World War Three 1946 Series Boxed Set: Stalin Strikes First

by Harry Kellogg

  The scientists were going nuts over the radio trying to measure this and that and get the information back to the real deal, the Silverplate named Three Feathers. That's what this mission is all about. Getting the information that Three Feathers needed to drop the bomb accurately. Nothing else mattered. Both of the other B29s with the scientists aboard were duplicates just in case. That case had just happened. Willy Nun and his bunch were flying along like nothing had happened and ignored the carnage of Finnegan's Wake except for when it hit the river of air. That's what they needed. That gave them some of the most accurate readings they acquired.

  He learned later that this stream was 3000 miles deep and moved at 176 mph. Estimates were it was 400 mile wide and thousands of miles long. It covered all four of their targets it was later discovered. This actually turned out to be ideal. It was sustained and predictable and the same over every target. God works in mysterious ways some would say.

  Nick located the fighter. It appeared to be gliding, losing altitude and disappearing fast far below.

  "I think the bogie ran out of fuel Skipper. over"

  "Thank God for that. We were not prepared to deal with whatever the hell that was! Maybe you nicked him. over"

  "I don't think so Skipper. over"

  "Roger that."

  Nick noticed that he was shaking and all he did was watch. The others had died and been in the crosshairs of whatever that jet was. God, Finnegan's went down fast. What the hell are we going to do if they have more of those jets?

  Maiden Tower of Baku

  The Maiden Tower of Baku had seen its share of bloodshed and war. The theory was that it was named the Maiden Tower because it had never been conquered or violated and was still a virgin. Complete with underground water supply, a wooden substructure that may have saved it from earthquakes and strong buttresses the tower had stood for over a thousand years on the spot overlooking Baku Bay. The Maiden has withstood the sands of time and many earthquakes since the 6th century but not today.

  An explosion of atoms toppled her finally after 1300 years of proud testimony to the people who designed and built her. Today she was violated and obliterated. Today she ceased to exist. Today she will lose her virginity.

  The day started out like any other and she did not have any idea her fate. Would it have mattered anyway? What can a stone structure have done to combat a force only rivaled by the sun? What can a mere pile of stones do against an explosion of atomic particles? It can’t run and hide. It can’t even sway enough or bend. It can only stand straight and tall until it is literally blown away by a blast of superheated air and a shock wave that had only been seen 4 times before.

  There are 30 hewed stone protuberances on the tower's lower section and the 31 protuberances on the upper section, linked with a stone belt, that correlate to the days of the month. The Maiden was probably designed and built as an observatory. Block 23 of the lower belt will be the only stone that will survive somewhat intact after today at 7:26 am local time. It was shielded by its brothers and sisters as they are blown to pieces and those pieces flew hundreds of feet, meters and even miles from their 1300 year old resting place.

  By a quirk of fate block 23 will not only stay intact but will be caught in what can only be called an eddy of the swirling debris made up of its neighboring stones and will fall very close to the place it had overlooked for centuries.

  A few minutes after the calamity that is caused by a US made atomic bomb destroys The Maiden Tower in Baku, Azerbaijan, Soviet Union, an apparition that used to be a human woman finds block 23 and attempts to sit and rest on it. She is already basically dead but somehow her right side keeps dragging what was her left side far enough to attempt to sit on block 23. She almost makes it but with half of her body melted by the searing heat of an atomic blast it is a superhuman effort that falls inches short when her left tibia finally rips loose from the connective tissue. She falls on her left side which almost makes her look normal with her untouched right side visible to the next calamity that will follow the blast. She would not have wanted to live anyway after seeing her husband and 6 year old twin boys blown apart before her right eye. The oldest by 10 minutes had lived long enough to whisper Mama before he died. This was more painful to her than her own physical wounds could ever possibly be.

  The irony was that Mama’s maiden name was Jill Parker and she grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She married William Nelson who was an engineer. They ended up in Baku because of Bill’s expertise in petroleum extraction. Jill left the farm based community in Middle America with its white picket fences and church steeples to follow her husband’s career. Cedar Rapids still had a street car when she left and even a few cobble stone streets but not many. Before America entered World War Two there were still Sunday picnics and concerts on the lawn.

  Brucemore Mansion was still in its heyday and she grew up playing on the great lawns and gardens of the grand mansion own by Margret and Howard Hall. Howard was a friend of her father’s and she spent many a day playing on the groomed grounds with the pet lion that lived in the basement. Leo live in a maze of tunnels made just for him. He was the sibling of the famous MGM lion you still see growling before your favorite movie.

  Margret and Howard loved to entertain and many a movie star stopped by during the 30s. Basically Margret had control of 4 upper floors and 21 rooms contained therein, complete with a sunken pool that would put any in Hollywood to shame. All 21 rooms were very tastefully decorated and built for entertaining Hollywood’s elite. Howard built the ultimate male retreat in the basement. It included a replica of a Polynesian hut complete with a sprinkler system that pours rake rain down the tin roof and drips off dried nipa and onto the fake ground. Further on past the hut is a room decked out just like a Northern Minnesota or Wisconsin bar. It was complete with deer heads and hides on the walls and beer on tap and of course a lion running loose.

  How Jill and William ended up in Baku is rather pedestrian. He took a job assisting the Soviets with their oil production. He was recruited by the US to join hundreds of other American citizens to work in the USSR. Others helped build a huge truck factory and others worked on other industrial projects. Jill and William just stayed too long. They were on their way to the regional port and within days of taking a freighter to Turkey and from there through the Mediterranean to a new job in Galveston, TX when the war started.

  The inside of their home in Baku looked like any other home in Cedar Rapids. They had been in Baku for 5 years and had shipped many familiar things through the Black Sea before the Second World War started in earnest. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between their home and 454 Harris Street in Cedar Rapids, their previous address. They spoke American English and dress in western styles in a small enclave of US workers surrounded by millions of Soviet citizens. Much like many a US Army base located all over the world, where the contacts with the locals were few and far between. Their Negro nanny accompanied them and they had a pretty good life. The nanny Nora had about a dozen friends that were nannies and cooks and they felt pretty much at home as well. Nora had left a week earlier in order to get the home ready in Galveston, TX that they had built for their return to the US.

  All this had run through her head until half of her brain was gone.

  You would have been hard pressed to tell Jill from her younger sister if you only looked at her undamaged side, her sister who still lived in Cedar Rapids. Her blond hair was still attractively blowing in the deadly wind and her clothes were as stylish as anything in the US with her full skirt showing a shapely leg and ankle worthy of a starlet or a dancer on Broadway. Jill had taken a life time of dancing lessons and had taught the children in the US compound at various times over the years. There was a little dancing studio next to the Baptist Church the Soviets had allowed to be built and maintained in order to keep their valuable experts happy.

  She was missing one shoe along with a leg, but the other one was in pristine condition. It was a very odd sight that was rap
idly being covered in a grey ash falling in big clumps from the sky and swirling all around. Just looking at her body you would have thought that the city destroyed was Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

  You could still see parts of the white picket fence and one wall of the Baptist church complete with one intact stain glass window depicting Christ ascending to heaven. With Jill in the picture, the church wall, picket fence and with the angle just right you could easily be convinced that Cedar Rapids Iowa had just been destroyed by an atomic bomb.

  The ash was composed of twenty thousand six hundred and twenty six human beings, 36,897 trees, 3,498 cats and 2,345 dogs, and four American citizens of which two where six year old twins. It starts to settle over everything including block 23 and the remains of Jill Parker in earnest. This ash is highly radioactive which of course does not bother block 23 or Jill. It has the consistency of sand and rains down for hours. It does bother every other living thing within a 36 mile long plume reaching out to the Southeast. Even cockroaches are affected by the radioactive ash that falls covering everything for miles inches deep.

  Nuclear weapons don’t care what the circumstances are or even who you are or what side you’re on. They just kill everything.

  Baku 1946

  Shelter in Place Baku

  Slava Churchkin had studied the results of the nuclear blasts in Japan and knew that your best bet of surviving was to stay indoors and avoid the substance now called fallout for the first 48 hours. Despite his instinct to flee the area, he knew that the sand like ash falling all over the area had a certain length of time when it was most lethal and over a period of days that killing effect lessen dramatically. He had access to numerous studies and the survivors in Nagasaki and Hiroshima that were within the zone of this killer ash all either stayed inside, for a period of days out of fear, or because they were trapped, and the had lived. Almost all of the people who tried to flee through this killer ash, died, even after reaching safety and the people they came in contact with also became sick and many died if the ash was only a few days or less old. If you avoided the ash for 48 hours or more, you had a good chance of not getting sick.

  That is why, despite every bone in his body screaming run as far and as fast as you can, he made his family and three other close friends stay indoors down in their root cellar. Despite all their pleading and begging he just knew he was doing the right thing and saving their lives. His 8 year old had almost snuck out in the early morning to get some food. He only just caught his little foot as he was about to open the cellar door and he pulled him back in time. He had to watch them all when they left, less they try and drink any water or eat anything from the outside. They had to wait until they were out of the ash zone and that could be a few days walk or more.

  He has seen the ravages of radiation poisoning. It was horrible beyond imagination. He had worked with mustard and chlorine gas victims after the first war but nothing compared to this. It rotted you from the inside out. It cause terrible agony and your skin fell off in horribly large patches. He was not sure if the skin falling off was more to do with the heat involved or was a cause of radiation. He suspected that it was because of the blast itself.

  He gained access to the case of Harry Daghlian. One of the many spies in the US group had gotten a hold of the case files and they had migrated to him. Mr. Daghlian was believed to be the first death caused by radiation sickness. He was working on the US atomic bomb and was trying something called "tickling the dragon's tail" and the dragon had doused him in invisible flames. His hand slipped and he and the other scientists in the room were exposed to massive amounts of radiation.

  The victims of the US nuclear explosions went through an agonizing sequence of radiation-induced traumas including severe diarrhea, reduced urine output, swollen hands, massive blisters on any exposed skin, intestinal paralysis, gangrene and ultimately a total disintegration of bodily functions. He had seen it happen as a representative of the Soviet delegation and relief effort sent to Japan. His job was really to study the effects of this monstrous weapon which he did in minute detail. Some of the Amerkoski seemed very eager to demonstrate what their new weapon from hell could do and for the Soviet delegation to report back to Stalin. A crude form of intimidation he guessed.

  He could not give up his humanity like he has been taught to in the Soviet system and joined in the efforts of the Japanese Red Cross and US military in trying to at least ease the suffering of those most in need. Yes, he had killed dying patients with overdoses of morphine. They begged him and he relented. You can't imagine seeing the amazing agony and utter degradation of a body heavily dosed with radiation. When there is no hope of recovery you cannot let the suffering continue if the patient implores you to end the pain. It didn't matter what language they were trying to communicate in you just knew what they were saying by what was left of the facial expressions and the undamaged eyes. Even the newly blind can emote unbelievable pain through their unseeing eyes; pain that they just wanted to stop so they can die in peace and not silently screaming through destroyed throats unable to make a sound and barely able to sustain a life giving breath. He knew what his duty was in such cases and he did it. He was prepared to do it for himself or his family and friends if need be.

  He was sent to Baku to work with some unusual skin conditions thought to have been caused by the petroleum products that some of the other scientists were working on, additives for gasoline and such. He brought his family along after being away from them for 6 months and after seeing all he had seen and been through in Japan he wanted them close by. Had he thought it through, he would have realized that this area was a prime target for a bombing attack by the Amerikosi. It surprised him that such a good people could have invented the atomic bomb. The Yanks that he worked beside were just as upset with what the atomic bomb had done as he was. Even the military minded expressed their utter contempt for this weapon. He actually thought that if it was up to the warriors, they would reject using such a weapon. It had no glory, no sense of conquest, no humanity. Killing an opponent face to face had that. Pushing a button and dropping an atomic bomb on a helpless city did not. It was the weapon of the coward, the politician and the technocrat and not the weapon of the warrior.

  He was just reading in Pravda the other day about the movement in the West to ban the creation and use of additional nuclear weapons. According to the paper it was quite a large percentage in the West who did not want to see it used again and wanted it banned.

  Now the scourge had been unleashed here in Baku, practically on top of his family. When the three high flying bombers had made their way over his city and then they were followed by a long bomber he instinctively knew what was coming. He had gotten everyone he cared about down in the cellar just minutes before the blast. He was sure the building above them had been destroyed but he was also certain that the cellar doors were relatively free from rubble piled on them and that the area around the door had not been contaminated. He had no doubt that the whole city was gone just like he witnessed in Japan but his little cellar was very safe for now. If he ever got out of this he was going to write a paper on how to survive and atomic war and immediately start digging a bunker under his house in Moscow and stock it with food and water, enough to last for months. He was sure the American pigs were going to try this again on Moscow. How could they resist?

  They were a people who had not experienced war first hand. Oh a few of their healthiest men had seen war but not millions of women and children. By in large their population had not seen the horrors of what man has invented to kill other men. As if bullets weren't enough. We had to invent liquid flame, bombs that sent pieces of their shell casings in all directions to kill as many as possible and of course the atomic bomb.

  As he understood the theory there was a half-life for the most dangerous period of the ash that falls after a nuclear blast. If you survived the initial horror of the shock wave and heat this ash was the most dangerous thing for at least 48 to 72 hours. You had to avoid it at all co
st. Luckily if was in the form of a kind of sand so the particles were relatively easy to keep out with oil cloth or multiple layers of some kind of tightly woven cloth. He had thought long and hard about this when the Amerikosi had tried to bomb Leningrad. He had a friend who was studying the challenge and was fairly certain of what he had heard would work. It appeared that if you covered even the tiniest cracks with some kind of barrier that could keep out the deadly sand or ash then you were safe in the short run.

  The root cellar was small but they were continuously making room by eating the food from his garden stored there. He theorized that if the ash did not contaminate the food and water it was safe. Luckily for all in the confined space, his wife had insisted that he keep a few barrels of water in the cellar as well. She insisted that she needed cold water to start any soup stock. Starting with even lukewarm water tended to soften up the outside of things, like potatoes, before the insides could get warm. He had to admit that she made the best borsch he had ever tasted and she insisted it was because of starting out with cold water. For now her little quirk was saving their lives he was sure.

  There had been a very awkward time when he had to speak to Yuli and Mansur about not fornicating for a long time for fear of spawning a deformed fetus. He had seen horrible monstrosities crying helplessly abandoned and left to die cause by the ravages of radiation in many of the hospitals and medical stations he had worked in. No arms or legs, horribly malformed faces, no eyes or even whole faces, crooked spines that bent the baby backward were all the norm. The newly married couple cried together for hours trying to comfort each other and silently hoping they had not conceived yet.