Steel Reign (Kirov Series Book 23)

by John Schettler

  Now it was clear that these were not the naval rockets that had been the bane of the Kriegsmarine in recent months, but something much more sinister….

  * * *

  Weeks after Kapitan Heinrich delivered that cache of documents and magazines, and those remarkable missiles, both he and Kapitan Falkenrath were called to Gibraltar. There, in an office building overlooking the former Governor’s Parade, Admiral Raeder sat with a stony expression on his face.

  “Gentlemen,” he began. “I have just received a report from Peenemünde. They are convinced that the weapons we delivered are not the naval rockets that have been used against us at sea.”

  “Then what are they?” said Heinrich, clearly surprised.

  “Ballistic missiles, and it appears that initial assessments believe they have a very long range, and a most unusual warhead. We now believe that what you may have stumbled upon in the South Atlantic was a secret American test project. Given the fact that such a weapon has not been used against us thus far in the war, we conclude that these two rockets are prototype designs—but very dangerous prototypes. I must therefore impress upon you the importance of secrecy in this matter. Nothing whatsoever must be disclosed about these weapons. Understand? As far as you are both concerned, they do not even exist. Furthermore, I want the names of each and every member of your crew who may have set eyes on those rockets. They are to report directly to me at once.”

  “I understand,” said Heinrich.

  “Detmers finally got through to Casablanca, and he had the ship in question with him as well. I have already had this conversation with him. As for the reports and other documents you have obtained from that ship… The conclusion they lead us to believe is clearly preposterous, but you are to say nothing of them either—not a single word to anyone. Even Hitler himself has not been fully briefed as to the nature and presumed capability of those rockets.”

  “What about the radar sets and other equipment?” asked Falkenrath.

  “They have been turned over to appropriate authorities for further testing and analysis. It is apparent that our enemies have developed a much higher level of technical proficiency than we believed. This little cache you discovered will prove absolutely invaluable, and for that…” The Admiral reached into his desk drawer, producing two small felt covered boxes, “you are both about to receive the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves. Congratulations! One day soon, the weapons and equipment your daring sortie delivered to the Reich will make a great difference in this war.”

  Yes, thought Heinrich, a very great difference. But knowing these weapons were already in development in the United States was most disturbing. And there were so many things about that mission that remained utterly perplexing. After that meeting was over, Heinrich and Falkenrath had a little chat of their own.

  “This is all so very strange,” said Falkenrath. “What happened to that aircraft carrier you hit with a 15-inch shell?”

  “Should we be discussing this?” said Heinrich.

  “What, you just want to take your medal and go back to business as usual? Look, Heinrich, this is just between the two of us. There’s something odd about this whole affair. Do you know that Raeder had all my ship’s logs confiscated?”

  “Mine as well.”

  “Well let me tell you what he will soon learn, if he doesn’t already know it. We lost contact with you right at the outset of that encounter with those ships down there. My watch logged it at 02:45.”

  “The weather was miserable. Why is that surprising?”

  “Because we took a good long while searching for you. I doubled the watch, had the radar sets working, everything, but there was no sign of your ship—for almost two hours….”

  “Two hours?”

  “Our log reported sighting Kaiser Wilhelm again at 04:10, nearly an hour and a half later, and we did not get positive recognition from your lamp signals until 04:18. Where in God’s name were you all that time?”

  “That cannot be right,” said Heinrich. “I’ll admit that one gets pulled into the heat of the moment, and that contact was very sudden, but I am certain the whole incident took no more than five or ten minutes!”

  “Two hours, Heinrich, or nearly so. We couldn’t use the wireless, but I was even considering launching a seaplane to get up and look for you. All we saw were those strange auroras, and the empty sea. Then there you were, but well off our original course.”

  Heinrich narrowed his eyes. “Since you tell me this, I will say that those documents no one is supposed to know about tell quite a different story. Raeder has said I am not to ever speak a word of it again, and he’s taken the whole lot, every report and file we found on that ship. Detmers and his entire crew from the Kormoran have been pulled from that duty and sent somewhere. Something tells me that the men we send to Raeder will all end up being replaced.”

  “What’s going on here?” said Falkenrath. “None of this adds up.”

  “I think we had better not be too eager to do the math,” said Heinrich. “Can’t you see what has just happened? We are both senior officers—not so easy to get rid of without others in the fleet taking notice. So Raeder just called us in, pinned a nice shiny medal on our chest, and told us to keep our mouths shut. Frankly, I don’t know where we were all that time, Herr Kapitan, or where in the world that enemy aircraft carrier went, or why we should then find that American ship with these rockets, but not a living soul aboard. But I’ll tell you this—if the Allies have these weapons operational now, we are doomed, Germany is doomed. It would take us years to catch up, even with those prototypes.”

  “That is what is so confounding. They have these rockets—the damage they put on Hindenburg and our other ships was plain to see. Yet they only seem to be in very limited deployment. Raeder may be correct. These may only be prototypes, perhaps limited to a very few ships. They haven’t been seen in use anywhere else. Hell, we took Moscow from the Russians and not one such weapon was ever directed against us. This is quite bizarre, Heinrich.”

  “Yes…. It certainly is. Well, good day, Kapitan Falkenrath. I hope we sail together again one day soon. In the meantime, enjoy your medal.”

  Heinrich saluted, turned, and walked away, his footsteps sharp and brisk, his mind still inwardly dwelling on those magazine articles. Detmers was the only other man besides Raeder who knew about them. Something told him that the three of them would end up being the only ones who ever really knew. Really knew what? What is it you think you know, Kapitan, he said to himself? Did you stumble across a ship from another time, from the future? Nonsense, just as Detmers said it best.

  But deep down, there was a quiet inner mind that would simply not believe that, and this would not be the only time Heinrich would be presented with clear evidence that this impossible notion as presented in those magazines was really truth. And if it was the truth… The faces of those 24 Ministers of the Reich, all lined up in a double spread, were so very haunting.

  I wonder what Raeder thinks about that? He’s probably going to wonder a good long while why his own face was not there among that rogues gallery, and why that photo of Döenitz listed him as the Fleet Commander. Yes, he’ll be thinking about that for a very long time….

  Chapter 6

  Raeder was thinking about it, and it fell like a shadow over his mind, a grim realization that the story being told in that strange magazine was a real possibility. I should be elated with this find, and in one sense, I am. We finally have our hands on prototype weapons that the enemy was undoubtedly testing in the deep South Atlantic. But that entire incident was most unusual, most disturbing.

  I have read the log books from each ship, and they simply do not agree. Now I know Heinrich and Falkenrath to be sensible, reliable men. I’ve had my eye on Heinrich for some time now, ever since we lost Admiral Lütjens. He has amassed a most impressive kill record in the few sorties he’s been on, and now this astounding find that no one expected.

  What really happened down there? How could Kaiser Wilh
elm stumble on an aircraft carrier, hit it, and yet allow it to slip away? The weather must have been very thick. That is the only thing that can account for it. The Goeben actually lost contact with Kaiser Wilhelm for well over an hour, according to the logs there—but those on Heinrich’s ship tell a completely different story. Very strange.

  And what about those fabricated reports Heinrich littered my dinner table with—those odd magazines? Why would the Allies concoct such nonsense—to use as propaganda tools? It makes no sense. And what happened to the crew of that ship Detmers brought in—what an amazing find that was. How could something so valuable be abandoned and set adrift like that at sea. Heinrich says the ship was actually underway at about ten knots when they encountered it. Two precious missile prototypes aboard, and all that advanced equipment, on a derelict ship with no Captain or crew….

  It’s as if the enemy intended for us to find that ship, which means they intended us to find those missiles as well. Could that be the solution to this puzzle? Are those missiles simply dummies? They know we are aware of their rocket technology, and therefore know we will be stopping at nothing to get these weapons ourselves. So they just leave a few there, on an empty ship. What if they were intended to mislead our technology teams—lead them down false pathways in their research? What if that ship was nothing more than a Trojan Horse? It is clear those rockets can never be fired to prove they even work. Surely the Americans would know that. No. They can only be studied, analyzed, reverse engineered, and there is never any guarantee that our models will work either.

  Look how they went to such elaborate lengths to rub our nose in this assertion that Germany loses the war. How very clever—trot out old General Montgomery, reminiscing on his victory over Rommel; line up all the top ministers of state like common hoodlums. Yes, they were certainly giving us the middle finger in those documents. Here they went so far as to date every log and report to the year 1958, as if to say that is how far ahead of us they are with their rocket technology. Then they leave us a pair of poison pills… I wonder…

  Yet those were not the naval rockets that have been used against us. They couldn’t be. They are simply too big, and Peenemünde thinks they are multi-stage ballistic missiles, like our own V project designs, yet even more advanced. My god… we’ve got to find a solution for these naval rockets. Look at the damage they have inflicted on the fleet!

  We have lost Nürnberg, Prinz Eugen, and watched Admiral Scheer chastened in the far north—naval rockets. The Graf Zeppelin was utterly destroyed, along with destroyers Loki and Siegfried—naval rockets. Gneisenau was sunk by enemy torpedoes in that engagement with the Rodney, presumably by an enemy submarine, and Hindenburg has also suffered three torpedo hits, though I built that one very well. Bismarck sustained so much damage in that duel off Fuerteventura that it will be laid up for at least another nine months.

  Thank god we got hold of the French fleet. Their losses are even more staggering: Bretagne, Lorraine, Provence, Richelieu, Strasbourg, Dunkerque, and now Bearn in the Pacific. Their entire battle fleet has been gutted, not to mention the loss of eight cruisers! Yet that entire fleet was always expendable. As it stands now, the presence of the Normandie and Jean Bart, mean a very great deal to our chances at sea now, and their destroyers are worth their weight in gold. Alas, the French Admirals are getting squeamish, though I suppose I cannot blame them.

  So many things concerning these new weapons do not make sense. What caused that massive explosion at sea in that earlier Atlantic engagement? What kind of ordnance could the Allies be using? It towered up thousands of feet in that terrible mushroom cloud. Could it have been something like the secret atomic project our scientists have been working on? I was afraid we would see it again off Fuerteventura, but nothing of the kind was used against us there. Could that earlier explosion in the Atlantic have been the deployment of another prototype like the missiles Heinrich found? If so, and these rockets are the real thing, then that Trojan Horse had a real terror within it. What have we taken within our gates by sending those rockets to Peenemünde?

  It took some doing, but a Grand Admiral has some clout after all. I managed to get hold of the preliminary assessment by the technical team at Peenemünde. That is how I knew those were not naval rockets, but ballistic missiles. And now I also know that their warheads were most unusual, possibly the same as the weapon that caused that terrible mushroom cloud in the Atlantic. God help us if the Allies have such weapons now—if they ever have them at all! Then the things they taunted us with in that strange magazine would indeed come to pass. Germany could never win this war, and I am well aware of how our ring leaders in the Nazi Party would be regarded. Thank God I am not a Party man. Is that why my picture was left out of that gallery, or was there some other reason?

  The Admiral shook off these impossible thoughts. They could only lead him down inexplicable corridors, into shadow and uncertainty. He had to focus on the here and now. Yet those odd magazines were pretending to know the future, to predict Germany’s inevitable fate. They were so utterly persuasive, every photo, every line of text, right down to the silly advertisements. What would I do differently now if that was our future?

  That might be a long list. In the meantime he had another list in front of him, and it needed his thought time and attention.

  I must get Hindenburg back into fighting trim as soon as possible. The superstructure repairs can finish up at Toulon, but after that, I need a good dry dock to look at the hull and see to that torpedo damage. It will be no good trying to run the ship home to Germany. Hindenburg is a serious threat right where it is in the Med, or at Gibraltar. Thankfully, the Normandie Dry Dock at Saint Nazaire can easily accommodate the Hindenburg. So as soon as we tidy up Kaiser Wilhelm and the Goeben, I will send all three out to that port.

  That will be a strong knife at the throat of the Western Approaches, and I will use that task force exclusively for commerce raiding now. Then, in the south, I stage Normandie, Jean Bart and Prinz Heinrich at Casablanca with strong French destroyer escorts. Another knife to support our continued efforts in Operation Condor.

  To keep the British spread thin, I must see that our operations at Trondheim are given high priority. The Nordstern base there must be complete as soon as possible, a city of a quarter million citizens of the Reich, and a strong naval / air base—our North Star. It will be our Singapore of the north, only we will not squander such a marvelous base, like the British did in the Pacific.

  From Nordstern I will stage Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, the fast cruisers Rhineland and Westfalen, and our new destroyers. To that I can add the carrier Peter Strasser, another star in the north to plague the British. And I still have the two older pocket battleships there as well. Once Nordstern becomes a self-sufficient naval base, that entire fleet can be staged there, freeing us of the necessity to transit the North Sea. It will be tasked with shutting down the Allied convoys to Murmansk. Doenitz will have his own u-boat bunker there as well—Dora 1.

  But what about Operation Condor? That is my most immediate concern. I could dearly use Heinrich and Falkenrath down there now, but Hindenburg will need a good escort to Saint Nazaire. He sighed, thinking about the stalemate operation in the south.

  We have taken Arecife, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria, yet the naval engagement was so costly to both sides that a lull has fallen over operations. It has taken us much more time than we realized to move in fresh supplies, and to repair the airfields and get aviation fuel, munitions, and service crews there. My use of Prinz Heinrich as an aviation fuel ferry ship was quite clever, but we need more tankers. The loss of Ermland was difficult to bear. I must get another tanker into the Atlantic as soon as possible.

  Then what? We have enough troops to proceed with Operation Condor, even though Rommel still has one of the Mountain Regiments I requested. Now he is bellyaching about our use of ‘all his planes’ to support Operation Condor. He will undoubtedly say the very same thing to Hitler as an excuse for being pushed out of Cyrenai
ca. That is a dangerous omen. He cannot advance, and now it seems that he cannot even stop the British. If we lose Libya, then the Enemy will be poised to invade Tunisia, and all because the Führer is still so obsessed with the campaign in Russia. Five divisions would settle the matter in the Mediterranean…. If we could only keep them supplied.

  At the moment, Rommel is still holding on to Benghazi, but that port will soon come under attack from Allied air power. The Americans are shipping the British a lot of aircraft now. Rommel will soon want ‘his planes’ back, but those Stuka squadrons are the key to maintaining our hold on the Canary islands. We’ve caught that bird, but now we must swallow it. The British will undoubtedly attempt to use their sea power to interdict our supply operations to the islands. Against that, my great trump card is air power.

  Now we have good airfields on the islands. The British have already had to re-route convoys well out into the Atlantic, and Doenitz is already asking me to get a U-boat pen set up there, perhaps on Fuerteventura. The British won’t like that, and the hard fact is that they can make bombardment runs by night to attack those airfields. That was where they inflicted the most harm to the Luftwaffe, when they shelled that damn airfield down south. So I must fight for each and every squadron, and what we need now is the development of a good long range night fighter, and more planes for my aircraft carriers.

  Look what the Japanese have done in the Pacific! Here we struggle to support the occupation of these islands, while their navy has overrun the entire South Pacific! They are in a very good position to cut off Australia now, and I wonder if they can manage it. But I could take good lessons from their conduct of naval operations in these last several months. Their ability to project power and sustain it with their navy is absolutely superb, the equal or better of the Royal Navy, and that says a great deal.