Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) (41 page)

“Torpedoes
in the water!” shouted Tasarov on sonar.
His system immediately went to active rapid pulse detection mode, beeping in
ever shortening intervals to indicate the closing range of the oncoming threat.
“I have three contacts.”

 “Come right, thirty degrees hard!” shouted Fedorov.

The ship heeled over with the high speed turn, but Karpov
could see that they would easily avoid the barbs
Intrepid
had hurled at
them on this course, yet that turn would put them dangerously close to the last
torpedo, the fish that had fallen from Tom Wales Albacore II.

“Shkval!”
said Karpov reflexively.

The fast rocket torpedo was fired, acquiring a target in
seconds and racing with impossible speed to destroy it. Karpov looked back out
the port view panes and saw the explosive dome of seawater slowly subside, and the
threatening streaks of two more torpedoes leaving cold white wakes behind them.
Then the scene grew quiet again, and there was only
Kirov’s
churning
wake, and the distant glow of fire on the heavy British ships. Tasarov signaled
that all was well.

The ship had turned on a heading of 292 degrees northwest
now, still running at full battle speed. They had raced past the Almeria bay in
the last forty minutes, coming around past another flat headland that jutted
south into the Alboran Sea. Ahead Fedorov could see the wrinkled shadowy
highlands rising from a rocky coastline and climbing steeply to heights up over
1800 meters. The ship was heading straight for them on this course, in spite of
the danger posed by submarines that might be lurking near the coast. It was the
only sea room they would find off their starboard quarter for a while, and he
knew he would soon have to come left again to get round Cabo Sacratif looming
in the distance. Yet they had finally pulled well ahead of the British battleships,
and the range was now increasing with each passing minute.

They saw one last bright orange belch of fire from their
pursuers, and then the British Guns fell silent.
Nelson
was still
burning badly, with her smoke so thick that the entire conning tower was
engulfed in the black plume and the ship had to turn to get the prevailing wind
off angle so the weary bridge crew could get air and function.
Rodney
had hurled one last vengeful salvo at them, and now the rounds came soaring in
from her A turret and fell in a tight spread so close to the aft section of the
ship that they could feel their rump jostled by the near impact. She would not
find the range again.

The British ships knew that the sea devil they had been
chasing would now escape them.
Kirov
was opening her lead steadily, and
there was no way they could possibly catch up. The intercept course they had
wisely chosen allowed them only this brief window for engagement. So now they
turned thirty points to port, the command of the battle squadron falling to
Admiral Fraser on
Rodney
. Syfret had been hustled off the bridge of
Nelson
,
alive but still unconscious below decks. Fraser also got word from Admiral St.
Lyster that
Indomitable
had been hit by one of these rockets, and took
some heavy damage below the fight deck amidships. They couldn’t stand to lose
any more carriers.
Eagle
was enough, so he wisely decided to turn his
battered ships southward to cover the carrier force. Most of the destroyers
were fairly well beaten up, except for
Intrepid
, who came out remarkably
unscathed, though she had gotten in closer to this devil than any other ship.

Slowly the rumble of guns and roar of the missiles
subsided, and the night once again settled heavily over the scene. The ‘Battle
of Almeria Bay’ had been fought for well over an hour and was now concluded. Though
Rodney
and
Nelson
had clearly taken the harder blows, they would
say that they were not the first to turn from the heat of battle, and that
their enemy had fled into the night, breaking off with her superior speed to
escape the grasp of their 16 inch guns. It was an old story for the
Nelson
class battleships.
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
had escaped them in
the past, and they were not fast enough to chase either
Bismarck
or
Tirpitz
until the former was stopped by planes off the
Ark Royal
so
Rodney
could catch up. Their day had come and gone, and they survived to be eventually
folded into laborious convoy escort duty later in the war, still a stalwart
threat, but well past their hour of glory.

When the destroyer attack failed and the air strike
suffered such grievous losses, Fraser knew his men had suffered enough for one
night. They had all done their best, and a good many DSOs would be awarded for
this action—but too many of them posthumously. As destroyer
Intrepid
led
the remnant of the flotilla south, he gave the order to turn and effect a
rendezvous with the carriers. Then he tramped listlessly into the wireless room
to get a message off to Tovey. It was just three short words, and they would
carry the whole of what his men and ships had striven for and failed to win in
the end.

‘Geronimo…Geronimo…Geronimo…’

Submarine
Talisman
had been lying quietly in
the cool still waters off the coast of Adra, her Asdic operator listening to the
churning sea battle above. Lieutenant Commander Michael Willmott had drifted
the boat up to periscope depth. He had come to this boat in time to get in on
some exciting North Atlantic patrols. His boat had hunted for the cruiser
Prince
Eugen
and was also engaged in the hunt for
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau,
and thought he had them in his sights on March 12, diving to begin his
attack. But as he lined up on the targets he suddenly realized he was looking
at HMS
Rodney
and
King George V!
He made the best of an
embarrassing moment and used the situation as a drill for a practice attack
before surfacing and signaling his presence to the battleships.

Now he was listening to the rumble of
Rodney’s
guns
off to the southeast, their massive report still audible at this shallow depth,
a dull boom resounding through the sea. The old girl still has a temper when
she wants to, he thought. He was glad he had not stupidly fired on her those
months ago. It seemed his boat had been fated to run afoul of his own side far
too often in this war. A year ago he had fired on what he thought was an enemy
submarine and later learned it was Favell’s boat, HMS
Otus
. Thankfully
all his torpedoes missed. Most recently he had been stalking a U-Boat in the
Bay of Biscay, and when he surfaced to get up some speed he was quickly pounced
upon by a British Sunderland and depth charged!

Talisman
was knocked about quite a bit, and put in to
Gibraltar for repairs on the morning of 13th of August. Operation Pedestal was
in full gear and he was gratefully spared that duty while the engineers worked
feverishly on his boat at the docks—a little too feverishly, he thought. He
remembered pulling a mate aside and asking him what all the haste was about.

“Can’t say as I know, Lieutenant,” the man said. “We were
just to have this boat seaworthy by sunset, and that’s all I know.”

“By tonight? Well look at her—look at that hull buckling
there.”

“Don’t worry none sir, we’ll patch her up nice and good…But
I’d keep to shallow water if I was you, sir. None of that deep diving and
such.”

Willmott was flabbergasted, but he had orders in hand by
15:00 hours that afternoon and was told to get out into the Alboran Sea and
lurk in the coastal waters off Spain to look for a renegade French battlecruiser.
And here he was, at a little before 04:00 hours on the morning of August 14th.

At least it was a little excitement. He could be stuck in
an office in the bowels of the Rock answering a raft of tedious questions about
that Sunderland incident. Now he had a shot at another fast capital ship, and
by god, there the bugger was! He spied the threatening silhouette of what
looked like a battlecruiser, the ship his Asdic operator had been listening to
for the last half hour, and she was running fast and furious right in his
direction. All he had to do now was fire.

“Down scope! Load tubes one and four. On the double quick!”

The crews rushed to battle stations and he had his fish
ready to fry in record time. He raised the periscope again to check his alignment.
There it was, still barreling in at high speed, some 3000 meters out. He could
take a long shot, or he could wait silently in the shallows until it came just
a little closer, he thought. While he was considering his options his luck ran
out. Something came out of the murky depths with lightning speed and found his
boat first. He felt a massive explosion well aft, the terrible sound of metal wrenching
apart, then the rush of seawater raging in. The tail of the sub had been blown
clean away.

In one last moment of life he looked at his dazed Executive
Officer, eyes wide and said: “My God, Johnny. I think they’ve buggered us!”

They were the last words spoken by any man on the boat.

An interval
of uneasy calm ensued, and the men
aboard
Kirov
eased back in their posts, breathing a little more calmly
after the
Shkval
had killed the sub. Tasarov again signaled all clear
and Karpov visibly relaxed, his shoulders slumping, face drawn with fatigue.
They had been running the gauntlet for the last three hours, evading the heavy
blows of the enemy with everything their skill and the amazing technological
advantages of their ship could deliver.

Fedorov looked at the position of the enemy surface action
groups on radar and he knew they had broken through. He consulted his
navigation board and settled on a course of 250 degrees southwest. They were
still 240 miles east of Gibraltar, and when Byko called and asked him to slow
the ship down so he could check on some possible damage aft, he reduced to twenty
knots for a time and changed his heading slightly west to an area where he
thought the thermals would not provide any acoustic cover for another lurking
submarine.

At the time he knew nothing of the codeword that had been
flashed from Fraser to Tovey indicating that he had escaped the grasp of Force
Z and was headed west. He knew nothing of Home Fleet as it made its steady
approach, now well past Lisbon and churning its way south. His only thought was
that they were now out in front of Force Z, out of range of those terrible 16
inch guns, and not likely to be caught again. He intended to get back up near
thirty knots at his earliest opportunity, and to make Gibraltar by nine or ten
in the morning for the slog through the straits.

But the best laid plans of mice and men, have oft gone
awry.

Part XI

The Eleventh Hour

“It takes
something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”

~
Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

Chapter
31

There was
one more attack just before dawn out of
Gibraltar. A well coordinated strike from both land based aircraft and the
remaining strike aircraft from Force Z’s Carriers. As before, the planes and
pilots were gallant, but they were seen from the every moment they took off and
assumed their formations to begin their approach, and they were targeted by
Kirov
’s
deadly SAM systems long before they could pose any threat. Yet it cost them
another eighteen Klinok missiles before Rodenko reported the remaining flights
were breaking off and turning away. They had already expended twenty-four
Klinoks earlier that morning to repel the first carrier strike.

“What is our magazine still holding?” Fedorov asked,
concerned.

Samsonov took note, a look on his face like a poker player
who was slowly watching his chips diminishing as he pushed one stack after
another out onto the table, winning hand after hand, but getting nothing in
return. “Sir,” he began, “this last action has reduced our Klinok SAM inventory
to thirty-seven missiles, and we still have thirty-five S-300s
remaining—seventy-two total SAMs.”

“What about our primaries?”

“Nine missiles each on the Moskit-II system and MOS-III
Starfires. Eight P-900 cruise missiles remaining.”

That was now a matter of some concern. He looked at Karpov,
his eyes clearly carrying the message he was trying to convey. “Twenty six
missiles,” he said slowly. “That’s all we have left in the way of anything that
can seriously damage a ship. When they are gone this invincible battlecruiser
becomes a big, fast anti-aircraft cruiser, and little more. When the SAMs are
expended, then we have only the Gatling Guns remaining against air strikes, and
when
they
run out of ammunition, we will be more vulnerable to enemy air
attacks than a tramp steamer. I note from Rodenko’s screen that we did not sink
either of the two British battleships, though we undoubtedly hurt them badly.
Force Z will still be behind us now, though I would think they would be more
than cautious about engaging us again, even if they could. That said, they will
soon be reinforced by Admiral Burrough’s detachment, Force X. He was escorting
the surviving merchant ships on their final leg to Malta, and his force took
some significant damage, but he will have destroyers to reinforce Force Z  and
a couple of damaged cruisers,
Nigeria
and
Kenya
. My guess is that
they will reform as one new task force to block the route east again if the
Straits of Gibraltar prove a major obstacle for us. They will put out the fires
on those battleships and still be a dangerous force coming up on us from
behind.”