John Schettler - 9 Days Falling, Volume I

The previous day his ships had been approached by three American contacts. Tasarov reported a submarine creeping into a position ahead of his flotilla and considered what to do. The sub decided the matter when it launched two torpedoes, both well wide of the mark after Karpov quickly ordered a sharp fleet maneuver to starboard. Kirov killed the sub quickly with a torpedo from a KH-40 helo sent up on ASW picket. With his phobia about submarines still a demon on his shoulder, Karpov wanted no potentially hostile undersea boats anywhere near the ship from that moment forward. Razorback never called home after that.

Then two destroyers must have picked up on the engagement and rushed to the scene, making it obvious they intended to attack, They too were sent to the bottom by a pair of Moskit-IIs. They were followed by two cruiser class ships approaching at high speed, and Karpov had considered what he might do next. He wanted to de-escalate the situation, but the cruisers decided to press the matter and started dropping salvos off his starboard quarter. He answered with four P-900s.

He would say that the Americans were the first to fire, but everyone on the bridge could sense that the Captain had no real qualms about what had happened. Karpov seemed different now, not the man he had become in those long weeks of close cooperation with Fedorov and Volsky. Both had been counterweights to his darker ambitions, and neither man was on the ship now. Only Zolkin remained, but he had been voted down. Somewhere in the Captain’s mind that cold logic was again asserting itself—they could never get home now, not without Rod-25. If that were the case, then this was their world, and Karpov intended to be one of the big fish in the sea he cruised on now—the biggest fish in the sea.

As he watched the American planes approach he was well aware of the danger they posed yet wondered if they were making an attack run here. The memory of those tense moments aboard Kirov after they had first appeared in late July of 1941 was still clear in his mind. He recalled how Admiral Volsky had calmly waited out the approach of that first aircraft, unwilling to fire, and now he thought to do the same. One of the cruisers he hit the previous day had sunk, and there was still a place in his mind, in his conscience, that gnawed at him. He had already put three ships and a submarine on the bottom of the sea, clearly a provocation deserving a strong response by the Americans. But how would they know his ships were responsible? The Americans would be looking for remnants of the Japanese fleet. They would be cautious at first, or so he reasoned.

Another side of his mind argued that if he wanted to take his little fleet down to Tokyo Bay and negotiate, a demonstration of his strength was necessary first. Babe Brown had stuck his nose in the matter at just the wrong time, and he paid for it. But Karpov did not expect that the Americans would be so quick to marshal a major naval force and send it north like this.

“Those planes are getting close,” said Rodenko again. “It will have to be the Kashtan system if we need to engage now, sir.”

“Steady, gentlemen,” said Karpov. “If they wanted to attack they would not send only five planes.”

They could hear the sound of the aircraft now, and Karpov had his field glasses up, preferring them to the Tin Man optical HD camera feeds. The planes came in very low, their engines roaring. All eyes were on the Captain, with obvious anxiety as the noise grew ever louder.

“Steady…” The Hellcats were over them in a flash, their big radial engines growling as they overflew the flotilla. But they did not fire.

Karpov smiled, picking up the handset and calling Yeltsin on the Orlan . “Well, Captain, he said. I hope you had a good look at those planes. Our history expert is not with us at the moment but those were American World War Two era fighter planes, and the contacts to our south will be a fast carrier task force. If you had any lingering doubts as to our situation, this should dispel them.”

Yeltsin was convinced, but there was also an edge of worry in his voice. “I’m not sure I’d let them overfly us again like that, Captain.”

“I’ll handle the matter. Karpov out.”

“They are circling for another pass,” said Rodenko. “They probably want camera footage.”

“Mister Nikolin?” Karpov wanted to know if he could determine what the pilots were saying.

“They seem surprised, sir. Something about a battlewagon… …where are the guns… something about the Russians. One says our ship is too big to be Russian.”

The planes came round again. Then it happened—one of those quirks of fate, a mischance born of emotion and happenstance. A young man aboard the Admiral Golovko was at his air defense action station, and he was manning the manual sighting interface behind a 30mm Gatling gun, a backup precaution in case the ship lost computer control of the weapon. The system was not engaged. He saw no sign that the guns were responding to targeting radars to track the incoming planes, so he naturally assumed the weapon was inactive. He decided to track the approach of the planes himself, just as he had practiced this emergency drill before. It was, in fact, only the third time he had ever drilled at a battle station, which made him as raw as they came. On all of those occasions the rounds were never engaged in the gun firing chambers. So he would practice squeezing off short imaginary bursts at the target drones while other gunners were firing their live exercises on nearby ships.

All he had ever aimed at before were a few floating buoys on the water. This time things were much more exciting. As the Hellcats came in a second time he had his eye on the leftmost plane in the formation, following its approach by centering it in the range finder and the squeezing a trigger he thought was inactive.

It was live.

The AK-630M dual Gatling system suddenly erupted with a snarl of red orange fire and it blew the wing right off the plane he was tracking, sending it cartwheeling into the sea.

“Holy God! They just took down Billy!”

“Son-of-a- bitch . Climb! Get up to angels ten and come three-sixty around the right side.” It was Lieutenant Tom Haley, flight leader, and he was hopping mad. “Anybody get a good look at that bastard?”

“Blue X on a white standard,” came an answer. “That’s not Japanese, is it LT?”

“Not since I last looked, and that was just a few days ago. It sure as hell’s not ours either. So that narrows down the list. Has to be Russian, just like we called it on the first pass. Either that or the Japs are trying to pull a fast one on us by reflagging their ships.”

“Russians? What the hell are they shooting at us for?”

“Hell-if-I-know. But we’re sure as hell going to return the favor.”

“Damn right, sir!”

Billy Watts had been Haley’s sidekick and wing mate for the last six months, and the thought of him in the drink, bushwhacked on a photo run, was more than he could pass on. He pulled hard and banked right, anger in his eyes.

“Let’s give ‘em a taste of our Brownings. One pass. Then break for home.”

“Roger that Comet,” came a reply. Haley’s nickname was an obvious one. “This one’s for Billy.”

“Who fired on those planes?” Karpov was red faced with anger when he saw the American plane go down.”

“It looked like Golovko , sir,” said Rodenko. “AK-630 system.”

“Nikolin! Raise Golovko and get me that young Captain. I’ll stew him for this.” But before Nikolin could raise the other ship, it was clear the planes were coming round again. Karpov turned, snapping his field glasses up to get a better look.