Final Impact

by John Birmingham

  And now, of course, those “brutes” all knew the ultimate fate of their glorious revolution. To Kolhammer the outcome was clear. They had been heading toward this from the moment Manning Pope had opened the wormhole. This war wouldn’t be over when Hitler was crushed. It would only end when a Sherman tank burst through the gates of the Kremlin, or a T-34 rolled into the Rose Garden. Assuming the combatants didn’t all die in a nuclear exchange first.

  He wanted to say all that, but restricted himself, when asked, to explaining what intelligence-gathering assets he could deploy far in advance of Spruance’s task force, to determine what—if any—consequences had flowed from Stalin’s declaration of war on Japan.

  “With midair refueling, we can get AWACs on station in eight or nine hours,” he explained. “But they can’t stay for long. It’s just too far away. Both the Siranui and the Havoc are outstanding platforms for this sort of work, and lest anyone lack confidence in the former, I’d remind you that she is now staffed entirely by U.S. Navy personnel. However, the Siranui is an integral part of this battle group, and losing her is like putting out our eyes.

  “The sub, on the other hand, we can live without, and she is a naturally stealthy vessel. Captain Willet is already stationed well in advance of the task force and could be off the Marianas in three days, or the Home Islands in four. This is exactly the sort of work she was originally designed to do. I’d suggest sending her with all dispatch.”

  “Do we need to talk to Canberra about that?” Stimson asked.

  “No, sir,” Spruance answered. “They’ve assigned her to us under her original rules of engagement. For the duration of the operation, the Havoc is our asset to deploy as we see fit. She doesn’t need to refer back to her national command.”

  “Good, then,” Roosevelt said. “See to it.”

  “We have other assets we could deploy,” Spruance added. “A couple of our destroyers are carrying SEAL and Force Recon teams. They were going to insert to support the landings, but we could probably retask some of them to gather information about the Japanese reaction to these developments.”

  Roosevelt consulted with his navy and Marine Corps advisers, who agreed it would be a good idea, as long it didn’t significantly detract from the primary mission of the task force.

  “Well, gentlemen,” the president continued, “I suppose we should prepare ourselves for the worst. What is the phrase your people use, Admiral Kolhammer? The eight-hundred-pound gorilla? I think we need to talk about it. General Marshall, leaving aside the atomic question for now, can we fight and win against the Red Army in Europe?”

  Again, Marshall broke up in transmission, but again it hardly mattered. His answer was clear.

  “No, sir. We will take sig…casualties against the Nazis. We’re fight…best divisions while Zhukov and Koni…their worst. We’ll have to re-supply…Atlantic…then the channel. They have a significant advan…men and matériel, and while we can’t gauge just…they’ve advanced their indust…base, it seems obvious that they’ve used the last two years to…least some of their technol…to the same level as ours. The Luftwaffe, for…is having no better luck…their MiGs than they have against our Sabers.”

  Admiral King, always the most abrasive of the personalities, cut across Marshall when it seemed as if he was finished. “Can we just deal with the other eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room?”

  Roosevelt looked wary, but he nodded. Kolhammer felt a sick feeling forming in his stomach to keep his headache company.

  “The Reds didn’t come up with the new planes and guns and tanks by cribbing from afar. And they didn’t get them from that Demidenko complex they were running with the krauts. That was just a hustle by Ribbentrop and Himmler to keep them on side. I think it’s pretty obvious that they’ve independently laid hands on twenty-first technology and documentation—and possibly even expertise—and they’ve grabbed quite a bit of it.”

  He was staring out of the monitor directly at Kolhammer now, having learned the trick of addressing the web-cam rather than the screen image.

  “Wouldn’t you agree, Admiral Kolhammer?” King concluded.

  “I would,” he answered without demur.

  There was a noticeable shifting among the men on screen. Nobody looked comfortable. He could sense Spruance becoming very still beside him.

  “Care to have a guess at which ship you lost?”

  The president stepped in before the two men could get started on one of their legendary fights. Although Kolhammer paid due deference to King as the commander in chief of the contemporary U.S. Navy, he was not directly under his command. He answered to Spruance for operational purposes, and ultimately to Roosevelt, but under the Transition Act of 1942 he was permitted to remain within his original chain of command until one year and one day after the cessation of hostilities in both the European and Pacific theaters.

  It was a situation that made for some fiery clashes with the aggressive and often unpleasant Admiral King.

  “Gentlemen, let’s not open another front just yet,” Roosevelt cautioned. “Admiral Kolhammer, your thoughts.”

  “I suspect the Russians may have gotten their paws on the Vanguard,” he said. “It was a sister ship to Captain Halabi’s HMS Trident.”

  He clearly heard a couple of stifled groans coming from speakers.

  “In the first months after the Transition, I covertly placed a surveillance team inside the Soviet Union to search for evidence of any Multinational Force assets that might have turned up there, in the same fashion as the Sutanto and Dessaix were displaced and fell into Japanese hands.”

  He was aware that Spruance was staring at him, and some of the others looked similarly abashed. Only Roosevelt and, curiously, the British envoy Lord Halifax did not react.

  “We couldn’t sustain the team in-country for longer than six months before they had to withdraw. During their time in the Soviet Union, they picked up some indications that the Red Army somehow had gained access to twenty-first technology, but nothing conclusive could be found, and there was nothing that couldn’t be explained as a result of the Demidenko Project.”

  Admiral King cut in on him. “So what? You bought that crock of shit, and pulled your guys out?”

  Kolhammer was about to say that only a few moments ago King had been outraged by the fact of the team being placed in-country at all. Now he was raging because they’d been taken out.

  But Roosevelt made the point redundant.

  “I’m afraid I ordered Admiral Kolhammer to cease all of his activities within the borders of the USSR,” he said. “The situation with Stalin was tenuous, teetering on war really after we hit Demidenko, as you’ll all recall. It was my opinion that Admiral Kolhammer’s people were in danger of pouring gasoline on the fire. That was a mistake. We could have done with them now.”

  Nobody said anything in reply. Kolhammer closed his eyes.

  Here goes, he thought.

  “They’re still there,” he said. “And still in contact.”

  He thought the president might have him shot right then and there, so he hurried on with an explanation.

  “Major Ivanov and Lieutenant Zamyatin stayed in the USSR, as they were entitled to, since their period of attachment to the Multinational Force had expired. They are operating as free agents now, doing what they can to liberate their country from tyranny.

  “It is their right,” he insisted as Admiral King snorted volubly on screen. “Major Ivanov was a Special Forces officer back in our world. He was an expert in both combating and fomenting insurgencies. That’s exactly what he’s been doing, all over the Soviet Union, for eighteen months. Supporting insurgent forces.”

  Kolhammer let that sink in. The only natural light in his ready room came from two portholes, through which he could see a few wisps of clouds in an otherwise blue sky. A couple of prop-driven planes flew past, a good two or three thousand meters away, while he paused in his delivery. Then he continued.

  “There was always going
to be a reaction against the central government, when Stalin no longer had the Nazis to unite everyone he’d been tormenting before the war,” he explained. “Ivanov has simply been helping that process along. Frankly, I thought it was futile, but it’s not my country. At any rate, President Roosevelt ordered me to cease all contact and control, and I did so. However, Major Ivanov has continued to file regular reports. They have been logged by Fleetnet and archived, but no correspondence was entered into.

  “We couldn’t very well stop him sending the information, after all.”

  Roosevelt muttered, “I still don’t understand why you didn’t get on with Hoover, Admiral. You’re cut from the same cloth.”

  Kolhammer tactfully ignored the aside.

  “Anyway, Ivanov has been in contact again recently. Fleetnet logged a data burst from him just a few hours ago. He is in the Kamchatka region, and is investigating what the Russians call a sharashka. It’s effectively a prison, but a gilded one. Not a million miles removed from the Manhattan Project—in principle, if not execution. Sharashki are tightly closed R-and-D facilities, some of them as big as cities. Life for the scientists and techies who are effectively imprisoned there is very cushy by Soviet standards. They get comfortable quarters, good food, some minor luxuries. But if they miss a deadline or screw something up, there’s a fair chance the NKVD will kill them and send their families to a real gulag.”

  The president looked more than a little uncomfortable with Kolhammer’s uncompromising account of life under Uncle Joe. The other military men, used to dealing in extremes, seemed much less discomfited.

  “Major Ivanov has provided us with the locations of three sharashki other than the Kamchatka site, and extensive notes on what he was able to find out about each. He hasn’t sent much on Kamchatka yet, but I expect that will change soon. The other sites he has logged are a missile range at Novolazarevskaya, a large jet program at Baikonur, and another aviation program near Baikonur that seems to be mainly concerned with helicopter production.”

  Kolhammer paused to take a breath. He had no idea how anyone would react to his next statement.

  “I would strongly suggest that all of these facilities should be targeted for immediate deep-strike missions, if open conflict with the Soviets ensues. The missile base at Novolazarevskaya in particular. If it transpires that they’ve had two years’ access to the Vanguard, they will have a very advanced missile program by now. It’s quite possible that Stalin will be able to call on ICBM assets—rockets that could reach well into the continental United States. And if he has made any progress on his atomic program…well, you don’t need me to tell you what a nightmare that would be.”

  It was evident, even in the little pop-up window, that a few of his colleagues were as furious as they had been in the days after the Transition, when they learned that Kolhammer’s ships had destroyed the Pacific Fleet “by accident.” He could see that King’s face had turned a dangerous shade of red. Marshall was shaking his head, his lips pressed thinly together.

  “Major Ivanov has taken some preliminary soil, air, and water samples from around the Kamchatka site, and they have tested positive for low-level radioactive contamination.”

  He heard Spruance swear softly beside him.

  “In addition, Ivanov has sent back some basic imagery of the Sharashka, and there are a number of signs that it may be part of the atomic program.”

  He tapped a string of commands into his keyboard. On the screens at the other end of the link, he and Spruance disappeared. They were replaced by still shots of massive concrete cooling towers. Allowing them a few moments to examine the image, Kolhammer then returned to the video feed from the ready room.

  “Major Ivanov intends to secure high-value personnel from within the facility, to question them and confirm its nature.”

  “How?” Henry Stimson asked.

  “He’s gonna grab them up and interrogate them as quickly as possible.”

  “Torture them, you mean,” King said.

  “No, Admiral. Ivanov has access to a small supply of T-Five. It’s a drug we use in hostile debriefing of enemy combatants. It’s a lot more effective than kicking them in the kidneys.”

  “Admiral Kolhammer, what happens if Ivanov gets caught?” Roosevelt asked.

  “He won’t allow that to happen, sir.”

  “Oh really.”

  “No. He won’t. I’m afraid that given the nature of his mission, there is very little chance that Ivanov and his companions will escape with their lives. He judges it a sacrifice worth making. And I can assure you, he won’t leave traces behind for the Soviets to throw back in your face.”

  “Admiral, you seem almost eager for this conflict with the Russians,” Roosevelt said.

  “I have no enthusiasm for it at all, Mr. President. It will be an unholy bloodletting. But in my opinion, it is inevitable. The Soviets will not accept their future—the future they found in our records. We’ll fight it out in the next few weeks or the next few years, but we will have to fight them. And it’s almost certain that Stalin will want that fight to take place now, when he’s at his strongest, and before we reach the stage of mutually assured destruction with atomic weapons.”

  Kolhammer waited for someone—Admiral King, he guessed—to flay him again for having royally fucked up their world. He’d built up a thick mass of scar tissue over the past two years of getting flogged on that same point. To his surprise nobody did anything of the sort.

  The president, looking unsteady, turned to Lord Halifax. “Mr. Ambassador, what is the position of His Majesty’s government concerning the Soviet declaration?”

  Kolhammer narrowed his eyes without realizing it. His research on Lord Halifax gave him no confidence in the man. He was a remote, upper-class grandee who was in Washington because Churchill couldn’t stand to have him spooking about London. He’d been an appeaser in the 1930s who’d argued that Hitler’s territorial ambitions should be accommodated, since they “constituted no serious threat” and even marked the return of the Germany to normality after the trials of the Great War and Versailles. If he’d been born a century later, thought Kolhammer, he’d have been one of those idiots who slapped their foreheads and moaned, “What did we do wrong?” every time some jihadi nutjob blew up a primary school or crashed a supertanker into a port.

  With a long face and a melancholy, almost melodramatic delivery, however, Halifax said, “His Majesty’s government has been aware of Major Ivanov’s activities, and has been studying his reports for some time now.”

  That didn’t surprise Kolhammer. He knew a Russian-speaking SAS officer had accompanied Ivanov into the Soviet Union.

  “It’s the opinion of the prime minister and cabinet that war with the Soviet Union is inevitable, and that all preparations must be made to successfully prosecute the conflict as quickly as possible.”

  “I see,” Roosevelt said. He was apparently as taken aback as Kolhammer. “General Marshall, gentlemen, I don’t want to fight another war, and I will do all I can to avoid it, but as it will fall to you to prevail in any conflict with Stalin, I must now direct you to begin planning for that eventuality.”

  Spruance poured himself a second cup of coffee from the pot on the warming stand in Kolhammer’s ready room. The task force had moved only a few nautical miles since they’d sat down to take part in the teleconference, but the world had turned itself inside out, again. Maybe one day they’d get used to the feeling, Kolhammer mused.

  He finished the dregs of his espresso and stared out a porthole. He could tell from the lazy, heaving motion of the ship and the number of whitecaps out on the deep blue that they were sailing into a weather front. A southerly, if he guessed right.

  “Young Kennedy is already a hundred miles out ahead of us,” Spruance said. “I intend to chopper a SEAL team out to him, and then send him to drop them on Saipan.”

  Kolhammer folded his arms and leaned back on the edge of his desk. “Seems a reasonable idea,” he agreed. “There�
�s nothing like eyeballing the ground for real. And our drone cover isn’t what it used to be.”

  “No, but we have a larger issue now, don’t we?” Spruance said. “If it turns out that Tojo is withdrawing some of his forces from the Marianas to shore up defense of the Home Islands, we have to decide whether or not we’ll let him.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kolhammer responded. “My two cents’ worth. If the Japanese want to get home, we should let them. It’ll mean less resistance for us, and it’s going to get bloody taking those islands. More importantly, it’ll hold up the Sovs, and believe me, you don’t want them getting hold of Japan. I can’t think of anything worse.

  “You think the Japanese are bad news now, you got no idea. As Commies, they’d be worse than the North Koreans.”

  Spruance paced the room with hands clasped behind his back. He adjusted his balance to the movement of the ship without apparent thought.

  They’d been given no specific orders about how to respond to a Japanese withdrawal from the Marianas. Until they knew better what was happening out there, they’d been ordered to continue as planned. Spruance stopped at a porthole and gazed out over the task force awhile. The invasion fleet that hit Calais had been an awesome sight, even when viewed on screen. But it hadn’t been a proper oceangoing armada like this one. This had fewer ships, overall, but to Kolhammer it looked much more powerful.

  Spruance turned away from the view. “When we find out exactly what’s going on, we will be referring back to Washington,” he said, in a tone that made it clear he would brook no argument.

  “Of course,” Kolhammer agreed. “This is your task force, Admiral, not mine. I’m just here to run my part of it.”

  “As long as we understand each other then, Admiral. I’m not going to interfere with your tactical decisions. You’re playing with technologies and doctrine I’ve never trained for. But I am not going to make political decisions—and neither are you. If choices of that nature are to be made, they’ll be made by the right people, not us.”