John Schettler: Tigers East

He tells me not to ponder these things, and to leave that part of the mission up to Mother Time. She will get me where I need to be, and she will then put Kirov where it needs to be. Sounds very tidy, but I’m old enough to know things will almost always go wrong if they can. The universe wants chaos.

The missile launch was completed under the grey skies of Severomorsk. That was good. That would keep the prying satellite eyes from looking down and seeing what was going on here. Kazan was out in the long channel soon after, past the last buoy, rounding the rocky headlands as they turned east, and out into the cold of the Barents Sea. It was going to get much colder. There was a lot of ice out there now, and winter was coming again.

Where would he go? A lot may have happened since he fired that last torpedo. Kirov was in the Atlantic then, and would most likely be found there, but he could not know that for certain. Then he realized that all he had to do was run the procedure with that damn control rod, right there, in the Barents Sea. First things first. He would find out whether Kamenski was full of shit or not. He’d run the procedure with Rod-25, and see where he ended up. Then it would be a simple matter to just get on the encrypted HF radio and find out where Kirov was, and who was in command. That would be risky, but it was certainly one way he could quickly locate the ship—he’d just phone home.

His boat was soon under that dark water and taking a route that was well off the beaten path used by most Russian subs. The Americans always had boats of their own out here snooping about, lurking in the grey sea, looking to sniff out the trail of any Russian sub that tried to deploy. He couldn’t allow that to happen this time, and he would rely on the inherent stealth of his boat, and his own considerable skills, to see that he slipped away undetected. Besides, he thought, we aren’t sticking around here long. Even if an American boat did pick up our trail, we’d vanish soon after.

He smiled at that, wishing he could see the look on the US Sonarman’s face when Kazan just flat out vanished, slipped into a hole in the sea and disappeared—back to a time before that young rascal was even born, before any of them were ever born. Even thinking of it now gave him the shivers. And so he would flee now, from the edge of this war to the heart and fire of the last one.

Then he had one of those thoughts that always lurks in the back of every submarine Captain’s mind when he first puts to sea. If Time had issues with Kirov for meddling in the history, might she not also have issues with Kazan? Kamenski seemed to think that Time would cozy up to his boat, welcoming it with open arms. Things were all knotted up, he said, and I’m to be the scissors—and Kazan . He supposed that Time had no problem at all in using him like that—using him like a thief in the night, an assassin, a stealthy Ninja of death. Then that thought arose, like an untucked shirt, a loose shoestring. What will Time do with us after we do her dirty work for her?

Yes, he thought. Suppose I do get Kirov home safely, wherever that might be, and failing that, suppose I kill the damn ship, and everyone aboard her. Then what? I’ll be the last loose end in the loom, the last dangling thread. What will Time do about that? What will that bitch do with Kazan?

HauptmannKarl Linz was a daring man. He had seen what was in front of him on the rudimentary radar set aboard Fraenir . There were two big enemy airships circling about Ilanskiy like a pair of great white sharks. If I can see them, he thought, then it is likely they can see me. Did the Siberians have radar? He would find out soon enough.

Those two sharks had names, Riga and Narva , and they had radar sets as well, though they were only the Topaz equipment Karpov had developed. The really good Oko Panel sets were few in number, and so they were only installed on the T-Class Airships, Tunguska and Baikal . They would see Fraenir in five minutes, and then a pair of fighters would be scrambled from the airfield at Kansk to get out and eyeball the contact. The garrison at Ilanskiy would go to full alert, and crews would soon be manning the heavy flak guns Karpov had set up there.

The two fighters were actually IL-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft, a gift to Karpov from Sergei Kirov’s relocated factories in Siberia. The name literally meant “Storm Birds,” and this plane was produced in the tens of thousands during the war, exceeding the production of any other aircraft in history. Karpov liked them because they were relatively fast, compared to an airship, very hardy, with an armored box protecting the pilot spaces, and they could take MG fire from typical 7.62mm guns and still keep flying. It would take several 20mm rounds to really damage the plane, or a solid hit from a 37mm round, and while the enemy was trying to shoot them down, the Storm Birds would fire back with two 23mm cannons and a pair of wing mounted 7.62 MGs. There was also a bigger 12.7 MG manned by the rear cockpit gunner, and the plane could carry eight RS-82 rockets, or four of the larger RS-132s.

“Enemy aircraft,” came the alert. “Bearing 195 degrees south.”

The ship was already at action stations, all guns manned and ready, and Fraenir was a very well defended beast. The airship had three gondolas beneath the main body where its secondary batteries mounted sixteen Rheinmetall 7.5cm LG 40 recoilless rifles, with an effective firing range of 6,800 meters. There were also another eight Krupp 10.5cm LG 40s, with a range of 7,950 meters, and the 88mm guns were the main battery for long range engagement, four guns in all. There was one each in the nose and tail with 300 degree arcs of fire, and two on the main central gondola, one firing to port, the other to starboard.

Against aircraft, there were three top mounted gun platforms, each with a twin 20mm AA gun. Similar mounts in the nose, tail and lower gondolas raised the count to 18 twin 20mm guns, and there were also twelve twin MG-42s mounted on small portals along the main canvas body on either side of the ship. The Sturmoviks would be too fast to be bothered by the 88s, but all those 20mm cannon were a severe threat.

Both planes came streaking in from above, guns firing until the streams of red hot counter fire began to zero in on their line of approach, whereupon they split apart to divide the enemy fire. One got off without a hitch, but the plane that angled off the bow of the airship saw its wing riddled by a rake of 20mm gunfire, enough to cause serious damage and a fire. The two storm birds had sunk their claws into the behemoth, their own cannon perforating the big flanks of the ship, but the double lined Vulcan sealed airbags survived unscathed. The number six bag on the port side took the brunt of the enemy attack, where two crewmen were killed and a small leak started, but the engineers had it repaired in good time. Only one of the two Sturmoviks made it back to Kansk, the other pilot was forced to bail out and let his plane fall.

Had there been a typical attack group of eight planes flying in their characteristic ‘circle of death’ formation, the Storm Birds might have put some credible damage on Fraenir . And if they had all come with RS-82 rockets, willing to brave those guns to get close enough to fire them, they might have done much more than harm. As it was, the Siberians had too few of these planes, being a backwaters front, with all the production needed so desperately on the real battle front to the west. But they had eyeballed the target, picked at it with their talons, and now the word went to the Captains of the Riga and Narva .