John Schettler - Fallen Angels - 9 Days Falling, Volume II

Halsey was referring to that disastrous battle Sprague had fought off Samar when he commanded Taffy 3 while Halsey had the fleet carriers off on a wild goose chase. It wouldn’t happen that way this time. The Bull was lowering his head, snorting loud, and pawing the ground hard before he charged. But when he did go in, Halsey planned to raise hell over Hokkaido, one way or another.

Karpovreceived the report from the radar man with some gratification. His message had been delivered. Rodenko looked over the contacts and noted that they struck two ships in the core, most likely both carriers. The strike wave had turned back just inside the thirty kilometer mark and was withdrawing south. Karpov ordered all ships to cease fire at once, wanting to conserve as much ammunition as possible.

“Now perhaps they will listen to me when I contact them, and I can get someone senior to this ‘Iron Mike’ on the radio.” Karpov grinned.

“What do you plan to do, sir?” Rodenko was with the Captain in the briefing room off the main citadel bridge.

“A good question. I’ve given it some thought, but as you can see, these are dangerous waters. We’ve let events push us into action sooner than I might have desired. I heard what you said about those early engagements with the Americans in the Kuriles. Perhaps I was rash, particularly with the heat of the fight with CVBG Washington still getting my blood up.”

“I understand, sir. That Demon Volcano shook us all up as well. How did the other Captains come to grips with what has happened?”

“That remains to be seen. They performed well just now, particularly Orlan , but I can imagine they are all still scratching their heads and trying to figure this whole situation out. At the moment, they are doing their duty under extraordinary circumstances, but this last engagement was mere target practice. We aren’t facing supersonic jet aircraft and fast moving missiles now. The planes here are like drones—slow and witless. They have no ECM to speak of, and we can start jamming their radar in the next few hours, for all the good it does them now.”

Rodenko thought about that. “They came because of what they didn’t know,” he suggested. “Their scouting detachments ran into trouble, and this seemed more like a reconnaissance in force. But sir, Nikolin picked up some radio chatter. The American attack was called off by their Fleet Commander.”

“Yes, Admiral Halsey. You’ve heard the name. Halsey, Nimitz—these are the men they name ships for, even as we choose our old admirals to do the same. Well, they’re up against more than they realize now. At least they came to their senses and called off that attack. This gives me hope that we might be able to talk some sense into them now.”

“But what will we say, sir? Are you going to present yourself as affiliated with the Soviet government here?”

“Another good question,” said Karpov, quickly. “The Soviets would deny this, of course, unless we contact them first and come to some arrangement. But I do not think we could be very persuasive to the powers that be in Russia now without putting in an appearance. We would have to sail to Vladivostok, and it would be just like the nonsense we went through earlier. They would send officials to look us over. They’ll want to ‘interview’ us; find out who we are, where we came from. Our ships would certainly raise some eyebrows, eh? We would have to reveal everything to gain their full cooperation. It could take months and I’m not about to stand for that any longer.”

“I still don’t understand what we are doing then, Captain.”

“Perhaps I don’t either, Rodenko. But my guess is that the Soviet government will not believe a word of what we might tell them. They will only believe what they see. They understand power, and they definitely understand how to use it to get what they want. I can show them power unlike anything they can imagine. The same may be true for the Americans here. We just showed them that they can’t send in a wave of strike planes and win the day. We showed them how vulnerable their precious carriers are now. They are dealing with something extraordinary, a force to be reckoned with, as they might put it. I want them to stew in that borscht for a while, and we might have to make a further demonstration of our power before we can get them to back down here and listen to our demands.”

“Our demands, sir?”

“In the end we will have to support the Soviet government in this post war environment. How can we do anything else? It’s our country. Stalin may be the great dark shadow on the land at the moment, but Russia survives Josef Stalin, and all the others. The question is this—will Russia survive NATO and that damn war we found ourselves in before that volcano sent us back here again? What do you think the allies were doing when we first showed up here? Churchill and Roosevelt were planning a secret meeting at Argentia Bay that would end up forming the basis of the NATO alliance. They called it the Atlantic Charter, and you will take note that Stalin wasn’t invited. And what are they doing now? At this very moment the Allies are getting ready to set their watch on Russia and stand behind the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall until they come tumbling down and they finally go after us in our day. I’ll tell you this, Rodenko. The world once thought we built those walls to keep people in and control them. The fact is that we built them to keep the Americans out! We’ve seen it, Rodenko. We know what they’re going to do—all of it. There will be the big standoff over Cuba until Khrushchev backs down, and then they’ll bleed us in Afghanistan, ride us and harry us until the old Soviet system finally collapses. But now we have the power to change all that.”

“Do we, sir? I mean no disrespect of course. This ship certainly has power unlike anything in the world. But that power has limits as well as potentials. Orlan took the burden and fired thirty missiles in that engagement. They have 150 SAMs left in inventory. We fired sixteen medium range SAMs just now and that leaves us with 168. After using those four P-900s we have 30 SSMs remaining. Those aboard Golovko and Orlan combine for 32 more. We may have hit and badly hurt a ship just now. But it took multiple hits. And remember what happened during that fight with the Japanese battleship?”

“Yamato? Yes, that was quite a battle.”

“We hit that ship with eight missiles and two torpedoes, and it still survived the battle to fight later in the war! Well I think the Americans have battleships here too, Captain. There are at least two in this task group approaching us.”

“Yes, the obvious limitations of our conventional weapons will begin to weigh on us if this thing draws out much longer. We can hit them before they even know where we are, and very hard, but only for a limited time. So we are faced with the very same decisions we debated earlier. We either run out to sea and try to get away from the allied navies here and hide somewhere, or we do something with the power we have in hand at the moment, limited as it may be. We have what the American President Theodore Roosevelt might call a very big stick. I intend to speak softly in the beginning, but if I have to raise my voice to be heard, or use that stick, I intend to do so.”

“Yet look what happened before, sir,” Rodenko suggested plaintively. “We even used a nuclear warhead, and I say we used it, not you alone, sir. I was on this ship—on the bridge here, and I did nothing to impede that. I’m as responsible for what happened as you are, so I don’t raise this point with any recrimination in mind.”

Karpov wasn’t sure he took much solace in that, though it seemed that Rodenko was saying it that way to sweeten the tea they were now drinking together. “So what is your point?”