“Looks like the rats are leaving the ship,” one man said. “Afraid of the Germans, eh?”
Troyak gave the man a hard look, but Fedorov waved him on and the three men slowly climbed down to the dinghy where it now bobbed in the water next to the steamer.
“Good riddance!” they heard another sailor yell at them from above. “Go back to the other NKVD bastards where you belong.”
Fedorov shook his head, eager to get underway. There was no motor on the launch, so they were going to have to row. Troyak pushed off, inwardly angry when he heard the sailors on the Amerika jeering at them, but he swallowed his pride and ignored them. There was no way they could explain their situation or make the men understand what they were doing. He knew Fedorov’s plan was for the best.
They rowed hard, and Fedorov saw that the Germans got two hits on Ubelikov. That ship was burning hard, and listing to starboard where obvious flooding threatened to capsize the vessel and sink it. They could hear the faint cries of alarm and calls for help as they rowed, and Fedorov was torn by the urge to go back and render assistance.
You must not, he told himself, swallowing hard. You must stay the course and make a rendezvous with the detachment on Anatoly Alexandrov. A man’s fate is a man’s fate. And that ship was supposed to be hit. You can’t try to save the entire world from death and pain. Keep pulling those oars.
He could hear Troyak speaking through his collar microphone now on a secure coded channel. “Wild Geese to Mother Lode—come in. Wild Geese to Mother Lode—come in.”
“Wild Geese, this is Mother Load, Lieutenant Bukin here. We have a locator beacon signal on you in the middle of the Caspian Sea! What is your situation—Over?”
“Lieutenant Bukin? You mean to say you now outrank me, Arseny? This is Troyak here. We were on one of those ships, last in the line, but put off in a lighter. We’re heading east into the Caspian to stay out of sight. Fedorov doesn’t want to show the locals any more than we have to.”
“Understood, Sergeant. Hey, you gave me the slip back in Vladivostok! Good to hear your voice again. We’ll be a few minutes getting one of the hovercraft operational. Is Orlov with you as well?”
“We haven’t even made landfall to look for him yet. You’re early, but it was good to see those Ilgas go up. We’ll keep rowing east. I’m leaving my signal locator beacon on and you can track us easily.”
“Hold on. We’re coming. Bukin out.”
Troyak shook his head. “Lieutenant Bukin, is it? He was a Corporal last time I saw him, and jumped right over my head. Now he’ll have a good laugh over the fact that he ranks me.”
Fedorov gave him a grin. “If it is any consolation, Sergeant, I can promote you to Captain at once, for outstanding performance in the field.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” said Troyak. “Did I ever tell you the story of my father’s hunting dog, Private Litchko? He was a wonderful dog—flushed out quarry like no other. We had a hunting lodge in Kamchatka, and my father would let visitors use the dog when they came out for hunting trips. One year an old friend of my father’s came back to the lodge and asked about the dog. What, my father said to him? You mean Private Litchko? Yes, that was the best dog we ever hunted with, this man told my father. Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, my father said in turn, but that dog was so good we promoted him to Captain Litchko, and now all he does is sit around and bark.”
Fedorov laughed, understanding exactly what Troyak meant. “I have the distinct feeling that Bukin is going to enjoy barking for a while. He’s probably still upset because we left him behind in the reactor room at Vladivostok.”
“He’ll get over it,” said Troyak, and then he put his back into the rowing, sending the lighter surging ahead. It was nearly an hour later when they saw the squat shape of the hovercraft approaching and heard the roar of its two big turbine engines mounted on the aft section of the craft. Fedorov’s plan was to get to the Anatoly Alexandrov and then gather all the officers together to decide how to proceed. He turned to Troyak as they watched the hovercraft approaching.
“Can we try locating Orlov yet through his jacket beacon?”
“We can try,” said Troyak, “but our chances will be better closer to the west coast. Were over twenty kilometers away here. His passive range for IFF pickup is five kilometers. If he turns on his transceiver and broadcasts, we could see him out here, but otherwise we’ll have to get ashore.”
“Admiral Volsky said he would provide us with ample resources,” said Fedorov.
“A full reinforced company of naval Marines,” said Troyak with a satisfied look on his gruff features. He looked like a bulldog that had just eaten a pork chop. “They’ll even have AFVs on the hovercraft, and we won’t have to worry about the German planes any longer either. There will be plenty of missiles for air defense.”
“Our own little invasion force,” Fedorov shrugged. “The only question I have is whether or not we should contemplate using it. The less the Soviet forces of this day see of us, the better.”
“Why, sir? We just tell them we were sent as reinforcements. How will they know otherwise?”
He squinted at the distant horizon to the west. Orlov was out there somewhere, so close, yet so far. Where was he, and how could he get to him without writing a whole new chapter in the military history of this war? It wasn’t going to be as easy as he had hoped.
Chapter 21
Fedorov could not believe what he was hearing. “The ship has displaced in time again? To 1945?”
“Not just Kirov,” said Dobrynin. “This time three ships have vanished. At least that is what Admiral Volsky has told me. Karpov sent a letter to that same storage locker and it turned up in 2021!”
“Amazing. Then the eruption of that volcano was so violent that it must have opened another time rift. Yet this time the ship did not have Rod-25 installed. How will they get back?”
“Take a look at the big fat Mi-26 on the roof,” Dobrynin pointed. “There’s more going on here than you realize. They found two more control rods that were produced in the same lot as Rod-25. We have them right here on that helo and the plan is to fly them all the way to the Pacific coast for Kirov and the other ships.”
“But you said Karpov appeared in 1945. It’s October of 1942 now. They’ll have to wait out the entire duration of the war!”
“Exactly,” said Dobrynin. “Don’t give me those big eyes, Mister Fedorov. I didn’t come up with this plan, I was just briefed by the Admiral and told to manage this part of the operation to rescue you and Orlov.”
Fedorov gave a heavy sigh. “Well a lot of good that will do us now. Here I was worrying about the fate of a single man, and now I learn that there’s an entire naval flotilla at large in the Pacific of 1945! Orlov may yet be important, and yes, we must rescue him if possible, but Karpov appears nearly three years later and this will trump everything we do here. I hope to God he keeps a good head on his shoulders and doesn’t start another war! Does he know we’re sending the Mi-26? No…” Fedorov answered his own question. “How could he possibly know? There would be no way to communicate this to him.”
“The plan is to get the Mi-26 to the coast, possibly out on Sakhalin in an isolated location where they can wait for Kirov to appear. Then they’ll try to contact Karpov via radio.”
“If they make it there,” said Fedorov, a frustrated look on his face. “If they manage to survive somewhere until 1945, and if they know exactly when the ships appear, and if Karpov picks up their radio call. Good heavens! What a stack of teacups! A thousand things could happen to them over the next few years. The Japanese controlled all of South Sakhalin Island during the war. Their 88th division was posted there. How many men are you sending on the Mi-26?”
“Just four. All the rest of that space is being used for fuel and supplies to get the helo there. It’s a very long way to the Pacific coast from here.”
“Indeed…” Fedorov shook his head. “We just spent the last week getting here by road and rail.”
>
Two more control rods had been found! Would they work as Rod-25 had? Dobrynin explained the plan to him, but the longer he listened, the more he began to feel it was doomed to failure. The team would have to remain safely undetected for almost three years. Then, on the day Kirov and the other ships were supposed to appear, they would have to make contact with Karpov as soon as possible. But the Captain would not be expecting their call. In fact…”
“The plan has failed,” he said darkly.
“What do you mean,” Dobrynin complained. “We haven’t even launched the operation yet.”
“You say Karpov managed to get a note to the Naval Logistics Center? That took time. He would have probably sent helicopters with a small Marine contingent to infiltrate Vladivostok and get to the locker just as Troyak and I did. That took time. If your Mi-26 makes it to the Pacific coast and is there and ready to contact the ships upon arrival, then they obviously failed to do so. Karpov would have taken at least a full day to mount this operation and let Volsky know what happened to him—possibly longer. No further message was received? There was nothing stating he received the control rods and was going to use them to try and return home? No, that wouldn’t be possible yet.”
Dobrynin scratched his head. “Not as of 09:40 hours on the day we launched our operation to arrive here.”
“What day was that?”
“October 5th, 2021.”
“What was happening with the war?”
“Things were not going well. The American’s sent planes off one of their carrier groups and Karpov fought an engagement. The Chinese have also attacked Taiwan with a heavy salvo of ballistic missiles and aircraft. There was an incident in the Persian Gulf and now Iran and Israel are at each other’s throats. We even lost a submarine in the Gulf of Mexico. I was informed that Moscow was going to initiate operations here the day I left.”
“Here?”
“At Kashagan and Tengiz oil fields in the North Caspian. There was also a scrap in the Black Sea, but I was too busy here to attend to the reports. I will say one thing. We were under attack at the very time we shifted.”
“Under attack? Here in the Caspian?”
“NATO aircraft were approaching from the south. Just a small pinprick, a couple helicopters, but they were heading right for our operations and the coastal defense missile batteries at Kaspiysk engaged them. That was the last news I received. Now we are here.”
“So Karpov was displaced by that volcanic eruption. Astounding! What day was that?
“October 2nd. It took us another couple of days to pull things together here.”
“Yes, and Rod-25 is very meticulous now. It’s October 5, 1942—the same day you launched the operation in 2021.”
Fedorov sat down, thinking hard now. What could they do? Karpov sent that message, which meant that, during the interval he loitered within helicopter range of Vladivostok, he must have received no communication from the Mi-26. The plan must have failed. If it were to succeed then that long tenuous line from here to the Pacific—from here to 1945—had to remain perfectly intact. Something went wrong. If Karpov was contacted by the helo team then why would he not mention that in his note?
Then it struck him, with thunderclap surprise—Volsky could not dream up the Mi-26 plan until Karpov sends his letter! Of course! Otherwise the Admiral would have no idea where Kirov and the others shifted. So Karpov appears in a kind of limbo, a brief slice of eternity where the future is uncertain. When he first appeared Volsky had no knowledge of his presence in the past, but the instant Karpov’s team delivered that letter and closed the locker at the Naval Logistics building a new time line was possible! That single act of transmitting information to the future has already worked a change in the line of events. Volsky got the letter and here we are on the Anatoly Alexandrov trying to sort this whole mess out.
His mind ran on, feverishly trying to work through the convoluted loops of time and causality. So it isn’t possible for us to successfully contact Karpov the moment he arrives, he thought, because that all depends on his decision to send that letter. We can go there with the Mi-26, but somehow the effect of that operation will have to occur after Karpov arrives in 1945. Even if everything went perfectly with the Mi-26 and they remained safely undetected until Kirov appears, Karpov could not possibly hear or respond to our radio calls until after he sent his letter. How long was that interval, that slice of uncertainty in time? What was Karpov doing during those hours? Now he found himself laboring to recall the history of those last days of the war, history that they had already dramatically altered with their sorties into the past.
“Dobrynin…Did that letter say when Karpov arrived. Did it give an exact date?”
“August of 1945.”
“No day?”
“That is all I was told, Mister Fedorov.”
“Damn! We need to know the exact date.”
“What do you mean? We have three years to wait for Kirov to show up again. What is the problem?”
“The problem is this: we know Karpov arrives in August, but on what day? We can’t order the team to just start broadcasting radio calls on August first round the clock. They’ll be detected for sure. Then there’s Karpov. That’s another potential problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure what he will do if he decides there is no way he can ever get back to 2021. If he thinks his bridges are burned, and there is no other life for them but the one they have there in 1945, then he might do something radical. He’ll have the power to make a dramatic intervention if he chooses to do so. The only problem is that he may overreach himself. The United States Navy was enormous at that stage of the war, and they would all be concentrating at Sagami Bay off Tokyo for the surrender ceremony…”
“What’s wrong?” Dobrynin saw the look of surprise in Fedorov’s eyes like newly kindled fire. Then he seemed to lapse into fear.
“My God,” said Fedorov. “The temptation will be overwhelming. Karpov will be sitting there with three ships, nuclear warheads, and the power to unleash hell if he so chooses. The entire Allied fleet will be concentrated in one place at Sagami Bay!”
“You are thinking he might try something as he did in the North Atlantic?”
“God help us if he does, but yes, Karpov is now the prime lever on all the history from that moment forward. There’s no telling what he might do!”
“Unless the Americans have something to say about it,” said Dobrynin.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Fedorov. “Things could get completely out of hand, and then what? We have no way of ever knowing unless we get home to find out.”
“You want me to dip the rod back into the soup? We’ll be somewhere else in no time.”
“Not without Orlov. I didn’t come all this way to leave him stranded here… I need to think…” Fedorov began pacing, head down as he stared at his feet, hand rubbing his brow. He had to sort this out and come up with some reasonable plan here, but what should they do? First, find Orlov. The journey had taken them far longer than he hoped, and they were late. Orlov reached Kizlyar on the first of October, but every report he had heard as they drew near the Caspian region indicated the Germans were very near that place and it was now the front line in the war to control the oil. Hitler was hell bent on getting to Baku. The oil wars start here and they will continue for the next eighty years.
Orlov might still be there at Kizlyar, or somewhere south of that location. They had to get within five kilometers of him if his service jacket was switched off. That might make for a long and difficult search now. What they needed was a helicopter….And they had one, sitting right on top of the Anatoly Alexandrov.
“We’ll have to use the Mi-26,” he decided.
“What? They’re supposed to take off for the Pacific coast as soon as possible. Volsky beat that into my head before I left.”
“That may be so, but we need the helicopter to look for Orlov first. Trying to put men ashore to search for
him on land will be too risky.”
“But we have no fuel for that,” Dobrynin objected
“I understand the situation,” said Fedorov, “but we need Orlov. We can’t leave without him so we’ll have to find the fuel, one way or another.”
“Are you ordering me to commit the Mi-26 to this operation, Mister Fedorov?”
Fedorov looked at the Chief, respecting him greatly. “I will take full responsibility, Dobrynin. The decision is mine. You’ve done everything Volsky asked of you, but I want to get Troyak and Zykov on that helo and do a night search below 3000 meters. It’s the only way we can locate Orlov’s jacket signal. We had hoped to be at Kizlyar before he got there, but we’re late. There’s no other way now. We leave tonight.”
“Well what am I supposed to do while you go off looking for Orlov? I was supposed to rescue you, Fedorov!”
“And you have. Your mission will be the same, Chief. Just hold the fort and protect the Anatoly Alexandrov at all costs until we get back. In the meantime, we can save on fuel if we offload excess storage on the helo and fly lighter. We can always load it back again when we return.”
“If you return. What do I do if we lose your signal locator?”
“We’ll be fine. It will be dark. Troyak will be with me, and I’ll take some Marines.”
“Plenty of those around.”
“Exactly. We’ll sweep the area around Kizlyar first, then work south over the Terek and along the roads to Makhachkala. It’s just a couple hundred miles in all. We should be able to pick up his signal very quickly.”
“Then what?”
“We’ll have to see. If Troyak thinks we can get him, we’ll land. If the situation is more difficult, we’ll return here and go in with more force. The quicker we do this, the better. I’d prefer to keep things very quiet.”
“Well that big monster on the roof makes a good deal of noise, Fedorov.”
“Yes, but the road hugs the coast and runs right near the shore in many places. We can be two or three kilometers off the coast and flying low enough so we still can pick up that signal. It will work. I’m sure of it.”
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