‘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.”
“Not if we race for the straits now,” said Karpov. “What else might they thr
ow at us? Are there more ships at Gibraltar?”
“I cannot be certain,” said Fedorov. “The reference material I have is not comprehensive, and things are already in a jumble. Destroyers have been shuffled about from one task force to another and the history is starting to look like well stirred cream in a cup of hot tea—hard to see my tea leaves now. I think we are fortunate that they dispatched so many ships east to support Operation Pedestal, but anything they do have in Gibraltar will be deployed to block the straits. Given the situation with our missile inventory, we must be very judicious in how we employ them.”
“Will there be large capital ships?”
“No, I think we can safely rule that out.”
“Then the deck guns should be sufficient. Our rate of fire and accuracy is so superior that we can handle their destroyers and cruisers easily enough, and our ammunition there is still solid, is it not Samsonov?”
“Sir, we have expended a total of 434 of 3000 rounds on the 152mm batteries.”
“Good. That leaves us well over 2500 rounds. I have a suggestion, Fedorov. What about the KA-40? We could send it ahead to survey the area and report back. With its jammers they will not be able to see it on radar, and it can defend itself from anything that might happen to spot or attack it. In fact, it can even drop a few sonobuoys to see if any more submarines have been deployed in the straits. This way we will know what cards the enemy is holding and can make better tactical decisions on how to best employ our remaining weapon systems.”
Fedorov thought for a moment. “This is our last helo,” he said. “Yet I suppose it does us no good to leave it sitting in the hanger as though it were already gone. Alright, Karpov, we’ll risk it. We certainly have plenty of aviation fuel left for it with the other two helicopters gone. You can make the arrangements. I must go and inform Admiral Volsky of our situation and see if he has any orders for us. The next stage is crucial and I want to keep him in the soup.”
“Certainly, Fedorov. Certainly.” Karpov nodded, but inwardly wished they could handle the matter themselves. Volsky was an experienced and wise commander, but Karpov thought the Admiral was too cautious, and believed himself to be the superior tactician. Thus far they had come over a thousand miles through hostile seas and the ship had been fought well. He was proud of himself, and confident they could complete the last leg of their marathon and get safely out into the Atlantic.
Two messages were to change all that. The first was from damage control Chief Byko, calling on the ship’s comm-system to report a matter of some concern. He had been below decks in the aft of the ship where those two near misses had fallen close off the stern. Now he reported that they were taking seawater below decks near the vital machinery that would run the ship’s drive shafts.
“It is a slow leak, sir. Nothing the pumps cannot handle for the moment, but it could get worse, particularly as we continue to run the engines near full like this. If you could give me some time, a few hours, I might get a better look at the damage. I can’t get men in there when the ship is at thirty knots.”
This weighed heavily on Fedorov. They could not afford to lose the great advantage of speed. Still wary of Force Z at his back, he told Byko that they would have to maintain this speed for another two hours, but when they had put more distance between the ship and their pursuers, he would cut power to any speed he advised. As long as Rodenko could still see the enemy behind them, they could take any action necessary before a threat closed the range. This was the one great advantage Kirov still had at her disposal. She could both see and fight her enemies at very long rage range, like an aircraft carrier might do in WWII. Her only problem was that when she sent out her missiles to attack, they never returned.
That matter settled, he was about to exit the bridge when the second message came in, this time from Nikolin at communications. The young Lieutenant was sitting at his station, weary, but dutiful nonetheless as he waited for his shift to end. Then he heard something odd in his headset, and it drew his attention, a steady beeping which he soon realized was old Morse code. At first he thought to ignore it as simple signals traffic from the many ships and bases in the region around them. But being curious, he decided to listen in. The message seemed to be repeating itself, over and over. He began to decode it, writing the letters down on a note pad he had been doodling on, but it made no sense when he assumed the language was English. Perhaps it was being sent by a Spanish operator, or even French. Then something in his innately Russian head heard a Russian Morse code, with its unique melodies that would be used to convey their special alphabet. He immediately began to make sense of the signal, writing the letters down in large capital letters. The signal faded slightly, but repeated. Dash—dash—dash…dot—dash—dot—dot… He had written that last set of letters below the first, and then put them together, staring at them, quite surprised: НИКОЛИН. It repeated three times, and two short words followed.
“Captain…” he said tentatively. “I have just received an odd message.” Both Fedorov and Karpov turned, waiting.
“Well don’t just sit there with that stupid look on your face, Nikolin,” said Karpov. “What is it?”
“Well sir…It’s in Morse code and I’ve written down the letters, but it’s Russian Morse, sir, and look what they spell!”
Karpov walked over to his station, somewhat annoyed, but when he looked at what Nikolin had written he turned for Fedorov, clearly bothered by what he had seen.
Half way out the aft hatch Fedorov waited. “Well, what is it?”
“My name,” said Nikolin. It repeats three times and then sends two more words: ‘you lose.’ It repeated three times, sir. Then I lost the signal.”
“Russian Morse code? Your name?”
“My surname, sir—Nikolin. Everyone calls me that. No one ever uses my given name. But sir…” he bit his lip, and then launched his missile. “I was playing cards with Orlov below decks on my last leave after dining yesterday. I thought I had a winning hand, sir, two pair, but then Orlov drew one last card and…Well, that was all he said to me: Nikolin, Nikolin, Nikolin—you lose. Then he laid down his cards and there were five spades…”
An hour later both Fedorov and Karpov were with Volsky in the sick bay, their faces grim and worried.
“I thought I had a headache before,” said Volsky. “Then the missiles and gunfire started again. Now this! Why didn’t you report this Orlov business to me earlier?”
“I’m sorry, Admiral,” Doctor Zolkin spoke up. “That was my doing. Fedorov gave me the news while you were sleeping. I thought it could wait.”
“Then what does this mean? Orlov is alive? Nikolin believes that he sent this Morse code?”
“He does, sir,” said Karpov. “And I tell you it would be just like Orlov to do such a thing. He must have bailed out before we targeted the KA-226, and now he’s goading us. We got the helicopter, so you have nothing to worry about on that account.”
“Yes, we got the helicopter, now all I have to worry about is Orlov! The man may not be a historian like Mister Fedorov here, but he knows enough to cause real problems if he opens his mouth.”
“Who would believe anything he said? Besides that, he’s in Spain, and speaks only Russian. No one could even understand him. Yes, he’ll cause a little trouble. He’ll need food, and money, and he’ll have to find new clothes. So he may hurt a few people until he gets what he wants, and then he’s more than likely to just get himself drunk in a bar, and attract the attention of the local authorities. They’ll arrest him and he’ll be detained for the duration of the war. Perhaps it will do him some good.”
“We might hope so,” said Volsky, “but I have read the file on this man when I took command of the ship. He was mixed up with some very shady characters before he came to the navy. He is cagy, and ruthless. Look how he planned his escape. We may have much more to fear in this situation than we realize. It would not be surprised if he evaded capture, and then what might he do? I can tell you one thing. He will not stay
in Spain. He will try to make his way to Russia if he can, and then we get real trouble.”
“He’s a long way from Russia, through a lot of enemy occupied countries.”
“Even if he is captured and detained, what happens after the war ends and they release him?”
Karpov frowned. “We just sent the last KA-40 out an hour ago to scout the straits. It’s due back soon, and we could send a detachment of Marines to look for Orlov. Send Troyak after him. He’ll get the job done.”
“That may not be as easy as it first sounds,” said Fedorov. “Where would they look? Orlov could be anywhere along that coast east of Cartagena now, or well inland if he made it to shore. The signal we received was too brief to get a fix on his location. Finding him may be impossible. It is not like we can simply send Troyak over to make discrete inquiries. None of the Marines speak the language either, and for that matter that whole scenario is simply not practical. I had a bad feeling about this the moment we fired those S-300s. This may have implications we can scarcely imagine now.”
Admiral Volsky shook his head. “I have the same feeling. The man will cause nothing but misery and trouble. Perhaps there is nothing we can do about it beyond hoping that his bad temperament gets him jailed as Karpov suggests, or even killed. I know that is a hard thing to say or wish on one of our own, but there is little more we can do now.”
He looked at them, a weariness in his eyes. “Now for the rest of your bad news. What does Byko say?”
“Flooding below the waterline near the propulsion shafts.” Fedorov was blunt and to the point. “He wants us to reduce revolutions so he can get men inside near the shafts, and put out divers to seal the leak on the hull again. It must have been splinter and concussion damage from those near misses. It aggravated the initial damage there when the helicopter was jettisoned.”
Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) Page 30