Kirov (40 page)

Chapter
23

August
5th, 1941

Admiral
Tovey
was still
in a state of shock and disbelief. He was trying to sort through what had
happened with Brind, collating reports that were now coming in fast and
furious. They had turned about, and were running south until he could gather
his ships, and his wits, and determine what to do. He shook his head solemnly
as he pointed at the chart.

“Wake-Walker
is over 200 miles to the north, Brind, up above Reykjavík. If this enemy ship
is where we think it is, how in the world could he have been struck up there?
Furious
has been gutted with fire. She took two hits just as we did, but we were lucky
enough to have five times her armor protection. They've managed to put the
fires out, but I’m afraid she's no good to us now—no planes and a shattered
flight deck due to the explosions.”

“Best
to get her into Reykjavík and then off home for repairs,” said Brind. “But the
real question is this: what do we do about the
Victorious?
She's just as
vulnerable, sir, and with little more than a few Fulmar fighters aboard, she’s not
much good as a strike asset now. In fact, her planes can’t even reacquire the
enemy ship on radar. Everything's gone haywire. None of the equipment seems to be
working from these latest reports. Walker believes the Germans are using some
kind of powerful jammer.”

“You're
probably right. Signal Wake-Walker that he is to transfer his flag to cruiser
Suffolk
and make for Reykjavík as well to refuel his ships. It’s likely I’ll leave
Victorious
there. Without an air wing she’s just a target.”

“That
pairs down Force P to just the two cruisers, sir. Unless you suggest we refuel
the destroyers as well.”

“As
soon as possible,” said Tovey. “We were fighting this threat as if it were a
battleship, Brind. But it’s a carrier, or at least it fights like one. It
stands off and strikes at us from extreme range, as any carrier would, but
instead of planes it’s throwing these damnable rockets at us. So we can’t go
steaming about like this, unescorted and without a proper screen. Yes, I want
those destroyers along as well. And anything else in the harbor that’s in any
way seaworthy.”

“The
Canadians were going to send out three destroyers to pick up
Prince of Wales
,
sir.”

“The
more the merrier,” said Tovey. “And we’re going to rendezvous with that ship as
well. It’s entirely too lonesome out here. Home Fleet is bloody well going to
start looking like one again. Signal Force K and Vian’s two light cruisers and
put them on a course to join with us. We need to form a larger task force, and
the cruisers were made for screening duty.”

“Right,
sir, but what about
Repulse?
She took two hits as well, and they bruised
her quite a bit. Who knows how many more of these long-range rockets the
Germans have aboard that ship? My god, sir, how in the world did they develop
this weapon without us knowing about it?”

“Your
guess is as good as mine, Brind. Lucky for us that they gave us a couple of
body shots. If
King George V
had been slapped about the head and
shoulders, the damage would've been far more extensive. Not that we have a weak
chin, mind you, but I’d hate to take one of those rockets here on the bridge. All
things considered, we haven’t really been hurt that much.
Repulse
is
seaworthy, and Tennant says he can still make thirty knots. Should we risk her
further?”

“As
it's been demonstrated the enemy rockets can penetrate her side armor sir, I’d
think twice about that.” The two men still had dark thoughts over the fate of
HMS
Hood
. Tovey thought about it for a moment, and then decided.

“She
can still fight, but I don’t want her out in front on her own like this. Let's reel
her in and put her in our wake again. Tennant won't like it, but there it is. We’ll
bring Walker and Vian down to join with us with their cruisers and destroyers,
and then we’ll swing south. I'm afraid it's an entirely new game now. As
amazing as it sounds, we’re are on the defensive. I want to steer in such a way
as to put our ships between the enemy and
Prince of Wales’
route to Newfoundland.
Our best play now is to form a covering force for her until we can make a
proper rendezvous with the rest of the fleet.”

“We
might simply send
Prince of Wales
home, sir,” Brind suggested. “Then we
can stay in the hunt a while longer.”

“And
we might try getting the Prime Minister to agree to that,” said Tovey, somewhat
frustrated. “It's time we called in the heavy cavalry. Let's get a message off
to Admiral Somerville and bring Force H out from Gibraltar into the Atlantic.
He's got
Ark Royal, Nelson, Renown
, and several more cruisers he can
sortie with. Strength in numbers. The pilots aboard
Ark Royal
have
considerably more experience than Wake-Walker's boys did. After all, she stuck
a few torpedoes into
Bismarck
, didn’t she? We could use her, even if we
utilize her aircraft for spotting purposes only.”

“Yet
she'll be vulnerable to these German rockets, sir; so is
Renown
. As for
Nelson
,
she can't make much more than twenty knots, and that will slow down Somerville
considerably.

“Twenty
knots will have to do for the moment,” said Tovey. “I need ships with big guns and
the armor to stand in a fight for a time.
Nelson
may not be able to
catch this German ship, but we might, and if we get her by the ankles and hold
on tight enough, then
Nelson
can come up join the party, just as
Rodney
did against
Bismarck
. Let's get on a heading to the south. This German
ship is not likely to try steaming into the Labrador Sea. They'll be heading
south as well. Eventually we can work our way to join up with
Prince of
Wales.
As long as Somerville will be making no more than twenty knots, if
he has a fast tanker in port at Gibraltar, tell him to bring it along. Vian’s
cruisers would be in need of fuel by the time we get down south. It's either
that or we send them home soon.

“Very
good, sir,” said Brind, thinking. “What about the Americans?” he said at last.
“Don’t they have a convoy headed for Iceland at the moment? They'll have
warships bound for this meeting in Newfoundland as well. It would be wise if we
brief them as to the nature of the threat, sir.”

“Yes,
they’ll run right afoul of this rogue and won’t have any idea what the Germans
are capable of. We’d best warn them as soon as possible.”

“Admiral
Pound is aboard
Prince of Wales
with the Prime Minister,” said Brind.

“Let's
leave the Admiral to his tea and crumpets for the time being,” said Tovey. “He’s
likely to sit on things if we go through channels. We’d best let the Yanks know
directly. I'll take full responsibility.”

“Very
well, sir. I'll see that the orders are sent out at once.”

~
~ ~

Kirov
raced south
,
passing the distant Cape of Greenland to the west and heading into the North
Atlantic. She pushed on through the Denmark Strait without the slightest
scratch from the enemy. Karpov was pleased when Rodenko informed him the British
battleships had turned about, heading southeast for a time until they vanished,
beyond the range of his surface radar. The British carriers that had been
following
also disappeared from Rodenko's screens.

Tovey
was steaming south on course almost parallel to that of
Kirov
, but
Karpov could not know this unless he sent his KA-40 helos up to extend his
sighting range. For the moment however he was content to have shaken off his
pursuers. He had given the British another hard lesson, demonstrating that he
could strike them heavy blows well outside the range of their guns. They had
turned tail and sped away, bruised and battered by his missiles. Yet before he
had too much time to gloat, he needed to handle a maintenance problem that had
come up at a most inopportune time.

Chief
Dobrynin in engineering had called up and asked him to make slow revolutions on
the turbines again while they investigated a reactor cooling problem. There was
no immediate danger, but Karpov knew that a ship’s reactors at sea could be
temperamental pieces of equipment, and there had been more than one ‘incident’
in the navy over the years. What had happened to the
Orel?
As much as he
wanted to get down south quickly, his better judgment led him to slow the ship
to a sedate 10 knots while the engineers investigated. There was nothing wrong
with
Kirov’s
radars, and she could defend herself from any and all
threats well before they became a problem. Yet he wanted speed when he needed
it, and so he decided to linger on the 5th of August and effect repairs. It
would put the ship in its best, battle worthy condition, and also give him time
to think as he set his mind on bigger fish to fry.

Somewhere
to the east there was another British battleship at sea, he knew, and she
carried a gaggle of high-ranking officials, and officers from every arm of the
military, including fat Winston Churchill himself. He thought what a tempting
target
Prince of Wales
would make for his Sunburns. Then again, he could
allow the ship to complete its journey and see all the eggs in one basket,
there in Argentia Bay of Newfoundland, where he could keep them as long as he
wanted, or deal with them in any way he saw fit.

With
the American president and the British prime minister holed up, he had any
number of choices. One was to join the negotiations himself, standing in for
his uninvited countrymen and assuring that the Soviet Union would not be
marginalized in the postwar environment the two Western powers were now
scheming to build.

He
passed a moment imagining his arrival, with all three helicopters used to ferry
in an honor guard of marines, led by the formidable Kandemir Troyak. He
pictured them in their dress olive greens, long double breasted trench coats
with gold buttons and collar tabs, braided gold belts and the brilliant red sash
strap from shoulder to waist, where a six inch tasseled gold horsetail tied it
off. Their black Ushankas rose proudly as they marched, stiff backed, their
pace timed precisely to the beat of black jack boots polished to a mirror like
finish. Each man would carry a bayoneted rifle, and the squad leader would hold
a long silver sword, gleaming balefully in the morning light. Behind him would
come the flag bearer, with the tricolor of the new Russian Federation snapping
proudly in the wind. The symbolism would be apparent to all those who watched
them come, their eyes glazed with awe, jaws slack with fear and surprise. They
would be the sword of Mother Russia. They would seem a phalanx of doom as they
marched, with the Captain strutting boldly in their midst as commanding
officer.

Karpov
smiled to himself, dwelling on the image. But it would not be mere theater, he
mused. The considerable weight of
Kirov's
firepower, and the nuclear
weapons he could demonstrate on some empty forsaken tract of Newfoundland would
be his big sticks in the negotiations, sure to bend the minds of both heads of
state. If they gawked at his helicopters, he could only imagine their shock at
the sight of a nuclear detonation, and their fear as he calmly told them his
ship was laden with a hundred similar warheads,
lozh
to be sure, but a
lie that would surely be believed after his demonstration. What would the
duplicitous titans of the West do, he wondered?

Roosevelt
and Churchill had given their assurances time and time again, toying with
Stalin throughout the war as they promised to eventually open a second front in
Europe, while in fact they left most of the fighting to the Russian army. They
might do the very same with him, he thought, promising him the world with sweet
tongued graces, yet delivering nothing in the end. What would he do with the
ship in the meantime, while the British and Americans most likely gathered
every fighting vessel they could get their hands on and vectored them in? He
needed to know more about the enemy capabilities to make a firm decision one
way or the other. As much as he disliked Fedorov, the navigator was the only
man on the ship he could rely on for the information he needed. The book he had
been reading was in no way comprehensive.

“How
many more ships might we expect to encounter if we proceed south now,” he
asked.

Fedorov
was grateful for the opportunity to speak. Perhaps he could persuade the
Captain to alter his course and avoid further combat. “I've done some research,
sir, and we are fortunate that many British capital ships are laid up for
repair and refit at this time. They have four or five more aircraft carriers
available, but two are in American ports for refit, and one is in the Indian
ocean. Aside from the two we have just driven off, that will leave them only
the
Ark Royal
at Gibraltar. This is a more experienced ship and could
pose a threat.”

“It
will serve only as a good target for our Sunburns,” said Karpov. “And we have
already seen what happens to their aircraft should they dare strike us again.
But what about battleships?”