The Burning Time (Timeline 10/27/62 Book 5)

by James Philip

  There was obviously some part of ‘come with me if you want to live’ that the Redcap had not understood. She was tempted to kill him but was momentarily distracted by a volley of automatic gunfire from high over her head. Empty cartridge cases started clattering around her. The British were on the roofs shooting at the next wave of parachutists. Good, somebody was getting organised at last!

  “You will die if you stay here,” she said, turning on her heel.

  Chapter 55

  12:52 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  HMS Talavera

  A blast of foul-smelling cordite whipped back across HMS Talavera’s open flying bridge as both main battery turrets fired. The destroyer’s bow cleaved a furrow in the three to four feet high swell offshore as she arrowed towards her distant quarry.

  “Yarmouth has opened fire, sir!”

  “Very good!” Commander Peter Christopher acknowledged.

  Some small part of the back of his brain told him that what he was doing was insane. His father had told him – strictly speaking he had ordered him to ‘get out to sea’ – and if he had taken Talavera out of range of the big guns and lurked in the haze, he could later have claimed under oath, with complete honesty, that he was obeying orders. Except that was not the way things were done in the Royal Navy. In the Royal Navy an order to ‘get out to sea’ was no more or less than an unambiguous incitement to immediately join battle with the Queen’s enemies. His father had not specifically ordered him to do his duty because he had not needed to; such things were so implicitly understood within the brotherhood of the Service that no commanding officer worth his salt actually needed to explicitly order anybody to actually ‘steam towards the sound of the guns’. In olden times no captain could do better than lay his ship alongside his foe; in modern times that was neither practical nor militarily sensible, so Peter Christopher he was about to do the next best thing.

  Excluding the second group of enemy ships coming down from the north-east Talavera and Yarmouth were outnumbered five or six-to-one. In terms of firepower they were probably out-gunned by twenty or thirty-to one. Worse, both Royal Navy ships were ‘trapped’ between the Maltese Archipelago and the greatly superior enemy ‘fleet’, and therefore had little or no room for manuever, and even had they been looking for it, nowhere to run.

  All of which Peter Christopher knew and accepted. The tactical situation was what it was and there was nothing he could do about it. It was not as if he had any kind of death wish. He had married the love of his life less than a month ago, he had been given command of a fleet destroyer at a ludicrously young age, even contrived an unlikely rapprochement with the father with whom he had been estranged since his mother’s death in the 1950s; he had everything to live for. And yet it never occurred to him to walk away from this self-evidently hopeless fight.

  Not that he had believed that any fight was intrinsically ‘hopeless’.

  Without duty a man was nothing.

  He saw the flash of the First World War German battlecruiser’s broadside in the distance, not knowing if the big ship was shooting at Talavera yet. The former SMS Goeben was belching black smoke in a passable impression of a forest fire at sea. The smoke and the haze made it hard to pick out the shapes of the two big ships until they fired their main batteries. The dinosaur battlecruiser was half-a-mile-astern of the Sverdlov class cruiser; the Russian ship was probably using her range-finding radar to signal fall of shot corrections to the Yavuz. If so, that was a horribly cumbersome way to fight any kind of action, let alone the sort of fast moving Boy’s Own sort of battle Peter Christopher had in mind.

  Talavera’s main battery fired again.

  “Range to target?”

  “Sixteen thousand five hundred yards!”

  That was approximately nine-and-a-third 1760-yard land miles, a tad over eight-and-a-quarter 2000-yard sea miles. Talavera had worked up to revolutions for thirty-one knots – over thirty-five miles per hour in land-lubber money – so the arithmetic was straightforward; Talavera and her chosen target, the old German battlecruiser with her eleven-inch naval rifles, would collide in about fifteen minutes. Not that a collision was exactly what Peter Christopher contemplated. His battle plan envisaged approaching to within about five hundred yards of his quarry, throwing the helm over and loosing off all four of his torpedoes at point blank range. It was good plan, good not brilliant, but like most good plans it had the singular merit of having very few moving parts. All that needed to be done for it to have a chance of success was for him to place Talavera into position to fire her torpedoes without getting sunk first.

  The main battery fired.

  At this range the Yavuz’s shells would take over a minute to reach the destroyer. In that time Talavera would have fired between ten and fifteen four-gun broadsides at the two big ships. ‘A’ Turret was shooting at the leading ship, the Sverdlov class cruiser armed with a dozen 6-inch guns; ‘B’ turret was shooting at the Yavuz. Oddly, the battlecruiser’s 11-inch – strictly speaking 11.1-inch, or 28-centimetre Krupp model SK L/50 – guns only out-ranged Talavera’s 4.5-inch main battery by a few hundred yards and both ships were already well over four thousand yards within their maximum engagement ranges. Back in the days that the Yavuz had been in the service of the Kaiser her crew might have fired off two to three broadsides in a two minute window; thus far today she had managed only a single four-gun salvo every two minutes, give or take. Having switched to eight-gun broadsides her rate of fire had become even more funereal.

  Talavera’s next broadside barked.

  A single hit from one of the Yavuz’s 666-pound high explosive rounds would probably cripple or sink Talavera. This being the case there was not much point wasting time contemplating that particular eventuality.

  Pragmatically, Peter Christopher was more worried about the Sverdlov class cruiser. Once she realised what Talavera and Yarmouth were up to she could shoot half-a-dozen, perhaps more, twelve gun broadsides a minute at the approaching ships. The rate of fire of the Yavuz’s 6-inch calibre secondary casemate-mounted armament was unlikely to be as fast, but nevertheless, she would soon be adding an additional six-gun broadside to the Sverdlov’s twelve. At ranges within ten thousand yards the cruiser’s 4-inch calibre quick-firing secondary guns would, if properly handled, lay down a withering wall of fire. If the big ships realised that the torpedo-less Yarmouth was no real threat to them and concentrated their combined fire on the Talavera, this was going to end very quickly in a maelstrom of shot and shell.

  If Peter Christopher had learned anything in the last few months it was that that sometimes, when all else failed, a man had to have a little faith. Either the Gods of war were on a chap’s side or they were not.

  A line of tall water spouts reared up half-a-mile ahead of the racing destroyer.

  And then the seas all around HMS Talavera seemed to erupt in a paroxysm of mountainous geysers of dirty grey water and her hull rang like a cracked bell as countless shards of spent shrapnel crashed and clattered inboard. The ship staggered, and then drove on, her screws threshing the wine dark Mediterranean with a new and terrible purpose.

  Chapter 56

  12:57 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  Battery Caves, Kalkara, Malta

  The rolling thunder of naval gunfire filtered into the bomb shelter but the ground was still, no shells had exploded on land for several minutes and the sound of nearby small arms fire outside the cave entrance had ceased.

  Three dusty, sweating British soldiers had rushed in and squatted on their haunches, anxiously looking out, their FN L1A1 Self-Loading Rifles at the ready, guarding the forty or so mainly women and children who had sought sanctuary in the old shell store.

  Marija had stopped shaking and regained a little of her normal composure. The coldness in her heart was now a dull ache, the feeling of loss like a dark spirit whose tendrils reached into every part of her waking mind.

  “What is going on?” Rosa Calleja asked
of the soldiers.

  “The big ships have stopped shelling us,” one man grunted.

  “There don’t seem to be any more parachutists coming down over on this side of the island. They’re all dropping the other side of Valletta,” the oldest of the three, a man with corporal’s stripes on his arm added. “I think the Navy is getting stuck into the bastards offshore!”

  This last comment was uttered with a genuine, if grudging respect. Whatever the Army thought about the Royal Navy, the Navy never ran away from a fight.

  “Parachutists?” Marija asked, breaking out of her darkling thoughts for a moment.

  “Only a couple of dozen came down over this side of the Grand Harbour,” the corporal explained, glancing back to her before resuming his watch. “I think they tried to get into the Hospital at Bighi, there was lots of shooting. Something’s burning in the Hospital grounds so maybe we didn’t get all of the bastards. We were shooting them as they came down. Bastards!”

  Marija rose stiffly to her feet, balanced herself by resting a hand on the rough hewn wall of the cave.

  “You can’t go out there, miss,” the corporal hissed.

  “I must see what is happening.”

  “It isn’t safe. We don’t know if we got all those bastards. They were shooting at everybody.”

  Rosa also had risen to her feet.

  The soldiers shook their heads as the two young women walked to the entrance of the shelter.

  Marija and Rosa stared out at the surreal, sickening scene of a familiar vista transformed into something out of a fever-induced nightmare.

  From where they stood they could see little to the west and nothing to the south, the higher ground obstructing those views. In front of them Valletta was burning, and great roiling blankets of grey-black smoke drifted across the Grand Harbour. Beyond the sandstone ramparts more pillars of smoke rose from the direction of distant Gzira and Sliema, and the air sea was tainted with the vile stench of bunker oil. Shells had taken huge lumps out of the previously immaculate curve of the northern – King George V - breakwater.

  Far out at sea sudden flashes of white fire glittered through the smoke and haze. It was like a panorama out of Dante’s Inferno. Near to the epicentre of the faraway sea battle a huge, ominously black rain squall tracked across the sea, threatening to engulf the ships now fighting for their lives. A fork of lightning branched in an instant, stabbed down, discharging; and then another, its super-charged trident spearing imperiously into the midst of the battle.

  Rosa grabbed her arm, pointed inland towards where the twin city of Mdina-Rabat must lie, hidden in the seething fog of war. A downward curving finger of livid red flame told of the death of an aircraft.

  The Corporal had joined the women in the entrance, standing a little in front and ahead of them, his rifle ready, his eyes scanning constantly.

  He chuckled grimly.

  “I bet those jammy buggers who came out her on the Sylvania don’t think Malta’s such a cushy billet now!”

  Chapter 57

  12:57 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  The Citadel, Mdina

  Clara Pullman’s two tame Royal Military Policemen thought she had taken leave of her senses when she ordered them to break into a boarded up disused bakery in a cul-de-sac enclosed by the outer bastion wall of the Citadel. While she had said they were going to the Headquarters building; she had actually led them through streets heading away into the southern quarter. They would have said something had not the sound of gunfire become more muffled, reassuringly distant as they walked and trotted down streets strewn with bloody bodies. Death seemed to have made little distinction between men, or women, or those in and those out of uniform. Clara had paused momentarily over the corpse of an eight or nine year old girl who had been shot in the face at point black range, otherwise she maintained a measured, cat-like, watchful pace.

  “Get on with it!” She snapped, quartering the entrance to the death trap into which she had, without a qualm, entered seconds earlier. “Break down the door!”

  The two men began kicking and shouldering the door.

  The ancient, dry, cracking wood was tougher than it looked.

  A booted foot smashing a small hole low down. More kicks broadened the hole until it was just big enough for Clara and perhaps the smaller of the two Redcaps to crawl through. She did not hesitate. Pushing the Kalashnikov inside she squirmed into the darkness. Once inside she ignored the Redcaps kicking to enlarge the hole, alternatively opening her eyes wide, and squeezing them shut, willing them to adjust to the lower light faster than was humanly possible. Another body rolled through the doors as Clara began to move a table over to the back of the dusty, dank room.

  Outside in the street there was shooting.

  An explosion, a grenade. The boarded up windows splintered but held.

  “Help me up!” She yelled at the surviving Redcap as she clambered onto the table and reached up for the two foot square hatch directly above her head. The hatch would not move. The man was beside her, the table creaking and groaning under their combined weight as finally, the hatch lifted, dust and cobwebs falling into Clara’s hair.

  She hated spiders...

  Clara had slung her AK-47 over her shoulder.

  Her hands sought purchase on the rough wood frame of the trap door.

  “Push me up!”

  The Redcap was so scared that in forming his hands into a stirrup into which she could put her right foot he very nearly propelled her straight up into the ceiling. As it was Clara’s head bumped sickeningly against the frame of the hatch. She rolled clear of the opening as the Redcap threw his Kalashnikov ahead of him and began to scrabble for a handhold.

  Clara, a little dazed flinched.

  She had seen AK-47s spontaneously empty a magazine when they were dropped.

  She grabbed the man’s arm.

  The Redcap was half-way through the hatch...

  Clara’s befuddled brain could make little sense of what had just happened for several seconds. The loft was full of dust and smoke, she was coughing, desperately trying to suck air into her lungs. A few inches from her face splinters spat from new holes in the wooden floor boards.

  She heard a string of vile Russian curses in the room below and out in the street.

  “Prekratit' strel'bu!” She choked. Stop shooting! “Prekratit' strel'bu!” She did not think it would help, nonetheless she added: “Ya s vami, tovarishchi!” I am with you, comrades!

  If they fell for that one the idiots did not deserve to go on living!

  “Tovarishch?”

  “Da tovarishchi!”

  The dead Redcap’s Kalashnikov was by the hatch.

  “The pigs chased me up here!” She wailed, hoping she sounded like ‘the pigs’ had also despoiled her. “Svin'i presledovali menya zdes!”

  The average Soviet private soldier never got to do a lot of thinking for himself and so, when faced by a dilemma, he either panicked, shot first and asked questions later, or tried to get one of his comrades to make his decision for him. Luckily for Clara, these comedians obviously did not have an NCO or an officer with them.

  Clara rolled to the open hatch, sweeping up the AK-47.

  By the time she had emptied the red-tipped magazine into the press of troopers in the room below very little that was recognisably human remained scattered across the floor and walls of the abandoned bakery.

  Her hair was sticky with blood.

  “Shit!” She muttered, staggering to the narrow, padlocked door to the next building along the top of the old ramparts. In the half-light she smashed the lock with the stock of the Kalashnikov. She threw the gun on the ground, unslung her own, fully-loaded AK-47 and stumbled through the door.

  Clara Pullman, whoever you are, not even Arkady Pavlovich Rykov could have turned you into a monster in his own image.

  She had liked being Clara Pullman.

  For a while she had actually believed she was capable of being a normal, livin
g breathing woman and in her hubris she had made the mistake of believing that the World would let her be Clara forever.

  Stumbling through the labyrinth of forgotten lofts and attic storerooms, haltingly tracing the eastern line of the great wall of the Citadel, with every step carrying her closer to the upper levels of Admiral Christopher’s Headquarters, her right hand closed ever more tightly on the trigger guard of her Kalashnikov.

  Chapter 58

  13:01 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  USS Iowa, 14 miles SW of Malta

  Captain Anderson Farragut Schmidt paced the bridge of the battleship as it thundered north west on a course that, if unaltered, would run the great ship aground off Delimara Point, one of the most southern promontories of the island of Malta. He was cursing the fact that there had been no time to reactivate two of the USS Iowa’s eight fire rooms. He was two boilers light when he needed them most!

  Notwithstanding that their bunkers were running low; he had ordered the Iowa’s two screening Charles F. Adams class guided missile destroyers ahead at flank speed. He had authorised the captains of the USS Berkeley and the USS John King to ‘run their bunkers dry’ if they had to if that’s what it took to get in range ‘to engage the enemy’. The two destroyers had creamed off into the distance at better than thirty-three knots, leaving the Iowa wallowing in their wakes as the old battlewagon gradually worked up to her best speed on six boilers of about thirty knots.

  “The Berkeley has cleared the coast sufficiently to open the range for her sensors and main battery, sir!”

  The destroyers had Tartar surface-to-air missiles, useless against surface targets; and two automatic Mark 42 five-inch 54 calibre turret-mounted – fore and aft – guns capable of firing up to forty radar-ranged and predicted rounds per minute.