Three Kings (Kirov Series) (43 page)

“I was in Alexandria, with
General Wavell when we heard your plane was lost.”

“With Wavell? I see. Very good,
Captain Fedorov. Now then, Mister Kinlan?”

The Brigadier shook his head,
smiling. “Barmy nonsense, this whole bit. The two of you are going to play this
out, are you? In for a shilling, in for a pound, is it? Well if you think you
can
blag
your way on like this, I’ve run out of
patience with the whole lot. I’ve a mind to run you and all your men before a
firing squad!” He was interrupted by his Staff Officer. “Yes, Mister Simpson?
What now?”

“That report on comm-link status,
sir.”

“Anything from Command?”

“IT Systems Operator has nothing
on the combat network, sir. All the TALON system digital satellite links are
down with the GPS.”

“Everything?”

“Sorry, sir, but it’s all dark.
No TSC 503, No PSC 506. And nothing through REACHER or
Skynet
5.”

“What about Ptarmigan?” He was
referring to a modular battlefield WAN system which operated like a secure VHF
mobile radio telephone.

“Nothing there either.”

“Damn. That detonation had more
of an effect than we thought.”

Even as he said the word
detonation, Fedorov caught his eye. Detonation… strange effects from a nuclear
blast… movement in time. Rubbish! That was the load the Russian Captain had
shoveled his way. All of this was supposed to be an accident. Then there was this
fellow Popski, who looked for all the world like the historical figure by that
same name, and O’Connor here was the spitting image of the real thing. He was
supposed to be a bloody time traveler now, with the whole brigade lost in 1941.
Rubbish!

“One more thing, sir, for what
it’s worth.” Simpson had a wan look on his face. “This bloody sand storm is
clearing, and Staffer Jacobs managed to have a look at the sky to get a fix on
our position for desert navigation.”

“Good for him. We’ll get these
men into another truck, wrap this up and move out.”

“Well sir… about the stars.
They’re all wrong, sir.”

“Wrong? What do you mean?”

“Jacobs says Orion is rising, and
Sirius right behind it. Those are winter constellations, sir. We should be
looking at Sagittarius and Scorpio rising now in the late summer. And he says
the moon is wrong too. It shouldn’t be up.” He pointed to the thin crescent
moon, barely visible. “He says it was supposed to set at 11:14 this morning,
sir—doesn’t rise again until nigh on to midnight, and it should be a waning
gibbous moon. That’s an evening crescent!”

Fedorov caught this, struggling
to understand it all, but suddenly realized what the Staff Officer was saying
when he pointed at the moon.

“Yes!” he said enthusiastically.
“Listen General. Hear that? Look at the sky,” he pointed to the stars. “It is
last day of January, 1941. That is date and time here and now. The sky has
changed, because the time has changed. Where is Sultan Apache? Think, General
Kinlan!”

Think! Kinlan was a no nonsense man,
but now his eye roved upwards, noting the clearing skies and the cold light of
the stars. Something there seemed even colder than the desert night now, a
lonesome feeling settling over him, chasing the irritating bother he had been
sorting through with these men. O’Connor in a Blenheim bomber?

He had to think.

“Reeves, you’re certain of what
you saw with that plane wreckage?”

“Yes sir. A Bristol Blenheim, and
brand, spanking new—still warm as toast. That’s how we spotted it on infrared, sir.
The engine heat was very evident.”

Fedorov seized on this, knowing
that only one such plane existed in 2021, just like that Fulmar that had
overflown his ship when
Kirov
first appeared. He remembered how he had
broken citadel integrity to run out onto the weather deck to see it. He had
seen the plane in England the previous year while on leave—in a museum. And now
he remembered the single operational Bristol Blenheim he had seen on that same
trip, at RCAF Bolingbroke.

“Only one Blenheim bomber exists
where you have come from,” he said. “Explain how this one is suddenly here?” He
was very pleased that he managed to get the English correct.

Brigadier Kinlan gave him a dark
look. O’Connor was standing there with an indignant look on his face, not used
to such treatment, and put off by some of what he was hearing now that made no
sense. What was this bit about Talon and
Reacher
the
staffer had teed up? What did they mean that the satellite links were down? Who
in bloody hell was this man? What was this unit doing out here, with vehicles
that he had never seen before? Who was this Russian Captain here saying he had
just seen Wavell? Why was this Brigadier being so damnably thick and obstinate?

“General,” Fedorov tried again.
“Sultan Apache is gone because you are gone… moved… to a time where Blenheim
bombers still fly, and General O’Connor commands the Western Desert Force in
1941. Can stars and moon change in one hour? Think, General. Impossible? Yes.
But still all true.”

Kinlan did think… Popski, the
Long Range Desert Group, old jeeps that should not even be able to run, a
Blenheim bomber, General O’Connor, and the stars were all wrong. On top of that
he had a Russian Captain off a KA-40 claiming he and his ship had a nuclear
accident and actually moved in time! It was the stuff of science fiction, and
he might have turned his head to look away from it all and just carried on, but
for these stubborn things he was still struggling with. What happened to the
bloody stars and moon? Was the whole earth off its kilter? And where the hell
was Sultan Apache?

It was the first thing this
Russian Captain had come to him with, telling him the place would not be there
even before any of his men knew that was so. How could this Russian Captain
know this? His men had confirmed it. The entire facility was gone, lock, stock
and oil barrel, and that was an argument that he simply could not dismiss, like
a man going out for groceries one Saturday morning and then coming home to find
his house was missing, with nothing more than a vacant lot in its place. It was
madness. The men must have gotten lost on their way back. This simply could not
have happened. He looked up at the stars again… Impossible!

Brigadier Kinlan would not be
satisfied until he got into a command vehicle and drove back to Sultan Apache
himself. There he stood, his eyes scanning the craggy features of the
escarpment, places he had come to know in the months he was there. He was
standing right in the place where he knew a tall metal guard tower was suppose
to be positioned. His boots should be on the hard black asphalt of the internal
camp road network here, cleared daily by the heavy street sweeper vehicles that
should still be sitting there in the maintenance facility—the 30,000 square
foot building that was completely gone.

There was no wreckage, no sign of
trauma or the fire of war at all. But it was all gone, the barracks facilities,
mess hall, vehicle parks, oil workers village, and all the equipment and rigs
and drilling tube and pipeline that should be stockpiled at the southern end of
the zone—all gone.

There was only the sand and stone
of the heartless desert, sand blowing listlessly over the toes of his service
boots as he stared down at his feet. He was standing on solid ground alright,
though he felt as though he had wandered into some episode of Doctor Who, a
Twilight Zone of madness where nothing he ever took for granted as real could
be believed again. It was all impossible, and yet it was as real as the hiss of
that biting desert wind.

He took his helmet off for a
moment, and let the last of the blowing sand sting his face, almost as if he
needed to feel the pain to be certain he was still alive. He caught a last
glimpse of the crescent moon above, cold and unforgiving, the moon that should
not even be there! Then he slowly fixed his helmet in place, adjusted his eye
goggles, and turned to his Staff Officer Simpson.

“What do you make of this,
Sim
? Are we both crazy?”

“I haven’t the foggiest, sir.
What could have happened here? I don’t understand.”

Kinlan took a long breath. “Who
do we have on the left flank guard?”

“Lieutenant Dobie, sir. 2nd
Squadron, 12th Royal Lancers. He’s got the Scimitars, about 15 miles north of
Siwa
.”

“Tell him to get down there and
have a look around. He’s to see if he finds any sign of an Australian unit
there—A Colonel Fergusson. Got that?”

“Yes sir. I’ll get him moving
right away.”

Kinlan took another long look
around the stony plateau where the enormous BP facility had been just two hours
ago. It wasn’t burned, or blasted. It wasn’t buried by the sand storm, or
carted off by the Berbers, but he knew one thing—it wasn’t here either. Sultan
Apache was gone.

The Russian Captain told him it
would be gone, and he also told him why. If this were true… If he was the one
that went missing in 2021… He resolved to have another chat with the man right
away.

My god, he thought. If Dobie
radios back that he’s found this Fergusson fellow, then that’s the last straw.
But what in the world do I do now? I’ve a full brigade here, men, tanks, IFVs,
and a supply train a mile long. I should be half way to
Mersa
Matruh
by now, and I suppose that’s my only play. My
god!
Could it be true? Could I be standing here in 1941 like this crazy Russian
Captain says?

He returned to the command
vehicle and they started back for the main column. By the time he got there, he
had a report back from Lieutenant Dobie. He had found what looked to be an ill
equipped company of Australian infantry at
Siwa
. They
had a few old lorries, and yes, a man came forward calling himself Colonel
Fergusson, wanting to know who he was and how he came to be here, but happy to
have any reinforcement Wavell could give him.

“He said that?” Kinlan returned
on the radio. “Wavell?”

“That was the name he used,
sir. And there’s another officer here that says he’s with the 7th Armored. He’s
even got the Jerboa patch, and a battery of four artillery pieces, field guns,
General. But they look like the old 25 pounders!”

“Very well, Lieutenant. Return to
the column, Kinlan out.”

The General took off his helmet,
rubbed the weariness from his eyes, and took a long breath. He could hear his
Communications Group working their systems, but all the normal military
channels remained dark. Maybe if he just hunkered down for the night here he
would wake up tomorrow morning and all this would just be a bad dream. Any sane
man would have thought that, but he no longer numbered himself among that
group.

Off in the distance he heard the
AM band radio playing at one of the comm stations. A staffer was there, listening,
and hearing news of Rommel’s advance and the British retreat to Tobruk! Then
Simpson was back, looking crestfallen and somewhat pale.

“Sir,” he said. “We’ve just
gotten through to someone in Alexandria, and he’s hopping mad.”

“Who?
Dempsy
?”
Kinlan hoped they had finally made contact with reality again, as General
Dempsy
was the liaison officer working out of Cairo.

“No sir… A General Wavell…”
Simpson rubbed his forehead. “He wants to know what in blazes is going on out here,
what happen to his rescue mission to find O’Connor and where the general is.
And he wants to speak with you, sir, directly.”

Kinlan smiled. He was about to be
chewed out by a man who had been dead 71 years! “Tell him to stand by, I’m on
my way.”

“Yes sir… But General Kinlan,
sir….” Sims had a lost look on his face. He had seen and heard all the
impossible evidence himself, yet was still in a state of shock and disbelief.
“What are we going to do here, General?”

“What are we going to do?” Kinlan
shook his head. “Well I think I’ll go over and take my lumps from Wavell first.
Then I expect we’ll take this brigade north to
Mersa
Matruh
, just as we planned it, and if we run into a
gentlemen named Erwin Rommel… I’m going to kick his German ass, half way from
here to Berlin!”

The Saga Continues…

Kirov Series: Book XIII -
Grand
Alliance

Three new and powerful forces
have suddenly appeared in the Mediterranean Theater, soon to be united in a
grand alliance and single minded purpose to stem the tide of war and save
Britain from almost certain defeat in early 1941. Three kings join Admirals
Cunningham and Tovey at sea, with
Kirov, Kazan
and
Argos Fire
united with the British against a powerful Axis force from three nations in the
largest naval battle since Jutland.

While in the deserts of Egypt, a
bemused General Kinlan leads the British 7th Armored Brigade north, and the
Desert Rats come home to their roots, joining hands with their ancestors to
oppose a powerful buildup of new forces for the German Afrika Korps. Hitler has
committed the victorious troops that broke the Rock of Gibraltar, with the
addition of 1st Mountain Division, the elite Grossdeutschland Division and
Student’s 7th Flieger Division to the Mediterranean theater of war.

Meanwhile, Karpov raises a
growing insurgency in Siberia, bedeviling the armies of Ivan Volkov’s Orenburg
Federation with his ingenious and devious tactics, and new deadly weapons of
war. Action and suspense dead ahead as the amazing
Kirov Kaga
moves into
1941, and the hour draws ever closer when the ship and crew must face that
fateful date and time of their first arrival in the searing fires of WWII.