Kirov (13 page)

A
curious ship,
Furious
was laid down in 1915 as a battlecruiser, but was
later converted to a light carrier with the addition of a flight deck and
removal of her main bridge superstructures. She carried three squadrons, nine
old Swordfish torpedo bombers, nine newer Albacore torpedo bombers, and nine
Fulmar II fighters. The torpedo bombers were older biplanes, slow and
cumbersome, yet effective enough once they closed with the target. The Fulmars
had proven themselves as capable air defense fighters, and the carrier also had
a flight of four more modern Sea Hurricane fighters as well. The Admiral’s
flagship, HMS
Victorious
, had another 33 planes aboard, giving him a
total of 64 planes to make the strike.

Yet
what to do about this odd report from the weather ship? What little they could
decipher of the message indicated turbulent seas, and chaotic atmospheric
conditions. While the slate gray horizon seemed to threaten, there were no
signs of such violent weather as yet. But the Arctic waters were fickle and
could change on a moment’s notice, he knew. Best to get
Furious
and
Adventure
on their way as soon as possible. He was checking the squadron manifest, noting
pilots assigned to the operation, when the signalman reported an odd contact to
the north.

“Visual
sighting, sir. Aircraft of some type.”

The
Admiral raised his field glasses, scanning the distant horizon where he soon
noted what looked like a small, yet odd looking aircraft. It hovered over a
bank of low clouds, well within sighting distance of his task force, and he
swore under his breath, wishing he had had a couple of Sea Hurricanes up for
air cover. This contact was most likely a Do-18 flying boat, a German
reconnaissance plane out of Tromso. It was the only thing with the range to
patrol this far out, and now that he had been spotted, the news would put the
enemy on alert.

He
had hoped to get much closer to the coast before being discovered, and this
news would now force him to reconsider his options here. Should he detach
Furious
and
Adventure
as planned, or keep the ships in hand for a quick run in
to the coast in the hopes of getting off the strike as soon as possible? He
squinted into his field glasses a second time, but the contact had slipped into
the low clouds and was gone.

“Better
notify Home Fleet,” he said to his Chief of Staff. “And have Mr. Grenfell come
to the bridge.” Grenfell commanded his 809 Squadron of twelve Fulmar II
fighters, and ten minutes later he was discussing the situation in the plotting
room off the rear of the bridge.

“The
contact was visual,” said Wake-Walker. “Strange that we didn’t get a look at it
on radar first with this odd interference the last few hours. We might have had
time to get your boys airborne.”

“Right,
sir,” said Grenfell. “I’ve heard the antennae have been a bit rattled today.”

“Well,
the thing is this. If Jerry is on to us, and we make a run at the coast now,
we’ll need more vigorous air cover over the task force.”

“I
can split my squadron in thirds, sir,” suggested Grenfell. “We could put four
planes in the air and rotate the duty en-route, then muster the lot of them for
the raid.”

“Good
suggestion,” said the Admiral. “See too it, will you? And I should like to have
the first flight up immediately, if you please.”

“Right,
sir. Will we be keeping to our planned course?”

The
Admiral considered for a moment. “Unless we hear anything to the contrary from
Home Fleet, I’m inclined to maintain our present course. However…I’m cancelling
the mine delivery to Archangel for the time being and keeping
Furious
with the task force pending further developments. In this light, you may wish
to coordinate with
Furious
and extend your air cover with the addition
of her fighter planes as well.”

“Very
good, sir. Lt. Commander Judd’s four Sea Hurricanes would come in handy. I can
have my first flight up in fifteen minutes.”

The
Admiral was satisfied that he would not be spotted without air cover again. Yet
now he turned his thoughts to the mission ahead. There was little real surface
threat, as all the Germans really had in the vicinity at the moment were a few
destroyers. They may have been able to slip in a
Hipper
class cruiser,
but with
Bismarck
gone, the only real formidable threat the Kriegsmarine
could mount would come from the battleship
Tirpitz
, and she was laid up
at Kiel for the moment if the Admiralty's intelligence was correct.

If
Hipper
showed its face, he had two cruisers here to deal with her. Even
if he was spotted, the Germans wouldn't have much to throw at him out here. Oh,
the Do-18 might return again and attempt a bombing or torpedo run, but with two
Royal Navy aircraft carriers present, it was more than likely the Germans would
use these planes to keep a distant, wary eye on the British fleet's movements.
U-boats were another consideration, however. The Germans would likely vector in
anything they had in the area, but his task force was well protected with all
of seven destroyers.

All
things considered, he had little reason to think of canceling this mission,
though he was comfortable with his decision to keep both carriers together for
the time being. Perhaps an opportunity might arise in the days ahead to let
Adventure
complete her delivery, but for now she would stay with the main fleet. He
watched the takeoff of Grenfell’s Fulmars with satisfaction, noting that
Furious
had also spotted and launched two of their Sea Harriers. The planes circled the
task force once and then sped off into the distance.

Moments
later the Admiral was interrupted by his radioman.

“An
odd message, sir.”

“Home
Fleet?” He turned, expecting to be handed a decoded signal, yet his radioman
was still at his post, listening on his headset as if monitoring a live
transmission.

“It’s
in the clear, sir,” he said incredulously. “I think you had better hear this,
Admiral.”

“Well,
put it on the loudspeaker then.”

 The
radioman flipped a switch and they heard a clear hailing message, in English,
yet the speaker had just the hint of an accent that was immediately apparent to
the Admiral.

“Force
contact at latitude seventy degrees, forty-two minutes, forty-five seconds;
longitude zero degrees, forty-six minutes, forty-eight seconds; speed fifteen
knots, please identify—over.”
The message repeated.

“Someone
is out of his bloody mind,” said Wake-Walker. “Breaking radio silence like
this? What, has he given out our position and speed as well? Captain Bovell, if
you please, sir!”

“Admiral?”
The ship’s Captain was at his side immediately, returning to the bridge from
the plot room. The Admiral inclined his head to the overhead loudspeaker, and
waited as the incoming hail repeated.

“Damn
sloppy,” said the Captain. “What do we have out there, sir, some imbecile in a
fishing trawler?”

“Your
guess is as good as mine,” said Wake-Walker. “How could a trawler be quoting
our position chapter and verse like that? Blast! First we get this sighting by
a Jerry reconnaissance plane, now this! If that transmission is intercepted our
entire cover will be blown. Anything from the watch?”

“No
one has reported any surface contacts, sir. Grenfell’s Fulmars are up now, and
we can have a look around. I'll check the watch and advise them to be on the
lookout for any commercial shipping.”

The
hail repeated.

“Very
well, Mister Sims. Turn that damn thing off.”

The
radioman pursed his lips, again looking at his Admiral, wondering if he should
bother the man as the open band hail began to repeat again. Before he could
speak, however, a message came over the speaker tube from the radar room.

“Air
reconnaissance reports a strong surface contact north by northeast, approximately
40 miles out from our position. No contacts on the ship’s surface radar.”

 Admiral
Wake-Walker raised his thin brows, surprised. A surface contact? He turned to
Captain Bovell to assess the situation. “What do you make of that, Captain?
Have we found our fishing trawler?”

“Probably
a stray steamer, sir. Could even be a German supply ship, though I can’t see
that they would be broadcasting a message like that in English. More likely
Norwegian traffic, though we have no notifications of commercial shipping from
the Admiralty. Yet this could be our loose cannon. Can’t imagine how they may
have spotted us, though. Shall I have Grenfell vector in one of his planes to
overfly the contact?”

“That
would be prudent,” said the Admiral, and Bovell gave the order to the radioman
at once, who seized upon this opportunity to relate the recurrence of the hail
he had been receiving. “They just keep repeating it sir, and the operator
sounds somewhat edgy, if I may say.”

“Edgy?”

“Might
it be a distress call, sir?”

“Perhaps,
yeoman. We’ll see to the matter. Carry on then.”

“Aye,
sir.”

~
~ ~

Minutes
later
Kirov
would activate her forward missile array and paint Admiral
Walker’s ships with their targeting radars, yet the British would be entirely
unaware of that.
Kirov
was well outside the range of their own
rudimentary surface contact radar, and had no equipment aboard capable of
detecting and analyzing the radar signals being beamed at them in any case. In
effect,
Kirov
was squaring off and shouting at a deaf man. When one of
their fighters finally spotted something on its radar set, they naturally
vectored that plane in to have a closer look.

As
the plane approached Karpov, seemed more and more ill at ease. Walking to the
forward view screen, he turned and wagged his finger at the Admiral. “You could
be making a serious error,” he said. “One we may not live to reconsider!”

Admiral
Volsky felt the gesture strayed very close to insubordination, yet he was too
preoccupied in the intensity of the situation to deal with that for the moment.
Rodenko's timing had been very accurate, and soon they looked to see a distant
mark on the gray horizon that was apparently the silhouette of an inbound
aircraft. Somewhat relieved, Volsky was gratified that he would finally have
the evidence of his own eyes to throw into the odd mix of conflicting
information they had been dealing with. The Admiral clearly expected to see the
profile of a typical British seaborne helicopter, but it was soon clear to him
that this was a plane, flying low already, and still descending as it bore in
on their heading.

Karpov
reached for a pair of field glasses where they hung on a peg near the forward
view port and snapped them up to peer at the contact, his movements tense and
driven by obvious adrenaline. Volsky saw his jaw slacken, mouth opening with
astonishment. “What in god's name…”

The
aircraft sped in, perhaps no more than 300 feet over the water now, and Volsky
could clearly hear the drone of a standard propeller type engine.

Fedorov
leapt to his feet and was out through the side hatch at once, eager to get a
closer look at the aircraft as it overflew the ship. He smiled with amazement,
seeing the telltale concentric circles on each wing, the Royal Navy insignia,
and he immediately knew from the profile of this aircraft what it was. The plane
passed overhead, its engine loud as it banked quickly, climbing swiftly up
toward a drift of low clouds.

Back
on the bridge Karpov’s shoulders slumped, and he gave the Admiral a sallow
look, field glasses in his hand betraying a slight tremor there. He took a deep
breath, exhaling the tension, for he had expected the ship might even now be a
flaming wreck. The over-flight had been a simple reconnaissance, not a strike
mission as he had feared, yet what in the world were the British up to? What
did he see just now?

Fedorov
was back inside, sealing off the hatch to the exterior watch deck, his face
alight with excitement and amazement, nose red from the cold.

“Mister
Fedorov,” said the Admiral, “you will kindly maintain your post in the future.
Compromising the integrity of the citadel is a serious breach of conduct.”

“I'm
sorry, Admiral,” said Fedorov, “but did you see it, sir? That was an old
British fighter plane, a Fulmar II from the look of it, the same planes that
would be assigned to these carriers in the Second World War, sir!”

Karpov
looked as though he was about to say something, but he held his tongue, for he
himself had clearly seen what Fedorov was describing. Admiral Volsky noted
Fedorov's astonishment, relieved that he had made the right choice in holding
fire, at least for the moment. But now even the evidence of his eyes simply
added to the wild confusion of the moment, for what he had seen, what Fedorov
was describing, was clearly impossible.

“This
must be some sort of reenactment,” said Orlov. “The radio show, the old ships,
and now this plane.”

“Sir,”
Fedorov went on, shaking his head. “There is only one known example of that
aircraft type in existence, and it is sitting in an aeronautical museum in
England. There is simply no way that plane could be out there unless…” He
himself stopped at the precipice of his own thinking, unwilling to make that
last impossible leap over the edge into an abyss he could not hope to fathom.
What was happening?