1943 (Kirov Series Book 27)

by John Schettler

  Chapter 30

  “So then,” said Gromyko. “What is our plan?”

  He was sitting with Admiral Volsky in his cabin, a private meeting so none of the other officers and crew might overhear. Kamenski had briefed them both when they departed, yet Gromyko was still bothered by the jumble of memories in his head. Who was he now? He clearly remembered the secret rendezvous when the Admiral and Fedorov first came aboard, sneaking in on a submersible as his sub remained hidden in the still dark waters beneath the Admiral Kuznetsov.

  He had been at war in 2021, his submarine already clashing with the Americans when Karpov took Kirov and the Red Banner Pacific Fleet out. Then Kirov vanished with the unexpected eruption of the Demon Volcano, and he had taken on these two other officers, hearing their impossible tale as to where the ship had turned up. It wasn’t dead as many in the fleet first thought. That volcano had sent Karpov’s flotilla careening into the past, and now Gromyko was to take his boat back and look for it. But how?

  That was when he learned of the control rod they had brought aboard, and its amazing effects. He could still recall how hard it had been to internalize all of that, get his mind around what was happening and come to accept it. In time, the mind could embrace every impossible thing. He had seen the reality of the past, and used the power of his boat to fight there.

  Then, while caught up in yet another duel at sea in the Atlantic, they had encountered a most unexpected challenger. Chernov had been at his station, as always, when he spoke those most unwelcome words.

  “Con…. Undersea contact. Possible submarine…”

  Gromyko turned, a question in his eyes. “An uninvited guest,” he said. “German U-boat?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation as Chernov continued to toggle switches on the module he had been using to process the signal. “Sir… This sounds like a British sub.” His voice carried a note of alarm that surprised Gromyko, and he never liked surprises. “British? We were not informed they had anything out here.”

  “Sir! This is crazy. It’s reading as Astute Class!” He gave Gromyko a shocked expression. “We got lucky and recorded one boat after learning its deployment date. It’s the only profile we’ve ever managed to get, but my readings are above a 90% match for this signal.”

  “Impossible,” said Gromyko, but then a deeper instinct asserted itself, reptilian, a reflex born of many hours beneath the sea. “All stop!” he said. “Launch noisemaker sled number one. Then right rudder fifteen, down bubble fifteen! Rig for emergency silent running!”

  Astute Class… And Director Kamenski was most curious about that when he heard about it, thought Gromyko. My own reaction was perhaps overblown. There I was, fighting the second World War, when suddenly I’m told we have a visitor from the third. In my mind, I had no way of knowing where I was. There was never any certainty on this boat from the moment they first brought that control rod aboard. I could have been anywhere. The boat could have shifted again for all I knew. Yet there was one sure thing that I could count on in those split seconds—Chernov. There was no way he would make a mistake and classify an old WWII boat as Astute Class. So I did what I would have done in 2021, fought as I would have fought there. We barely avoided that surprise attack, and when I threw my punch back at the unseen enemy, I wanted to make sure I killed him.

  The next thing I know, the boat was somewhere else….

  Now this.

  Another mission with Volsky, and with the same objective as the first—find Kirov, bring it home, and that failing… kill the ship. Volsky looks tired, but he seems to have settled himself. Yes, he experienced the same thing I did, with memories of different lives all jumbled together in his mind, but now things have quieted, the shock of that receded, and he has been able to sort things through. I still don’t understand it—how could I be carrying all these memories in my head. Poor Volsky apparently has a good many more.

  “Captain,” said the Admiral. “This is going to be a most delicate situation. Since Fedorov never kept his appointment with you, something must have happened to him—we know not what. But knowing that young man, I will bet he is still alive and well. We have remained radio silent up here for some time, but now I think we must contact the ship again. That would be the most direct way to address our problem.”

  “It would reveal our presence here to Karpov,” said Gromyko.

  “I understand what you are saying, but what else are we to do?”

  “We could remain silent. If you might have to go to someone’s house and kill them, would you knock first? In that event, we must hit the ship the old-fashioned way. I don’t think it would be too hard to determine where they are. Karenin picked up some radio chatter just yesterday. Apparently, there was an attack at an important Japanese naval base.”

  “That should not be surprising,” said Volsky.

  “But it involved missiles….”

  That got Volsky’s attention.

  “Missiles? Then that must have been Kirov; Karpov. The man is fighting his own private little war with the Japanese out here. Such an attack would be very much in accord with the way Karpov thinks.”

  “So we could just navigate to that sector and start the hunt there.”

  “Suppose we do,” said Volsky. “I do not think we will just creep up on Kirov easily. You forget Tasarov.”

  “Yes, yes, the best ears in the fleet. Our man Chernov is pretty damn good as well.”

  “Yet one way or another, contact will occur,” said Volsky. “If we are to give Karpov the option of returning with us, then we’ll have to speak with him.”

  “Frankly Admiral, I have very little hope in that. Didn’t we try to convince Karpov to return earlier? There he was, fighting the Japanese in 1908, and he was driven. I do not think he will be any different this time.”

  “In that you may be correct.” Volsky shrugged. “He disobeyed a direct order from me to cooperate with us and return to 2021. Setting aside the fact that we have no idea whether or not we could even pull that off, Karpov will not want to cooperate this time either. He was quite determined to get control of Kirov, and now we see what he has in mind. He wants to fight the Japanese, and he will think that by doing so he can convince them to relinquish the territories they took from Russia after his last intervention failed in 1908. In fact, if we do contact him, he will throw that at us right from the beginning. He will say it was our interference that prevented him from settling things in 1908.”

  “Then our only other choice is to do it on the sly,” said Gromyko. “Stealth is what this submarine is all about. I’m willing to bet I can get this boat into missile range before Tasarov hears us.”

  “Which then presents us with the uncomfortable decision as to whether or not we fire.” Volsky was obviously bothered by that idea. “That is a good ship out there; a good crew. All of those men are like sons to me, which is why I suppose they came to call me Papa Volsky. The thought of killing them all is hard for me to even contemplate. But yet, Kamenski is convinced that we must do so as a last resort. I do not say I even understand the threat he sees so darkly, but I have been troubled by this for a good long while. When messages come from a future that we cannot even know, and they warn of our ship, it is more than troubling. It is deeply disturbing.”

  “Messages?” Gromyko gave him a blank look.

  “Signals that were aimed at this shadowy group founded by my good friend, Admiral Tovey. He called it the Watch, and I suppose we are the reason for that.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Beware of a ship… beware Kirov.”

  There was a moment of silence, before the Admiral spoke again. “So it has something to do with everything Kamenski told you, and he went over it all again with me before I stepped aboard again. Well Captain, if it came down to it, how would you fight Kirov?”

  “With everything I have,” said Gromyko. “It’s likely we’ll get into missile range, and they gave me a new set of some very sharp teeth.”

  “Yes,
the new Zircon MOS-III. How many?”

  “Two full silos of eight missiles each. The remainder are the older Kalibr Class cruise missiles. I have another eight of the long-range 3M-14-K Series. That gives me striking power out to 2500 kilometers, and with a 450 kilogram warhead. But that is the land attack variant. The remaining sixteen missiles are the 3M-54-K, a shorter range variant out to 660 kilometers, but with the smaller 200-kilogram warhead. That was the dedicated anti-ship variant, though I suppose I could use the land attack missile against a water borne target as well.”

  “It may interest you to know that Kirov also has the Zircon—ten missiles. They also carried older P-900s and there were 40 of the Moskit-IIs. I have no idea how many Karpov may have expended since he took over the ship. Fedorov would certainly know, assuming Karpov did not throw him into the brig.”

  “The missiles don’t matter to me,” said Gromyko. “I won’t be firing from the surface. That’s where I have the real advantage. Their entire missile inventory is useless in this fight. All I have to worry about is their torpedoes.”

  “Remember, they have three helicopters.”

  “That is the real threat,” said Gromyko. “They expand their ASW search radius, and if they get a good idea where we are, they can drop sonobuoys to refine that contact and then we get trouble. It’s a pity that no one ever managed to put decent SAMs on a submarine. I’ve got the mast mounted 9k34 Strela 3, but its range is just a whisker over four kilometers. That might get a helo that was hovering right on top of us, but little more. Give me the S-400. That would really be a game changer. A few silos of those, and I would be virtually unbeatable against those helos or ASW planes. Then again, to see them I’d have to have my head above water, and for an old sub driver like me, that is the last place I want to be in a fight.”

  “Yes, you would have to expose your sensor mast to target the helicopters,” said Volsky. “That would make your position known, particularly after you fire your SAM. All the helo has to do is fire their torpedo in response. You might shoot down that helo, but then you would have to deal with that torpedo in the water, and perhaps more than one. It would also tell the enemy mother ship exactly where you are, and Kirov has three helicopters.”

  “So both sides have good face cards in their hand,” said Gromyko. “As it stands, they are vulnerable to my stealth and missile attacks, but we are vulnerable to those helos. The key is who finds the other first.”

  Volsky shrugged. “It’s a pity that we even have this conversation,” he said. “Here we are, discussing our Assassin’s Creed. It is most unseemly.”

  “So there is no way Karpov might be reasoned with?”

  “I find that most unlikely.”

  “Then if I had to kill that ship, I would start with a full salvo of those 3M-54-E Series missiles, but I would want a firing position that would mask their approach for as long as possible.”

  “Explain,” said Volsky.

  “If I could find the ship close to one of these islands—a nice big fat one—then I would fire from the opposite side of that island. If it had sufficient elevation, it would create a radar blind spot. I would fire right down that dark zone, and then they might not pick up the missiles until they start their final attack maneuvers. They would climb to avoid the land mass, and then immediately dive for the high-speed terminal run at sea level.”

  “Do you think they would get through? Kirov’s missile defense shield is very good.”

  “All we need is one good hit. I hesitate to bring this up, but if this was real war—the kind I trained to fight in 2021, then the last missile in that salvo would have a special warhead. If I see the first fifteen shot down, then we detonate the last one before they get it. The blast wave, shock and EMP will all have strong effects.”

  “Yet there may be other exotic effects as well,” said Volsky. “Remember what happened to you in the Atlantic.”

  “Only too well.”

  “You know,” said Volsky. “This may sound odd, but there are three layers of memory in my mind. One is the life I led when we first left Severomorsk to go out for those live fire exercises. The ship was carrying a lot of older munitions then, just to get rid of them. We were going to double down on the Zircon after we reached Vladivostok. The second layer of memory is from the second coming of Kirov, and we had much the same in terms of overall weaponry, but better SAMs. Yet I also remember the life I was living in when Kamenski herded me into his little scheme here. In that world, the one that just serviced your ship, there was no Kirov, at least not any ship by that name. It was renamed Admiral Ushakov, just as the Frunze was renamed Admiral Lazarev. Both those ships had troubled reactors, and are scheduled to be scrapped. So only two of the Four Boys, as we called them, were still at sea.”

  “And the other two brothers?”

  “Oh, those were renamed as well and eventually put into deep modernization programs, the Admiral Nakhimov was finished in 2018, and Pytor Veliky in 2021. They got new teeth, ten 3S-14 vertical launch system modules that could each hold eight missiles. That dramatically increased firepower and endurance, from the 20 old P-700s we were carrying, to eighty SSMs. Pyotr Velikiy, for example, got all Zircon class missiles.”

  “Formidable,” said Gromyko.

  “You see, we never cannibalized those ships to build the new version of Kirov. They are still from the original class, yet vastly upgraded. Strange how in these other two life lines the ship seems to be different from the models we created in the world I come from.”

  “Yet all three are dangerous,” said Gromyko. “Is Kirov carrying special weapons?”

  “Of course. They will have at least three.”

  “Would Karpov resort to using them?”

  “He already has! In the first time loop, there was no Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor as a result. After the second coming, the ship went north to Murmansk instead of south into the Atlantic, and we have Mister Fedorov to thank for that. So, one turn of that ship’s rudder, and we get Pearl Harbor back. I can see how the men from the future might fear Kirov, and why they sent Tovey’s group those warnings. Captain, that is a clever attack plan, though one that would need Kirov to be in a particular spot to succeed. What if it fails?”

  “After moving off axis to one side or another, I would then continue to close until I got inside Zircon range. Then I would fire all sixteen of those, and the last with a special warhead. If they manage to stop them, then I go to the Kaliber 3M-54-E1s, and when in range, I throw all eight. After that, it’s down to torpedoes, but I think I would have killed that ship before things got that far.”

  “Yes,” said Volsky. “They’ll have to expend a lot of SAMs to get those Zircon missiles. They move too damn fast. They won’t be able to rely on one S-400 getting a hit each time. So it may come down to how many arrows Karpov still has left in his quiver, and whether or not we can achieve surprise.”

  “He knows we’re out here somewhere,” said Gromyko. “Fedorov certainly knows.”

  Part XI

  The Missing Egg

  “A guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, hey doc, my brother's crazy! He thinks he's a chicken. Then the doc says, why don't you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs.”

  — Woody Allen

  Chapter 31

  Admiral Volsky thought for some time, listening to the quiet hum of the boat, feeling its sleek, stealthy power as it glided beneath the sea. What were they planning to do here? Gromyko was laying out the best possible strategy for his attack on Kirov, on the ship and crew that he felt so close to in his mind and heart. There were memories there, layer upon layer, that he could not push aside. He imagined the string of missiles this sub would fire, emerging from the sea and starting their deadly run in to the target. There was Fedorov, Rodenko, Nikolin, Tasarov, Samsonov, and yes, his dear old friend Doctor Zolkin.

  “I don’t like it,” said Volsky. “I know it makes the best military sense to attack as you advise, but I cannot steal up on t
hat ship and unload all these missiles. I cannot sit here, wondering whether they have killed that ship and crew. No, Captain, I think I must first knock on that door.”

  Gromyko nodded. He had made his case for how he would attack if pressed, but deep down, he was not eager to do so. “I understand,” he said. “Yet what ammunition do you have that might prevail over Karpov?”

  “That remains to be seen. Can they pick up a signal on the secure comm-link?”

  “It was designed for extreme long range communications.”

  “Very well, I want to use it… Now.”

  Gromyko extended his hand, pointing the way as they stepped out of his cabin and went down the narrow passage towards the command sail. Stopping at the bridge, he told Belanov to run shallow and deploy the sail mast for long range communications. They found the signals station, where Lieutenant Alexi Karenin was at his post, head lost in his earphone set, listening. Jr Lieutenant Genzo Gavrilov was at his side, the man the crew called “GG.” Born in Vladivostok, his father had married a Japanese woman from Hokkaido, and Genzo was bilingual, with fluent Japanese as his second language. The two men had been listening to Japanese radio traffic.

  “Anything new?” asked Gromyko.

  “Sir, we picked up the code phrase 8-E-YU. That’s Admiral Nagumo, and he was ordered to make a course change west into the Solomons.”

  “Genzo? What’s up?”

  “We think it has something to do with that hit on the base at Truk, sir. The last course track we had on that task force put it heading for Truk.”

  “So they don’t want their carriers in harm’s way,” said Gromyko. “Karpov must have shaken them up. Very well, that will be all Mister Gavrilov. Dismissed.”

  “Aye sir.” GG Saluted, then gave a nod to Karenin as he left. The Captain cleared out the area surrounding the comm station, and sent several crewmen off to do something or another so they would have some privacy.