Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (13 page)

Or be killed…

And so now they waited, and it was
indeed taking cool heads and a lot of nerve as Karpov had warned. The sight of
those torpedo planes swooping in with their blue wings glinting in the sunlight
was somewhat awesome, and every eye on the bridge was watching out the view
screens of the citadel. Admiral Volsky was sitting stiffly in his chair,
waiting. The drone of the distant engines increased, and he turned slowly to
Karpov, a sadness in his eyes.

“Mister Karpov,” he said quietly.
“Kill those planes.”

“Sir…” Karpov turned quickly to
Samsonov and nodded his head. “Fire at 4000 meters.”

*
* *

Matsua
saw the first bright muzzle flashes
spit fire from the side of the ship. So few guns, he thought, remembering the gunnery
trials for the battleship
Yamato
against simulated torpedo attacks. That
ship could literally blacken the sky with its flak guns, but this—”

Then he saw Lieutenant
Tomashita’s
plane erupt in flame to his left, and felt the
rattle of metal strike his own plane. He grabbed the stick, tensely trying to
steady his approach. Yet as he looked left and right he gasped to see one plane
after another being torn apart by lethal fire, the hot tracers coming out at
them as if they had eyes. Every stream of fire found one of his planes, and the
heavy rounds were grinding them to pieces—wings shredded, torpedoes blasted
from beneath torn fuselages and spinning wildly into the sea, canopies
shattered and engines ripped into mutilated fragments, so deadly was the fire.

Now he knew what Hayashi had
experienced, and what he was trying to describe to him…and why he had chosen to
part with the formal farewell of
sayonara.

But Matsua remembered his promise, and
knew he would not die without first firing his weapon. He screamed at the enemy
ship, firing his wing mounted machineguns even if it seemed a feeble and
fruitless reprisal. He was almost there. The visual rangefinder in his pilot’s
head told him he was crossing 2000 meters, and so with one final yell he pulled
his torpedo release, even as a stream of bright red and yellow rounds found his
plane and shook it with terrible rending impact.

Hayashi’s face…his
face…his
eyes when he spoke that last word!

Sayonara…

*
* *

Aboard
Shokaku
Admiral Hara was
waiting for reports on the air strikes, expecting good news at any moment. His
radio officer,
Onoshi
, rushed in, jubilant as he
reported that the Darwin attack had been a great success.

“Flight leaders report good hits. A
destroyer was sunk in the port along with two other cargo ships trying to leave
the harbor. Enemy gun positions on the coast were given a real pounding.
Yamashita’s men will have no problem getting ashore, particularly after
Iwabuchi’s force finishes the initial bombardment.”

Hara seemed thoughtful. “Casualties?”

“Only two planes reporting light
damage, sir. The enemy was clearly unprepared.”

“What about the cruiser?”

“Sir?”

“The cruiser that gave Sakamoto’s
planes so much trouble. Didn’t you hear Hayashi’s report?”

“I’m sorry, sir. We have no news from
Lieutenant Matsua as yet.”

“He should be on his way back by now.”
Hara was not happy at the silence from his torpedo planes. It had a tinge of
foreboding in it, and he was glad he had signaled Iwabuchi on
Yamashiro
to alter his course and look for this cruiser before he went in to complete his
preliminary bombardment at Darwin.

“Let me know the moment you hear from
Matsua. And signal the screening force. They must have some news, neh? Why is
everyone so tight lipped?”

“At once, sir,” said
Onoshi
, heading for the radio room.

No news was never good news, thought
Hara. This cruiser had been a stone in his shoe from the moment Sakamoto’s
planes first sighted it. It would be another hour before he recovered all the
planes he had out on strikes at the moment. He still had plenty of strike
capability aboard, eighteen more torpedo bombers on
Zuikaku
and another
eighteen on his own ship. There was no point spotting them on deck now with an
inbound recovery operation imminent to bring all the dive bombers home. He
would wait and see what the reports from Matsua and Iwabuchi revealed, but he
was not happy.

“A very simple operation,” he said
under his breath. That was what he had told Yamamoto, but the simplest things
have a habit of spinning off in wild directions during combat. Nothing was ever
certain. The calm seas ahead were deceptive, he knew. One should always keep an
eye over his shoulder.

He turned and look there to see the
storm front that had been following them building on the horizon. He would
probably recover all his planes before the winds came up. Then he could run
before the storm, his mission plan still sending him southeast towards Darwin.

A very simple operation…

*
* *

Aboard
Battleship
Kirishima
spotters
from the high pagoda could see something ongoing to their south, and hear a
faint rumble of gunfire. They sent the report down, and Iwabuchi was quick to
contact his floatplane to have them investigate.

Fifteen minutes later Lt. Murajima was
up in his F1M2 Floatplane, called “Pete” by the Allies during the war.
Kirishima
carried two on its aft deck for local area search operations exactly like this
one. Apparently the torpedo bombers off
Zuiho
had found a battle to the
south, but there had been no details. Cruising at 5000 feet he could see over
80 miles in a every direction before the horizon blocked his view, a pair of
good, experienced human eyes standing in for the lack of long range radar.

Just ahead of him he could see the
three fast ships of Cruiser Division Five spread out in a wide fan. South there
seemed a smudge of gray against the blue sky near the ocean, and he turned to
investigate. A few minutes later he found what he was looking for, peering
through a pair of binoculars to get a better look. He was on the radio
immediately, sending only his name and a coded phrase indicating ‘ship sighted’
and the approximate position speed and heading relative to his own position. He
sent one more code: ‘shadowing.’ And then decided it best to gain a little more
altitude.

Within ten minutes he smiled to see
the cruisers effect a wide turn to starboard, coming around to assume an
intercept heading on the contact. Then he saw something in the sky ahead,
another aircraft which he first took to be a straggling plane returning from
the Darwin mission, yet when he looked through his binoculars he could not make
out what it was, moving low and slow, and with no apparent wings! He was going
to have a ring-side seat to a most dramatic event.

*
* *

On the
bridge of
Kirov
Rodenko was
now receiving good data from the KA-40 and fine tuning his contact reports to
feed the information to both the navigation station and the CIC. The KA-40 had
been aloft for some time, and was now on the backward leg of its search
pattern, but the telemetry it had been sending, along with HD video footage,
was enough to finally paint the picture of what was happening around them.

Fedorov was analyzing the data,
reviewing the video footage and looking up references from his books and other
materials at navigation while he plotted positions on a digital map. He sat
with a perplexed look on his face, as nothing seemed to make sense. When
Nikolin reported that he now had clear radio reception and could pull in
shortwave signals, they were able to finally establish the date as August 25,
1942.

“We must have lost all the days we
sailed from St. Helena to this point,” said Fedorov. “In fact, I think we may
have started shifting into this time as early as yesterday. I could feel
something was wrong. This is most unusual,” he said as the briefing began.

“That is an understatement, indeed,”
said Karpov. “I’m still trying to shake myself awake every time I realize we
have been shooting at planes that went out of existence eighty years ago.”

“We may have more yet to come,”
Fedorov warned. “The KA-40 has located the
Kido
Butai
for this operation, the main mobile carrier group. It was able to get a little
long range HD video footage but was wary of enemy combat air patrols over the
target and turned east. It was enough. I studied the footage very closely, and
I am certain that a force comprised of the carriers
Zuikaku
and
Shokaku
,
escorted by another light carrier and the heavy cruiser
Tone
with five
destroyers is here—” He pointed to his navigation Plexiglas board, and then fed
the signal to the overhead HD monitor as well.

“The carriers are northwest of our
position now, about 175 kilometers out. That is very close considering the
combat radius of their aircraft. We are still well within their strike zone.”

“I have already given my opinion on
how we should handle the matter,” said Karpov. “Two missiles would be enough to
disrupt any further operations against us.”

Admiral Volsky listened, nodding, but
saying nothing for a moment. Then he asked about the overall picture painted by
the data.

“There appears to be a major operation
underway against Darwin,” said Fedorov. “Only it is completely a-historical. It
should not be happening. It never
did
happen, particularly on this date.
All the action should be in the Solomons now, at Guadalcanal. But from what
I’ve been able to piece together, I believe ‘Operation FS’ is now underway, or
some variation of that plan.”

“Operation FS?” Volsky wanted more
information.

“It was a plan to isolate Australia by
continuing the drive south through the Solomons with the aim of striking New
Caledonia, and eventually Fiji and Samoa. Hence the initials F and S for those
islands. This attack on Darwin must be a part of the overall plan. It was
debated in early 1942, largely opposed by the Japanese Army, and then
eventually discarded for the Midway operation. But if it is underway now then I
can only conclude that Midway was never fought—or if it was fought, then the
Japanese fleet must have been victorious.”

“They were supposed to lose four
carriers in that operation, Yes?” asked Volsky.

“Correct, sir,” Fedorov continued.
“Yet if they IJN has the capability to launch an operation of this scale and
scope, they must have sufficient carrier forces in theater. This bit we’ve
sailed into is the sideshow. It was never part of the original FS plan, at
least not formally, but it has apparently been added. With two fleet carriers
here, then the Japanese must still have their other main carrier divisions
intact in the Solomons for the drive south. They could never successfully move
troops without strong air cover. As for
Zuikaku
and
Shokaku
, they
should not be here either. They should be east in the Solomons this month,
supporting operations near Guadalcanal. In fact, they were supposed to be
dueling with the American carriers
Enterprise
and
Saratoga
on Aug
24-25 of this year… but that was only because the other four fleet carriers
were lost at Midway. I suppose if that battle was not fought their presence
here makes a great deal of sense.”

“I think we can safely say that these
facts you refer to are no longer viable,” said Karpov.

Fedorov shrugged, a sullen expression
on his face. “I’m afraid I will have to agree, Captain. What we are looking at
here is a complete restructuring of the history of the war in the Pacific.
Nikolin has been very busy the last two hours. The radio intercepts he has from
Allied sources clearly indicate that Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea is also
Japanese controlled, which means that Coral Sea was a Japanese victory, or
perhaps never even fought. This is a radical deviation from the history we
know, and we are right in the middle of a very well stirred bowl of soup now.”

“Yet you say this is 1942,” said
Volsky. “What happened to this interval business you were talking about
earlier? We did not move forward this time?”

“It was just a theory, sir. I
concluded we might move to 1943 if we shifted again, based on our previous
displacements, but Nikolin is convinced that this is 1942, so we have been
pulled back into the same year we were in the Mediterranean.”

Volsky laughed. “What will Admiral
Tovey think if he gets a report about us now? You say we may have started
shifting here yesterday? We vanish at St. Helena on August 23, 1942, and then
appear here, thousands of miles away, in just a day’s time? That will befuddle
the British if they ever hear about it!”

Fedorov considered that, coming to a
startling conclusion, but saying nothing about it for the moment, being more
concerned about their immediate situation. Volsky caught the glint in his eye,
and a flash of trouble there, though he did not pursue the matter, listening
intently as his young first officer continued the briefing.