Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series) (7 page)

The
second bomb was a standard 500 pounder delivered by a lucky
Helldiver
that had survived the Russian missile gauntlet, and it did the one thing that
would now seal the ship’s fate, smashing down on the deck very near the
Kashtan
CWIS system and blowing it to pieces.
Orlan
still had another 18 SAMs in
her forward deck VLS tubes, but now there looked to be about 140 planes bearing
down on her from all compass headings. The math was simple and blunt.

It
was over.

The
Russian ship’s surface radar had also just spotted another large contact on the
horizon, a second battleship from the looks of its tall main mast and
superstructure on the long range imaging system. Yeltsin saw the ship fire its
forward guns, blasting out a challenge in spite of what had happened to its
sister ship. Minutes later they heard the wail and whoosh of the rounds coming
in, and saw six big water spouts where they fell off the starboard side of the
ship.

“CIC,”
he said resolutely. “Activate ship-to-ship missile system, P-900 missile number
ten please.”

“The
young officer may have thought it odd to be enabling just one missile under
these circumstances. They had seen what
Kirov
had done to the first
American battleship, then he realized what the Captain was ordering—it was the
number ten missile! They were going to blow this ship to oblivion as well!

“Sir,
Aye, Aye. Your number ten missile is keyed and ready.”

Yeltzin
walked slowly over to the CIC station, hearing a watch stander call out yet
another warning.

“Conn—torpedo
wakes off the port bow! Spread of three!”

The
Captain saw the horizon light up and knew the enemy battleship had fired yet
again. “Steady as you go,” he said calmly. He had reached the CIC and was
inserting his firing key. The men watched his deliberate action, as though he
had all the time in the world, one man looking out to see the torpedo wakes that
had been reported with obvious fear on his face.

“Helm,
come left ten degrees.” The Captain ordered an evasive turn, winking at the
young Lieutenant, which gave the man heart. He had seen the Captain avoid three
torpedoes in the last five minutes, and now he turned his attention to his
equipment with renewed confidence.

No
man should die in fear, thought Yeltsin.

The
sound of incoming heavy rounds loomed in the tense air, drowning out the drone
of the aircraft overhead. Too bad for them, he thought. They made it through our
missile umbrella only to die here, just as their spirits were rising with the
heat of their attack.

He
caught the first column of seawater as the rounds came in, very near the ship
in what he thought to be an amazing feat of naval gunnery. Then he flipped open
the missile fire toggle and pushed his thumb down hard.

* * *

“Make
your range 28,000 yards and fire when
ready!” Sprague turned to the Bridge gunnery officer. “Let’s blow the fuck out
of them!”

“Sir,
aye, aye!” The claxon sounded a warning and then
Wisconsin
fired, her
full broadside lighting up the gathering evening with bright orange fire that glowed
on the swells of the sea, beating down the waves with their fierce concussion.
He counted the seconds as the rounds streaked out, arcing up and up and then
tipping over to begin the dreadful downward plunge. The Admiral was looking at
his watch as the rounds began to fall. Now was the time.

The
horizon erupted with white fire, a searing flash of light followed by a
rippling crack that shook the ship with an intense vibration. Everyone on the
bridge shirked with alarm. There came a sudden wind, awful in sound and effect,
as if some great portal had opened, the gates of hell itself yawning at the
edge of oblivion.

The
evil orange glow illuminated surrounding clouds, slowly fading as the fireball expanded
outward like a star going supernova. The evening sky was bathed in the light
for miles in every direction, and the golden fire of the explosion glimmered on
the rising seas like molten gold. Soon the light deepened to a tawny shade of
ocher, reddening like the early crimson light of sunrise. Clouds evaporated, to
a fine steam above the roiling fireball, crowning it with pale smooth inverted
dishes of fog. The shock wave radiating out from the erupting column raked the
sea to lathered foam as it spread out in a perfect circle about the base, where
a raging vortex of fire seemed to suck the ocean up into the reddening fist of
fire above. High up, in the windswept heights above, ice clouds formed in a
pristine nimbus that fell like gossamer veils to envelop the fireball in a
shroud of mist. The great incandescent dome threw off a cascade of fire falls,
which billowed down into the boiling ocean, causing it to hiss as the water
fled to steam.

“Holy
mother of God…” Ziggy Sprague was reaching for his field glasses, the intense
light abated enough for him to see the broiling fireball churning up at the top
of a seething column of seawater. He had seen ships go up before, but never
like this!

“Looks
like we hit the sons-of-bitches!” It was Captain John Wesley Roper, skipper of
the
Wisconsin
, grinning from ear to ear.

“It
does indeed,” said Sprague. “That looks like something a whole lot bigger than
what we were firing.”

“We
may have hit their magazines, Admiral. When
Yamato
went up she sent up a
column of smoke and steam like that over three miles high.”

Sprague
gave the Captain a look of agreement. “Well then,” he sighed. “I suppose that
settles the matter. Radio Admiral Halsey. Tell him Old Wisky has evened the
score. Tell him we just blew the Russians into the ninth level of hell.”

“With
pleasure, sir.” Roper saluted, heading for the radio room with the good news.
Some minutes later the reply came back from Halsey. It was simple, direct, and
to the point.

“Sir,
the Admiral sends his regards, and says he’ll get you a case a beer for that
one.”

Sprague
just smiled. It was finally over.

* * *

But
it wasn’t over. The politicians
weren’t done with it yet.

When word hit the papers on the fate
of
Iowa
the nation was up like wailing banshees and wanting a rope
around Stalin’s neck. The headline in the New York Times bawled out the
sentiment:

RUSSIANS SINK BATTLESHIP
IOWA
WITH
ATOMIC BOMB!

TRUMAN WARNS STALIN OF A ‘RAIN OF RUIN’

US
Readies Atomic Weapons In Reprisal

Truman
was on the radio at once, informing the nation:

 “We have known the Russians have been
working on these weapons for some time, as early as 1941, and before this war
began for our great nation. Well, I am here to tell the Russians, and all of
you today, that we have been working on them as well. Our friends in Great
Britain have also been working, feverishly, day and night, to harness this
great power, and we have succeeded.

“The weapons I now speak of are no
ordinary bombs. They have more power than 20,000 tons of TNT; more than two
thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is
the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare…Until this dark day.

“It is an atomic bomb. It is a
harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun
draws its power has been loosed against us in an act of utter depravity. It is
our believe that the Russians thought they might frighten us, and so secure
their claims to territories occupied on the European Front and in the Pacific
where this dastardly crime was perpetrated.

“To strike at one’s enemy in war is
expected. But to betray your allies in arms with an act of this magnitude is
inexcusable, and it will not go unanswered.

“I can report this day that the
Russian forces responsible for this attack have already been hunted down and
utterly destroyed by elements of the United States Navy. Our own battleship
Wisconsin, sister ship of the stricken Iowa, has had the final word at sea, but
I will have yet one more word here today. The enormity of what the Soviet Union
has done cannot be pardoned. It is treachery at its blackest root, perfidious
betrayal of a wartime friend, and it shall be answered in no uncertain terms.

“I am today demanding, and ordering,
that all units of the Red Army west of the Oder River must withdraw to Russian
territory at once, and that no unit of the Soviet army will be permitted to
land anywhere on the Japanese mainland, or on any islands in the Pacific that
were the former territory of Japan.

“If the Soviet government does not
accede to this order and ultimatum immediately, they may expect a rain of ruin
from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this
air attack will follow sea and land forces in such number and with such power
as they have not yet seen…”

The
Russians, of course, denied any involvement in the attack the President was
speaking of, claiming Truman and Churchill sought to define the post war era in
their favor and refusing to withdraw from any territory then occupied by Soviet
forces. In truth, they had no idea what Truman was talking about, and said as
much.

The
Presidential order went out that same day, and it was answered by the 509th
Composite Air Group on the island of Tinian. And so three days after the Second
World War ended, the third war started, and it would rage for nine days of
continued madness until the world had finally had enough.

* * *

Colonel
Tibbets got the call two hours later.
It was Go, Go, Go! The entire 509th would fly with him, as well as over a
hundred other B-29s in a massive show of force intended to convince the
Russians that any further deployment or use of atomic weapons would lead to
their swift and utter destruction.

In
truth, the United States was taking the gravest possible risk in hand with the
order that Tibbets received that day. Yes, they had the bomb ready just as
Truman had boasted, but there were only two available, and both were in the
Pacific. Operations at the ultra top secret Manhattan Project in New Mexico
were ramping up as never before in a desperate effort to enrich more nuclear
fuel and assemble more bombs should they be needed.

The
US was already well behind in the race to atomic supremacy. Now they believed the
Russians had tested their first bomb in the North Atlantic as early as August
of 1941, though the Allies had first thought the Germans were responsible when
the
Mississippi
went down. Years of intelligence work had slowly brought
them to another conclusion—that it was a Russian ship, and not the Germans, who
had attacked TF-16 in the North Atlantic. It was that conclusion that fed the
fires of suspicion where the Russians were concerned for the remainder of the
war.

The
Russians had the bomb…
Why
they never used it again on the Germans remained a mystery, and it was
eventually decided that the considerable resources, technical knowhow and time
required to produce a bomb while under all out attack from Germany had
prevented them from creating any more bombs until late in the war. By the time
they were ready, Germany had already been defeated.

Yet
now the Russians appeared again, with the same blighting footprint on the
hallowed ground of peace as before. They used it not on their enemies, but on
their friends, or so the Americans believed. They blasted yet another American
battleship in a gruesome echo of the dastardly attack made in 1941. Only a very
few knew of the fate of the
Mississippi
and TF-16, and of these no more
than ten men alive on the earth at that time knew all of what had really
transpired.

But
none of that mattered now. Tibbets got the order, and the
Enola Gay
got
the bomb. The planes were in the air the day after the
Iowa
was sunk,
and not two hours after the Soviet authorities had issued a venomous denial of
all charges leveled against them and a refusal to withdraw.

The
skies were bright and clear that morning, but they had floodlights up to
illuminate the runway just the same. The video cameras would record the takeoff
for posterity, a newsreel for the ages. One by one the big engines sputtered to
life, turning over and spinning the massive props on the enormous engines of
the bombers. Tibbets felt the vibration of all four engines shaking his plane,
and just before he taxied away he leaned out the side window and waved. Then it
was out on the tarmac and down the long runway of North Field, Tinian.

“Hey
JS, look at ‘em go!” A group a Seabees were watching near the hangers. “And to
think we built the damn airfield that made all this possible.”

They
had seen the bombers go many times before, but never with this kind of fanfare,
and by direct Presidential order. It was awesome, as all real military power
was meant to be. And it was terrible beyond the soul’s capacity to measure, 425
superfortresses in the sky, and one with the power of the sun itself in its
belly, all flying north for the vengeance the nation demanded. Only the final
raids on Japan had been bigger, with two massive raids involving 464 and 520
planes in late May.