Three Kings (Kirov Series) (3 page)

“Sir, they believe the British
have at least two other battleships behind us.”

“Anything to the south? What of this
Force H we have been brooding about?”

“Nothing sir.”

Adler nodded, putting the message
into his pocket. “See that the Admiral is informed.”

The man saluted and went off, and
Adler looked over his shoulder again, seeing nothing but the low clouds and gathering
rain. Well, he thought, two more battleships—a fair fight now. What could the
British possibly have that could keep up with us? The ship behind them now must
certainly be the HMS
Invincible
. That much was evident when it delivered
a booming challenge at long range when it first appeared. The shells were well
off the mark, but Adler knew the splash of a big gun round when he saw one, and
that was a battleship that had fired at them, and not a cruiser. Only their
battlecruisers could make thirty knots to keep up with
Hindenburg
like
this, but they were thought to still be in the ship yards after the bruising
Graf
Zeppelin
and
Bismarck
gave to them in Operation Valkyrie.

That was another aborted battle
at sea that they should have fought and won. He knew Lindemann on the
Bismarck
.
The man was not one to turn and run from any good fight. Yet he, too, had
exercised caution at the outset when the Royal Navy charged in with more
reinforcements—HMS
Invincible
, the pride of the British Home Fleet. But
that was not all… There had been another ship, firing those amazing naval
rockets, or so he had heard. He spoke with Lindemann about it, and the man
seemed strangely bothered, an uncertain look in his eye that Adler had never
seen before. He had also heard what Kurt Hoffmann had said about what happened
to
Gneisenau
, and the loss of one of their newest destroyers,
Heimdall
, was further evidence that some dark new
demon was at large on the seas. But it wasn’t a British ship—it was Russian!

He still had trouble getting his
mind around that. How could the Russians have developed such weapons? This was
obviously a very secret project, something that had been missed by the
intelligence services, which did not surprise him. The Abwehr was a leaky sieve
of late. Canaris could not really be relied on for anything of importance.
Adler had the lingering suspicion that the man was a double agent, a
dissembling obstructionist at best, a traitor at worst, though he knew he could
never prove that. Canaris had whined on and on about Franco’s unreliability.

Adler knew how he would deal with
Franco—with a good Panzer Korps! It was just the way he thought he should deal
with this British battleship behind them, but now there were three… That
thought gave him pause. Was the Russian ship with them, the ship they were all
calling
Fafnir
, the dragon of the Nordic seas
where it had first made its appearance? It was said it could fire these new
naval rockets at very long range, but they had seen nothing of this. Perhaps
this was just an exaggeration, he thought, though the reports were very
disturbing.

A rocket had come out of the
night, high in the sky, then falling like a shooting star to skim over the sea
and lance right in at
Graf Zeppelin
. The destroyer
Heimdall
had just been in the way, and took the blow that might have gutted the carrier.
And the strangest thing about that attack is that there was no sign of any
enemy ship on the horizon—no sign at all.
Graf Zeppelin
was well back
from the action, so the rumors about the extreme long range of these naval
rockets must be true.

Then he had heard what happened
to the
Admiral Scheer
, and he could no longer dismiss the talk as the
idle fancy of officers too new to battle in this war. Lindemann, Hoffmann,
Krancke
… these were all good men, well experienced,
fighting Kapitans just as he was. They would not shirk from battle like
Lütjens, and yet…

Three British battleships now.
Perhaps Admiral Lütjens had been correct after all. If we had stayed there and
fought with the first, the other two may have come up on the action just as it
was getting interesting, and they would fight fire with fire. It was a battle
he still thought they may have won, but
Hindenburg
was out on its maiden
voyage. The Führer was undoubtedly jubilant with the news of the wreckage they
had already left behind them. If they had fought, there was always the chance
that the ship would be hit, and that did not seem to be something Hitler would
enjoy hearing about. Tell the Führer that his new fleet flagship has just sunk
a hundred thousand tons of British merchant shipping and that was one
thing—tell him that
Hindenburg
was blackened by the fire of the enemy’s
guns—that was quite another thing.

In this light he now came to see
Lütjens’ decision to turn away and make for the coast of France in better
light. It’s our maiden voyage, he thought. He wants to deliver the ship to a
safe harbor, take his laurels, and then scheme on fighting his battle some
other day. Perhaps that was the wiser course after all, he thought, but it
still did not feel all that comfortable as he turned and started for the hatch
and the warmth of the inner citadel of the conning tower. They still had a long
way to go. The French coast was another 2000 kilometers away, and they
certainly would not run at 30 knots the whole way. This odyssey was not yet
over. They would have to fall off to two thirds to give the engines and
turbines a rest. Then they would see if this shadow behind them fell off as
well, or came boldly forward to engage.

I might get my battle in any
case, he thought, and in spite of his confidence, in spite of the power he
could feel beneath him as the ship hurried on, another voice whispered in the
back of his mind, and gave the old warning—be careful what you wish for…

* * *

Another
man who once stood
in the shadow of an Admiral was also thinking that night. Vladimir Karpov was a
man who might understand Adler all too well and, if he could have heard his
thoughts, he might have reinforced that note of caution in the Captain’s mind.
But he was far away from the sea, hovering in the mist above the endless green
forests of Siberia, scheming in his own way over what he would now do about
Ivan Volkov.

There had always been someone
like that in his way, he thought, and Volkov would be no different than any of
the others—the school teachers, classmates, coaches, commandants and rival
officers had all tasted the poison of his envy and ire. Not even Admirals were
spared, and now, after demonstrating his own brand of conniving duplicity and
treachery, Volkov would not be spared either. But what to do?

Sitting there aboard
Abakan
,
thinking, Karpov knew what he would do in this situation, if only he had the
power. In two years he had scratched his way into the good graces of Kolchak,
but that man still had half the army facing the Japanese at Irkutsk. What
remained here in the west was barely enough to hold the line. One of his best
divisions, the 18th Siberian Rifles, was now invested at Omsk in the second
battle his men had fought with Volkov for that city. The rail line east was cut
behind the city, and now there was no way he could get supplies or
reinforcements in except by airship. Behind that forward outpost, he still had
four good divisions on the main line of defense along the Ob River, including
his elite 32nd Siberian at Novosibirsk, and then there was the cavalry he had
boasted about to Volkov. They were mostly north of Tomsk watching that flank.
He had gathered his only reserve division, the 91st Siberian, here at Ilanskiy
after Volkov’s ill fated raid. What was that man thinking? He threw two
airships and a couple good battalions to the wolves here, all in a foolhardy
attempt to take this place when he knew he could never hold it. Did he really
think he could punch through and come all the way from Omsk to relieve this
force?

No. He didn’t think that at all.
In fact, he intended to throw me this bone all along— Symenko, the surly
Squadron Commandant in the Eastern Airship Division of the Orenburg fleet. Yes,
he was one of
Denikin’s
old guard, the bald headed
old fart who tried to lead the White movement in the Revolution. Volkov made
short work of him, and easily took control, and all he was doing with this raid
was cleaning out his cupboard and settling some old, unfinished business.
Karpov understood that instinctively as well.

But the raid could not go
unpunished, nor could the treachery Volkov had used as a prelude to this attack
at Omsk. What he needed now was a nice big hammer to smash this nail, but how?
He thought, musing on the awesome sight of the nuclear blast that incinerated
the Naval Arsenal at Kansk. He had seen that when he went up those steps, and
now he knew there was no going back that way. The war in 2021 was in its final
death throes. That world was not going to survive the missiles and bombs in
their thousands.

I could certainly make good use
of one right now, he thought. That would stop Volkov’s offensive right in its
tracks, but he knew where the only viable warheads on earth were at this
moment—on the battlecruiser
Kirov
, the ship he had once commanded in
that hour of destiny… so long ago it seemed now. The heated memory of that
final moment on the bridge would still come to him from time to time, and the
lashing rebuke of Doctor Zolkin’s words, the confused, yet stolid presence of
Victor Samsonov as he stood up, refusing to obey, the last straw…

Yes, Samsonov was so mindlessly
efficient at his post that it had seemed to Karpov the man was just another
part of the ship itself. When he stood to oppose him it was as if
Kirov
itself has turned in rebellion, the weapon no longer willing to serve the
warrior… He shook the bitter memory of those last moments with his comrades
from his mind. Comrades? He sneered at that now. They were all traitors as
well, no better than Volkov. One day he would settle that score, but he had
other fish to fry now—Ivan Volkov.

He thought about that hammer he
needed; about the arsenal at Kansk, and then an idea came to him, a devious,
sinister thought of something he could do here that might suddenly change the
balance of power. He did not have the warheads at his disposal any longer, and
there would be no more until the Americans bumbled their way into the atomic
nightmare five years from now. Yet he could create something that might serve
his purpose very well here, and these old airships he commanded just might be
the perfect way to deliver it.

The more he thought about this,
the more he realized how easy it would be to do what he was now imagining. That
thought rising in his mind like dark smoke, he turned to his Aide de Camp, a
dangerous glint in his eye. “Summon all the engineers. Then tell Captain Bogrov
to take us to the nearest fuel depot at Krasnoyarsk. He is to plot a course
south to
Kyzyl
, the
Kaa-Khem
coal mine to be precise. Signal Big Red at Novosibirsk to head that way and
meet us there.”

An idea was mushrooming up like a
dark explosive cloud in his mind, and with the information he had in his
computer jacket, he knew exactly what he would need to do.

Chapter 3

Several
weeks later Karpov
had what he needed. The engineers had worked day and night, in double shifts,
and all under his scrutinizing supervision. He used the information in his
computer jacket to determine exactly what to do, and was pleased with the
results, particularly after the first test deployment on a hapless flock of
sheep.

It worked as planned.

The Germans had hit upon the
primal fear of fire, and the agonizing death it would bring, to unhinge
Britain’s stalwart defenders under the Rock of Gibraltar. So he would use that same
element to achieve his purpose here.

He strode down the long metal
grating of Big Red’s interior walkway, all the way from the tail of the ship,
where the last of the loading operations were now being concluded. Along the
way he removed his black leather gloves from his uniform side pocket, slowly
pulling them on one at a time, and making a fist to set the fit just as he
preferred. The sound of his hard soled boots resounded in the enclosed space,
echoing up through the metal duralumin framework of the massive airship. Karpov
was ready. He would leave the ship to board
Abakan
for the planned
attack. It would be much too dangerous to remain aboard ‘Big Red.’

That was the nickname of one of
the largest airships in his small fleet, the
Krasnoyarsk
, or “Old
Krasny
,” which meant ‘red’ in the Russian language. Most
simply called the ship ‘Big Red,’ and the tarps that covered its duralumin
skeleton had been tinted a dull red to fill the bill nicely.

The project Karpov had been busy
with was the development of a hammer big enough to smash the nail he had in his
shoe, Ivan Volkov. He knew he would never get his hands on another nuclear
warhead, so he tried something else, a rudimentary air fuel bomb the like of
which had been pioneered by a German engineer named Mario
Zippermayr
during the Second World War. In fact, the man was probably out there somewhere
working on a similar project now, he thought, but I have beaten him to the
punch.

He had come to the
Kaa-Chem
coal mine to get the dust—coal dust, which could
be highly explosive if applied properly in the weapon his engineers had
designed. He had rigged out a bomb container the size and appearance of a
sub-cloud car. In fact, he began with the empty shell of one such car to create
his prototype. Then he used the data available in his jacket computer to find
how to suspend the coal dust in a liquid, and combine it with oxygen in his new
bomb. It would be a two stage delivery process, one to first burst open the
receptacle and cause wide area dispersion of the material inside, and a second
charge to then ignite the holocaust. The explosive shock of the weapon was
severe, far beyond that off any normal detonation.