Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) (43 page)

Karpov went into the interior of
the massive airship, leaving the heated cabin and venturing down the cold,
drafty walkway. His breath came up short in the chilled, thin air, but he
thought he could brave the environment, wanting to show his men the iron
strength of his will. It was then that he heard an odd thumping on the canvas
high above, beyond the bulbous gas bags, and realized they must be running into
hail or ice. The ship careened on the wind, a strong gust nearly knocking him
from his feet as he gripped a nearby beam to steady himself. When he reached
the aft section he could see that the engineers were busy applying a tough
canvass restraining belt around the intersection of several duralumin beams
where the rivet had failed.

“It’s moving too much to try and
get another rivet through, sir. We can’t drill under these conditions and
welding is out of the question. So we’ll secure it this way and hope it will
hold.”

“Carry on, Chief,” said Karpov,
and as he turned to head back,
Tunguska
shuddered with another impact
and a loud boom. He saw what looked like greenish blue lightning running along
the interior framework in eerie streaks of Saint Elmo’s fire. It was a weather
phenomenon where luminous plasma formed in a coronal discharge. It could center
on the tip of any sharp object, like the high mast on a ship, but he had never
seen anything like this before. A strong thunderstorm could generate more power
than a nuclear detonation, and produce very strong magnetic fields.

When Karpov made it back to the
control gondola, he saw that Bogrov’s face was white with apprehension. His men
were battling the control wheels, straining to turn them this way and that as
they struggled to keep the ship level and stable, fighting the heavy winds.
Karpov took one look at the compass and saw the needle was spinning wildly
around in jittery circles.

“We’ve blundered into ice, just
as I feared,” said the Captain, “and we’ve been hit by lightning at least
twice. I’ve lost the number six engine aft and rudder control is very loose
right now. This could get bad, Admiral.”

“Should we get lower?” Karpov
really did not know much about the aerodynamics of the airship. He was a
commanding officer, but not a real Zeppelin Captain here. He had no sense of
how to maneuver the ship in these circumstances, and was relying on Bogrov.

“We’ve no say in the matter now.
We’re icing up too bad and getting heavy. The gas bags are filled to the
bursting point, and yes, I’d advise we let the ship descend.”

“Then take her down, Captain.”

The air seemed to have a strange
smell of ozone, ionized by the storm, and the strange glow infused every region
of the ship now.
Tunguska’s
bones were tingling with an eerie magnetic
fire, infusing the metals that had been mined in the place that gave the ship
its name.

“Candles of the Holy Ghost,” said
Karpov, using an old seaman’s name for the effect he was seeing. When Charles
Darwin had first noted the effect while cruising on the
Beagle
, he had
described it thusly: ‘everything is in flames—the sky with lightning—the water
with luminous particles, even the masts are pointed with blue flame.’ Karpov
had seen it aboard
Kirov
, but under circumstances that gave him a
chilling warning of grave danger here. Saint Elmo’s Fire was usually a
fluorescent blue or violet color. The strange luminescent green rippling along
the inner framework of the ship put a bad feeling in his gut.

It was a difficult ride down,
taking all the skill that Bogrov had to manage the inflation and prevent a
major gas bag from collapsing as the pressure changed. Helium expanded at high
altitude, and contracted as they descended. He had to manage a careful balance but
his crew was skilled, and the ship began to stabilize at lower altitudes.

They could see the tall angry
storm off the starboard side of the ship, and Bogrov turned to try and avoid
plunging into the billowing column again. Evil twisting wind spouts seemed to
curl and form at the fringes of the column, and the bridge crew was deathly quiet
as they watched.

“Land ahead!” a watchman finally
called out the sighting, and Bogrov rushed to his navigation chart.

“Damn if we haven’t been blown
another fifty kilometers southwest,” he said, moving his puckered eyes from the
charts to the view panes, now wet with rain. “That’s England there, sir,” he
pointed. “And we’re at no more than 5,000 meters now and still descending. I’m releasing
helium from the reserve and we should level off soon.”

“You may keep us low,” said
Karpov. “I doubt if we’ll run into any British fighters at night, and in this
weather.”

His prediction was on the mark, except
on one count. They descended lower and there was no sign of any other aircraft
in the sky, and there was soon no sign of the rain or storm they had just come
through either. But they were too preoccupied to notice this at that moment. One
of the forward Topaz radars had been hit by lightning, and was no longer
functioning, and reports were now coming in from all over the ship.

“We were lucky,” said Bogrov as he
tallied the damage. “But she’s a good ship, Admiral.
Tunguska
came
through well enough. What we need now is a little time to catch our breath.
Then I can see about that number six engine aft and everything else on this
list. We can try making some of these repairs in flight, but it would be much
better if we could find some high ground down there and anchor the ship in
place. This storm seems to have moved well out to sea, and quicker than I
thought. Not a sign of any rain now, and it feels much warmer, strange as that
sounds. There should be cold air behind that front. Well sir, we can certainly
get down to ground level now.”

“As you wish, Captain,” said
Karpov. “Find us an nice bald hill somewhere with a tall tree and we’ll anchor
there. But the locals will get an eyeful, won’t they.”

They would.

Chapter 36

It
was late that night and
the train had just made its brief stop at Hoveton & Wroxham, a humdrum
bywater of Norwich. Tom Willers had been on holiday to the north, visiting
relatives in Walsham, and was now riding his motorbike home in the dead of
night. He could have waited until morning, but he had promised to be back by
midnight, and was running late. So when his late supper was finished he bundled
up and gave it a go, ready for the short twelve kilometer ride south to
Wroxham. He had had one too many nips at the bottle that night, but it would
keep his blood warm for the ride, or so he dimly reasoned.

Tom was well known in these
parts, and well off to have his own motorbike to ride about at any ungodly hour
of the day or night. He putted along, taking a side road to the bridge at
Wroxham over the broad sloughs of the River Bure. In modern times the area
would berth many boats near a place called Summercraft, but these were not
modern times, at least not times Karpov would describe that way.

The night was wreathed in misty
drifts of grey clouds, and the moon was not yet up. It was a cold, lonesome time,
even for May, and no time to be out, but he was almost home. He reached the
bridge and started across, when the front lamp on his motorbike suddenly went out.
So he coasted to a stop to dismount and have a look, not wanting to ride the
rest of the way home in the dark. It was then that he saw it, catching
something out of the corner of his eye, a dark shape above him that blackened
the stars.

“Now what in bloody hell?”

Tom Willers looked up, stricken
with fear to see a massive shape in the sky above him, huge and threatening,
like a great behemoth of the night. Then, to his great surprise and discomfiture,
he was suddenly illuminated by a blinding white light. It was a dazzling
display, lingering on the bridge where he shivered by his motorbike until the
light moved on, searching along the winding road ahead.

His eyes adjusted, and now he
could see the dark mass above again, long, cigar shaped, with the faint drone
of a whirring sound. He could also see that the light that had dazzled him was
from what looked like a powerful searchlight, now fingering the ground beyond
the river, and a second light flashed from its other end, so far from the nose
of the craft that it seemed to stretch half way across the county!

He was not the only one who saw
the strange lights that night. Mrs. Turner of New Catton, Norwich, was near the
window on the upper floor of her home, restless and unable to sleep. Her eye
was suddenly caught by the brilliant columns of light, so bright that they
illuminated the street outside as bright as daylight. She would later report
the incident, saying that: “... I looked up and there I saw a big star of light
in front, and a big searchlight behind... It was coming from the north-northeast,
from the direction of the Angel Road School, and flying very low, so low that
it would have touched the pinnacle of the school had it passed directly over
it.”

Others in Norwich reported seeing
a similar strange shape in the sky that night, and a few minutes later, a man
riding a bike in Tharston south of the main town said he saw a ‘torpedo shaped’
object in the sky, and with a powerful searchlight.

Tunguska
had come down to
a very low altitude, and they were making a search in the dark for a place
Karpov was fingering on his navigation map. There had been no suitable hills
about as they had earlier hoped to find, but Karpov could see a place denoted
RAF Coltishall, which would offer plenty of unobstructed space for the massive
airship to hover in place, anchored by the buckets they might lower and fix to
the ground. The base had been established in 1938, and would serve until sold
off in 2010 after its closure in 2006. It would give them a safe place to stabilize
the ship for the repairs they wanted to make, and they could also clear their
arrival with the R.A. F. Karpov gave the order to try and raise the base on
radio earlier, but they had no response.

“I’m surprised they don’t have
fighters up after us by now,” said Bogrov. “The storm is passing. Are the
British pilots all asleep?”

“I’m more surprised that they do
not answer our hails. Are you certain the equipment was not damaged from those
lightning strikes?”

“It seems to be working, sir,”
said a signalman. I can hear signals, though they all seem to be in Morse
code.”

‘Well why don’t they answer?
Signal in Morse then. We need to get this ship sorted out.”

“Well we can’t even seem to find
the damn airfield,” said Bogrov. “Where’s the moon?” He seemed somewhat
disoriented.

“It’s likely lost in that storm,”
said Karpov.

“Storm? Have a look out there,
Admiral. Its settled down to a fine quiet night. But where is this airfield? It
should be right in front of us.”

“Are you certain these charts are
accurate?” Karpov gave him an irritated look.

“The best I could find on short
notice, sir. That’s the river there that we were illuminating with our
searchlights a moment ago. If I keep it on our left then the airfield should be
no more than 5 kilometers northwest, but I can’t see a thing out there. There’s
certainly no sign of air activity here.”

“Well, there’s plenty of open
ground about. We’ll just have to hover low and anchor in a field. Then get the
engineers busy. I want to be over London at dawn, just as I surprised the
Germans.
Tunguska
will be quite a sight over Big Ben, will it not?”

“I can only hope we get a better
reception than the Germans gave us. We’re fair game down here, sir. And their
Spitfires
are good planes.”

But they saw no sign of aircraft,
and heard no return to their radio hails. It was as if England had just gone to
sleep, with only the faint snoring of Morse code over the airwaves, but that
was not so. Tom Willers had been wide awake that night, as was Mrs. Turner of
New Catton and Bob Thatch of Tharston, and the reports were soon coming in all
over East Anglia. For
Tunguska
was not where Karpov thought to take it,
at least not the hour and day he had hoped to arrive.

Something in the awesome power
and magnetic energy of that towering storm over the North Sea had found
affinity with the bones of the ship, the odd flecks of exotic metals that had
been smelted into the beams which made up the massive structure. The dancing
fire and rippling light that Karpov had seen was the telltale sign of its
power, and the ship was
elsewhere
for some time, until it finally
settled into the here and now—but not the one they had left behind them at nearly
15,000 meters, with the shaking winds and battering ice of that massive
thunderhead. It stood like a great anvil in the dark tormented sky, and the
hammer of god had descended upon it, falling on the ship that carried something
from another world in the core of its very structure.

Karpov would not find that out for
some hours, while the airship hovered like a great beached whale over the downs
of Tunstead. There was a winding road not far from the place where they ground
anchored for repairs, and on that road was another late traveler on a bicycle,
working his way along the track towards the old rectory. He was making a very
early delivery at two in the morning, and he had promised the parson he would
have fresh cheese, milk, and a morning paper well before dawn. He had come up
Peter’s Lane from Ice Well Wood, feeling the chill on the air as he rode, and
then he saw it, the massive shape hovering silently above the ground, the
shadows of men beneath it, and the sound of an odd language being spoken.

Tyrenkov’s security men stepped
out of the woods, brandishing submachine guns, and he made the sign of the cross,
thinking the only thing that made any sense to his startled mind at that
moment. It was the bloody Germans! That thing on the downs looked like one of
their massive airships, and the invasion everyone had been worried about was
finally on—but not the invasion that had been expected in 1940 or 1941. No. The
date on the newspaper found in his delivery basket would say something quite
different.