Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series) (5 page)

Perhaps
a hundred planes massed above
Iowa
had been swept to oblivion by that
detonation, but there looked to be another hundred behind them, veering left
and right around the angry mushroom cloud and still bravely bearing down on his
ship.

“How
many missiles do we have remaining?” He shouted over the growing noise of the
oncoming planes.

“Sir,
I read 96 SAMs still remaining and ready to fire.”

But
there was a second group of aircraft off their starboard side, the planes off
Ticonderoga
and the remainder of Sprague’s carrier group, at least 160 or more contacts. He
was now being attacked by nearly 280 enemy aircraft, three planes for every
missile they had on the primary SAM system. They had 56 more missiles on the
Kashtan system, and 8700 rounds on the 30mm Autocannons. If it came to that
things will be very bad, he thought. Very bad indeed.

Sheer
mass and brutal determination had been at the heart of war fighting in this
era. In the beginning the Germans danced and maneuvered, running armored rings
around their sluggish opponents. Four years later the allies were a massive
juggernaut, virtually unstoppable, and relentlessly grinding down their enemies
by the sheer weight of massed fire and steel. The Americans had beaten down the
Japanese by simply out-producing them, building hundreds of ships and thousands
of planes. And when Japan finally sent her last armored gladiators out,
Yamato
and
Musashi
, the Americans simply swarmed over them with relentless air
strikes, like bees against a lion.
Yamato
was hit by eleven torpedoes
and six bombs before her magazines exploded sending a mushroom cloud six
kilometers high that was seen over 90 miles away in Japan.
Musashi
was
even tougher, and took 19 torpedo hits and 17 bombs before she finally capsized
and sank.

Any
ship could be sunk, Yeltsin knew. Look what happened to
Admiral Golovko
when the Americans scored just one lucky hit—more a fortunate miss, as they
probably never even saw the stealthy warship. They had been firing at the much larger
silhouette of
Kirov
, and simply missed, the rounds falling short to
strike
Golovko
by sheer chance. It will only take one or two hits to do
the same to us…

Now
the harsh logic of war was apparent to him. His ship was never meant to oppose
this many targets. It was designed to fight as an integrated part of a surface
action group, with fighters from the carrier
Admiral Kuznetsov
overhead and
the support of four or five other ships all contributing to its survivability.
Orlan
was meant to fly with a flight of other proud eagles, and without them the ship
was doomed. Where was
Kirov?

“Radar,
report surface contacts aft.”

“Sir,
my scope is clear. I read no surface contacts on the aft quarter.”

“Sonar!
Go to active search. Report any contacts within five kilometers of the ship.”

Sir,
aye, active search….” There was a brief delay as the sonar pinged out its
plaintive call, still echoed by the communications officer as he continued his
hail: “
Orlan to Kirov. Come in, Kirov. Requesting battle orders. Over. Orlan
to Kirov. Please respond. Over. Where are you, Kirov? Please come in…”

“Sir,
I have no undersea contacts within five kilometers. Continuing search.”

Where
are you
Kirov?

Karpov
had said something that he suddenly recalled now:

“There
is one thing more…Should it come down to nuclear weapons, I must tell you that
our experience leads me to believe that our position in this timeframe could be
affected by a detonation.”

“What
do you mean?”
Yeltsin
still had the same question in his mind now
“Affected in what manner?”

“It
is impossible to say. We have already seen how a massive release of explosive
energy sent us here. A nuclear detonation, close enough, could send us
somewhere…else…”

Clearly
it has sent you somewhere else, Karpov, but it left us behind…unless…Might
another nuclear detonation blow a hole in time for
Orlan
to sail away to
safety? His statement to Karpov had carried that hope.

“Perhaps
this might also be a way for us to get back to our own time again.”

“That
thought occurred to me,”
said
Karpov.
“We might kill two bears with one shot. If we do have to teach the
Americans a lesson, and it changes the history in our favor, that will be one
thing. If it also sends us home, so much the better.”

“And
if it puts two thousand men in an early grave?”
The voice of Doctor Zolkin echoed in
his mind now.
“What then, Karpov?”

What
then?

Should
he follow Karpov’s lead and blast the oncoming American strike wave from the
sky? And what about those fast battleships out there chasing him at 33 knots?
He had sixteen missiles and he had seen Karpov put six
Moskit IIs
on the
American battleship. It was still firing before the final blow ended that
battle! He had three special warheads as well. He could use one to deal with
the contacts to the southwest. The ship’s missiles could then be concentrated
on the remainder of the Halsey air group.

Then
there would be two madmen at large in the history, he thought grimly. He looked
at the men of his bridge crew, tense yet alert, performing their duties by
reflex, following the protocols of their training with expert skill. His ship
was also answering the call of war, engines strong and running full out,
weapons firing with smooth efficiency, missile after missile, each one killing
a man out there in the wild sky—a brave, brave man who may have lived a long
and happy life were it not for the obscenity of this moment, this awful blight
on the face of time.

Karpov
has done his worst and then he leaves me here in the soup, he thought. What
should I do? Do I fight to preserve the lives of my ship and crew, and at any
cost? The light gleamed on his high forehead, the years taking most every hair
that once grew there in his youth. He was a veteran of twenty five years in the
Russian Navy, in line for a promotion, ready to add another stripe to his cuff
and sew in a bigger star there as Rear Admiral Yeltsin. What did any of it
matter now? Was he fighting for Russia here? Would anything he or his ship do here
matter under the crushing weight of the decades to come? Something told him
that he could only worsen the fate of his nation if he added to the grievous
harm Karpov had already done.

He
decided.

Yeltsin
walked slowly over to his executive officer and quietly told him to summon the
ship’s chief engineer, Yeremenko. When the man arrived on the bridge the
missiles were firing fast and furious from the destroyer’s forward deck,
streaking out to find and kill the American planes. One missile—one kill. The math
was ruthless and unerring, yet with each kill the number of missiles remaining
ticked one notch lower.

“Yeremenko,”
Yeltsin said quietly, his voice low so that no other members of the bridge crew
could hear him. “I need you to prepare to scuttle the ship.”

“Sir?”

“Yes,
Yeremenko. The battle looks to be a glorious event out there now as our
missiles punish the enemy at range like this, but the ammunition is limited. The
range is closing fast. I calculate that even if every missile strikes and kills
an enemy plane, we will still be attacked by well over a hundred aircraft in
the next twenty minutes. Our autocannons may get five or ten more, but the rest
will get their chance with us, and I expect we will be hit. You saw what
happened to the
Admiral Golovko.”

“Yes
sir….But what about
Kirov?
The men say they cannot see the ship off the
bow any longer.”

“We
don’t know what happened. We have no radar contacts and there is nothing wrong
with the Fregat system. The ship vanished shortly after that detonation, yet we
remain. Yeremenko…The Americans must not be allowed to obtain the technology
aboard this ship: the computers, weapons systems, reactors, warheads.
Understood?” He finally got to the heart of the matter.

Yeremenko
gave the Captain a wide eyed look, realizing what he was saying. The Captain
did not believe they would survive this attack. How was it possible, a ship
like
Orlan
taken down by the old planes like this flown by men who were
grey haired great grandfathers before they were even born? Yeltsin was telling
him the worst. The ship would have to be destroyed. There must be nothing left
for the Americans to find, because if they were ever to salvage their wreckage
they could leap ahead decades in a single bound. Yet the next obvious question
came to him, and Yeltsin saw it in his eyes even before he spoke the words.

“But…
But what about the men, sir?”

Yeltsin
just looked at him, saying nothing, and Yeremenko knew that they, too, could
never be taken alive by the Americans. The Captain continued.

“Is
there a way we could use one of the special warheads?” Yeltsin’s eyes were
searching now. “It would be quick, complete, and painless. It would be over
before anyone knew it was happening—perhaps just like the fate of the Americans
out there. An eye for an eye…”

Yeremenko
was silent, nodding after a moment, his eyes heavy with grief. “I will do what
I can, sir. I think it can be arranged. But is there no other way, Captain?”

Yeltsin
had no answer, no alternative. “Carry on, Mister Yeremenko. We may have very
little time.”

Lost
in eternity, but with no time to spare. Now they had to hasten to arrange their
own demise! The irony of the situation cut Yeltsin deeply as he turned away,
the sound of the missiles firing now a strident rebuke.

Chapter 5

Tibbets
was up early that morning, watching
the ordnance crews in the secret hanger on North Field, Tinian. The whole
squadron was flying today. The call had come in late the previous night, and
they were told to be ready with all planes—including those of the 509th
Composite Air Group with their special “Silverplate” bomb bay modifications.

They
were stuffing something really sinister in the belly of his plane today, he
knew. He wasn’t sure what to expect, really, but he knew it would be
spectacular. The briefing and training he had completed had prepared him for
the most difficult job any man could ever be asked to do—deliver the bomb in an
act of supreme hostility to beat down a defiant enemy with overwhelming force
and more violence than he could possibly imagine.

His
plane had come all the way from Wendover Army Air Field in Utah, hopping to
Guam and then on to Tinian where it arrived July 6. They changed the plane’s
tail symbol and Victor number, and then the long training runs started dropping
pumpkin bombs over Japan, big fat high explosive conventional bombs that looked
almost identical to the thing they were loading that day. He had hit Kobe and
Nagoya with a couple of practice runs, but they were cities. Now the word came
down that he was being sent up to go after ships at sea!

“Who
ever heard of a B-29 being sent out to look for a ship, Deak?” he said to
Captain William S. “Deak” Parsons, who would serve as the Chief Weaponeer on
the
Enola Gay
that day, arming the bomb in flight to avoid any mishaps
on takeoff.

“Sounds
as crazy to me as it does to you,” said Parsons. “But that’s our primary.
They’re sending the whole group up.”

“Well,
hell, I thought we were supposed to go with just three planes?”

“They
want the sky full of wings,” Colonel. “Scuttlebutt says these ships are using
some slick new rocket weapon for air defense. They chopped up a couple carrier
air groups the other day, and so now they think if they put enough B-29’s up
there it will increase the chance of our plane getting over the target safely.”

“I’m
not sure whether I should be reassured by that or not. But look, Deak, we never
trained to hit a fast moving target at sea. I was supposed to put this thing on
a city.”

“You
may end up doing exactly that,” said Parsons. “Halsey is out after these
Russian ships now, and he’ll likely get the job done before we even get there.”

“Yeah?
Then why all this theater?”

“Because
the Russians lobbed one of these things Halsey’s way this morning, that’s why…”
He thumbed at the special ordnance pit where the bomb they had come to call
“Little Boy” was still sitting ominously on its trailer cradle, ready to be
loaded into the plane.

Tibbets
gave him a look of real surprise. “The Russians have the goddamned bomb?”

“That’s
what I heard.”

“And
they used it on Halsey?”

“Fired
the damn thing from a rocket, but it didn’t hit anything. Word is it was a
deliberate show of force to try and get us to back off. They think the Russkies
want all of Hokkaido, and that they sent these new ships of theirs out to warn
us off.”

“God
almighty…”

“You’ll
hear all this in the pre-flight briefing, Colonel. I got it through back
channels. I may even be shoveling shit here for all I know. But I think you’ll
have a secondary target on this mission too, in case we can’t find these
Russian ships or Halsey gets to them first. Hell, we’re out here loading for
bear, but they may even call the whole damn mission off. We were going to hit
Japan last week, and that never went down.”