Who knows where the Sergeant is now, he wondered? Who knows where Volsky is, alive or dead, or Fedorov? This is all that matters.
“You’re going to use a tactical warhead?” Rodenko was at the Captain’s side now, his voice low and tense.
“You can see the situation as clearly as I, Rodenko.” Karpov said quickly. “Those planes are coming in right over that battleship and heading our way. We may get many of them, even most of them, but how many will get through? And how many SAMs will we be left with after that? If we expend all our missiles we’re done for. It’s time for decisive action.”
“But sir…”
“But what, Rodenko? Did you think we were just playing with fire here? This is war! I’m going to destroy that battleship, and kill everything above it out to a radius if five kilometers. Then our SAMs will handle the remainder if they dare us.”
The Captain flipped the fiberglass cover open, inserting his missile key. “Don’t worry Rodenko. I’m not asking you to concur with my decision. The responsibility is mine. It is either us or them at the moment, and I, for one, do not wish to see this ship blown up like Admiral Golovko.” He turned the key firmly, and saw the board confirm a successful arming of the warhead in the silo.
“Sir, “ said Samsonov. “Missile active and keyed for firing. My board reads ready.”
“Just one second Mister Samsonov, if you please. Nikolin. Signal Yeltsin on Orlan. Tell them to cease firing immediately. I don’t want a hungry SAM to find our P-900.”
They waited, the tension on the bridge ratcheting up as the seconds went by. All eyes were on Karpov now, and then Nikolin reported. “Orlan responding, sir. All weapons are secured and ready. Awaiting new orders.”
“A good man, Yeltsin,” said Karpov. “Send the coded signal Hellfire. Tell them to standby and rig for NBC. Signal all helicopters as well. Kirov will come to readiness level 1A.”
An alarm sounded, warning the ship to prepare for an NBC event and don any protective gear as appropriate. Karpov stood up, looking from one man to the next, seeing their eyes on him, remembering those same eyes when he had desperately stayed Samsonov’s hand and spared the destruction of the submarine Key West. There had been forgiveness in those eyes back then, and a feeling of personal redemption, a return to sanity and heart, a whisper of hope in that one single act.
Now he was about to throw that all away, burn it, remand it to the deepest level of hell. We thought we could stop the war, he thought darkly. What we failed to realize is that we were the war, and as long as the root and stem of that weed still grows in our hearts, no place is safe from the ravaging fire. There was even war in heaven…
He stepped to Samsonov’s side, and reached down, slowly pushing his hand from the firing toggle on the P-900 system, in an act of supreme irony. This time it was not to stay his hand. No… It will be my hand on the button, not his, he thought. I am responsible, the Dark Angel of perdition, and death is in my hand.
He pressed his thumb hard on the toggle, and the warning claxon bawled. His eye strayed to the forward deck where the P-900 ejected from the red open hatch, its nose declined downward and the rocket motor fired. It looked just like any of the other missiles they had fired, yellow fire in its wake with white hot smoke behind it as the Sizzler climbed to its cruising elevation and bent away to the south. Hell was on its way.
* * *
Captain Wellborn was still looking through his binoculars when the XO pointed out the contrail. “Here comes another one, sir; dancing like a drunk sailor on the deck.”
The P-900 had reached altitude for a brief subsonic cruise, and now descended to low level as it approached the ship, swinging this way and that in a series of maneuvers designed to defeat fast computer controlled gun systems.
“Just one this time,” said Wellborn, watching it come. “All hands, brace for impact!”
It was the last thing he said.
The meal the crew had eaten that day was also their last, cream of tomato soup, saltine crackers, roast Young Tom Turkey, cranberry sauce, sage dressing, whipped mashed potatoes, buttered peas, hot Parker House Rolls, ripe olives, sweet pickles, sweeter cherries served up in the pies…The missile suddenly popped up as one trigger happy gunner on a 20mm gun took a shot, hoping to get lucky.
Then it went off.
Chapter 36
Captain Murray on the Missouri had been looking north through his binoculars at the distant shadow of Iowa on the horizon. It was the last thing he saw. The brilliant white light was searing, many times the brightness and heat of the sun, and “Sunshine” Murray was instantly blind.
Halsey felt the flash as much as he saw it out of the corner of his eye, immediately knowing what had happened. Any man who sees a nuclear weapon detonate once will never forget the experience if he lives through it. The Russians had fired off one bomb earlier that morning, and now the evening was ushered in with a second sun on the horizon. They’ve hit us again, he thought. My God, they’ve hit Chuck Wellborn on the Iowa.
Now the words of Admiral Fraser came back to haunt him from that first meeting they had together on the Missouri… “Admiral, suppose I told you that your Desron 7 had nothing whatsoever to do with the outcome of that incident in the North Atlantic. There was no heroic sacrifice by your gallant destroyers as reported in your newspapers. Suppose I told you that the ship you believed was a German raider was nothing of the sort, and that it wasn’t sunk that day—the day your Mississippi went down. Suppose I told you that you lost that ship, and the others in TF.16, when it was hit by a weapon of unimaginable power, enough TNT to take out an entire fleet if it was concentrated like that, or to obliterate an entire city. I think you know what I may mean when I describe a weapon like this. You Americans have been working on them; so have we.”
The blinding light was gone in a flash, and next came the shock wave, the awful racing wind, and the low roar in the distance, like the bellow of an evil dragon. It was much worse than before, and Missouri was far closer than the warning shop fired that morning. Two suns in the morning, thought Halsey; two suns at day’s end. He turned to see the mushroom rising where the battleship Iowa had once been stalwartly firing her main guns at a distant, unseen enemy. The Big Stick was gone, broken, hidden by a rising hollow column of seething water, its walls some 300 feet thick. The temperature there at ground zero reached as high as 7,200 degrees Fahrenheit in the first second of the detonation. Half a mile away it was as hot as 3,200 degrees, but only for an instant. Initially the sea was boiled away to vapor, but as the detonation quickly cooled it swelled up into a massive spray dome that was soon wreathed by a thick mist that came to be known as a “Wilson Cloud.” This slowly lifted to reveal the darkened hulk of the once proud battleship, no more than a battered shadow on the sea now.
Then the ocean itself rolled out with the onrushing wave, leaving a circle of frothy white foam behind it as it went. The shock produced a huge swell in the sea, and Halsey could feel Mighty Mo rise up, though she weathered the high tide easily, surging down again until her bow cut into the sea. There had been over a hundred planes in the air nearby when the detonation occurred, the flights just reaching Iowa’s position. Every one of them within a kilometer of the ship was incinerated. Flights as far as five kilometers out were swept away in the raging wind as though batted from the sky, lashed with the terrible blast wave. Farther out the aircraft wheeled and swooped, a few barely managing to recover and avoid being swept into the sea. Between the missiles and the bomb, 165 airmen lost their lives in those searing minutes.
Some ten miles behind them the second wave of pilots raised their gloved hands, shielding their eyes from the flash and light, and some felt the heat even that far away, but they survived. Now the titanic mushroom cloud loomed before them, and they were forced to veer left and right to avoid it, just as Tanner’s flights had veered to avoid the wrath of the Demon volcano. Another Demon was at work that day, but on they came. None knew of the radiation burning through their bodies, and
not one would care if they did. They saw the Big Stick die its agonizing death and, as the shock abated, the hot fire of anger burned within them now. There were a hundred planes from the Halsey group still in the air, and the Sprague’s strike wing was only now starting to reach the scene.
One pilot in the Sprague group was Rod Bains, bringing up the rear of the group, the big ASM-N-2 BAT bomb anchored to his fuselage. He had seen the missiles hit the carriers, watched Ticonderoga burning as he climbed to join his mates above. Now he remembered Lowrey shaking his fist at him as he revved up his engines for takeoff. Go get ‘em. Go give them hell.
He opened the throttle up, hastening on and following the radio direction calls being sent by Ziggy Sprague’s radio man on the Wisconsin. They had all seen it. No one could have missed it, the mushroom cloud was thousands of feet high already, and still boiling the sea up into the evening sky. Yet all around him the planes kept on, and he caught one pilot’s eye, giving him the thumbs up as they sped forward—Hellcats, Helldivers, Avengers all.
* * *
“The ship is gone, sir,” said Rodenko. “Target destroyed.”
Karpov was staring at the mushroom cloud, his mind beset with images of what it must have been like. They didn’t suffer, he said to himself. It would have been too quick. One minute they were there, and the next minute they would be gone. Yet perhaps this will shake the Americans at last, and they will see what they are up against… Yes, look what they are up against, a raving lunatic with a single minded bent for destruction, Vladimir Karpov, Commander of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet. Did you really think you could rule these men, bend them to your will, make them kowtow to your demands? What was it all for, vengeance for Admiral Golovko, reprisal for the long years of enmity the West imposed upon Russia? You thought you would settle accounts, and look at it now. Look!
“Are you alright, Captain? What are your orders, sir?”
He turned slowly to look at Rodenko, his eyes sallow and empty, as was his soul. There was a God shaped hole in the man, thought Rodenko, but no God could fill it.
“Con, Radar. Enemy aircraft now at twenty kilometers and closing at 400 kph.” The watch stander’s voice was strident in the tense air and the warning finally roused Karpov from his dark reverie. There was no time to scourge himself for what he had done. There would be time enough for that later. The ship was still in danger. Yet he moved listlessly, stepping back, away from the distant mushroom cloud darkening the horizon, feeling strangely light headed.
“Captain?”
* * *
Yeltsin would not have believed it if he had not seen it with his own eyes. They had just come left in a hard fifteen point turn when the detonation occurred. Karpov’s earlier demonstration had sent a missile over a hundred kilometers south before it ignited. It was well over the horizon and they did not see the detonation, but this time they were very close. It was the first time he, or any of his bridge crew, had witnessed such a thing. They knew they carried the weapons in the belly of the ship’s magazines, but had never seen what they could really do when fired in anger. Everyone gaped at the horizon, awe struck.
Yet when it was over he was amazed to see that a second wave of aircraft was still coming in from that same heading, the planes sweeping around the tall mushroom cloud as it cauliflowered up into the gloaming sky. And further out to the west there came another large group. Karpov had ordered him to cease fire so the P-900 carrying the tactical weapon would arrive safely on target. What was he planning now? Was he going to swat these remaining planes from the sky with another tactical airburst, or were they to resume conventional SAM defense?
He steadied himself, shaking the horror of the moment from his mind and ordered his radio man to contact Kirov for further instructions. There was no initial response but the hail continued, sounding more and more plaintive with each repetition… “Orlan to Kirov. Come in, Kirov. Requesting battle orders. Over. Orlan to Kirov. Please respond. Over. Where are you, Kirov? Please come in. Orlan to Kirov. Where are you?…
Frustrated and knowing the enemy planes were just minutes away, Yeltsin stepped out of the enclosed armored citadel of the bridge and onto the weather deck, binoculars in hand. They had been steaming about two kilometers in front of the big battlecruiser, but when he scanned the sea in his wake, there was no sign of the ship. Kirov was gone! What had happened?
Yes, they had felt the harsh wind from the explosion, the shock wave and swell from the sea, but even his much smaller ship rode it out easily, and there were no enemy planes in close. Could Kirov have suffered the same fate as Admiral Golovko, struck by a late fired round from the stricken American battleship? No, there was no sign of an explosion aft, and Kirov was a very big ship. If there had been an incident, or even an accident aboard the ship itself, he would have seen something. Yet what was that strange glow on the sea? He would not have time to investigate further.
The hard seconds ticked away, and now it struck him that Orlan was alone, and soon to be faced by a massive air attack. Time was running out. He rushed back into the bridge.
“Air alert one! Resume SAM defense! Ready all close in defense systems!”
The klaxon howled out the alert, and within seconds the first sleek SAMs were ejecting again from the ship’s forward deck, streaking wildly into the sky to seek and destroy the American planes. The roar of the missiles continued, one after another, the skies streaked by ribbons of smoke as they sped away on hot white tails. Then he heard the low, distant drone of many engines, saw the blue specks in the sky drawing ever nearer amid the roiling explosion from his lethal SAMs
They were coming—Hellcats, Helldivers, Avengers all—and one man named Bains with a big fat Bat Bomb under his fuselage was feeling very lucky that day. He saw something on the sea ahead of him, squinting as the light gleamed on its odd angles and lines. The sky around him was a chaos of fire and smoke. Planes were being hit and going down in flames.
Hell, he thought. I’ve got the range right now, and he pulled hard on the bomb release. The Bat Bomb was on its way, one solitary rocket fired against the scores of sleek weapons being fired by Orlan.
* * *
“Forgive me, Admiral. I know you are a very busy man these days, and I hate to impose on your time.” Kamenski settled into a chair, cradling the thick volume under his arm.
“That time may be running out,” said Volsky. “As you can see, the accommodations here are not nearly so plush as our offices above ground. I’m afraid Moscow continues to dig itself into a hole insofar as these hostilities are concerned. So we dig too.”
“Is it really that bad?”
Volsky gave the old man a long look. “I have seen it, Mister Kamenski; seen it with my own eyes. The past was not able to hold us long, it seemed. We kept bouncing back and forth from some distant future, well after the war was fought, and then into the hell of that last war again—out of the frying pan, into the fire. In those strange intervals we learned the war was to begin here in the Pacific, and so it has, in spite of our effort to prevent it. Perhaps it is not so easy to change time and fate after all. We have also seen what was left of the world after this current little disagreement was fought, and there was very little to speak of.”
“I understand,” said Kamenski. “As much as any man could, I suppose. Can we do anything more?”
“I have asked myself that a thousand times, but it is very frustrating. I still have Marines at the Naval Logistics Building, you know. Perhaps, I thought, we will get another letter.”
“I see…Then you are still hoping Fedorov will appear from the ether and pronounce that all is well.”
“Of course! But that’s a fool’s wish now, isn’t it? We never knew how to control things—these odd time displacements. I’m still not sure how we ever managed to get home. Suppose Fedorov completes his mission, and he returns, but not until the year 2022, or 2025. This possibility crossed my mind. It would mean we wait here in suspense, if we can dig a hole deep enough to survive what I kno
w is coming next. Well, we don’t have two or three years to wait. I would be willing to bet that we may not have more than a few days left now before things get out of hand. And what would I do, I asked myself, if these were the last three days in the world we know? What would you do, Mister Kamenski?”
“Me? Why, I think I would take a little trip. In fact, that’s exactly what I am planning to do. If you could remove yourself from your duties here I would ask you to come with me.”
Volsky smiled, then the warmth fled from his eyes and he seemed to stare vacantly ahead. “Mister Kamenski, I don’t think there is any place we can go to hide from what is coming.”
“Don’t be so gloomy, Admiral. One must have faith.” He was fingering something with his left hand in his pocket as he spoke. The other still clung to a thick book beneath his arm.
Yes, he thought, a little trip. He really wished the Admiral could come with him. He was already guilty enough with the thought of stealing away on his own, but something had to be done, and it was clear to him that the Admiral, and all the other men in their nice pressed military uniforms, seemed powerless to change the fate they were shaping with their very own hands. It was as if they thought the war was something that was going to happen to them, something that was coming like a bad storm, as the Admiral seemed to believe…something inevitable. In the end they will realize that it was all their doing. They were the war. That was the hard truth they hid from behind those gold stripes and gilded caps, and all the decorations on their chest. He sighed, feeling the weight of the key in his pocket now. It seemed such a small and insignificant thing, but the doors it could open…
“Well Admiral, we may not have to wait all that time for Fedorov to appear. In all our plans and discussions it occurred to me that the end of those operations would soon be apparent to us here.”
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