Knight's Move (Kirov Series Book 21)

by John Schettler

  Yet there will be more, all new ships, fast, strong, with good endurance and sea keeping to let them range out into the Atlantic. Wait until they see what I am building! They will be real ocean going destroyers, just like these large fast French destroyers that fluttered off in the heat of battle. They will be forged from the steel I salvage from Oldenburg, my Valkyries, my Shield Maidens. They will have raised forecastles, clipper bows, funnel caps to keep out the sea. The guns will be dual purpose, suitable for surface actions or air defense. They will get the new Wagner boilers, but also utilize diesel propulsion, like Kaiser Wilhelm. The next time I take a ship like the Hindenburg to sea, they will be most essential, steaming right on either side with our new missile defense strategy.

  So we still have prospects, and very good capability. The Royal Navy has lost a lot of ships in this war, mostly old, obsolete battleships, but they must be feeling the strain. Now is the time to put maximum pressure on them. Much will be riding with the Kaiser Wilhelm. I must demonstrate that we can keep the navy useful, a vital part of the war effort. As long as it remains a potent battle force, the prospect of a successful Allied counterattack is in doubt. They will have seen what we did to them here, and take pause.

  All the better, for as long as I can hold Northwest Africa and Gibraltar, then the chances for Plan Orient still remain possible. If Hitler had finished the job with the British before Barbarossa, everything would look quite different now. Yet Rommel was stopped, unaccountably, and by tanks the Abwehr knew nothing whatsoever about.

  I have always had my suspicions about Canaris. His reports of hidden defenses on the beaches at England, a standing British Army there of 1.6 million men—well, they were quite exaggerated, to say the least. It was Canaris who tried to put us off in the attack on Gibraltar. He droned on and on about Franco, and his network in Spain has not been helpful for our assessment study Group sizing up Operation Isabella.

  Yes… Canaris… It is clear he has no love for Hitler, but could he be a double agent, as this man Volkov has whispered to the Führer? Could he really be in the employ of the British? It is bad enough that we have bumblers like Goring to reckon with in high places, but a traitor, and at the very heart of our intelligence network? This is too much to conceive, and certainly too much to bear. I must be very wary of that man, particularly concerning my own building projects. To think that I nominated him to his present post, as he was at least a Navy man. Better Canaris than that pest of a man, Reinhard Heydrich. He was nothing more than a beady eyed SD man, a Gestapo man, and a real spider. Hitler called him ‘the man with the iron heart,’ and I called him the man with no morals. I was correct to dismiss him from the navy years ago, and he has always tried to get even for that. So it was Canaris…

  But I may have made a mistake.

  The Admiral shook his head, brooding, distracted by these old memories and suspicions. First we must finish the job in the Canaries, he thought. and starve the British in Egypt. Then we will see if they can keep these new heavy tanks of theirs supplied for battle against Rommel. I’m told we still have no idea where they were manufactured, and how the British got them to North Africa, but that doesn’t matter. They are there, but they will need gasoline to be anything more than pill boxes, and I am going to do everything in my power to take that away from them.

  The Canary Islands are just the first step. So now I set my mind on seeing to the supply runs out to Fuerteventura, and organizing the covering force for those two big troop ships, Bretagne and Rex. Halder has finally found me that third division, the 327th Infantry. With that force in hand, I will certainly take these islands. But to use it, I must find a way to get it safely into a position to attack. That is a job for the Navy, and here I sit, alone on this single battleship, the apple of my eye ten years ago. Here I sit, but would I trade Hindenburg tomorrow for a pair of fast cruisers, an oil tanker and a good destroyer flotilla? I wonder…

  With an endurance of 20,000 sea miles, Hindenburg can be my oil tanker if I need one now, and one that I will not have to protect. Prinz Heinrich can carry all the aviation fuel our airfields on those islands will ever need, and also ferry planes. The British have been using their aircraft carriers like this for years, but I was blind to it all. Look what the Japanese have just done at Pearl Harbor! The reports were most enlightening. The only real damage they sustained came from other aircraft carriers.

  Yes, things have changed. Everything is different now. The navy I was building with the Bismarck and Hindenburg classes may have been necessary. After all, the British had so many battleships, though they have lost six of them so far, and a battlecruiser as well. The odds are better for us, assuming I ever get Bismarck back in time to matter. Yet I could not have planned this without the French Navy at my side. The British were so worried about those ships that they tried to sink them at Mers-el Kebir. But what really put those two French battleships under the sea when Admiral Gensoul ran for Toulon? An aircraft carrier!

  So I have become the greatest fool in the world. I wanted to build battleships the like of which the world had never seen, but now I am taking the massive hull of the Brandenburg and building the most powerful aircraft carrier ever to sail the seas. Yes, how things have changed, and I have changed with them. If I have any further doubts about that, one look at Bismarck now should tell the story clear enough.

  Things are finally heating up in this war, but the battle for the Atlantic is far from over.

  Chapter 3

  The ship made its way up the narrow channel, with floes of ice on either side, some drifting near the hull as Kirov passed. They were in home waters now, familiar, and yet so far from the world the officers and crew once knew. The Sea of Okhotsk had always been a barren and forbidding place, a desolation of ice in the winter, and a brief fleeting summer before it would all come again. Magadan would be iced over now, were it not for the daily sorties by two icebreakers Karpov had found for the port. They cleared the channel to the harbor, breaking up the frosted grey-white sea.

  Yet the smell of that ice was familiar, a tinge of home on the air, for Kirov was a denizen of the icy waters of the north, long based at Severomorsk near Murmansk. Ahead the narrow quay would just be long enough to let the ship ease up and tie off. And high above the harbor, the looming shape of a massive airship hovered in the grey sky, the long shadow of Tunguska darkening the wharf. Only Karpov would go ashore, where he planned to meet with himself that day, a very private engagement that no other man on earth could ever arrange.

  The news of the third, and hopefully final victory at Ilanskiy was most heartening. The little weapons cache Sergeant Troyak had provided was put to the best possible use, and with deadly results.

  “Six airships! And all at once?” The Siberian beamed, wishing he could be close enough to his other self to embrace him, but that could never happen. The searing pain would build rapidly inside a six foot radius. That was as close as the two men could ever come to one another, a polite conversational distance that could never be spanned, at least without one or both being annihilated. Time grudgingly permitted the existence of two beings here, but she was very particular about the space they occupied. The closer they came to one another, the more persistent her protest would be.

  “I knew you could handle things,” said the Siberian. “I had every faith in you, even as I would in my own self, for that is who and what you are, as I am the reflection of your own self, like a shadow stretching out before you, only a shadow fully become this man you see here. Now… We have so much to discuss and plan together. Were there any difficulties we should speak of?”

  “None worth mentioning,” said the younger Karpov. “I realize things might have been different were it not for those Koronets. We were outnumbered by a good measure.”

  “As I was on the Pacific, but it is the Japanese that went limping home, wondering what in hell had happened to them, just as you sent Volkov’s fleet packing. And speaking of the Japanese, that is our next operation. I assume the situation
on the ground at Ilanskiy is secure?”

  “Certainly. As soon as they lost air cover, their attack was doomed to fail. I moved up six airships, and we sat over them for an hour, pounding them with those recoilless rifles. They had some light flak guns, but we took those out first. After that, they couldn’t make a move on the ground without my seeing it, and delivering a nasty little sting. Fresh troops arrived from the east, and that was that.”

  “A good lesson for Volkov again,” said the Siberian. “That will probably be the last attack he can mount. I doubt if he’ll ever persuade Hitler to lend him those transport planes again.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Good then… The Japanese. Plan 7 is scheduled to begin immediately. I’ve jousted with their fleet carriers on the way here, but now is the time to make our move for Kamchatka and Sakhalin Island. It is the last thing they would expect, and if we can get a substantial force moved, we’ll catch them before they have time to build up strength. Tyrenkov says the garrisons are quite slim, particularly on Kamchatka.”

  “How will we proceed?” asked the younger man.

  “We’ll move the Air Mobile Brigade first, and we’ll need most of the fleet for that. The terrain we’ll be facing is rather formidable, and there are very few ports or other landing sites favorable for a seaborne attack. That said, most of the heavy equipment for the troops must move by sea, which means control of the few ports available is a necessity. I plan on setting up a forward depot at Nikolaevsk at the mouth of the Amur River. We’ll need to secure Vanino-Gavan soon after that. I have already deployed the 40th Division to Chumikan and Torum near the mouth of the Maya River before the winter months set in. Airships did most of the work, and though it took some time, that division now has forward supplies for a move south. 3rd Air Guard Brigade has been added to lead this movement by air. It’s objective is to get down through Tyr to the mouth of the Amur, and get control of Lazarev on the Tatar Strait. That port is our land bridge to Northern Sakhalin Island, and that is where all the key oil fields are.”

  “Oil? In 1942?”

  “Well, it hasn’t been developed here yet, but we know where the oil is, and it will become an important resource in the future. The Japanese have set off to Borneo to secure oil, not knowing it was right under their feet.”

  “How many feet?” asked Karpov, wanting to know what they were up against.

  “They have an engineer regiment in that area snooping around with heavy equipment and drilling rigs, so I believe Volkov must have put them on the scent. But they haven’t found anything yet, as most of the really good fields are just off shore. They have a battalion at Lazarev, another at Alexandrovsk. The rest of their forces will be south of the treaty demarcation line, in Karafuto, as they call it now. Yes, they’re fond of renaming things. That is all of southern Sakhalin Island, and now it’s time we restored its original name.”

  “What about Kamchatka?”

  “Again, they deployed no more than a single brigade, five battalions, all still south of the treaty line. I will land the 92nd Division on the west coast, all well trained ski troops. They’ll be supported by a Naval Marine Brigade, and my air mobile troops with a division of airships. It is only about 100 miles east from my chosen landing site to Petropavlovsk. That’s where the main airfield is, and the best protected bay and harbor on the peninsula.”

  “And what good does all this empty territory do us, aside from assuaging our damaged pride?”

  “It is more than that, brother. Those two airfields on Kamchatka will be quite tantalizing for the Americans.”

  “The Americans?”

  “Of course. No one else can supply us with the necessary aircraft. I’m trying to demonstrate that this whole plan can be developed into a viable axis of attack against Japan. The idea is to offer the Americans basing rights to prosecute their bombing campaign against Japan. They’ll fight for years, hopping from one island to the next before they can get bases close enough for strategic bombing. I can give them that this year, within months.”

  “But they aren’t ready. They haven’t got the planes yet.”

  “It is under a thousand miles from Petropavlovsk to Hokkaido. Fedorov tells me that is well within the range of their B-17 bomber, and soon they will have the B-24, with even better range. The airfields on Sakhalin are the real prize. They are much closer, and if I can secure those, and then offer them to the Americans, I will have a real lever on the Japanese. I’ll have troops that could advance along the frozen Amur river towards Khabarovsk, bases, airfields, new ports, all slowly closing in on the plum—Vladivostok.”

  “A very enterprising plan…” The younger Karpov considered for a moment. “What does our resident historian think of all this?”

  “Fedorov? He has his reservations, as always. He thinks a campaign of this nature will mandate a strong Japanese counterattack.”

  “That does not sound too farfetched. If we know these airfields and ports are important, the Japanese must know this as well. I’m surprised they haven’t got stronger forces there.”

  “Tyrenkov is running down their order of battle.” The Siberian folded his arms, a satisfied look on his face. “As for their counterattack, that is where Kirov comes in handy, wouldn’t you say?”

  Both Karpovs smiled. “Precisely,” said the younger man.

  “Precisely,” said the Siberian. “Let them try shipping anything over from Japan by sea and see what happens.”

  It all sounded so plausible when the two men discussed it, but that evening, the Siberian would have one last meeting with Fedorov to hear his opinion on the matter.

  * * *

  “They don’t all have to come by sea,” said Fedorov. “Though I’m willing to bet they could get something from Hokkaido onto southern Sakhalin without much trouble, and very quickly. But don’t forget the Trans-Siberian Rail. They can move forces up from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk, and from there it isn’t far overland to Vanino-Gavan. They’ll certainly do this if you try to come down from the mouth of the Amur River.”

  “That rail line can be interdicted very easily,” said Karpov. “I have partisan cadres all over Primorskiy Province when this operation starts. We’re even planning major uprisings in the big cities, including Vladivostok.”

  “That’s what is so troubling,” said Fedorov. “The scope of your plan makes it into a substantial threat to Japanese security. Why, it would put enemy bombers in range of their homeland, and cut off the entire Kwantung Army if you actually took Vladivostok. That is their primary supply port.”

  Karpov raised a finger. “If I am to ever win back the territory they seized in 1908, then I must certainly pose a significant threat. They received my ultimatum, and yet took no action. In fact, they did not even give me the courtesy of a reply. So I must show them I mean business.”

  Fedorov nodded. “This is why I believe your operation will provoke the Japanese into a major reaction. The security of their entire war effort in China would also be at stake, so I would not be at all surprised to see big troop redeployments to stop what you are planning. You may believe they have ignored you, but I expect your man Tyrenkov will soon learn that they have, in fact, begun to make preparations for renewed hostilities all along your border. That front has been stagnant for years now. You’ve maintained an army at Irkutsk, and they’ve sat on the other side of Lake Baikal on their border outposts, quietly facing you down. You can bet those troops will soon be on alert, and supplies also moving on their side of the board. Make no mistake—if they do take you seriously, you should expect to be attacked.”

  “Let them try,” said Karpov.

  “Just a moment,” Fedorov countered. “You say that with such confidence, but how many divisions are you committing to this operation?”

  “I’ll have two veteran units, the 32nd and 92nd, and then a good line unit in the 40th Division, with one reserve division. Considering that I’ve sent so many troops to Sergei Kirov, that was all I could spare from the Far East Sector. Al
l the rest is with the Irkutsk Army Group. I will also add three Air Guard Brigades that have been raised to operate with my airship fleet, and the Magadan Marine Brigade. So the force I have available amounts to five divisions.”

  “And did this Tyrenkov fill you in on what you’ll be facing? The Kwantung Army Group has five armies, and over 20 divisions.”

  “Most will have to stay on their frontier positions,” Karpov waved his hand. “They are scattered from Outer Mongolia all the way to the Amur River sector near Chita.”

  “And what about their armies in Manchuria? They could easily re-deploy two or three divisions from those forces to augment anything the Kwantung Army Group sends. How much force will it take to stop you? I’m guessing not much. You have good troops, well acclimated to winter warfare, and hardy men, but could one of your divisions push easily through a decent Japanese division? Could they push through two? Three? Considering the terrain, I find that unlikely. Just keeping your forward units supplied overland from the mouth of the Amur will be a very difficult task. There is no question of your ability to contest or control the sea, but on land, you may find out it’s a different game entirely. There is very little Kirov can do to help you there.”

  “Don’t forget my airships. They can move supplies for a full brigade to virtually any point I desire.”

  “That may be so, but if you push forward with an offensive of this scale, you will get a very strong reaction from the Japanese. Of this I have no doubt. You could find yourself in another bloody Russo-Japanese war if you aren’t careful.”

  “That is the general idea here, Mister Fedorov. Why are you so squeamish?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” said Fedorov. “My reservations are based on a good knowledge of the Japanese military. You forget that their troops have been fighting in Manchuria for years now. They are all veteran divisions.”

  “Yet you said yourself that most of the really good units were combed off to strike south.”