Crescendo Of Doom

by John Schettler

  “And I welcome it, sir.” Adler had a gleam in his eye now. “Because I won’t leave all the fighting to this young Stuka pilot. No, I plan on seeing what the British battlecruisers think they might do when Hindenburg darkens their horizon, then we will see what this day of reckoning holds. Because when this ship engages the enemy, the Lord Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.”

  Lütjens smiled. “So you are a poet as well, Kapitan Adler?”

  “No sir, just a good Christian soul. That is Isaiah, Chapter 29, Verse 6.”

  Part VI

  The Gathering Storm

  “They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”

  ― D. Parker

  Chapter 16

  Far to the east, Popski came in with a message that was a matter of some concern. Fedorov had been huddling with Troyak, trying to determine if they could hold on at Raqqah until the British got there, or if he was simply risking the lives of his men, and the Argonauts as well. It was clear to him that, in spite of the edge they had with their modern weaponry, they would soon be badly outnumbered.

  The German 7th Machinegun Battalion had already appeared from the west, coming down the long road back to Aleppo. Another formation had landed by air, in spite of the mauling given them by the X-3 helicopters. Then the first elements of the retreating German 65th Luftland Air Landing Regiment began to appear on the road leading south to Dier ez Zour.

  The fighting was hot near the bridge over the Euphrates. There elements of the German 7th Machinegun Battalion had been trying to suppress the defense on the northern bank by putting down a withering fire from their MG-32s. But the Argonauts had good positions, and whenever the enemy mounted a rush at the far end of the bridge, they were met by equal fire from their assault rifles. At one point, the Germans moved up a truck, trying to advance behind it for cover, but the hand held AT weapons made an end of that enterprise.

  Earlier that day, Troyak had ten marines in the town itself, where they encountered German paratroopers from Ramcke’s battalion trying to infiltrate. They joined with fire teams from the Argonauts, and a brisk firefight ensued. The German troopers were good. They knew how to lay down covering fire, slowly advancing to secure a building, and then using it as a base of fire to support further movement. They were testing the defense, trying to gauge just what they were up against, and concluded this had to be an elite force, all armed with SMGs, and with some amazing hand held weapons that were very powerful.

  Troyak’s Marines held, then counterattacked, and methodically drove the Germans from the strongpoint they had seized. Zykov would again have reason to boast how good his weapon was when he had to clear a room.

  Fedorov was nonetheless worried about the situation. There were only ten men in the town now, and Troyak had told him they could not cover that zone with the forces they had.

  “What do you think, Sergeant? Can we hold here?”

  “We’ve beaten them off for now,” said Troyak. “Our firepower is just too good when well concentrated, but we’re no more than 50 men. Just putting five men on each of those two hills there overlooking the airfield takes half my Marines, and that is not an adequate defense, even with the firepower we have. As for the town itself, it’s too porous. We stopped them today, but they’ll be able to infiltrate there tonight. Our night vision goggles will surprise them, but they have at least a battalion on that flank now. It will be hard to stop. We just don’t have enough men to cover that town, hold those bridges, and this airfield as well. Pick one place to hold, and I’d give us better odds, but I don’t see what good it will do the British for us to be holding this airfield when they get here.”

  “What about the bridges? Can we hold those if we concentrate our entire force?”

  “Possibly, but the ground on the northern end is quite exposed. The enemy will have mortars, and once they get into that town they can fire from concealed positions that won’t be easy to hit with the helicopters. If they know what they are doing, they could hurt us here.”

  “Oh, they know what they’re doing alright,” said Popski. He had just come in from the KA-40, overhearing the end of Fedorov’s conference as he arrived. “But I’m afraid all this talk is academic now.”

  “What do you mean?” Fedorov could see he had something more to say.

  “We’ve just got word from your ship. It comes right from that fleet Admiral of yours. We’re to pull out and return at once.”

  “Pull out? Did Volsky say anything more?”

  “All I got was the order to return. You can get on the radio and confirm if you wish. Argonauts say they got the same treatment. They’re to get back to their own ship as soon as possible.”

  “Something must be up at sea,” said Fedorov, thinking.

  “You’ve heard Rommel’s on the move again?” There was a glint in Popski’s eye. “That might have something to do with it.”

  “Well. That settles it then,” said Fedorov. In one sense he felt relieved. The burden of being responsible for the lives of the men here was no longer on his shoulders. All he had to do was get them safely back to Kirov.

  “Sergeant, get the men to the airfield, and be certain nothing is left behind this time. I want an accounting of every shoelace. We’re going home. If we have the fuel, I just may make one more landing along the way. The rail line south from Aleppo could use another demolition. That might keep it closed a couple more weeks.”

  The men moved out, and he found himself wondering what this summary recall was all about. Rommel was moving again, and Kinlan’s force had mostly been in Syria. That could mean there’s trouble in Libya, and that the fleet has to take action to intervene. I’m Captain of the battlecruiser Kirov. Volsky was gracious in letting me run amok out here for so long.

  He looked about him, noting the hills he would not see his men fight for, the forsaken airstrip, the gleam of the Euphrates to the south. This desert terrain beguiles a man in time, he thought. It’s a sea of sand, and I’ve been maneuvering out here like a sea Captain, but now it’s time I got back to my real duties on the ship. Something tells me there’s more to worry about than holding these bridges.

  He was correct.

  * * *

  On the first of May, even as Rommel kicked off his drive east from Mersa Brega, Fedorov had arrived back aboard Kirov, and was welcomed onto the bridge.

  “Good to see you again,” said Admiral Volsky. “Now that our Captain Navigator is back, the ship can actually do something more than steam in circles off Alexandria.”

  “I didn’t expect to find you so far east,” said Fedorov.

  “That is because we have business that we must now discuss.” Volsky briefed Fedorov on what they were going to attempt, which was a matter of some concern.

  “Run the Straits of Gibraltar? That is going to be very dangerous, sir. We could be facing a great deal of enemy air power.”

  “We understand that, but the German battlefleet has left Toulon and is already heading for Gibraltar. Admiral Tovey believes he has no choice but to attempt this. I have been trying to dig out information from your library, Fedorov, but perhaps you can make my task a little easier. What will we be facing?”

  “Well sir, the enemy will certainly have planes here in their bases along the Libyan coast, and at Malta. That will be the first test. After that, we must run the Sicilian narrows, with a lot of Italian air power on Sicily, and the German bases around Tripoli. Getting around that will be difficult enough, and if we do attempt it, the enemy will certainly have an opportunity to sortie against us from their bases in Italy and Toulon. Once we get past the southern cape of Sardinia, I don’t think the Vichy French will bother us, but as we approach Gibraltar, the Germans could have both air strikes and U-Boat screens there”

  “Just as I assumed. It’s the air power that worries me, which is why Argos Fire is coming along with us. Together we have a combined total of 232 surface to air missiles, counti
ng the 50 missiles we still have on the short range Kashtan systems. I am hoping that will be enough.”

  Fedorov nodded, feeling a little better about their prospects. “We may also have an advantage of surprise, if we move quickly. They won’t expect us to move west like this. But the submarines are a matter of some concern to me.”

  “Don’t worry about them, Gromyko will be right out in front of us in Kazan.”

  “I see… Well then, I think we have a good chance, sir. It will all depend on how many planes the enemy has to throw at us, and how determined they are to stop us.”

  “With any luck they will find our SAM defense a formidable deterrent,” said Volsky. “They gave up trying to mount air strikes against Alexandria and Suez weeks ago. But tell me—what did you accomplish in your maneuvers?”

  “Not much, sir. We served as an advance scouting and holding unit for the British, but they could not take Palmyra. Our move to Raqqa interfered with the German withdrawal there, but little else. Frankly, our raids on the rail lines around Aleppo were probably the most significant thing we did. It slowed down the movement of German troops and supplies into Syria.”

  “Yes,” said Volsky. “I am told that situation has reached a stalemate around Rayak. The British used Brigadier Kinlan’s troops there, but now they are moving them back to face Rommel. That force has been truly decisive, has it not?”

  “At least here in this theatre. It can trump anything the Germans are likely to commit here, and tip the scales just enough that the British will likely gain the upper hand in time.”

  “It looks like Rommel is going for Tobruk this time.”

  “Of course, sir. He needs that port to secure his lines of supply, and to deny the same to the British. It is the key to all these operations.”

  “It is still amazing to me that unit is even here. How did it get here, Fedorov? You tried to work this out with Director Kamenski before.”

  “It’s still quite a mystery. Kinlan tells me they were on station at the Sultan Apache oil facilities, and they were targeted by an ICBM.”

  “Most likely one of ours,” said Volsky sullenly. “Luckily their SAM defense was enough to save them.”

  “Yes, but a warhead did detonate, and we know that can create conditions where time displacement is possible.”

  “But we determined it was Rod-25 that was responsible for our own movement,” said Volsky, “not just that accident aboard Orel, god rest the souls of every man on that boat.”

  “It may have been that the exotic effects of the nuclear detonation was catalyzing Rod-25,” said Fedorov.

  “Awakening the dragon?”

  “Possibly, sir. Then, once activated, the control rod was sufficient to move the ship on its own.”

  “But this General Kinlan had no such control rod at his disposal, so this is what leads you to suspect that object Orlov found. Yes?”

  “True sir.”

  Fedorov remembered those first, harried moments when he had tried to comprehend what had happened, and the one odd thing in the mix he had eventually focused his thinking on—that strange object Orlov had found in the Tunguska River Valley—the Devil’s Teardrop. A nuclear detonation… a Tunguska fragment… a hole in time. It was the only possible explanation. That’s how Rod 25 must be working, he concluded. It contained exotic residual material from the Tunguska event… Was this Teardrop another such fragment?

  He recalled Orlov’s haunting words, describing the moment and the place where he had found the object. “The Sergeant calls it the Devil’s Teardrop. Good name for it. There was something very strange about that place—very bad.” I’ve read stories like that about Siberia all my life, thought Fedorov, as every young boy in Russia eventually did. It was our “Devil’s Triangle,” one of those unexplained mysteries, wrapped up in all the myth and lore from the taiga and tundra. Tunguska… I was right there, on the very morning that object struck in Siberia.

  He still shuddered to think of that, realizing that he had seen that second sunrise, the evil glow in the sky, with his own eyes. And he had heard the dull rumble that had haunted all those stories of his youth, echoing in the confined space of that stairwell at Ilanskiy.

  “We gave that thing to Chief Dobrynin,” he said. “Has he discovered anything more?”

  “Go and see him about it. Frankly, the whole matter slipped my mind. I’ve been in one conference after another with Admiral Tovey and Wavell. Then we came to this decision to head west.”

  “I understand, sir….”

  “But you are not quite comfortable with that, yes Fedorov? Something tells me it is not only the threat of enemy planes and submarines that is bothering you now.”

  “Well I was just thinking that the war is about to take a very serious evolution soon sir—Operation Barbarossa.”

  “Yes, the invasion of Kirov’s Soviet Russia. Yet how can we prevent that?”

  “Impossible sir. Oh, we do have means at our disposal, but I don’t think you would wish to use our special warheads.”

  “Believe me,” said Volsky, “I have given that a good deal of thought. In fact I was just discussing it with Admiral Tovey.”

  “You told him about our nuclear weapons?”

  “Not quite, but I hinted that I had more in my arsenal than he has seen. Then a very odd thing happened. It was as if he knew what I was talking about. He had a strange look on his face, almost as if he was seeing things that were not there, ghosts.”

  “Admiral Tovey has been another little mystery in these encounters,” said Fedorov. “That file box he produced was quite a shock, and he seems to be haunted by memories from those earlier encounters we had with him, though I cannot see how that is possible.”

  “Those photographs and reports he handed us were the real shock,” said Volsky. “They were hard evidence of our appearance in that other timeframe. But how could they be here, Fedorov, in this time?”

  “We never did reason that out. Perhaps Director Kamenski could help us, but the only conclusion I came to is that they were brought here.”

  “Brought here? By who?”

  “That is the mystery, sir.”

  “Well it is one that needs solving, Fedorov. And there is another wrinkle in all of this that I still do not quite understand—the Argos Fire! How did that ship get here. It has no Rod 25, and I do not think that Devil’s Teardrop was aboard the ship either. Yet it is there, right off our starboard quarter. For that I am grateful now, but the presence of that ship remains a stubborn mystery.”

  “Miss Fairchild never really explained that during the meeting at Alexandria. I assumed it was a result of a nuclear detonation—mere happenstance.”

  “Yes, but why only that one ship, Fedorov? If this is true, and Argos Fire was sent here by the shock of a detonation, why no other ships? There must have been missiles flying everywhere.”

  “We need to discover that, sir. Perhaps we should convene a meeting here, and discuss this, as we plan the route ahead.”

  “I will arrange it,” said Volsky. “In the meantime, kindly go and see if Dobrynin knows anything more about that Devil’s Teardrop.”

  Fedorov saluted, eager to get to the bottom of things.

  “And Fedorov,” said Volsky.

  “Sir?”

  “Welcome back!”

  Chapter 17

  Chief Dobrynin had been a very busy man of late, but he had given the mystery of the Devil’s Teardrop as much time as he could.

  “I’ve determined one thing right off,” he said. “That object must be kept well away from the ship’s reactors. Every time I got near the main engineering plant with it, we started to go into a flux event. I had the thing in my pocket when one started, and when I rushed to the engineering supply to fetch my system reports, things settled down, until I got back there, when they started all over again. On a hunch I just backed away—slipped right out through the hatch, and the moment I got well outside the armored shell, things settled down again. So I put two and two togeth
er, remembering the other times that had happened. Orlov was here on the first incident, and he tells me he had that thing in his pocket.”

  “And I had it the next time it happened!” Fedorov said excitedly.

  “Correct. So I took the thing down to an engineering lab and gave it a good inspection. I was looking to determine its makeup, but found a little something more.”

  “You told Volsky about this?”

  “Not yet. The ship has been in combat, running at high speed, and now we have this mission west to Gibraltar and the engines need to be in top condition. So I’ve been too busy with things, but now that you are here—listen to this! I used a phase-measuring acoustic microscope, and also an electron microscope. This thing is not a natural element, not simply a chunk of rock that has been melted by heat. It was engineered.”

  “Engineered? You are certain of this?”

  “I could go in to technical details, but you’d have a hard time following me. But yes, I’m certain. It was once an almost perfect sphere, at least this is what I believe now. I thought it might be some kind of bearing, which is why I used that equipment to have a closer look. We often inspect bearings to check for surface wear, hardness measurements, cracks and depressions, but the metal is almost flawless.”

  “Well, what is it, Chief? Have you determined that?”

  “I’m not quite sure, but I suspect it is loaded with exotic materials beneath that smooth exterior. I don’t have the equipment aboard ship to really do the job right, but everything about that object tells me that it was engineered. It’s an alloy. I’m convinced of that. We use similar superalloys in our own high performance engines, and even here in the ship’s reactors. They have an austenitic face-centered cubic crystal structure, and so does this thing, but its unlike any I have scanned before—very advanced metallurgy. I’d say it was engineered using equipment designed for nano-metrology.”