Crescendo Of Doom (4 page)

It would be long years of murder and struggle here before I reached the time I have just come from. By then I would be much older, and I might not even live to see the conclusion of the Second World War, or know what happens to Russia when it all ends. After all, isn’t that what I must set my mind on? I must assure Russia is not marginalized, ostracized, entrenched behind an iron curtain and guarded by the prison warden that came to be called NATO. To settle those years favorably, I must live to see the end of WWII. If I stay here, that will be a long 34 years to wait, and I would not have much time to live in the post-war era. If I get back to the 1940s, I’ll still be young, vital, with long decades ahead of me to settle the affairs of the world.

Yes, I must return.

“Weather report, Admiral. Cloud Master is calling for increasing overcast, and a storm front building to the northeast.”

“Very well, send to Bogrov that we are to make ready for operations. Prepare to cast off lines and make our ascent within fifteen minutes.”

A storm brewing.

Karpov did not get the details in that report, but the storm was emanating from a massive low to the northeast, over the Stony Tunguska River. A hard wind was blowing, the skies mushrooming up in tall thunderheads, their flanks rippled by lightning. It was as if some power was at work, stirring the airs to fitful wrath, even as Karpov’s own thoughts rose on the winds of his anger and determination. Soon the ship would rise to meet that storm, driven as much by that anger as it would be by the wind. Karpov and
Tunguska
would surge forward, sailing into the outermost squalls of doom itself.

He steeled himself, knowing he could be off on a wild bear hunt, with no hope of ever achieving his objective now, but he had to try. It was a storm that sent me here, and so now I’ll look for another, he thought. A voice within him chided that it might take many days, weeks or even months to find a storm with the power he needed to move
Tunguska
again. And what if he did? Where would he go? At least on the stairs of Ilanskiy there seemed to be a method to the madness of Time. The dots of distant eras were connected by the line of those stairs, but this was a casting of his fate to the wind in the most literal way imaginable.

Yet another voice, the place in his head that did the planning and scheming and reckoning, rose with his anger to still the inner warning. I have been a most unwelcome guest in the homes I’ve broken into all through this saga, he thought to himself grimly. I tortured Mother Time with my doings, and here I was about to cause her grief and torment yet again. She doesn’t want me here. I can feel it. Eliminating Volkov from here causes so many changes to the history that she’ll be long years, decades sorting out the trouble I cause. So my guess is that she will do everything possible to send me on my way.

He stepped out of his heated stateroom, his eyes looking down the long central corridor of the airship, looking up at the lattice of her duralumin skeleton, seeing the cold steel ladders rising into small voids between the massive gas bags. Men moved there, like shadowy spiders in a metal web, spinning out wires and rigging cables.

He turned for the bridge, the hard clump of his boots on the metal grating of the decking. Aboard
Kirov
he had always climbed up to reach the place of command, but here the inverse was true. He looked for the ladder down, descending through the mass of the ship to reach the lower gondola. Even as he went, he could hear the movement of other men echoing through the massive structure of the ship. That always gave him a quiet little thrill—the sound of other men rushing off to do his bidding. He was down the last ladder and onto the bridge, announced by the boatswain as he arrived.

“Admiral on the Bridge!”

“As you were,” he said tersely, looking for his Air Commandant.

“The ship will be ready for lift in ten minutes,” said Bogrov. “Linesmen are working the land anchors now. May I ask our destination sir?”

“Up,” said Karpov. “Climb for that weather front on this morning’s report.”

Bogrov gave him a puzzled look. “Climb for the weather front? I thought you were taking the ship up so we could avoid that storm.”

“Just the opposite. The crew will stand to battle stations. Rig the ship for bad weather and rough air. Secure all equipment. We’re going to chase lightning.” Karpov smiled. “I want all lightning rods deployed, but take the Topaz radar systems off line. I can’t risk any damage to that equipment. Make sure the antennae are retracted into their bad weather ports.”

If Bogrov was puzzled before, he was truly perplexed now. “You mean you want me to steer directly into this storm front?”

“Exactly.”

“Didn’t we get enough of a ride over the English Channel?”

“More of a ride than I have had time to explain to you, Bogrov. Just get the ship aloft and headed northeast. Understand?”

Bogrov did not understand, but he knew an order when he heard one, and he also knew that when Karpov had this mood on him he was a very dangerous man. One question after another piled up in his mind, all unanswered. Tyrenkov had teased him earlier, yet explained nothing. And he could clearly see that something was very different here at Ilanskiy. Where was the Siberian Rifles? That whole division should be here, God only knows why. Karpov left them digging in all around the town when we were last here, but there’s no sign of them now.

The Admiral has been ashore, down by the rail station, but that looks all wrong too. In fact, the town itself doesn’t seem even half the size it should be. What’s been going on here? Did Karpov have the place demolished? There’s that old railway inn, but it looks as though the work crews have been very busy. That entire west wing of the building is completely restored, good as new. Very strange… What is so damn important about that railway inn? He knew enough not to voice all this, but this other business had him worried. Deploy the lightning rods and head for the storm? What was Karpov thinking?

With a shrug, he pulled a line to the air horn that would sound the alarm for battle stations. “All hands, all hands, battle stations! Rig the ship for rough air. Deploy all lightning rods and secure all storm ports. Ballast control—prepare to lighten the ship. Up elevator five degrees on my command.”

“All lines away sir,” said a watch officer. “Tethers secure and land anchor cables are stowed.”

“Very well. Ahead one third on forward engines, and ease us on up.” He looked to Karpov now. “Admiral,” a question was in his tone, but it would concern ship’s business, and leave all his other speculations aside. “You’ve ordered battle stations, but we’re rigging for storm. Do you still want men on the upper canopy? Those gunners up topside are going to have a very rough ride.”

“Topside gun crews may take station on deck five,” said Karpov. That was one deck below the top of the ship, where the ladders that extended up between the massive gas bags opened on a small platform just beneath the outer shell.
Tunguska
had three twin 76mm recoilless rifles there, and numerous 20mm guns and lighter 50 caliber machine guns. There was space on deck five for crews to move laterally along the length of the airship, to repair torn canvas, secure lines or do other maintenance. And there were also hardened storage areas for ready ammo that could be passed up to the gunners on the upper platforms.

“Very well,” said Bogrov, turning to a watchstander. “Send word topside, that all crews may take station on ready deck five. Watch your altimeter and variometer, Mister Kanev.”

“Passing through 200 meters, sir.”

“Then ahead slow. Rudderman will make a gradual turn north by northeast—five points at three minute increments.”

“Aye sir, coming five points to starboard now.”

The airship was always kept with enough buoyancy to make an easy ascent without having to resort to jettisoning much ballast. When land anchored, as opposed to taking station off a mooring tower where it was easy to secure lines, the anchors were actually steel harpoons that were fired to penetrate the ground itself, with a head designed to deploy after impact to create enough resistance to keep it securely anchored in the ground. Grappling hooks could also be tethered to any suitable feature on land, and like a bee sting, when the airship cast off to ascend, the cables would simply be released from the harpoon heads, leaving them embedded in the ground. This made land anchoring expensive, as it slowly used a finite number of harpoon anchor heads. The only way to avoid their use was to find an open field big enough to actually ground the ship on its landing gear, where crews could then drive stakes to secure lines and hold the ship in place. This had not been the case here, as Karpov wanted to hover at some elevation, very near the rail station, another little irritating request that Bogrov never understood.

Why did they have to take station here at Ilanskiy when there was a perfectly good mooring tower at Kansk, just a few kilometers to the west? Then he got his answer when
Tunguska
overflew Kansk on approach—the mooring tower was gone, which led Bogrov to believe it might have been bombed by the enemy, though he could see no sign of damage when he looked. It was all very strange. It was as if the tower had never even been built!

Tunguska
rose into the grey sky, untethered and free again, which always had a way of calming the Commandant. He was born to fly, eschewed the ground and all land lubbers as he called them. Once the ship was climbing and through the first deck of lower clouds, he always breathed easier. There the world was a much simpler affair, pristine, clean, clear. Looking down on the cottony cloud tops was still a thrill, and he had come to think of the sky as his private domain, where he could waft with a gentle breeze, or cruise with the trade winds wherever he liked. There on the bridge, his gaze extended out for miles, unfettered by trees or hills or the ugly, squarish shapes of man made things. There was no mud to soil his boots, and no crawling along bumpy dirt roads to get from one place to another.

He took a deep breath, calming himself. The endless sky, and the steady drone of the forward engines were a comfort. “Ahead two thirds,” he said to the telegraph operator, the man who would tap out the signal that would go by wire to the engine pods, where the engineers would actually set the speed.

But it was a deceptive calm in the air now. As the big nose of the ship slowly inclined upwards, turning another five points as he had ordered, he could sense that the weather ahead would be rough indeed. That had been a very hard ride over the English Channel. The ship had been badly shaken, though she bore the stress well. That said, the engineers had to reset interior cables, and even weld three segments of the duralumin frame that had been unduly stressed. Why was Karpov chasing another storm, particularly one that looked like this?

He was in the observation room now, his eyes darkening as he scanned the grey flanks of the clouds ahead. This one looks big, he thought, another goddamn bag buster. Look at that lightning! We’d be wise to get well above those thunderheads, but how high will they climb? I’ve seen storms out here in Siberia that would shake a man’s dreams for days after they passed, and this one looks bad.

And what was this order for the men to stand to battle stations? Was Karpov at war with the sky itself? We’re deep inside our own airspace here, though there had been no sign of any other fleet airship, and not a whisper on the radio set. What was happening? Was the fleet off west at the front? Was the Grey Legion making another big push on our Ob River line defenses? Karpov always left at least one airship here at Ilanskiy, which was another thing the Air Commandant never understood. It was too far from the front, and there was nothing here of value that he could think of. But the Admiral seemed intent on building out a major operations hub here. He had gathered troops, engineers, airships to this place, but now it was quiet and forlorn. What was really going on here?

“Thunderheads ahead sir,” said his navigator. “Shall we steer to avoid them?

“Steer directly for them,” Karpov intervened. “Take us right into the heart of the storm. Find the worst air possible. If you see lightning, steer directly for it. Yes, I know this is dangerous, but we survived a storm like this easily enough over the English Channel, and we can ride this one out as well.

“Aye, sir, but why would we want to do this? Are you testing the integrity of our skeleton? Engineers tell me they have good solid welds on those damaged frame girders. There’s no need to air test. Why steer for the storm and put the ship at risk again?”

There, he had finally done it. Bogrov had directly asked the Admiral why he should carry out the orders he had received. He knew that was risky, always risky with a man of Karpov’s temperament. One could never predict how he would react, but Bogrov would go unsatisfied. Karpov merely looked at him, then stared quietly out the viewport at the rising wall of thunderheads. Bogrov watched as the Admiral slowly adjusted the fit of his black leather gloves, and he knew better than to say anything more.

Part II

Lightning In The Sky

“What tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder go when it dies?”

―
Ray Bradbury

Chapter 4

Raqqah
on the upper Euphrates was the ancient capital of the old Abbasid Caliphate dating from the year 796. Centuries earlier it was known as Leontopolis under the Greeks, the “City of Leon,” where emperor Leo I reigned. The Greeks and Romans came and went, ant then came the Muslim warlord Iyad ibn Ghanm, who took the city in 639, for there were already holy Muslim monasteries there, where companions of Muhammad himself once lived. At one time it was bigger than Damascus, the center of an empire that reached into Central Asia, and stretched all the way to the deserts of North Africa.