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

by James Philip

  The 5-inch rapid-firing guns would be a problem for the Sverdlov class ship but the Yavuz was a dreadnought built around a virtually impenetrable armoured raft. The old ship had ten to twelve inches of cemented Krupp armour around her sides, even thicker armour protecting her turret barbettes and conning tower. Her decks were more lightly protected; even so no 5-inch round was going to penetrate to her vitals. Only Iowa’s main battery could actually puncture the dinosaur’s steely carapace.

  “The Berkeley has commenced firing, sir!”

  Chapter 59

  13:01 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  HMS Talavera, 6 miles west of Sliema Point

  The two big enemy ships had reversed course and in the process, the clumsier, coal-burning Yavuz had taken station as lead ship. For almost three minutes the cannonade bracketing and drenching HMS Talavera had relented but not before near misses had killed and wounded a dozen men and punctured the thin side plates of the destroyer in scores of places. Something had penetrated the port boiler room, nicking a steam line and briefly cutting seven knots off Talavera’s speed.

  “Nine thousand yards!”

  The whole side of the Yavuz seemed to disappear in a series of unimaginably violent crimson explosions, and for at least a dozen seconds the ship was invisible behind billowing clouds of white cordite smoke. Because of the way the old ship’s two amidships main battery turrets were sited – at an angle one from the other on opposite sides of the battlecruiser’s centre line and therefore capable of firing only on one beam – only eight of her ten 11-inch guns could be fired in broadside. However, to an unarmoured ship at a range of only nine thousand yards, virtually point blank range for guns of that calibre – the missing twenty percent of the Yavuz’s main battery was by and large, academic.

  Peter Christopher knew there was nothing he could do except to present the smallest possible target to the enemy. That meant driving straight at the Yavuz. If he flinched and ordered the tiniest course change he would expose the length of his command’s paper thin hull to those great onrushing projectiles.

  Waiting for the broadside to arrive he involuntarily did what any sensible man would do.

  He shut his eyes.

  “Short! Somebody screamed.

  Peter Christopher opened his eyes.

  Half-a-mile ahead the sea was an impenetrable wall of giant shell splashes.

  He thought he was dreaming but an object travelling so fast that all he saw was a blur of phantom blackness seemed to be coming straight at him. He stood transfixed, the thing that was coming towards him so impossibly fast seemed as though it was going to hit him in the middle of his forehead.

  It did not, of course.

  Because the 11-inch shell actually crashed into and through the lattice foremast about three feet below the Type 293 ranging aerial. There was no explosion; it must have been an armour piecing round but the top twenty feet of the mast, and incidentally, the top of the gun director tower simply ceased to exist. Debris blasted back down the length of the vessel and into the surging waters through which she charged.

  Peter Christopher stared stupidly at the stump of the great lattice foremast.

  The main battery was still firing.

  Damage control reports started coming in as he stepped to the back of the bridge and surveyed the wreckage of his recently repaired and re-modelled command. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that the mainmast still standing.

  A destroyer captain tended to feel a tad naked in the absence of something to fly a big flag from...

  “Somebody find the battle flag that was streaming from the foremast halyards!” He shouted. “Run it up the mainmast jack stay!”

  On a day like this a ship was simply not properly dressed without her battle flag flying!

  “What’s going on with the Yarmouth?”

  The Type-12 frigate had come roaring out of the South Comino Channel separating the main Island of Malta from the second largest island, Gozo, and its smaller neighbour, Comino shooting, of all things, star shell to attract the enemy’s attention. Yarmouth had immediately come under fire from the Yavuz’s 6-inch secondary battery, and soon afterwards from plunging fire from the third large ship approaching from the north. Approaching the Yavuz and the Sverdlov class cruiser from a more oblique angle than Talavera she presented a bigger target and had suffered accordingly.

  “Yarmouth is on fire forward and abaft her stack, sir. She’s slowed down but she’s still closing with the enemy!”

  Talavera was straddled by a shower of smaller projectiles.

  There was a sickening metallic crash somewhere beneath Peter Christopher’s feet.

  “Range eight thousand yards!”

  Chapter 60

  13:02 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  The Citadel, Mdina

  Ever since she had been a little girl Clara had hated heights. The roof of the final building sloped precipitously to the very edge of the ramparts; if she slipped there was a two hundred feet sheer drop to the foot of the Citadel rock. She had kicked off her shoes; they were ruined with blood, anyway. She hoped her bare feet would give her better purchase on the lichen damp, fragile slates. It was only a few steps; it might have been a thousand miles. Yet all she had to do was traverse a few steps across the slanting tiles, climb over the low retaining brick wall and then the roof beyond was flat. She would have to be careful not to make a sound crossing to the skylight; and leaving her shoes behind would help with that, assuming that she did not fall to her death first.

  She thought about trying to crawl along the ridge. No, that would never work. Somebody would see her and the way things were they would shoot her, or she would have to shoot them. Either way, she would be frustrated in her belated attempt to do what she ought to have done several weeks ago. Betrayal was a funny thing; sometimes it was unclear who was betraying whom and the meanings of loyalty got twisted, blurred out of any kind of recognisable shape.

  She had comforted herself that she was not the first double agent to become a triple agent, or to forget who she was really working for and then lapse into a state of self-defensive quasi-denial. She had allowed her emotions to get in the way. She had fallen in love with this island and the people who had treated her, for the first time in her adult life as a normal woman. Worst of all she had got too close to Arkady and fallen in love with him. Was it any surprise that she had lost the plot? Yes and no. At some level she had known she was doing the wrong thing, permitting her feelings for a monster to warp her perspective. Nobody had ordered her to do otherwise and it was hardly as if she had sworn any kind of oath of fealty to the British or what remained of their stupid Empire. Notwithstanding, in retrospect she had made a series of increasingly bizarre, and in the light of recent events, very bad decisions.

  The odd thing was that if that fucking Spetsnaz trooper had not murdered Margo Seiffert she would have carried on being Clara Pullman, the aging courtesan who had been for a while the mistress of Arkady Pavlovich Rykov and who had been, in her naivety duped by him just like everybody else including the Head of MI6.

  Unlike the illustrious Head of the Secret Intelligence Service she could blame her hormones; she had fallen in love with Arkady, and for a short time honestly believed despite all the evidence to the contrary that one day she might be his wife.

  How did I get across that sloping roof?

  Her shame, anger and self-loathing had transported her across the treacherously angled tiles before she knew she had even set off. One moment she was burning with a nameless violent fury, the next she was clinging to the lintel of the wall between the buildings, peering over the empty, flat roof between her and the skylight above the office of the Chief of Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations.

  She sucked in air, her chest heaved.

  It was ludicrous but she felt uncomfortable, unhappy for anybody to see her the way she was with her hair a me
ss and wearing the blood-spattered slightly oversized pale blue nursing auxiliary’s smock that gave her figure a vaguely dowdy, matronly look. What little make up she had put on that morning must be a disaster area, and to cap it all she had broken a least two nails.

  Her scalp was sticky with blood, a rivulet of which trickled down the back of her left ear.

  I must look like a scarecrow!

  She dragged herself over the wall, aware for the first time of her bone deep weariness and near exhaustion.

  She straightened, took a fresh grip of the AK-47 Kalashnikov loaded with a red-dotted magazine filled with doctored man-killing, flesh and bone wrecking bullets. A brief shake of the head to clear her scattered thoughts and she was moving forward again, like a tigress stalking her prey.

  Chapter 61

  13:04 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  HMS Talavera, 9 miles west of Sliema Point

  Joe Calleja had been dragged onto the deck behind the splinter-riddled funnel by Petty Officer Jack Griffin. The other men hastily recruited to the replace the members of the original Torpedo Crew cut down by before the ship had got out of the Grand Harbour, were similarly hunkered down behind or under the loaded quadruple mount, and around them on the deck. Standing up was to invite being sawn in half by flying shrapnel. Around them HMS Talavera was being shot to pieces. Somehow, the Battle class destroyer kept moving forward but there were fires burning aft and the ship was down at the bow. Each time a new salvo arrived the deck recoiled with fresh impacts, water deluged onboard and Talavera shuddered. And yet ‘B’ Turret was still firing, the starboard twin 40-millimetre cannon thumped, and on the cruelly exposed aft deck house volunteers queued to step up to man the surviving 20-millimetre Oerlikon cannons as men before them were cut down and their bodies piled on the bloody deck house roof.

  The Yavuz had stopped shooting at Talavera with her big guns.

  Joe did not know why. Perhaps, Talavera was so close the Turkish battlecruiser could no longer depress the barrels enough?

  Talavera was making clouds of acrid black smoke to help mask her dark bow on silhouette against the background of the island as the ships drove deep into the giant thunderstorm which was advancing on Malta from the south east. Jagged spears of lightning lit the unnaturally gloomy afternoon.

  This was what it was like in Hell!

  The destroyer’s hull rang like a bell as white hot smashed into her port side forward of the bridge, and miraculously, exited her starboard side without exploding. The last time Joe had dared to look up he had seen the long low outline of a foreign-looking grey warship less than a mile away. The other big ship appeared to fire rockets at Talavera; he might have imagined that because nothing made much sense anymore. He had never imagined anything so beautiful and as deadly as the tracers arcing between the ships and crashing into the destroyer’s side, or watching the dark harbingers from the starboard 40-millimetre guns walking along the decks of the nearest enemy ship.

  Petty Officer Jack Griffin was grinning.

  He was actually grinning!

  “Two minutes!” The red-bearded man shouted.

  Joe Calleja was determined not to raise his body a single inch above the deck. He was not particularly happy or comfortable with his nose pressed hard against the planking, but it was infinitely preferable to standing up in the constant rain of splinters and shrapnel.

  Jack Griffin understood this and on a man to man, personal level he entirely sympathised, not to say empathised, with the dockyard electrician’s preference in the small matter of wanting to stay alive a little longer. Notwithstanding, he hauled the other man to his feet, brushed him down and looking him straight in the eye said: “Don’t you dare try to tell me that this isn’t the most fun you’ve ever had in your entire fucking life, Mister Calleja!”

  Chapter 62

  13:05 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  USS Iowa, 10 miles South of Marsaxlokk Bay

  “The Berkeley and the John King are engaging a Krupny class DD at extreme gunnery range!”

  Captain Anderson Farragut Schmidt stepped across to the plot to watch the display update. Extreme gunnery range for the Mark 42 5-inch 54 calibre automatic guns on the two Charles F. Adams class US Navy destroyers was between twelve and thirteen miles. Shooting at a potentially fast moving, aggressively manoeuvring relatively small target at that kind of range was a singularly unrewarding pastime. Each shell would be in the air over a minute. Never mind, if nothing else the sudden barrage of plunging long-range fire - up to eighty rounds a minute from each ship - was likely to concentrate the enemy’s mind wonderfully.

  Captain Schmidt stomped to the front of the bridge, gazed down grimly upon the Iowa’s forward main battery turrets as they swung ponderously to point their great Mark 7 16-inch 50 calibre naval rifles towards the co-ordinates supplied by the Berkeley and the John King.

  Each barrel was loaded with Mark 8 ‘super-heavy’ 2700 pound APC - armour piercing capped – shells which, when fired with a maximum charge of 660 pounds of cylindrical-grained propellant was capable of hitting a target over twenty nautical miles distant. Leaving the muzzle at a velocity of 2690 feet per second the shell would be in flight over one-and-a-half minutes and at the end of its trajectory retain sufficient inertia to penetrate deck armour twice as thick as that protecting the decks of any ship in the World, excepting the other three – mothballed - Iowas. At a range of twenty miles a Mark 8 round would cleave through the three inch deck armour of the Yavuz very much in the fashion of a red hot knife going through butter. At half that range a Mark 8 would scythe through the ten-inches of cemented belt armour protecting the Yavuz’s machinery spaces, magazines and turrets with only minimal retardation.

  “I want constant real time updates on the co-ordinates of the Yavuz and the accompanying heavy!” Schmidt demanded, marching purposefully back to the plot. “Iowa will commence shooting when in range.”

  Chapter 63

  13:06 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  The Citadel, Mdina

  Clara did not try to fool herself that taking a look through the skylight was a good idea. However, jumping through it without knowing who or what was waiting for her in the office below was an even worse idea.

  She was pleasantly surprised to discover that the skylight was ajar, presumably propped open before the battle to allow fresh air to circulate in the room. It had always been a mystery to her that a people who came from such a cold, wet place like the British Isles where in her experience the sun hardly ever shone, could be so fixated with ‘fresh air’.

  Not being too proud to look a ‘gift horse in the mouth’ – another peculiar British saying, she thought – she gently eased the skylight open and clambered into the relative gloom of the office. Her left ankle twisted as she dropped to the floor. Her gasp of pain was silent. To never betray one’s pain was a thing she had learned in the camps as a child; and it had stood her in good stead ever since.

  There was desultory gunfire in the lower levels of the Headquarters complex. ‘Complex’ was a generous word to describe the warren of offices, walk-in cupboards, the old chapel, the bunkers and dungeons in the lowest reaches of the former Emergency Command Centre. The ‘complex’ had been set up during the Second World War and largely neglected in the ten years before its reactivation after the air raid last December, which had destroyed practically every other key command and control installation on the archipelago. In the farther distance she recognised the clatter of Sten Guns, the faster ‘burping’ of Kalashnikovs, the single shots mostly from hand guns, and the less frequent crack of rifles.

  The door to the Chief of Staff’s office was closed.

  She did not waste time putting her ear to the door.

  She pushed it open and stepped into the adjoining office where she discovered Admiral Christopher’s flag lieutenant – actually a middle-aged lieutenant-commander – dead on the floor. Two head shots. Another man, a youthful second-lieu
tenant with the pale features of a man newly arrived from England was sprawled behind another desk.

  The Second World War ‘Emergency Headquarters’ had become the Central RAF Officers’ Mess on Malta in the 1950s, now she walked through the old bar onto what had been the magnificent terrace where officers had wined and dined their guests, and brought countless pretty girls to impress them with the panoramic view of the island from tables perched seemingly at the top of the ramparts.

  “Hello, Clara.”

  The woman froze.

  The door to the Commander-in-Chief’s room was ajar.

  Clara turned but did not immediately raise the muzzle of the AK-47. Dying was one thing but dying for dying’s sake another.

  Arkady Pavlovich Rykov beckoned her to follow him inside, gesturing with the muzzle of the Browning semi-automatic pistol in his right hand. Clara wondered why he was holding the gun in his right hand before she noticed the blood dripping down his left arm from a wound somewhere above his elbow. From the way he held the arm and the hint of greyness in his face she guessed the bullet had shattered his upper arm.

  Admiral Sir Julian Christopher, Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations was standing behind his desk with his left arm cradled by his right, cool, collected and more than somewhat disenchanted. Blood flowed freely from his left brow and from his left nostril, his hair was a little awry, his uniform jacket soiled and torn. More blood was travelling down his uniform from a shoulder wound close to where his left collar bone met his sternum. He looked tired, and somehow, enormously dignified. He swayed on his feet as he viewed Clara.

  A Soviet officer in standard airborne camouflage fatigues but with KGB flashes on his collar was covering the Englishman with a 9-millimetre Makarov pistol.