Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) (39 page)

*
* *

“Look
there, Vasily! A Submarine!” Airman Lev Leonov pointed out the
forward pane of the KA-40.

They saw it as the water depth faded to only 30 meters and
Kazan
was forced to move very near the surface on her run south. The speed and
shallow depth made the submarine very visible from the air, and what human ears
could not hear in all the noisome sea, human eyes from above could easily see.

“That looks like one of ours!” The pilot, Vasily Kovalenko had
seen every class of Russian sub from above, and he knew the sleek lines of a
Yasen
Class boat. My God! That has to be
Kazan!
What are they doing here?”

“Maybe they have come to join us! Now there is no force on earth
that could bother us.”

“Yes, but weren’t we ordered to look for submarines? We have a
full ASW loadout for good reason, Lev. Get busy.”

“What? You want me to drop sonobuoys here?”

“What else?”

“And report on our own submarine? That’s ridiculous. Just call the
ship and tell them we’ve spotted
Kazan
approaching from the northeast.
That will certainly bolster morale.”

“Alright, but drop your buoy just the same. We’re supposed to be
on ASW exercise. You want to get in trouble with the Captain after we land?”

“Very well, Vasily. You report, I’ll deploy.”

The pilot nodded and touched his helmet microphone to call the
ship but when the signal came winking in on Nikolin’s station he had already
been chased below by Karpov, and there was no one there to see it! Chekov had
not yet arrived and the light winked on and off plaintively, with no response. Kovalenko
droned on with his call litany, waiting, but soon realized that no one was
listening. Frustrated, he looked over his shoulder and saw
Kirov
approaching Iki Island from the west after navigating around the cluster of
small islands. He, too, saw the ring of explosions around the ship, and realized
they had fired the RBU-1000 system.

“Lev! They have fired the 300mm rockets! Things are getting
serious down there.” The rockets primary use was as ASW defense against close
in submarine contacts, torpedoes or mines.

“Still exercising in the middle of a surface engagement? Look at
all these old ships approaching from every heading! Why is the Captain making
us run this stupid drill?”

“
Kazan
will deal with anything on this side of the island,
and
Kirov
can handle the rest. But we may be ordered to fire a torpedo at
one of those ships as well. Stay sharp.”

It had never occurred to them that the submarine they had found
was Karpov’s mortal enemy and the real target of their mission.

*
* *

Zolkin
fell back against the bulkhead near the aft hatch, clutching his
shoulder where the bullet had struck him. Whether it was Karpov’s unsteady
hand, or some inner instinct that saw the Captain aim his shot to a non-vital
area, the Doctor was not mortally wounded. The shock of the gunfire was
stunning, however, and Karpov moved like a dark shadow, bounding toward the
open hatch and violently slamming it shut just as the first of three Marines
had reached the landing above the ladder.

He sealed and locked the hatch, immediately toggling the intercom
there, one eye on Rodenko. “You men! Return to the helo deck. The situation
here is under control. This is the Captain.”

Now he wheeled towards Rodenko, seeing he was kneeling over Zolkin
where the Doctor had slumped to the deck, bleeding from the gunshot wound.

“Well it seems you’ll be staying here after all, Rodenko,” said
Karpov, breathing heavily. “I can’t risk opening this hatch until I’ve dealt
with those enemy ships out there.”

“Samsonov!” He looked for his CIC chief, the fire of battle
smoldering in his eyes. “No more fooling around with the deck guns. Now the
gloves come off. Key up the Moskit-IIs, two full silos. Prepare to target on my
command.”

Samsonov turned his thick neck and saw Zolkin and Rodenko, the
wild light in Karpov’s eyes, the revolver in his hand, and then the Doctor’s
words burned in his mind.

 “Don’t think, just react, and the next thing you know the Captain
here will be ordering up another nuclear tipped missile to get himself out of
the stew. Well, don’t worry gentlemen. If Samsonov is not man enough to stand
up here then I think I will spare the rest of you the trouble.”

He looked at Zolkin now where he clutched his wounded arm. Then Samsonov
stood up, man enough, his jaw set, towering like a chiseled statue over his
post, his face resolute and grim. He had been just that for one engagement
after another, a man of steel and stone, a mindless automaton, a fighting
machine, as if he had been part of the ship itself, a mere dial or switch the
Captain might throw to vent his rage on the unsuspecting foe. His work had been
precise, clock-like, emotionless, like any other machine on the ship. Yet now
he stood there looking at Rodenko where he knelt by the Doctor, seeing the
blood staining Zolkin’s shoulder and arm, and he found the mind and soul within
him and spoke.

“No Captain. I will not comply. You heard the Doctor. The
Admiral’s order has fallen on me now.”

Karpov gave him a look of complete shock. “Samsonov! What are you
doing? Those ships will have us in range within minutes!”

“I’m sorry, sir…” He stood there, a look of anguish on his face,
the fate of the world on his broad shoulders, though he did not know that,
could not know it. But what he did know was that the fate of at least one man
he loved was at stake. Zolkin could bleed to death right there on the deck of
the citadel. He also knew if he fired those missiles the last would bear a
nuclear warhead, and thousands more would die here today. The Captain knew but
one way forward in the heat of battle, a certain escalation that could only lead
to fire and doom.

Who would judge him this day? Perhaps it would be a bullet from
the Captain’s pistol and he would fall as Zolkin did. Yet now he finally stood
before the unforgiving court of his own conscience, even as he stood adamantly
before Karpov on the bridge. Now he stood as  a man and not a machine, and he
could do no more. Karpov once stayed my hand as I made ready to kill that
American sub. Now it will be my hand that stays his, thought Samsonov. He found
inside himself this single budding moment of morality, the bane of all warriors
who kill by trade, yet it was enough. It was enough.

“Tasarov!” The Captain turned, his face frantic now. “Ready on the
Vodopad
system. Target those oncoming ships!”

Now Tasarov was still standing, eyes wet, and now he walked to
Samsonov’s side and stood at attention, unable to speak. Then, one by one, the
Junior Officers at every station set down their headsets and light pens and
came to their feet, standing like terracotta warriors, in serried rows at their
stations, motionless, their eyes on the Captain as a black hole of silence
seemed to open beneath their feet. Their silence and stillness was an awful
reproach, and the look in their eyes was the final unspoken verdict.

Karpov looked at them as though they were ghosts, the spirits of
the damned, the fallen angels he had led to perdition now arrayed against their
lord and master in an act of supreme defiance. He saw the fear there, the
doubt, and behind it all the awful spike of recrimination, a dagger to his
soul.

“Get back to your posts!
What are you doing? You’ll get us all killed!” The Captain’s
words lashed at the men, but they would not be moved. He craned his neck to see
outside, but cinder black smoke obscured the seascape. Then he ran to the weather
bridge side hatch, opening it with a vicious wrench of the handle and stepping
outside to see what was happening. A battle line of oncoming enemy cruisers was
knifing through the waters in the distance, the ensign of the Royal Navy
snapping stiffly in the breeze above the main mast of the leading ship.

Chapter 33

On
that ship stood another man, leaning on a hand rail with one
hand, the other holding a pair of field glasses. Lieutenant John Tovey had
closed the range. His ships had taken a fearful pounding, but they had closed,
and now he meant to make his turn at 9,000 yards and give return on every shot
and shell the enemy had flung upon them.

“Port thirty, and signal all ships to follow!”

“Port Thirty, aye sir!”

“Come round to two-seven-zero and set your range!”

“Sir, coming to two-seven-zero,” the helmsman echoed back.

“Range 9,000 yards, aye sir, and all guns ready.”

“Steady…Steady…
Commence firing!
All ships to fire in turn!”

The guns roared in anger, retribution, vengeance; the justice of
Lyddite and shrapnel. Tovey watched to see the first shells from the Mark VII
6-inch guns falling near the enemy ship. They had the range, and he hoped some
would find their way to the heart of that monstrous shadow.

His own ship trembled again with the impact of yet another enemy
shell, this time at the base of the armored conning tower where it rattled the
heavy armor there. He had a fire amidships, one funnel sheared off and bleeding
smoke, one of his stacked casement guns on the starboard side was blasted away,
the weather deck was gone and the Captain with it, but the ship was fighting
back now, and behind it came
Kent
, and
Bedford, Monmouth,
and
then the light cruisers
Astraea
and
Flora
. They were turning
smartly, following the arc of his frothing wake, and one by one their guns
opened fire, adding their thunder to the raging skies above.

Well off his port quarter he saw the last brave cruisers of
Kataoka’s battle line still firing as they, too, came into good range for their
well trained gunners. The main body of the Japanese fleet was coming up behind
them, and farther off his starboard side he could see yet another long line of
tall battleships laboring forward, the ships of the American Great White Fleet.
They would surely join the action in half an hour, with more ships under
Japanese flags due east of his position.

The crash of the guns was reassuring, now, his two big turrets
joining in with their loud booming 9.2-inch guns. He looked to see the first
shell hit home, high up on the dark battlements of the distant ship where a 6-incher
flashed in explosive anger.

“Pound them, gentlemen,” he said coolly. “Give them the shot and
shell.”

It was the grandest battle he had ever seen at sea, with all of
forty ships or more dashing forward in a wild surge of steel and violence. It
was Armageddon and he was right in the middle of it all, thrust into battle with
a nemesis that would haunt him the remainder of his long life. One day he would
see this ship again, and the strange, unsettling feeling would settle in his
gut as he reached for the faded memory of this hour. He would wait, through
long decades, unknowing and unaware that this demon before him would return
again and again, a dire threat that he would guard against to his dying day.

*
* *

When
Togo finally saw the enemy ship at a closer range his face
hardened, taking on a stony quality, as if the weight of that inner warning
that had possessed his mind had now frozen him to a rock like thing. There was
something otherworldly about the ship, the way it moved, shark-like, its guns
turning, barrels jerking to elevate on a target in sharp precise movements,
then recoiling in three crisp salvos that were so rapid it seemed beyond the
realm of possibility that human hands could have achieved that rate of fire and
reloading.

It was a monster from the deepest sea, twice the size of any ship
he had ever seen, intent on devouring all that came before it. By comparison
his own fleet seemed a hapless school of tuna, lumbering forward in formation
only to see one ship after another struck by the  lethal fire and accuracy of
those guns. He could see only three of them, turrets mounting what looked like
two medium caliber guns each. Yet their rate of fire and accuracy was awesome!

And what happened to
Chinyen
, he thought? He arrived on the
scene to see the burning flotsam of wreckage where it once led in Kataoka’s
Fifth Division. What was that blur of fire that had struck it? Where was the
Vice Admiral now? Was he suffering the fate of those men flailing about the
sea, or did he manage to escape and safely transfer his flag to another ship?

He looked over his shoulder, seeing the battle line behind him,
his proud warriors, the victors of Tsushima. The battleship
Shikishima
followed his own, and then came
Fuji
and
Asahi
followed by the
armored cruisers and then the destroyers. The ragged line of Kataoka’s division
was still well ahead of him, and half those cruisers were now on fire. He spied
the brave 2nd Destroyer Division of Captain Yajima sweeping up in a wide turn,
their wakes white behind them as they began to charge the enemy ship. The aft
turret of the  Russian ship rotated and fired, its shells immediately finding
the formation—two, four, six—white fire and smoke as the lead destroyer was hit.
He knew none of those ships would ever get close enough to fire their torpedoes
under the murderous fire of those guns.