Turning Point (Kirov Series Book 22)

by John Schettler

  Lamb was supposed to be in a jail cell in French North Africa, captured when he tried to fly in a special agent there, and his plane developed engine trouble and had to go to ground. He would have sat out most of 1942 there, waiting for his confederates to land in Operation Torch in November. But that had not happened either. It was just a small thing that had changed his fate, an errant tick mark on a flight officer roster that checked off someone else’s name instead of his. So there he was, also in good fighting trim, and ready to board his Albacore, one hand reaching up to one of the wings as he completed his pre flight inspection.

  Then, strangely, he felt the wing vibrating under his hand, thinking the ship had finally turned to find the wind, but that was not the case. He looked aft, but the wake of the carrier was calm and smooth. Mountbatten had not yet turned, the elevators were still working, and the last of this flight was still being spotted on the flight deck.

  But there it was, a trembling vibration that rippled now from his hand on that wing, down his arm and all the way to his boots. The metal deck was quavering, and he thought he felt an odd stirring in the air. He looked around, finding the near full moon clear and bright as it fell towards the horizon. He looked at his watch, seeing it was just a little after 06:00. They had been under its pale silver light for some time, and it would not set for another hour, at about 07:00. Then, in that last interval of darkness, the planes would take off to race north before sunrise at 09:30 that day.

  Lamb was enough of an old salt that he knew something was wrong in that vibration. Was Illustrious teething from that last refit? Had the work crews missed something in her engines? He would not find a chart and realize that it was only the occasional rumbling of the volcano that lived in these waters, one of so many that rose in tall misty cones along the Malay Barrier.

  * * *

  The long archipelago that military strategists of the 1940s referred to as the “barrier islands” stretched over 2,500 miles from the northern tip of Sumatra to the eastern tip of Timor. It followed the subterranean line of a great subduction zone, where the Indo-Australian plate slowly folds beneath the Eurasian plate. The resulting pressures created over 130 active volcanoes in the island arc, and among them were some of the great terrors in the panoply of Volcanic Gods.

  In northern Sumatra, the mighty supervolcano of Toba sits beneath a serene blue lake, the largest in southeast Asia, that now covers its massive caldera. At its center sits the misty island of Samusir, almost as big as Singapore Island, and white falls of water now cascade down to the lake where hot flows of lava once shaped the flanks of those sheer cliffs. When it last erupted, over 70,000 years ago, scientists say it may have been a V.E.I. 8 on a scale of 9, where no known eruptions of V.E.I. 9 have ever been found. Some believe it nearly wiped humanity from existence, reducing the population to perhaps fewer than 10,000 individuals.

  The children of Toba dot the landscape of these verdant, steamy islands for thousands of miles. Rinjani, Child of the Sea, sits prominently astride Lombok east of Bali. Merapi the Mountain of Fire, dominates the rugged central mountains of Java. The legendary Tambora sits as the undisputed master of the Island of Sumbawa, and in 1815, just a few months before the battle of Waterloo, it produced the largest eruption known on earth in the last 25,000 years.

  And then there was the demon of the sea, sitting right astride a dogleg bend in that subduction zone, where the thinner crust saw the fiery heart of the earth migrate upwards to produce another famous mountain of fire in the middle of the Sunda Strait, and one with a name that might now be a synonym for fear and dread—Krakatoa. These were the islands that had rumbled to bother Captain Agar that morning, and their stirring had quavered the wing of Charlie Lamb’s plane, even though HMS Illustrious was 110 kilometers to the southwest.

  In Fedorov’s history, that volcano had last erupted in 1883, producing the loudest sound humans ever heard, resounding all the way across the Indian Ocean, and shaking seismographs the world over. Its explosive force was 30,000 times greater than the bomb dropped at Hiroshima, and its shock wave circled the earth seven times. The mountain itself was literally blown apart, but as terrible as its demise was, the volcano still refused to die. In 1927, it slowly began to rise again, a dull grey cinder cone emerging from the sea like some dreadful behemoth with a single glowing red eye. Called Anak Krakatoa, or the ‘Son of Krakatoa,’ it would grow at a rate of five inches per week, always restive, never really sleeping, like a man beset with fitful nightmares.

  Of all the most explosive eruptions in human history, the top three were Tambora in 1815, Santorini off Greece in 1628, BC, and Krakatoa off Java in 1883—at least in the history Fedorov knew. In this timeline, more than human events had been found to change. Meteorological and geologic events had skipped a beat here or there as well. The 1920s earthquake in Japan that had damaged the hull that was being built for the battlecruiser Tosa had never happened, and now that ship was afloat as a converted aircraft carrier, standing in for the loss of Hiryu after Pearl Harbor.

  No one had ever thought to look, not even Fedorov, for there was so little time in the heat of all these events, and so much data to reabsorb. He had focused on trying to analyze what had changed in the history they were now sailing through, and why, but a flip through a geologic reference to see what the earth itself had been doing had never occurred to him. Perhaps he simply assumed that these “acts of god,” the storms, earthquakes, eruptions of the earth were all riveted in the chronology, destined to take place at their appointed times, but, as we have already seen, they were not.

  The weather was so fickle that it could simply not be so harnessed. The wind would go where it wished, heedless of time’s ledgers and the urgencies of human endeavor. The storm that delayed Halsey and hastened the arrival of Neosho had been early, speeding the gritty Admiral into that confrontation with the Kido Butai, and sending Neosho to her fiery fate. That simple weather event had a considerable effect on the outcome of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, though no one ever took the time to finger the wind as the real culprit that day.

  The interval from the 1800s to modern days is but a wink in geologic time, so to have two major eruptions so close together like Tambora and Krakatoa was strong evidence that the barrier islands were rumbling to life, the earth there shaking, even as it has in modern times, producing some of the largest earthquakes ever recorded on the planet.

  Eruptions on this scale could radically alter the flow of events in the history they affected. The dire and weighty matters of war and strategy produced volumes in the brief outbreak of violence that was WWII, but relatively little has been written on the life changing powers possessed by these fiery mountains, and the restless angry Gods that hunched beneath their glowing cinder cones.

  Vladimir Karpov might be one man who came to respect their power, for he had his entire battlegroup blown over a century into the past when the Demon Volcano erupted in the midst of a wild mêlée at sea in 2021. If he thought about that event, he might lay the blame for the massive fractures now rippling through the halls of fate and time right at the base of that volcano. For if that eruption had not occurred, nothing of his strange displacement to 1908, and the long confrontation with Admiral Togo’s fleet, would have ever happened. The Altered States that were now rewriting the history of WWII would have never taken place. Was it fate that he found himself aboard Kirov at exactly that place and time, the will of the great god Vulcan, or mere happenstance?

  Whatever force had moved the levers that day, it was moving again in the Sunda Strait, awakening from long troubled sleep, rumbling to life beneath the turbulent seas where uniformed men now steamed about in the rising swells on small metal ships, flinging even smaller hunks of metal at one another, and calling it history. The lines they would inscribe in that book would be nothing compared to the epic now about to be written by the Demon in the waters off Java that morning.

  It was something that was never supposed to happen now. The violence inherent in t
hat fractured spot in the crust of the earth was already supposed to have vented its wrath in 1883, but it had not done so. If Fedorov had taken the time to look, he might have discovered the grim possibility that was now rumbling to life. He might have learned that, for reasons he could never fathom, the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 had never occurred in this time line, but better late than never, it was going to happen now, and it would change the entire course of these events.

  Aboard Illustrious, Mountbatten was settling into the Captain’s chair on the bridge with his early morning tea. Charles Lamb was sitting in his plane and ready to go find the sunrise, but he would never see it that morning. Something else was rising, from the depths of the earth, slowly throwing open the gates of hell itself.

  Krakatoa was about to explode….

  Part VI

  The Gates of Hell

  “Hell is empty, and all devils are here.”

  ― William Shakespeare

  Chapter 16

  It began at 06:40, on the last day of February in 1942. The vague misgivings, thrumming vibrations in the air, and dull and distant rumblings soon produced a vast column of what looked like white steam, rising up and up, a massive veil over the Sunda Strait. In the little gun duel that was then under way, every man on either side with a view to the south and west took notice, some standing spellbound as they watch the rapid ascension of the steamy white cloud. High up, perhaps over 11,000 meters, it caught the wind, its top sheared away and smeared across the dull grey sky.

  On the shore where the Japanese had landed on Java, the small, once bustling port of Anjer had long since ceased to be the little paradise of Palm and Banyan trees, with the sweet trade winds laced with spices. First came the headlong rush of soldiers and refugees coming over from Oosthaven on Sumatra, swelling over the quays and docks, hastening inland on the roads to Serang and Batavia to the east. Ships came and went, pulling up anchor and then putting out to sea, for the enemy was said to be very near.

  At night, the dark silhouette of a Dutch gunboat lurked off shore, then fled north around the stony Cape Merak. Soon the silver grey night saw those glassy seas broken with the coming of over fifty transports, their holds laden with troops and equipment, the Japanese 2nd Infantry Division had finally arrived. Destroyers churned in the waters to the west of the landing site, soon to be challenged, first by the probing of the ill-fated Jupiter, and then by the larger task force led by Captain Agar on Dorsetshire. But he had been too late to prevent those landings, and now the old village Kampong huts were burning from the fires of war, and the dull tramp of Japanese infantry had swept over the sandy shore as they pushed inland, driving off a company of hapless Dutch defenders, and then the hasty defense mounted by the Beds & Herts.

  When that vast column of steam vented up into the sky, the last gleaming light of the moon illuminated the silken white veil, and the moon itself fell like a massive blue pearl into the troubled waters of the Sunda Strait, as if fleeing from what was now to come. It set behind the island group that had sent this first warning up, and any man who gazed west was awed by the sight of the tall conical island, backlit by a violet haze that deepened to scarlet indigo at the level of the sea. The soldiers gawked for a time, then were urged on by the harsh throated orders of their officers. They had an invasion to see to, and no thought of what was now about to take place had entered any of their minds.

  That morning, in the dark interval between moonset and the coming of the sun, the last of the landing parties cast off their lines, and anchors were pulled up on the transports. The first squadron was already heading north, hastening away from the rising sound of naval gunfire resounding from the west. Three of their guardian destroyers were already engaged, and out in the strait, a line of three more were hastening west like the winds they were named for, Harukaze, the Spring Wind, Hatakaze, the Flag Wind, Asakaze, the Morning Wind that was now about to become the breath of hell.

  The pop of their gunfire was briefly heard, even as that vent of steamy sky reached upwards. Then the muffled report of the gunfire was suddenly smothered by the low growl of that isolated stony island in the sea, and this time something much more than steam erupted. The tip of the mountain’s sharp cone belched with fire, and a huge billow of pinkish-grey smoke and ash piled up above those flames, surging into the sky with a loud roar. It cast a vast shadow over the glassy blue sea, which deepened as the column rose, a roiling mass of heat that carried the sulfuric taint of some long lost den of horror beneath the earth.

  The ships at sea were caught up in a sudden wild disturbance of the water, not a wave emanating from the site of that eruption, but something affecting the entire area around the islets of Krakatoa, as if the earth beneath was heaving and bucking up, shaking the water above. The smaller destroyers lurched about in those wild seas, and on the bigger ship Dorsetshire, Captain Agar was forced to reach for a guide rail near the binnacle as his heavy cruiser rolled suddenly to one side. His gaze was now transfixed on the scene behind him, amazed by the spectacle of that darkening bloom of heavy ash rising above the volcano.

  The day that had been slowly lightening, now darkened under that shadow, the impenetrable pall of Hades spewing forth until the gloom shrouded the entire scene. The smoky ash that blighted the sky gathered with unceasing volume, and tremendous speed, driven on by a series of thunderous reports, as if massive bombs were being set off. They were heard all over Western Java, and dazed villagers came stumbling out of their huts and houses, staring in awe at the fisting shadow of doom that now rose into the violet grey sky. That fading color soon deepened to shadow, and darkness blackened the sky in every direction.

  Out on the weather deck of Dorsetshire, Captain Agar gawked as a fine haze descended all about the ship. He reached out his ungloved hand, surprised to find a sheen of ash whitening the handrail. In a matter of minutes it had covered the cruiser from halyards to decks, a mantle of pallid grey-white ash that made it seem he was now Captain of some ghostly phantom ship.

  The Japanese destroyers had careened about in that wild sea, and then turned rapidly northeast, as if they could sense the unnatural movement of the water beneath them was an omen far more dangerous than anything the British could be doing. The fume in their wakes seemed to underscore the chaos of the movement, but this was only the beginning, the first herald of the storm that was coming. It was only the first great eruption, which would persist until well after sunrise. Krakatoa was only just awakening from its long sleep, and for the next twenty hours, the gates of hell would be open, the host would issue forth, until it would end in a world shattering event that no man then alive could have possibly imagined.

  * * *

  At the bungalow HQ of Java Command near Bangdung, General Montgomery had been up early to follow the reports of the battle that was now underway. So far the movement of the Australians to contain the landings at Patrol east of Batavia had been smartly carried out, and he had come to believe that lodgment was not the main event. In the heart of Western Java, he was 250 kilometers southeast of Krakatoa, but when that first eruption burst forth, he soon heard the loud rumble, thinking it was the sound of a Japanese airstrike nearby. Then a messenger ran in with a cable from Batavia, and news of what was happening.

  The boom of the eruptions could be heard clearly, growing louder with each report, as loud as heavy naval guns. Calls from Batavia, a hundred kilometers east of the eruption, claimed that a heavy ashfall was now blanketing the city, and frightened people were rushing about, throwing their meager belongings onto carts and rickshaws, and starting east on the road. The Japanese landings south of Merak were only 50 kilometers from Krakatoa, and there the rain of ash and pumice was far heavier, until the troops were themselves covered in ash, moving like pale ghouls through the thickening darkness. Even an hour after sunrise, the gloom was impenetrable, and all combat operations had to be immediately suspended.

  Montgomery had one of his Brigadiers on the line in Batavia, learning that the city was not yet under att
ack. Then the line went dead, and a moment later there came a much louder explosion, the sound finally arriving from the distant mountain in the sea. It gave him a chilling, ominous feeling, and he wondered what must be happening there.

  Windows were rattling in the city with each booming explosion, and battalion commanders further west, their men choking in the ashfall, were making frantic calls for permission to pull out to the east. Those orders were given, until the telephone system also went completely dead. The day that had promised nothing more than the thunder of war, had now descended into the wrath and chaos of nature, which was so all consuming of the sky that Krakatoa began to generate its own weather. Lightning streaked through the broiling mass of rolling black clouds, illuminating the bristling crown of the maddened Sea God.

  As for flight Lt. Charles Lamb, safely out in the Indian Ocean, it was immediately apparent that he and his mates would not go out that day. All the planes on the two British carriers, still 150 kilometers from the eruption, were ordered removed from the flight deck and stowed below. Air operations were now completely impossible, and one seaplane that had tried to go up to see what was happening came plummeting down in no time, its engine completely clogged with ash.

  Out in the Sunda Strait, Captain Agar had come about and was now withdrawing southwest. He would have to come within 25 kilometers of the volcano to leave the strait, and it would be a very perilous journey. Ships flashed lanterns at one another, until they could simply not be seen. Then the order was given to use the naval search lights, and long white fingers probed the ashen seas ahead and behind as the column proceeded at a cautious speed of 15 knots.