B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (7 page)

“What’s
this world coming to, Lieutenant?”

“No
good,” said Ryan. “Well, the birds are all fueled and ready to go. Let’s get the
Argonauts loaded and get on with it.”

“What
about those Chevron people?”

“What,
Flack and the rest? They come too, at least as far as, Baku. The birds will be heavy
but we’ll lift them easily enough. That will take more fuel, which is why we
top off at Baku again after we get back. It’ll be another thousand kilometer run
back to
Argos
in the Black Sea. So take a good look at the Caspian while
we’re here, Tommy. And I hope to God we never see the damn place again.”

Ryan
turned to the open hanger and gave a loud whistle, waving at the men there. The
Argonauts had done what they came for. It was no problem scaring off the local militias
near the oil fields. One look at these dangerous looking men in jet black
military garb was enough to convince them that their little oil war would best
be conducted some other day. They melted away, and Lieutenant Ryan was able to
pull out good number of Chevron workers and get them safely back to Buzachi.
They were shutting down. The place was just too dangerous now to contemplate
any further operations. There had already been a brief air duel between Russian
fighter patrols and the Kazakh air force, and it was looking like the conflict
would get rolling on the ground any moment.

They’re
just waiting on fuel and equipment, he knew. Once they do move, however, they’ll
come hard and fast, and that Kazakh Ready Brigade will have its hands full. Who
knows, perhaps this Spetsnaz outfit off the Caspian coast is figuring to be
part of that attack. Mack Morgan says they’re moving in a big fat helicopter as
part of the force. So I guess we’ll see what kind of sting my X-3s have after
all.

He
looked at them, three of his four little darlings, one of the fastest helicopters
he’s ever flown. He could fly circles around the Apache in his X-3, but when he
thought about the Russian SAM batteries his bravado was quashed. There’s one
thing the damn Russians get right, me boyo, he thought, and that’s missiles.
We’re going to be out there alone with the gods, and the night will flame with
fire.

And
that soon…

Part III

The
Bull

“I never trust a
fighting man who doesn’t smoke or drink.”

—Admiral Bull Halsey

Chapter 7

Airman
J.D. Pickett was scouring the seas ahead in
his
Helldiver
, leading in a section of five planes that morning. Behind
him were the lines of the remainder of the squadron, two more flights of five
SB2C-5
Helldivers
like his own, followed by three groups of five TBM-3
Avenger
torpedo bombers. A thousand feet above them were the
Hellcats
, long
lines of fighters, and many with 500 pound bombs under their wings in the
fighter/bomber role. Others carried the HVAR Rocket System the men called “Holy
Moses” due to the reaction they had when the airmen first saw the weapons fire
and streak in towards their targets.

They
were about to see something an order of magnitude better, and then some. Pickett
spotted it, coming up at the formation with impossible speed. “What in God’s
name is that?” he called through his headset. “Coming up on my twelve o clock!
Rocket! Rocket!”

The
explosion said the rest as the rocket flashed in and struck a
Corsair
flying
off the rightmost wing of his flight. He craned his neck to see the bright
yellow fireball consume the plane and saw the smoldering remnant falling from
the sky.

“Holy
shit!” he yelled, all thoughts of Moses blown from his mind by that fireball. “Did
you see that? Anybody see what fired that? I don’t have anything on radar. Can’t
see a thing.”

The first missile was a warning
shot. Karpov had ordered
Orlan
to fire this single missile at the first
planes they could track inside 100 kilometers. He was back on the radio to see
if Iron Mike might have a change of heart, but the effect of the missile shot
was a bit like poking a stick into a hornet’s nest. The Americans quickly shook
off the shock and they were calling to one another, orders barked sharply over
the airwaves.

“Louis!
Get your Avengers down on the deck! Pickett, you peel off to your left and swing
round on 290. Everybody upstairs get ready to rumble!”

Vern
Higman heard the order and reached in to pat the dash board of his plane—‘Round
Trip Ticket.’ They were going in again, but even though he had seen planes shot
up pretty bad he always came through in one piece. This would be no different. He
looked out his cockpit window and saw Wendell Stevens and Lowell Chamberlain both
give him the thumbs up. The others were itching to dive the instant they laid
eyes on the target—Bob Nouall, Mike Hallard, J.G. Wheeler, who already had one
Navy Cross on his chest for blasting the Japanese Cruiser
Tone
a while
back.

“Let’s
get down and dirty,” Higman called to his
Helldiver
flight mates. “I’ve got
me a round trip ticket to the action and a thousand pounds of metal in my belly
that I plan to put right on Ivan’s foredeck! You ready Pickett? Lead the charge!”

Pickett
was ready, but so was
Orlan
.

* * *

“Fools
rush in,” said Karpov, shaking his head as he
watched
Orlan
firing off his starboard bow.

“Where
Angels fear to tread,” said Rodenko at his side, the duty on his radar assigned
to a Lieutenant. He was acting
Starpom
now, and promoted to Captain Lieutenant.
When the ship was at action stations he was up and at Karpov’s side, inwardly
proud of his promotion and ready for both the new authority and responsibility
it brought him. Always a level headed man, Rodenko remained cool under fire and
was a natural leader for all the junior officers in his section during the
ship’s earlier ordeals. While he had never mustered the courage to confront
Karpov in the beginning when he opposed Admiral Volsky, he regretted that now
that he knew what it felt like to be standing in command level officer’s shoes.

When
Fedorov had been promoted to
Starpom
, and then ship’s Captain during Karpov’s
rehabilitation in the Med, Rodenko never fretted or felt passed over. He saw
how the young Fedorov was struggling to assume his new role, seeing he was over
his head in many ways, and tried to help him as much as he could. The cooperative
relationship he managed to forge with Karpov was inspiring to the entire bridge
crew, and with Orlov gone, things seemed much more stable on the ship. Now his
tactical sense, overall situational awareness born of his years as a radar man,
and his general competence made him perfect for the role as the ship’s
Starpom
,
Executive Officer and second in command after Karpov on the fleet’s flagship.

He
admired the Captain’s skill at the helm, particularly in combat, and it was true
that Karpov had saved the ship many times in tight situations. But Rodenko had
seen, and knew well, the darker side of Karpov, and now that the ship had regressed
again in time, he began to perceive the Captain’s shadow thickening on the deck
of the bridge again, and flashes of his old self—his ambition and yes, his
arrogance was apparent at times, particularly after their battle with the US
Captain Tanner and CVBG
Washington
.

Rodenko
knew that had been a real threat, and that circumstances and strong support from
both the Naval Air Arm and the undersea boats had been decisive in the engagement.
If the fleet had faced the Americans without them, things might have been very
different. The initial eruption of that volcano had also forced the Americans
to divert left and right to avoid the ashfall. While Karpov was clever in
moving the ship south beneath the ash cloud that morning, they had still seen a
Harpoon
come within a whisker of striking the ship.
Varyag
had
saved the day, and then all hell broke loose when that volcano erupted again.

Now,
thrown back into the same impossible situation as before, Karpov seemed to regress
in his behavior, his own inner Demon restlessly awakening in the heat of
imminent battle. Rodenko had seen how both Volsky and Fedorov had served as strong
counterfoils to Karpov before, and wondered how he would measure up to that
task. In the end he realized it was his job to give the Captain his best judgment
in any situation they encountered, and his best effort at the helm.

“They
have no idea what they’re facing,” said Karpov. “And that’s why they seem so brave,
I suppose. If they knew there was no way they could penetrate our SAM defenses,
they might fear the skies over this ship.”

“But
they don’t know,” said Rodenko. “Which is why it hurts a bit to watch this.”

Karpov
turned his head, lowering his field glasses, but said nothing. The light in his
eyes was lit by the flames of battle. The action had moved inside the 50 kilometer
range circle, and radar reported that the formation was pressing doggedly
forward.
Orlan
had fired three salvos of eight, and she was near
perfect. Two of the missiles had consumed the same plane when they tracked in
on fireballs, moving too fast to switch to a new target in time. They had listened
to the reports on radio from
Orlan
. 22 kills, and yet they came. Karpov
was holding all his precious S-400s in reserve and letting
Orlan
do the
fighting at this point, but now he turned to communications with an order.

“Mister
Nikolin, signal the flotilla. Tell Captain Yeltsin aboard
Orlan
that they
have led the way ably and we will now join the action with our
Klinok
system
while they switch to short range munitions.
Admiral Golovko
will continue
to hold fire unless directly attacked, and then they are authorized to use
their close in defense systems.”

“Aye,
sir, signaling now.”

“Medium
range SAM system, Samsonov; salvos of eight. Track and fire when ready.”

“Sir!
Firing now.” Victor Samsonov was only too eager to get into the fight. The aft deck
of
Kirov
sounded off the loud warning claxon, and the hatches opened.
The missiles were up soon after, jetting away on fiery tails with ash-white smoke
in their wake.

Four…Eight…Twelve…Sixteen…the
weapon was called the
Klinok
shipboard multi-channel self-defense system,
NATO designation SA-N-92
Gauntlet
, and the pilots of the oncoming strike
wave would soon be running the gauntlet of fire and steel. The short reaction
time and high rate of fire for the missiles made it ideal in this role, and the
missiles
Kirov
fired had much improved range over the initial system
developed two decades earlier. It was a tried and true multi-channel tracking
system with the ability to use laser, TV, or radar to find targets. Each radar
could simultaneously prosecute eight targets, and reassign remaining live
missiles in the salvo to new missions if their original target was destroyed.

Karpov
turned to Rodenko, who was keeping one eye on the Plexiglas situation plot adjacent
to the radar systems. “How far away is the main body?”

“About
250 kilometers southwest of our position, sir. Speed thirty knots, heading due north
at 360 degrees.”

“Fools
rush in. Very well, let’s send them a message that should give them something to
think about. How soon before we have them in SSM range?”

“You’re
moving to a surface action, sir?”

“A
preemptive action, Rodenko. If we give them a hard shove on the shoulder now, it
could spare us a much more involved battle later. If I can get them to back off
here, all the better. At the moment they may be under the illusion that we are
nothing more than a small surface flotilla—Soviet ships, or even Japanese. I
want them to know we can hit them at range, strike them like an aircraft carrier.
It should give them something to think about, and perhaps it will take the
starch out of their collars down there and we can talk sense.”

Rodenko
nodded his agreement, though he still wondered what the Captain had in mind for
that conversation. What was he thinking to say to the Americans now? Yet this was
not the time or place for that discussion, so he considered their surface action
missile loads. They had left Vladivostok with a standard load of ten P-900
Sizzlers
,
ten MOS-III
Starfires
, and twenty
Moskit-IIs
. Four P-900s were
expended earlier against American patrols in the Kuriles.

 “Sir,
we can fire the P-900s now, but we have only six remaining for that system. The
Moskit-II
system should be in range momentarily. At our present speed due
south, the range is diminishing by about 100 kilometers per hour. We can fire
in about fifteen minutes.”

“Very
well. Mister, Samsonov. Ready a half salvo on the P-900 system—four missiles please.
Target the core of the enemy fleet. Set ship target profile preference to
aircraft carrier. On my command fire at thirty second intervals.”

“Ready
on P-900 system, sir.” The deadly missiles could be programmed to seek out a specific
target profile, analyzing a ship’s silhouette to determine the target type.
They could also fly evasive low level approach runs to avoid screening targets
to get to their primary, an evolution that made them particularly effective.

“Are
these missiles reprogrammed for plunging fire?”

“I’m
sorry sir, they are all in standard configuration. We have had no time to reprogram
the overall attack profile.”

“Nor
did we have any reason to in 2021,” said Karpov. “No matter, the sea skimming approach
should do. There are four aircraft carriers down there, and my guess is that
they will have more planes than we have seen thus far. I want to make their
lives a little more difficult and discourage any further launches. Sorry if we
have to spoil their lunch.”

Karpov
was jaunty, pacing back and forth in front of the citadel view screens, the ocean
beyond clear and calm. The sound of the SAM defense batteries was loud in the
air, and their white tails scored the sky as they sped away, but as yet not one
of the distant American planes they were seeking had come within visual range.
It was Beyond Visual Range naval combat, and they could not see the carnage
they were inflicting some thirty kilometers away now, only the green blips on
the radar turning red when a missile hit its target.

Yet
Rodenko was at least encouraged by the fact that Karpov was fighting the
engagement in a measured way. He could have sent a withering saturation barrage
at the American ships, and inflicted tremendous damage. By using only four
missiles he would give them a stiff, painful jab in the face, and still
preserve the ship’s vital missile inventory.

Even
as he thought that, Rodenko realized those missiles would more than likely run out
again, and perhaps sooner than they thought. And without our missiles, he thought,
we are nothing more than a fast cruiser, and not a particularly well armored
one either. Karpov was taking things slowly here, and at least they were not
alone this time. They still had
Orlan
and
Admiral Golovko
, but
what else did the Americans have down there, and were they prepared to use it?
Would they negotiate with Karpov after an engagement like this; after losing
planes and men, or even a carrier when Samsonov lets loose that salvo?

* * *

Orlan
was
particularly effective with its lethal missiles traveling so fast at Mach 15
that the pilots had no time to even react once they caught sight of the approaching
contrails. It was hideous, and in Higman’s flight they were two planes light
already, with Nuall and Hallard both dead and gone into the sea. But Higgy
Higman was still there in Round Trip Ticket, bravely pressing his
Helldiver
forward. He thought he saw something on the distant horizon now—yes, there was a
ship, then another, and those damn rocket trails pointed out the way.