B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (2 page)

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was correct.

Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And
your reconnaissance?”

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

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

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

“Something
of that sort.”

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

“Might
they have suspected your planes were Japanese?”

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

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

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

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

“Are
you talking about the bomb?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Precisely.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Amazing,”
said Halsey.

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

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

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

“What
happened?”

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