Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series)

by Schettler, John

  He heard the other Sergeant shouting again in the dialect he understood, telling his men to stand down. With no time to lose, Troyak waved his squad forward, and the Marines rushed on, Troyak in the lead. They passed into the culvert and under the rail bridge, and saw the Siberian Sergeant staring sheepishly at these big, well muscled men in dark camouflage uniforms and mushroom top Kevlar helmets. Troyak grinned at the man, clasping him on the shoulder.

  “There’s no one on your right, Sergeant,” he said. “But from the sound of things there’s a lot of action on the left flank. Follow me!”

  They pushed on through the tree line, then skirted the rail line as it made a wide sweeping arc south and curved up towards the town center. Now he began to recognize the place again, for he and Zykov had searched a long hour for Fedorov when he had first gone missing here, though that seemed ages ago. Yes, thought Troyak, this is where we slapped that smart ass NKVD Lieutenant around, and made him clean out those box cars with his squad. No trains here today, and maybe no gulags further east either.

  The place looked strangely empty, devoid of life and haggard with neglect. Ilanskiy was no longer a way station for Stalin’s prison trains. Stalin was dead.

  Troyak saw the big airship come about, whistling to Chenko when he saw his men come up. “RPG-30!” He yelled, pointing at the airship. Chenko whistled and his squad soon had the weapon in action, which was a man portable 105mm anti-tank weapon that was so good it had come to be called the “Abrams killer.”

  “Put one more round into that aft gondola and silence those guns.” Troyak pointed, and the RPG was quickly deployed, a light weight shoulder fired weapon that was designed to defeat reactive armor by firing a decoy rocket ahead of the main shaped charge. The RPG-30 could blast through 650mm of armor. It could smash through the side armor of the toughest battleship, and the zeppelin would pose no challenge in that regard. So Chenko disabled the decoy and instead selected a special long range thermobaric round that relied on the oxygen in the air to create a much enhanced explosion and fire, with a very strong shock wave.

  The airship was about 500 meters above them, just within the 600 meter range of this special round. It blasted into the aft gondola, exploded, and blew it clean away, along with both 76mm gun mounts and the number five and six engines in the bargain. The sustained blast wave was so violent that it also blew away much of the duralumin frame above the gondola, and ignited a fire that would burn the Oskemen to a torrid death. The nose of the airship canted upwards as the fire consumed its tail. Fire and shock had ruptured most of the aft gas bags, and the higher buoyancy in the nose quickly pulled the ship’s front end up.

  The Siberian squad that had come up with Troyak’s men gaped in awe at the sight of the massive airship in raging flames above, black smoke clouding out like sable blood. Only the two good engines on the forward bridge gondola were still running, and they slowly dragged the burning hulk of the airship northwest over the open ground beyond the village, where it began to fall. They saw long rope lines extending down from the undamaged nose segment, and men clinging to them, hoping to reach the ground before the blazing wreck of the ship as the Oskemen fell to its doom.

  “Alright!” Troyak shouted at the Siberian Sergeant. “Take your men across the rail yard and work your way west. That’s your fight now. We’ll hold the town center.”

  His manner was so commanding that the Siberians immediately obeyed, their rifle squads rushing across the rail yard and into the town beyond. Troyak smiled. Now to see what is happening at that damn railway inn.

  Chapter 14

  Troyak led his Marines swiftly on, racing past squat warehouses by the rail yard and into the cluster of small dilapidated houses at the edge of the town center. The railway inn was another two or three blocks, and he stopped to reorganize his squads, barking sharp orders to the men.

  “Weapons teams here! Set up your AGS-30 here!” This was the belt fed automatic grenade launcher with a high fire rate 30 round drum. It would stand in for the lack of a mortar team, and they had a full pack of extra ammo drums to lay down some good sustained barrages. Troyak pointed out the direction of fire. “Right there,” he said. “Make your range about 800 meters. Rifle squad, on me! Demolition teams ready! Zykov! Follow me in!”

  The assault rifle squads of five men each moved out, the sixth man was a demolition expert, and the seventh stayed behind with the heavy weapons to fire on Troyak’s order. The men moved with expert swiftness, racing from the lee of one house to the next in brief rushes covered by at least two men on overwatch at all times.

  Up ahead Troyak saw a building labeled “Secondary Boarding School Number 1,” and he remembered it from his last visit to the town. School was out today, and there had been no classes in session here for many months. Beyond this place lay the railway inn, so he signaled for a silent approach.

  “Zykov, take your squad around the right and through that wooded park behind the inn. Signal me when you are in position. You men, follow me.”

  He was through the back doorway to the school building and inside, intending to get a good look at his objective across the street before he committed his men further. He reached a window and peered cautiously around the edge. There it was, with the same quaint sign he remembered: Rail Crew’s Holiday House. It was here that Fedorov had first stumbled down that back stairway, and the iconic figure of the young Sergei Kirov had come up after him. It was here that Ivan Volkov had vanished in the year 2021 in his hot pursuit of Fedorov, so close on his trail in space, yet eighty years off in time.

  The railway inn was the hinge of fate that day, for that dark stairwell was a portal to distant times where a knowing man could place his hands on levers that would move the decades and reshape the contours of all modern history.

  Now Troyak recalled his orders. He was to take the building and report back to Admiral Volsky on Kirov for final orders. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. They had tried the radio several times and though they could still raise the Narva, they could not get through to Kirov. He put a man on the radio and told him to keep trying.

  Now he had to decide. Do I go down those steps to look for this man, Volkov? What in God’s name will happen here if I find him? First things first. Secure this inn. He could see that the entrance was guarded by three men, and he knew there were probably more inside.

  The sound of gunfire raged beyond the inn, and he knew the Siberians were hard pressed now. Angered by the fiery loss of their only ride home, the Grey Legionnaires were pressing their attack with fierce abandon. Troyak stuck his head out the front school door and shouted at the guards.

  “Hey! Pizda! Get your men up to the front. I’m bringing up two reserve squads to hold this place. Move!”

  The guards gave him a wide eyed look, one reflexively leveling a rifle in his direction, but Troyak paid it no heed. He walked right up to the three men, scowling at them. “Didn’t you hear me? Move your men up to support the perimeter! And get that rifle out of my face, Corporal, or I’ll shove the damn thing down your throat!”

  The men looked and saw the rest of his rifle squad coming up behind him, hard men the like of which they had seldom seen. One passed a fleeting thought that these were the enemy. Their uniforms were strange and they carried unfamiliar looking weapons. Their insignia was nothing they recognized, but then Troyak gave them an evil grin. “Did you see how we toasted that stupid zeppelin? We’ll make short work of the enemy just the same.”

  “You were sent by Karpov?”

  That name jolted Troyak a moment, but he seized on it, realizing a moment when he saw one.

  “Of course—who else? We’re taking over here. Move your men out to the causeway!”

  It was all it took to gain entry. The sheer force of Troyak’s presence and will power, his uncanny command of the Siberian dialect, the dour Marines at his side, and a little lozh. The guards ran off to the front line and Troyak signaled Zykov to bring his men in. He took his squad up the main stairway to the sec
ond floor and the men instinctively tramped down the hallway and into the empty boarding rooms to take up firing positions at the windows. They found three more men inside, and sent them on their way.

  Now Troyak noted that the upper landing to the back stairway was taped off. He had the presence of mind to give one order that mattered here: “No one is to use that back stairway under any circumstances. Understood? If I give a withdrawal order, and for any reason you cannot get to the main stairs, then use the windows. Otherwise you can check in here for an extended stay.”

  Zykov’s team swept through the park, coming to the clearing where a round waterless fountain surrounded by a low, red brick wall sat just behind the inn. He soon saw that the perimeter defense had finally collapsed. The causeway had been forced by the determined assault of Volkov’s engineers, who brought up a heavy machine gun to suppress the defensive fire while three rifle squads had raced across. The enemy was now just two blocks away, and he reported as much to Troyak when he reached the inn.

  “Alright,” said Troyak. “We’ll hold here until we secure this place.” Then he gave an order for his grenade launcher. “Drop 200 meters and fire for effect!”

  The pock, pock, pock of the rapid fire launcher sounded on the crisp air, and soon the small 30mm grenades were popping off all along the front of the enemy advance. The Siberian riflemen had fallen back through the town and were trying to regroup in the big concrete locomotive depot. A main street from the causeway came right through the town between the inn and the depot, and he knew the enemy would come that way. That would leave Troyak’s Marines as the only force east of that road against the Grey Legion.

  “What do you figure we’re up against, Sarge?” said Zykov as he deployed his men on the first floor.

  “At least two companies, maybe three.”

  “A battalion? Good! It’s a fair fight for a change.” Zykov smiled.

  Troyak sized up the situation. I can hold this inn indefinitely, he thought, unless they have heavy weapons, which I doubt if these men came off those zeppelins like we did. But if I let them sweep into town and surround this place… He didn’t like the thought of that.

  If he was going to take the risk of going down those stairs, then the inn had to be secure. Fedorov had warned him that time passed at different speeds at both ends of that stairway. He didn’t quite understand it, but grasped the fact that even if only a few minutes passed for him, it could be hours for the men he left behind here. And what if it took him hours, or long days to track down his quarry? What if Volkov was nowhere in sight? What if he ended up in some other year? The unknowns associated with a sortie down those stairs were simply too great.

  Now he looked at Zykov, a glint in his eye, dark brows furrowed over his bulldog face. “We can’t let them box us in here.”

  “Agreed. But why hold here at all? We should just blow this place to hell and be done with it.”

  That made sense. That was what he should do.

  “Take your squad back through the park to those storage sheds on the other side and flank that causeway. We need to hold this intersection.” He pointed to his map with a thick thumb. “I’ll take a heavy rifle squad forward and take this position here. Then we’ll show them what they’re up against.”

  * * *

  Fedorov was sleeping restlessly that night. Kirov was still anchored in the Faroe Islands and they had been discussing future plans for the ship with Admiral Tovey. Soon they would be bound for Reykjavik. Their plan was to swing up to Hornsrandir, the northernmost cape of Iceland on the Denmark Strait in the Westfjord region. Fedorov knew that there were several old farm houses and hunting cottages there, and he had come up with the idea that they could set up a generator and Oko panel radar team in one. It would give them radar coverage over the whole approach to the strait, and preclude the need to ever use the valuable KA-40 to patrol the region. Admiral Volsky found out that they had six Oko panels aboard, two for each of the three helicopters they would normally carry, so it seemed a good idea to him, and he heartily endorsed it. From the tip of that icy, windswept horn they could close the Denmark Strait, and Tovey was very glad to hear this proposal.

  “We will call it the Ice Watch,” Volsky said to Fedorov.

  Fedorov had selected the place he had in mind, on a stony finger of land called Hornstrandir. It was a green desolate preserve, pristine in its simplicity, with emerald swards that swept up at near 45 degree angles to the edge of a jagged coastline that suddenly dropped off in sheer cliffs to the rocky shore and cold sea below. The local farmers were abandoning the region now that war had come, seeking safety in the larger communities to the south. So it would be a bleak and lonesome watch there, in a land where legends held that spirits and trolls haunted the stony vales, and polar bears roved the shore to look for seals, or anyone foolish enough to be at large there.

  The details of that mission, and his worry over Troyak’s mission, had kept him awake that night, a fitful sleep as he sifted through possible outcomes. What had happened to the Narva? They had missed five consecutive radio checks since leaving Port Dikson. He had this in the back of his mind all through the Faeroe Island conference with Admiral Tovey, but now it came to the fore.

  Did they suffer some mishap or accident, or was this a simple radio failure? Did they get through to Ilanskiy? If so, what was going on there? Some inner sense kept nagging at him that there was unforeseen danger at the heart of this mission, deep dark trouble that he had not considered or accounted for. What had he overlooked? Then he sat up in his bunk, suddenly realizing something, his eyes wide and alert.

  No! Troyak cannot go down those stairs! Why did he not think of this earlier? He had been so busy with his duty on the ship, planning the meeting with Tovey, and he should have realized this before. He should have talked it over with Kamenski, and now he thought that he may have made a fatal mistake. It was imperative that he get through to Troyak now, and he was up from his bunk, throwing on clothes and grabbing his service jacket and hat to run down the long corridor to the citadel.

  A sleepy eyed watchstander heard footsteps on the ladder up to the main hatch there, but was very surprised to see Fedorov when he burst through the entrance. He sat up, startled, and then instinct served and he shouted: “Captain on the bridge!”

  “As you were.” Fedorov was immediately to the communications console. Rodenko was standing the late watch and he came over with a curious smile.

  “Need to send a message?”

  “Any word from Troyak or Orlov?”

  “None, sir.”

  “Well, we have to get through. Is there any way we can boost the signal from our end? What if we piggy backed it on our over the horizon radar?”

  “It would get lost in the microwaves. But we could switch off that system, and then use its high power amplifier to boost our HF radio signal. In fact, I can even configure the top mast radar antenna to receive.”

  “Do it, Rodenko, as fast as you can.”

  “I’ll need an engineer on the main mast. It’s not something I can toggle from the console here.”

  “Then get someone, and wake up Nikolin, I’ll need him here.”

  The young mishman at that post was only too glad to be relieved when a sleepy eyed Nikolin showed up on the bridge ten minutes later.

  “Sorry, Nikolin,” Fedorov apologized. “I’ll see that you get the entire morning watch off, but I need you here now. We’re going to try something.”

  It took another forty minutes, but the radio engineer soon called down from the top mast above the citadel and reported he had cabled the HF military broadcast system to the powerful radar amplifier equipment on the mast.

  “Alright, Nikolin. Can you frequency hop from about 1.6 to 60 MHz? I want to blast a signal so loud at them that they would have to be deaf not to hear it.”

  “With that kind of power they would have to be dead,” said Nikolin. “Either that or the radio sets are all destroyed.”

  That thought gave Fedorov
no comfort, and Nikolin regretted it the moment he said it, but they pressed on with the plan. It was a tense five minutes, but then Nikolin saw his secure signal line go green and he knew they had managed to make contact.

  “Got them!” he said with a smile, and Fedorov sighed with relief. But a sudden pulse of anxiety swept over him now. If I give this order, he thought, then my own fate is directly involved this time. I could create another insoluble problem for time, and this time she just might go after the offender—me! Yet he knew he had to do something. That stairway was simply too dangerous.

  He closed his eyes. Even if it meant he might now be casting his soul to the wolves, he had to act. Then he reached for the handset and pushed the send button.

  * * *

  Troyak’s men gave the onrushing Legionnaires a nasty surprise. The enemy had crossed the causeway and were working their way past an old abandoned garage and vehicle park. Troyak let them come, then gave the hand signal for his men to open up. They cut down the two lead squads in seconds, the staccato of their assault rifles sharp in the air. The third enemy squad retreated quickly. They brought up two machine guns to try and answer the heavy automatic weapons fire from the Marines, but the RPG-30 made short work of them.

  “Sergeant Troyak! I have comm-sig from Kirov! It’s Nikolin!”

  The Sergeant had just reloaded his assault rifle when the radio man he left with the two demolitions experts sounded off in his earbud. “Here it is sir, I’ll patch him through to you.” The man toggled his speaker switch but it was not Nikolin. Troyak immediately recognized the voice of Fedorov.

  “Fedorov here. It is imperative that no one utilizes the back stairway. I repeat. Sergeant Troyak—your mission down those stairs is cancelled. Implement plan B, and then move to extract your team. I repeat. Plan A is aborted. There must be no sortie on the stairwell. Implement plan B and extract. Over.”