B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (21 page)

“
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.”