Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) (28 page)

U-73 was
creeping along at barely three Kph, its bow perfectly positioned to slip
through the narrow entrance to the bay where the depth was just 18 fathoms. It
was dangerous to navigate in such waters, but his boat had a draft under five
meters and he could even remain submerged in that depth as he snuck into the bay,
then sit quietly on the weedy bottom with over thirty meters of water above
him. Tonight he would surface briefly and put men ashore for some fresh water
or perhaps even a little fresh fish to celebrate the occasion.

As was his
habit, Rosenbaum was taking a last look over his shoulder as the light faded,
to be certain nothing threatening was at hand. When he saw the silhouette of
the big ship emerge from behind the massive bulk of Sa Mola Isthmus to the
east, he was shocked. There, not four or five kilometers distant, was one of
the most threatening looking ships he had ever seen. It was big, fully the size
of a battlecruiser, though he could only vaguely discern its guns from this
range. It was creeping along at no more than five knots, he guessed, a perfect
target if ever there was one! Then he noticed a smaller craft in the water near
the ship as well. Probably inspecting the hull for damage, he reasoned, or
putting men ashore.

Something
immediately struck him about this ship, jangling loose a distant memory, and
setting his adrenaline to rush. This had to be the ship his cable had warned
him about, and he now found himself in a perfect position to fire his single
aft torpedo in the stern of the boat. He immediately lowered his periscope,
giving orders for silent running, and to the other men it seemed that the
Kapitän was very much on edge. His second in command, Horst Deckert was
watching him closely, noting the distant look in his eyes and just the hint of
a glaze of fear.

“What is
wrong, Kapitän?” he asked.

Rosenbaum
looked at him apprehensively. “I think I have seen this ship before,” he said
in a low voice, almost a whisper, as if the ship itself might overhear him and
suddenly burst into action as he had seen it do earlier.

“A year
ago,” said Rosenbaum. “In the north Atlantic. Do you remember, Deckert?”

“Ah, that
ship you took to be a target vessel southwest of Iceland?”

“Yes—that’s
the one!”

“The ship
that killed Klaus Bargsten on U-563?”

Rosenbaum
said nothing, nodding at young Hans Altmann, a watch officer who was surely
listening to them out of the corner of his ear. He turned to the young man and
gave an order. “See that that number five is pre-heated well.”

“Ja Kapitän,”
said Altmann, and he passed the order back. For a long shot like this, they
would get much better performance from a pre-heated torpedo. The boat had four
tubes in the bow, and one aft in the stern, his number five tube, and there he
was carrying one of the newer G7e model T2s, upgraded and designated T3 now to
note that it was an improved torpedo. Heated to thirty degrees centigrade
before launch, its battery would perform much better, running out to 7500
meters in trials. If he could get it to run true for four or five thousand
meters he thought he stood a good chance to hit this ship. Then he planned to
scoot into the bay and settled quietly on the silted floor for an hour in case
this ship had a gaggle of destroyers in tow that he could not yet see.

“You’re
going to try a long shot?” Deckert whispered. “Remember what happened to
Bargsten! You already got a big kill with that carrier back there, Kapitän. And
you’ve already got your Knight’s Cross waiting for you back home—if we can get
there in one piece.”

“Don’t
worry, Deckert, I have a good plan, you’ll see.”

He waited a
few minutes consulting his chart for proper depth and angle on this shot while
the torpedo was heated. A British battlecruiser, he thought. There were not
many left, and this one did not look like anything he had ever seen before. His
chart notes on HMS
Renown
, which sometimes operated in these waters,
indicated her length at 242 meters and a draft of a little over eight meters.
This ship was easily that long. If it were a cruiser, the length would be no
more than 190 meters. Might this be a new ship? No matter. He would set his
torpedo running depth at 8 meters and leave it at that. Word was soon passed
that all was ready. He raised his periscope and took another look to be certain
of the angle of his shot, leading the boat based on the running speed of the
torpedo and that of the target. He had his solution.

The sun was
gone now, but the gloaming light still sharply outlined the darker silhouette
of the ship. All he had to do was nudge his boat gently to get the perfect
angle. Gliding on battery, his boat was very quiet, and he could hear no sign
of an Asdic signal indicating the enemy was suspicious of his presence. Once he
had made his adjustment he clenched his jaw and gave the order.

“Feuer jetzt!”

The whoosh
of the torpedo launch seemed the only sound in the boat at that moment, and he
immediately lowered his periscope. “Ahead two thirds,” he whispered, wanting to
get as far away from the track of his running fish as possible. There had been
no need to rig it out with a Federapparat pattern running device, which was
useful against convoys, but not in a situation like this. The last thing he
wanted was for some enterprising seaman on deck to sight down the line of his
incoming torpedo wake and get a fix on his periscope and location, so he went
blind and nudged the boat ahead on battery power, content to slip behind the
intervening mass of the Sa Mola Isthmus and then into Fornells Bay. Like a
dangerous eel, he had taken a bite at the enemy, and now he would slink into
his cave.

He looked to
his man on the hydrophones, who was listening intently to the torpedo as it
went. The man frowned, shaking his head. “It does not sound good, Kapitän. I
think it is losing depth.”

Rosenbaum
clenched his fist with frustration. They had a surface runner! Now the weapon would
strike too high, where most ships in this class would have a strong torpedo
bulwark for protection. Ideally he wanted the torpedo to strike much closer to
its assigned depth, where the hull would curve from the vertical towards the
bilge of the ship, and the armor protection could be avoided. If he had fired a
magnetic head, set to explode beneath the hull, it might have been worse, he
thought. At least this one has whiskers, four metal spikes in the nose that
would detonate the 273kg warhead on contact. It could still do significant
damage, even if it was running shallow.

The entrance
to the bay was a little over 500 meters wide here, but it opened quickly to two
kilometers, and was all of five kilometers long, just deep enough near the
little village to give him a place to hide on the bottom. They’ll never find me
here, he thought as he watched his wrist watch, counting down the seconds left
in the long torpedo run. If he heard no detonation, indicating a miss, he would
settle on the bottom and wait things out. The British would search for him in
vain and, when he was ready, he would sneak out to have another look and begin
the game again.

The second
hand ticked away…

Byko
was waiting on the fantail, watching
the KA-40 slowly rise up from the flight deck, its twin rotors bronzed by the
fading sunlight, its overhead engines roaring as the helo hovered, then slowly
gained altitude. He was a big man, with good sea legs and burly shoulders and
arms, sleeves rolled back and a spanner in one hand while he waited at the diving
station. His features were raw, and weathered from years at sea, and his close
cropped hair did little to conceal the prominent dome of his skull, with more
hair on his short, thick neck than he seemed to have on his head.

The men had been
in the water for two hours, coming and going from the small skiff where it
hovered amidships. They had inspected the big forward bulge off the lower bow
where the passive sonar array was installed and found it free of damage. The
starboard hull was lightly dimpled by fragments of splintered metal, some still
lodged there, and the men were removing them and filling the holes with a fast
acting adhesive sealant. What little seawater they took had been confined to
the inner void and was easily pumped out.

Now they
were working the port side, and the divers had noted a large shrapnel fragment
cutting cleanly across their underwater sonar rim. This was undoubtedly where
the damage was, and after an initial assessment they had returned to the diving
skiff to run round to the aft of the ship and use the side ladders and stair
extension there to re-embark. They were going to need tools, and some
replacement parts as well, including underwater Acetylene torches. A marine
guard sat sullenly in the back of the skiff, standard procedure for security on
any boat that was manned and away from the ship, no matter how close.

Andrey
Siyanko had been with the 874th Naval Infantry Battalion for some years, and
was excited to be included in the special detachment assigned to the new
Kirov
when she launched. Now he looked to the west, watching the last traces of
sunlight fade and etch the distant islands of the Balearic chain in sharp
relief. Then he caught something out of the corner of his left eye, and turned
to squint at the placid sea. His eyes widened with shock when he saw it, the long
thin trail of a fast moving torpedo aimed directly at the heart of the ship!

“Torpedo!’
He shouted, and he instinctively unslung his automatic weapon, taking aim as
the deadly undersea weapon bored in on them. He had little chance of hitting
it, but reacted by sheer reflex as it came surging in, firing on full
automatic.

With
Kirov’s
sonar dark for this vital repair, no one saw the torpedo but this one man, and
the sharp rattle of his weapon was the only reprisal the ship mustered against
the attack. He was firing in sheer self defense, because the torpedo was now
running up very near the surface of the water and aimed directly at his boat.
Siyanko would not live to know what his reflexive, if futile, action had
accomplished.

Chapter 20

The
Torpedo
ran true,
right at the diving boat and struck it dead on, detonating and literally
ripping the small boat to pieces. The fire from Siyanko’s automatic rifle may
have helped in that, but it could not save his life, or even spare
Kirov
from being hurt by the powerful explosion.

On the
bridge, Karpov had just resumed his post while Fedorov remained below seeing to
damage control. He was watching the launch of their last KA-40 on the aft Tin
Man camera feed, pleased that they had some protection airborne against
submarines. Yet no sooner had that thought come to him when he heard the violent
explosion, and felt the ship lurch in response. His only thought in that wild
moment was that they had struck an unseen mine.

He ran out
the side hatch of the citadel to the watch deck, looking aft with shock to see
that there was a huge explosive spray washing up over the ship there. The
diving tender boat was obliterated, and parts of it had been flung against
Kirov’s
hull. Then he saw it, the thin remnant of a torpedo wake dissipating on the
water.

His heart pounded,
eyes wide as he rushed into the citadel shouting at the top of his voice.
“Torpedo! Submarine off the port quarter. Tasarov, do you hear anything? Go to
active sonar!”

“Aye sir!”
The sharp ping of the sonar resounded a second later.
Kirov’s
passive
systems had been shut down for the diving repair, but she could still shout at
the unseen enemy below and listen for the telltale return of the sound waves.

“Samsonov, be
ready on the
Shkval
system and get me an immediate firing solution.”

But no
solution came. Tasarov listened, and listened, and though he was one of the
best sonar men in the fleet, he could hear nothing moving beneath the darkening
still waters.

“We’re too
close to this island,” he said. “I’m getting too many reflections from the
coastal headlands. We need sea room, sir.”

Karpov’s
mind raced ahead, trying to catch up with the unseen enemy. He noted the
direction of the torpedo wake and resolved to immediately fire a salvo from the
ship’s UDAV system down that line at once. The sub had to be somewhere between
the island and the ship, probably a few hundred meters left of right of that
track, and trying to slink away. He squinted at the narrow mouth of an inlet,
but could see little in the dark. It seemed entirely too small a channel there and
he discarded it as a potential escape route. The sub would be diving now and
maneuvering out to sea as quietly as it could.

“Activate UDAV
ASW system! Fire in an arc toward that island, three kilometer range. Now!”

Samsonov was
flipping switches to key the manual fire, as he had no data incoming from
Tasarov’s sonar. He quickly activated the UDAV-2 ASW system and fired two
salvos sending a total of ten rockets out in a wide fan off the port side of
the ship. They exploded with raging fury, generating a curtain of tumultuous
seawater in the distance. If any submarine was lurking there, it would surely
be shaken up by the sudden violence of the attack.
Kirov
had fired back,
yet had not yet seen its foe. It was the first time they had fired without
being able to precisely target their enemy, and with no real assurance of
hitting or hurting him in the process. Even the frantic attempt by the young
Siyanko had been directly aimed. This was no more than a random wall of fire
intended to frighten their enemy and buy the ship some vital time while Karpov
tried to better assess their situation and gain control of the engagement.