Lions at Dawn (Kirov Series Book 28)

by John Schettler

  As always, it was not what you knew, but what you did not know in modern combat that could kill you. Gromyko was still unaware that Kongo already had another Seahawk up, moving south at low elevation, and still unseen by either of Karpov’s KA-40s. Yet at the same time, the Japanese had no inkling that a modern Russian sub would be in the mix, and that helo had been loaded out for maritime surveillance. Now this three dimensional chess game was about to go from a sedate series of opening moves, to the heat and fire of the middle game. Karpov was leading by a pawn, but the Japanese had heavy pieces bearing down on him, and they were about to make themselves known.

  * * *

  Rodenko saw the data link from Blackbird on his screen, scratching his head. “Sir, new airborne contact, bearing 50 degrees northeast, range 175 nautical miles, speed 480.”

  “480 knots?”

  “Yes sir, and I have it on a direct heading to our ship—245 degrees.”

  “Show me.” Karpov was hovering over Rodenko’s station, seeing the contact lit up in yellow. “That can’t be another helo off Takami.”

  “No sir,” said Rodenko. “Their Seahawks can run at about 155 knots, so it has to be a plane.”

  “Then they have a carrier nearby.”

  “Wait just a moment!” It was Fedorov, that look on his face again, and Karpov was very lucky he had him on the bridge at that moment. “There’s no Japanese plane in their current carrier inventory that can make 480 knots. That’s almost 200 knots faster than their Zero fighters.” His voice was edged with warning, his eyes dark and serious.

  “What’s out there, Rodenko?” Karpov had his eyes fixed on that contact, his voice prodding his radar man for more information.

  “Contact reads class unknown. I have it at 36,000 feet, and steady at 480 knots.”

  “That’s 4,000 feet above the Zero’s service ceiling as well,” said Fedorov.

  “Could they have a new plane?” Karpov gave him a searching glance.

  “The Nakajima C6N Saiun could fly that high, but sir, the speed. Rodenko is reporting 480 knots. The Zero was fast for this time, and never exceeded 350 knots, typically operating at about 280. The only plane that could approach that speed might be the Ki-84, the plane the Allies called Frank, but the first one didn’t come off the production lines until August of this year.” The F-35’s could double their present speed, but they were still cruising, hoping to get in unnoticed.

  “This makes no sense….” Karpov could not grasp how the Japanese could have a plane that fast, and if there was a carrier out there, why would Rodenko only see a single aircraft? They typically launched in waves. He wanted more information. “Move Turkey 2 on a heading to intercept that contact.” He was going to have one of the KA-40s take a better look. “See if they can refine their information. Something is wrong here.”

  “Damn wrong,” said Fedorov. “Unless….”

  “What?” Karpov turned, his eyes hard on Fedorov, waiting.

  “Suppose this Japanese destroyer had a jump jet on its aft deck?”

  “Contact has closed to 125 miles,” said Rodenko.

  Now Karpov was all business.

  “Mark it hostile.” There was a hard edge to his tone. “We shoot first, and ask questions later. Samsonov—get me a firing solution on that thing.”

  “Sir, I can put an S-400 on it now.”

  “Do so, one missile. Let’s see what happens.” Then he turned to Fedorov. “Check your chronometers, or sun and moon data—whatever it is you do. See that we haven’t moved in time. That has to be a jet aircraft out there, and I want to know why. For the time being, I’ll buy your theory about a jump-jet on the fantail. It would have to be a Harrier, or even an F-35B. That’s the vertical takeoff and landing model, but let’s see what our missile does.”

  The seconds ticked off as the S-400 streaked in at its target. It was the SEAD plane out in front of Akagi’s Shotai carrying the JSOW missile payloads. The S-400 was very good. It saw the target increase speed to over 620 knots and turn. The F-35 deployed countermeasures, decoys attempting to seduce the active radar seeker on the missile as it now closed for the kill. It had perhaps a 25% chance of succeeding, but the S-400 did not bite. It turned for the target, ran true, and exploded.

  “Hit!” said Rodenko. “Target destroyed!”

  Karpov smiled. “So much for their little surprise,” he said. “They must have launched that bird earlier, and sent it north of their position like that. Then this Harada got on the line and tried to play patty cake with me on the radio. A little theater here. I’m half tempted to call him again and see what he thinks now.”

  Before Karpov had any more time to gloat, Rodenko sounded off with yet another string of contacts. They were on the same heading as the first plane, and now the little surprise became something more.

  “Con, new airborne contact—same heading, speed 480, at 36,000 feet.” He gave Karpov an astonished look. “I’m reading three planes.”

  Three brief seconds passed in Karpov’s mind, one for each of those planes. They rang the alarm in his head like a great hammer striking a bell. He might explain away one plane, a little secret harbored by Takami to throw at him like this, but he could not explain three planes. He passed the briefest moment, stunned by the report. Then the rush of adrenaline took over, and the synapses of his brain fired in response. He had lightning fast computers at his beck and call, but his mind had to process that signal first, and set the defensive abilities of the ship in motion. He did not waste another half second with speculation concerning his enemy, or worries over inventory on hand. Wheeling about, he looked Samsonov in the eye and said one word.

  “Fire!”

  The big CIC Chief knew exactly how to interpret that command, his own reflexes well-honed for battle. All the while, Grilikov, sitting at his side again like the devil’s adjutant, stared in wide eyed suspense.

  Three planes, three targets, three missiles. Samsonov was quick to get his weapons keyed and on their way, the deadly S-400s. The development of the S-400 Triumf was in some ways a response to missiles like the American Patriot air defense system. The S-300 had begun that way as well, a land deployed mobile missile that would fire from a canister bearing four launch tubes. It was an excellent “denial of airspace” attack on intruding aircraft, but the S-300 had always been designed with naval deployment in mind, a perfect candidate for the vertical launch modules installed on big ships like Kirov.

  The Russians had long ago claimed that they had a system in that weapon that could find, track, and kill 5th Generation stealth fighters like the F-35. Now it was about to be put to a real-time test. NATO called the missile the SA-21 Growler when it was first deployed in 2016. Later it would evolve as the worthy successor to the S-300 SAMs used by the Russian Navy, the Gargoyles to NATO, and be replaced by an even better missile, the S-500, which had not been widely deployed by the time war broke out in 2021.

  For now, the Triumf was about the best SAM the Russians had, fast at Mach 7, and it could range out 215 nautical miles, with a blast fragmentation warhead that was like shooting a 12 gauge shotgun at a chicken at close range when it exploded.

  There were no emissions coming from the planes, so Karpov could not be certain just what he had in front of him, but he knew it had bad intent, and he knew that Samsonov had done exactly the right thing in selecting that weapon. You always lead with your Ace.

  “A nice little rat’s nest out there,” he said to Fedorov, amazingly cool given the shock they all just had.

  “Yes sir, those have to be enemy strike planes—modern day equipment. But how?”

  “Ours is not to reason why,” said Karpov. “Not now, not in combat. It’s kill or be killed at this moment, and I want to live.”

  “Sir,” said Rodenko. “The KA-40 has sent a refinement. We’ve got a hot fix on those bogies! They’re reading as F-35B Lightning fighter jets!”

  Karpov’s jaw clenched. Now, with his missiles on the way, he reached for an answer. “Fedorov? Have we
moved? Are we still in 1943?”

  “There’s been no observable change I can put my finger on,” said Fedorov. “The sun is up, and just where it should be.”

  “Mister Nikolin… Can you pick up that station you’ve been listening to?”

  “Aye sir. Radio Tokyo is still on the air.”

  “Then what in God’s name is going on here?” Karpov looked at the screen, his eyes glued on the thin lines tracing the path of his S-400s towards the contact.

  “The fantail on Takami could not hold anything more,” said Fedorov, seeming to be a hundred miles away now. “I’m damn sure we haven’t moved in time. No explanation, sir, unless our system is malfunctioning.”

  “No time for a diagnostic.” said Karpov. “I’ll treat any further contact as hostile and act accordingly.”

  Karpov was reacting on pure instinct, and his reflex was sure and steady. One part of his mind said this shouldn’t be happening, but then again, he and his ship shouldn’t even be there in 1943. Now something else clearly was there, and it was reading as a denizen of his own long lost future in 2021. He didn’t care how it came to be there, he would just fight it.

  Seconds later the S-400s were beginning their terminal radar search. They began to eat away the last interval of space between the their warheads and those planes. This time, instead of one plane trying to spoof the oncoming attack, there were three, all deploying their decoys and turning at high speed. That improved the odds on defense considerably. Each missile had perhaps a 50% chance of getting a kill, but they all would roll good dice that minute, and all three would find pay dirt. The three explosions were clearly seen on Rodenko’ screen, and the odds on the Russians getting four planes like that so easily had been very long. They just got lucky.

  “Targets eliminated!” said Samsonov, clearly pleased with himself.

  Yes… They had been very lucky, getting to those planes just minutes before they would reach their release point on ordnance. Those three targets would have become twelve targets in a hot minute, but Karpov’s immediate reflex to fire had won him a big advantage. The centermost Shotai in Kita’s attack was gone, but there were still eight planes out there, one group due north, another coming in at a 45 degree angle, and neither of the KA-40s had seen them. They were just now reaching their maximum throw range on the GBU/53s, and they were about to open those weapons bays and let loose the dogs of war.

  All hell was about to break loose.

  Part XII

  The Perfect Moment

  “Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Chapter 34

  “Bear!” said Rodenko, seeing another enemy plane. At 10:23 his screen lit up with scarlet, the blood red contacts piling up as his system reported the position of Kita’s other two groups. “Four unidentified aircraft due north, same elevation and speed increasing through 600 knots. It looks like they’ve put ordnance in the air. Wolfhounds! I’m reading multiple contact clusters. And I’m getting another off axis airborne contact—Bears—with more hounds in the air at 45 degrees northeast. My god, I have 64 separate contacts inbound!”

  The Western brevity code would had tagged the planes as ‘Bogies,’ and the missiles or bombs as ‘Vampires.’ No one knew much about Russian brevity code, short phrases meant to convey a quick message in the heat of battle. The crew of Kirov had long used the word ‘bear’ to indicate a hostile contact, and the wolfhounds that ran with it were the enemy missiles and bombs.

  Karpov could not believe what he was hearing. F-35B fighters had been clearly identified by his systems, and they were coming in fast and furious. While he had concentrated his SAMs on the first group they spotted in the center, two other groups had remained undetected on the wings until they suddenly delivered their ordnance, and his mind was already racing through his own internal database to determine what might be coming his way. Those planes could carry the American Joint Standoff Attack Missile, but not in such numbers, and not released at that range.

  Sixty-four Wolfhounds….

  “Rodenko! Do you have the planes that made that delivery?”

  “Yes sir. They are turning and breaking off to the north.”

  “How many did you say? Quick!”

  “Two groups of four planes each.”

  “Range to leading hound?”

  “62 nautical miles, sir. Inbound at a little over 550 knots.”

  Bears and Wolfhounds. Planes and unfriendly ordnance inbound on his ship. There was only one way the human side of him could respond.

  “Damn!” Karpov swore. Now he knew what his enemy had just thrown at him. “Smart bombs!” he said. “They have to be GBU-53s.”

  He had spent hours and hours studying American Naval strike ordnance to learn their characteristics and applications, and match them to the aircraft that could carry them. He knew all the typical loadouts common to the F-35. It was one reason why he was so good in combat. His razor sharp mind for battle was operating on top of a thick database of real knowledge. The F-35 could carry the GBU-53, and one loadout configuration allowed for eight bombs to be carried in the internal weapons bay. Its optimal release point was about 60 nautical miles out, and that’s what Rodenko had just reported to him: eight planes, 64 hounds in the air running subsonic, unthinking death from above, gliding towards him with precision navigation systems and a host of other sensors guiding them in.

  Smart bomb munitions were central to the American bag of tricks in naval combat, but who was out there? How did it get here? He could not answer those questions. His mind was all focused on the adrenaline of fight or flight, and for Karpov every synapse in a situation like this screamed at him to fight.

  “Helm, ahead flank and hard to port. Come to 145!”

  This was going to cost him—big time—where missile inventory was concerned, but it was sink or swim now. The life of the ship and crew was at stake here. His own life, and all his heated aspirations, were on the line, in the crosshairs of those incoming wolfhounds. It wasn’t time, or fate, or the devious will of an opponent like Volkov that was gunning for him now. It was a string of glide bombs, mindless metal, yet seeking his life with their deviously engineered electronic sensors, both radar and infra-red.

  “Rodenko,” he said, his voice controlled and steady. “Deploy all offensive ECM systems.”

  “Aye sir.”

  “Samsonov! Switch to full automatic and fire at the group bearing 045—salvos of six. Fire!”

  * * *

  “String of pearls!” shouted Hideo Honjo at the CIC aboard Takami. They had been watching the battle unfold in the phosphorescence of their own sensor suite, and saw that first missile targeted at the lead plane off Akagi. Their planes had taken the direct approach to the contact, while those off Kaga had moved off axis to come at Kirov from two other angles.

  They saw the lead plane get hit, the crew reacting with disappointment. When the next Russian SAM salvo struck home, there was an audible reaction from the bridge crew. Harada looked over his shoulder, feeling the same as his crew did, but knowing he had to hold it all inside.

  “See to your work,” he said sternly. “This fellow nearly took us out the last time we saw him, and we have to be damn good to survive out here. Now get it done.” Tensions rose in the silence that followed until Honjo shouted out that epithet—string of pearls. He was describing the ordnance being delivered by the strike planes, all lined up on his screen.

  They saw the Russian ship firing again, this time throwing serious metal. They were ignoring Takami completely, their defense now a flurry of SAMs directed at those vampires.

  “Good,” Harada said under his breath. “Throw your eggs, you bastard. You’ve got to be letter perfect now, and there’s 64 smart bombs heading your way. Anything you use now is one less missile under that deck when we get close enough to get in this fight.”

  They watched, spellbound, as all of 64 JDAMs dotted the screen, descending
from that high altitude towards the Russian ship. Then they picked up two more very fast contacts that the system identified as the Zircon SS-N-33s. Kirov must have thrown something their way, and he authorized the use of the best long range defense asset that might have a chance at getting them—his Standard Missile 3. They had been designed to get out after ballistic missiles inbound on a carrier task force, and the Zircon running close to Mach 6 was in that same speed category. It was now going to be a contest between the very best ship killer the Russian technology had designed, against the best defense the Americans had to offer.

  RIM-161B did exactly what it was designed for that day. The missiles rose with alarming speed, tracking unfailingly as they sipped data from the network of sensors playing on those two Russian speed demons. But the SM-3 was the crown jewel in the US Aegis defense system, with a Mark 104 rocket boost sustainer that was capable of throwing that missile out at the dizzying speed of 5750 knots. The Block 1 version could make Mach 10. Block 2 and later versions could go even faster at Mach 15. It was a hypersonic killer the likes of which the world had never seen, and now the two sets of missiles closed on one another like bolts of lightning jousting in the sky. The SM-3 would have the hot minute to its credit that day. Both missiles ran true. The semi-active radar homing suite found the Zircons, tracked them accurately, and the SM-3s blew them to hell.

  Harada breathed a sigh of relief. He was even surprised that Karpov had bothered to throw those missiles at him, but he had just showed his adversary that Takami could still fight, slapping aside the very best missile his enemy had. Now all he had to do was get close enough to let his own SSMs fly. The ordnance delivered by Kaga and Akagi was already in the air. Karpov had taken out all the JSOW missiles on those planes before they could deploy, but all the smart bombs were still inbound, and yes, Hideo Honjo had called the tune. He could see the GBU/53s strung out like a string of pearls in the sky.