Three Kings (Kirov Series) (39 page)

* * *

The
Staff Officer leaned
in, speaking quietly to Kinlan as he reported. “These were men claiming to be
British soldiers, sir, dressed out in that same old style British kit from head
to toe!” He gestured to Popski now, who was listening intently.

“A Sergeant Galloway, sir. Six
jeeps and an odd bunch that look like they’ve been out here for a good long
while. That’s how Reeves put it. But they had another man with them, and sir,
the fellow claims to be a British General. Calls himself O’Connor.”

Brigadier Kinlan just stared at
him. “O’Connor? Rubbish! What in bloody hell is going on here?” He looked down
at his library pad again. There was the entry on the General himself in the
data file, complete with a vintage photo from World War Two.

Fedorov heard the name O’Connor
and his heart leapt. He immediately asked Popski if he had heard what was said.

“Sure enough,” his guide said.
“They’ve done our work for us, Captain. So you won’t have to spin up that
helicontraption
of yours any further. It’s O’Connor alright,
along with some of my men! I caught several of the names that staff officer
reported.”

Then to Brigadier Kinlan he said:
“Just you wait and see now, sir. General O’Connor will be more than glad to
straighten this matter out for you.”

“Will he now?” Kinlan did not
seem happy at all, and he gave a sharp order to his Staff Officer. “Tell him to
bring the whole lot in,” he ordered. “We’ll get to the bottom of this mess
right now!”

Chapter 33

Troyak
had been unable to
get through to
Kirov
, saying there was odd interference on every radio
band. This news kept Fedorov in the dark, knowing that something terrible had
happened again here, but unable to determine whether his team had moved in time
again… until he heard that the British had found O’Connor. If this was so, if
it was actually General O’Connor out there in the desert, then this new British
General and his Desert Rats had somehow manifested here from the future!
They
were the interlopers in time, and not his own small contingent. But how did it
happen?

He remembered that strange glow
in the sky, the almost phosphorescent light in the blowing sand, and that odd
moment when Orlov had yelped with pain dropping that thing he had found in
Siberia—in the Tunguska river valley. He began to piece together the odd bits
of the puzzle, thinking hard. This British General Kinlan had said something
about a missile, an ICBM. Popski told him that they ‘got it first,’ before it
could make an end of them, though he did not know what Kinlan meant by that.
That could only mean they engaged it with anti-ballistic missile systems, but
he gathered that the warhead had detonated, somewhere over the Qattara
depression.

Kinlan thinks we’re a fifth
column, he realized, finally understanding that remark about lazing about near
the target area. He meant ‘lasing,’ but Popski would have never heard of that
word, and translated it otherwise. Brigadier Kinlan thought we were here to
paint the target zone and help guide the missile attack in. He questioned
Popski further about it, and it was the only conclusion he could come to. If
this were so, then Kinlan might see Popski and his men as saboteurs, even
O’Connor. How could he possibly believe anything else?

Now he had come to one of those
critical moments of knowing that could make all the difference in how this all
played out. A nuclear detonation… a Tunguska fragment… a hole in time. It was
the only possible explanation. That’s how Rod 25 must be working. It contained
exotic residual material from the Tunguska event, and when lowered into the
sublime nuclear dance of the ship’s reactor, the combination cut time like a
razor, and anything within a given radius fell through the rift.

Director Kamenski told him that
large explosions disturb time, particularly those of nuclear origin. Could that
thing Orlov found serve as a kind of lightning rod, where all that strange
effect was targeted at this very place and time. If so, the radius of this
event must have been very great if it allowed a force the size of a full Armored
brigade to move through the rift. Then again… From what he could determine, and
see all around him, this brigade had been tightly concentrated, ready to make a
road march, with all its vehicles and equipment gathered into a zone that
probably did not exceed five or ten kilometers. Even Rod 25 could produce a
radius effect that wide, and this thing Orlov had could be a highly
concentrated fragment from the Tunguska event, with considerably more power
than the control rod.

All these thoughts tumbled
through his mind in a matter of seconds, but now the agonizing question was
before him—what should he do about it? What could he do? Saving his own skin,
and extricating his contingent from this dilemma was one thing, but to do so he
was going to have to convince this Brigadier Kinlan that his brigade was no
longer where he thought it was—that he and all his troops were now sitting in
the Egyptian desert in January of 1941! Look how long it took us to accept what
had happened to us. And Admiral Tovey… He and Turing had years to figure this
all out, the slow accumulation of hard evidence, tangible clues, right down to
those photographs they handed us. What can I do to convince this General
without sounding like I’m a madman?

He groped about, trying to figure
a way he could persuade this man, and explain what had happened. O’Connor, he
thought. General Richard O’Connor. They were bringing him in with
Popski’s
men this very moment. O’Connor is a prominent
historical figure. There will be photographic references, in fact, I could call
them up on my jacket computer if need be. Would that be enough? Perhaps, but
then he realized what was on the other side of that coin.

If I do convince them they have
moved in time, he thought, then they’ll have to know who
we
are as well,
and wonder how we came to be here. This man was British military, with a very
important post in commanding one of the only heavy armored units they had left
in 2021. It is very possible that he would have heard about the disappearance
of our ship during those live fire exercises.

He thought about this. Could I
tell him who we are, and how we came to be here? That lets the bear out of the
cave, doesn’t it? Admiral Volsky was bold to reveal this to Tovey, but to
convince Kinlan of his impossible fate, I may have to reveal it to the entire
world. This is information known only to Admiral Tovey and Alan Turing in this
era. My god, even Popski is still in the dark. He doesn’t even know who we
really are!

Yet the more he thought about
this incredible situation, the more he realized the inevitable outcome of these
events. This unit was posted to the BP Sultan Apache oil concern in the year
2020, after the massacre of British oilfield personnel there. He remembered the
incident clearly, and now he knew what must have happened. The damn war, he
thought. It’s started. The missiles are in the air in 2021, and this was on the
target list, two fat birds that could be killed with one nuclear stone. Our
forces could take out a vital oil and gas recovery facility here, and wipe out
the best unit in the British Army at the same time.

But it didn’t happen that way,
and we had everything to do with that.
Kirov
, this entire odyssey,
Orlov, that mission to Ilanskiy, all of it. Then he realized that he, himself,
had been at the heart of everything that had happened to forge that chain of
events. Yes, Orlov jumped ship, or so he now secretly believed, but I was the
one who insisted we go after him. I found the stairway at Ilanskiy, and
whispered that warning in Sergei Kirov’s ear. I was the one who insisted we go
after Karpov too, and now Kazan is involved in all of this. I was the one who
sent Troyak and Orlov on that raid in Siberia, and that’s how Orlov found that
Devil’s Teardrop. This is all my doing! And now look what’s in front of me, the
British 7th Armored Brigade from the year 2021! My God, the power this unit has
at its disposal could influence the entire outcome of this war, and all the
history that follows it.

What should I do? It’s going to
happen one way or another, with or without any action on my part. These troops
were set to move out from their base at Sultan Apache. If so, then they were
going to head north to ports that might be able to accommodate the movement of
this tonnage. That would be a chancy move with the war heating up as it was,
but they’ll try. Yes, they’ll try, and if they do go north they will run right
into the thick of things, demigods on the field of battle, the Desert Rats,
echoes from the future, born of a past that was playing out here and now, reincarnated
in a form and shape so potent that it could change everything. They could save
Egypt, prevent England from being knocked right out of this war if things
continue to unravel here.

Fedorov had been deeply troubled
by the news that Gibraltar had been taken, and the shadow looming over Malta.
The dominoes were falling now. He knew the history so well that he could easily
see the most likely outcome of these events. Even now, Admiral Volsky was out
to sea with
Kirov
to try and bolster the British fleet as they faced
those impossible odds against a combined Axis naval force twice their size.
That fight we can win, he thought. With
Kirov
, and with
Kazan
out
there somewhere, we can unhinge the growing Axis naval power and reset the
balance here as it was, restoring the Royal Navy to a position of naval
supremacy.

Yes, that we can do, but what
about Rommel? How do we influence events on land? That was the dilemma he had
discussed with Admiral Volsky. The Germans took Gibraltar, and they’ll likely
take Malta now. Rommel will get all the tanks, fuel and supplies he needs here,
and what if the Germans reinforce him further? What if they make this place
their major war effort for all of 1941? We can win the war at sea, but how in
god’s name do I stop Rommel?

There were two ways, one an
indirect approach that was within their power—logistics. If we establish naval
supremacy here, then we can sink any troop transport the other side puts to
sea, and cut off Rommel’s supplies. That was one thing
Kirov
and
Kazan
could easily accomplish, particularly with the stealth of the sub.

Yet can we do this before the
German force footprint here becomes too large for the British to oppose
Rommel’s advance? Now he remembered what Admiral Tovey had confided to them
before they put out to sea to look for their battle. He revealed that Turing
had sent word that BP had wind of new German troop authorizations for North
Africa. They were going to send the troops they had used to smash the Rock of
Gibraltar, put that hammer in Rommel’s hand by augmenting his force with 1st
Mountain Division and a newly reconstituted Grossdeutschland at full division
strength! Those units and others, like the 90th Light Division, were now
earmarked for North Africa, and they just might get here before this naval
situation is resolved to our satisfaction. Then all we could do is try and make
their lives miserable here, by cutting off their seaborne communications with
France and Italy.

He considered that, and realized
the Germans now had many more options open to them for supplying a force here
in North Africa. Tripoli was the first port they would use, but they also had
Oran, Algiers, and now the narrow straits of Gibraltar to Tangiers. Getting
supplies to Egypt from those ports would be much more difficult, but if the
Germans were determined… There was even the possibility that they could create
an air bridge, like they tried to supply the 6th Army at Stalingrad.

And how to stop Rommel from
smashing his way to the Suez Canal before
Kirov
and
Kazan
can
make that vital difference? A logistics war is a long, drawn out affair, a way
of killing your enemy by starving and smothering him. But there was another
way, the direct solution to the problem, right here!

The answer was now right in front
of him, all around him in the thundering rumble of heavy tanks and IFVs. The
Desert Rats had come home again, by chance, fate or design, and if they do move
north Fedorov now knew what had to happen. They would find the British holed up
in Tobruk, and by god, they would learn the horrible truth of what had happened
to them the hard way and, after the madness passed, they would fight. He was as
certain of this outcome as he could possibly be.

So you see, he thought. You can
stand here worrying about revealing this insane truth to this world, that men
from a future time were here to take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by
opposing, end them. Shakespeare had something to say about everything, he
thought, smiling inwardly as his anxiety settled down around this conclusion.

It wasn’t up to him after all.
Kinlan was going north, and he was going to fight for Great Britain in this
war, and that was that. He doesn’t know that now, and he certainly won’t
believe a word of it should you try to tell him, but that’s what will happen. So
all you have to do, really, is go along for the ride. In fact, that won’t be
our choice either. These men have us now, and they certainly won’t apologize,
send us back to the KA-40, and wish us farewell.

Perhaps General O’Connor and I can
do something about that first, before Kinlan takes that hard road north. Then
he smiled again, wondering how O’Connor was going to take in the sight of a
battalion of Challenger 2 tanks! Standing there in disbelief was one thing.
Putting your hand on that Chobham armor, hearing that big 120mm gun fire, and
the thunder of this force in attack—well that was quite another thing entirely,
and it will make a believer of O’Connor in short order. He won’t understand it
at all, but he’ll see it with his own eyes, and seeing is believing.