B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (9 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Our
demands, sir?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I
don’t understand.”

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

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

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

“Orlov?”

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

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

“What
if we change things again, sir?”

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

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

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

“What
do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Then
the Admiral knows we’re here!”

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

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

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

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

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