John Schettler - 9 Days Falling, Volume I

“See what they can get up from Misawa before that ash fall closes the place down, and anything available at Yokota—and do it now, Boss Man. That last missile just put you and me out of a job. It will be all we can do now to get this big baby to safe waters.”

At that moment they heard a tremendous explosion, and Tanner literally ran to the view ports to look down his long flight deck, thinking they had been hit yet again. It wasn’t long before his Cloud Man reported on the eruption, the wrath of the Vulkans had only just begun.

They pulled in any information they could in the midst of the chaos of the next several minutes. It wasn’t long before the massive column of ash, steam and pumice was seen rising on their northern horizon.

“Holy God,” breathed Tanner to his XO, Skip Patterson. “Will you look at that mess?”

“Nothing we have in the air now is going to get anywhere close to engaging the Russians on that right flank, sir.”

“Hell, we won’t have to lift another damn finger. SITREP had the core of the Russian fleet right in the shadow of that monster. They were no more than thirty klicks south of that island.”

“Looks like this Karpov is going to get a mouth full of smoke and ash,” said Patterson.

“Serves him right. Cagey bastard was thinking to use that initial eruption this morning to screen his task force from my planes.”

“That he did, sir. It split our strike package in two.”

“Well, look at him now. The Russkies are in a world of shit up there. He must have got off that last salvo just before that thing blew its top.”

The distraction actually imposed a strange calm on the bridge, and they stood there for some time watching the skies darkening to the north. Then Ensign Pyle produced a message from Anderson AFB on Guam with more details on the eruption.

“Big seismic signature,” said Tanner. “Anderson says they got a look at it from space. They heard the damn thing go up all the way out on Guam, and the eruption is already over forty kilometers high! It’s pierced the stratosphere all the way to the edge of space. We’ve been ordered to withdraw all fleet assets and make for Guam for repairs. They’ll probably scoot our ass back to Pearl when they see the holes those missiles poked in our side. The ash fall will saturate most of Hokkaido and even reach as far south as the main island, so they don’t want us back at Yokosuka. This thing is big, Skip. Just when we thought to raise a little hell out here old Mother Nature knocks our heads together with something like this.”

“I think we got the worst of this little brawl, sir.”

“That we did. This Karpov beat us to the punch, but we’ve learned a valuable lesson here. I acted on that flash traffic but I was a stupid son-of-a-bitch to do so. We should have coordinated this strike with Nimitz . What we’ve learned today is just how good those damn long range missiles the Russians have actually are.”

“We put up a pretty good score on defense, sir.”

“Not good enough, Skip. We can’t trade a fleet carrier for four or five missiles, can we? Thank God they build these things like a rock. The Russians will take note of this little engagement as well. They threw everything they had at us and still couldn’t put us on the bottom of the sea. But before they have too much time to think about that, let’s move everyone in tight with us and get this old girl pointed south.”

“ McCampbell says they have everyone they could pull off Lassen , sir. She’s still afloat but pretty well gutted above the waterline.”

“USPACFLT wants us to send Davey Jones a present. We’ve got orders to sink Lassen , and that means we gave up two Arleigh Burkes for a couple old Udaloys . We got the short end of that deal too.”

“Aye, sir. But maybe our boys put the hurts on the Russians up north after all.”

“We may never know with that mess out there. Satellites can’t see a thing. We’ll have to see if we can get a sub in there to have a look.”

Before noon that day Tanner was going to find his beleaguered task force in an early midnight. The ash fall was much thicker and more pronounced than anyone expected, and prevailing winds were driving it right in his direction. The skies began to deepen to amber and then sallow gray as the hours progressed. Soon the skies were blackening and virtually no sunlight was getting through the intense clouds of silt and ash. The aerosols would rise into the upper atmosphere and interact with other gases there to form sulfuric acid, which reflected almost 90% of the sunlight away from the earth. It was going to be a very cold winter throughout the entire northern hemisphere, and the year following the last eruption on this same scale was called “the year without summer.” Crops would fail, acid rains and fogs would become commonplace, and the evening skies would be blood red for months on end.

It was as if the world itself had groaned with a roiling song of doom. To a world beset with war and strife, the Demon was a harbinger of the terrible days ahead. It had exploded with a power a thousand times greater than a nuclear weapon, but in spite of that it was the missiles in their silos that were threatening to make an end to the human experiment on the planet, and the clock was still ticking.

When Tanner finally got one last report from a stealthy US sub that had been creeping up on the Russian Red Banner Pacific Fleet, he took heart.

“No news from Key West yet, but we just got traffic from Mississippi ,” said Patterson. “We may just have some bragging rights after all! They say there’s no sign of those Russian ships up north. Looks like this little scrap is over for the time being. They spotted a couple Udaloy class destroyers afloat and running west for Vladivostok. Whether our planes took the rest down or that mountain did it, the good news is that the entire core of their fleet was blown to hell.”

Kamenskisat at the desk, quietly stirring his tea. “So that’s what’s been going on in the Caspian region. How very interesting,” he said quietly. “And you call this thing Rod-25?”

“My Chief Engineer, Dobrynin, calls it that,” said Volsky. “It was a spare control rod for a standard 24-rod naval propulsion reactor. I don’t understand the engineering.”

The two men were sitting in Volsky office at Fokino, speaking quietly, with Inspector General Kapustin sitting with Kamenski opposite the Admiral. The hour was late, almost midnight, and Volsky was weary, disheartened by the lack of news on the fleet and needing sleep. But when Kapustin called again offering to make good on his promise to arrange a meeting with Kamenski, the Admiral decided sooner was better.

“That’s quite an amazing story, Admiral. And you say each time this control rod is used it causes a displacement event?”

“Apparently.” Volsky held up his hands, as empty as his understanding was on the whole matter. “I’m afraid my secrets end there, however. It sounds unbelievable, but I’ve experienced it—lived through things that I could not have imagined just three months ago. We have no idea how or why this happens, but seeing is believing.”

“How very interesting,” said Kamenski. “Controlled displacement…” His eyes seemed distant, thinking, seeing things far away, as if he were considering the vast ramifications of what Volsky was telling him now. Then his eyes brightened, and he turned to Kapustin.

“My good inspector General—you have records on all these things, do you not?”

“Control rods? Why, now that you mention it, yes I do!”

“How long would it take you to fetch information on this Rod-25? Could you tell me, for example, where it was manufactured?”