Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) (30 page)

“No sir, the
ship is well, but we had a very near engagement with a German U-boat.”

“A U-boat?
You sound very confident about that.”

“ I believe
I know the boat, sir. And I think I know where it might be hiding as well.”

“Your books
tell you all this?”

“Not exactly,
sir, but I have made some well informed assumptions. We put sonobuoys in the
water where Karpov directed and yet did not find anything, so there is only one
place this boat could be.”

“Did you
tell Karpov about it? The man is very edgy when it comes to submarines.”

“I believe
Captain Karpov has gone below, sir. Rodenko has the bridge for the moment, and
I am heading there now. I just wanted to see how you were recovering and give
you a report. Dobrynin says the reactors are stable, so the ship is stable as
well.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Well sir,
every time we have moved—experienced these odd effects and time displacement,
there has been a strange flux in the reactor core. I think it happened several
times after we first vanished from the scene of that last nuclear detonation. I
found these odd references in the history to the sighting of a ship the allies
believed to be a
Hipper
class cruiser, and on the very course we were
making when we went down to investigate Halifax.”

“Yes,” said
Volsky. “I remember you bringing this up. You are still ruminating on that?”

“It’s just
that I was considering that it might happen again, sir. It obviously
did
happen again, or why else do we find ourselves here, still stuck in the middle
of this war?”

“Have you
considered telling Dobrynin to fiddle with the reactors a bit more,” Zolkin
spoke up.

“What do you
mean, Doctor?”

“Tell him to
turn his dials, or whatever else he does down there, and maybe we will move
again. Then we don’t have this problem of Gibraltar in front of us and the
British can relax, fight Germans and Italians, and leave us poor Russians
alone.”

Volsky got a
laugh from that, but held up his soup spoon, a glint in his eye and said: “The
Doctor makes a good point. Tell Dobrynin to plot a course for Severomorsk, the
year 2021. Then we could all go ashore and forget this nightmare.”

Fedorov
smiled, still considering this for a moment. “I was thinking about something
else,” he said. “Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but it was twelve days from
the day of Orel’s accident until we eventually vanished into this odd green sea
again. That was from July 28 through August 8, counting both days as bookends.
Then we vanish again, and it is another twelve days sailing in that desolate
world we discovered until 20 August—and we move again.”

“You are
suggesting there is an interval involved here, that we move every twelve days?”

“It was just
a thought, sir. Perhaps it is mere coincidence. For that matter, we have never
determined what sent us back in the first place.”

“I thought
it was all these nuclear explosions,” said Zolkin.

“We all
assumed as much,” Fedorov agreed.

“Then if
nobody tries to lock us up here in my sick bay and we can manage to keep our
nuclear warheads in the magazine and not on the missiles, we should be fine,”
Zolkin concluded glibly. “We’ll just sail about the Mediterranean until we run
out of things to shoot at—or until we run out of missiles to fire at them.”

“Not a very
appealing prospect,” said Volsky. “I would much rather find that deserted
island in the South Pacific, but to do that we have to get there alive and in
one piece. The longer we stay here, the more chance we have for these unhappy
encounters with airplanes, battleships and submarines. Something tells me we
have more trouble ahead of us than behind us if we are ever to get out into the
Atlantic again.”

“I have an
idea,” said Zolkin. “This submarine business aside, these waters are relatively
safe, are they not? Wasn’t Spain neutral in the war? Don’t these islands belong
to Spain? We could drop anchor here in neutral waters and wait another week or
so to test Mister Fedorov’s new theory. Maybe the ship will move again, on the
twelfth day, and then we don’t have to kill anybody else, and they don’t have
to kill us.” He folded his arms, a satisfied look on his face.

Fedorov
smiled, his thoughts returning to the problems in this moment. “Well, sir…We
still have the KA-40 up and I could probably prosecute this submarine contact
further, but repairs will be completed by noon and the ship is sound. However I
am sorry to report the loss of four crewman in this last incident.”

He told
Volsky what had happened, and the luck that had saved them from a direct
torpedo strike when the diving boat inadvertently shielded the ship and took
the blow instead.

“Astounding,”
said Zolkin. “It could have been much worse.”

“Very much
worse, Doctor,” said Volsky. “That torpedo would have probably caused severe
damage, and flooding as well. We were very lucky.”

“Sometimes
fate does things like that,” said Zolkin, his dark eyes wide. “We could have
been hit, perhaps we
should
have been hit. Who knows how many we might
have lost in that event? These four men died in their place, and that is all we
have to console ourselves. It would be so much better if we were not sailing
around here in these metal machines shooting at one another, but we are—until
men come to their senses, I suppose, and realize that choosing life is better
than death, even if it means you do not win the day or avenge a fallen foe.”

Fedorov
nodded. Then to Volsky he asked: “Do you want me to destroy this submarine,
sir?”

The Admiral
looked at him from beneath his heavy brows, then slurped another spoonful of
his soup. He realized that the young captain was asking him to shoulder the
burden of this next kill, to give him the order so that he would not have to pull
the trigger himself, but he considered it best to leave this matter alone, and
said as much.

“You are
presently acting Captain of this ship, Mister Fedorov. The decision is yours.
Protect the ship, that is all I ask, and also, I think when you are done with
this submarine business it would be wise to recover all the sonobuoys before we
depart this area. Leave nothing in the water that might be found and raise a
lot of questions, yes?”

“Very Good,
Sir… Will you be returning to duty soon?”

“Ask Zolkin
here,” Volsky inclined his head to his friend.

“Ask Zolkin,
ask Zolkin. Everyone is always asking the doctor for advice. Well in this case,
I think the Admiral is recovering nicely and should be back on his feet in
little time. You may go chase your submarine, Mister Fedorov, but don’t get too
close. A few less explosions would help the Admiral sleep a bit better.”

“Don’t worry
about me, Fedorov,” said Volsky. “I’ll be fine.”

Fedorov left
the sick bay, encouraged by the thought that the Admiral might soon recover to
take the burden of command from him. He headed for the bridge, thinking what to
do about this submarine. They had lost four men. He knew that the U-boat was
still out there, and probably intent on stalking them further if they lingered
here, yet he believed he knew what to do about it now. Moments later he stepped
onto the bridge resumed command from Rodenko, sending him below for some rest.

Karpov had already
gone below a few hours earlier, and would relieve him at dawn. Now he was ready
to consider the matter of this submarine. The KA-40 was still up, though low on
fuel, but he decided to follow his hunch and have a closer look at Fornells
Bay. He had Nikolin radio the helo and ordered the pilot to overfly the inlet
and use infrared cameras and sensors to have a look. Sure enough, when the
telemetry was fed back to the ship he could see the knife like presence of a submerged
submarine hovering in the shallow waters of the bay, very near the entrance. It
was probably trying to sneak out at this very moment, he thought!

Returning to
his navigation station he called up the reference to U-73 once more and clicked
on the link to the boat’s captain, Helmut Rosenbaum. There was Germany’s newest
recipient of the Knight’s cross for the sinking of HMS
Eagle
, he
thought. So there you are, you crafty little bandit. He looked at the first
photo of Rosenbaum, smiling amiably beneath his captain’s hat, a younger man in
a better day. There was another photo of him arriving back at La Spezia after
this very same patrol, a bouquet of flowers before him and his head turned left
to the camera with a gritty smile, his beard unshaven and a jaunty look of
pride in his eyes. He read the final notation on the man’s fate:

 “He left
U-73 in October 1942 and became the commander of the 30th flotilla, which
fought in the Black Sea. Helmut Rosenbaum was killed in an air crash on 10 May
1944.”

As Fedorov
stared at the photo he felt a strange connection to the man, and an eerie
sensation in knowing his future like this. It was a heady, almost God-like
feeling, and something that no man should ever have in his grasp, he thought.

“KA-40
reports it can put a weapon on the target at any time sir,” said Nikolin,
looking at Fedorov.

Roused from
his muse, Fedorov looked at him for a moment and blinked. He could order the
U-Boat destroyed in a heartbeat, snuffing out the lives of every man aboard as
easily as he might blow out a match. In that event he suddenly realized the
photo he was looking at would never even be taken!

Something in
him revolted at that that. It was no longer a cold calculation of war or
survival in the balance.
Kirov
was well off shore and safe from any harm
this U-Boat might still wish upon them. It was his intention to sail west as
soon as the helo was recovered, and even running at only twenty knots the ship
would quickly leave Rosenbaum and his intrepid U-73 behind. He looked again at
the photo, saw the pride in the man’s eyes as he accepted his laurels, and then
he made up his mind. Rosenbaum would die in that plane crash on 10 May, 1944.
The man was living out the last brief years of his life, and Fedorov would give
them to him, come what may.

He
remembered what Doctor Zolkin had said just a few minutes earlier, and he knew
he had chosen correctly:
“…choosing life is better than death, even if it
means you do not win the day or avenge a fallen foe.”

“Mister
Nikolin,” he said. “Order the KA-40 to secure all weapons and return to the
ship immediately. They are to recover all sonobuoys as well. Leave nothing in
the water, is that clear? We are heading west at once.”

Nikolin
raised an eyebrow. “Very well, sir,” he said, and he passed the orders on. When
Karpov returned to the bridge an hour later
Kirov
had sailed and was off
the western edge of Menorca. Heading into the channel between that island and
the largest landform in the Balearic chain, Majorca. He gave a heading of 270
degrees due west, intending to move north of that larger island and then down
through the wider channel to its west. There would be plenty of sea room there
and the ship could stay well off shore and safe from prying eyes. He would use
that channel to head due south before plotting his course for the Alboran Sea,
the last great bottleneck that would lead them to the cork—Gibraltar.

Fedorov
communicated his intentions to Karpov and made ready to leave the bridge. “I
stand relieved, Mister Karpov.”

“Aye, sir.
Rest well.”

Once alone
Karpov inquired about the submarine with Tasarov just as he was about to hand
over his shift to Velichko. “Any sign of that devil?”

“We spotted
it in that inlet a little over an hour ago. The Captain had the KA-40 right on
top of it, but he did not fire, and ordered the helo back to the ship.”

Karpov’s
face registered real surprise. He started to say something, then stopped himself,
thinking. Fedorov had the U-boat in his crosshairs and let the damn thing live!
He never said a word to me about it when I came up to relieve him. He had half
a mind to refuel the helicopter and send it back out to avenge its dastardly
attack on his ship, and avenge the lives of the men that had died, but another
voice spoke to him from within.
“
He who seeks vengeance must
dig two graves:
one
for his enemy and one for himself.”
It was his headstrong obsession with
righting perceived wrongs that had cause this trouble for them in the first
place. He would let Fedorov’s decision stand.

 “Very
well,” he said at length, tapping Tasarov on the shoulder. “Get some sleep and
wash the wax from those ears, Tasarov. We’ll need you back in your chair when
we sail for Gibraltar.”

He let the
matter go and turned to the helmsman: “Steady on two seven zero.”

U-73
slipped quietly through the narrow
mouth of the bay and out into the wide sea beyond that rocky shore. Rosenbaum
immediately raised his periscope for a look in case his enemy was still nearby.
He saw no ship, but spied a strange craft in the air, heading northwest, its
running lights winking as it went.

A strange
feeling came over him, and an involuntary shudder shook his frame as he watched
the aircraft vanish in the grey dawn. It was as if the hand of death had been
poised above his head, and stayed itself. He felt strangely alive, a vibrant
sense of the moment keening up his senses as he scanned the horizon. It was
empty, and the sun was casting its first golden rays on the rocky crest of Cape
Caballería off to the northwest. He knew he could never catch up  with that
British ship again, and something told him that it would not be wise to try. So
he decided to take his boat quietly out to sea and then turn northeast for La
Spezia. He would not get his number seven kill on this patrol, and he would
have to put aside the attack he had planned to avenge the loss of U-563 and
Klaus Bargsten. Enough was enough, he thought.