Three Kings (Kirov Series)

by John Schettler

  In that last week before the final surrender, he resolved that he would not be marched off to some German prison camp in Spain. Life might be better there than what he now contemplated, but comfort was one thing, a man’s pride and character quite another. The recollection of that young Lieutenant in the Artillery Corps that had taken up a rifle as the final retreat began was still with him. He remembered how the lad had thrown himself on that grenade, making the final sacrifice to save his comrades in arms.

  “And here we are about to hand the Rock over to Jerry,” he muttered bitterly. “Some murderous German General holds up a match book and that’s the end of it. Well, not for me.”

  In those last days he went about rounding up much needed supplies. If six other men would stay behind, so would he. One by one, he forced the small supply packs through the crevice, and then he finally squeezed through himself.

  He took out a matchbook, shaking his head as he did so. “The Germans think they’ve taken the Rock with a single match,” he said aloud. “Well this one says we haven’t given up yet, not while there’s still one Barbary ape here on the rock, just as legend has it. By God there’s one down here somewhere, and I’m going to find it!”

  He used the match to light his oil lamp, watching as it illuminated the strange shapes of the carved walls of the cave. “Now then,” he said, standing up in the dark, grateful that there was at least enough head room in his cave to allow for that. “Where have you gone, my young little weasel of an ape?”

  Chapter 2

  The cold light of the waning gibbous moon fell on other ships that night, as they surged through the rising seas like steel shadows. They were running full out, engines straining, the water high on the sharp bows as they pushed ahead. Bismarck was in the van, its dark shape illuminated in the cold pale moonlight, a grim silent presence on the sea. Behind it came an even greater mass, the looming hulk of the Hindenburg as it followed the wide frothing wake of the other ship. Kapitan Adler was on the bridge, fretting and restless that night, and ever mindful of the third shadow on the sea, well behind them yet still there, doggedly following their every move. He could not see it now in the darkness, but he could feel it, the threatening presence of another enemy battleship on the seas behind them.

  Adler was still steaming with the thought that they should have turned and fought this ship the moment it first appeared on the distant horizon. But Lütjens had turned away, and he had received a stiff rebuke when he made an unwise comment intimating that the Admiral seemed to have no stomach for battle. It still bothered him as he felt that presence behind them, and he stepped out onto the weather bridge to have a look through his field glasses.

  The night was cold and wet, a light mist on the air that was more than the spray from Hindenburg’s bow. Rain was coming. He had checked with the weather man and knew the pressure was falling. So they would have a storm to shroud their massive steel shoulders soon, and thickening clouds overhead. That would keep the Goeben’s planes on the deck for the foreseeable future, so he could not count on the Stukas driving off this meddlesome British battleship. But here he had the most advanced ship in the German Navy under his feet, its power and mass so evident as it plowed the seas—and they were running!

  He shook his head, wishing he could make a sudden turn and rip open the night with those terrible 16-inch guns. That was how he would have handled the matter, but Lütjens had been adamant. They had their feast. Convoy HX-69 paid the terrible price for the meal in ships lost and blood and fire on the sea. Then, at the height of their feeding frenzy, the Royal Navy had appeared, a battleship challenging them off the starboard bow, and the Admiral had turned away, leaving the wrecked convoy behind, along with the prospect of a good battle that Adler knew they would have won if the Admiral had found his backbone. Bismarck took the lead and he had followed, reluctantly, still stinging from the threat leveled at him by Lütjens.

  Throw me in the brig, will he? Adler steamed, glad for the cool wet air of the night on his face now. Then he had second thoughts, realizing that his remark had been too much of an insult for Lütjens to permit, particularly on the bridge, in front of the other officers. That realization still burned at the back of his neck, and he knew he had invited the Admiral’s angry reprisal, but that did little to comfort him. He would have to be more careful, he thought, yet he must make his voice heard as well. He was Kapitan of the Hindenburg, a posting any man in the fleet would envy, and not without reason. He was an experienced sea Kapitan, young, with a good fighting heart, a loyal party man. Why else was he here if not to find and fight the enemy? His judgment was sound, and he would have it heard, but he had to be more careful.

  Lütjens was not a party man. He was a good, loyal officer, but not one to click heels and stiffen to the salute before the Nazi flag. It was said that when the Führer came to tour the ship before it sailed on this first maiden voyage, the Admiral offered a traditional naval salute, and not the one armed salute that had been adopted by the party. Lütjens seemed to have misgivings about National Socialism, reservations that seemed to manifest as a quiet disdain at times. Perhaps I can use that, he thought, but he put the matter aside.

  In the future I will state my opinion in a more direct manner, he thought. No innuendo with a man like Lütjens, but I can have anything I say entered into the ship’s log. If I disagree, then it can be made a matter of record, and perhaps then the Admiral will think twice before he so lightly dismisses the advice of this ship’s Kapitan.

  Even as he thought that, he realized how hollow it sounded. This ship’s Kapitan… He was on the flagship of the fleet! Yes, an enviable post, but one that was ever fated to stand as vice Chancellor in the hierarchy of command. There would always be an Admiral on this ship, another man’s shadow ever darkening his chair. He would play second fiddle here—unless he became the Admiral on this ship one day, and that thought set his mind to a more promising compass heading.

  They had been running full out for ten hours after their feast on the convoy. Now they had come to a position about a thousand kilometers east of Glasgow, well away from British air cover, though he gave that little mind now with the Goeben along. Marco Ritter had a clutch of good fighter pilots out there somewhere. The escort carrier was steaming with the new battlecruiser Kaiser in escort, another good reason they should have turned and sunk this British battleship.

  He sighed, turning to greet an adjutant coming out to see him with a message.

  “Fleet communiqué, sir. Wilhelmshaven reports they have radio intercepts on more capital ships that have joined the chase.”

  Adler took the message, squinting at it in the darkness. “What does it say?”

  “Sir, they believe the British have at least two other battleships behind us.”

  “Anything to the south? What of this Force H we have been brooding about?”

  “Nothing sir.”

  Adler nodded, putting the message into his pocket. “See that the Admiral is informed.”

  The man saluted and went off, and Adler looked over his shoulder again, seeing nothing but the low clouds and gathering rain. Well, he thought, two more battleships—a fair fight now. What could the British possibly have that could keep up with us? The ship behind them now must certainly be the HMS Invincible. That much was evident when it delivered a booming challenge at long range when it first appeared. The shells were well off the mark, but Adler knew the splash of a big gun round when he saw one, and that was a battleship that had fired at them, and not a cruiser. Only their battlecruisers could make thirty knots to keep up with Hindenburg like this, but they were thought to still be in the ship yards after the bruising Graf Zeppelin and Bismarck gave to them in Operation Valkyrie.

  That was another aborted battle at sea that they should have fought and won. He knew Lindemann on the Bismarck. The man was not one to turn and run from any good fight. Yet he, too, had exercised caution at the outset when the Royal Navy charged in with more reinforcements—HMS Invincible, the pride of
the British Home Fleet. But that was not all… There had been another ship, firing those amazing naval rockets, or so he had heard. He spoke with Lindemann about it, and the man seemed strangely bothered, an uncertain look in his eye that Adler had never seen before. He had also heard what Kurt Hoffmann had said about what happened to Gneisenau, and the loss of one of their newest destroyers, Heimdall, was further evidence that some dark new demon was at large on the seas. But it wasn’t a British ship—it was Russian!

  He still had trouble getting his mind around that. How could the Russians have developed such weapons? This was obviously a very secret project, something that had been missed by the intelligence services, which did not surprise him. The Abwehr was a leaky sieve of late. Canaris could not really be relied on for anything of importance. Adler had the lingering suspicion that the man was a double agent, a dissembling obstructionist at best, a traitor at worst, though he knew he could never prove that. Canaris had whined on and on about Franco’s unreliability.

  Adler knew how he would deal with Franco—with a good Panzer Korps! It was just the way he thought he should deal with this British battleship behind them, but now there were three… That thought gave him pause. Was the Russian ship with them, the ship they were all calling Fafnir, the dragon of the Nordic seas where it had first made its appearance? It was said it could fire these new naval rockets at very long range, but they had seen nothing of this. Perhaps this was just an exaggeration, he thought, though the reports were very disturbing.

  A rocket had come out of the night, high in the sky, then falling like a shooting star to skim over the sea and lance right in at Graf Zeppelin. The destroyer Heimdall had just been in the way, and took the blow that might have gutted the carrier. And the strangest thing about that attack is that there was no sign of any enemy ship on the horizon—no sign at all. Graf Zeppelin was well back from the action, so the rumors about the extreme long range of these naval rockets must be true.

  Then he had heard what happened to the Admiral Scheer, and he could no longer dismiss the talk as the idle fancy of officers too new to battle in this war. Lindemann, Hoffmann, Krancke… these were all good men, well experienced, fighting Kapitans just as he was. They would not shirk from battle like Lütjens, and yet…

  Three British battleships now. Perhaps Admiral Lütjens had been correct after all. If we had stayed there and fought with the first, the other two may have come up on the action just as it was getting interesting, and they would fight fire with fire. It was a battle he still thought they may have won, but Hindenburg was out on its maiden voyage. The Führer was undoubtedly jubilant with the news of the wreckage they had already left behind them. If they had fought, there was always the chance that the ship would be hit, and that did not seem to be something Hitler would enjoy hearing about. Tell the Führer that his new fleet flagship has just sunk a hundred thousand tons of British merchant shipping and that was one thing—tell him that Hindenburg was blackened by the fire of the enemy’s guns—that was quite another thing.

  In this light he now came to see Lütjens’ decision to turn away and make for the coast of France in better light. It’s our maiden voyage, he thought. He wants to deliver the ship to a safe harbor, take his laurels, and then scheme on fighting his battle some other day. Perhaps that was the wiser course after all, he thought, but it still did not feel all that comfortable as he turned and started for the hatch and the warmth of the inner citadel of the conning tower. They still had a long way to go. The French coast was another 2000 kilometers away, and they certainly would not run at 30 knots the whole way. This odyssey was not yet over. They would have to fall off to two thirds to give the engines and turbines a rest. Then they would see if this shadow behind them fell off as well, or came boldly forward to engage.

  I might get my battle in any case, he thought, and in spite of his confidence, in spite of the power he could feel beneath him as the ship hurried on, another voice whispered in the back of his mind, and gave the old warning—be careful what you wish for…

  * * *

  Another man who once stood in the shadow of an Admiral was also thinking that night. Vladimir Karpov was a man who might understand Adler all too well and, if he could have heard his thoughts, he might have reinforced that note of caution in the Captain’s mind. But he was far away from the sea, hovering in the mist above the endless green forests of Siberia, scheming in his own way over what he would now do about Ivan Volkov.

  There had always been someone like that in his way, he thought, and Volkov would be no different than any of the others—the school teachers, classmates, coaches, commandants and rival officers had all tasted the poison of his envy and ire. Not even Admirals were spared, and now, after demonstrating his own brand of conniving duplicity and treachery, Volkov would not be spared either. But what to do?

  Sitting there aboard Abakan, thinking, Karpov knew what he would do in this situation, if only he had the power. In two years he had scratched his way into the good graces of Kolchak, but that man still had half the army facing the Japanese at Irkutsk. What remained here in the west was barely enough to hold the line. One of his best divisions, the 18th Siberian Rifles, was now invested at Omsk in the second battle his men had fought with Volkov for that city. The rail line east was cut behind the city, and now there was no way he could get supplies or reinforcements in except by airship. Behind that forward outpost, he still had four good divisions on the main line of defense along the Ob River, including his elite 32nd Siberian at Novosibirsk, and then there was the cavalry he had boasted about to Volkov. They were mostly north of Tomsk watching that flank. He had gathered his only reserve division, the 91st Siberian, here at Ilanskiy after Volkov’s ill fated raid. What was that man thinking? He threw two airships and a couple good battalions to the wolves here, all in a foolhardy attempt to take this place when he knew he could never hold it. Did he really think he could punch through and come all the way from Omsk to relieve this force?

  No. He didn’t think that at all. In fact, he intended to throw me this bone all along— Symenko, the surly Squadron Commandant in the Eastern Airship Division of the Orenburg fleet. Yes, he was one of Denikin’s old guard, the bald headed old fart who tried to lead the White movement in the Revolution. Volkov made short work of him, and easily took control, and all he was doing with this raid was cleaning out his cupboard and settling some old, unfinished business. Karpov understood that instinctively as well.

  But the raid could not go unpunished, nor could the treachery Volkov had used as a prelude to this attack at Omsk. What he needed now was a nice big hammer to smash this nail, but how? He thought, musing on the awesome sight of the nuclear blast that incinerated the Naval Arsenal at Kansk. He had seen that when he went up those steps, and now he knew there was no going back that way. The war in 2021 was in its final death throes. That world was not going to survive the missiles and bombs in their thousands.

  I could certainly make good use of one right now, he thought. That would stop Volkov’s offensive right in its tracks, but he knew where the only viable warheads on earth were at this moment—on the battlecruiser Kirov, the ship he had once commanded in that hour of destiny… so long ago it seemed now. The heated memory of that final moment on the bridge would still come to him from time to time, and the lashing rebuke of Doctor Zolkin’s words, the confused, yet stolid presence of Victor Samsonov as he stood up, refusing to obey, the last straw…

  Yes, Samsonov was so mindlessly efficient at his post that it had seemed to Karpov the man was just another part of the ship itself. When he stood to oppose him it was as if Kirov itself has turned in rebellion, the weapon no longer willing to serve the warrior… He shook the bitter memory of those last moments with his comrades from his mind. Comrades? He sneered at that now. They were all traitors as well, no better than Volkov. One day he would settle that score, but he had other fish to fry now—Ivan Volkov.

  He thought about that hammer he needed; about the arsenal at Kansk, and then an ide
a came to him, a devious, sinister thought of something he could do here that might suddenly change the balance of power. He did not have the warheads at his disposal any longer, and there would be no more until the Americans bumbled their way into the atomic nightmare five years from now. Yet he could create something that might serve his purpose very well here, and these old airships he commanded just might be the perfect way to deliver it.

  The more he thought about this, the more he realized how easy it would be to do what he was now imagining. That thought rising in his mind like dark smoke, he turned to his Aide de Camp, a dangerous glint in his eye. “Summon all the engineers. Then tell Captain Bogrov to take us to the nearest fuel depot at Krasnoyarsk. He is to plot a course south to Kyzyl, the Kaa-Khem coal mine to be precise. Signal Big Red at Novosibirsk to head that way and meet us there.”

  An idea was mushrooming up like a dark explosive cloud in his mind, and with the information he had in his computer jacket, he knew exactly what he would need to do.

  Chapter 3

  Several weeks later Karpov had what he needed. The engineers had worked day and night, in double shifts, and all under his scrutinizing supervision. He used the information in his computer jacket to determine exactly what to do, and was pleased with the results, particularly after the first test deployment on a hapless flock of sheep.

  It worked as planned.

  The Germans had hit upon the primal fear of fire, and the agonizing death it would bring, to unhinge Britain’s stalwart defenders under the Rock of Gibraltar. So he would use that same element to achieve his purpose here.

  He strode down the long metal grating of Big Red’s interior walkway, all the way from the tail of the ship, where the last of the loading operations were now being concluded. Along the way he removed his black leather gloves from his uniform side pocket, slowly pulling them on one at a time, and making a fist to set the fit just as he preferred. The sound of his hard soled boots resounded in the enclosed space, echoing up through the metal duralumin framework of the massive airship. Karpov was ready. He would leave the ship to board Abakan for the planned attack. It would be much too dangerous to remain aboard ‘Big Red.’