Grand Alliance (Kirov Series)
Read Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) Online
Authors: John Schettler
Kirov Saga:
Grand
Alliance
By
John Schettler
A publication
of:
The Writing Shop Press
Grand
Alliance
, Copyright©2014,
John A. Schettler
Discover
other titles by John Schettler:
The Kirov Saga:
(Military Fiction)
Kirov
-
Kirov Series - Volume I
Cauldron Of Fire -
Kirov Series - Volume II
Pacific Storm
-
Kirov Series - Volume
III
Men Of War -
Kirov Series - Volume IV
Nine Days Falling -
Kirov Series - Volume V
Fallen Angels
-
Kirov Series - Volume
VI
Devil’s
Garden -
Kirov Series -
Volume VII
Armageddon
– Kirov Series – Volume VIII
Altered
States
– Kirov Series –
Volume IX
Darkest Hour
– Kirov Series – Volume X
Hinge Of Fate
– Kirov Series – Volume XI
Three Kings
– Kirov Series – Volume XII
Grand
Alliance
– Kirov Series –
Volume XIII
Hammer Of God
– Kirov Series – Volume XIV
Crescendo Of Doom
– Kirov Series – Volume XV
Award
Winning Science Fiction:
Meridian
-
Meridian Series - Volume I
Nexus Point
- Meridian Series - Volume II
Touchstone
- Meridian Series - Volume III
Anvil of Fate
- Meridian Series - Volume IV
Golem 7
- Meridian Series - Volume V
Classic Science Fiction:
Wild Zone
- Dharman Series - Volume I
Mother Heart
- Dharman Series - Volume II
Historical Fiction:
Taklamakan
- Silk Road Series - Volume I
Khan Tengri
- Silk Road Series - Volume II
Dream Reaper
– Mythic Horror Mystery
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Kirov Saga:
Grand
Alliance
By
John Schettler
Kirov Saga:
Grand
Alliance
By
John Schettler
Part
III –
Seeing The Elephant
Part IV –
Torch In The Wind
Part
VII –
The Battle
Part VIII –
Sheepdog
Part IX –
Strange Bedfellows
Author’s Note:
For
readers who might be dropping in without having taken the journey
here from book one in the
Kirov Series
, this is the story of a Russian
modern day battlecruiser displaced in time to the 1940s and embroiled in WWII.
Their actions over the many episodes have so fractured the history, that they
now find themselves in an alternate retelling of those events. In places the
history is remarkably true to what it once was, in others badly cracked and
markedly different. Therefore, events in this account of WWII have changed.
Operations have been spawned that never happened, like the German attack on
Gibraltar, and others will be cancelled and may never occur, like Operation
Torch. And even if some events here do ring true as they happened before, the
dates of those campaigns may be changed, and they may occur earlier or later
than they did in the history you may know.
This
alternate history began in Book 9 of the series, entitled
Altered States
,
and you would do well to at least back step and begin your journey there if you
are interested in the period June 1940 to January 1 1941, which is covered in
books 9 through 11 in the series. That time encompasses action in the North
Atlantic, the battle of Britain, German plans and decisions regarding
Operations Seelöwe and Felix, the action against the French fleet at
Mers-el-Kebir and Dakar, and other events in Siberia that serve as foundations
for things that will occur later in the series.
To faithful crew members, my readers who have been with me
from the first book,
Three Kings
was a “bridge novel” leading you to
this one, and
Grand Alliance
begins the fourth trilogy in the series.
It now takes us into the action that has been building on land and at sea as
the British struggle for their survival in the Middle East and Mediterranean. As
always, Fedorov, Volsky, Orlov and Karpov and others will be right in the thick
of things, on land or at sea, for good or for ill. Enjoy!
-J. Schettler
Part I
A Thing of Shreds and Patches
“My pulse, as
yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music.
it is not
madness that I have uttered.
Bring me to
the test,
and I the matter will re-word…”
―
William Shakespeare:
Hamlet
, Act 3, Scene 4
Chapter 1
Brigadier
General Kinlan arrived back at the tail of the column, his
mind weighted with a thousand impossible thoughts. The evidence of his own eyes
had betrayed his thin hold on sanity, forcing him to stand at the edge of
oblivion and stare into the abyss. He felt completely untethered, his thoughts
as dark as the dead satellite GPS links, a blind man groping about in a desert
sandstorm in a desperate search to find something he could get hold of to save
himself from being buried.
He
stepped out of the FV432 command vehicle, thankful his sand goggles hid the
uncertainty and fear in his eyes. His boast to his Chief of Staff, old reliable
Sims, still echoed in his mind. What were they going to do? Could this all be
really happening? Was his whole brigade now caught up in this whirlwind of
impossibility, trapped in the deserts of 1941 and marooned in World War Two?
Where
was that damn Russian Captain? “Sims,” he said, forcing as much normalcy on his
tone of voice as he could. The men, the few that had heard and seen the same
evidence as he had, would be as disoriented and clueless as he felt now, and it
was his to be the heavy anchor and keep this ship from foundering on the rocks.
They would look to him, first and foremost, to make sense of what was
happening, and sort it all out. So he reached for the book. They would do
things the Army way, step by step.
The
Army way, thought Kinlan. The four pillars of operations were drilled into his
head early on in officer’s training schools: integrity of purpose, application
and threat of force, the nature and character of the conflict, enduring
philosophy and principles… he smiled grimly at that, still hearing the command
instructor’s words as if they were just spoken.
“These
principles should be adhered to in every respect, but they are not immune from
change. They are malleable, and can be altered so that they may be applied to
as many situations as possible, but only after careful consideration. Doctrine
is the map for all your operations. It turns the sum of subjective thinking
into an objective guide for action, thus distilling a sometimes confusing array
of ideas and opinions into a clear, simple essence. Existing doctrine—based on
common sense—should be consulted before new ideas are floated, but nothing
should be taken too literally in translation. And remember that all principles
of war fighting rest upon the cohesion of will, in ourselves, our allies, and
our adversaries.”
Doctrine,
common sense and will power. Know the rules and use them, but be ready to break
them if the situation warrants… But only after careful consideration. And by
all means, don’t be stupid. That was the menu now, right from the book of war.
He had long known that no plan, however carefully it was devised, ever survived
first contact with the enemy—but this? This was something else entirely. This
was sheer bedlam.
Rommel…
He had told Sims he was going to head for Mersa Matruh as planned, and if he
found anyone named Rommel out there he would kick his ass half way to Berlin.
Yet at the moment, with communications down, no satellite links, no sitrep,
little intelligence as to what had actually happened, and this crazy Russian
Captain and his troupe of World War Two impersonators, the doctrine called for
caution. Rommel… It was he who had coined the phrase so often repeated by surly
instructors in the officer’s schools: “The British write some of the best
doctrine in the world; it is fortunate that their officers do not read it!”
Doctrine…
Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act… Yet at the moment he would go dark and still.
There was no sense pushing his five miles of steel and thunder north until he
knew damn well what he was heading for, and to a certainty. Now he wished he
still had the 656th Squadron Apaches with him, but the air assault units were
the first to depart. They left for Mersa Matruh three days before the missile
came in. They were spared the madness, but he could damn well use their eyes
and mobility right now. Then he remembered the Russians, and that nice fat
KA-40 helicopter sitting out there somewhere.
“Tell
Hampton to send out a Wingo to all units. The column is to stop and remain in
NBC order, engines off, lights dark, except for flankers and air defense
security. Then find me that Russian Captain and his interpreter, the fellow who
calls himself Popski. We’re going to get to the bottom of this right now.”
“Sir!”
Sims was off at the trot, soon disappearing into the heavy brown desert airs,
still occluded heavily at ground level from the recent storm.
Send
out a Wingo, which was Army slang for WngO, a Warning Order. Sense, warn,
consider, decide, execute… And be ready to take risks. He might be faulted for
stopping now, leaving his column strung out, motionless, a massive sinuous heat
signature on the desert. That wouldn’t matter much to another ICBM, so he
decided to take the risk. He knew that mobility was his first guarantor of
survivability, but something told him it was not good just blundering ahead
until he could understand his environment and make some sense of this
situation.
He
wanted to talk to that Russian Captain again, but even as he thought this, he
heard the rebuke so often quoted in the Army Operations Manual about the last
war in this goddamned desert.
‘The British were plagued by feebleness, by
lack of instant authority in the high command. Intentions were too often
obscure. Orders at army, corps, or divisional level were too often treated as
the basis for discussion, matters for visit, argument, expostulation even. The
result was a system of command too conversational and chatty, rather than
instant and incisive…’
What if
these two characters had been sent out here to serve as a grand distraction to
delay his move north? That thought was silly. Could he imagine the Russians
dreaming up something like this charade? How can we make sure the British will
stay in the target zone? I know, send in a few men on helicopters to ID their
position, and better yet, we can dress them up in old World War Two uniforms
and tell the British they’ve been transported to that old romantic era of the
past where the Desert Rats first made their mark on these sands.
He
shook his head… Impossible. The Russians couldn’t dream this up in a century.
This business with the LRDG, Popski, O’Connor and the whole bit… well it all
seemed so damnably authentic. The look in O’Connor’s eye was riveting, and he
was mad as a hornet now in the other FV432. To calm the man he had played
along, almost comically.
“General,”
he had said. “We’re glad you’ve been recovered, but I’ve a bit of a problem on
my hands at the moment, and more than one. Would you be so kind as to wait here
while I complete my reconnaissance? We’re trying to get through to the liaison
officer in Cairo.”
That
worked. It at least gave him the time he needed to slip away and sort this
whole mess out. Yet the more he looked at the situation, the more wild and
crazy it all became! The Russian had come to him bang away with the assertion
that he should look over his shoulder and return to the Sultan Apache
facilities. In the end, he had granted the man the small grace of compliance,
and sent a patrol back to check on the status of things at the massive oil
drilling site. They reported nothing was there, and Kinlan immediately assumed
they had wandered off somewhere in this damn desert sand storm and were
probably lost in the desolation of the Qattara Depression. So he went to look
for himself.
Nine
months out here in the desert had given him an uncanny sense of how to
navigate, even in conditions like this. He knew where his column was when the
lights went out and they had lost all satellite links and GPS. So he got in his
FV432, pulled out a compass, only to find the needle was spinning like a top!
Something was certainly wrong, but he moved south, able to follow the fading
remnant of the column’s tracks. Sixty ton tanks leave a good footprint on the
desert wherever they go, and he had sixty Challenger IIs in the brigade. It
wasn’t long before he saw the familiar shape of Hill 587, and realized he had
come east to the edge of the Qattara Depression. Beyond this point the land
would cascade down in a steep escarpment into the silted, wadi infested Sebka
that was completely impassible to vehicles. But behind him he had the stony
plateau where the Sultan Apache facilities should be… and they were gone.
Not
destroyed… not blasted to hell by another damn Russian ICBM… The desert was a
sublime, immaculate wasteland, with fresh drifts of windblown sand forming even
here. This was something he had not counted on; something no man could factor
into his operational planning, no matter how closely he read the manual and
adhered to the principles of the Operational Art. This was something wholly
unaccountable, a madness that had come upon him like the desert storm,
obscuring all reason and sanity and presenting him with the bewildering
prospect of having to lend credence to the impossible story spewed by this
Russian Captain.
Popski,
O’Connor, and a Russian Naval Captain… Now he had the distinct feeling that O’Connor
had never once laid eyes on the Russian, and knew nothing whatsoever of the
man. If this
was
an act, aimed at distracting him into immobility here,
it was masterful.
Sims
was back, with the Russian in tow, and he folded his arms, thinking. “Very well,”
he began, looking at the Russian. “I’ve done what you asked of me, and had a
good long look at the facilities, at least the place where they once existed.
That is no longer the case.”
Popski
translated, still with a completely befuddled look on his face as he did so.
When Fedorov realized they were again to meet with the commander of this force,
he had quietly spoken with Popski to try and prepare him for what he might soon
hear.
“Popski,”
he said. “I must discuss our situation with this officer, and you will hear
many things that will make absolutely no sense to you. I know it will be
confusing, and I will do my best to explain it all to you later, but for now,
can you simply serve as my voice and translate what I say? My English can get
the essence across, but I’m afraid my vocabulary is somewhat limited still.
Just translate, and I’ll sort this all out for you once we set things right
with the British.”
“Good
enough,” said Popski, but it was not long before he did begin to hear strange
talk between these two men, some of it stupefying nonsense, other things
complete mysteries to him, words and terms he had never heard or used before,
though these two men clearly seemed to know what they meant.
“It is
as I have told you,” said Fedorov. “The facilities remain where they were, but
the timeframe has changed. There was a missile strike on your position, and a
detonation, correct?”
