Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) (42 page)

Karpov was not happy. These
planes had climbed higher than he expected, and so he immediately gave Bogrov
an order to gain another thousand meters in altitude. Even as he did so he
stood his air defense crews up on the three lower gondolas, and soon they were
training their twin machineguns and tracking the swift fighters as best they
could. He found a German speaker and sent out a message that they were from the
Free Siberian State, warning the Germans that any further hostility would be
answered.

Willy Beyer had a good laugh at
that. He reported that the Zeppelins were Siberians, and seemed to be intent on
overflying the city. His ground control was adamant, order the Zeppelin off, or
drive it off if it failed to comply. This was a war zone. He swung around, his
plane a bit listless at the altitude, and saw that he could no longer climb.
Amazingly, the Zeppelin was receding above him, slowly rising through a thin,
wispy cloud. He had never heard of a Zeppelin that could fly at such altitudes.

Following his orders he decided
to issue one further demand to turn north at once, and was able to point his
nose upward to fire yet another warning shot, which streaked in hot yellow
tracers well below the main gondola.

“They order us to turn north away
from the city at once, sir.” The radioman gave Karpov a wide eyed look, the
thought of those rounds riddling the pressurized cabin none too welcome in his
mind.

“They order us to do nothing,”
said Karpov. “If they cannot fly up here and look at me eye to eye, then we are
outside the boundaries of their controllable airspace.” Then Karpov heard the
rattle of the fighter’s guns and saw the tracers streak by.

“Forward gunners!” Karpov shouted
an order over the voice tube. “Give them the Fedorovs!” He was referring to the
Fyodorov-Ivanov Model 1924 twin barrel machineguns mounted on his gondolas. It
had been designed as an experimental main machinegun for the old T-18 tank, but
Karpov got his hands on several for the airship, and was fond of calling it the
‘Fedorov Gun,’ after the navigator he knew by that same name.

When the planes came around
again, Willy Beyer got a nasty surprise this time.
Tunguska
had two twin
MGs on its forward gondola, four of the gun mounts on the main gondola, and two
more aft. There were also guns on top of the ship in open air platforms, but
Karpov had not ordered them crewed, as he did not expect any attack from above
his current position. The two mounts forward opened fire, sending streams of
rounds at the fighter as it swept by below the ship, and one gunner had led his
target well and scored a hit!

Beyer felt the rounds bite into
his wing, big enough to do some serious damage, and he immediately called out for
his wing mates to engage. This time the Germans would use the bigger 20mm
cannon, but
Tunguska
had been slowly climbing and was now another
thousand meters higher, well above the service ceiling of the planes. They
swooped and then tried to pull their noses up to engage, but the firing was
misaligned with the sluggish performance of the aircraft at this extreme
altitude. One burst of fire pierced the nose of the airship, but the new double
thick Vulcan self-sealing gas bags took the hit and resealed. The rounds passed
completely through the nose, just barely missing interior duralumin beams, but
did no damage beyond tearing holes in the outer canvass.

This time all the twin MG mounts
on the airship replied, and the fighters soon realized they were badly
outgunned. Willy Beyer’s plane was already losing altitude and streaming a thin
white smoke, and amazingly, the airship was still climbing. They reported as
much and were ordered home, but the Germans were not happy and decided to send
up another plane, the JU-86 bomber, which could fly higher than any other
aircraft in the service at that time. It could reach 13,000 meters, or 42,650
feet, and half an hour later the Topaz system caught a flight of three more
planes climbing on their position.

“The fools,” said Karpov. “What
is our present altitude?”

“13,200 meters,” said Bogrov.
“We’re getting bad frost on all the windows. It won’t be easy to spot those
planes if they can reach us.”

“Climb higher. Take us above
14,000 meters. The Gunners will engage any plane that gets close enough to
fire.”

The bombers had only three 7.62mm
machineguns, but it was soon clear that not even these planes could climb to an
altitude where they could pose any real threat. One got close enough to fire,
but it was answered by blistering return fire from the Zeppelin and easily
driven off. Karpov was invulnerable in the high thin air, and the dizzy
altitude of power that he felt now prompted him to do something that would have
dramatic repercussions.

“That was an act of war,” he
said. “The Germans think they can do whatever they please. Well they cannot
touch me here, can they? But the inverse is not true. Let us leave a little
calling card for the Berliners this morning, and let them know who they are
dealing with.” He called down to the main ordnance deck of the command gondola.

He was going to bomb Berlin!

Chapter 35

The
bombs fell, with no
particular target in mind, but
Tunguska
was right over the heart of the
city and they tumbled down in a fateful place. The tributary of the Spree wound
its way through the heart of the city, and the first of the small 100 pound
bombs fell there, doing little more than to crack the ice floes, sending a
spray of white water up and startling a few birds. But the next bombs fell on
the Admiralspalast Theater and nearby rail yard, blasting across the splayed
out tracks in a string of three explosions. Others fell in Tiergarten Park,
behind the famous landmark of the Brandenburg Gate, and very near the Neo-Renaissance
parliament building of the Reichstag, though they did no damage beyond rattling
the central cupola.

It was pure chance, random fate,
that saw the bombs fall so close to those symbolic targets, and while Karpov
was gloating with his unanswerable power from above, the news of the attack
spread swiftly. Berlin had already been visited by British bombers in August of
1940, embarrassing Goering who had boasted the city could never be harmed by enemy
aircraft. This embarrassment would have similar results, enraging Hitler who
was in the city at that time and even went to a nearby window to look up and see
what was happening. When he later got the news that these were not British
planes, but a high flying Russian Zeppelin, he was outraged. He summoned the Soviet
Ambassador and gave him a tirade about the violation of their neutrality pact.

“You claim to be neutral, and yet
it is well known that you have been scheming and negotiating with the British
for many months now. In fact you have signed an accord with them, but do not
have the backbone to declare war on their enemies. So be it! Now you have the
temerity to overfly Berlin like this, shoot down planes and even bomb the city!
Do you think the German Reich will sit idly by and allow this insult? The German
people are already demanding reprisals, and be damn well aware that I have the
means to deliver them!” The German people had said nothing whatsoever about it,
as most knew nothing of the incident, but that was a detail that didn’t matter
at the moment.

The Soviet Ambassador said that
he also knew nothing of the attack, and a few telephone calls assured him that
all the known Zeppelins still operating in the air service were nowhere near
Germany, and certainly had not violated German airspace in any way.

“Then what was that thing over
the city this morning? Another phantom airship?” Hitler was referring to the
many incidents of airship sightings that had been reported in England and
Europe in 1909, 1912 and later years before WWI. Much of it was written off to
pre-war jitters and hysteria born of the fear of flying objects, as aircraft
and powered flight were still a novelty at that time, and a subject that fired
the human imagination. Hitler wagged his finger at the ambassador, his cheeks
reddening as he promised the ‘atrocious act’ would not go unpunished.

That night German artillery
opened a five minute barrage across the tense polish frontier, firing one shell
for each and every bomb reported. Telephones jangled all the way to the
Kremlin, but when the details of the report came in, Sergie Kirov ordered no
reprisal. But the level of tension ticked up yet another notch, and Karpov was
only just beginning his aerial reconnaissance of Germany. From Berlin he flew
another 800 kilometers northwest to overfly the German harbor at Kiel that
evening, lingering there all night until cloud conditions were favorable for
good photographs the following morning. There he documented the presence of the
German battleship
Tirpitz
, and something else in the slipways that he thought
the British would take particular interest in. On the 12th of February he was
looking through a high powered telescope at what appeared to be construction of
a new aircraft carrier.

“This will get the attention of
the Royal Navy, and I will soon prove my usefulness. Now we will see what they
have in their trouser pockets at Bremerhaven before we cross the North Sea.”

“You aim to overfly England next
sir?”

“How else can I visit London,
Captain Bogrov?”

“But if you mean to land there
we’ll have to radio ahead and make arrangements.”

“In due course.”

“But the blitz, sir. I realize
the Germans have been winding down their air campaign over England to transfer
planes to the Mediterranean, but it could be very dangerous if we get caught in
the midst of a big air duel. Suppose the Germans are bombing tomorrow.”

“You worry too much,” said
Karpov. “I will radio ahead after lunch and obtain the necessary clearance. I
wanted to see what intelligence we could gather first, and we’ve seen a good
deal. I have photographed the German troop dispositions on the Polish frontier,
Berlin’s airfields, their two biggest harbors. All of this will now be my
ticket to an audience with the British.”

“You mean to say they don’t know
about this trip already?”

“They will learn everything they
need to know this afternoon, Captain. Concern yourself with the operations of
the ship. I gave Tyrenkov instructions and he will handle the initial
negotiations.”

Bogrov was silent, and a bit
sullen for a time. He had been watching the barometer and altimeter closely,
and wished they could get the airship down to a lower altitude. Thus far
Tunguska
had performed flawlessly. Her fluids had remained sound and the engines were
running smoothly. And they had only used about 20% of their fuel to cover all
this distance, so he had no worries there. But something about this unexpected
jaunt, about the quickness in Karpov’s step again, the glint in the man’s eye,
made him feel very uneasy. He looked at the weather report again, noting the
front that was slowly building over the North Sea. They might have thunderheads
building and rising well above 50,000 feet, which was the maximum safe ceiling
for
Tunguska
.

“We may run into some bad weather
if we move west,” he said, making one last veiled protest in the weather
report. Karpov paid him no mind.

For his part, Karpov had no
scruples about his operation over Germany, and no fears about his imminent
visit to England. He was demonstrating a power and capability that no other
person on the earth had at that moment, and this was something that fed
directly into that unfillable well of recrimination within his darkened soul.
Later that evening he was satisfied with his photography of Bremerhaven, and
gave the order to steer due west for another 300 kilometers before turning
southwest for the coast of England near Norwich. Headwinds began to pick up,
and they could not make more than 70 KPH, but Karpov was not concerned.

It was then that they ran into
the storm.

The light was fading and they
remained at very high altitude when forward spotters, and even the Topaz
operators, reported a formation of black storm clouds ahead. Bogrov did not
like the look of them, and immediately suggested they alter course.

“We must be 3000 meters above
them, said Karpov, squinting through his field glasses.”

“Aye sir, they look to be up just
over 10,000 meters, but some of these storms can go much higher, and there can
be nasty surprises if we run into one, updrafts exceeding 120KPH, turbulence, wind
shear, ice, not to mention lightning.”

“We’ve good lightning rods
installed,” said Karpov.

“Yes sir, but we also have those
nice expensive radar sets on the nose and brow of the ship, and they’ll do the
same. It will be a rough ride, but at least the moon is up, and still almost
full, so we’ll have some light when we make the coast—
if
we make the
coast.”

Karpov heard the warning in the
man’s tone. “Carry on for the moment. If this storm climbs any higher, we can
always take an evasive course.”

The storm did climb higher, an
unusual monster that continued to billow up and up with angry black fists of
clouds, sewn with fitful flashes of lightning. It was a ‘trop buster,’ a storm
that was so high that it broke into the troposphere, where the cumulonimbus
clouds began to flatten out at the top in the classic anvil shape. By the time
they realized what was in front of them, the storm itself was too wide to
circumvent. They were going to have to ride it out, and the ominous rolls of
thunder grumbled in the sky as they approached.

“All hands, secure for rough
weather,” said Karpov, cursing his bad luck to hit a storm of this size.

The view panes were frosted over around
the edges, but they were feeding a low current to the center of the glass where
they had embedded tiny filaments of wire to heat the surface and allow for some
visibility. The airship was shaken by stiff winds, the duralumin airframe
shuddering an squeaking as the wind put unusual torque on the structure. At one
point a hard jolt shook the ship, and a crewman in the aft section reported a
rivet had broken on one of the beams securing the tail and rudder section. The
engineers rushed down the long central aluminum mesh walkway, their boots
clattering on the metal grating as they went. With their oxygen masks on, they
looked like grim, ghoulish figures, the demon crewmen of a phantom ship.