doubting Thomas that he was, he did not believe the first reports made to him. He wanted to see the anomaly himself, and thoughts of the excursion now returned to him.

“Are you certain it has not been altered in recent years?” he asked the curator.

“Absolutely certain, sir. The piece has been here, in this very display case, for years now, completely undisturbed.”

“And was there any record of the damage, any sense of how it happened? No sir—at least not officially. There would have been an insurance claim, of course, and we could locate nothing of the sort. What we do know is that it happened in 1941, during the time the marbles were being transported for protection. As you may know, many were moved into the tube—but not all, sir. This one here was transported to the United States for a time, aboard HMS Rodney, to be precise.”

“HMS Rodney? Isn’t that a battleship?”

“It was, sir. She was built in the interwar years and served ably throughout the conflict. Had a few very choice engagements, she did, sir.”

“Do go on, Chelmsley. I’m assuming this has something to do with this damage.”

“It does indeed, sir. The old girl found herself in more than one good scrap at sea, but there were two battles of particular note. One was in May of 1941, which is when we believe this damage occurred. If you recall, sir, that was when John Tovey was running down the Bismarck. Old Rodney was scheduled for overhaul and was actually supposed to be en-route to the US. She had a contingent of war-weary passengers aboard, a goodly sum in gold bullion from the treasury, and some very significant segments of the Elgin Marbles, this piece in particular. They were all being transported for safekeeping, sir, but the Germans got into it and the Bismarck sortie was most inconvenient. Admiral Tovey had to pull Rodney into the chase, not that she was built for such work. She might make 21 to 23 knots on a good day, but her boilers were rather dodgy at the time. It was a miracle that Dalrymple-Hamilton—that was her captain at the time, sir—was able to steer her right into the thick of things and catch that German ship.”

“You say this ship had it out with Bismarck?”

“That she did, sir, before Admiral John Tovey came up with King George V and settled the matter. A battle at sea can be a rather rousing affair, sir. Rodney was Nelson Class, and she had big 16 inch guns all laid out in three turrets on the foredeck.” Chelmsley extended his arms in a wide circle to illustrate the girth of the guns, smiling.

“The guns were so powerful that they damn near shook Rodney to pieces. Most of the damage she sustained in that battle was self inflicted. That and the rough seas at the time gave her cargo holds a bit of a good hard shake, sir. We think the damage occurred there when one of the crates shifted and burst open. We have it on report, sir. The piece was re-fitted, it seems, and must have been done by someone aboard. Unbelievable as it may sound, sir, they just tamped in a little mortar and put the chipped section back.”

“It was not noticed?”

“It may have been, sir, but we’ve no way of knowing that now. All we know is that no fuss was made about it, and no insurance claim ever filed. But…well there it is, sir.” Chelmsley pointed at the display where the Selene Horse sat in special circumstances for a rare cleaning and inspection prior to the planned relocation to a deep underground vault.

“The damage was noticed again on this very inspection, sir. We might not have even seen it except for all this war news prompting the relocation. ”

The piece was a select sculpture of the famous Elgin Marbles, segments of the Parthenon that had been transported to England by Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin from 1801 to 1812. Some called him a savior for bringing such sublime art to the shores of the Kingdom, others called him a vandal and pillager, the famous poet Byron among them. In any case, the marbles were here, and the Duke had always been very fond of them.

“Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,” said the Duke, quoting Lord Byron’s poetry. “But at least they’re here, and largely in one piece. God only knows what might have happened to them otherwise.”

“Precisely, sir.”

The Duke looked at the sculpture, still admiring the piece, perhaps the most striking of the entire Elgin collection. It’s eyes still bulged with the veins on its neck and face, the labor of a long night pulling the chariot of Selene, the Goddess of the Moon, through the heavens. It was sublime. Well, brigand or not, the Centaurs now battle the Lapith warriors here in Room 18 of the British Museum. It’s a pity their struggle ends here, once and for all time. They’ve survived centuries of strife and turmoil, but now there may be no vault deep enough for what is coming next.

“And the second engagement?”

“Sir?”

“You say this battleship had two battles of particular note.”

“Ah…Yes, sir. The second was a rather cloudy incident in the Med. She was with HMS Nelson, her sister ship during a big relief operation bound for Malta. Something happened, I’m not exactly sure what, but it sent both battleships and the whole escorting force racing back to Gibraltar, leaving their charge early. It was most unusual, but I’m told the ship encountered something very mysterious in that campaign, and both Rodney and Nelson sustained damage that the Royal Navy was keen to cover up.”

“I see…Well, war is war. Secrets are secrets, and the two are often bedfellows. Very good, mister Chelmsley. That piece there is the damaged segment?”

“It is, sir. I’ve left it aside, but of course it’s the horse’s head itself you’ve come to see. If you would be so kind as to put on these gloves should you wish to inspect it more closely…”

“Of course. That will be all now, Mister Chelmsley.”

“I shall be right outside should you need me, sir.”

The Duke waited until the man left him alone, then slowly pulled on the white museum gloves as he regarded the small chipped segment that had been set aside. He leaned forward, noting the curious depression in the stone, and was truly amazed at what he saw. Could it be, he thought?

He reached into his pocket, removing a small object and looking furtively about him to make certain there were no surveillance cameras. Chelmsley had assured him complete privacy for this special viewing, but he remained a naturally cautious man.

The key sat in the palm of his gloved hand, starkly contrasted against the satin white. He reached out to steady the chipped segment as he placed the key into the depression in the stone, amazed to see it was an absolutely perfect fit! The key was now nestled snuggly in the chipped segment and he realized that a similar object must have been embedded there at one time. My Lord! A key! In the Elgin Marbles…

And not just any key.

The unique shape and coded teeth of this key made it unlike any other. He was one of the very few privileged to hold one, though it was now clear to him that someone else had deliberately placed another in this very sculpture—embedded within the Selene Horse! Was it there when this segment was chipped off—perhaps during the sea engagement Chelmsley described? Astounding if it was. Who could have placed it there, ages and ages ago when the sculpture was first given life in Classical Greece? And more, who might have taken it if it was discovered in the hold of HMS Rodney in May of 1941? His mind was full of questions, and a light of excitement was in them.

We aren’t the first, he realized now.

There were others…

He reached for the key, putting it safely back in the special inner pocket of his jacket and reminding himself to be sure to get that chain so he could wear it around his neck beneath his clothing in the future. He must never be without it again.

That thought shook him from his reverie and his mind now ran down particulars of the arrangements. Everything seemed in order now. He had not overlooked anything of any importance. The Duke was a very careful man.

Now he was increasingly confident that all would work as planned. The tuning had been very precise, or so he was led to believe. The location was now secure, all the riff raff and commoners seen off to their dull, unwitting lives. It would be a fine morning for the trip, and everything was ready. He would take the drive up through Newcastle tomorrow and do a last bit of sightseeing. Then it would be up and over the causeway beneath the Snook along the narrow neck of Holy Isle to Lindisfarne castle. He would be sure to keep his appointment by arriving a full day early.

Ah, if they really knew what it was all about, he thought. The whinstone on Beblowe Crag hides more than anyone could possibly imagine. Good hard rock, whinstone, which is why it has survived the tides of both time and sea for so very long, not to mention the considerable turmoil and bother of politics through the ages. A pity that it will not survive any longer.

They had but three days left… all the Angels were ready to leap from this heaven on earth into worlds of newfound freedom. How would it be? Lucifer fell for nine days, he thought—nine days falling into hell. That will certainly not be the case for me, not for his Grace Sir Roger Ames, the Duke of Elvington. I’m off to keep a special appointment with yet another Duke! Let the other Angels and Demons fall where they may.

Chapter 31

Battleships are awesome things, thought Halsey. He was riding one now, and staring off the starboard side of the bridge at its twin sister. Missouri and Iowa were works of sublime engineering, steel shaped in long, graceful lines, yet with stark edges and raw power that was evident in every angle and curve of the ship.

Speak softly and carry a big stick, thought Halsey. That’s exactly what he had in hand now. ‘The Big Stick,’ battleship Iowa, was winking at him as it executed a 10 point turn to starboard, signaling by lantern. Her long, swept bow cut through the rising sea leaving a frothy white spray to wash the foredeck where the big “61” was painted in clear block numerals.

The two ships had steamed north together, but now, in keeping with the new plan of attack proposed by the British Admiral Fraser, the they were spreading out in a wide line of advance. Iowa was peeling off to starboard to take a position at least ten kilometers to the northeast. Halsey’s ship, ‘Mighty Mo’ held steady on. Together the two big battleships would be the center of the line with their massive 16 inch guns. Heavy cruisers would flank them at ten kilometer intervals. Boston and St. Paul were on the far right, speedy ships at 33 knots but with nine 8 inch guns and twelve 5 inchers to go with them.

A third ship in this same class was to the left, the Chicago, and further out were the light cruisers San Diego and Flint, with no less than sixteen 5 inch guns. A destroyer from Desron 50 filled the gap between each of the larger ships, and all together Halsey was moving a line of steel north that stretched nearly a hundred kilometers long. As Iowa pulled away he saw the much smaller destroyer Gatling move up to take her place, slowly shifting east to take up her position in the gap.

It was unlike anything Halsey would have ever ordered, this long line of widely spaced ships. A task force should be tightly grouped, with smaller ships screening the principle units and the supporting umbrellas of flack from the entire group providing the air defense. Not so here. Each ship would be on its own, within visual range of vessels to either side but at very wide intervals. Fraser’s argument for the formation had seemed ludicrous at first, until Halsey saw that mushroom cloud off his starboard bow as promised by the Russians. Now they would position their assets so that if the enemy threw another at them, they could take out no more than one or two ships in the line. It was a cold calculus, but it just might work. There were enough ships to snag the enemy in a steel dragnet, and once contact was made, the sighting ship would radio its position, course and speed to all the others, then the line would coil to that spot like a whip, and they would lash the Russians to death on the cruel seas of the north.

So it was planned.

Halsey’s group was only part of the line. Further west Ziggy Sprague had forsaken his post on Big T and was leading in more heavy ships on the battleship Wisconsin. He had the smaller North Carolina and South Dakota to either side, no less formidable, and a pair of light cruisers on either flank.

My, my, thought Halsey. This whip is knotted with steel. We’re sweeping north with no less than five battleships, and once we find these bastards we’ll give the word to the carriers and send 500 planes up to join the show. Bomb or no bomb, the Russians had bitten off more than they could chew this time, and he was looking forward to sinking the big teeth of Mighty Mo into the enemy, to end this thing, once and for all.

Hopefully the weather would cooperate and give them clear skies for good hunting. A pair of tropical storms had bedeviled the fleet the last few weeks. Tropical Storm Frances had just dissipated 150 miles due east of Tokyo, but now a second storm named Grace was making a beeline right for Tokyo Bay. Luckily the fleet’s advanced search line had already moved well north, because Halsey still had bad memories of the big storm last December that laid up a number of good ships and men in the hospital. Typhoon Cobra had sunk three destroyers, ripped the bow off a cruiser and damaged carriers and even battleships when it caught the fleet at sea.

They were calling it “Halsey’s Typhoon” now. The weather men had reported its location to him so he could try and avoid the storm, but they were dead wrong. He ended up sailing Third Fleet right into the maw of 145mph winds. They had lost a hundred planes, and worse, 790 men in the incident, and Mother Nature had hurt the fleet in a way the Japanese were now powerless to do.

They probably thought it was another of their “Divine Winds,” he thought. Not this time. Wind estimates on this Tropical Storm Grace were no more than 70mph and the barometer was reading only 985 at its low point. That would kick up the seas behind them, but they were already clear of the storm. He had ordered the carriers to move a little farther north as well to avoid difficulties, and hoped all would be well.

The fleet was as strong as ever. The word had been passed that Halsey was going north, gloves off, and ready for anything. He was taking nearly sixty ships with him, and behind them there were sixty more with Admirals Spruance, Ballentine and others. The US Navy was the biggest typhoon in the sea now, and the storm was blowing north.

Aboard Kirov they saw it coming on the radar feeds, a long line of contacts spreading out on a wide front and heading north. Karpov studied the tactical board for some time with Rodenko, ready to transmit his battle orders to the other ships in his small flotilla. A picket line of thirty four ships was forming up, spaced at intervals of 5 to ten kilometers. The line stretched nearly 200 kilometers, with the western end sweeping off the coast of the Kuriles and extending east into the Pacific.

“They came to this idea in the Atlantic as we approached Newfoundland,” said Karpov. “And this was the same tactic the British thought to employ in the western approaches to Gibraltar.” He could clearly recall Fedorov’s assessment of the situation in the last briefing with Admiral Volsky in the Med.

“After what happened to the Americans Admiral Tovey will also be wary of concentrating his force in any one central task force. For this reason I believe he will not enter the Straits of Gibraltar tonight, even if he does get there first. No, sir. He will wait for us in the western approaches, and he will disperse whatever force he has in a web there, which we will have to penetrate. Then, once we commit ourselves to a breakout heading, he will make one mad dash and engage us with everything he has—all his ships and every plane they can put into the air. His dilemma is how to close the range on us as quickly as possible so the fourteen inch guns on his battleships can have a chance at getting some hits. And it would only take one hit from a shell of that caliber to decisively shift the battle in his favor.”

Then he heard his own voice answering: “If they disperse their forces as Fedorov suggests, then we must pick one point in the line for our breakthrough, preferably at one of the extreme flanks. We will attack this point in his defense and neutralize it quickly. We do not have enough missiles left to engage all the battleships decisively at one time in this option. But we can hit one very hard, and then simply run through the gap at high speed.”

The Admiral had his doubts about the tactic. He could still hear Volsky’s heavy voice; see his finger wagging in his mind’s eye: “What if this Admiral Tovey places his battleships close enough to one another for supporting fire? These big guns have a long range, correct Fedorov?”

“They do sir. With good light for sighting we can expect fire from as far away as 28,000 meters, even 32,000.”

“So even if we do saturate and neutralize one of these big ships the others may very well still have the range on us. This is not a very satisfactory situation, Karpov.”

Not a very satisfactory situation…It was Volsky’s typical way of discarding the most direct and obvious option in battle. The Admiral had always been cautious at sea, he thought. My advice to Admiral Volsky back then was to send out the P-900s and put one on each of the big battleships with pinpoint precision. Then make the offer to parley. The enemy would see all four of their best ships hit and afire. Even if they were not wounded badly by the single missile, it would still be a strong psychological blow.

Volsky’s conclusion echoed in his mind now as he considered that the enemy was setting up the same kind of battle they had faced at Gibraltar…

“Well here we are at the eleventh hour, gentlemen. I have heard your analysis, and yet there is one other weapon we have not discussed that we might try using here.”

“Sir? I thought you did not wish to consider our nuclear option.”

“Oh, I considered it, Mister Karpov, and I have discarded it. The weapon I am thinking of now is intelligence. We have looked at two options here. The first has considerable risk. We make a run at this man, give him a shove as we go and hope to slip by him in the dark. It might work if our luck holds out. Now you suggest that we punch this man in the face first, and then threaten him with further harm if he does not stand aside. Yes, it is a strong tactic. Something our old friend Orlov might do. But I will propose another solution. Suppose we talk to this man before we punch him in the nose, eh? I think he might be more inclined to hear us.”

“Negotiate first? Before we’ve shown him what we can do to him if he persists?”

“Exactly. Mister Karpov, I believe he has already seen what we are capable of—weeks ago in the North Atlantic. He already knows we can hurt him before he even catches a glimpse of us. Yes, he knows how dangerous we are. He knows we can hurt him severely, and yet here he comes. That is a different sort of bravery, is it not.”

Negotiate first. Well I have tried that option as well, Admiral, Karpov spoke inwardly to Volsky, missing him strangely, and wishing he was here now. When Volsky was present the full weight of the decision to fight and inflict grievous harm on the enemy was not Karpov’s alone. He could advise, lay out tactics and strategy, and execute as a skilled fighting officer that he was. But the moral weight of the action rested with Volsky.

This time the Admiral was not here. He was decades away, fighting his own war with the Americans, and Karpov wondered if he was even still alive. He sent me out as his strong knight, he thought, He gave me the Red Banner Pacific Fleet, and here is all that remains of it, still fighting the Americans.

Negotiate first—and look where that got me. Halsey is still out there, every bit as determined as the British Admiral was, and here he comes.

“We’re going to have a real fight on our hands, Rodenko,” he said in a low voice. “They are throwing out this skirmish line with the intent of locating us. Our jammers have fogged over their radar screens and they will need to make visual contact now.”

“That they will, sir,” said Rodenko.

“I expect that they will have planes up soon as well.”

Something in Karpov’s voice seemed hollow and empty now, a weariness, a resignation. Rodenko was watching the Captain closely, seeing how his eyes shifted back and forth over the tactical board, noting one position or another, his mind engaged, calculating, yet a kind of mechanical reflex to it all. It was as if he was a machine, a computer engaged in the cold operations of war. Yet behind his eyes Rodenko knew there was also a man, and one who had suffered and endured much emotional turmoil. Karpov seemed wasted and spent now, and very tired. The adrenaline began when the fleet engaged Captain Tanner…so long ago it seemed now, but only days ago in real time. The Captain had not had much sleep, and from time to time he could perceive the odor of vodka on his breath. There is only so much a man can take.

He wondered what he would do if something happened to Karpov. How should he carry on the fight? What if it came down to that same desperate moment that had prompted Karpov to use nuclear weapons? Would he have the guts to do the same?

“Well I am not going to sit here and wait for the planes to show up like a bad weather front on our radar screens, Rodenko. The instant I see them forming over those carriers, I’m going to attack. If one of those ships spots us before that, I’ll blow it out of the water.”

“Aye, sir,” Rodenko said quickly, yet he could feel and hear the edge in Karpov’s voice. Everyone on the bridge could feel it too.

Rodenko glanced at the ship’s chronometer. It was only a matter of time before the Americans got close enough to spot them. Then the planes would come—perhaps more planes than they had missiles. There would be carnage in the skies for a wild hour…Then something would get through.

“Sir, Captain Yeltsin on Orlan requests battle orders.”

Karpov looked at Nikolin, a sallow expression on his face.

“Tell him I am going to hit the Americans here,” he was still looking at the tactical board as he pointed. “On their right flank.” Tell him that we will begin the action ourselves, and assign him his targets. I have moved the KA-226 to a position to allow us to better identify what we are shooting at. I’m going to punch a hole in their line right here, and sink whatever I have to in order to do so. Signal Admiral Golovko that they should keep their helos aloft on active ASW watch. Go to active sonar. I want no surprises.”

“Very well, sir.”

Rodenko was watching the long range radar returns now, noting the refresh of the screen as the system updated at intervals. Then he experienced a thrum of anxiety, for he saw what looked like a definite concentration of smaller contact returns to the south. His radar man saw it as well and turned to report, but Rodenko raised a hand, silencing him. He would deliver the bad news himself.

“Captain, I believe I have long range returns on air units forming to the south.”

He saw Karpov’s eyes shift quickly to him from the tactical board. The Captain licked his lips, as though he were very thirsty, needing water and sustenance. His right hand strayed to his brow, and he rubbed a spot above his eyebrow. There was no clasping of his hands behind his back this time. His chin was not elevated and his eyes seemed dark and smoldering, not bright and alive as Rodenko had often seen him in combat. There was no instruction to begin a log entry to commence the action, with all the drama Rodenko remembered when they had engaged the battleship Yamato. Karpov had the look of a man who was about to fight his last great battle, confident but wary and burdened by a strange feeling of presentiment, like Napoleon at Waterloo. There was just a moment’s hesitation, and then he spoke, his voice low, yet firm.

“Mister Samsonov. P-400s. Long range barrage in two batteries of eight. We are going to spoil their party.”

“Aye, sir. Keying targets and ready to fire.”

“How many will that leave us?”

“Sixteen on the P-400s, sir.”

“Sixteen? Oh yes… We fired half the entire inventory against the Americans in 2021. We’ll use the remainder now in 1945, and hit them before they have the slightest inkling of any danger. Perhaps we can pluck this weed out by the root this time, before it flowers.”

A last whisper of recollection came to Karpov now. It was Volsky speaking to Doctor Zolkin just after he had laid out his plan of attack against the British.

“I told you this man was one of the best tactical officers in the fleet, Doctor.”

“Yes,” said Zolkin. “He has the bravery of being out of range. It’s very comfortable—but just a little a bit devious at the same time.”

Yes, just a little bit devious, thought Karpov. What else should one expect from a Fallen Angel?

Chapter 32

The line swept north for two long hours, covering just over 50 nautical miles in that time. Halsey had three radar pickets out in front of the main skirmish line, but they were having fits with their radars. So the orders went out to man every weather deck and crow’s nest with eyes, and it was down to binoculars again, and the hope of a clear horizon.

Destroyer escort Fox was out in front, making 30 knots as she raced north. The seas had been heavy behind them, driven by the gales of a budding typhoon to the south, but now the wave sets were lower, swells evening out, skies clearing ahead. Named for a gallant Marine Lieutenant, the Myles C. Fox, DD-829, was a latecomer to the war, a Gearing class boat that had been fitted out with the latest radars for picket duty. She arrived in mid-August just after hostilities had ceased.

Commander John S. Fahy was at the helm, a bit rattled over the fact that none of his radar equipment was in working order. He had come over from USS Gillespie, DD-609, where he saw action in the Solomons and Peleliu campaigns, so he was no stranger to combat. The screens were clouded over, and he quickly deduced the enemy must be jamming them.

“They’re close, Pem,” he said to his XO Pemberton Southard. “I can feel it. Double up on the lookouts. I can smell a good fight coming, and soon.”

“Aye, sir.” Southard was a competent man who was just a little disappointed that the ship was late to the action in the Pacific. The Japanese had surrendered when they were off Wake Island, and he boasted it was because they knew the Myles C. Fox was coming. He didn’t quite know what to make of the rumor that they were up here looking for Russians now, and that broiling mushroom cloud northwest of their position that morning was an ominous and disheartening thing to watch. All the men on the bridge were tense and alert. They could sense trouble coming too.

Ensign Pine was the first to make a report. “Look to starboard, sir. Lookouts report a contrail.”

Commander Fahy had his binoculars up just in time to see it. Something descending from a bank of clouds and diving for the sea. It was coming right for the ship and he immediately gave the order hard left and ahead full for an evasive turn. The ship had plenty of boiler power in reserve for the sudden burst of additional speed, but the missile could not be fooled by such a rudimentary maneuver. It bored in and struck the destroyer flush on the forward deck behind the number one gun mount, setting her afire with a shuddering impact.

Fires broke out in the passageway around number two upper handling room, in the forward officer’s room, the anchor windless room, and on the number one gun mount itself. The Forward Repair Officer and half of initial repair party on the scene were killed or wounded by secondary explosions. Fahy was on the handset immediately ordering additional damage control crews forward. There they found a ruptured fire main and began to rig out new hoses from fireplugs on the main deck to fight the flames.

The enemy was close, alright. Commander Fahy had the presence of mind to sight down the line of approach of the missile and send off a good estimate of the ship’s bearing relative to his own position. The contrail had also been sighted by a second destroyer picket, Chevalier, and together the two ships began to triangulate. Ten minutes later they thought they had a good idea where the enemy was. It wasn’t enough to sent a “ship sighted” message, but Fahy insisted the information be passed on to Halsey on the Missouri.

It cost them seven dead and thirty-two injured, and Fox was forced to fall off the line and retire after her first salt drenched smell of gunpowder, but Halsey had what he wanted. He knew where the enemy was and he was pouring on the speed. The word went out on the wireless to all ships in the line, and soon they were altering course to intercept based on a presumption that the enemy was still headed east.

They were correct.

The last of the Helldivers were spotted and ready for takeoff on the Big T, with something under its modified fuselage that looked very strange. Aviation Ordnanceman Julian Lowry was still scratching his head over the device, a fat 1700 pound bomb with wings! It had a big round nose that was crammed with gizmos, or so he had heard, though he never got a look inside.

“This thing like those Jap missiles?”

“Hell no,” said Boatswain’s Mate Rod Madison. “They stick some dumb ass in theirs and fly them like Kamikazes. Not like ours,” he pointed. “That sucker has its own radar.”

“What do you know about it, Boats?”

“We were working the decks in the lower munitions hold when they brought the damn thing in. I heard the briefing. It’s got radar in there, I tell you. That’s why they call it a bat.”

Madison was correct. They were looking at one of the world’s first “Smart Bombs,” named the ASM-N-2 BAT, (Mark 9). It was an amazing development by RCA, Western Electric and other talented engineering firms, deployed and tested for the first time in April of 1945 off Borneo where it sunk a couple Japanese merchant ships and damaged the escort ship Aguni from a firing range of 20 nautical miles. The first true “fire and forget” anti-ship weapon, over 3500 were built and deployed on numerous aircraft from bombers to seaplanes to the versatile Helldivers. The $700 million investment in the weapon was exceeded only by the Manhattan project. Clearly the Americans had seen what these rockets and radar guided weapons could do, and they were hot to deploy their own.

It had been a long time in development, with numerous models by various names designed before this model achieved success. The problem of how to guide a special weapon to the target was a daunting one first tackled by the Germans with their Fritz X, a glide bomb that was actually radio controlled and guided by a crewman in the bomber it was dropped from. The US wanted to use a bomb with its own radar instead, though one group argued it could easily be defeated by jamming and suggested a wacky, yet novel approach. They fixed a lens in the nose of the bomb that would project an image of the target ship onto a white screen. There, tucked away inside the nose of the bomb, they placed a pigeon trained to peck at the image, which generated signals from the sensitive wired screen that would serve to reorient the bombs air foils to correct the missile’s flight path! Needless to say, the radar advocates won the day.

“They say the Russians have guided rockets,” said Lowrey. “Spooked some of the pilots pretty bad last time up.”

“Yeah? Well take a good look, Lowrey. We’ve got the damn things too.”

“Did you see that big Russian bomb this morning?”

“Yeah, I saw it. We’ve got one too.”

“How you know all this, Boats?”

“You think they got something we don’t have yet? Get a clue, Lowrey. We had to ship the Russkies trucks and planes for years. If they have it, then we’ve got it too.”

The plane was loaded and on the flight line now, and the lucky man in the cockpit that day was Rod Bains. Signalman Bill Tomko was handling the flags as the engine revved up, and he was ready to wave the plane off when someone pointed at the sky. He craned his neck to have a look, first seeing the thick flights of Hellcats overhead as they formed up for the big strike run up north. Then he saw what Lowrey and the Boatswain’s mate were jaw-boning about, thin white streaks in the sky, coming in so fast he could hardly believe what he was seeing. The rockets ripped into the dense formations overhead with booming explosions. He saw three planes go up with the first fireball, their flaming remnants falling from the sky like wounded angels.

The Russians had pigeons too.

“Holy crap! Will you look at that! Where are they coming from?”

The skies overhead were soon a wild melee of wheeling aircraft and more missiles came streaking in from the north, eight in all. The signalmen gaped at the scene, their unbelieving eyes transfixed as the rockets exploded, one by one. There was something wrong about it, something unfair, like a boxing match where the two fighters were standing face to face with the referee and one man snapped a sharp jab at the other fellow before the bell even rang. The formations overhead were broken up and wheeling in all directions now, like angry bees.

Once the shock and amazement abated there was also palpable anger on the flight deck. Lowrey shook a fist at Bains, as if to urge him to go get some well deserved revenge. Bill Tomko was fired up and he snapped his flags back up pointing the way forward to the nose of the ship.

“Come on Bat Man, go get the sons-of-bitches, will ya?” With a snap of his arm the Helldiver was on its way, the Bat Bomb cradled under its fuselage and off to war.

Then the flying fish came in, and everything was chaos again. Someone pointed off the port side of the ship. “Hey, look out! More of them rockets coming in fast!”

Gunner’s mate Benny Benson barely got a look at them, three flying fish skimming low over the sea in the distance, leaving frothy white tails behind them as they raced in. Two veered off and he got a good side view for a second as they sped towards the light carrier Monterey, the third was headed right for Big T, and it came in with a roar and wallop unlike anything he had ever heard. A brilliant orange fireball lit up the port side of the ship, and the missile blasted through the thin side armor, plunging inside to the maintenance bays. It was lucky that all the planes were mostly in the air. The Bat Man was the last off the deck, his Helldiver laboring up with its heavy load.

Bains looked over his shoulder, saw Ticonderoga burning, and set his jaw tight, then wagged his wings in farewell, a signal that set the everyone on the flight deck cheering him on. At least twenty angels had fallen from the sky when the lightning fast rockets caught them in their tightly packed formations. Now all bets were off. The rest of the strike package was dispersing like a flight of scattering birds, flying off in all directions and altitudes as they had been told in the pre-flight briefing. The rockets would not find them huddled together again, and soon they were all heading north.

Karpov was after the carriers first. He had pegged their positions with the long range AEW radars on the KA-226. Samsonov fired a salvo of eight P-400 missiles at each carrier group, hoping to catch the air formations early and hurt them. The eight missiles that had shaken up the Sprague’s group took down over twenty planes, and he had similar results against the Halsey group carriers. But the allies were getting cagy now. They immediately began dispersing their carriers at high speed, making each one an individual target instead of steaming them in a centralized task force. Each had an escort of two destroyers, particularly after three P-900s found Ticonderoga and Monterey, the latter hit badly by two missiles.

The blow changed all future history, at least in one respect, in a way that Karpov would never know. The General Quarters Officer of the Deck on Monterey was Gerald R. Ford, later to become the Vice President in Richard Nixon’s administration, and eventually the 38th President of the United States. He was once fated to be the longest lived president in US history, reaching the age of 93 years and 165 days, but all that was changed in a hot flash of fire and smoke from a Sizzler. The General Quarters OOD didn’t make it off Monterey alive.

It was shaping up to be a battle of attrition at first. The salvos against the carrier groups had expended all but one of Kirov’s P-900s. Only the number ten missile remained, and it was mounted with a ‘special warhead.’ Kirov still had seventeen Moskit-IIs nine MOS-III Starfires, and that last remaining P-900. The other ships in the flotilla could contribute another thirty missiles. The only question he had now was whether they could sufficiently disable the American combat power with limited conventional weapons, or whether they would be forced to resort to stronger measures.

As the action proceeded Karpov finally began to take the full measure of his foe. The Americans were not going to back down. They were going to persist with this attack with everything they had at their disposal, just as the British had. Wouldn’t I do the same, he thought? Shouldn’t I do the same now? I’m letting the ghosts of Volsky and Fedorov convict me here, and Zolkin was no help either. This is war now—yes, a war of my own making, but war nonetheless.

He turned that over in his mind, and made an inner resolution. If he could not retain sufficient combat power to insure future operations, he was a good as dead, the ship sunk, and this whole thing over. Before he would let that happen he would show the Americans that his massive shot across the bow was no bluff. Yet given the deployment he was now facing he realized they might easily punch through the American battle line with conventional weapons and head out into the Pacific.

They were not going to negotiate. His fantasy of sitting at the table with MacArthur and Nimitz and Halsey was now an insubstantial folly. These were men of war, and their answer to his challenge had been to turn the full might of their navy to engage him. Volsky was correct, at least on one point. Why would they negotiate after the casualties they will sustain in this engagement?

He shook his head inwardly, realizing that, for all their power, his flotilla was still a small player on the board, a dangerous renegade knight, but one that could not force a checkmate on its own. He had two choices now. One was to return home to Vladivostok, and hope it could shelter him from the wrath of the allied navies. The Soviets had nothing to speak of for a Pacific Fleet at this time, he realized, but they had strong land forces. If the Americans wanted to get pushy they would have to try to put ground troops on Soviet soil.

Then his mind ran down a long corridor of thought, recalling the folded bureaucracy that had greeted them in Vladivostok of 2021. Volsky won’t be there. It will be Stalin’s Russia, and if I thought Inspector General Kapustin and his lap dog Volkov were a nuisance, Stalin’s NKVD will be many times worse. Sail for home at your own peril. You will end up having to flee from the Golden Horn harbor yet again, this time a pariah to your own country, and not the proud warrior who led the fleet out in 2021.

Yet what else could they do? Rodenko has advised him to get some breathing room and run out into the Pacific. Perhaps he could find a way to talk sense into the Americans later. Now he felt what Lucifer must have felt after his challenge failed at the gates of heaven. He would be an outcast if they ran east, wandering the seas, forever hunted, pursued the world over. It all seemed so simple hours and days ago, with the American fleets set to gather at Tokyo Bay. He thought he could make that one decisive intervention and change everything, but now he realized that this world would not submit to his will without a fight. It was not so simple any longer.

“Mister Rodenko, we will have to select a point in the enemy line and blow a hole. Then we’ll make our best speed and punch through.”

“KA-226 can feed us the data now, sir, and the Fregat will have line of sight contact any minute.”

“Good. Signal Admiral Golovko. Tell Captain Ryakhin he is to prepare a salvo of six missiles, two sets of three, and I want him to engage with the first set on this ship here.” He pointed to the tactical board. “Can you feed him the location data?”

“Yes, sir. Nikolin has been reading ship to ship chatter. That is a heavy cruiser.”

Karpov had fingered the St Paul.

Chapter 33

She was everything a good heavy cruiser should be, fast, reasonably well protected and with decent punch in her nine 8 inch guns. The lavish addition of twelve 5 inch guns, forty-eight 40mm Bofors and twenty-four 20mm Oerlikon cannons gave her considerable air defense capability for her role in screening the fast carrier task forces that won the war in the Pacific. Seventeen ships were built in her class, but only seven saw service in the war. St Paul was one of them, slipping into the action in those final days when Halsey’s carriers made their last raids on Honshu and Hokkaido. The ship also got in close and bombarded industrial targets on the Japanese mainland on two occasions, and had the distinction of firing the final salvo in this role from any capital ship in the war.

The enemy never laid a finger on her throughout this brief action, but St. Paul’s fate was about to change. Something was coming at her that all her lavish anti-aircraft guns could not forestall. There was nothing but scrambled eggs on the radars that day, and the lookouts barely saw the missiles coming. Admiral Golovko had fired three Oniks/Yakhont sea skimmers on Karpov’s order, and they came in at Mach 2.6, striking the ship at ten second intervals with three hard punches that set her ablaze from stern to bow. And like so many foes Karpov had engaged, the ship and crew never saw the enemy that had crippled her in one swift blow.

Halsey got the word just as he was consulting with staff on the battle bridge of the Missouri to lock in their best location for the enemy based on information relayed by the radar pickets. Iowa, some ten kilometers on his starboard side, had already turned on a new heading to intercept, and he was bringing Mighty Mo around fifteen points to starboard, churning up the seas at 30 knots.

“Where in hell did the Russians get these damn rocket weapons?” The ship’s Captain, Stuart S. Murray was still trying to get his mind around the situation. “You would think we might have known something about it.”

“Apparently we did,” said Halsey. “Or at least the British did. That mushroom cloud we saw this morning was the same thing they used to sink Mississippi in TF-16, and that was before we were even in the war. Admiral Fraser says the Brits slugged it out with these Russians more than once—a renegade ship from all we can deduce now. There was only one before. Now we have three according to the picket reports. They think there’s at least three enemy ships out there now. No one knows where they came from or what they’re about. Even the Soviet government claims they have no knowledge of these ships, but yet there they are, demons at sea, and they just hit St. Paul hard. She never got off a single round.”

Admiral Fraser’s words returned to haunt him now, biting harder with the news coming in about St. Paul… “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.”

“Well, Sunshine,” Halsey said to the Captain, using his nickname to put the matter on more personal terms. “We’re about to see just how good the Iowa class battlewagons really are. I think the enemy is trying to break out into the Pacific. They can see what we’re doing and they’re trying to punch a hole in our line right there—right where they hit St. Paul. So I think that’s exactly where they are heading, and we are too. The good news is that we’re now in a good position to intercept. The bad news is that those rockets may be heading our way soon when this Karpov realizes that. I want damage control and repair crews doubled on both Iowa and Missouri. Lay out extra fire hoses. Take men from any watch you need to fill out the ranks. If those charts we’ve just plotted are accurate and the enemy is where we think he is, then we could be in visual range within the hour.”

“Still good light for a couple hours,” said Murray.

“We’ll need it. Pass the word. The gunners can’t rely on radar. I’ve got lookouts up on every weather deck and mast I could find—even up on the radar mounts themselves. We’ll have to do this the old fashioned way. Somehow they’ve managed to black out and foul up every radar set on the ship.”

“This just doesn’t add up, Admiral. How could the Russians be so far ahead of us? They couldn’t even produce the trucks they needed early in the war. How could they build ships that can do this, and then have the gall to stand there and deny any knowledge of them?”

“A lot of guff,” said Halsey. “Well I plan to have a real close look at these ships, personally. See that the Missouri is trimmed for action.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Murray was only too happy to comply, then he looked over his shoulder.” Suppose they throw another big one our way, Bull. Then what?”

Halsey’s eyes were dark fire beneath those bristling grey brows. He gave the Captain a long look. “We’ll coordinate our attack with the air wing,” he said. “Bastards tried to sucker punch us there too, but we’ve got most everyone up now and they’re heading our way. Cowpens got hit, but the fleet carriers came through alright. Plenty of deck space there for further operations, though I’m ordering the flattops to move further south.”

Murray noted that Halsey had not answered his question, but said nothing more.

A thousand miles away other men were working to answer that question. North Field on the Island of Tinian was a very busy place that day. The big silver B-29s of the Twentieth Air Force were being rolled out of their hard stands and rigged for battle. The Americans had taken the strategic island a little over a year ago, in July of 1944, and it meant the big superfortress bombers now had a place to roost in range of the Japanese homeland. North Field was originally Ushi Point, a Japanese runway for recon planes until 1500 Seabees showed up and expanded the operation in a vast quilt of new runways, tarmacs, and hard stations to house the planes.

To do the work they moved thousands of tons of coral and earth to complete what soon became the largest airfield in the world at that time, occupying the entire northern end of the island as if it had been branded into the ground there. It was now home to 265 B-29 bombers, which busied themselves in pounding Iwo Jima, Okinawa and then blackening the major cities of Japan in the last months of the war. The bombers were all set to continue with Operation Olympic, the planned invasion of Japan, but the Emperor came to his senses and capitulated just days ago.

But it wasn’t over. Word was that Halsey was still fighting out there, though few knew the details of what was happening. All they knew was what they were told. Tonight all leave was cancelled, and every man was to be in their quarters. Units in and around Runway A on the big airfield were rounded up and literally locked in Quonset huts, watched over by MPs and dour faced Master Chiefs. Something was up.

“What gives JS? What do you make of this? Why they have us all locked up in here?” A couple of Seabees were chewing the fat over the incident, wishing they would be out in time for chow and hoping there was something special on the menu to celebrate the war’s end. Something was on the menu, alright, but no one seemed to know what was going on. It had been a long time since any of them had seen any sign of the Japanese.

The last JS had seen of them was during an air raid seven months ago. They had three big towers set up, positioned at intervals from one side of the island to another. He was out on the airfield finishing up some grading operations when the sirens sounded, one tower warning another and passing the alert all across the island. Then he saw them, a couple Jap Zeros tipping their wings in the sun and diving in for a strafing run. He had never dug a hole so fast in his life, bare hands scraping at the rough hard packed earth he had just smoothed out with grey coral the last hour, trying to find some way to get low.

The Zero flashed right down the field, its machine guns rattling as it came, and JS saw the lines of shells chew into the earthen runway bed. They went right by him, to either side, a couple rounds within just a foot of his position. Then the planes were gone, and the blue fighters were after them. It was the last surprise raid the Japanese ever got away with on that island, and JS was proud of telling all his kids that story after the war, all nine of them. Yes, Johnny got busy after he came home from the war, and he told his pups that they all had come within a foot or two of not being born if that Jap pilot had aimed just a little better.

“You know as much as I do,” he said. “But if you want my money I’ll say it has to do with those new planes that came in for the 509th.”

Something more than fresh food was on the menu that day. JS had it right. A couple very special planes from the 509th Composite Air Group had been rolled out, and then moved to a secret hanger. A couple days ago one was renamed the Enola Gay. He had a look at it one morning and, the first thing he noticed was that there were no gun turrets, and the bomb bays looked all wrong, but otherwise it looked much like all the other planes in the 6th Bombardment Group, with that big Circled R on the tail. All last month they had been loading big fat “pumpkin bombs” into the plane for runs over Japan. He had no idea that they were ballistically identical to another bomb, and that the Enola Gay was preparing for a very special mission.

They renamed the plane the other day, which was another tip-off that something was up. JS had seen Alan Karl doing the new paint job, though it ticked off commander Robert Lewis to no end when he laid eyes on it. You don’t go messing with the nose art on someone’s plane! JS was Navy, a Seabee, but even he knew that much.

There was a special bomb loading pit that the Seabees had to build for the 509th. No one knew why, but no one cared either. They just got the job done and went about business as usual.

Johnny knew nothing more about it, but he would soon find out. That night the whole base was going to come alive like a swarm of bees, just as if it was another war day, with a big mission to fly. A couple hundred B-29s would take to the air and head north. One of them would be that very special plane, surrounded by so many similar targets that it would be a real crap shoot to get lucky and hit that plane. Odds were that Enola Gay would get through to the target and deliver her bomb…A very special bomb.

This was how they planned it.

BB-61, Iowa was now point man in the looming battle, her sleek prow cutting through the sea as she sped northeast. Captain Charles Wellborn had the scent and was hot for battle. The enemy had hit the cruiser St. Paul to his north, and though dead in the water, they had been able to report “three ships sighted, SSW our position, estimate speed thirty.” Iowa was just as fast, and on a good angle to intercept now. There was going to be a battle within the hour.

“The Big Stick” was ready—all nine of them, 50 caliber 16 inch guns among the best in the world. First of her class, Secretary of the navy Frank Knox called the Iowa “the greatest ship ever launched by the American nation.” That was true until Missouri, Wisconsin and New Jersey were launched as well, but as senior ship in the class, Iowa enjoyed a special status.

Iowa had stood a watch in the Atlantic, daring the German battleship Tirpitz to make a showing that never came. Then she was moved to the Pacific to run with men like Spruance, Halsey and Lee. In all that time the only damage she sustained were a pair of hits from Japanese shore batteries that she easily shrugged off. One seaman had a small cut on his face, but no other man aboard was injured.

The crew had been elated with the news of Japan’s defeat, and they celebrated with a big feast the day Halsey made the announcement. 2500 mouths to feed took some doing, but on that day the kitchens aboard Iowa served up 240 gallons of cream of tomato soup, 240 pounds of saltine crackers, 2,849 pounds of roast Young Tom Turkey, 18 pounds of cranberry sauce, 6 pounds of sage dressing, 1,500 pounds of whipped mashed potatoes, 480 pounds of buttered peas, 4,500 hot Parker House Rolls, 20 gallons of ripe olives, 20 gallons of sweet pickles, 1,200 pounds of sweet cherries served up in the pies, and then a special treat: 2,800 packs of cigarettes along with 2,800 packs of candy. Ice cream followed—200 gallons of it, and to wash it all down the ship served up 640 gallons of lemonade. They were going into battle well fed and content, with a confidence born of long months at sea and a feeling of invincibility.

Now the ship was racing towards the biggest fight of its brief career, her long, graceful bow cutting the seas at 33 knots. Her turbines were pushing 52,000 tons of steel at that speed, an amazing feat that no other battleship could match. Considering her speed, tremendous firepower and considerable protection, many considered the ships of this class to be the best ever designed and deployed in the world. She almost got her chance to prove that against Yamato in the Philippines campaign, but now she would face the ship that beat that behemoth, and her enemy was not alone. Word was that there was a small flotilla of fast Russian ships out there, and coming fact. One was a battlecruiser, the others cruiser and destroyer class ships, or so the last signals from St. Paul had described them.

Iowa would not be alone either. To the north the heavy cruiser Boston was hastening south to this same intercept point, her 8 inch guns ready for action. Destroyer Ingersoll was also nearby, but ordered to render assistance to St. Paul. The high main mast of Iowa would see enemy first. Bert Cook of Waterloo, Iowa would be the first man to see the Russians—three of them, just as the pickets had called it. But they weren’t ships, just odd glowing lights in the sky.

Then the missiles came.

The Russian flotilla had raced east to pass very near the stricken St. Paul. Karpov watched the ship closely, Kirov’s deck guns trained and ready should it show any signs of life. They passed without incident, the flaming cruiser slowly listing from a big gaping wound in her side where one of the Oniks missiles had blow through her six inch armor. There were two more ships racing to cut them off, one big contact to the south, and a second smaller ship to the north.

“Shall I order Golovko to fire that second set of Oniks now, sir?” Rodenko was at Karpov’s side.

“Tell them to target the other cruiser to the north, just as before.”

“Aye, sir. But that will be the last of their P-800s. They still have another eight P-900s if needed.”

“I’m aware of the missile count, Mister Rodenko. It is more than adequate. Golovko is to engage that cruiser class unit and then maintain her ASW watch. Orlan will hold fire and concentrate entirely on air defense. As for that bigger contact to the south, I think it will be an American battleship.” He looked Rodenko in the eye. “Fair is fair, Rodenko. That’s work for Kirov.”

Chapter 34

Iowa was still wearing her war paint that day, the only ship in her class to have a camouflage dazzle paint scheme. Its lines were smoother and employed more curves, but their intent was the same. To throw off estimation of her size and speed when viewed by human eyes from a great distance.

After his duel with Yamato, Karpov was in no great hurry to get a close look at the American battleship. He had argued endlessly that the one great advantage Kirov possessed at sea in any surface action was range. The ship could fight like an aircraft carrier, striking at ranges up to 370 kilometers with her P-900s. But there was only one left in inventory now after his long range attack against the distant American carriers. It had paid off with four ships hit, Monterey and Ticonderoga in the Sprague group, Cowpens and Shangri-La in the Halsey group. Of these, only Cowpens was damaged badly enough to be put completely out of action, taking two missile hits that affected her speed and hydraulics. Monterey was also limping badly after two hard knocks, but the rest of the fast fleet carriers were still alive and well, controlling the damage and edging a little further south to avoid harm. The Captain had no more missiles to expend on them—not with the American battleships bearing down on him now.

The need to penetrate the American line was going to mean the action would necessarily close to short range at the moment of breakthrough. Karpov wanted to hurt his adversary well before it came to that. He elected to open the battle with the real workhorse of his SSM suite, the deadly Moskit-II. The ship left Vladivostok with her standard loadout of twenty missiles. Three had been fired thus far, leaving him seventeen, and he would begin the engagement against Iowa with a salvo of three.

The problem with the missile soon became evident. They had gone to sea with the intention of fighting modern ships. None of the missiles had been re-programmed for plunging fire that had proved so deadly against WWII ships. The Moskit-IIs were therefore coming in as fast sea skimmers, and their accuracy actually worked against them, putting them square on the side armor belt of one of the best protected ships in the world.

That said, the shock of a supersonic fire bomb with an armor penetrating warhead traveling at Mach 2.6 on impact was considerable. The missiles would meet over 12 inches of hardened steel that was designed to defeat a warhead of over 2000 pounds. The Moskits carried nearly a thousand pounds, but they hit with a thunderous impact as substantial reserves of rocket fuel ignited to add fire and hell to the explosion.

The big ship rocked with the blow, broiling fire cascading up above the gunwales and into the main deck. Three hard body shots came in at ten second intervals and combined to start a huge fire amidships. Alarms were jangling all over the ship. Damage control parties were scrambling to the port side of the battleship, dragging fire hoses to get streams of water flowing on the inferno. The fires were so close to a 5 inch gun battery that one of its twin barrels actually began to melt and droop in the hot fuel driven flames, which reached red heat temperatures approaching 1800 degrees at the height of the fire.

Yet fire consumes fuel rapidly, and within minutes the worst was over and the hundreds of trained damage control teams were slowly getting the upper hand. From a distance Iowa appeared to be a flaming wreck after one good shot, but there was soon more smoke than fire and, as the stiffening wind blew the pall astern, what was left was a blackened and buckled armor plate that was still intact. Two of the three missiles were defeated, the third struck more toward the long swept bow and a little high where it scudded across the deck in a billowing explosion forward of the number one turret, but the damage was soon controlled and in non-vital areas.

Thank God for armor, thought Captain Wellborn. We rolled with the punches, like a fighter on the ropes taking it in the gut. There was nothing wrong with those Big Sticks out front now, he reasoned, looking at the massive turrets. If only I had a target! Then he realized the rockets had betrayed the exact bearing of the firing ship. The long smoky contrails pointed out the way. All he had to do was sight down that axis and he would find his enemy in time, but at what range? The horizon was nearly twenty miles away now, the sun lowering as the time passed through 18:00 hours. Sunset was 20:56, plenty of daylight left in these high latitudes. If they kept coming he should see them soon, silhouetted against the gloaming sky.

Yet Iowa could fire much farther than that horizon. Her guns could lob their massive 2700 pound shells out twenty-four miles. Wellborn was not going to wait for the enemy to come at him again without answering. He ordered his number one turret to fire. They had no firing solution, no target in sight, just a bearing, but the big guns blasted away anyway. Iowa was clearing her throat, and the sheer concussion blew out the last of the flames on her forward deck.

The sound of the massive guns going off set the ship’s crew to cheering, which is exactly what Wellborn wanted. You don’t lay on the ropes and just take it. You throw punches back, whether you can reach the other fellow or not. In a hot minute some 8100 pounds of metal would plow into the ocean out there. They would see those rounds and know we’re still here and ready to fight.

They did see them. Rodenko called a warning and Kirov tracked the incoming shells on radar as if they were missiles. Amazingly, they came arcing up from the distant curve of the earth and then descended, on a perfect line to their present heading and just a couple thousand meters ahead of the Orlan. The blind haymaker Iowa threw back at them had very nearly grazed their chin. Orlan, out in front, was much closer, and they had a good look at the tall water spouts rising as the big shells plummeted into the sea.

“Rodenko—I thought we were jamming their fire control radars.” Karpov’s complaint was an obvious one. The shot had been far closer than it should have been.

“We are, sir. There is no way they can read our position on Radar through the clutter we’re hitting them with.”

In an instant Karpov realized what had happened. “Helm, come left fifteen degrees,” he said quickly. “They’re firing down our missile wakes. We’ll need to assume a new heading after every salvo. Samsonov, set up three more Moskit-IIs. I want the KA-226 to get me optical images on that ship. I want to see what our missiles did to them in that first salvo.”

Rodenko was nervously watching at the Fregat system, which was still receiving data from their AEW helicopter. He saw what looked like a signal cloud or weather front to the south, then realized what it was. “Conn, Radar.” He began reflexively, the years at that station honing his reflexes as he reported. “Large airborne contact cloud bearing 190 degrees and approaching at 400kph.”

“Range?”

“Ka-226 has the leading edge at 200 kilometers. Fregat should have them in about five minutes. From there it will be another twenty minutes or so before they reach our present position.”

The Captain’s eyes shifted back and forth, hand on his chin. They had sixteen P-400s left. The rest of their SAM defense rested with the Klinok medium range system, which could not yet engage. The Orlan was the real bulwark of the fleet air defense. That ship still had 152 lightning fast SAMs ready for action.

“Nikolin, signal Captain Yeltsin to match our new heading and go to air alert one. We’re going to need them soon.”

How many planes were coming, he wondered? The contact cloud as Rodenko described it was very dense, yet widely dispersed. In spite of his preemptive strike against the American carriers, they got a significant strike wave in the air, and anything that gets through our defense umbrella will arrive right in the heat of my action against this battleship.

His plan was simple. They might fire a hundred rounds at me to get just a single hit. That was what Fedorov told him. Our ammunition is limited, but we hit them every time we fire. He had twenty-four more SSMs on Kirov, yet he knew each and every one was going to hit and hurt his enemy. Against a smaller ship they were awesome lances, perfect for blasting the lighter armored cruisers and destroyers to hell. Against the big battleship they were hard punches indeed, but not fatal blows. Look at the punishment we put on the Yamato, and we still could not sink that ship. I can’t waste my valuable missiles on this ship’s heavy armor…

“Samsonov, we can still program the Moskit-IIs for popup maneuver, can we not?”

“Yes, sir. That is a simple toggle selection.”

“Key all three for popup and hold. I suspect our first salvo hit their side armor. We need to be more precise in our targeting.”

A second salvo from Iowa came in again, very wide now that they had turned on the new heading. This time there were nine rounds falling. Karpov smiled, knowing he had been correct. There was nothing wrong with their jamming. The American Captain was simply firing blind. It was all bluster and no skill, just like the Italians; just like Iwabuchi on Kirishima when he was chasing us in the dark.

“Activate forward deck guns,” said Karpov.

“Sir, aye. Guns ready.”

“Begin firing. Sets of 16 rounds. We’ll show them what precision naval gunnery can really do.”

It was time to dance and jab.

The first shells landed just shy of the bow, surprising everyone on the Iowa’s bridge. They fell in pairs, obviously from typical twin gun mounts, and from the size of the water plumes Wellborn knew they must be no more than 5 inchers.

“Who the hell is shooting at us?” he bawled, thinking one of the destroyers had come on the scene and misidentified his ship as the enemy. But there were no reports of any ships sighted on any quarter. They seemed completely alone on the sea, and the skies above were clear as well. It was as if the shells were dropping from heaven.

“Watchmen, any contacts?”

“Sir, weather deck. My watch is clear—”

“Belay that! Main mast reports ship sighted, bearing 340!”

Wellborn couldn’t see anything, and the next rounds came in with a dull thud and jarring explosion. The ship had been hit by a small caliber round. A twin Bofors mount was ablaze on the port side, and more rounds were falling astride the long raked bow.

“Navigator, range to horizon—quick! Helm. Starboard ten.”

The Captain saw an explosion forward again, right on the number one turret. The smoke cleared and he took heart. They had 500mm of armor there, all of 19.7 inches. The turret shrugged off the small caliber rounds like nothing had happened. There passed a tense moment, with Wellborn half looking over his shoulder as he waited on his navigator.

“Sir I calculate horizon from main mast at 19.5 miles.”

It was not possible, the Captain thought. He could still see nothing on the horizon, but the top of Iowa’s main mast was 150 feet above the water. Add that to the height of any distant contact and you could peg the range to horizon.

“Give it to me in yards, damn it!”

“Sir, aye, sir. Range to horizon…three, four, three, two, zero.”

The Captain was close by the view ports now, binoculars up, and focused intently on the far horizon, then he thought he saw a slight blemish on the clean edge of the sea.

“Gunnery officer. All batteries to bear on target at three-five-zero degrees. Make your range 33,000 yards and commence firing.”

Another explosion told him they had been hit yet again by a small caliber round. He knew he had this one brief moment. The fleeting moment of first contact where a general calculation of the range to horizon would give him the range. He knew optical sighting crews were working the problem now as well, but the Big Stick would get something in the air while they were still calculating. That ship could turn away at any minute and they would lose both bearing and range.

Then the big guns blasted away, the deafening sound ripping the air with fire and concussion so great that it flattened the waves out a hundred yards from the ship and literally sheared away the rising water splash of two more enemy rounds. White smoke rolled out behind the fire as Wellborn looked north, squinting to see if he could still see the enemy contact. Those were naval guns, he thought, smiling inwardly. They had come to rely so much on radar that it was going to be one hell of a crash refresher course for the optical sighting crews. Get it right, boys, he thought. Get it right.

Karpov grinned as he watched the overhead HD screen receive the long range camera feed from the KA-226. He could see his deck guns straddle the distant ship, then quickly score a hit.

“They’re probably wondering what hit them,” he said to Rodenko. “Just a little slap in the face for their insolence before I ram a couple more missiles down their smoke stacks, eh?”

But where were the raging fires he expected to see? He knew all three missiles from his initial salvo had hit the target. Why wasn’t this ship burning like Yamato? Then his eye caught a bright flash, and he looked to see the distant ship seemed to explode—but it did not explode. He was seeing Iowa’s massive main batteries firing in return.

“Rodenko! What’s the range?”

“33,200 meters, sir.”

“Have we slipped over the horizon?” The Captain was reaching for his binoculars—yes, he could see the bright flash on the edge of the sea.

“Helm port fifteen! Signal all units to match our new heading.”

“Sir, port fifteen and my rudder is four-zero degrees.”

He watched the ship turn smartly, heard Nikolin relaying the turn order to both Yeltzin and Ryakhin. The Orlan followed his lead at once, but Admiral Golovko off his starboard side was still on the old heading when they heard the scream and whoosh of heavy rounds coming in. The enormous geysers fell well short of Kirov, but between Orlan and the frigate—three, then three more, then—

There was a flash and explosion and Karpov’s eyes widened in shock when he saw what had happened. He raised his binoculars to the angry knot of smoke and fire ahead, then they heard the sound of loud secondary explosions going off, a massive detonation that sent jets of flame and debris shoot up from the rolling red-black fireball where Admiral Golovko had once been.

“My God…”

Rodenko was looking at the overhead screen, as were most of the bridge crew now. The frigate had been blown in two sections, its sharp bow now wildly tilted upwards through the billowing smoke, then falling rapidly to the sea. The center of the ship was gone and the aft quarter was capsized and already sinking. They saw men leap from the gunwale, then a wall of flames immolated them and the entire scene was wreathed in smoke and flame. Seconds later they heard more muted explosions, felt the jolting concussion, and Karpov knew that the ship was continuing to explode beneath the sea as it sank. Admiral Golovko was gone, and 200 men were scuppered into the sea with her, the lines of life and fate ending for them in that brief, wild moment of explosive violence.

Karpov slowly lowered his field glasses. All it will take is one hit from a gun of that size…Fedorov’s voice echoed its warning in his mind. It was nothing more than happenstance, he knew on one level. They slipped over the horizon ever so briefly, and the battleship must have spotted Kirov’s tall main mast and superstructure. There is no way they would have seen the frigate at this range. They fired blindly, just shooting down the line of our bearing and aiming for the horizon. They were firing at us, and they missed… Then all these thoughts were swept away by a hot anger.

“Sons of bitches,” he hissed.

Rodenko was watching the Captain closely, the shock and concern evident in his eyes.

“Sons of bitches! Samsonov! Moskit-IIs, salvo of three. Key on that contact and fire.”

“Sir, aye! Salvo firing on target.”

In that one brief instant the battle had taken a dramatic turn. Karpov had thought he would face down and intimidate the entire US Pacific Fleet. He thought he would show them what real power was when he fired one precious tactical warhead to frighten these little men—but these were not little men. They had just come through four long years of violent struggle at sea in the greatest naval war in human history. In all that time they had lost one battleship, the Mississippi sunk by Karpov himself in another fit of rage, along with the two carriers he had killed, swatting the Wasp at both ends of the long, terrible war. Then the Japanese had sunk ten carriers, eight cruisers, ninety destroyers, and still they fought on. He remembered Fedorov talking about the war. On any given weekend they would lose more men than the entire ten year American war in Iraq. US Marines would claw their way ashore on isolated rocks in the sea and blast the stalwart enemy from cliff and cave in a grueling campaign of utter attrition. Thousands would die for tiny islands, and still they came.

Now here they come for us, he thought grimly. Now we feel the hard hand of war at our throat. Halsey is out there somewhere, gritty, determined, leading his battleships forward in this hot pursuit, and we have yet to even face their air wing!

The missiles were firing, a swift lancing return, measure for measure, an eye for an eye. He was going to sink this ship, and kill every last man aboard in reprisal. And after he was done with that he would burn the rest of the American fleet in the raging fire of his anger.

Chapter 35

They saw the explosion, the bridge crew jubilant when it rippled up and bloomed on the horizon. The Big Stick had just struck their enemy a hard blow. Then they saw the same telltale streak of a rocket bearing down on them, and this time the ship opened up with every AA gun on the port side. The sky was pot marked with white puffs of exploding rounds, everything from the rapid firing 20mm cannons up to the quick firing five inch guns, but the missiles were simply too fast to be aimed at. It would be sheer luck if anything scored a hit.

The first missile stuck the number one battery, streaking in at sea level before it suddenly popped up and then nosed down onto the ship. It blasted through the outer bomb deck, a thinner barrier that was designed to trigger falling bombs and detonate them in the space between that outer deck and the heavier armor deck below. Beyond that there was a third splinter deck, and so the missile had to penetrate all of 7.5 inches of steel to get at the vital innards of the ship.

It struck at an angle and blasted through all three protective decks, then hit something far more substantial, the barbette of gun turret number one, which was 17.3 inches of steel at its thickest point. The searing wash of flame engulfed the turret in anger, but it was not breached. Fifteen men inside had been felled by the concussion, but relief crews were coming up from below to rescue the wounded, remove the dead, and fight on.

They had to flood the number one magazine for that gun, but there were three more still high and dry, and plenty of powder bags stretched out on the racks four decks below the gun itself. The huge shells were still rotating into the lifts on the projectile handling floor, and hoisted up into the rammers. Like an enormous clock, the turret skipped a beat or two as the crews recovered from the shock and replacements were sent in, then the workings of the turret continued, and the guns struck twelve with another thunderous roar.

Two more missiles came at them. One popped up and then plunged down on the deck just behind the aft main battery. If the big guns had not been rotated away they would have been struck there, but as it was the missile penetrated the deck and bored into the galley and crew’s mess section on the second deck. The Hot Parker Rolls were going to be a little overdone if they were ever served there again.

The third missile struck amidships, blasting into the superstructure where a special cabin had been set up for FDR when the Iowa transported the President to the Tehran Conference earlier in the war. The explosion damaged a twin 5 inch gun battery, and sent a hail of fiery shrapnel up toward the battle bridge. The armored conning tower where Wellborn captained the ship was protected by thick 17.5 inch armor, and it shrugged off the punch with no significant damage. The fire soon spread from FDRs cabin to the officer’s Wardroom, but crews were rushing to the scene to put the flames down.

Iowa had taken six hard hits, but for all the smoke, fire and concussion, she was not seriously hurt. The primary virtue of a battleship, her ability to take punishment and remain in the fight, was now paramount. With each passing minute the range was decreasing, her crews working the optics, he guns plotting a solution to lob more massive shells at the enemy.

The Russians had turned, skirting the far horizon out of visual range, but Wellborn knew they would see them again soon. If they wanted to break out into the deep blue they would have to continue an easterly heading. He estimated they had probably made a ten or fifteen point turn, and he was correct.

“Gunnery Officer! Adjust your fire five degrees to starboard and set your range steady at 34,000 yards. Aim for that column of smoke.”

He knew they had just scored a lucky hit, and didn’t think they would get another any time soon, but they would keep a rain of hot steel heading the enemy’s way nonetheless.

“Sir, we have visual sighting on our air wing. Aircraft off the port rear quarter!”

The Captain looked to see the skies slowly darkening with tiny specks. They were not in any discernable formation. Some were low on the water, others at altitude, and scattered all over the sky. They had been riding Iowa’s radio direction signal to arrive unerringly at the scene of the battle just as things were heating up. And then he gaped at the sky to the north, seeing it scored by a series of lighting fast contrails that raced out at impossible speeds. The enemy was firing rockets at the incoming planes—rockets with eyes so good that they swerved and struck dead on when they hit, and soon the sky above the ship was blooming with hot fireballs and angry black fists of smoke.

“Radio signal, Captain. It’s Admiral Halsey!”

Wellborn took the handset and toggled the overhead speaker. “Welcome Admiral, take off the gloves and get busy. The enemy is just beyond that column of smoke on your horizon. We put sixteen inches of steel on them with our third salvo.”

“Good job, Chuck. Give ‘em hell. We’ve just seen your main mast on the horizon so we’re about thirty minutes out, but on a good intercept angle. We’ve got your back! Mighty Mo is coming at 33 knots and Sprague is swinging up behind them with Whisky. Together the three of us are going to pound these guys to rubble.”

The Bull was charging to the scene aboard battleship Missouri, mad as hell when he saw the enemy rockets firing at the planes overhead. The entire scene was now becoming another wild display of controlled chaos at sea. The big ships surged forward, sharp bows frothing the waves, huge guns firing amid the drone of hundreds of aircraft coming in above them.

“Order the flack gunners to cease fire,” Wellborn shouted over the noise. “We can’t hit those damn rockets and we might take down our own boys up there.”

He watched as the first planes passed his position, making for the distant column of black smoke on the horizon as the enemy rockets clawed into the sky to look for them. Get the bastards, he urged the flyboys on. But look out for my big guns.

The Big Stick fired again.

Karpov watched Orlan firing, the missiles accelerating to the incredible speed of Mach 15, five times faster than a bullet fired from a good rifle. The planes in the sky were like slow flying target drones to them, and Orlan’s amazing fire control computers were sending them out with pinpoint accuracy, one missile, one kill. Three, then five, then nine angels fell in the wild sky, yet on they came, blue Hellcats, and Helldivers, well named, for it seemed they were plunging over the edge of perdition as the missiles exploded, taking one plane after another.

“Stand ready on Klinok system,” he ordered. “We’ll add our fire to that of Orlan soon.”

The cold weight of Admiral Golovko’s tragic loss was now settling into his stomach like a heavy stone. They lost their best ASW ship, two hundred men, and all the weapons remaining that now had to be wiped from his mental inventory. He had assigned a place for each of the eight remaining P-900s on the frigate, but now they would never be fired. And her special warhead was gone as well, an even bigger loss, he thought. The ship’s helicopters could be recovered easily enough, but that was another matter that he put far from his mind.

The crew also seemed different now. Each time they saw the crack of fire light up the horizon, then heard the deep rolling thunder of the American battleship firing, there was a long minute of tense anxiety on the bridge. Karpov saw one crewman looking up at the ceiling of the citadel, as if he thought a 16 inch shell might come blasting through the armored roof at any moment like Hayashi’s plane hit the aft citadel when they fought the Japanese. It was not the battleship he was worried about now, but the flights of aircraft massing above it.

The American planes had cut the range in half in the last ten minutes and were now inside thirty kilometers, ripe fruit for the flotilla’s potent missile defenses. Orlan led the way with her superb 9M96E missiles, designed for direct “hit to kill” impact. Their high speed maneuverability was attributed to canards and thrusters, which allowed them to achieve extremely high G turns with precision throughout the engagement envelope. In effect, it was a highly maneuverable shaped charge that would strike and detonate with a tight fragmentation pattern that was ripping the American planes to pieces, one by one.

Yet each missile fired was one less available in the magazines. Orlan started the battle with 180 SAMs, and she had already fired 46 missiles, each and every one finding a target, though three had homed on planes that had already been hit.

Rodenko reported that the SAM defense was exacting a terrible toll, but the Americans were still pressing doggedly forward. “This group must be off Halsey’s carriers,” he said to the Captain, pointing at the tactical board. “That second group there at the fifty kilometer mark must be coming from the Sprague group.”

“How many?”

“Signal tally has about 160 discrete contacts there, sir. The Halsey group we’re engaging now is much bigger, well over 250 aircraft. Orlan started with 152 SAMS after fending off Ziggy Sprague’s first attack, and we have 100 missiles in the Klinok system. Even if we score hits with every missile that will still leave over150 aircraft that will get through the SAM envelope for our close in systems to contend with. The Halsey air group must have vectored in on a signal from that battleship.” He pointed at the tactical board where the symbol for the Iowa was drawn by the computer.

Karpov had a distant look in his eyes now, lips tight, the tension evident on his jaw line. “I cannot allow over a hundred aircraft to get that close,” he said with a low and dangerous tone of voice.

The Captain turned and walked away, Rodenko looking after him, concerned. He saw Karpov leaning over Samsonov’s combat station, his hand reaching into his service jacket. Then he heard the order.

“Mister Samsonov, Activate P-900 system—Number ten missile.”

“Sir, aye, number ten missile… Sir, that weapon is mounted with a special warhead.” The big CIC Chief looked at the Captain for confirmation.

“Correct, Samsonov. Ready the missile for firing on our primary target.” Karpov had produced his missile key and was now leaning over the launch station, staring at the clear fiberglass key hole covers. There were two, side by side, but he had long ago ordered Martinov to reset the system to fire on insertion of a single command level key. This time there would be no countervailing order from Volsky. This time his word was final. And this time Sergeant Troyak would not appear at the eleventh hour and snatch away his key.

Who knows where the Sergeant is now, he wondered? Who knows where Volsky is, alive or dead, or Fedorov? This is all that matters.

“You’re going to use a tactical warhead?” Rodenko was at the Captain’s side now, his voice low and tense.

“You can see the situation as clearly as I, Rodenko.” Karpov said quickly. “Those planes are coming in right over that battleship and heading our way. We may get many of them, even most of them, but how many will get through? And how many SAMs will we be left with after that? If we expend all our missiles we’re done for. It’s time for decisive action.”

“But sir…”

“But what, Rodenko? Did you think we were just playing with fire here? This is war! I’m going to destroy that battleship, and kill everything above it out to a radius if five kilometers. Then our SAMs will handle the remainder if they dare us.”

The Captain flipped the fiberglass cover open, inserting his missile key. “Don’t worry Rodenko. I’m not asking you to concur with my decision. The responsibility is mine. It is either us or them at the moment, and I, for one, do not wish to see this ship blown up like Admiral Golovko.” He turned the key firmly, and saw the board confirm a successful arming of the warhead in the silo.

“Sir, “ said Samsonov. “Missile active and keyed for firing. My board reads ready.”

“Just one second Mister Samsonov, if you please. Nikolin. Signal Yeltsin on Orlan. Tell them to cease firing immediately. I don’t want a hungry SAM to find our P-900.”

They waited, the tension on the bridge ratcheting up as the seconds went by. All eyes were on Karpov now, and then Nikolin reported. “Orlan responding, sir. All weapons are secured and ready. Awaiting new orders.”

“A good man, Yeltsin,” said Karpov. “Send the coded signal Hellfire. Tell them to standby and rig for NBC. Signal all helicopters as well. Kirov will come to readiness level 1A.”

An alarm sounded, warning the ship to prepare for an NBC event and don any protective gear as appropriate. Karpov stood up, looking from one man to the next, seeing their eyes on him, remembering those same eyes when he had desperately stayed Samsonov’s hand and spared the destruction of the submarine Key West. There had been forgiveness in those eyes back then, and a feeling of personal redemption, a return to sanity and heart, a whisper of hope in that one single act.

Now he was about to throw that all away, burn it, remand it to the deepest level of hell. We thought we could stop the war, he thought darkly. What we failed to realize is that we were the war, and as long as the root and stem of that weed still grows in our hearts, no place is safe from the ravaging fire. There was even war in heaven…

He stepped to Samsonov’s side, and reached down, slowly pushing his hand from the firing toggle on the P-900 system, in an act of supreme irony. This time it was not to stay his hand. No… It will be my hand on the button, not his, he thought. I am responsible, the Dark Angel of perdition, and death is in my hand.

He pressed his thumb hard on the toggle, and the warning claxon bawled. His eye strayed to the forward deck where the P-900 ejected from the red open hatch, its nose declined downward and the rocket motor fired. It looked just like any of the other missiles they had fired, yellow fire in its wake with white hot smoke behind it as the Sizzler climbed to its cruising elevation and bent away to the south. Hell was on its way.

Captain Wellborn was still looking through his binoculars when the XO pointed out the contrail. “Here comes another one, sir; dancing like a drunk sailor on the deck.”

The P-900 had reached altitude for a brief subsonic cruise, and now descended to low level as it approached the ship, swinging this way and that in a series of maneuvers designed to defeat fast computer controlled gun systems.

“Just one this time,” said Wellborn, watching it come. “All hands, brace for impact!”

It was the last thing he said.

The meal the crew had eaten that day was also their last, cream of tomato soup, saltine crackers, roast Young Tom Turkey, cranberry sauce, sage dressing, whipped mashed potatoes, buttered peas, hot Parker House Rolls, ripe olives, sweet pickles, sweeter cherries served up in the pies…The missile suddenly popped up as one trigger happy gunner on a 20mm gun took a shot, hoping to get lucky.

Then it went off.

Chapter 36

Captain Murray on the Missouri had been looking north through his binoculars at the distant shadow of Iowa on the horizon. It was the last thing he saw. The brilliant white light was searing, many times the brightness and heat of the sun, and “Sunshine” Murray was instantly blind.

Halsey felt the flash as much as he saw it out of the corner of his eye, immediately knowing what had happened. Any man who sees a nuclear weapon detonate once will never forget the experience if he lives through it. The Russians had fired off one bomb earlier that morning, and now the evening was ushered in with a second sun on the horizon. They’ve hit us again, he thought. My God, they’ve hit Chuck Wellborn on the Iowa.

Now the words of Admiral Fraser came back to haunt him from that first meeting they had together on the Missouri… “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.”

The blinding light was gone in a flash, and next came the shock wave, the awful racing wind, and the low roar in the distance, like the bellow of an evil dragon. It was much worse than before, and Missouri was far closer than the warning shop fired that morning. Two suns in the morning, thought Halsey; two suns at day’s end. He turned to see the mushroom rising where the battleship Iowa had once been stalwartly firing her main guns at a distant, unseen enemy. The Big Stick was gone, broken, hidden by a rising hollow column of seething water, its walls some 300 feet thick. The temperature there at ground zero reached as high as 7,200 degrees Fahrenheit in the first second of the detonation. Half a mile away it was as hot as 3,200 degrees, but only for an instant. Initially the sea was boiled away to vapor, but as the detonation quickly cooled it swelled up into a massive spray dome that was soon wreathed by a thick mist that came to be known as a “Wilson Cloud.” This slowly lifted to reveal the darkened hulk of the once proud battleship, no more than a battered shadow on the sea now.

Then the ocean itself rolled out with the onrushing wave, leaving a circle of frothy white foam behind it as it went. The shock produced a huge swell in the sea, and Halsey could feel Mighty Mo rise up, though she weathered the high tide easily, surging down again until her bow cut into the sea. There had been over a hundred planes in the air nearby when the detonation occurred, the flights just reaching Iowa’s position. Every one of them within a kilometer of the ship was incinerated. Flights as far as five kilometers out were swept away in the raging wind as though batted from the sky, lashed with the terrible blast wave. Farther out the aircraft wheeled and swooped, a few barely managing to recover and avoid being swept into the sea. Between the missiles and the bomb, 165 airmen lost their lives in those searing minutes.

Some ten miles behind them the second wave of pilots raised their gloved hands, shielding their eyes from the flash and light, and some felt the heat even that far away, but they survived. Now the titanic mushroom cloud loomed before them, and they were forced to veer left and right to avoid it, just as Tanner’s flights had veered to avoid the wrath of the Demon volcano. Another Demon was at work that day, but on they came. None knew of the radiation burning through their bodies, and not one would care if they did. They saw the Big Stick die its agonizing death and, as the shock abated, the hot fire of anger burned within them now. There were a hundred planes from the Halsey group still in the air, and the Sprague’s strike wing was only now starting to reach the scene.

One pilot in the Sprague group was Rod Bains, bringing up the rear of the group, the big ASM-N-2 BAT bomb anchored to his fuselage. He had seen the missiles hit the carriers, watched Ticonderoga burning as he climbed to join his mates above. Now he remembered Lowrey shaking his fist at him as he revved up his engines for takeoff. Go get ‘em. Go give them hell.

He opened the throttle up, hastening on and following the radio direction calls being sent by Ziggy Sprague’s radio man on the Wisconsin. They had all seen it. No one could have missed it, the mushroom cloud was thousands of feet high already, and still boiling the sea up into the evening sky. Yet all around him the planes kept on, and he caught one pilot’s eye, giving him the thumbs up as they sped forward—Hellcats, Helldivers, Avengers all.

“The ship is gone, sir,” said Rodenko. “Target destroyed.”

Karpov was staring at the mushroom cloud, his mind beset with images of what it must have been like. They didn’t suffer, he said to himself. It would have been too quick. One minute they were there, and the next minute they would be gone. Yet perhaps this will shake the Americans at last, and they will see what they are up against… Yes, look what they are up against, a raving lunatic with a single minded bent for destruction, Vladimir Karpov, Commander of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet. Did you really think you could rule these men, bend them to your will, make them kowtow to your demands? What was it all for, vengeance for Admiral Golovko, reprisal for the long years of enmity the West imposed upon Russia? You thought you would settle accounts, and look at it now. Look!

“Are you alright, Captain? What are your orders, sir?”

He turned slowly to look at Rodenko, his eyes sallow and empty, as was his soul. There was a God shaped hole in the man, thought Rodenko, but no God could fill it.

“Con, Radar. Enemy aircraft now at twenty kilometers and closing at 400 kph.” The watch stander’s voice was strident in the tense air and the warning finally roused Karpov from his dark reverie. There was no time to scourge himself for what he had done. There would be time enough for that later. The ship was still in danger. Yet he moved listlessly, stepping back, away from the distant mushroom cloud darkening the horizon, feeling strangely light headed.

“Captain?”

Yeltsin would not have believed it if he had not seen it with his own eyes. They had just come left in a hard fifteen point turn when the detonation occurred. Karpov’s earlier demonstration had sent a missile over a hundred kilometers south before it ignited. It was well over the horizon and they did not see the detonation, but this time they were very close. It was the first time he, or any of his bridge crew, had witnessed such a thing. They knew they carried the weapons in the belly of the ship’s magazines, but had never seen what they could really do when fired in anger. Everyone gaped at the horizon, awe struck.

Yet when it was over he was amazed to see that a second wave of aircraft was still coming in from that same heading, the planes sweeping around the tall mushroom cloud as it cauliflowered up into the gloaming sky. And further out to the west there came another large group. Karpov had ordered him to cease fire so the P-900 carrying the tactical weapon would arrive safely on target. What was he planning now? Was he going to swat these remaining planes from the sky with another tactical airburst, or were they to resume conventional SAM defense?

He steadied himself, shaking the horror of the moment from his mind and ordered his radio man to contact Kirov for further instructions. There was no initial response but the hail continued, sounding more and more plaintive with each repetition… “Orlan to Kirov. Come in, Kirov. Requesting battle orders. Over. Orlan to Kirov. Please respond. Over. Where are you, Kirov? Please come in. Orlan to Kirov. Where are you?…

Frustrated and knowing the enemy planes were just minutes away, Yeltsin stepped out of the enclosed armored citadel of the bridge and onto the weather deck, binoculars in hand. They had been steaming about two kilometers in front of the big battlecruiser, but when he scanned the sea in his wake, there was no sign of the ship. Kirov was gone! What had happened?

Yes, they had felt the harsh wind from the explosion, the shock wave and swell from the sea, but even his much smaller ship rode it out easily, and there were no enemy planes in close. Could Kirov have suffered the same fate as Admiral Golovko, struck by a late fired round from the stricken American battleship? No, there was no sign of an explosion aft, and Kirov was a very big ship. If there had been an incident, or even an accident aboard the ship itself, he would have seen something. Yet what was that strange glow on the sea? He would not have time to investigate further.

The hard seconds ticked away, and now it struck him that Orlan was alone, and soon to be faced by a massive air attack. Time was running out. He rushed back into the bridge.

“Air alert one! Resume SAM defense! Ready all close in defense systems!”

The klaxon howled out the alert, and within seconds the first sleek SAMs were ejecting again from the ship’s forward deck, streaking wildly into the sky to seek and destroy the American planes. The roar of the missiles continued, one after another, the skies streaked by ribbons of smoke as they sped away on hot white tails. Then he heard the low, distant drone of many engines, saw the blue specks in the sky drawing ever nearer amid the roiling explosion from his lethal SAMs

They were coming—Hellcats, Helldivers, Avengers all—and one man named Bains with a big fat Bat Bomb under his fuselage was feeling very lucky that day. He saw something on the sea ahead of him, squinting as the light gleamed on its odd angles and lines. The sky around him was a chaos of fire and smoke. Planes were being hit and going down in flames.

Hell, he thought. I’ve got the range right now, and he pulled hard on the bomb release. The Bat Bomb was on its way, one solitary rocket fired against the scores of sleek weapons being fired by Orlan.

“Forgive me, Admiral. I know you are a very busy man these days, and I hate to impose on your time.” Kamenski settled into a chair, cradling the thick volume under his arm.

“That time may be running out,” said Volsky. “As you can see, the accommodations here are not nearly so plush as our offices above ground. I’m afraid Moscow continues to dig itself into a hole insofar as these hostilities are concerned. So we dig too.”

“Is it really that bad?”

Volsky gave the old man a long look. “I have seen it, Mister Kamenski; seen it with my own eyes. The past was not able to hold us long, it seemed. We kept bouncing back and forth from some distant future, well after the war was fought, and then into the hell of that last war again—out of the frying pan, into the fire. In those strange intervals we learned the war was to begin here in the Pacific, and so it has, in spite of our effort to prevent it. Perhaps it is not so easy to change time and fate after all. We have also seen what was left of the world after this current little disagreement was fought, and there was very little to speak of.”

“I understand,” said Kamenski. “As much as any man could, I suppose. Can we do anything more?”

“I have asked myself that a thousand times, but it is very frustrating. I still have Marines at the Naval Logistics Building, you know. Perhaps, I thought, we will get another letter.”

“I see… Then you are still hoping Fedorov will appear from the ether and pronounce that all is well.”

“Of course! But that’s a fool’s wish now, isn’t it? We never knew how to control things—these odd time displacements. I’m still not sure how we ever managed to get home. Suppose Fedorov completes his mission, and he returns, but not until the year 2022, or 2025. This possibility crossed my mind. It would mean we wait here in suspense, if we can dig a hole deep enough to survive what I know is coming next. Well, we don’t have two or three years to wait. I would be willing to bet that we may not have more than a few days left now before things get out of hand. And what would I do, I asked myself, if these were the last three days in the world we know? What would you do, Mister Kamenski?”

“Me? Why, I think I would take a little trip. In fact, that’s exactly what I am planning to do. If you could remove yourself from your duties here I would ask you to come with me.”

Volsky smiled, then the warmth fled from his eyes and he seemed to stare vacantly ahead. “Mister Kamenski, I don’t think there is any place we can go to hide from what is coming.”

“Don’t be so gloomy, Admiral. One must have faith.” He was fingering something with his left hand in his pocket as he spoke. The other still clung to a thick book beneath his arm.

Yes, he thought, a little trip. He really wished the Admiral could come with him. He was already guilty enough with the thought of stealing away on his own, but something had to be done, and it was clear to him that the Admiral, and all the other men in their nice pressed military uniforms, seemed powerless to change the fate they were shaping with their very own hands. It was as if they thought the war was something that was going to happen to them, something that was coming like a bad storm, as the Admiral seemed to believe…something inevitable. In the end they will realize that it was all their doing. They were the war. That was the hard truth they hid from behind those gold stripes and gilded caps, and all the decorations on their chest. He sighed, feeling the weight of the key in his pocket now. It seemed such a small and insignificant thing, but the doors it could open…

“Well Admiral, we may not have to wait all that time for Fedorov to appear. In all our plans and discussions it occurred to me that the end of those operations would soon be apparent to us here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our plan… Fedorov’s plan, the whole business with Orlov and these control rods and the helicopter. It still astounds me when I think that this was all we could consider doing with the power we had in hand when Kapustin turned up those other two rods.”

“We still don’t know if they will even work. The one rod was proven—Rod-25—the others have yet to meet the test. Dobrynin only just launched his mission.”

“Oh, but they have met the test,” Kamenski said quickly. “That is if they were ever put to use. You see, I shared this with the Inspector General, but never took the time to share it with you, Admiral. We were so busy, but when things settled down I decided to check up on the history.” Now he shifted the volume from under his arm and placed it on the Admiral’s desk.

Volsky looked at it, squinting to see the text on the spine. “The Chronology of the Naval War at Sea. Fedorov’s book?”

“Not the same he owned, but the same volume. A very curious book, Admiral. I was doing some reading in the period relating to late 1945, just as the war ended. You see, it occurred to me that if your Marines and Engineers did actually manage to get those control rods to the Pacific, and contact your missing ships, then we might soon know about it.”

“How is that?”

“It would be right there in that book, Admiral. It would all be history by now.”

“You mean to say you think the book would… would change?”

“Precisely. And I would not say as much if I had not already experienced that very thing happening before. It does change. I’ve already seen it happen several times.”

“Your book changed? This is what Fedorov told me as well. How is it possible.”

“I really don’t know. All I do know is that the information I read on the closing days of the war, and what happened in the Kuriles, is not the same now—not as it was just a few days ago when I last consulted this book.”

“You are certain of this?”

“As certain as this old man can be. Yes, I know you will think I may have simply forgotten what I read days ago. This is all very subjective. But I assure you, the history has changed. When you see what I have discovered you will realize that as well.”

“Then you know what happened? You know the fate of Karpov and Kirov?”

“See for yourself, Admiral.” He opened the book, sliding the big volume so the Admiral could read it more easily. “Turn the page, please. Yes…right there in the right hand column. See for yourself…”