John Schettler - Devil's Garden

“Anything on radar?”

“It has not been functioning, sir. We are only now starting to get coastal returns as the system reboots. The sea around us appears clear out to 15 kilometers, and our range seems to be increasing by degrees as time goes by.”

It was just like the slow recovery of their electronics aboard Kirov , thought Fedorov. All the signs were indicating that they had shifted in time, but where? Now that they finally had Orlov, his mission was successful, but did they get back home to 2021? Was the world still there waiting for them? Then he felt compelled to go and see Orlov when he came alongside the facility, and he rushed down to the lower decks.

He soon caught sight of the big Chief, his head crowned with a black Ushanka and wearing an NKVD trench coat like the others. The two men had not seen one another for long months, but it seemed more like the centuries that had separated them. As the Chief came up the ladder Fedorov could not suppress a smile.

“My God, Orlov. You are one hard man to find! Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”

“I knew it would be you,” Orlov said sullenly.

“You knew it would be me? Then why didn’t you make contact? We lost good men searching for you here!”

“That should be obvious. I didn’t want to be found, Fedorov. You’re just going to drag me home to stand at a court martial. The prospect of a life on my own was much more appealing.”

“I’m not here to judge you, Chief. Just to find you and bring you home. Do you have any idea what’s been going on since you left the ship?”

“Of course not! I’ve been dragged from one ship to another, transferred from the Spanish to the British to the Russians and now apparently back to the British again before you came along.”

“Who are these other men?”

“Hell if I know. They gunned down a pair of Marines Zykov attached to me and led me off at gunpoint. I was planning how to ditch them and make another getaway. Then Zykov showed up again. That man is like a bad shadow.”

The corporal smiled at that. “I could smell you, Orlov, even that far away,” he jested.

“Is that so? Well there were three of these others until just a minute ago. You’d better have a good look around, Zykov. You lost a fish! One man probably went into the water when they saw you coming.”

Zykov’s face reddened, and he quickly shouted orders to a handful of Marines, telling them to get out in rubber rafts and search for the man.

Fedorov folded his arms. “Well, what were you trying to pull jumping ship in that KA-226?” He was justifiably upset with the Chief.

Orlov pursed his jaw, expecting this question and ready with an answer he hoped might better his situation. “What do you mean? I didn’t jump ship! They wanted an Oko radar panel up on that mission and the goddamned technicians didn’t have the correct cables installed. So I grabbed the hardware with some tools and boarded the helo to finish the job. The stupid pilot reported a fire on his control panel and it was playing havoc with all our electronics. I was spending too much time on the bridge when this whole thing started. I should have been down below decks knocking heads together. Then maybe the damn equipment would work.”

“That’s why you didn’t respond to our hails?”

“Of course! The radio was dead, Fedorov. That should be obvious.”

“But Karpov said you were deliberately jamming us. I had to have Kalinichev isolate the jamming frequencies to try to track you.”

“Yeah? The system came on by itself. It was probably that fire, but who the hell fired those missiles at us?” Orlov knew the best defense was a good offense. “We were trying to get control of the chopper. I look over my shoulder and see a fist full of S-300s coming at us! Thank God I had the presence of mind to have a chute on and jumped before you blew us to hell. The pilot wasn’t so lucky. Whoever gave that order to fire has that man’s blood on his hands.”

Fedorov was shocked to hear Orlov’s version of those events. The story was entirely plausible. They had reacted to the incident on the spur of the moment, and with the pressure of their race to Gibraltar and the British fleet bearing down on them. He was new to command, somewhat rattled, worried over what Orlov might do or what might happen if the technology on that helo survived intact. He had given the authorization to fire, and Karpov was only too happy to oblige. Now he felt a tinge of guilt over how he had handled the matter. Orlov in a helicopter heading away from the ship was one thing, but seeing him here now put a human face on it all. He looked tired, disheveled, dragged half way around the world from where he leapt to safety, just as he had said.

“We… we didn’t know, Chief. We thought you were abandoning the ship. The helicopter had advanced technology aboard. There was no way we could allow it to possibly fall into the hands of the Spanish or anyone else in 1942. You know what we decided with Admiral Volsky.”

“It was Karpov, wasn’t it? That little bastard had it in for me ever since he tried to take the ship. He wanted to blame that all on me. I noticed how he wheedled his way back onto the bridge in no time at all, while I was rotting in the brig, busted, and sent down to the Marines.” He looked at Zykov now, who had been listening to all of this with some amusement.

“No offense, Zykov.”

“None taken, Orlov.” Zykov grinned. “But you mean sent up to the Marines, yes? I have a bone to pick with you for making me take that damn train ride all the way from Vladivostok to find you here. We never leave a man behind.”

“What do you mean? Vladivostok? You made port there?”

Fedorov took a moment to explain some of all that had happened after the Chief left the ship, and how Kirov eventually returned to Vladivostok. He also told him there was a big war brewing, and possibly underway now.

“It’s too complicated to go into all of it, Chief,” he finished. But we used that same control rod off Kirov to get back here and rescue you. If what you say is true, then there will be no court martial. You can come home, Chief, come home where you belong. There was nothing you would do here but cause trouble, eh? And we’ve meddled with the history enough as it stands. It was my aim to find you and bring you back home. We found your service jacket.”

Orlov laughed at that. “Very clever, Fedorov. I forgot it could track my location. Well I stuffed it down that Commissar’s throat to try and be done with this whole affair.”

“You killed the Commissar?”

“Of course!”

“Why? What did he do to deserve that?”

“What did he do? He bothered my grandmother for starters, and that was enough. You think he was some kind of angel? He was herding young women for Beria-you know the history. I just did the world a big favor by choking the life out of that man, that’s all.”

Fedorov knew that was probably true. Molla and so many others like him had caused nothing but pain and misery, just like those NKVD men Fedorov had confronted on the journey west, and they had been responsible for the suffering and death of tens of thousands. Yet who knows what Molla did to keep the world on the course it was sailing. Killing him, removing him and all his ancestors from the time line was one thing-restoring the lives of all he may have killed, and adding in all their offspring was quite another thing! It had enormous ramifications as to how the history might play out. He tried to explain this to Orlov, but the big Chief just shook his head.

“How many Germans did our boys just butcher with this little amphibious landing, Fedorov? What about them? What about their lives and children and all their grand children as well? Don’t think I’m some kind of madman or monster here. I satisfied myself with Molla; you’ve done much worse. You should have just left me alone here if you were so worried about your precious history books.”