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

by James Philip

  There was a sustained burst of automatic gunfire on the floor below.

  “A little mopping up, my dear,” Rykov declared. “We’re almost finished here. I should have asked you if you wanted to come with us when we left. But...”

  “It slipped your mind Arkady Pavlovich?” The woman inquired acidly.

  “Something like that...” Rykov’s voice trailed off. He had been holding his gun loosely, pointed at the ground.

  But the muzzle of his former lover’s AK-47 had risen to point at the middle of his chest.

  The man viewed her quizzically for a moment.

  “Perhaps, you should give me the gun?” He suggested, with the impatience of a man who had finally realised that he could be surprised like any other man, by the actions of a woman he had been convinced he understood better than any man alive.

  She made no move to surrender her weapon.

  “There is no time for this, Clara,” the Russian said flatly, dangerously.

  She quirked a half-smile.

  Out of the corner of her eye she later recollected that Admiral Sir Julian Christopher, the Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations had also been smiling. As if he knew exactly what was going to happen next.

  And was wholly reconciled to it.

  “My name,” she said quietly, “is not Clara.”

  That was when she pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 64

  13:04 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  HMS Talavera, 9 miles west of Sliema Point

  “TORPEDO ATTACK PORT!"

  Initially, that had confused Joe Calleja. Lieutenant-Commander Weiss had specifically told him to position the quadruple 21-inch torpedo launcher to fire at an angle of forty-five degrees to STARBOARD.

  Petty Officer Jack Griffin, whom seconds earlier had practically manhandled him into the director seat on the right-hand side of the quadruple 21-inch torpedo tube mounting, sensed his indecision.

  “The fuckers changed course!” He yelled. Thumping the civilian’s shoulder he went on: “Swing the tubes to PORT!”

  The mount moved at a stately, unhurried pace, the drive motor whirring, the whole installation groaning and trembling and then, abruptly, it stopped and there was a new smell of burning practically beneath Joe’s chair. The mount was pointing only a few degrees off the centreline of the ship, aimed directly at the aft port footing of the wrecked lattice foremast.

  Both Joe Calleja and Jack Griffin cursed foully and eloquently in their own native tongues.

  “The servo has burned out!” The Maltese dockyard electrician cried.

  The muscular Petty Officer had jumped up to stand astride the mount. He started bawling orders and men magically appeared from under cover.

  “Let out the fucking clutch or whatever you do to free up the movement on this fucking thing!” He bellowed at Joe Calleja.

  The mount began to swing to the left.

  Joe checked the board. Mostly green lights!

  “Nobody stands behind the tubes when we launch!” He screamed.

  The Mark VIII 21-inch torpedo weighed over a ton-and-a-half and needed a great deal of persuasion to eject itself from a firing tube. On a submarine the job was done using a blast of compressed air; on the mount that Joe Calleja was sitting on it required a small explosive charge to ‘impel’ each fish on its way.

  There was a meticulously choreographed drill for launching a torpedo off the deck of a moving ship for the very good reason that the exercise was inherently fraught with difficulties, and very dangerous to everybody involved. However, to do the job safely and without the risk of a major disaster, like a fish catching fire in the tube or worse, exploding, the execution of the well-practiced, precision ‘drill’ pre-supposed the presence of a trained and competent crew of about a dozen men. On this spring afternoon the destroyer’s ‘torpedo crew’ comprised a concussed dockyard electrician, a petty officer who’d never had anything to do with torpedoes until that day, and a motley collection of – mostly walking wounded – Royal Marines and seamen who had happened to be fighting fires, or sheltering in the vicinity of the tubes.

  Marshalled by Jack Griffin the tubes swung ponderously.

  “That should do it!” He shouted, grinning broadly.

  The destroyer bucked as she was hit twice more.

  Somebody was barking orders with a megaphone from the bridge above their heads.

  Jack Griffin slapped Joe Calleja on the back.

  “Wind up the fish!”

  “They’ll catch fire if they run too long in the tubes!”

  The red-headed and bearded Petty Officer thought this was the funniest thing he had ever heard anybody say in his whole life; in other circumstances he might have rolled around on the deck laughing until his ribs cracked or he pissed himself.

  “Start them up, Joe!” He shook his head. “The moment we turn we’ll show the bastards our whole broadside and they’ll probably blow us out of the water anyway!”

  Joe Calleja was acting like an automaton by then.

  It was all a dream.

  He was not really sitting in the exposed director chair on an open deck while two huge ships with very big guns tried to kill him. It was easier to let his mind move outside his body and to watch what was going on from a distance. His hands fumbled the controls and the mount began to vibrate, shake and rattle as the torpedo motors ran up. Time telescoped, everything became fast and slow in the same instant and suddenly, the young Maltese dockyard electrician and trades union activist was completely unafraid.

  The destroyer heeled into the turn.

  Jack Griffin’s hand slapped down on his shoulder.

  “FIRE ONE!”

  The mount bucked as there was a muted WHOOF and Tube One spat out its long silver merchant of death.

  Joe had been so preoccupied watching the lights on his director board that until then he had had no time to steal a glance beyond the side of the ship. Now he was momentarily transfixed by the sight of a great grey ship belching enormous clouds of pitch black coal smoke. Talavera was so close to the leviathan that he could almost have reached out and touched the Yavuz.

  “FIRE TWO!”

  At the moment the torpedo exited the tube the whole length of the Yavuz disappeared behind a wall of fire.

  There was no time for Joe to shut his eyes before the storm of metal and high explosive passed over HMS Talavera. Or at least, mostly passed over the shot-riddled destroyer. There were clangs and crashes all around him as smaller rounds came inboard, and a ripping, rending thunderous express train roar as the battlecruiser’s main battery broadside cleaved the heavens asunder barely feet overhead.

  Afterwards there was a peculiar silence before Joe’s ears again registered sounds; the asthmatic rushing of the blowers, the sea coursing down the ship’s sides, men calling out and the staccato the pumping of the 40-millimetre cannons thirty feet away. Further aft at least one of the twin 20-millimetre Oerlikons was pouring fire directly onto the deck of the seemingly impregnable wall of steel in front of him. He saw the sparks of the small rounds travelling along the battlecruiser’s main deck, and a stream of 40-millimetre shells bursting on the dreadnoughts stumpy, ugly bridge and conning tower.

  “FIRE THREE!”

  That was when a giant fist punched HMS Talavera amidships. The destroyer sagged, attempted to lurch forward. It was useless, the blowers died and she began to coast to a water-logged stop.

  “FIRE FOUR!”

  Chapter 65

  13:07 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  Battery Caves, Kalkara, Malta

  Although nobody was inclined to move far from the entrance of the bomb shelter, everybody had edged cautiously out into the smoky afternoon sunshine. The small crowd watched in horror and awe as the great thunderstorm tracked to the north across the distant sea battle. The sound of guns and great explosions rolled onto the land, whispers of the war. Giant tridents
of lightning stabbed jaggedly into the fog of battle. It was like a distant glimpse of Hades.

  Marija Christopher and Rosa Calleja had stumbled to the top of the ridge where they stared at the two sleek grey American destroyers creaming north so close to the shore that it seemed that they must surely run aground any moment. The gun in each ship’s fo’c’sle turret fired every two seconds, the smoke of each shot instantly whipped away by the rushing wind.

  The bombardment of Valletta and the interior of the main island had stopped several minutes ago, while out at sea to the north-east fires flashed, sparkled and were swallowed in the haze and smoke. The young women were silent, holding each other’s hands; appalled and fascinated, knowing they were watching the most terrible of things and yet sadly, hypnotically utterly enthralled.

  Valletta was burning. The airfield at Luqa and all the surrounding villages burned. Senglea, Cospicua, Birgu were on fire. She could hardly imagine what carnage the rain of shells might have wrought in the dockyards of French Creek, Dockyard Creek and elsewhere in the Grand Harbour, the surface of which was now vilely fouled with leaking bunker oil. There was far too much smoke to tell if Marija’s new married home still stood in Kalkara. Beyond Valletta there were big fires in Gzira and Sliema. The whole island was fast disappearing beneath a growing pall of smoke, dust and ash.

  Unconsciously, Marija put her free hand over her abdomen.

  Some things in life were meant to be.

  “Sister?” Rosa asked anxiously.

  Tears trickled down Marija’s cheeks.

  “What is it?”

  Marija forced a tight-lipped smile.

  “Nothing. It is nothing. Whatever happens we must have faith in the future.”

  Rosa stared at where her sister rested her free hand.

  Marija met her gaze, and tight-lipped, shrugged.

  Chapter 66

  13:19 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  HMS Talavera, 10 miles west of Sliema Point

  Commander Peter Christopher staggered to the bridge rail. His ship was dead in the water, shrouded in smoke from her fires. In his dazed, half-deafened, shocked state he had trouble piecing together the events of the last few minutes. There had been no time to take in anything while it was going on but now, in this surreal lull the temporary absence of madness allowed numbed minds to come to terms with realities that were like ghastly nightmares.

  Somebody was still shooting, he could hear the regular fall of shot a mile, perhaps less distant. Nobody was shooting at Talavera at the moment; that was the main thing. The ship beneath his feet was broken. He could feel it, and he shared the old destroyer’s pain. Whatever happened one fought until one could not fight any more; that was the tradition, the legacy that Nelson had handed down to generations of Royal Naval officers and men.

  But HMS Talavera’s fight was over.

  Talavera’s first torpedo had porpoised and run away at an oblique angle missing both enemy ships. Neither the old battlecruiser nor the Sverdlov class cruiser tracking half-a-mile in her wake had attempted to take evasive action until after Talavera had launched the last of her fish. The destroyer’s second torpedo had not found a target either. The Yavuz had started to turn away from the destroyer when a giant geyser of water had erupted thirty or forty feet inboard of her swinging stern. Within seconds the smoke from her coal-fired boilers had filled the gap between the two ships. Then, about twenty seconds later there had been a very heavy underwater explosion.

  ‘Captain!’

  Peter Christopher had turned and looked in the direction that the wounded yeoman clinging to a twisted stanchion which had once supported the starboard signal lamp was pointing.

  At first he did not quite believe what he was seeing.

  The Yavuz was steaming in a slow circle to starboard and visibly down by the stern. Beyond her the Sverdlov class cruiser was dead in the water, settling by the bow. The cruiser’s entire fo’c’sle was bent down at an unnatural, impossible angle just forward of her first turret.

  One Mark VIII with a contact detonator had hit the Yavuz in her most vulnerable area – her propeller shafts and rudder – and a Mark VIII with a magnetic warhead had gone off beneath the keel of the cruiser. The water under the Yavuz’s stern stopped churning.

  It was already too late.

  It was exactly like watching a car crash in very, very slow motion, albeit on a grand scale.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Peter Christopher had muttered.

  The sound of the Yavuz’s straight-stemmed ram bow burying itself forty feet deep into the armoured steel flank of the Sverdlov class cruiser – just behind her bridge - carried loudly across the mile of open water between the two doomed giants and the sinking British destroyer.

  “ONE-ZERO-FIVE!” A man shouted from nearby. “I can see the number on her side. That makes the cruiser the Admiral Kutuzov, sir!”

  The Captain of HMS Talavera would have liked to have savoured the moment. But war is Hell and all that. His half-scrambled wits registered the scream of plummeting shells only after the salvo had turned the seas around the destroyer into a maelstrom.

  Both main battery turrets were out of action.

  His ship was dead in the water.

  Talavera had just been bracketed by a ranging salvo from another big ship.

  “If it’s not one thing it’s another!” Miles Weiss, the destroyer’s bloodied Executive officer complained irritably, picking his way across the wreckage of the bridge to join his friend by the binnacle.

  Peter Christopher quirked a wan smile at the other man.

  “Very true, Number One,” he agreed amiably.

  Chapter 67

  13:20 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  USS Iowa, 1 mile off St Thomas’s Bay, Malta

  “The range is clear, sir!”

  Captain Anderson Farragut Schmidt looked at the plot. He did not know if he ought to be humbled and awed by what the lone British destroyer had done; or incredibly pissed off that it had done most of his work for him. He had ordered the two Charles F. Adams class guided missile destroyers under his command to proceed north and to interpose themselves between the Soviet cruiser coming down from that direction and, if it was still afloat, the surviving British destroyer. In the meantime, he was going to give his main battery gun crews have a little much needed target practice. He had adjusted the battleship’s course by a few degrees to starboard to open her ‘A’ arcs so as to allow her entire broadside bear on the enemy.

  “Your targets are the two Soviet heavies bearing approximately zero-three-zero! Broadsides! COMMENCE FIRING!”

  The firing bell clanged.

  There was a short delay.

  Travelling through the water at over thirty knots the leviathan seemed to halt for a moment as her nine great naval rifles fired. In that instant over thirteen tons of steel and high explosive belched forth on a one-and-a-half minute twenty mile long arcing trajectories towards targets as yet invisible to the naked eye, but painted for destruction by the USS Iowa’s fire control radars high above her bridge.

  Chapter 68

  13:27 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  HMS Talavera, 10 miles west of Sliema Point

  The two American destroyers had surged between Talavera’s sinking hulk and the doomed leviathans locked together in a death embrace some two thousand yards farther out to sea to the east. The long lean greyhounds had had bones in their teeth, creaming enormous bow waves under their clipper bows, their guns firing with regular, fast, THUMPS! Those men on Talavera’s deck who were able had raised a ragged cheer.

  And then the forest of shell splashes had risen around the Yavuz and the Admiral Kutuzov. Not so much geysers of water the size of a small office block, these geysers were veritable giant Redwood trees. The second salvo straddled the two helpless ships, three shells from the third found their targets. Red flames splashed across the Soviet cruiser, sending debris flying mast high, and falling into the water
hundreds of yards away. Over a mile distant Peter Christopher could see smashed pieces of the cruiser’s superstructure cart wheeling through space. Fires belched evil black smoke shot through with crimson. There were two hits from the fifth broadside, another from the seventh. The cruiser was on fire, settling fast. The Yavuz’s superstructure seemed to have been blasted flat and one of her amidships turrets suddenly vented a plume of dazzling iridescent white fire.

  The old dreadnought and the Soviet cruiser drifted apart, the Admiral Kutuzov instantly lurching to starboard. The fifteen thousand ton cruiser capsized a minute later, her upturned hull floating briefly before sinking by the bow. Her stern hung in the air for some seconds, suspended a hundred feet in the air before her amidships compartments filled with water and the cruiser slid into the oily, flotsam-fouled sea.

  The Yavuz trembled under a rain of shells.

  The old battlecruiser wallowed deeper and deeper in the water as a deluge of huge 2700-pound super-heavy Mark 8 armour piercing rounds fell upon her. Some carved right through the ship and exploded in the water around and beneath her, while others wrought untold mortal carnage within her thickly armoured carapace.

  Nobody on HMS Talavera actually saw the Yavuz turn turtle, or linger capsized on the surface for another minute as one last dreadful broadside lanced down upon her from the darkling, lightning bolt illuminated squall like blows from Thor’s mighty hammer. There was one final great explosion, her boilers filling with sea water or a magazine igniting, and then the dinosaur was gone, her death agonies mercifully concealed by a veil of smoke and steam.

  With her engines silent Talavera’s surviving electric generators struggled to power the pumps.

  Presently, the destroyer’s bow was awash.