John Schettler - Steel Reign

“You stinking piece of shit!” Molla swore at Orlov now. “Tell me… Which eye should I put the first bullet through?” He raised his pistol again, pointing it right at Orlov’s forehead.

“Tell me,” Orlov said darkly, looking him square in those icy black eyes. “How long can you breathe when I get both hands around your neck?”

It was very difficult to speak while you were choking, and that was what was happening to Molla now as he listened to Orlov’s last taunting rebuke.

The big Russian had moved so quickly that the Commissar could not even squeeze the trigger of his pistol! In an instant Orlov batted the weapon aside with a sweep of his arm and had a murderous hold on the other man’s neck, forcing him back on the desk where he had been sitting and tightening his big hands on the man’s throat. Molla’s pallid cheeks quickly reddened as he strained for breath….

“My God! Fedorov….” Orlov gave him a look of profound amazement. Molla! Yes, I know the man. I hunted the bastard down—choked the life out of him for what he did. Then, the next thing I remember I’m on some kind of….” He hesitated, as if struggling to recall something, the memory right at the edge of his mind, yet wreathed in shadow. “You came back for me!” The Chief pointed a thick finger at Fedorov, a look approaching anguish on his face.

Fedorov was watching him very closely, a light of excited awareness in his eyes. Orlov remembered! He was aware of experiences he lived through after he jumped ship. He knows!

KapitanFalkenrath and the Goeben steered south until they were certain they had evaded their enemies, then slowed to 12 knots. On the night of the 27th of February, he turned east, intending to creep silently towards the coast of Africa again, which he approached on the fateful morning of the 28th. He had a sense that something was amiss, a strange quavering in the air that day, and an unaccountable disturbance that he could not put his finger on. It was the initial eruption of Krakatoa, and though he was much too far away to hear it, the shock wave that shook the atmosphere was something perceptible to all the men on the ship. One thought he felt an odd vibration, another was strangely seasick, thinking it no more than a bad bit of beef at breakfast.

Now the ship turned northeast, following the coast up toward the German airfield at El Aioun, which promised to have air support up to cover his approach. In the meantime, Captain Sanders had searched fruitlessly to the north and west, until he ran up close to the island of El Hierro in the Canary’s. His quarry had eluded him, and Tovey ordered his cruisers to return to the Azores to have a look at the damage put on Sir Lancelot by Hans Rudel’s dramatic attack.

As for Rudel himself, he turned and headed for the African coast, even though he knew he would not have the fuel. What he wanted to find now was a U-boat, for if he had to ditch in the sea, that was his only chance at being rescued. With the weather bad, his chances were slim. A lot of U-boat Kapitans would submerge to avoid the pounding heavy seas could deliver to their boats. So Rudel knew his best chance was to find clear skies, and luck was with him that day. He broke out of the worst of the storm, continued east, and found a nice wide glistening patch of open sea.

If anyone was in the vicinity, this would be a perfect place to surface and take on fresh air after the storm, and that was what Kapitan Karl-Friedrich Merten was doing that hour. Rudel spotted the U-boat, and made a slow approach, but he knew he had to get them on the radio before they saw him. He managed to do that just as the top watch spotted his plane, and was reporting the alarm to the Kapitan.

“Aircraft spotted sir! Coming in low from the west.”

His first Officer, Oberleutnant Albert Lauzemis, made ready to order the dive, but Merten stopped him. “It’s one of ours,” he said, and sent 2nd Warrant Officer Werner Happe up with a team of divers to see about fishing the pilot out of the sea.

Rudel overflew the U-boat, his wings wagging in greeting. Then he flew a slow, lazy circle before he opened his canopy and bailed out, landing very near the u-boat, his parachute a wet deflated jellyfish on the sea. The divers got to him in a small inflatable rubber boat, and he would live to fight another day.

“What in the world are you doing out this far?” asked Merten.

“Hunting the British,” said Rudel. “What else?” He told them his story, and all the men listening were quite impressed.

“Well,” said Merten. “You can hunt with us for a while if you like. Our mission is to interdict the waters in the approach to Lagos further south.” Rudel was going on his first, and last, U-boat patrol, but a signal was sent to Group West informing them of the rescue operation.

Marco Ritter had been very glum for a few days after he made landfall, thinking Rudel had met his fate in those stormy seas. He eventually transferred to the Prinz Heinrich , operating east of Lanzarote, and that was where he heard the news.

“They found your protégé,” said the Kapitan. “U-68 picked him up and he’ll be on patrol with them for some time. But he gets a nice free ride all the way back to Lorient, assuming that U-boat makes it safely home.”

Ritter smiled. “Don’t worry about that, Kapitan. With Hans Rudel aboard, that boat is charmed. They’ll make it home.”

And they did….

The Goeben made it safely to the German controlled coast as well, and Falkenrath took it quietly north to Casablanca, arriving with barely enough fuel to keep his screws turning. He was very pleased to see the Kaiser Wilhelm anchored in the port, and they also had news that Detmers on the Kormoran was still at sea, undiscovered, but making steady progress north.

Now the Germans had two of the three great prizes they had obtained in the deep South Atlantic, and days later Admiral Raeder sat down to his dinner with Kapitan Heinrich, soon to learn the world was not what he thought it was.

Raederwas quite surprised to see the material Heinrich had in that brief, reports, charts, logbooks from an American ship, the USS Norton Sound . He would make a point of looking it up, and if it was not found in the index of known enemy warships, he would ask Naval Intelligence to look deeper. What was odd about the material were the dates.

“These can’t be accurate,” he began, even as Detmers had initially dismissed the possibility that the information could be authentic. Heinrich did not argue the matter. Instead he merely placed more and more material on the table, like a man revealing one piece of some elaborate puzzle after another. As time passed, and Raeder continued to study the documents, he saw how completely consistent every page was, every report and chart.

“1958?” he said with a wry grin. “Someone has a ripe sense of humor.”

“That is what I first thought,” said Heinrich, “but the documents were all stored where one might expect them, Chart Room, Log Station, Captain’s Ready Room. If it was all theater, it was certainly an elaborate performance. There were no other documents but these on that ship. Nothing ‘normal’ to offset the sheer weight of all this material, which is entirely consistent in depicting the date and time of the events described as occurring in 1958.”

“I could have a clerk type up more of the same in half an hour.” Raeder was not yet convinced, preferring to conclude this was some Allied special operations ruse. But there was more to the story Heinrich was telling him now. “You say you fired on this aircraft carrier.”