Fedorov sighed, nodding a quick affirmative. “You know what’s been happening since the Admiral fell ill,” he said. “The Captain…”
Zolkin gave him a long look, then dabbed the antiseptic on his cheek. “Karpov has been somewhat aggressive, it seems.”
“He’s made a terrible mistake,” said Fedorov, and he told the doctor what had happened on the bridge, how the American planes had simply been flying a transit mission, unarmed. “I tried to warn him-reason with him, but he had me relieved. Then he engaged the American task force as well. I fear there were very many casualties…”
At this Zolkin took pause, his manner more solemn, concern evident on his face. “It looks like the Captain didn’t like his cigar thrown out the window, and threw out the dog after it,” said Zolkin. He was referring to an old Russian tale, from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, when the character of General Ivolgin claimed he had been berthed with a woman on a long train ride who complained about his cigar and threw it out the window. Ivolgin told his listener that he was so put off that he threw the woman’s dog out after the cigar in reprisal! The story was entirely fabricated, a perfect example of Russian vranyo, and the listener in Dostoevsky’s tale claimed he had read about a similar incident in a Belgian newspaper just days ago. In doing so he broke the time honored forms of vranyo by contradicting the liar, instead of quietly listening, straight faced and concerned.
Doctor Zolkin did not know how much was true and how much was manufactured in Fedorov’s tale, but he stayed in the role of the believing listener, then asked. “What ships did he fire on? Was it serious?”
“An aircraft carrier and several smaller escorts were leading the next convoy out to Iceland. They were not even aware of our presence, sir! He fired a full battery of Moskit-IIs. Didn’t you hear them when they launched?”
“I wouldn’t know a Moskit from a mosquito, Mister Fedorov. Everything this ship fires off sounds the same to me, and it’s all for killing one thing or another, so I pay no attention to it.”
“It’s not an exercise any more, Doctor. We’re not on maneuvers. Men died out there this morning, a great many I fear.”
Zolkin nodded, quiet for a moment before he said: “That’s the business of a warship. We spend billions of rubles to build them, pack them with men, missiles, guns and torpedoes, then put on these nice pressed uniforms and hats to make us feel better about the dirty business we’re up to. In the end, we are a shark, nothing more. This ship is a great white shark, and she has very sharp teeth. Do not be surprised, then, if it ends up doing exactly what a shark would do when the men commanding this ship become sharks themselves.”
Fedorov looked down, still upset. “Does the Admiral know?”
“He should never have stood that last night watch,” said Zolkin. “I suspect that, even when he was in his cabin, he was too busy reading your book to find time to sleep. The man was exhausted, and at his age he will not have the stamina to function as he should without sleep. At least I was able to see that he stayed here all day and got some much needed rest.”
“What happened to him?” Fedorov’s eyes were searching, worried.
“BPV. Benign Positional Vertigo. It will not be serious, and it will pass. Particles in the fluid of his inner ear went one way, the ship went the other. Throw in fatigue and stress and he had a case of sudden vertigo. It is not serious. Another day and I will have him back on his feet-but I want him to rest.” He held up a finger.
“I understand, sir…But doctor.”
“Yes, I knew there would be a ‘but doctor’… what is it Mister Fedorov?”
“The engagement today…The men are saying we have sunk an American carrier! They laugh and joke about it, as if we were on maneuvers. But this attack could have consequences we cannot even imagine now. It will enrage the Americans, just as the Japanese attack on them at Pearl Harbor roused them to anger, and look what happened? They built thirty aircraft carriers, another hundred smaller escort carriers, ten battleships, seventy cruisers, over 800 destroyers and escorts and 200 submarines, not to mention over 400,000 planes!
“They crushed the Japanese empire and practically incinerated their entire country with just a third of their war effort. And liberated half of Europe, and all of Asia in just four years. This is not the United States we know from our time, Doctor. This United States doesn't start with soft words and sanctions. They don’t move a battalion here, a brigade, a few planes, a carrier steaming offshore for a week or two. They won’t take ten years fighting a war like the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan and then leave with nothing in hand when they are done. No…This United States will stop at nothing to achieve its ends. And this war is like nothing we could possibly imagine. A hundred thousand will die on a bad weekend in this conflict. Karpov has stuck his hand into a beehive. We are one ship. How many missiles does he think we have?”
“You know your history well, Mister Fedorov.” The Doctor finished up with a little antiseptic ointment on his cheek. “I think it would be wise if you stay clear of Mister Orlov for a while. As for the Admiral, I'll have a little chat with him.”
“We need more than a little chat, Doctor. I'm afraid the Captain has his mind set on something involving the Atlantic Charter conference. It’s just a few days from now, and as soon as the ship's engines are certified for high-speed rotations again he will hasten on his way, and he will strike at anything in his path.”
Zolkin nodded gravely. ”What exactly is in his path?”
“At the moment, another US surface action group. The battleship Mississippi, two cruisers, five destroyers, and four transports. And behind them there will be much the same escorting their president to Argentia Bay. He will engage these ships if he spots them. We’re jamming all their radar frequencies now. They can’t see us, and he’ll shoot down any plane that comes near us. We can fire at five times their range and hit them before they even know we are here. It’s not warfare, doctor, it’s murder. Our only weakness is the fact that we have a limited weapons inventory, and I'm afraid that when our missiles begin to run low…”
The Doctor knew what Fedorov was angling toward. He scratched his chin, his head to one side as he thought. “I understand,” he said. “I'll do what I can, Mister Fedorov.”
“Thank you, sir. Anything you can do to get the Admiral back on his feet might help.”
Zolkin smiled. “That's what doctors are for. The admirals and captains and generals send men out to fight, and we doctors, we try to put them back together again when they fall apart. In the meantime, I suggest you get some sleep as well. The Chief Engineer was in here an hour ago. It may comfort you to know that I told him to take his time working on the engines. In fact I was rather insistent.” He winked at Fedorov again, removing in one gesture some of the loneliness and isolation the young navigator had carried on his shoulders for days now.
“Now then,” said the Doctor. “Sleep! Doctor’s orders! I will summon you to sick bay at 1800 hours for your prescription.”
“What prescription, sir?”
Zolkin just smiled, and Fedorov knew he had found an ally.
On the bridge the excited flush of victory was well savored. Karpov ordered the KA-226 to scout out toward the position of the American task force and send back live video, and this time he trusted what he saw. The scene was still shrouded with smoke and burning oil, though the sole remaining American destroyer had limped away to the south, her decks laden with every man she could pull out of the sea. All too many were left there, either dead before they hit the water, or dead within the hour. O’Brien lingered as long as she could, but after CV Wasp leaned over and finally began to sink, her skipper felt it would do no good to the survivors if another attack came in and blew his own ship apart. He sped south, back towards the Mississippi in TF 16, which was hurrying north to render any assistance possible.
The four troop and cargo transports were immediately ordered to turn about and return to Argentia Bay. Two destroyers went with them, the remaining three ha
stening north at full speed to pick up the last of the survivors. Behind them came the heart of the task force, cruisers Quincy and Wichita, and the battleship Mississippi. But at 16:00 hours a signal came in ordering the ships to hold position, then turn about and steam for Argentia Bay as well. Apparently the Admirals wanted to get all their eggs in one basket, count them well, and then hatch some plan of attack against this lethal, unseen German raider.
Karpov studied the footage, watching the movements of the three destroyers closely, then assured himself that they were there only to rescue the fallen. Before long they, too, turned and steamed south leaving only the still burning flotsam on the oily sea. The men on the bridge gathered round the video monitor, their eyes alight at first, until the helo zoomed in on the floating bodies of sailors adrift in the wreckage. They saw the arm of one man raise up, as if he was trying desperately to call back one of the destroyers. Then exhausted or stricken by the cold, he slipped from the spar of a mast he had been clinging to, and was taken by the sea.
There is an unwritten law among men who go to sea that binds each one in a silent kinship. The essence of it is that they live or die at the whim of a force greater than any man can sound or fathom, and that a man alone in the water was every man among them in his place.
Watching that last man slip beneath smoky green-gray waves and die took the fire and light of battle out of the eyes of the young mishman on the bridge. It was a perceptible shift in the tone of the emotion they shared, and a sullen silence came over them, perhaps as each one realized now that they had made a mortal enemy of the two single powers that mutually ruled these seas, and that from this point forward, their lot was to fight for their very survival, or to die like the men they had seen on the video screen. And slowly, one by one, they drifted away, back to their posts, keeping the last of their thoughts to themselves the way a man keeps the review of each day he lives in the quiet minutes before sleep takes him. Orlov noticed it, felt it as well, yet his only way of understanding it was to channel the emotion into derisive anger.
“Those stupid bastards,” he said. “What did they think they were doing launching those planes at us? What did they think we were supposed to do, sit here and let them come in on us and put our balls in the sea? No. They got what they damn well deserved, and I hope to god they learned from it.”
The men glanced his way warily as he spoke, but no one said anything, the echo of Fedorov’s warning still in their minds. It was not as Orlov had told it, they knew. The Americans had no intention of attacking. They were unarmed. They had no idea Kirov was even there, and not one of them ever laid eyes on the enemy that had struck them down; butchered them with weapons and capabilities they could not begin to comprehend. Somewhere in that train of thought was a ripening seed of guilt, and each man sat with it, dealt with it in his own way.
For Karpov, it was his to retreat to the silence of command. With Orlov at his side, no one questioned him. So his mind was already leaping past any notion of recrimination and on to the next evolution of his maneuver to the south. Yes, he would have to explain his actions to the Admiral, but he could claim, and justifiably so, that the Americans had struck the first blow in launching those planes, just as Orlov had said.
Why was the engine room taking so long on the reactor cooling problem, he wondered? The ship had been making no more than ten knots throughout the whole engagement. He wanted to put on speed, and cruise south to get into the most favorable position for the confrontation he knew was only a matter of days and nautical miles ahead of them now. What was done, was done. He would live with it and waste no time brooding over his fallen enemy.
Karpov knew he had taken a risk here. It was a feeling that had come to him many times before when he had finally set his schemes and plans in motion against a potential rival, because he knew he might fail. The Americans were just another rung on the ladder he saw himself climbing, that was all. Tomorrow was another day, and anything could happen. A man could never be too careful, or too daring, he thought. Which would it be for him?
He had been careful most of his life. Careful planning, patience and a lot of quiet suffering had brought him to this place. Now he had finally done something daring, and he felt strangely light headed as he looked at the battle damage assessment feed. This must be something akin to what Orlov felt just after he punched a man in the face, he thought. It was a heady, self-satisfied feeling of power. Somehow it quenched the smell of shame that had dogged him all these many years, and it made him feel just a little bigger than he was before.
Now he focused his thoughts on his munitions inventory, and turned to Samsonov, asking him for an update.
“Sir, we have fired a total of 12 Moskit-IIs, 28 remain in inventory. We have fired 16 S-300 SAMS, leaving a total of 48. We have fired 32 Klinok/Gauntlet SAMs, and 96 remain. Our Gatling guns have expended 5 % of available rounds. Our forward 100 millimeter cannon has expended six of one thousand rounds. The 152 millimeter batteries and torpedoes are at full load, as are the auxiliary ship-to-ship missiles.”
The Captain rubbed his hands together. Aside from his Moskit anti-ship missiles, and the S-300s his inventory was near full, and not one of the better 152mm deck guns had come into play as yet. He also had two more SSM missile systems aboard, with ten missiles each.
“Did we receive additional missiles for the MOS-III Starfires? And what about the cruise missiles?”
“No sir, neither of those weapon systems were scheduled for test firing, and so they were not replenished. But we still have our standard load of ten missiles for each of those two systems.”
Karpov thought about this in silence. Adding in those last two weapons, he now had a total of 48 missiles capable of targeting and hurting an enemy ship. His two primary air defense systems were still well provisioned, but he would have to be economical in using his ship killers in the days ahead. There was one other point he wanted to check.
“And what about our special warheads?”
Samsonov looked at him. “I’m sorry sir, that information is not on my board. Only the Admiral is aware of our status for special warheads on deployment.”
Correct, thought Karpov, and the Admiral will have a key around his neck even as I have one around mine. “Thank you, Mister Samsonov,” he said calmly.
His problem now was that it would require both keys, inserted into Samsonov’s Combat Information Display, to activate and fire a nuclear warhead, at least if the default protocols were in place. If he wanted to get his hands on that other key, now was the time to do it, while the Admiral was indisposed. But how to present this in a way that would not cause undo trouble with the crew? He knew their love and respect for Admiral Volsky could become an insurmountable obstacle if it came to a confrontation over the issue.
He considered his situation deeply. Orlov was with him for the moment. Orlov loved a good bar fight, and he understood all too well the effect of direct and bold action when it came to dealing with a problem. The problem was not Orlov, he thought, it’s me! I’m the one still a little weak in the knee over what I have just done, still a little worried at what the Admiral might say and do when he learns of this.
He took comfort in the thought that Orlov seemed to back his decisions, but would the fiery Chief waffle and recede into the background should Volsky return to the bridge? What about the other officers? Rodenko would answer to whomever held the watch on the main bridge. He thought he might be able to rely on Samsonov, but clearly Fedorov was a weak sister, and Tasarov seemed lost, as always, beneath his headphones, his mind in the depths of the sea and concerned with little else. But what were they really thinking? A bit of the old doubt and fear that had always bothered him in times of trouble like this reasserted itself. But what was done, was done.
What was the Admiral’s status? How much time did he have before Volsky would be back on his feet? Could he reason with the Admiral; explain the situation to him properly? Could he force him to see the opportunity they now had before them? He cou
ld insist on the use of nuclear weapons all he wanted, but what if the Admiral refused?
Karpov was still frustrated and troubled. Yes, it felt good to sit in the Captain’s chair just now, without Volsky’s shadow over him, contradicting him, lashing him with one question after another. But all of this was risky. He felt the awkward glare of the overhead lights on him now, flinching. When in battle, the bridge was folded in shadows, with only the red gleam of the battle station lighting on, blood red lights that pulsed with warning, and yet seemed a comfort to him.
His mind wandered over the many possibilities ahead of him now. What if the Admiral were permanently disabled? As First Captain of the ship he would then be senior officer. There were two other Captains aboard, as both Doctor Zolkin and Orlov technically held the rank of Captain, though they were both of the second and third rating, and below him in the chain of command. Orlov was presently designated Chief of Operations. Karpov could declare an emergency and appoint Orlov as his Starpom, his number one, bypassing Zolkin easily enough. The other Lieutenants, of every rank and stripe, would have no choice but to fall in line. If necessary, he could call on Sergeant Troyak and his Marine detachment to impose his will. Yet if it came to a contest of authority with the Admiral, what would Troyak do? Volsky was not just any admiral, he was Admiral of the Fleet, one big star and four stripes above Karpov’s present rank as First Captain.
He decided he needed to get below decks for a while and take the measure of the ship and crew. Like a mouse stealing out into a dark, drafty house, he needed to skulk about a bit to size up his prospects. He knew where the cheese was. Could he get to it this time? He wanted to check on engineering first, then visit the Doctor to see about Volsky. On the way back he would have a brief chat with Troyak as well.
Chapter 27
August 6, 1941
The American Task Force 16 was steaming south with the four transports out in front this time, followed by the larger escorts which hoped to screen the cargo ships from any further attack. Behind them, Kirov crept slowly south in their wake, like a lone wolf tracking a herd of water buffalo. Along the way she sailed right over the seas where Wasp had burned and sank, along with Vincennes and Walke. Many of the crew were out on the main sea deck, leaning over the railings and peering out of hatches to look at the flotsam and dark slicks of burning oil there. Bodies still floated in the water, some having drifted out of the stricken ships below, a macabre scene that left the living in a sullen silence, tinged with a measure of guilt. For many it was their first real combat action, and their first personal glimpse of the consequences of war.
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