Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) (35 page)

“Well,”
said MacRae, seeing shells still falling in his wake as
Argos Fire
sped
away at its top speed of 32 knots. “We won’t be able to take a peek at the
damage, but something tells me that wasn’t enough yet, Mister Dean.” They now
knew that they were not going to sink their target, or even drive it off,
unless they were willing to throw considerable more firepower at the enemy.

“I’ve
one arrow left,” said MacRae. “We’d be better off putting that on one of their
cruisers or destroyers.” He gave Elena a sidelong glance, but said nothing more.

They
were now well off the starboard side of the British fleet, and drawing closer
to those ships. MacRae could see them firing,
Berwick’s
8 inch guns
blasting away, but even those shells, with much heavier throw weight than the
missiles, would not seriously harm or deter the
Hindenburg
.

* * *

Aboard
Queen Elizabeth
the situation was going from bad to
worse. The forward turret was inoperable, and the flooding had spread through
gaping holes on the innards of the ship to begin swamping the lower decks of B
Turret as well. When they most needed it, the ship had lost half its firepower.
The two aft turrets had been firing at the lead ship in the German formation,
and the bridge crew took heart when they saw they had scored a hit there. It
was well forward of Anton Turret on the
Bismarck
, holing the deck and
plunging through the bow section, but on an angle that saw it cut through the
ship and exit to the sea.

Queen
Elizabeth
was slowly falling behind, and
was on a divergent course away from the rest of the formation. Up ahead Captain
Barry saw the
Malaya
bravely carrying the fight to the enemy, but now
the French ships had joined the action and the
Normandie
was taking aim
at that ship while the other two battlecruisers targeted the
Calcutta
and
Coventry
, outmatching them with their heavier guns and armor.

He saw
three destroyers angling in on his position, their bows white with the haste of
their charge, and he knew they were thinking to put their torpedoes into his
ship and end her reign on these waters. Then he marked the fall of shells off
the bow of one destroyer, and the flash of a hit there by secondary armament.

“Good
show,” he breathed. “One of our 4.5 inchers has found the mark. He was correct,
but the gun was not aboard
Queen Elizabeth. Argos Fire
had seen the
enemy ships maneuvering on radar and began using both her single barreled
4.5-inch turrets to put deadly accurate fire on the onrushing destroyers. The
radar guided shells were finding the mark, and the sheepdog bravely tried to
hold off the wolves, or in this case the big cats prowling to get at the
battleship’s flanks

The
French destroyer
Lynx
was the ship Barry had seen, hit three times in as
many minutes, and burning forward. He saw the defensive fire shift to the
second destroyer,
Panthere
, but then the urgency of the ship’s condition
pulled him away.

“Sir,
we’re starting to list to port side, and the bow is down five degrees.” A
harried young Lieutenant reported, his face blackened with the smoke from that
first massive explosion.

“Counterflood,”
said the Captain, though he knew that by trying to correct his list he was only
going to worsen the flooding problem. It was only a matter of time, and there
comes a moment in the heat of battle when a ship’s Captain realizes this, and
thinks of his men. He could order them into the life boats, try and save as
many as he could, or he could stay in the fight as long as possible, hoping the
time might by him a hit on the enemy ships.

“Signalman!
Notify
Malaya
we’re foundering forward and not likely to correct the
problem any time soon.” It was a hard message for the young ensign to bear, but
the man saluted, and was off at the run to the W/T room.

Then
Queen
Elizabeth
shook again with the heavy jolt and explosion of another big
round. This time it was
Bismarck
that had laid its hands upon her, a 15
inch shell plunging into the ship near the funnel. The explosion batted the
long cantilevered seaplane catapult away at an odd angle, flames licking the
steel trellis as it moved with the roll of the ship. Shrapnel from the
explosion struck a ship’s bell, and the sound rang out, a mournful note of
pain.

It was
then that Captain Barry saw something in the western sky, bright fiery lights
with tails of smoke high up, but diving for the sea like meteors. He watched,
spellbound at the scene as they pulled out of the dive, coming low over the
restless sea.

* * *

Argos
Fire
saw them coming as well. The radar
had identified the missiles as Russian P-800
Onyx
systems, a weapon that
was not on the IFF list given to him by Admiral Volsky. So the old man was
keeping something under his hat as well, he thought with a smile. The missile
warning was sounding loudly, and he gave a sharp order to terminate the alarm.
Argos
Fire
wanted to get after the missiles with her
Sea Vipers,
but
MacRae kept a firm hand on the reigns.

“Belay
that Air defense system,” he said with a growl. “That has to be the Russians.
Where are they, Mister Healy?”

The
Lieutenant looked over his shoulder, the surprise in his face plain enough. “I
don’t have them sir. No other surface vessel on that heading within range of
our SAMPSON system.”

“Then
he must have better eyes than we thought. Mister Dean, what’s the range of
those missiles?”

“Sir…
I’m reading them as SS-N-26, the Russian P-800
Onyx
—eight missiles—range
300 kilometers for high altitude flight profile, 120 for low altitude
trajectory. But sir, Lieutenant Healy has radar tracks and the point of origin
is no more than fifty kilometers west of our position.”

“What’s
that you say? Fifty klicks west?”

“Yes
sir. We should be seeing the Russian battlecruiser on SAMPSON, but he’s just
not there. I have no contacts on that heading whatsoever.”

“Well
fancy that,” said MacRae, watching the missiles screaming in towards the enemy
ships. “Who the hell is firing those missiles?” He looked at Morgan now,
instinctively eyeing his intelligence master as if he had the answer to
everything on a note pad in his shirt pocket, and only had to look.

“Beat’s
me,” said Mack. “But it reminds me of a lady I was courting once. My cab was
late on our first date, but she turned up late too, and that’s when I fell in
love with her.”

* * *

“Missiles
report target lock, sir,” said radarman Yevgeni Gorban.
“They should be down on their terminal run now.”

The
Captain ran a hand over his close cropped hair, eyes looking up as though he
were seeing it all through the hull. Gromyko had fired, and instinct serving
him well, he had quickly maneuvered off his firing axis, diving as any
submariner would.

Kazan
had been a long time coming, all the way from the Cape of
Good Hope where they had rendezvoused with
Kirov
. It was a long, silent
journey, passing several convoys which they identified as British ships, but
making no contact. Admiral Volsky had told him to keep his presence here a
secret as far as was possible, and with a submarine as stealthy as
Kazan
,
that was an order Gromyko could easily fill.

The
boat had sailed right through the British operations aimed at the Cape Verde
and Canary Islands, moving like a silent murmur in the sea. It was not until
they had reached the Western approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar that Gromyko
spent some time consulting his charts. He had entered there many times before,
drifting silently through the channel, and always at night. He found the strait
was patrolled by three French Destroyers that were now operating from
Gibraltar, but they had not heard a whisper of the quiet passing of
Kazan
.
Once in the Alboran Sea, Gromyko increased speed to make for his assigned
patrol post off the Sicilian Narrows, over 1400 kilometers to the east.

By the
time he reached that place the Franco-German fleet had already decided to make
their transit at Messina, and even as they emerged to drive off the British
Fleet, Gromyko decided to move east between Malta and Sicily and see what he
might find. He had been ordered to maintain operational silence, and
communicate only in the event he found it necessary to use his weapons.

As he
approached the scene, his sonar man Chernov painted the picture for him. The
British fleet had split into two groups, one on a course to Alexandria, the
other heading south with
Kirov
. The enemy fleet he had been told to find
did not seem interested in either squadron, moving east until something
happened that surprised Gromyko. Chernov thought he heard a very familiar sound
as he monitored the seas, and when he put his profile computer to work on it he
was proved correct—a
Daring
Class destroyer!

That
report sent Gromyko’s head spinning. What was going on here? Had they slipped
again in time? Were they back in their own miserable war again? That was
quickly disproved by Gromyko’s report.

“No
sir,” he said, “I still have a firm hold on the ships we’ve been tracking. This
new signature joined the British Squadron heading for Alexandria.”

“Daring
Class? You are certain of that?”

“It
sounds a little different, sir, but all my data points are very close. Give
Lieutenant Gorban an antenna and he could verify.”

“Make
it so,” Gromyko said to his Executive Officer Belanov. “The boat will come to
periscope depth, and ahead one third.”

They
had raised an antenna, and Gorban confirmed that he had readings for a SAMPSON
radar on his IFF board. “It’s a British Type 45, sir, at least from the radar
it’s using. And from the looks of things it’s hot in the thick of a good fight.
What is this all about, Captain?”

“Signal
Volsky on the secure channel,” said Gromyko, and he soon had his answer. The
British ship was to be considered friendly and the Admiral was now asking
Gromyko to do whatever he could to lend support.

“Do
whatever?” Gromyko smiled, crumbling the message in his fist. He had his boat
at a good depth for missile action, and had no worry that he might attract the
attention of a deadly American attack sub. He also had sixteen supersonic
Onyx
missile’s ready, the system he had retained after lending
Kirov
the bulk
of his P-900s. So he did the simplest thing he could think of—he picked his
targets and fired.

Better
late than never, he thought, realizing he had just become an active combatant
in the middle of the Second World War.

Chapter 30

Gromyko
was going to fight this battle as he had fought the
Americans in the Pacific.
Kazan
had been part of the three boat missile
barrage that Karpov had ordered against the
Washington
battlegroup, and
had been the only sub to escape after taking that daring risk. Russian naval
tactics knew the importance of getting in the first blow, the struggle for the
first salvo, and when they fired against a modern adversary, they meant business.

Now he
decided that the size of the enemy battlegroup ahead needed a good strong salvo
here as well, and so he committed nearly half his remaining missiles to the
attack. The eight air breathing P-800s were fast at Mach 2.0. closing the range
to the target in brief minutes. Nearly nine meters long, the missiles weighed
3100 kilograms, a good portion of that from the T-6 kerosene fuel, and packed a
250kg warhead. At this range the monopulse active/passive radar locked on,
hopping from one frequency to another as if it were trying to spook enemy ECM
jamming that would not exist for decades.

The
Russian word for the missile meant “Ruby,” the red gem of wrath, and the
formation of eight missiles were carrying a combined warhead weight of 2000kgs,
over 4400 pounds on eight times that in the weight of the missiles themselves.
With range out to 300 kilometers, they were only going to use a small portion
of the kerosene fuel to reach their targets, and the remainder was going to
ignite a holocaust on any ship it struck. It was a lightning fast salvo of
heavy armor piercing fire bombs.

The
watch on
Hindenburg
called out the alarm, seeing the missiles arc up in
the sky and then dive for the sea like a formation of dragons. Some of the men
stared in awe as the formation came in, and then slowly fanned out as the
missiles began to acquire specific targets. One missile in the salvo was acting
as leader, ruling on target acquisition like the chairman of the board. It had
been programmed to allow no more than two missiles to lock on to any single
ship. Gromyko wanted to spread the joy around.

Hindenburg
and
Bismarck
would both take two hard hits, right
amidships on the squadron flagship, with one missile very near the bruised and
blackened armor from the GB-7 strike from A
rgos Fire.
The roar of the
missiles thundered in, and the hour that Lütjens had mused on now became a
crucible of searing fire. The kinetic shock of the missiles were tremendous, as
they were many times the weight of the GB-7. Nearly fifteen inches of cemented,
face hardened Krupp steel stood in their way. The armor scheme had been
conceived by designers who assumed the ship would most often fight in the misty
cold waters of the North Atlantic, where visibility was low and range for
gunnery duels was often very short. As such, the layout and angle of the armor
was designed to repel flat trajectory attacks, like the one the missiles were
delivering, as opposed to plunging fire attacks that might be delivered from shells
fired at a greater range.