Men of War (2013) (48 page)

* * *

Half
a world away another Russian naval commander was about to deliver message
himself, in one of those snot nosed Russian submarines that was getting a just
little too nosey. A tiger was on the prowl in the Gulf of Mexico. The
Tigr
,
was hovering on the turbulent waters of the gulf, though 200 feet above the
seas were raging with the fury of a hurricane Victor.
Tigr
was an
improved
Akula
class nuclear submarine, sleek and dangerous like the
animal it was named for, with 8 big torpedoes and 40 fish to go with them. Fast
at well over 30 knots submerged, it was also very quiet for an older boat,
among the best the Russians had aside from their three new
Yasen
class boats.

But
Tigr
was not
quiet
enough that morning as it
moved slowly through the oil blighted waters of the gulf. It had been picked up
off the northern coast of Cuba by a fiery senator from Virginia, the SSN
John
Warner,
among the very best attack subs in the US Navy, and a boat that
trumped anything the Russians had. Dan Phillips had the boat that day, and he
was keeping a steady ear on the
Tigr
in his pond, and his hand on the
trigger. What was it up to? With events in the Pacific wound up so tight, it
was a bold and provocative move for the Russians to send an
Akula
into
the Gulf Of Mexico, and a most unwise decision insofar as Phillips was
concerned.

His
sonar man had a passive fix on the Russian sub, and it did not seem that the
other side even knew he was there. He had two torpedoes up and primed, and then
he heard the one thing that he dreaded every moment he had ever sailed at sea.

“Con,
Sonar. Torpedo in the water! Range 1500 meters and… and
increasing
sir…It’s not headed our way, Captain.”

“Not
headed our way?” Phillips took a fast look at his
Plexi
chart and knew immediately what was happening. “Mother of
God
,” he
breathed. “Ready on tubes two and four,” he said sharply. “Arm torpedoes!”

“Sir,
tubes two and four ready, and torpedoes armed, aye!”

Seconds
later two Mk 48 torpedoes were also in the water, and homing their way toward
the distant tiger in the sea. By the time the
Akula
heard them and
thought to turn its head and bear fangs, the Mk 48s had the target in their
crosshairs, their active electronically steered ‘
pingers
’
guiding them unerringly forward. A moment later they struck home with a ripple
of underwater thunder, two 295kg warheads striking the Russian sub and
virtually blowing the boat in half. But the
Tigr
had already finished
what it came here to do that morning. It had fired a single 650mm torpedo with
a massive 450kg warhead, though it would never fire another.

The
John Warner’s
sonar man had been correct. The big torpedo was running
away at high speed now, not seeking the American boat, but finding instead a
much bigger prize in the dark waters ahead. It was homing in on the massive
underwater segment of the British Petroleum/Exxon Mobile super rig dubbed
Thunder
Horse
, and it was about to take down one of the principle production
facilities in the Gulf. Hurricane Victor, raging with winds near 200 miles per
hour above, would do the rest.

Hours
later, when the storm had passed and raged inland on the Texas coast, a helo
swooped low over the restless waters of the Gulf, the pilot aghast at what he
was seeing. It was a British Petroleum ride, out from Port
Fourchon
in the Mississippi Region on an emergency rig tour after Hurricane Victor cut a
swath through the production zone at sea. Thus far 15 platforms had sustained
damage that would be at least a week in repair, perhaps longer. This was the
last planned stop for the day, to the crown jewel in the joint BP-Exxon
operation in the region. They were going out to
Thunder Horse
, the
world’s largest semi-submersible oil platform, so big you could put three
football fields up on the topside area. It was
fully
submersible now.

“Look
at that!” the pilot pointed at the badly listing platform.
Thunder Horse
was keeling over on her massive industrial orange flotation columns, and
apparently still taking on water. Constructed in Korea and delivered to Corpus
Christi, Texas in 2004, the rig had problems from the very first. Some grease
monkey had set in a bad six-inch pipe, and water was misrouted between ballast
tanks causing a major list in 2005. The big platform almost tipped completely
over during that incident, and it took a week to pump out the water and get the
ballast tanks balanced again. Six weeks later it weathered a blow from
Hurricane Katrina, and the last few brushes from the big storms never seemed to
bother the immense platform—until now. The 650mm torpedo was a little more than
the design engineers had ever planned for.

“What
could have caused this?” The engineer aboard knew they had not suffered a
direct hit from Victor this time. Yet the damage was plain to see. “Can you get
a bit lower, I want to check the other side.” The platform had finally sorted
out its teething troubles and was brought on-line in June of 2008. She was
expected to deliver all of a billion barrels of oil over her 25 year industrial
life span, but this was a problem that could cause a drastic setback in that
schedule. The 250,000 barrels she might have contributed to that total today
were obviously not going to be delivered, let alone the daily expected quota of
200 million cubic feet of gas. She was obviously floundering, and in very deep
water, sitting right astride block 778/822 in the Mississippi Canyon, the
bottom over a mile away, some 6300 feet below. One of her massive cranes was
already completely underwater.

“Damn,
with Mad Dog damaged we can’t lose Thunder Horse,” said the engineer.

Mad
Dog
was dubbed one of the 50 projects to change the world by Goldman Sachs,
sporting the world’s largest single piece truss spar, one of the biggest lifts
ever set in the Gulf of Mexico, about 190 miles south of New Orleans in the
Green Canyon plot. The big dog was permanently moored to the seabed, with a
capacity to produce up to 100,000 barrels of oil and 60 million cubic feet of
natural gas per day, much smaller than
Thunder Horse
, but significant.
She was also damaged, but still intact.

“Shall
I spread the word?” The pilot gave the engineer a sheepish look.

“Better
tell the techs on Mad Dog to get over here first,” said the engineer. Crews
were already working to restore the 24-inch lateral connecting
Mad Dog
to the
Caesar
oil pipeline. Her Natural gas was transported via a
16-inch lateral connected to the
Cleopatra
gas pipeline, both part of
BPs Mardi Gras Transportation System in the Gulf.

“Lord,”
the engineer was scratching his head, eyes wide as he surveyed the platform
below them now. “We’ve got a fire down there too! With
Caesar
and
Cleopatra
off line, and big rigs like this in the water, we’re buggered for weeks, mate.
Better blow the horn. This baby needs help fast. Damn thing’s about to go down
under!”

“Right-o,”
said the pilot, flipping his headset on to begin transmitting. “Mad Dog, Mad
Dog, this is BP Survey, Over. “

A
scratch voice answered in a few seconds.
“Go ahead, Survey.”

“Thunder
Horse down, mates. Repeat. Thunder Horse down. Survey engineer says we’ll need
all your people out this way on the double, with anything you can float, over.”

Someone
swore on the other end of the transmission. Then the voice came back,
“Roger
that, Survey. Thunder Horse down.”

The
Saga Continues…

Kirov
Saga

Nine
Days Falling

As
Fedorov launches his daring mission to the past to rescue Orlov, Volsky is
caught up in a web of intrigue spun out from the dark corners of the KGB. The
long journey west is fraught with danger for Fedorov’s team when they encounter
something bewildering and truly astounding, an incident that leads them deeper
into the mystery and origin of Rod-25. Yet even as they stalk Orlov’s shadow,
the hunt is joined by Beria’s NKVD and Haselden’s 30 Commando in 1942.

Karpov
faces his toughest challenge yet when Kirov is hunted by a US Carrier Strike
Group and a determined Captain with orders to sink the Russian battlecruiser at
any cost. Meanwhile, a desperate situation in the Caspian Sea endangers
Volsky’s attempt to reach and rescue Fedorov’s team.
The lines of
destiny meet in a Nexus Point of violence and mayhem that will decide the 
fate of the world.

As
the fuse of conflict is lit across the globe, the dread war has finally begun
when the Chinese move to bring home their long wayward son—Taiwan. Combat
begins from the very first chapter and rages throughout the entire novel as the
war begins on the high seas and burns like a searing fire into the vital oil
rich regions of the world. From the pulsing bitstream of the Internet,
 the deep void of outer space, the oil soaked waters of the Persian Gulf
and Black Sea, to the riveting naval combat in the Pacific, the world is swept
up in the maelstrom of chaos of war over nine grueling days.

This
is the story of that deadly war to end all wars, and the desperate missions
from the future and past to find the one man who can prevent it from ever
happening, Gennadi Orlov. Can the mystery of Rod-25 and Orlov be solved before
the ICBMs are finally launched?

OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN SCHETTLER

Kirov

The
battlecruiser
Kirov
, is the most power surface combatant that ever put
to sea. Built from the bones of all four prior
Kirov
Class
battlecruisers, she is updated with Russia’s most lethal weapons, given back
her old name, and commissioned in the year 2020. A year later, with tensions
rising to the breaking point between Russia and the West,
Kirov
is
completing her final missile trials in the Arctic Sea when a strange accident
transports her to another time. With power no ship in the world can match, much
less comprehend, she must decide the fate of nations in the most titanic
conflict the world has ever seen—WWII.

Kirov II
– Cauldron of Fire

Kirov
crosses
the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea when she suddenly slips in time again and
re-appears a year later, in August of 1942. Beset with enemies on every side
and embroiled in one of the  largest sea battles of the war, the ship
races for Gibraltar and the relatively safe waters of the Atlantic. Meanwhile,
the brilliant Alan Turing has begun to unravel the mystery of what this ship
could be, but can he convince the Admiralty? Naval action abounds in this fast
paced second volume of the
Kirov
series trilogy.

Kirov III
 
- Pacific Storm

Admiral Tovey’s
visit to Bletchley Park soon reaches an astounding conclusion when the
battlecruiser
Kirov
vanishes once again to a desolate future. Reaching
the Pacific the ship’s officers and crew soon learn that
Kirov
has once
again moved in time. Now First Officer Anton Fedorov is shocked to finally
learn the true source of the great variation in time that has led to the
devastated future they have come from and the demise of civilization itself.
They are soon discovered by a Japanese fleet and the ship now faces its most
dangerous and determined challenge ever when they are stalked by the Japanese
5th Carrier Division and eventually confronted by a powerful enemy task force
led by the battleship
Yamato
, and an admiral determined to sink this
phantom ship, or die trying. In this amazing continuation to the popular
Kirov
series, the most powerful ships ever conceived by two different eras clash in a
titanic final battle that could decide the fate of nations and the world
itself.

Kirov Saga:
Men Of War

Kirov
returns home to a changed world in the year 2021, and as the Russian Naval
Inspectorate probes the mystery of the ship’s disappearance, Anton Fedorov
begins to unravel yet another dilemma—the secret of Rod 25. The world is again
steering a dangerous course toward the great war that blackened the shores of a
distant future glimpsed by the officers and crew. Fedorov has come to believe
that time is waiting on the resolution of one crucial unresolved element from
their journey to the past—the fate of Gennadi Orlov.

  
Join Admiral Leonid Volsky, Captain Vladimir Karpov and Anton Fedorov as they
sleuth the mystery of Orlov’s fate and launch a mission to the past to find him
before the world explodes in the terror and fury of a great air and  naval
conflict in the Pacific. It is a war that will span the globe from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Middle East and through the oil rich heart of Central Asia to the
wide Pacific, but somehow one man’s life holds the key to its prevention. Yet
other men are aware of Orlov’s identity as a crewman from the dread raider they
came to call
Geronimo
, and they too set their minds on finding him
first…in 1942! Men of war from the future and past now join in the hunt while
the military forces of Russia, China and the West maneuver to the great
chessboard of impending conflict.

The
Kirov
Saga
Continues with the blow by blow depiction of this great war over its
first nine grueling days of intense conventional warfare in book V,
Nine
Days Falling.