Lions at Dawn (Kirov Series Book 28)

by John Schettler

  A sleek bomb when it launched, the weapon deployed a pair of long thin wings to begin its glide into the target. They were not rocket assisted in any way, moving with the sheer momentum imparted by the plane delivering the ordnance. That momentum, the wings, and gravity were doing all the work, and it amounted to a deadly saturation attack on a single target like this. By now, all of Kita’s surviving planes off the Kaga had turned for home, but that first salvo of six Growlers fired by Samsonov went out after them, and he had followed up by adding two more at the end.

  Of the four F-35’s in the eastern group, he would get two, the others evading and living to return to Kaga. Nothing had been fired at the planes in the northern group, and they would all escape to return home, for now Karpov had more to worry about than the planes. In less than ten minutes, those smart bombs would converge on his ship with a lethal attack from two directions. His decks were bristling with missiles, though he had very few of his longer range SAMs remaining. His second line of defense was the Klinok system, an upgraded version of the original missile, only with much extended range.

  “Samsonov. Cease fire on the S-400s. Switch to the Klinok system and fire at will. Target the same eastern group. Now!”

  In they came, and now Kirov’s defensive response was coming down to brief minutes of potential life remaining as the first salvo of missiles went out to challenge those glide bombs. The bombs had been delivered from a very high altitude to get the range required to reach their intended target. So they were coming down at a range above the Klinok / Gauntlet system until they got inside 40 nautical miles. As soon as the missile could reach them, Kirov started to fire.

  * * *

  The tension in that moment was extreme, and nowhere more intense than in Karpov’s mind. He had gamed attacks like these a hundred times on the simulators, and they were never pretty. Throw enough metal at a target, and something was bound to get through. Yes, something always gets through, he thought.

  Yet in most scenarios he ran, he had faced ordnance packages of no more than 32 Wolfhounds inbound at any one time. Even then, the odds were still not good for the ship. This was why it was always imperative that you find and attack the incoming enemy strike group before it could get to their weapon release point. The JSOW Shotai off Akagi had to get to a range of 40 nautical miles to release, which allowed Kirov to see and kill them before they could get close enough to do harm. Yet they had not even seen the other strike groups off the Kaga until they were already releasing their bombs. That was mute testimony to the effectiveness of the F-35B as a stealthy aircraft. Those planes had flown right through the overlapping radar circles of both the Russian KA-40s, completely undetected. It was only when those weapons bay doors opened, enlarging their radar return, that they were finally seen.

  Stealth was a physical thing, built into the structure and design of the aircraft itself. It was achieved by design angles and exotic materials, and in this case, it worked exactly as planned. The Japanese did not have the better US standoff weapons, but the planes had gotten in close enough to deliver what they had in the magazines.

  Seconds passed, and Karpov suddenly realized in one awful moment that his ship was dead. 64 Wolfhounds…. He had fought them in the simulators, battling the soft phosphor glow on the battle screens, but never once beat more than 30 incoming weapons. As good as the missiles were beneath that forward deck, the sheer mass of the attack would always see at least one or two bombs get through. This time those odds were doubled down, impossibly long, 64 wolfhounds!

  In a split second his mind did the one thing it had always done when pressed into an impossible corner. His hand was moving to the missile key around his neck before he even reached a certain conclusion in his thoughts. At the same moment, he turned to Grilikov, pointing at him with two fingers extended on his right hand. It had been a pre-arranged signal between the two men, and as Karpov reached Samsonov’s station, Grilikov stood, a vast looming presence there, and pulled a second missile key from a chain around his neck.

  “Samsonov—Moskit II, bank four, missile number sixteen. Program it for high altitude profile. Here is your target.” Karpov tapped the screen, indicating where he wanted the missile directed.

  “Aye sir.”

  Fedorov stood there, suddenly realizing what was happening. Karpov was already inserting his missile key into the CIC panel, the first authorization to fire the weapon in question, Grilikov’s big hand was right next to his, the devil and his deep dark shadow, side by side.

  “On my mark…”

  “What are you doing Karpov?”

  “Not now Fedorov! Grilikov, turn!”

  Both men rotated their keys, and the board lit up. It winked red three times, then went yellow as the missile accepted and acknowledged the attack profile that Samsonov had sent to it. A second later it went green, indicating it was ready to fire. Karpov did not hesitate one second more. He flipped up the protective plastic key mask, and pushed his thumb firmly down to fire the missile. The klaxon of doom sounded loudly, deep and jarring amid the whooshing hiss of the Klinok missiles that were still firing. Then one of the larger forward hatches opened on that long red deck, and the Sunburn was up in a roar of angry fire, climbing into the sky.

  Fedorov was slack jawed. Karpov had given him the second missile key, and he instinctively reached to feel for it, finding it was still there on the chain around his neck. But Karpov had given Grilikov a third key, insurance that any fire order he would give would certainly be obeyed. Fedorov knew exactly what had happened here, chiding himself for thinking Karpov was a leopard that could ever change his spots. That number sixteen missile was carrying a nuclear warhead.

  “Set missile for manual detonation,” said Karpov, and Samsonov toggled a switch, his thick finger poised, eyes on the Admiral, the first glimmer of fear awakening there. The CIC Chief knew exactly what Karpov was doing, and if his commanding officer had to resort to such measures, Samsonov knew the ship was now in the gravest possible danger.

  The seconds ticked off, the Sunburn raged into the sky. Karpov took a deep breath and looked at Rodenko, who was watching him closely now. “EMCON,” he said. “All systems dark.”

  “All systems dark, aye sir.” Rodenko repeated, instinctively knowing what Karpov was doing. If the weapon produced an EMP burst, the chance their electronics would receive damage was lessened when they were toggled off. For good measure, Rodenko put the system into Shield Mode, cross circuiting to a different set of relays that were highly shielded against EMP.

  Then Karpov watched the Plexiglas screen, seeing the fast track of his killer missile about to reach the long string of inbound ordnance. He looked down at Samsonov and gave the final order.

  “Detonate warhead.”

  Chapter 35

  Everyone on the bridge shirked when it went off. Karpov instinctively raising a hand to shield his eyes. He had fired the Moskit II with a 200 Kiloton warhead at the northern group of Wolfhounds, and the massive fireball, even fifty nautical miles away, dominated the entire seascape now. The blast was sufficient to destroy or divert the entire group of 32 smartbombs, consumed by the shock and fire of that terrible nuclear detonation.

  There came a quavering sound on the air, and a little later the shock wave hit the ship, rattling equipment all over the bridge. The crew were now mesmerized by the display in the sky, and Karpov realized it was the first time they would have seen such a thing. That was not the case for him. He had thrown his first warhead at his enemies long ago, in the cold north Atlantic, the end of the American battlegroup that had been centered on the battleship Mississippi. Having seen what such a blow could accomplish, he fired his second special warhead in 1945, destroying, among other things, the vaunted battleship Iowa.

  The quavering sound became a wind, dark, soulless, passing over the ship like a banshee. A strange glow surrounded them, and for the briefest moment, Karpov, looking at Fedorov, saw the other man vanish. An instant later Fedorov was still there, his face pallid an
d eyes wide as he looked around, struggling to determine what was happening.

  There came a groaning sound, a low counterpoint to the last missile sent off by Kirov before Karpov turned to Samsonov and ordered him to cease fire. Now all of Fedorov’s dire warnings presented themselves in Karpov’s mind. Time was fractured, unstable, prone to increasing damage by the power of massive detonations like the one Karpov had just set off, twenty times bigger than the bombs at Hiroshima or Nagasaki The sound deepened, descended, and Karpov seemed to feel as though he were riding a fast moving elevator. Slowly, the feeling subsided. He needed to know what was happening.

  “Rodenko. Light us up again. I need to know what’s out there.” He looked at Fedorov, then tapped Grilikov’s arm, nodding his head to the man as if to say “at ease.” He walked slowly towards Rodenko’s station, one eye on Fedorov. Both men would have information he needed, but Rodenko’s status report was his first concern.

  “I have nothing, sir,” said Rodenko. “I cross circuited to shielded systems before the detonation, and so I’m certain my system is functioning, but I read no contacts—not even the two KA-40s. We’ve lost our data link.”

  “I neglected to have Nikolin put them into EMCON mode,” said Karpov. “They might have suffered EMP damage, and as our primary line on Takami was being fed by their radars, that could account for this situation.”

  “But we should still be reading those Wolfhounds at 45 degrees,” said Rodenko. “Fregat could see those clearly enough inside sixty miles.”

  Yet they were gone. Karpov had killed half the Wolfhounds with his 200 Kilotons of nuclear rage, but the others had simply vanished.

  “Could they have been affected by the detonation?”

  “They were well to the east, sir. Over 50 nautical miles, just as we were. For that matter… Where’s the goddamned fireball…” Rodenko was staring out the forward viewport, away from his screen now as he just realized his system wasn’t even seeing that fireball any longer. Then, even as he looked, he saw a soft glow in the distance, burning brighter, second by second, and by degrees, the fireball reappeared. He could see it in the sky, using nothing more than the old reliable Mark 1 Eyeball. Yet the top of the cloud had been sheared off by prevailing upper winds, a long ocher smear in the sky.

  Rodenko’s systems fluttered briefly, then his screens seemed to light up again with fresh data, the colored symbols repopulating the Plexiglas conference screen between the CIC station and his own. Karpov looked at it, his eye going first to the 45 degree track that Samsonov had last been firing along. Those smartbombs might be getting very close by now… but they were gone. Could they have lost their hold on them? He squinted, looking through the forward panes, eyes searching for information stubbornly withheld by his electronic systems. He drifted over to Fedorov, a question in his eyes.

  “Well,” he said in a low voice so the others could not hear. “Any idea what just happened?”

  “What just happened? You lost your damn head again, that’s what happened.”

  “Don’t get all bothered,” said Karpov quickly. “I did what was necessary. You have no idea what was coming for us, but you heard Rodenko’s report. There were sixty-four warheads out there looking for us, and it was almost certain that some of them were going to hit home. I’ve simulated it a hundred times at the academy. We could never stop more than thirty incoming Wolfhounds in a single saturation attack. This ship was dead, so I did what I had to do in order to even the odds. That warhead took out everything they threw at us to the north, allowing me to concentrate only on the bombs coming in at the 45 degree axis. Even then, it would have been a very near run thing, and it is likely we would have been hit by at least one GBU/53.”

  “What’s that?”

  Karpov smiled. “American smart bomb, slow, completely unpowered, but very accurate, even in hostile ECM environments. Those planes threw a fist full of hailstones at us, and believe me, it isn’t easy to get them all in the very few minutes we had. So I did what was necessary, and you can thank me that we aren’t all dead. We should be. Their attack was perfectly planned and executed, and that damn F-35 was so stealthy that the KA-40s never even saw the last two strike groups until they had already launched. They must have had something externally mounted on that first group, which made them a better radar target. We came this close to perdition, all of us.” Karpov held up his thumb and index finger to measure out the slim interval of time that had saved the ship.

  “We got the northern group of 32 bombs with that special warhead,” he said again. “But what happened to the others?”

  “Look at that fireball,” said Fedorov. “See how the cloud has sheared off. That takes time, perhaps ten or twenty minutes. I think we phased when that detonation went off. You know what I said about time being so fragile now, and how we used to pulse and slip earlier on the first sortie.”

  “Yes….” Karpov breathed. “That makes sense. If we did phase, then those bombs may have come right in on us but—”

  “We just weren’t there in that moment.” Fedorov finished his thought. “We phased. I’m almost sure of it.”

  Karpov smiled. “Well you can thank any God you’d care to pray to for that. Thank old Mother Time if you will. But Fedorov—have we moved? Have we gone to some other time?”

  “I don’t think so. That detonation cloud is still out there, plain as day. No, I think we’ve settled back into 1943, just where we were.”

  Then Rodenko spoke up again, confirming the issue. “I have re-established contact with both KA-40s.”

  “Sir,” said Nikolin. “Blackbird is hovering and requesting permission to land. Very strange… They say they lost sight of the ship as they descended and couldn’t relocate us for over ten minutes. Now they have only three minutes fuel left.”

  “Permission granted. Bring them in.”

  Karpov gave Fedorov a knowing look. He felt his whole frame relax, the tension unwinding, but it left him feeling strangely weak. He walked slowly to the Captain’s chair, and took a seat, with Fedorov following him.

  Fedorov reached for his missile key, intending to return it to Karpov, a sour expression on his face. “There’s no point in my having this.”

  “What? Now don’t be so sensitive, Fedorov. I’m sorry, but I had only seconds to complete that missile launch—you understand? Seconds.”

  “Oh I understand completely. You gave me this key, and made me Starpom, but all I seem to be good for here in your eyes is sorting out the time travel.”

  “Come on, Fedorov. Don’t be that way. You know I trust your judgment.”

  “Except when it comes to the use of special warheads.”

  “I already told you,” said Karpov. “I had no time. A moment’s hesitation and those smart bombs would have been too close for me to do what I did. Grilikov is all synapse and nerve, and that was what that moment required. I could have no hesitation; no discussion. The missile had to be fired. If you want to discuss it now, be my guest, but hold on to that key. Under any other circumstances, I would have brought you in on the decision. In that situation, I had to make it alone.”

  “And you made damn sure you had the means to do so. In fact, Grilikov is on the bridge for more reasons than turning missile keys, yes?”

  “Well Fedorov… Let’s just say that a man once burned is twice guarded. I’ve had you raise the alarm and set Troyak and his Marines on me, and I’ve seen that one over there raise a ruckus,” he nodded at Rodenko, “though it was Zolkin that did the real meddling. That isn’t ever going to happen on this bridge again. If it takes Grilikov, then that’s what it takes. But why all this talk? We should all be glad for the breath we still have to waste on it. Forgive me, but let me check in with Rodenko.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “Radar—anything out there I need to worry about?”

  “Sir, no airborne contacts, but we still have that Japanese destroyer. The datalinks are back up, and Turkey 1 has a good fix on their position. But the range has closed to 7
3 nautical miles, bearing 32 degrees. I have them on a heading of 216 degrees, at 30 knots. Designate Greybear.”

  Karpov took a deep breath, finally able to relax, if only for a moment. “This confirms that we’ve settled in to the same time, right Fedorov?”

  “It seem so, like a wave rolling over us. We may have only been out of phase with this time for a very brief moment.”

  “A perfect moment,” said Karpov, somewhat buoyant now. “In that moment, death may have very well passed right through us in those thirty two glide bombs. Oh, if I had to fight them I would have probably taken down at least twenty-eight… But there were thirty two. If any of the others had struck us…” He didn’t have to finish.

  “Then I guess we got lucky,” said Fedorov.

  “Luck had nothing to do with it. I reached this end by taking decisive action when it was needed—cause an effect—and I was the cause. Of course I couldn’t foresee the exact effects of that detonation, but I’ll take the hand we were dealt after that. I traded that warhead for our lives, and the life of this ship. Now then… We have a lot more on our hands than we did an hour ago. Here we thought we were out to get Takami, and all the while, they were out to get us. It could be that these other forces were already in theater, and we just never knew about it. They may have arrived at the same time Takami did.”

  “No way to really know,” said Fedorov, “unless you feel like chatting with Captain Harada again.”

  “F-35’s…. The Japanese have those planes, and they can lift them on their Izumo class carriers. So my bet is that we’ve got one out there to the north. We faced twelve planes, and by god, this isn’t over. Those that got away safely could be landing on that carrier even as we speak. In training we figured four to six hours for turnover if they have to arm and refuel them again. Modern ordnance is a little more tricky than just latching on a dumb iron bomb, as in this war. But the dangerous fact remains that we could be facing another air attack, and very soon.”