Grand Alliance (Kirov Series)

by John Schettler

  Kirov Saga:

  Grand Alliance

  By

  John Schettler

  A publication of: The Writing Shop Press

  Grand Alliance, Copyright©2014, John A. Schettler

  Discover other titles by John Schettler:

  The Kirov Saga: (Military Fiction)

  Kirov - Kirov Series - Volume I

  Cauldron Of Fire - Kirov Series - Volume II

  Pacific Storm - Kirov Series - Volume III

  Men Of War - Kirov Series - Volume IV

  Nine Days Falling - Kirov Series - Volume V

  Fallen Angels - Kirov Series - Volume VI

  Devil’s Garden - Kirov Series - Volume VII

  Armageddon – Kirov Series – Volume VIII

  Altered States– Kirov Series – Volume IX

  Darkest Hour– Kirov Series – Volume X

  Hinge Of Fate– Kirov Series – Volume XI

  Three Kings – Kirov Series – Volume XII

  Grand Alliance – Kirov Series – Volume XIII

  Hammer Of God – Kirov Series – Volume XIV

  Crescendo Of Doom – Kirov Series – Volume XV

  Award Winning Science Fiction:

  Meridian - Meridian Series - Volume I

  Nexus Point - Meridian Series - Volume II

  Touchstone - Meridian Series - Volume III

  Anvil of Fate - Meridian Series - Volume IV

  Golem 7 - Meridian Series - Volume V

  Classic Science Fiction:

  Wild Zone - Dharman Series - Volume I

  Mother Heart - Dharman Series - Volume II

  Historical Fiction:

  Taklamakan - Silk Road Series - Volume I

  Khan Tengri - Silk Road Series - Volume II

  Dream Reaper – Mythic Horror Mystery

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  Kirov Saga:

  Grand Alliance

  By

  John Schettler

  Kirov Saga:

  Grand Alliance

  By

  John Schettler

  Part I – Shreds and Patches

  Part II – The Awakening

  Part III – Seeing The Elephant

  Part IV – Torch In The Wind

  Part V – Turnabout

  Part VI – Lessons Of War

  Part VII – The Battle

  Part VIII – Sheepdog

  Part IX – Strange Bedfellows

  Part X – Better Late Than Never

  Part XI – Taking Stock

  Part XII – Scareships

  Author’s Note:

  For readers who might be dropping in without having taken the journey here from book one in the Kirov Series, this is the story of a Russian modern day battlecruiser displaced in time to the 1940s and embroiled in WWII. Their actions over the many episodes have so fractured the history, that they now find themselves in an alternate retelling of those events. In places the history is remarkably true to what it once was, in others badly cracked and markedly different. Therefore, events in this account of WWII have changed. Operations have been spawned that never happened, like the German attack on Gibraltar, and others will be cancelled and may never occur, like Operation Torch. And even if some events here do ring true as they happened before, the dates of those campaigns may be changed, and they may occur earlier or later than they did in the history you may know.

  This alternate history began in Book 9 of the series, entitled Altered States, and you would do well to at least back step and begin your journey there if you are interested in the period June 1940 to January 1 1941, which is covered in books 9 through 11 in the series. That time encompasses action in the North Atlantic, the battle of Britain, German plans and decisions regarding Operations Seelöwe and Felix, the action against the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir and Dakar, and other events in Siberia that serve as foundations for things that will occur later in the series.

  To faithful crew members, my readers who have been with me from the first book, Three Kings was a “bridge novel” leading you to this one, and Grand Alliance begins the fourth trilogy in the series. It now takes us into the action that has been building on land and at sea as the British struggle for their survival in the Middle East and Mediterranean. As always, Fedorov, Volsky, Orlov and Karpov and others will be right in the thick of things, on land or at sea, for good or for ill. Enjoy!

  -J. Schettler

  Part I

  A Thing of Shreds and Patches

  “My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,

  And makes as healthful music.

  it is not madness that I have uttered.

  Bring me to the test,

  and I the matter will re-word…”

  ― William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4

  Chapter 1

  Brigadier General Kinlan arrived back at the tail of the column, his mind weighted with a thousand impossible thoughts. The evidence of his own eyes had betrayed his thin hold on sanity, forcing him to stand at the edge of oblivion and stare into the abyss. He felt completely untethered, his thoughts as dark as the dead satellite GPS links, a blind man groping about in a desert sandstorm in a desperate search to find something he could get hold of to save himself from being buried.

  He stepped out of the FV432 command vehicle, thankful his sand goggles hid the uncertainty and fear in his eyes. His boast to his Chief of Staff, old reliable Sims, still echoed in his mind. What were they going to do? Could this all be really happening? Was his whole brigade now caught up in this whirlwind of impossibility, trapped in the deserts of 1941 and marooned in World War Two?

  Where was that damn Russian Captain? “Sims,” he said, forcing as much normalcy on his tone of voice as he could. The men, the few that had heard and seen the same evidence as he had, would be as disoriented and clueless as he felt now, and it was his to be the heavy anchor and keep this ship from foundering on the rocks. They would look to him, first and foremost, to make sense of what was happening, and sort it all out. So he reached for the book. They would do things the Army way, step by step.

  The Army way, thought Kinlan. The four pillars of operations were drilled into his head early on in officer’s training schools: integrity of purpose, application and threat of force, the nature and character of the conflict, enduring philosophy and principles… he smiled grimly at that, still hearing the command instructor’s words as if they were just spoken.

  “These principles should be adhered to in every respect, but they are not immune from change. They are malleable, and can be altered so that they may be applied to as many situations as possible, but only after careful consideration. Doctrine is the map for all your operations. It turns the sum of subjective thinking into an objective guide for action, thus distilling a sometimes confusing array of ideas and opinions into a clear, simple essence. Existing doctrine—based on common sense—should be consulted before new ideas are floated, but nothing should be taken too literally in translation. And remember that all principles of war fighting rest upon the cohesion of will, in ourselves, our allies, and our adversaries.”

  Doctrine, common sense and will power. Know the rules and use them, but be ready to break them if the situation warrants… But only after careful consideration. And by all means, don’t be stupid. That was the menu now, right from the book of war. He had long known that no plan, however carefully it was devised, ever survived first contact with the enemy—but this? This was something else entirely. This was sheer bedlam.

  Rommel… He had told Sims he was going to head for Mersa Matruh as planned, and if he found anyone named Rommel out there he would kick his ass half way to Berlin. Yet
at the moment, with communications down, no satellite links, no sitrep, little intelligence as to what had actually happened, and this crazy Russian Captain and his troupe of World War Two impersonators, the doctrine called for caution. Rommel… It was he who had coined the phrase so often repeated by surly instructors in the officer’s schools: “The British write some of the best doctrine in the world; it is fortunate that their officers do not read it!”

  Doctrine… Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act… Yet at the moment he would go dark and still. There was no sense pushing his five miles of steel and thunder north until he knew damn well what he was heading for, and to a certainty. Now he wished he still had the 656th Squadron Apaches with him, but the air assault units were the first to depart. They left for Mersa Matruh three days before the missile came in. They were spared the madness, but he could damn well use their eyes and mobility right now. Then he remembered the Russians, and that nice fat KA-40 helicopter sitting out there somewhere.

  “Tell Hampton to send out a Wingo to all units. The column is to stop and remain in NBC order, engines off, lights dark, except for flankers and air defense security. Then find me that Russian Captain and his interpreter, the fellow who calls himself Popski. We’re going to get to the bottom of this right now.”

  “Sir!” Sims was off at the trot, soon disappearing into the heavy brown desert airs, still occluded heavily at ground level from the recent storm.

  Send out a Wingo, which was Army slang for WngO, a Warning Order. Sense, warn, consider, decide, execute… And be ready to take risks. He might be faulted for stopping now, leaving his column strung out, motionless, a massive sinuous heat signature on the desert. That wouldn’t matter much to another ICBM, so he decided to take the risk. He knew that mobility was his first guarantor of survivability, but something told him it was not good just blundering ahead until he could understand his environment and make some sense of this situation.

  He wanted to talk to that Russian Captain again, but even as he thought this, he heard the rebuke so often quoted in the Army Operations Manual about the last war in this goddamned desert. ‘The British were plagued by feebleness, by lack of instant authority in the high command. Intentions were too often obscure. Orders at army, corps, or divisional level were too often treated as the basis for discussion, matters for visit, argument, expostulation even. The result was a system of command too conversational and chatty, rather than instant and incisive…’

  What if these two characters had been sent out here to serve as a grand distraction to delay his move north? That thought was silly. Could he imagine the Russians dreaming up something like this charade? How can we make sure the British will stay in the target zone? I know, send in a few men on helicopters to ID their position, and better yet, we can dress them up in old World War Two uniforms and tell the British they’ve been transported to that old romantic era of the past where the Desert Rats first made their mark on these sands.

  He shook his head… Impossible. The Russians couldn’t dream this up in a century. This business with the LRDG, Popski, O’Connor and the whole bit… well it all seemed so damnably authentic. The look in O’Connor’s eye was riveting, and he was mad as a hornet now in the other FV432. To calm the man he had played along, almost comically.

  “General,” he had said. “We’re glad you’ve been recovered, but I’ve a bit of a problem on my hands at the moment, and more than one. Would you be so kind as to wait here while I complete my reconnaissance? We’re trying to get through to the liaison officer in Cairo.”

  That worked. It at least gave him the time he needed to slip away and sort this whole mess out. Yet the more he looked at the situation, the more wild and crazy it all became! The Russian had come to him bang away with the assertion that he should look over his shoulder and return to the Sultan Apache facilities. In the end, he had granted the man the small grace of compliance, and sent a patrol back to check on the status of things at the massive oil drilling site. They reported nothing was there, and Kinlan immediately assumed they had wandered off somewhere in this damn desert sand storm and were probably lost in the desolation of the Qattara Depression. So he went to look for himself.

  Nine months out here in the desert had given him an uncanny sense of how to navigate, even in conditions like this. He knew where his column was when the lights went out and they had lost all satellite links and GPS. So he got in his FV432, pulled out a compass, only to find the needle was spinning like a top! Something was certainly wrong, but he moved south, able to follow the fading remnant of the column’s tracks. Sixty ton tanks leave a good footprint on the desert wherever they go, and he had sixty Challenger IIs in the brigade. It wasn’t long before he saw the familiar shape of Hill 587, and realized he had come east to the edge of the Qattara Depression. Beyond this point the land would cascade down in a steep escarpment into the silted, wadi infested Sebka that was completely impassible to vehicles. But behind him he had the stony plateau where the Sultan Apache facilities should be… and they were gone.

  Not destroyed… not blasted to hell by another damn Russian ICBM… The desert was a sublime, immaculate wasteland, with fresh drifts of windblown sand forming even here. This was something he had not counted on; something no man could factor into his operational planning, no matter how closely he read the manual and adhered to the principles of the Operational Art. This was something wholly unaccountable, a madness that had come upon him like the desert storm, obscuring all reason and sanity and presenting him with the bewildering prospect of having to lend credence to the impossible story spewed by this Russian Captain.

  Popski, O’Connor, and a Russian Naval Captain… Now he had the distinct feeling that O’Connor had never once laid eyes on the Russian, and knew nothing whatsoever of the man. If this was an act, aimed at distracting him into immobility here, it was masterful.

  Sims was back, with the Russian in tow, and he folded his arms, thinking. “Very well,” he began, looking at the Russian. “I’ve done what you asked of me, and had a good long look at the facilities, at least the place where they once existed. That is no longer the case.”

  Popski translated, still with a completely befuddled look on his face as he did so. When Fedorov realized they were again to meet with the commander of this force, he had quietly spoken with Popski to try and prepare him for what he might soon hear.

  “Popski,” he said. “I must discuss our situation with this officer, and you will hear many things that will make absolutely no sense to you. I know it will be confusing, and I will do my best to explain it all to you later, but for now, can you simply serve as my voice and translate what I say? My English can get the essence across, but I’m afraid my vocabulary is somewhat limited still. Just translate, and I’ll sort this all out for you once we set things right with the British.”

  “Good enough,” said Popski, but it was not long before he did begin to hear strange talk between these two men, some of it stupefying nonsense, other things complete mysteries to him, words and terms he had never heard or used before, though these two men clearly seemed to know what they meant.

  “It is as I have told you,” said Fedorov. “The facilities remain where they were, but the timeframe has changed. There was a missile strike on your position, and a detonation, correct?”

  “You ought to know about it,” said Kinlan, still nurturing the assumption that this man and his band of Russian Marines were out here to guide in those warheads.

  “I assure you, I knew nothing, because I was not there, General. I was not in that timeframe at all. I was here all along. Understand? I have been here for the last six months, my ship and crew as well, and all of us trapped here in this time—in this war.”

  “You’re telling me you had some kind of an accident aboard ship?”

  “It had something to do with our reactors.” Fedorov did not want to get into all the details of Rod-25, Tunguska, the fragmented time that event had caused, the hidden places in the world where fissures in time had been cre
ated to allow men and objects to make impossible journeys through time. It was enough to try and give this man some footing here, some kind of solid ground to stand on, as shiftless and windblown as it all might seem now.

  “General,” he said through Popski. “When this storm finally abates, your systems will settle down, but you will never establish satellite links again—ever. In fact, you will never again receive another message or word from the world you knew. The only communications you will ever pick up will be things of this world, of this time, and the year is 1941—January of 1941 to be more precise. That is why the stars and moon seem to conspire against you. Believe me, I was a navigator by trade before being promoted to my present position. When this first happened to us, I used my skills as a navigator to determine the stars and moon were not what they should be, just as your men did.”

  Popski could not help but cast a furtive glance at the night sky above as the evening settled over the scene and the first stars were again visible in the slowly clearing airs.

  “Then you’re trying to tell me this man O’Connor is the real thing? This fellow Wavell that was bending my ear ten minutes ago is indeed General Archibald Wavell?”

  “Correct. Impossible, but true. It took us a very long time to determine what had happened to us, and relate it to the strange effects of a nuclear detonation. Apparently the same thing has just happened to you. We determined that these effects have a radius—like the EMP effect can influence an area beyond the core blast zone. Well, even if this detonation missed its target, you must have remained inside the zone.”

  Kinlan stood with that for some time, removing his sand goggles to get a better look at the man, noting the unfailing sincerity in his tone and expression. He allowed himself a question, even though it would admit to grudging acceptance of this whole wild scenario.