“Excellent,” said Volsky. “We would be honored to operate with him, and it will serve to solve the communication issue between our people and yours. Our Mister Nikolin here will be needed aboard my ship, so perhaps this man of yours can accompany our team and serve as a guide and liaison with your own forces.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Wavell. “Popski is fluent in English, and a very useful man. I know your people must be very capable, but there are many hazards in the desert that can trip the best of men up if they are not aware of them. Popski knows the desert very well, and I would feel much better to have a man like that on your team. I will make the arrangements. Might I have him sent aboard your ship?”
“Certainly,” said Volsky, and the matter was settled.
“Now all we have to worry about are those damnable Fallschirmjagers over Malta.”
“Fallschirmjagers?” Admiral Volsky tried to repeat the word, though he mangled it a bit as he did so
“The German word for Paratroops,” said Fedorov. “It loosely translates as ‘Parachute Hunters,’ but I have always called them the Hunters from the Sky. They are elite troops, and the garrison on Malta will have a hard time if the Germans throw their entire 7th Flieger Division at the island. Malta had only one Brigade in defense in late 1940…” He stopped himself, realizing he was rambling on, and referring to present events as past history. Wavell could not help overhearing him, picking up the Russian easily.
“You seem to be very well versed in military matters and up to date on current intelligence,” he said to Fedorov. “We’ve only just confirmed that the German 7th Flieger Division went operational. Now I’m afraid they’ve gone an done exactly as you suggest and thrown the whole division at Malta. We have some good men there, but only four or five battalions and too few fighters and anti-aircraft guns to hold off the Luftwaffe. This is the second time Jerry has surprised us, and caught us unprepared to make a good showing. I know our boys will fight, but frankly, I give them no more than a week, and until we settle this naval business, there is no hope of sending them any reinforcements.”
“Agreed sir,” said Fedorov. “Yet in one respect, we may look at this as a bit of a godsend. Had you sent the 2nd New Zealand and 6th Australian Divisions off to Greece, your situation now in Libya would be very much in jeopardy.”
“I’m inclined to believe things hang in the balance even with those good divisions still in hand.”
“Might I ask what your plan is, General?” Fedorov knew he was being presumptuous. Here he was, a Captain in the Russian Navy trying to stir the borscht with the Theater Commander of the entire Middle East. Yet Wavell was most gracious in responding.
“To be frank about it, we won’t stop this General Rommel in Libya. I’ve ordered the entire Western Desert force to withdraw to Tobruk. If we can’t hold there, then it’s back to our positions near Bardia and Sollum on the Egyptian border.”
“Then you’ll abandon Tobruk?” Fedorov knew the British held on to that key fortress in the withdrawal.
“Not bloody likely. We’ll hold it as long as we can. It will be a difficult decision should it come to a siege. I’ll have to leave the 6th Australian Division there. The Aussies were a leg division, and we had them well to the west when this German counteroffensive began. Thank God for the Italian trucks and fuel we captured on the way over, or we would have never been able to get those boys back to Tobruk. The 6th Division would have had to foot it over a hundred miles from their present position, and with enemy tanks nipping at them like a pack of wolves the whole way. So I pulled them into Tobruk. Now, however, most of those trucks have empty fuel tanks or broken axles after the mad dash to the east. If need be, we can get them out by sea, but it is my preference that they hold on there as long as possible. We’ll cover their desert flank, if feasible.”
“Tobruk is certainly a port of great strategic value,” said Fedorov. “That and the best airfield in North Africa at El Adem make it a prize worth holding, and it will tie down an entire Italian Infantry Corps if Rommel wants to move east towards Egypt.”
“Precisely,” said Wavell. “My, you are well versed in military matters. May I ask if you have served in the Russian Army?”
“No sir, I was always a navy man, a navigator by trade when I signed on, so I can read a map, and I have studied military history all my life.”
“I see. Well, Captain Fedorov, what do you make of our chances in this fight? We’ve had a fairly rough ride since things started last September.”
“Germany is, and will be, a formidable foe, sir.” Fedorov knew he had to speak carefully here, and not sound as if he knew the outcome of these events. In truth, he did not know, for the German Malta operation was now another major point of divergence in the overall course of the war. “Something tells me the British Empire has a good bit of fight left in her. This is far from over.”
Admiral Volsky had been listening in, with some pleasure, seeing the delight Fedorov had in speaking to Wavell, as if he had leapt into the pages of the history he so loved, to interact with these towering historical figures. In fact, he had done just that, and now they were all about to write a new chapter of that history together.
“Well,” he said. “I think we had best get our own Sky Hunters on the move, Mister Fedorov. Your General O’Connor is out there somewhere, so let us not keep him waiting.”
Part VIII
The Devil’s Teardrop
“When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see?”
― William Blake
Chapter 22
Admiral Cunningham’s fleet was well out to sea, a long column of four battleships, Queen Elizabeth, Malaya, Warspite, and finally Admiral Tovey in HMS Invincible. They were accompanied by the heavy cruisers Kent, Berwick and York, light cruisers Calcutta, Coventry, Orion and Ajax along with twelve destroyers. Kirov was ten kilometers off the starboard bow, her radars sweeping the sea for signs of enemy activity. This left only a few cruisers and destroyers in the cupboard to cover Alexandria and Suez, but it was a risk they thought acceptable given the probable locations of the Italian fleet. There were also two aircraft carriers at sea to provide fleet air defense, though both were aging warriors by 1941.
Hermes had been laid down 22 years earlier, in 1918, a design built on a light cruiser hull. A light escort carrier, she would carry no more than 18 to 20 planes, mostly fighters. But the ship had managed to get in on a few choice assignments, hunting both Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer in the South Atlantic, and then participating in the watch on Dakar before that place was finally taken. She had been slated to go to the Persian Gulf to harass the German effort to reinforce the incipient rebellion in Iraq, but the loss of Gibraltar prompted the Admiralty to re-assign her to Admiral Cunningham’s fleet for the planned raid on Taranto. Now that was frustrated, but her Captain, Richard Onslow, was eager to get in the action again as part of the fleet covering force for this operation.
HMS Eagle was the same age, a larger ship that was first planned as a dreadnaught for Chile, designed as an Almirante Latorre class Battleship at about 28,000 tons, with ten 14-inch guns. She was later purchased by the British for conversion to an aircraft carrier. The guns were removed, lightening her displacement to 22,000 tons by 1924. The ship spent the first nine months of the war in the Indian Ocean, hunting German commerce raiders before joining Cunningham’s fleet in the eastern Mediterranean. With mostly Swordfish, she managed to sink three Italian destroyers and a submarine in raids off Tobruk along the North African coast. She also had three old Gladiators that had been found crated up in Dekhelia, the only fighters available to the FAA at Alexandria before new squadrons arrived. Now she had the new Fairy Fulmars assigned to 803 Squadron, planes that had been transferred from HMS Furious.
The two carriers, Eagle and Hermes, would be going in ‘light,’ with a preponderance of fighter aircraft. Eagle would embark 12 Fulmar fighters of the 803 Squadron, and six new Martlets. S
he would also retain her 12 Swordfish in 824 Squadron, 30 planes in all. Hermes would carry 800 Squadron with 12 Skua fighters, and a small flight of 6 Swordfish that were waiting for her at Alexandria.
It was a strong sortie on paper, 4 battleships, 8 cruisers and twelve destroyers covered by 48 planes, and the addition of the battlecruiser Kirov was the icing on the cake. That said, the fleet would now face its greatest challenge of the war.
Prior to this time the Royal Navy had sparred with the Italians at inconsequential engagements off Crete and Cape Spade and Passero, which had decided nothing in the balance of power in the Mediterranean. Now however, the enemy was sending out a well coordinated fleet. The Italians had the battleships Roma, Venetto and Littoro near Messina, sailing to join Andria Doria, Duilio and Conte Cavour from Taranto, with four heavy cruisers, six light cruisers and fourteen destroyers.
The Vichy French would contribute another powerful fleet led by the pride of their navy, the battleship Normandie, battlecruisers Strasbourg and Dunkerque, with two heavy and four light cruisers, and ten destroyers. And arriving from Gibraltar the Germans were sending the formidable Bismarck and Hindenburg, escorted by their light carrier Goeben and the new fast battlecruiser Kaiser, which the British did not even know about, mistaking it for a heavy cruiser in the Hipper class when it was first spotted. They now outnumbered the British 12 to 5 in capital ships, 6 to 3 in heavy cruisers, 10 to 5 in light cruisers and 24 to 12 in destroyers, almost a solid two to one advantage in every category… almost.
Those odds were about to round off almost perfectly as an ominous storm cloud began to form in the Aegean that day. It was a wholly unaccountable moment, yet strangely one that had been planned by Admiral John Tovey himself… in another life…
* * *
Admiral Volsky was glad to be at sea again, a maneuver that served two purposes. First, they would soon join the British fleet that had just sortied from Alexandria in the hunt for the Italian Navy. Second, he could launch his special services rescue mission more discretely at sea, far from the many eyes who might see the KA-40 rise from the aft helo deck. The missile fire was one thing, yet it merely confirmed rumors that the Russians had been able to develop advanced rocketry on this prototype vessel. The sight of KA-40 naval helicopter might start another new rumor chain, and he wanted to keep evidence of the ship’s capabilities quiet for as long as possible.
Once aloft Fedorov was going to move discretely out in front of the British fleet and do a quick long range radar scan to test the Oko panel installation while searching for the Italian fleet. Then the helo would swing south over Mersa Matruh and make the journey south to begin the search for General O’Connor’s downed Blenheim. They had a fairly good idea where he might be, but the desert was a very big place.
It was to be a fateful mission, like so many other conceived in the fertile mind of Anton Fedorov. And in a strange echo of those earlier missions, another man would have a great deal to do with what happened that day.
Orlov stuck his nose around the hatch opening to the engineering section, looking to find Chief Dobrynin. He had something in his pocket he was still wondering about, and thought the Chief might be able to make some sense of it. He was greeted by the sound of system alerts and the rush of reactor engineers. Another man squeezed past him at the open hatch even as he stepped inside.
“Move, move, move!” he heard Dobrynin shouting inside the engineering section. “Norin—check those water feed levels. Osiniov—get on the reactor flux monitor. Tell me the instant you get any reading beyond yellow.”
Orlov stepped inside, aware that something was amiss, and soon seeing he would not be able to get the Reactor Chief’s attention. Yet he was ship’s Chief Operations Officer, so he stuck his thumb in the pie in any case.
“What’s going on here? Some kind of problem, Dobrynin?”
“Not now, Chief. Can’t you see that we have a flux event underway?”
Orlov looked at the monitors, but they made no sense to him at all, just as the radar and sonar stations made no sense to him on the bridge when he was lingering there. He shook his head. “Flux event? Someone had a bad egg for breakfast?” Even as he said that he was fingering the strange metallic egg he had in his pocket, the Devil’s Teardrop, as Troyak might call it.
Dobrynin was too busy to answer him, adjusting dials, looking at readings on the monitors, tapping a young engineer on the shoulder and pointing to a digital display. “Let me know the instant you see anything above thirty three on that monitor. Watch that thermal neutron flux very closely. See it rising? That had better settle down soon or we’ll have to insert another control rod.”
Orlov didn’t know it at the time, but if Dobrynin was forced to use one of his emergency control rods, the ship and crew might have other problems no one had counted on then. Both rods were the two new controls that had been shipped in, each from the same batch and field that spawned Rod-25. If he had to insert one now…
Seeing he was as useless here as legs on a snake, Orlov shrugged and edged out through the hatch, thinking he might need to get to the bridge and inform Rodenko of the problem. Then he realized that Dobrynin would simply use his intercom, which would save him that long climb all the way up to the citadel, so he started off towards the mess hall instead.
Every step he took was a benefit to Dobrynin and his badly spooked reactor crews. Every step he took carried that thing in his pocket just a little farther aft, another few feet away from the tempestuous fire of the nuclear core of the ship, and when he took a ladder up, entering the helo bay level, the thick reinforced bulkhead there designed to protect the ship from fuel explosions made things even better. He was outside the armored core of the ship surrounding the engineering section, and Chief Dobrynin’s morning would begin to settle down almost immediately.
Orlov thought he might go up yet another level and grab a sweet bun with raisins and a nice black tea for his mid-morning snack, but when he got to the mess hall he saw that a mishman had eaten the last bun. History would never record a moment like that, when a young man’s appetite for sweet rolls, or Orlov’s appetite for something to cure his boredom, would suddenly change everything again. When the ship’s bakery chef spread the last bit of icing on that roll, he could not know that he was sculpting the contours of the history of World War II from that moment forward.
The simple fact was that Pavel Gavlik took a second roll that morning, the last roll, and Orlov found nothing left but the empty bakery bin. So he wandered one deck higher, soon finding himself near the helo bay when he might have stayed right there in the mess hall, munching his roll and drinking black tea for the next half an hour—and that made all the difference. Was it the roll, or the Chief’s restless curiosity when he saw the elevated energy level in the aft helo bay that morning?
“Hey, Zykov, what’s going on? Why is everyone suiting up?” He could see a group of Marines donning special light camo-suits, and the weapons lockers were all open. Machine guns, grenade launchers, ammo canisters and other equipment were being pulled out and checked by the men. Off in the distance he heard the gruff voice of Sergeant Troyak riding someone for a sloppy rifle cleaning procedure, and the whole scene brought back memories of those first hours when he had been busted in rank and dumped here in the helo bay to join the Marine contingent.
“Orlov!” Zykov seemed eager to see him. “Just the man we need right now. Hey, Big K, the Chief is here!”
Troyak was Big K, at least to Zykov, who called him that instead of using his rank as an easy handle, or his real first name, Kandemir. The Sergeant stuck his head around the open door of a weapons locker and gave Orlov a scowl.
“Orlov. Good man on the job! I need you to get an Oko panel installed on the KA-40, with an infrared sensor suite. Can you do it? Kymkov is in sick bay and nobody else knows what they’re doing here.” He glared at his Marines, who shirked away, tending to their weapons and packs.
Orlov had been wandering below decks all morning, listless, broo
ding, thinking about that silly ride he had taken in the zeppelin and musing on the fact that Karpov was still out there somewhere doing the same thing. It seemed comical to him, that the once mighty Captain of the world’s most powerful ship was now relegated to the status of an airship commandant. Serves him right, he had thought.
Everyone on the ship seemed busy that morning, except Orlov. All he had to do was roam about and kibitz with one section Chief after another until his Bridge watch would come up in another six hours. He was bored, but now he finally had something to do.
“Oko panel? You going somewhere?”
“Never mind where we’re going, Orlov. Can you mount the damn radar panel or do I have to collar a matoc to get the job done?”
“Vse zayebalo!” said Orlov, swearing as he often did. “Of course I can mount a stupid Oko panel. Just let me grab a few men to fetch it from the bay.”
“I’ve already done that, but they can’t sort out the damn cable connections. It’s over by the KA-40. See about it, will you Chief?”
Orlov nodded. What the fuck, he thought, sick of Troyak’s bluster. Where did he get off ordering me around, eh? But it really doesn’t matter. I need something to do, and now I’ve finally got something to keep my hands busy for the next twenty minutes. Who knows, maybe I can work my way aboard and have some more fun with Troyak and his damn Marines.
Zykov grinned at him as he went to the helo, and Orlov was sick of him too. But what were the Marines up to? Why was everyone getting rigged out as if they were about to storm the barricades? That was an idle curiosity that would soon change the lives of millions… a man with a sweet tooth, a missing roll, and Orlov.
Three Kings (Kirov Series) Page 19
