Simpson returned, leading in a short man dressed out in the garb of an Army officer, but one from days of yore. He expected he might see someone wearing a uniform like his own in modern camo scheme, but not dressed like this, heavy wool socks reaching to knee length shorts, thick leather belt, a pale olive officer’s jersey with shoulder braids and a flash of red at the collars, all topped with an officer’s cap, emblazoned with a thick red band and the badge of a crown over a crossed sabre and baton, the insignia of a Lieutenant General. Rows of service bars rode above his left chest pocket, with a thick strap from shoulder to waist.
Yet it was not the rank and service medals that identified this man as a General, it was his manner and deportment, the bright penetrating eyes, always moving, the air of authority about him, not showy or arrogant, but a quiet strength that spoke of iron will and determination in the man.
“I’m told you are Brigadier Kinlan?” O’Connor extended his hand. “Can’t say as I’ve ever had the pleasure. Have you just come off the boat?”
Kinlan took his hand, with reflexive manners, yet his mind was just as befuddled as before. What on God’s good earth was happening here?
Chapter 36
He just stared at the man, seeing the characteristic white hair at the edge of his cap and short cropped white mustache. It was the image of the man he had seen in the data files he looked up on his library pad. Impossible! General Richard O’Connor had died in 1981, forty years ago! This had to be an imposter, there was simply no other way to look at the situation. Yet, at the same time, there was no reason on earth why anyone would be here, in the middle of nowhere, dressed up like this to play army. Did he come in on that KA-40 with the Russians to play out this sorry ruse?
Lieutenant Reeves was standing behind the man, and he saluted. “Sir,” he said quietly. “One other note to report. Our lead troop picked up something on infrared and we had a look. It was a plane crash, General, so I took my vehicle out and had a good look at it.”
“Yes?” said O’Connor. “That was our Blenheim. Jerry took a good bite out of our left engine, and we couldn’t ride out the storm. Tried to make Siwa, but went down near the dunes a bit north of here.”
“Reeves?” Kinlan looked to his Lieutenant for confirmation.
“Yes sir. It was a Blenheim, just as the General says. I had a look inside, and it was authentic, to the nines.”
“An old wreck from the last war?”
“No sir. The plane was in tip top condition. Looked like it was flown that very day. The engines were still warm, and oil was leaking from one—shot up as the General says.”
“As the General says, as the General says. Damn it Reeves! I’ll grant you this man looks the part, but you know very well he can’t be who he claims to be.” He looked at O’Connor, frustration battling with his senses and reinforcing the one word that could be applied to this whole charade. Impossible!
“See here,” said O’Connor. “You would do well to mind your manners, Mister Kinlan, and mind the rank and insignia you find on this uniform. I’m not one to lord it over another officer, but you’re obviously new here, as is this entire unit. What’s that parked over there?” He pointed with his riding crop. “That’s the biggest damn tank in the world! Did Wavell send you out here looking for me? How many of those monsters do you have?”
“Wavell?”
“Well I’m nobody special, just the commander of the British XIII Corps in the Western Desert, but you’ve certainly heard of Wavell. Yes?”
Kinlan folded his arms and shrugged. He should just throw this whole lot into a secure vehicle and get on with his move north. The column was nearly all past his position by now, the sound of the Warrior IFVs from the last battalion in the line of march still rumbling in the background.
By the time they brought O’Connor in, the storm had abated, but darkness and low blowing sand was still obscuring much of the landscape near the ground. Thus far O’Connor had seen only the eight wheeled Dragon IFV of Reeves’ troop, the FV432 command vehicles, and the shadowy form of one Challenger 2 parked as part of the HQ guard unit. He had seen nothing of the real mass and material of the brigade Kinlan commanded, but he could hear it, and knew the sound of tracked vehicles on the desert ground well enough.
“From the sound of things the whole division must be out here,” said O’Connor. “But I can’t imagine why, or even how you managed to get a force of this size out here. Suppose you tell me exactly what this unit is and what your orders are, General Kinlan.”
Now Fedorov spoke up. “General Richard O’Connor?”
“One and the same,” said O’Connor, noticing Fedorov. “Who is this man?”
“I am Captain Anton Fedorov, off the Russian battlecruiser Kirov. We came to search for you.”
“Russians?” O’Connor had not heard anything of the ship, as he had his hands full managing the retreat east, with Rommel’s tanks and armored cars in hot pursuit.
“I was in Alexandria, with General Wavell when we heard your plane was lost.”
“With Wavell? I see. Very good, Captain Fedorov. Now then, Mister Kinlan?”
The Brigadier shook his head, smiling. “Barmy nonsense, this whole bit. The two of you are going to play this out, are you? In for a shilling, in for a pound, is it? Well if you think you can blag your way on like this, I’ve run out of patience with the whole lot. I’ve a mind to run you and all your men before a firing squad!” He was interrupted by his Staff Officer. “Yes, Mister Simpson? What now?”
“That report on comm-link status, sir.”
“Anything from Command?”
“IT Systems Operator has nothing on the combat network, sir. All the TALON system digital satellite links are down with the GPS.”
“Everything?”
“Sorry, sir, but it’s all dark. No TSC 503, No PSC 506. And nothing through REACHER or Skynet 5.”
“What about Ptarmigan?” He was referring to a modular battlefield WAN system which operated like a secure VHF mobile radio telephone.
“Nothing there either.”
“Damn. That detonation had more of an effect than we thought.”
Even as he said the word detonation, Fedorov caught his eye. Detonation… strange effects from a nuclear blast… movement in time. Rubbish! That was the load the Russian Captain had shoveled his way. All of this was supposed to be an accident. Then there was this fellow Popski, who looked for all the world like the historical figure by that same name, and O’Connor here was the spitting image of the real thing. He was supposed to be a bloody time traveler now, with the whole brigade lost in 1941. Rubbish!
“One more thing, sir, for what it’s worth.” Simpson had a wan look on his face. “This bloody sand storm is clearing, and Staffer Jacobs managed to have a look at the sky to get a fix on our position for desert navigation.”
“Good for him. We’ll get these men into another truck, wrap this up and move out.”
“Well sir… about the stars. They’re all wrong, sir.”
“Wrong? What do you mean?”
“Jacobs says Orion is rising, and Sirius right behind it. Those are winter constellations, sir. We should be looking at Sagittarius and Scorpio rising now in the late summer. And he says the moon is wrong too. It shouldn’t be up.” He pointed to the thin crescent moon, barely visible. “He says it was supposed to set at 11:14 this morning, sir—doesn’t rise again until nigh on to midnight, and it should be a waning gibbous moon. That’s an evening crescent!”
Fedorov caught this, struggling to understand it all, but suddenly realized what the Staff Officer was saying when he pointed at the moon.
“Yes!” he said enthusiastically. “Listen General. Hear that? Look at the sky,” he pointed to the stars. “It is last day of January, 1941. That is date and time here and now. The sky has changed, because the time has changed. Where is Sultan Apache? Think, General Kinlan!”
Think! Kinlan was a no nonsense man, but now his eye roved upwards, noting the clearing skies a
nd the cold light of the stars. Something there seemed even colder than the desert night now, a lonesome feeling settling over him, chasing the irritating bother he had been sorting through with these men. O’Connor in a Blenheim bomber?
He had to think.
“Reeves, you’re certain of what you saw with that plane wreckage?”
“Yes sir. A Bristol Blenheim, and brand, spanking new—still warm as toast. That’s how we spotted it on infrared, sir. The engine heat was very evident.”
Fedorov seized on this, knowing that only one such plane existed in 2021, just like that Fulmar that had overflown his ship when Kirov first appeared. He remembered how he had broken citadel integrity to run out onto the weather deck to see it. He had seen the plane in England the previous year while on leave—in a museum. And now he remembered the single operational Bristol Blenheim he had seen on that same trip, at RCAF Bolingbroke.
“Only one Blenheim bomber exists where you have come from,” he said. “Explain how this one is suddenly here?” He was very pleased that he managed to get the English correct.
Brigadier Kinlan gave him a dark look. O’Connor was standing there with an indignant look on his face, not used to such treatment, and put off by some of what he was hearing now that made no sense. What was this bit about Talon and Reacher the staffer had teed up? What did they mean that the satellite links were down? Who in bloody hell was this man? What was this unit doing out here, with vehicles that he had never seen before? Who was this Russian Captain here saying he had just seen Wavell? Why was this Brigadier being so damnably thick and obstinate?
“General,” Fedorov tried again. “Sultan Apache is gone because you are gone… moved… to a time where Blenheim bombers still fly, and General O’Connor commands the Western Desert Force in 1941. Can stars and moon change in one hour? Think, General. Impossible? Yes. But still all true.”
Kinlan did think… Popski, the Long Range Desert Group, old jeeps that should not even be able to run, a Blenheim bomber, General O’Connor, and the stars were all wrong. On top of that he had a Russian Captain off a KA-40 claiming he and his ship had a nuclear accident and actually moved in time! It was the stuff of science fiction, and he might have turned his head to look away from it all and just carried on, but for these stubborn things he was still struggling with. What happened to the bloody stars and moon? Was the whole earth off its kilter? And where the hell was Sultan Apache?
It was the first thing this Russian Captain had come to him with, telling him the place would not be there even before any of his men knew that was so. How could this Russian Captain know this? His men had confirmed it. The entire facility was gone, lock, stock and oil barrel, and that was an argument that he simply could not dismiss, like a man going out for groceries one Saturday morning and then coming home to find his house was missing, with nothing more than a vacant lot in its place. It was madness. The men must have gotten lost on their way back. This simply could not have happened. He looked up at the stars again… Impossible!
Brigadier Kinlan would not be satisfied until he got into a command vehicle and drove back to Sultan Apache himself. There he stood, his eyes scanning the craggy features of the escarpment, places he had come to know in the months he was there. He was standing right in the place where he knew a tall metal guard tower was suppose to be positioned. His boots should be on the hard black asphalt of the internal camp road network here, cleared daily by the heavy street sweeper vehicles that should still be sitting there in the maintenance facility—the 30,000 square foot building that was completely gone.
There was no wreckage, no sign of trauma or the fire of war at all. But it was all gone, the barracks facilities, mess hall, vehicle parks, oil workers village, and all the equipment and rigs and drilling tube and pipeline that should be stockpiled at the southern end of the zone—all gone.
There was only the sand and stone of the heartless desert, sand blowing listlessly over the toes of his service boots as he stared down at his feet. He was standing on solid ground alright, though he felt as though he had wandered into some episode of Doctor Who, a Twilight Zone of madness where nothing he ever took for granted as real could be believed again. It was all impossible, and yet it was as real as the hiss of that biting desert wind.
He took his helmet off for a moment, and let the last of the blowing sand sting his face, almost as if he needed to feel the pain to be certain he was still alive. He caught a last glimpse of the crescent moon above, cold and unforgiving, the moon that should not even be there! Then he slowly fixed his helmet in place, adjusted his eye goggles, and turned to his Staff Officer Simpson.
“What do you make of this, Sim? Are we both crazy?”
“I haven’t the foggiest, sir. What could have happened here? I don’t understand.”
Kinlan took a long breath. “Who do we have on the left flank guard?”
“Lieutenant Dobie, sir. 2nd Squadron, 12th Royal Lancers. He’s got the Scimitars, about 15 miles north of Siwa.”
“Tell him to get down there and have a look around. He’s to see if he finds any sign of an Australian unit there—A Colonel Fergusson. Got that?”
“Yes sir. I’ll get him moving right away.”
Kinlan took another long look around the stony plateau where the enormous BP facility had been just two hours ago. It wasn’t burned, or blasted. It wasn’t buried by the sand storm, or carted off by the Berbers, but he knew one thing—it wasn’t here either. Sultan Apache was gone.
The Russian Captain told him it would be gone, and he also told him why. If this were true… If he was the one that went missing in 2021… He resolved to have another chat with the man right away.
My god, he thought. If Dobie radios back that he’s found this Fergusson fellow, then that’s the last straw. But what in the world do I do now? I’ve a full brigade here, men, tanks, IFVs, and a supply train a mile long. I should be half way to Mersa Matruh by now, and I suppose that’s my only play. My god! Could it be true? Could I be standing here in 1941 like this crazy Russian Captain says?
He returned to the command vehicle and they started back for the main column. By the time he got there, he had a report back from Lieutenant Dobie. He had found what looked to be an ill equipped company of Australian infantry at Siwa. They had a few old lorries, and yes, a man came forward calling himself Colonel Fergusson, wanting to know who he was and how he came to be here, but happy to have any reinforcement Wavell could give him.
“He said that?” Kinlan returned on the radio. “Wavell?”
“That was the name he used, sir. And there’s another officer here that says he’s with the 7th Armored. He’s even got the Jerboa patch, and a battery of four artillery pieces, field guns, General. But they look like the old 25 pounders!”
“Very well, Lieutenant. Return to the column, Kinlan out.”
The General took off his helmet, rubbed the weariness from his eyes, and took a long breath. He could hear his Communications Group working their systems, but all the normal military channels remained dark. Maybe if he just hunkered down for the night here he would wake up tomorrow morning and all this would just be a bad dream. Any sane man would have thought that, but he no longer numbered himself among that group.
Off in the distance he heard the AM band radio playing at one of the comm stations. A staffer was there, listening, and hearing news of Rommel’s advance and the British retreat to Tobruk! Then Simpson was back, looking crestfallen and somewhat pale.
“Sir,” he said. “We’ve just gotten through to someone in Alexandria, and he’s hopping mad.”
“Who? Dempsy?” Kinlan hoped they had finally made contact with reality again, as General Dempsy was the liaison officer working out of Cairo.
“No sir… A General Wavell…” Simpson rubbed his forehead. “He wants to know what in blazes is going on out here, what happen to his rescue mission to find O’Connor and where the general is. And he wants to speak with you, sir, directly.”
Kinlan smiled. He wa
s about to be chewed out by a man who had been dead 71 years! “Tell him to stand by, I’m on my way.”
“Yes sir… But General Kinlan, sir….” Sims had a lost look on his face. He had seen and heard all the impossible evidence himself, yet was still in a state of shock and disbelief. “What are we going to do here, General?”
“What are we going to do?” Kinlan shook his head. “Well I think I’ll go over and take my lumps from Wavell first. Then I expect we’ll take this brigade north to Mersa Matruh, just as we planned it, and if we run into a gentlemen named Erwin Rommel… I’m going to kick his German ass, half way from here to Berlin!”
The Saga Continues…
Kirov Series: Book XIII - Grand Alliance
Three new and powerful forces have suddenly appeared in the Mediterranean Theater, soon to be united in a grand alliance and single minded purpose to stem the tide of war and save Britain from almost certain defeat in early 1941. Three kings join Admirals Cunningham and Tovey at sea, with Kirov, Kazan and Argos Fire united with the British against a powerful Axis force from three nations in the largest naval battle since Jutland.
While in the deserts of Egypt, a bemused General Kinlan leads the British 7th Armored Brigade north, and the Desert Rats come home to their roots, joining hands with their ancestors to oppose a powerful buildup of new forces for the German Afrika Korps. Hitler has committed the victorious troops that broke the Rock of Gibraltar, with the addition of 1st Mountain Division, the elite Grossdeutschland Division and Student’s 7th Flieger Division to the Mediterranean theater of war.
Meanwhile, Karpov raises a growing insurgency in Siberia, bedeviling the armies of Ivan Volkov’s Orenburg Federation with his ingenious and devious tactics, and new deadly weapons of war. Action and suspense dead ahead as the amazing Kirov Kaga moves into 1941, and the hour draws ever closer when the ship and crew must face that fateful date and time of their first arrival in the searing fires of WWII.
Three Kings (Kirov Series) Page 31
