B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (27 page)

“So
we have,” said Fedorov thinking. Intervention would be risky, even rash, but then
it occurred to him that they might set right whatever had gone wrong and save
Makhachkala and the precious oil beyond at Baku. If the Germans were to take it
who knows what the consequences might be.

He
was torn for a time, reluctant to do anything to cause yet more alterations in the
history, but at the same time he was looking at an invading army overrunning
his homeland down there. The memory of Orlov’s note came to him now…

“Fedorov,
are you reading this? Are you listening? I know you must have spent many long nights
in your search. Well here I am! Yes, Gennadi Orlov, the Chief, the one who
bruised your cheek that day in the officer’s mess…
I always did have a Bolshevik heart. It’s not
that I am not afraid to die. I worked my ass off in the service because I love
my people, my country, my Motherland. I want to tell my comrades in arms that I
have never known cowardice or panic. I left you all to find a life here on my
own, and one I never could have before. I do not know what may have happened to
you and the ship and crew I once served. My dying wish is that you destroy our
enemies once and for all. Be heroes, be valiant men of war so that history will
remember you as defenders of the Rodina. Should you ever find this, and learn
my fate, I hope that you, courageous Russian sailors, will avenge my death.”

“Sergeant
Troyak,” he said slowly. “You will lead the assault.”

“My
pleasure, sir!” Troyak’s smile lifted a good bit of weight from Fedorov’s soul.
They were going to war.

Chapter 27

Admiral
Fraser sat in the wardroom aboard
Duke of
York
, thinking. His eye fell on the long sword and gilded scabbard, which
he always kept close with his sea chest and other personal effects. It was a
very special gift, and one he always wore on special occasions and ceremonial
events. He had intended to wear it for the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay
aboard
Missouri
, but all that was on hold now. The war was not yet over.
He could not yet put away the sword for good.

As
he looked at it, the memories returned, the adventure of it all, and the hardship.
Back then he was only Commander Fraser, but newly promoted and so very proud, a
young man of thirty one-years. They had just backed down the Germans in the
First World War, on land and by sea, and he had been part of the Royal Navy
supervision of the internment of the German Fleet. It was a heady time, with
England rising to meet any challenge in the world, and prevailing. So it was
that he volunteered for the first cherry assignment to come along, a stint with
the White Russian Caspian Fleet to see if he could help get their ships in
fighting order.

Fraser
led a small group of Royal Navy Sailors on a long trek from the Dardanelles, across
the Black Sea to Batumi where they took to a train heading east for the Caspian.
He was beginning to feel just a little bit like T. E. Lawrence, the daring
British officer who had raised such a ruckus in the Middle East during the war.
It was all to be a grand adventure, but it didn’t turn out that way. The train
was ambushed and the engineer refused to go any farther, which forced Fraser to
literally back-track and return to Batumi. The only ship they could find was
bound for Izmir far to the west on the coast of Turkey, but he gave it a go.

From
there they took another train through Turkey this time bound for Baghdad, but once
they arrive there no further transport could be found beyond a few horses and
camels. So Lawrence of Arabia it was, he thought, and pressed on overland by
horse, camel and foot. He and his party crossed Persia with a small Gurkha escort
and eventually arrived at their destination, a small run down hovel with a
single pier on the Caspian Sea called Enzeli.

The
ships they were to inspect and refit were thick with rust and of no real military
use, so Fraser determined to get himself north to Baku where he hoped to find
the bulk of the White Russian Caspian Fleet. What he found instead was a few
miserable floating hulks, rusting away without any regular maintenance. Yet
with typical British pluck and a can-do spirit, Commander Fraser set himself to
the task of refitting the small fleet…Until the Bolsheviks arrived.

The
Reds did not take kindly to outside interference in their revolution, particularly
those aiding the Whites. Fraser’s whole contingent was captured, stripped and
bound on the quays while their clothing was searched, and then re-dressed only
to be thrown into prison. The facilities were hardly accommodating, lice infested,
unfurnished cells with bare earth floors. By day a wan light filtered through
the metal grid on the ceiling, their only source of light and fresh air. Water
was restricted to a single running tap for thirty minutes each day. There was
no latrine, nor bedding of any kind, and the harsh conditions and poor
nutrition with little more than watery soup, rice, and black bread laced with
straw to eat soon undermined the men’s health and morale.

Worse
than that were the atrocious psychological abuse they were subjected to, marched
out and forced to watch executions, disembowelments of condemned prisoners,
particularly the women. On one occasion the Armenian warden in charged ordered
the summary execution of nearly ninety locals, who were shot with rifles then
slowly finished off with pistols while the British were forced to watch. Whole
families were condemned and died in this manner, though sometimes young
children were left alive to wander aimlessly about the prison halls crying for
their lost parents for days on end before they disappeared.

Commissars
questioned the British, inquiring into their politics, religion or other beliefs,
and many were told they would soon suffer the same fate as those they had seen
die. As it turned out, it was all a gruesome bluff intended to heighten the
stress and suffering of the men, and so it was no surprise to Fraser when the
first man to die, Seaman Marsh, was found to have slit his own wrists with a
piece of glass. The Bolsheviks fought over the clothing, then left the body to
rot in the two small sixteen by sixteen foot cells where all the men were
quartered together. It stayed there for four days, raising a horrid stench
before the guards finally removed it. Four others died this way.

Commander
Fraser and all his men were presumed dead, but when they learned one of their men
was to be released as an interpreter to aid prisoner exchange with the Georgian
army to the south they hatched a daring plot to get word home to England. If
the man’s word was not good enough, he swallowed a locket with a picture of
Fraser’s mother within as proof he was alive.

Great
Britain was not called that without reason, particularly as she rose into her imperial
prime after her victory in the First World War. The Crown’s displeasure with
the plight of their sailors soon led to their release. They had been marooned
two long years in what came to be known as the “Black Hole of Baku.” Twelve of
the thirty men survived, Fraser among them.

In
a strange twist of fate the ship that greeted them when they were returned to Batumi
by train was HMS
Iron Duke
, the same name as that of a certain Royal
Navy frigate that had fought Russians of another generation in the Black Sea of
2021. In that year, economics had temporarily trumped politics. Britain’s
interest in the Caspian was purely for the oil that remained there. In fact,
the offices of the British Petroleum Corporation in Baku were just a few short
blocks away from the old prison site where Fraser and his men had suffered so
much. And at that very moment, the black berets of the Fairchild’s Argonauts
waited there for the return of Lieutenant Ryan’s last X-3 helicopter and a ride
back to the
Argos Fire.

But
that was another world, and one that Admiral Fraser would never see or know. This
world seemed more than enough for any man to manage.

Fraser
had revisited the nightmare on many a dark and lonesome night in later years. Then
came the war and he saw himself rise to positions of increasing responsibility.
Few men would know it to see him in his Admiral’s cap and dress whites, but
behind that pleasant and smiling face was a steely resolve born of those long
nights in the Black Hole of Baku, listening to the moaning sobs of his men as
they suffered there. As for the sword, the focal point that had triggered this
avalanche of bitter memories in the Admiral’s mind, it was the last gift of the
men who survived, given to Fraser when they all were returned safely home. He
kept it close ever thereafter.

The
Russians, he thought. Churchill was correct about them, wasn’t he? Our alliance
made us strange bedfellows with Hitler and Tojo in the mix. Now that we’ve beaten
them, we wake up and stare at one another wondering how in the world we’ll ever
get on together. What are they up to now with this bloody damn ship and its
weapons from hell? If Tovey and Turing have it right…If this ship is from
another time, then we may reap the whirlwind if we let it loose on the seas of
our world again. What was going to happen if they threw the combined might of
the allied fleets against it? This time there would be no parley. This time it
was war.

He
gazed out the port hole and saw
King George V
steaming proudly off his starboard
side. We’ve tangled with this monster once before, you and I, he thought.
Perhaps Tovey should have made an end of it long ago when he had the chance.
I’d think my odds were good for a victory with this battlegroup alone against
that ship—man to man, steel against steel, and the rockets be damned.

Even
as he thought that he remembered the bomb and imagined one going off right in the
heart of his task group, rending his ships apart with unimaginable power. He
had advised Admiral Nimitz to give the Russians fair warning: if they wanted to
play that card, we could deal them the same death and destruction as well. Perhaps
that would sober them up a bit and prevent the worst here.

Even
as he thought that he knew what he would do in this Karpov’s shoes. He’s going to
look out and see a wave of fire and steel coming at him, and he’ll do everything
in his power to save his ship and crew…Everything…

* * *

It
was into the darkness of a similar prison that
Orlov found himself walking now, though he knew nothing of the horrific legacy
of the detention camps in this region, nor did he care. He had learned that the
commissar in charge was the man he had been hunting, which was the only reason
he permitted these little men to take him on the long truck ride south to Baku
in the first place. They would bring him right to the man he wanted, and then
he would kill him. It was all very simple in his mind, though he did not expect
what happened that night as the truck column slowed and the engines turned off
one by one.

He
had been listening to something, a familiar noise in the background behind the grumble
of the trucks on the road. Now, in the relative silence when the trucks stopped,
he heard a sound that shocked him alert, a steady, deep thumping. He immediately
looked up, knowing the sound was coming from the skies above. The NKVD Sergeant
in his truck was watching him closely, and when he saw Orlov looking up at the
unseen sky beyond the tarp of the truck, he leaned out the back and scanned the
grey shelf of low clouds overhead.

Then
Orlov felt his inner service jacket vibrate quietly, a sensation only he could perceive,
like a cell phone that had been set to quiet mode. In an instant he knew what
had happened. Someone had paged his service jacket! Now the meaning of the
sound overhead was starkly apparent to him. It was a helicopter! His heart beat
faster with the realization.
Kirov
…somehow they had found him! They were
searching for him, but how was it possible? He was deep in the interior of
Central Asia at the edge of an inland sea. Could they have tracked him here by
tuning in to his service jacket? That much seemed obvious, yet none of the
KA-40s could possibly reach this distance unless the ship was in the Black Sea!
He was astounded, but he knew what he was hearing.

When
he last left the ship it was approaching Spain, bound for Gibraltar. Could they
have reversed course to head east again and enter the Black Sea? Then he remembered
the night he had drunk half a bottle of vodka and tapped out that message in
Morse code to Nikolin. My God, he thought! They must have picked it up! They’re
trying to find me!

Now
he had to decide what to do about it.

He
could activate his jacket from the collar pip and broadcast his exact location if
he wished. Then again, he could also take it and throw it in the nearest fire.
The more he considered his situation the more the idea of rejoining the ship
and crew appealed to him. The track he was on now led to a sure and perilous
cliff. This place was obviously a prison of sorts. He would certainly be
searched, issued new prison clothing, and then he would be stuck here until he
got close enough to Molla to choke the breath out of the man. After that he was
a probably a dead man if he couldn’t find his way out of the place. He would at
least have the satisfaction of killing Molla, but for that he would forfeit the
life of privilege and power he imagined he might have in years to come.

Now,
however, with
Kirov
in the mix again he might just have his cake and eat
it too! Life aboard
Kirov
did not seem all that bad in such cold harsh light.
All he would have to put up with is petty disciplinary measures for jumping
ship and going AWOL. No one would know he killed the pilot of the KA-226.

Then
he remembered that pulse pounding jump from the helo when he saw the S-300s coming
up for him. They were trying to kill me! They did not want to take the risk of
leaving me at large. That was surely Karpov. This must be Fedorov, he realized
now. He’s the only one prissy enough to fuss and bother over his history. He
was probably afraid I would do something here and spoil the show.

A
sullen anger returned to him and, as he brooded over it, he was paying no attention
to the Sergeant from his truck when the man yammered at him to get a move on
and head for the prison entrance with the others.

“You
hear me, you big oaf! Get moving!”

Orlov
felt a hard shove on his shoulder and he turned, glaring at the Sergeant, vast and
threatening. “Touch me again and I will kill you,” he said clearly, and the Sergeant’s
bravado seemed to melt under Orlov’s menacing stare. Then Orlov turned and
headed for the gate.

Let
Fedorov try to find me in here, he thought. What will they do, land a helicopter
in the courtyard and send in a few Marines? This place looks like a fortress.
Troyak had a twenty man Marine contingent aboard, but they would not be nearly
enough to get inside this prison and control it long enough to conduct a
search, particularly since I won’t have my jacket for very much longer.