Three Kings (Kirov Series) (33 page)

“I’d best handle this,” said
Popski. “Have your men lie low.”

“I’ll come with you,” Fedorov
insisted.

“Better you wait here, Captain.”

“No, I think I should come along.
Lead the way, Major.”

A Major ranked a Captain in the
army, but this man was navy—the bloody Russian Navy at that. A Captain was a
bit of a demigod in the Navy, and this man had the ear of General Wavell
himself, so Popski relented.

He stood up, still holding the
signal lantern, and started off on foot, fearless. If this was the British Army
then he should have nothing to fear, but he kept his right hand on his sidearm
where it rode on his hip just the same.

Shadows loomed ahead in the
blowing sand, like ghosts materializing on the wind. Then they became the more
familiar shape and form of men… soldiers… weapons at the ready. He waited,
confident and eager to see who was coming for dinner. When the squad came up
they were well forward of Troyak’s Marines, which was just what Popski wanted.
One false move here and the whole scene could erupt in a firefight that nobody
wanted.

He saluted to the Sergeant, not
headstrong enough to wait for him to do so first. He wanted to defuse the
situation as quickly as possible.

“Major Peniakoff, Long Range
Desert Group,” he said, noting the Sergeant’s shoulder patch and the black
beret he wore. He was a Desert Rat, he knew at once, but what was the 7th
Armored doing out here? These had to be the reinforcements that the Aussies had
been hoping for.

The Sergeant returned his salute.
“Major,” he said. “May I ask what you’re doing out here?”

“I’ve the same question, mate,”
said Popski. “I suppose you lads are here for the Aussies and Giarabub. Well,
you’ve come too far north.
Siwa
is off that way, well
south of here. It’s to be expected in these damn sandstorms. Can’t see a bloody
thing.”

He heard a tinny voice that
sounded like it was coming over a radio, and the Sergeant pinched a spot on his
field jacket collar and spoke quietly.

“A Major Peniakoff, sir. But he
says he’s with the Long Range Desert Group.”

“That’s rather handy,” said
Popski. There was something odd about this man and his equipment, though he
could see he was of good British stock, and clearly a soldier in the 7th
Division by his insignia. The uniform looked new, and unlike any he had seen,
and the radio was a first. He could not see how this man could possibly have a
wireless stowed in his field jacket.

“Chaps call me Popski,” he said.
“Maybe you’ve heard the name? In any case, we’re out here on a search and
rescue. The General’s plane has gone down, and we came in on...” He looked over
his shoulder, hesitating.

“A helicopter,” said Fedorov, who
had been studying the Sergeant very closely, noting every line and detail of
his equipment and uniform. The collar microphone comm system had not escaped his
notice, and now his heart was racing, his mind a whirlwind of possibilities in
the blowing sand. No one from the British Army in 1940 could possibly have such
equipment. No one… Who was this man?

“Popski,” he said. “Ask him what
his unit is, please.”

“That’s clear enough,” Popski
said in Russian, then he turned and smiled at the Sergeant.

“No worries,” he said. “I’m in as
a guide and interpreter for this man and his rescue team. We’ve a squad back
there, and these men are Russian military.”

“Russians?”

“Right,” said Popski. “Out here
on the General’s orders—Wavell, I mean. Your general is the one we’re after,
O’Connor. His plane went down somewhere north of here and we’re out to fetch
him, before the desert does the man in. Can’t do anything until this storm lets
up, but you’re a sight for sore eyes out here. Thought we had a
Dego
patrol that got lost, and we’re glad to see you.”

Sergeant Williams took that in,
then conveyed the essence of it to Reeves over his comm link. “Sir,” he
finished, “I think you’d better come up here. Looks like we’ve got some bloody
Russian military here, or so this man says. He’s speaks the King’s English,
though.”

“Russians? I’m coming up.”

Reeves could not make sense of
that. Why, weren’t they just taking pot shots at us with 15 kiloton nukes?
Bloody hell, what’s going on here? He might want to inform the Sergeant that
they were presently at war with the damn Russians, but he needed to see what
was happening up front with his own eyes. So he tapped Cobb on the shoulder
again, nodding for him to move out.

“Easy does it,” he said. Then on
his command line he gave another order. “Number two, follow me up. Twenty yard
interval, if you can see that far.”

The Dragon’s engine purred and
the IFV moved forward, the turret gunner at the ready. As they moved up they
could now begin to see the dark shadowy mass of the helicopter in the distance,
still largely obscured by the blowing sand.

A Major Peniakoff… Russians… What
in god’s name was going on here? Could this be a Spetsnaz commando unit out
here as a fifth column? Maybe these sons-of-bitches have been sighting for that
ICBM, and vectoring the damn thing in! He steeled himself for that possibility,
but as his vehicle approached the scene he could see only the five man ground
team led by Sergeant Williams and two other men.

“Stop right here,” he said to
Cobb. “Cover me, boys. I’m going to try and sort this kettle of fish out.”

He exited the vehicle, goggles
fixed tightly over his eyes now in the blowing sand. There they were, the
Sergeant and two men, one in what looked to be old style British kit, right
down to the boots and cap. The other was clearly Russian, with a black leather
jacket, and he looked to be an officer, though he was certainly not army, or
rigged out for desert operations. If these were Spetsnaz commandos, then he was
a ninny goat, so he decided to try and solve the mystery.

“Lieutenant Reeves, 1/12 Royal
Lancers, 7th Brigade. I don’t suppose you gentlemen are looking for us? What’s the
Russian military doing out here, eh? There’s a bloody war on mates, and we
don’t take it well when you lob 15 kilotons at us like that bit a while back.
Now what in hell are you doing here?”

Popski looked very surprised.
What was this man talking about? “Yeah? There’s a bloody war on alright, but
we’re on your side, mate, or haven’t you heard?”

Reeves tightened his lips, eyes
obscure behind those goggles. “Well, sir,” he said. “Begging the Major’s
pardon, but you and your whole lot are now prisoners of the British Army!
What’s that you have parked out there?” Reeves gestured to the dark mass of the
helo.

“Helicopter,” said Popski. “From
the Russian navy. We’re on search and rescue out here, looking for the
goddamned general.” He was beginning to lose his temper now, but his eye kept
straying to the vehicle this man had climbed out of, and the longer he looked
the stranger he felt about it. Had to be something new, as he had never seen
anything like it. Fedorov was looking at it too, and now he knew he was
suddenly facing another one of those impossible moments that had been strung
out like pearls for all these many long months. Those were modern Infantry
Fighting Vehicles, he knew, and he also knew who the 12th Royal Lancers were in
the modern British Army. What was going on here? How could this man be standing
here… How?

Then he realized that his own
presence here at this moment was an equal impossibility, yet this moment was
real, as iron clad as reality ever got in the cold steel of what he now
recognized as the barrel of a 25mm autocannon pointed his way. He could hear
the engines of many more vehicles obscured by the blowing sand. Something had
happened. The mirror of history had cracked again, and they had moved one way
or another. Either these men came here through the fire of time, slipped
through a crack in fate’s battered hourglass, or he and the KA-40 had flown
through a hole in time again, only to reach their own day and era in 2021…

Then he remembered Orlov, and
that thing he had been playing with that had burned like a fallen star and
nearly scalded his hand. My God, he thought. We’re riding the tiger’s back
again, and heaven help us now.

Part X

Nick of Time

“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have
been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to
stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is
precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”

―
Henry David Thoreau

Chapter 28

The
waters of the Strait
of
Artemisium
were high that day, a sudden storm
brewing up in the narrow channel that heralded another warrior arriving from a
doomed world. It blew down from the craggy heights of Mount
Paranassus
,
stirring the waters to a fitful state until the waves were capped with frothing
white spray, and the tides crashed hard against the tiny Isle of
Argyronison
at the outlet of the strait.

There sat a fisherman, who had
seen the rising clouds and pulled hard to reach the safety of the island,
knowing he could never get back to his mainland village of
Katadika
in time. He would be the only human eyes to witness the coming, and when he saw
it he first believed the Italians had come to add naval gunfire to the torment
already underway in his homeland. Germans and Italian troops had invaded a
month earlier, and were now relentlessly driving the stalwart Greek Army back
towards Athens.

If
Regia Marina
is here,
he thought, then they mean to cross the Strait of
Artemisium
,
and my home town is right where they will land. He knew he had to get there as
soon as possible to warn his friends and family, but now he stood, transfixed
when he saw the ship in the grey rain, its tall white mainmast crowned by a
spherical dome the like of which he had never seen. It shimmered with a strange
glow, Saint Elmo’s Fire crackling from the lines and masts, outlining the sharp
fighting edges of the warship in stark relief with an eerie green light. He did
not really know what he saw that day, and he would never know that it had come
from the fire of one great battle to this one, arriving like the hard steel of
the Spartans of old, as if hearing the drumbeat of war and marching in this
grave hour.

The high pass of Thermopylae was
very close, but it was not
Leonidas
and his 300
Spartans, marching to the doom foretold by the Oracle of Delphi so long ago:

O
ye men who dwell in the streets of broad Lacedaemon!
Either your glorious town shall be sacked by the children of
Perseus
,
Or, in exchange, must all through the whole
Laconian
country

Mourn
for the loss of a king, descendant of great Heracles.

Another warrior had lately
visited that shrine, and found their a talisman that would describe the lines
of fate that would set a new doom in motion. But the fisherman knew nothing of
this, for it had not yet come to pass, nor would it happen for another eighty
years when a young woman would find the weight of the world on her shoulders,
and the doom of the Oracle in a strange metal box.

* * *

Elena
Fairchild had been
truly puzzled when she found no further doorway in the hidden passage beneath
Delphi. There was nothing but that strange black box.
She
had inserted her key, but it would not turn or open. Could other members of the
Watch help her solve the riddle? Protocol now required her to report the
incident. That was mandatory, but there was so little time and only one place
she could do that—back on
Argos Fire,
the corporate HQ and security ship
cruising out beyond the Strait of Artemisia. Its sleek lines and soft white
paint scheme belied its true purpose, for the ship was a
Daring
class
British destroyer, purchased by the Fairchild company and refit for the role it
now served, and it was every bit as deadly as any of the other warships in its
class.

It was
well past the eleventh hour, on a hard night in 2021. The missiles were about
to fire in the war that had been building to a terrible climax for the last
nine days. Her only thought now was how they could possibly survive it, and
where they could go. This place was not likely to be on any immediate target
list, but on one hour or another, a warhead might come that would end all their
days on this earth. The answer she desperately needed had to be inside this
box, but how to open it?

“Get
the men to the helicopters,” she said firmly. She was obviously meant to find
what she now had in hand. Why else would she have been sent here? The box may
not open with her key, but it might be opened with another. She had to report
this! She had to get back to the ship, re-enable her secure command line to the
Watch and report. They had precious little time, but enough to get there and
back again if need be on the fast X-3 helos.

The
Sergeants whistled, calling back the Argonauts from their security perimeter
and shouting to fire up the helicopter. They would leave the famous Oracle
scarred by the spade work that had uncovered the hidden entry. It won’t matter
anyway in a few hours time., she thought. It won’t matter…

But it
did matter. It was going to make all the difference, at least to them and the
lives they would lead in the world they returned to. The helos landed on the
after deck of
Argos Fire
, and the Argonauts dismounted, laden with arms
and equipment and feeling like passengers at an airport whose flight had been
cancelled. Yet they were glad to be back aboard the ship and soon settled in
below decks, thinking nothing more of the strange mission.