Kirov (60 page)

After
the war it was learned that the only two German ships that might have been in
the area, the commerce raiders
Komet
and
Orion
, had already
replenished and were nowhere near the sighting locations when the three reports
of the suspected “
Hipper
class cruiser” ignited this flurry of naval
activity. The allied forces did not know it at the time, but the day of the
German raider was long over. No German capital ship would ever again break out
into the Atlantic to threaten Britain’s vital convoy lifeline. The odd ship was
never seen again, and no credible report has ever been put forward to explain
the three separate sightings to this day.

Thankfully,
nothing more was seen of the new German wonder weapons that year either.
Bletchley Park concluded that Germany had been unable to enrich sufficient
amounts of fuel to further develop these weapons. Yet the fear that Hitler
would again unleash the terrible rockets and bombs kept Allied scientists busy
in an all out effort to duplicate the weapon and deploy an atomic bomb,
particularly when the V-1 and V-2 rocket bombs began to fall on London again.
Each terrible missile saw the higher ups hold their breath, thinking this would
be the one to ignite a holocaust in London—but it never came. The American
Manhattan Project finished a full year early, in the autumn of the year 1944,
and then the bombs fell on Germany instead.

Remembering
the fate of the
Mississippi
, the
Wasp
, and all those other ships
and men who had died with her, President Roosevelt ordered the deployment of
the weapon in reprisal that very same year. The city of Hamburg was chosen, it
being an important naval facility for the Kriegsmarine, a fitting return, or so
the Americans thought, for the bomb the German navy had flung at them years
ago.

Allied
forces braced themselves for a German counterattack using an atomic weapon, but
none came, convincing them that Germany possessed no further weapons of this
nature. For her own part, the United States had only one more bomb in
inventory, which they dubbed “Fat Man.” Roosevelt then directly warned Hitler that
the Allied armies would not hesitate to use further weapons and destroy Berlin
unless Germany surrendered. Hitler fled to a secret underground bunker, and saw
the destruction of the city before he would countenance surrender. Yet his
Generals, seeing the madness that had come upon the world, and their nation,
finally prevailed and put an end to the matter. Hitler was assassinated in
November of 1944, and Germany formally sued for peace shortly thereafter.

The
Allies were on the Rhine, and there would be no “Battle of the Bulge” that
December. The Soviets had entered Estonia, Latvia, East Prussia and Hungary,
and were reorganizing on the borders of Poland. Roosevelt sent a personal
message to Stalin asking him to stop the war. He refused, but settled for Poland
before he halted hostilities on the eastern front. The cry “on to Berlin”
abated when the Russians realized Berlin was no longer there. The war in Europe
ended in late January of 1945.

Yet
that early ending changed little else in the long, simmering standoff between
the West and the Soviet Union that followed. Soon the Russians had the bomb as
well, and both sides stood a long guarded watch on the years ahead, as
relations continued to slowly erode between them. This time, however, they did
not make it through the minefield of near run military standoffs and nuclear
brinksmanship. This time something different happened.

~
~ ~

Admiral
Volsky
, peered at
Rodenko’s radar scope, his eyes pursed with concern. All of the contacts they
had been tracking were gone on both radar and sonar.

“It
could be a system failure, just as before,” Rodenko persisted. “It took us some
time to recover full sensor integrity after that first incident.”

“I
suggest we get a helicopter up,” said Fedorov, his new position loosening his
tongue a bit and prompting him to voice his opinions without reserve. “They can
get down to the last plotted positions on these contacts easily enough.”

The
Admiral gave the order, and minutes later the KA-226 was heading south. As it
did so the communications and telemetry contact weakened with distance, just as
before, but they were able to maintain a hold on the craft. The Admiral soon
heard what he expected, that there was no sign of the British or American task
forces they had been tracking.

“Perhaps
they made a rapid withdrawal south,” said Fedorov. “We could come about and
steam to Newfoundland. If they are still active in the region we will likely
encounter them. In light of the sea effects we encountered again, we must at
least determine if our position is stable…In time that is.”

“I
want no more fireworks,” said Volsky. “My instincts tell me to turn east into
the Atlantic and head for that tropical paradise, but I will indulge you,
Mister Fedorov. Bring the ship around and head south again. If the KA-226 has
no contacts, have it precede us in the vanguard and overfly this Argentia Bay
where Roosevelt and Churchill are supposed to be meeting. Yet at the first sign
of a potentially hostile contact, I want that helo to withdraw to the ship at full
speed.”

“Aye,
sir.”

Nikolin
radioed the orders and the helo pushed on ahead. It was not long before they
lost radio contact with it, a tense period where Volsky worried that those
planes they had seen were still up and about. The minutes stretched on and on,
interminable. Then, at just after 17:00 hours, Rodenko picked up the helicopter
again on his radar. Soon after it reported in on the radio. Argentia Bay was
vacant and empty. The pilot’s voice seemed strained and worried on the radio.

“We
overflew St. John’s en route to Argentia,”
he said.
“There’s signs of severe blast damage,
and the whole town had been obliterated—not a single building still standing.
We saw nothing moving on the isthmus, and Argentia Bay is completely empty.
There are no ships anchored there of any type. We took HD video and can replay
the file if you wish, Admiral.”

“
Just tell them to return to the
ship. We’ll view the files later.” Volsky looked at Fedorov. “Number One?” The
question in his voice was obvious.

Fedorov
shook his head. “There is no way the Americans could have sailed off that
quickly,” he said. “I believe we have experienced another anomaly, sir. We may
have moved in time again.” The words still sounded preposterous as he spoke
them, but their experience the last week had opened their minds to the
possibility, and it was easier to think and speak of now, yet no less
disturbing.

“But
we still haven’t answered our last two questions,” said Volsky. “Have we gone
further
back
in time, moved forward? How far? And why is this happening
now? There have been many detonations of nuclear devices at sea, and never once
have these effects been reported.”

He
thought for a moment, remembering what Engineering Chief Dobrynin had told him
again. Each time this had happened the ship’s reactors had experienced a
strange neutron flux. Could the detonations be triggering this effect? Was it
being enhanced or enabled by the ship’s own reactor systems?

A
moment of alarm came when Rodenko reported the sudden appearance of surface and
air contacts on his screen—yet they vanished seconds later, leading them to
believe it was nothing more than a glitch in the equipment.

“Well,
sir,” said Fedorov with a shrug. “I suggest we cruise to the American coast, or
perhaps Halifax in Nova Scotia. It’s just a day’s cruise away and it is a
substantial city. I don’t like what the pilot said about the destruction of St.
John. Let us get to a more populous region and do a reconnaissance. And Mister
Nikolin should be monitoring all normal radio bands.”

“I
have been, sir,” said Nikolin. “I can’t pull in anything—not even on shortwave.
I should be able to hear most European stations, and anything broadcasting in
the Americas, but I get nothing at all.”

“The
signals improved after some time before,” said Fedorov. “Keep listening.”

~
~ ~

They
sailed
south
round the cape of Newfoundland, alert for any sign of activity in the sea and
sky around them, but saw and heard nothing—no sign of human activity of any
kind. The men were tired and hungry, and Volsky began rotating relief shifts at
every station, and went so far as to order the ship’s galley to send up food
and several pots of good hot coffee. They passed the Gulf of St. Lawrence and
headed for the coast of Nova Scotia, making for Halifax. The closer they came,
the more edgy the crew seemed to be, though the hot food and coffee helped a
great deal.

Volsky
slept in his chair, unwilling to leave the bridge, and refusing to have
anything to do with Karpov and Orlov for the time being. He would talk with
them later. Fedorov went below for a while, catching a few hours sleep before
returning to stand another watch when Rodenko again reported clear airborne
contacts close enough to be within sighting distance of the ship! This time
Tasarov had similar readings on his sonar equipment indicating the presence of
ships nearby yet, just as the ship’s new executive officer was ready to sound
the alert, the contacts mysteriously vanished again, and the watch settled back
into the long quiet hours at sea. It was a 300 mile journey, and even at 30
knots it would take them ten hours to reach Halifax.

Along
the way the Admiral had Fedorov bring the ship in close to the shore on
occasion, and they scanned the coast with field glasses and long range HD video
cameras, yet saw no sign of activity there. The coast was a maze of small
inlets, bays and islets, sprinkled with tiny fishing towns here and there,
though they could not make out any buildings. They passed Mitchel Bay, Sheet
Harbor, Sober Island and Taylor’s Head without seeing anything of note. There
were no fishing trawlers out to sea, and no sign of life on the coast that they
could discern, but they were still too far from shore to make out much, and
Volsky did not want to expend any more aviation fuel to recon that area.

“Let’s
wait and get down to Halifax,” he said. “Nuclear fuel seems to be getting us
about fairly cheaply. Aviation fuel is another matter. We must conserve as much
as possible.”

Some
hours later they were again surprised by Tasarov’s report of screw sounds on
his sonar. A few seconds later Rodenko confirmed the report on radar, very
close, and Fedorov’s eyes widened when he thought he spotted the silhouette of
a small cutter take shape on the foggy horizon. The contact vanished again,
like a cloud changing shape and dissolving into the mist, but this time they
dispatched the KA-226 scout helicopter to conduct a thorough search of the
area, yet nothing was found.

“Are
we imagining all these contacts?” Fedorov asked. For that matter, he wondered
if the whole scenario was nothing more than a bizarre nightmare of their own
making. When Dobrynin called up to the bridge to report more unusual flux
activity in the reactors, the Admiral seemed very troubled.

“It
comes and goes, sir,”
he said over the intercom.
“Three times now…But things have settled down
again. I note no unusual readings.”

Fedorov
was troubled as well. He slipped quietly over to his old navigation station to
retrieve the copy of
The Chronology Of The War At Sea,
and opened to
August of 1941. His eye was drawn to the odd segment where the allied naval
forces had come to full alert after three separate sightings of a “
Hipper
class cruiser” in the seas near Newfoundland. The ship was reported that way
each and every time, yet it seemed to vanish, and no sign of it was ever found.
His eyes betrayed the depth of his muse, and the confusion as he struggled to
form a clear thought on what he read…was it possible? They had picked up the ghostly
image of ships around them three times now—ships that vanished just as that
Hipper
class cruiser had vanished in August of 1941—three times… He set the book down
and returned to his station, his eyes scanning the seas ahead with a look of
grave concern on his face.

They
caught sight of Devil’s Island and headed for the Inlet that would lead them up
past McNabs Island to Dartmouth and Halifax Harbor. It was 04:00 hours before
they were in the main shipping channel, expecting to see the lights of the city
glittering in the hazy distance, yet a thick bank of fog was on the headlands,
masking all. Halifax was one of the world’s largest and deepest harbors, and
Volsky fully expected to find the answer to at least one of their questions
here. He decided to sail boldly up the channel, fog or no fog. There was
nothing but the coastline return on Rodenko’s screens, and Tasarov heard
nothing on sonar. As a precaution, he stood the crew to action stations, and
was fully prepared to use his formidable 152mm deck guns if they ran into
anything hostile. He was taking the ship in.

Fedorov
knew the place well. “McNabs Island is largely empty,” he said, “But it was
heavily wooded, and I see nothing there at all now. Very strange, sir. We
should be seeing something more at the harbor in a few minutes. This is a very
busy port, particularly in 1941, as it was a major embarkation point for all
the outbound convoys. The absence of shipping in this channel is ominous, to
say the least. There should be steamer traffic, tankers, civilian craft all
about us by now. I don’t have a good feeling about this, sir.”