Kirov (38 page)

Chapter
22

Karpov
stood
on the
bridge, stiffly alert, yet with a taut, almost strained manner, like a watch
spring that had been wound too tight. He had thought about the situation long
enough. If he was ever to get to the place he saw himself going in his mind,
the first step was necessary, compulsory. It was not a question of morals for
him—it never was. Nor did he bother with useless speculation as Fedorov might,
wondering where each round of his air defense Gatling guns was going, and which
man’s heart it might rend open, spilling his life’s blood out as if it were no
more than sludge in a gutter.

These
considerations did not figure in the intricate workings of his mind at that
moment. He was Captain of a ship of war now, and he looked at the situation
from the perspective of simple tactics and strategy. He knew where the enemy
was, and what his forces were composed of. Yet the enemy knew nothing of him.
He could see the stumbling advance of his foe on Rodenko’s radar screens,
illuminated by the clock-like sweep of the scan, round and round, pulsing out
the position, course and speed of the British ships. He watched their steady
approach on one side, where the British Home Fleet hastened to block his exit
from the Denmark Strait, and on the other side where the chastened but dogged
carrier group still followed him into that icy passage, intent on marking his
shadow and blocking any possible return by the route he came. It was as if two
men met in a crowded street, and one had to give way to the other to allow
either to pass. Who would give way first?

The
enemy was executing a well practiced drill as they smoothly vectored in the
assets of the Royal Navy to find and destroy his ship. They had cut their teeth
early on in 1940 when they hunted down the
Graff Spee
, and then learned
from the mistakes made in chasing the
Admiral Sheer
. They had limited
the effectiveness of
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
, eventually
bottling them up in a French port to suffer the ignominy of nightly bombing
raids. Then, by the time the Germans sent out their most formidable gladiator,
the
Bismarck
, the Royal Navy had honed its skills to a fine art, like
the well oiled mechanisms of a machine.

Kirov,
however, was
something altogether different. Yes, his ship was a mechanical wonder as well;
a metal shark, sleek, fast and dangerous. The enemy had not even taken the
measure of his ship, but they would soon learn more than they might ever hope
to know. And just as the British set their ships out in hot pursuit, war
machines that would not hesitate for one moment to fling their bombs, shells
and torpedoes at him, so he, too, would be equally heartless. It was not merely
a simple ship of war he commanded now, but time and fate itself, and Karpov was
at the helm of both as he contemplated the action that was about to ensue at
his command.

There
was an odd reciprocity about war, he thought. One side goes
tick
, and
the other goes
tock
. One drumbeat followed the next, in an inevitable cascade
of escalation that ended in violence of the highest order, controlled rage,
unrestrained anger made kinetic in the application of finely honed weapons of
war. What was it Doctor Zolkin had said about it? The missiles were mindless,
and gave not the slightest thought or feeling as they did their job. They were
simple mechanisms, action and reaction, cause and effect. But war was the
greater mechanism they all served, and man was the watchmaker of that clock. Why
else were they all here aboard
Kirov
; why else were the British out
there in their cold gray ships, their bows chopping into the sea as they surged
forward in the chase?

 
Kirov
had appeared, and within hours she was an object of military interest,
perceived immediately as nothing more than a threat. The ship had spoken first
with its voice, in Mister Nikolin’s plaintive calls for the other side to
identify themselves, but the enemy had different ideas. So one thing led to
another, tick-tock, tit for tat, action-reaction, cause and effect. This was
the synapse and rhythm of war, and it seldom came to anything different.

The
first blows of the enemy had been successfully parried, but the battle had only
just begun. Now they were marshalling the forces they deemed necessary to find
his ship and kill it, like ruthless whalers out to harpoon some ghostly
leviathan. They were cutting off his escape routes, closing in with each
passing sweep of the radar scope; with each passing tick of the clock. And in
Karpov’s mind, the situation was entirely unacceptable, particularly since he
had, at that very moment, the means of correcting it.

And
he did.

~
~ ~

Andy
Doolan
was the
Leading Rate in the crow's nest on
Repulse
that morning, or at least he
hoped to be. He was up for promotion this very week, hoping to make that first
step up from Able Seamen to one of the higher ratings before the ship was
transferred to the Pacific. Today's assignment was just the luck of the draw.
His Chief Petty Officer had thumbed his duty roster and landed on his name that
morning, and so Doolan was up high in the crow's nest, the wind in his face as
he settled in for the morning watch.

As
the gray dawn gave way, the skies lightened with pink and mauve dappled clouds,
and the first rays of real sunshine that they had seen in days pierced through.
It wasn't a bad lot, he thought. He could sit up there and chew on a biscuit or
two, though he wished he had the presence of mind to fetch a flask of hot water
or tea. Bundled up in his heavy greatcoat, gloves, and thick lined hat with ear
muffs, he'd be warm enough until noon when someone else would climb up the
metal mast ladder to relieve him. Yet this morning he was to have a front row
seat to one of the most amazing spectacles he had ever seen.

Repulse
was cruising along at high
revolutions, her bow splitting the waves easily as the ship surged forward, her
wake clear and white behind her. The air was cool and crisp, the biscuits just
salty enough to have a little flavor, and no one would bother him for the next
four hours. What could be better?

Sometime
after second bell, a little after 09:00 hours, he was peering at the distant
horizon when his eye caught the gleam of sunlight on metal in the sky.
Surprised to think he would find a plane this far out in the Atlantic, he
looked up and saw a remarkable sight. High up in the sky, something was
streaking by, leaving a long thin white contrail that sliced through the clouds
and vanished behind him, then fell swiftly towards the ocean. It was as if the
Gods had hurled a great burning stone into the sea. It's speed was amazing. It
was there and then gone before he had half a moment to think what it might be. Two
other streaks in the sky sped off to the north. There was no planes on earth
that could move at a speed like that, and without making the slightest sound as
they lanced through the sky above.

I've
gone and seen a meteor, he thought, a bleeding, shooting star! Then he looked
and saw another one diving in from the same place in the sky, descending at an
incredible rate, as it looked it might careen right into the ocean well ahead
of the ship. But as it swooped down, to his utter astonishment, the meteor
leveled off and surged right over the wave tops bearing directly in on
Repulse
in a silent, deadly charge. Dumbstruck, he instinctively reached for the phone
mounted on the main mast, but before he could even lay a hand on it something
struck the ship a mighty blow, right amidships, just slightly forward of the
place where he stood his watch.

There
came a shuddering vibration and the ship seemed to rock violently to port,
prompting him to hang on the side railings of his crow’s nest for dear life.
Seconds later, as a column of thick, black smoke broiled up from below, he
finally heard a long descending roar overlaid on the growl of the explosion,
not knowing it was the sound of a hypersonic missile finally catching up with
itself. Alarms were jangling all over the ship, and he looked down to see
engineers quickly donning life preservers and running to the scene of the impact,
the orange red flames licking through the heavy black smoke like the tongues of
hundred dragons.

Down
on the bridge, Captain Tennant never saw the missile as it skimmed in silently
over the glistening sea. Traveling at just under three times the speed of
sound, the P-1000 Moskit-II “Sunburn” was one of most lethal missiles in the
new Russian naval inventory, replacing the P-800 Yakhont/Bramos in 2016. It was
the second missile to bear the NATO codename “Sunburn,” as its design and
performance were much akin to that of its predecessor, the dreadful Moskit-I.

Shaped
like a long, aerodynamic torpedo with a finely pointed nose, it had four small
winglets in an X-scheme at mid-fuselage, with a series of small ramjet engines mounted
between them that gave it the look of a sleek and deadly shark. It's solid
rocket booster would ignite upon firing, followed by two small stabilizing jets
from the nose of the missile, one to incline it towards its target after its
vertical launch, and the second to counter this thrust and keep the missile
level. After these two short bursts, the solid fuel at the rear would rapidly
accelerate the missile, expended in the first four seconds of flight as it
reached its incredible speed of over 3600 kilometers per hour, quickly leaving
the roar of its own engines in its wake. Liquid fuel would then power the
missile along the remainder of its flight path. It would fly at altitude for
all but the last ten percent of its course to the target, then would streak
down to sea level accelerating right over the top of the ocean for the last
deadly run.

It
had been fired by
Kirov
just two minutes ago, gobbling up the 100
kilometers to the target with blistering speed. It could maneuver with precision
and defend itself with a suite of electronic countermeasures as well, but its
job today would not be difficult. It’s target was crystal clear ahead, its
design giving no thought to minimizing its radar cross-sections. It was masked
by no countervailing ECM, no infrared suppression system was in play, and there
was no chaff in the air intend to spoof or decoy the missile away—nor was there
any AA gun aboard the ship with the slightest chance of tracking and hitting it
as it came on its final blistering sprint at Mach 3.0. It was like shooting a
fish in a barrel.

When
the missile struck
Repulse
, it delivered a 450 kilogram, armor piercing
warhead that hammered against a belt of cemented armor measuring six inches
thick just above the waterline amidships. Only her big 15 inch gun turrets had
better protection, though this belt armor was relatively thin for a ship of her
size. Some thirty kilometers behind her by now, the flagship
King George V
,
had armor more than twice this thickness along her main side belts. The
protection given
Repulse
was enough to impede, but not stop, the
missile. It prevented it from completely burning its way deeper into the ship
when the Sunburn exploded, but the remaining load of liquid fuel in its long
fuselage ignited in a roaring fireball. The armor plating buckled and broke,
seared by the explosion and considerable kinetic impact of the missile, which
was enough to send a shower of metal fragments inward to pierce the inner sides
of the hull in places, and claim the life of two Able Seamen who had been in
the wrong place at the wrong time. A jet of flaming hot metal seared through
the breech, and started a major fire.

On
the bridge, Captain Tennant could only think that he had been hit by a torpedo,
and he immediately had his Chiefs check all the watches to see if anyone had
spotted a periscope. Doolan's phone rang and he blurted out his incredible tale
of high flying meteors descending and skipping over the waves. Tennant thought
the man was daft, but yet his ship was on fire, and he was clearly under
attack. The eyes of every watch stander squinted at the horizon looking for any
sign of an enemy vessel, but saw nothing. Then they heard a roar, the sound of
the missile’s rocket engine finally catching up with it, well after it had
already struck the ship. It seemed like the moaning of some demonic, unseen
leviathan.

Captain
Tennant shuddered with the sound and the sight of the awful fire now burning
amidships. When he had taken stock of the situation, and heard from his
engineers below, he turned to his signalman and said: “Make to Tovey on
King
George V
. We are under attack, struck by a torpedo amidships on main belt.
Ship on fire, but damage appears moderate and under control, and we are still
seaworthy. No enemy surface contact, and no periscope sighted. No damaged to engines
or plant, but slowing to twenty knots to assess possible breech below the
waterline. Beginning zigzag pattern for the next hour.”

He
turned and gave the orders to begin evasive maneuvers and scolded his watchmen
to be on the lookout for periscopes, particularly on the starboard side of the
ship where the blow had landed. As more reports came in it was soon made
apparent to him that, while struck very near the waterline, all the damage to
the ship was well above it. Unless this was a new torpedo that could leap out
of the water like a swordfish, the damage had to be caused by something else.