John Schettler - Kirov

“What about the weather, Rodenko? What about that storm?”

“The front is there, sir. Out of the Northeast now. Odd that the winds shifted so dramatically. I was tracking it out of the northwest before that detonation. It seems to have weakened somewhat as well. I make it no more than force five winds. There’s been no signal from the Met on Jan Mayen so I don’t have their readings yet.”

The weather might be a factor in the enemy’s planning as well, thought Karpov. All weather aircraft could launch and use that front to screen their approach. Then again, the carriers might just wait until the front passed their position before they would launch. He had to be ready for either contingency.

Fedorov reported as he came through the rear hatch, saluting. “Permission to resume my station, sir.” He waited, respectfully as Karpov looked his way.

“Carry on, Lieutenant” the Captain said tersely. “And I hope the doctor gave you a good examination, Mister Fedorov.”

The navigator said nothing, slipping quietly over to his post, and appraising the ship’s present position to update his manual chart. He could still rely on radar reports, but thought it best to have a backup in any case. He quickly surmised their situation, and noted that two ships had been detached from the surface contact and were steaming north towards Jan Mayen. That has to be Adventure and Anthony, he thought, remembering the narrative from his history book. They were detached to deliver those mines to Murmansk before rejoining the British carriers. Then he remembered something else from the history. The carrier Furious was supposed to be with them, yet the feed he had from Rodenko’s board showed only two ships had been detached. Something had clearly changed, and that thought gave him a strange, queasy feeling.

They were changing the history!

Somehow the presence of Kirov and the brief, fleeting contact with the British forces had already done something to change the events that were clearly written up in his Chronology of the War at Sea. While the full implications of that were not immediately apparent to him, even this subtle variation seemed deeply foreboding. A hundred questions came to mind, but he pushed them away, unable to deal with them for the moment. Yet the feeling remained with him, an ill-omened awareness that the world was no longer what it once was, what it should be, and that Kirov was somehow responsible.

He said nothing of this to the Captain, holding his thoughts close and busying himself with his navigation plots. Where was the Admiral? Why was he taking so long to return? The answer to all their questions was just a few hundred kilometers to the southwest, on Jan Mayen. When Admiral Volsky finally appeared, Fedorov breathed an inward sigh of relief.

The Admiral had spent the last hour and a half in his cabin reading from Fedorov’s book. As eager as he was to resolve the confounding riddles he had been dealing with these last hours, the lure of the information presented in the volume seemed too compelling. It was as if he had already determined what the most likely outcome of his mission to the isolated island outpost would be, a feeling that he was now actually facing the impossible notion that the world was off its kilter, and that he and his ship had slipped through some gaping crack into another time. If that were so, he wanted to know what the days ahead might hold for him, and Fedorov’s volume was quite enlightening. Finally, his need for certainty outweighed the fanciful thoughts that danced in his mind and he roused himself, returning to the bridge.

“Admiral on the bridge,” said a mishman at the watch.

“As you were, gentlemen,” said Volsky.

Captain Karpov straightened himself and turned to acknowledge the Admiral, leaving his conference with Rodenko.

“We’re twelve hours northeast of Jan Mayen,” said Karpov. “I’ve come to a heading of 250, but Rodenko reports two ships have broken off from the main group and are heading north on an intercept course at 22 knots.”

“They are heading for the island?” asked Volsky.

“Apparently so,” said Karpov. The Admiral seemed surprised by something, though he could not think what it might be. This seemed a predictable tactic in the Captain’s mind and he said as much. “These are most likely radar pickets to screen the main body, sir. We’ll have to be ready to deal with them.”

Volsky glanced up at Karpov beneath his heavy brows. The man was still convinced this was a NATO maneuver, and his thoughts and actions ran entirely along that track. Yet the aggressive undertone in his remark did not go unnoticed. Karpov was plotting out the best way to kill these ships and defend Kirov from any possible attack. That was admirable in one respect, but he knew he would have to keep a firm rein on his Captain if events led them onto a difficult situation.

“I want to get there first,” said Volsky. “Is the KA-226 refueled and ready for operations?”

“Sir? Well, yes, I believe so, Admiral.”

“Very good. I had a chat with Mister Fedorov earlier. Both his GPS and Loran-C navigation links are down and he believes he might be able to re-sync with the facility on Jan Mayen. Captain, please order the KA-226 to be ready for liftoff in fifteen minutes. I’m sending Mister Fedorov over to coordinate…” He allowed a deliberate pause, then leaned in a little closer to the Captain, lowering his voice. “The fresh air may do him some good. But as Norway is a NATO member, I think it wise that we include an armed detachment of Marines with this visit. Do you concur?”

Karpov brightened at that suggestion. “Good idea, Admiral. I’ll have Orlov select the men.” It seemed the Admiral was finding his backbone, he thought. He had considered the possibility that a NATO force could have been operating on the island, complicit in the operation they were dealing with.

“Speaking of the devil…” Admiral Volsky looked for his dour Chief and found him with Samsonov. “Mister Orlov, would you kindly join us?”

“Right away, sir.” Orlov gave Samsonov a reassuring tap on the shoulder and walked briskly over to the Admiral. “How is the headache, sir?”

“Still there, Orlov, but I’m going to see if you can help clear things up for me.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to select a marine rifle squad and pay a visit to the weather station out on Jan Mayen. I’m sending Mister Fedorov along as well. We want to see why our Loran-C navigation feeds are down. Land at the station and secure the complex with your marines. Mister Fedorov will then report directly to me by radio, and if, for any reason, communications are not possible, then Mister Fedorov will document activities there and you will return to the ship as quickly as possible. Is that clear?”

“I’ll see to it, sir. But what are we looking for?”

“Fedorov will handle that. He will direct the initial over-flight and select the landing spot. Understood? And he is to have free reign to make any investigation deemed necessary there. You are to support and secure his effort and make a safe return.” The Admiral gave him the hint of a smile. “One more thing… as the island is officially Norwegian territory, please be polite, Mister Orlov. Firm, but polite, yes?”

Jan Mayen was a bleak Arctic island, shaped a bit like a turkey leg and stretching some 32 kilometers from end to end. The thicker, northern segment was dominated by the Beerenberg Volcano, an imposing 8,000 foot high cone that was entirely covered with ice and snow year round. At the narrow handle of the leg there were flat, featureless lowlands, and it was here that a few hardy souls would hold forth in a small number of scientific and communications facilities.

Once the Vikings had landed here during their wandering exploration of the region. In the 1600’s whalers thought to set up a commercial center there with over a thousand men, and Denmark and Norway haggled over possession of the island until it was eventually abandoned after 1650, left a deserted and desolate frozen rock in the Arctic sea until a weather station was set up there in 1921. When WWII broke out it was home to no more than four Norwegian meteorologists, and their buildings were burned in 1940 when they abandoned the post in fear of imminent German occupation. Deemed “Island X” by wartime planners, Jan Mayen was considered an important Arctic outpost, and by March of 1941 a few meteorologists and Norwegian troops returned to set up a radio relay station and weather outpost again. The Germans bombed the place and occasionally tried to slip a few men ashore by U-boat, but it largely remained in Allied hands throughout the war, the only free Norwegian soil until Germany capitulated in 1945.