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  The real chill, however was that sighting report which was just called down from the top watch. Two cruisers and a destroyer? More like two battlecruisers and a cruiser, he knew. The Germans won’t have any destroyers out here, so those two bigger ships will be Salmon and Gluckstein, the Twins, or possibly two of the pocket battleships. Either way you slice it we had best be sharp eyed and ready. The ship is scheduled to get the new Type 286 radar in just a few months time, but we’ll have to rely on the old fashioned methods until then, a man on the mainmast and four eyes on the bridge.

  By the time they saw what was coming it was almost too late. The Sunderland seaplane had reported a contact and now the pallid horizon seemed to darken with a smudge of charcoal at one point. Captain Madden was experienced enough to take a good long look with his field glasses. Those were ships ahead, and now he was in a most uncomfortable position.

  “Signal Manchester and see what they find at about fifteen degrees north,” he said quietly to his senior officer of the watch.

  Time passed and the runner from the W/T room was up with the news. “Manchester confirms our sighting, sir. Three ships.”

  “Then get that off to Home Fleet on the double, and signal Captain Packer that I want to stay on this heading as long as possible to try and confirm the sighting. I doubt if these are cruisers as the Sunderland had it. The ship will come to action stations.”

  “Aye sir. Action stations!” The bells clanged right after sending booted feet thumping on every deck of the ship. Men were quickly donning life jackets, anti-flash aprons, steel helmets, gas masks. The fire parties were rolling out the hoses, ready ammunition was being fed to the guns and the turrets were soon training on the distant targets.

  The weather was lowering, ragged clouds sweeping up from the east where far off Greenland sat in white ice-encrusted silence. Bold of them to come barreling right down the strait, thought Madden. They can see us now, plain enough. But with this weather closing in they won’t see us for long, nor we them. In twenty minutes it’s going to be thick out there.

  Visibility was already falling off, though the converging courses had closed the range to shape the distant shadows into tall battlements of steel. Then the grey mist shrouded the sun for a time and they darkened again.

  “Range, Bobby?” Captain Madden shouted the question to his Senior Watch Officer, Lieutenant Robert Ward.

  “I make it a whisker over 21,000 yards, sir.”

  ‘Too far for any gunnery with this weather coming in.”

  “Aye sir.”

  The 6-inch guns on the two light cruisers weren’t going to hit anything at much over 15,000 yards, even though the guns could range further. The barrels would have to elevate past 13 degrees to fire even that far, which began to slow the rate of fire, as they had to be lowered again below twelve degrees to be reloaded.

  “Let’s come ten points to starboard. Signal Manchester to follow.”

  He was heading east, away from the weather to keep eyes on the sighting for as long as possible, but it was a decision he would come to regret, for it kept the enemy eyes on him as well. The wink of light from the squarish shadows at the edge of the sea told him their visitors had fired. Ward saw it, looking over his shoulder, field glasses in hand.

  “Incoming fire, sir.”

  “Noted.” Captain Madden knew it would be nearly a minute before those shells would fall, and he did not expect them to have the range, but he was wrong. Three waterspouts bloomed up off his port bow, short but uncomfortably close. He looked over his shoulder to see shells fall near Manchester as well.

  “Bloody good shooting for the range,” he said aloud. “Starboard ten again.” He was moving the ship to a new heading, just in case, but Manchester was slow to correct their course and follow. Cold fingers laid out the signal on the lamps even as lights winked again from the distant shadows. They heard a dull rumble of thunder, but it was not the weather. A second salvo of 11 inch shells were in the air and heading their way.

  “Midships and ahead full,” Madden called.

  “Ahead full, sir!”

  The forty seconds from fire to shell fall seemed interminable, but the gouts of water were soon in his foaming wake, and had the ship been there a moment longer, it might have been hit.

  “Well gentlemen,” said Madden. “The better part of valor here is to put some range between us and those ships. Their optics seem to be well polished today. Make smoke and turn on zero-nine-zero. Signal Manchester the same.”

  “Sir, make smoke and come to zero-nine-zero, aye.”

  But Manchester would not get the message in time. Instead she would get an 11-inch shell right amidships, between her two funnels, and it would sheer off a crane there before plunging into the guts of the ship, through storerooms, mess halls, bulkheads and quarters until it exploded in a broiling fire. Smoke emerged as if from a third funnel, and the ship made a sudden turn to starboard, coming around hard to present her backside to the enemy, still running hard.

  Madden saw the maneuver and decided to match it, bringing Birmingham around even more as a final salvo came hissing in through the char smudged skies, thankfully short again.

  “Well now, we’ve certainly been handed our hat this time around. Signal Manchester and ask if they can still keep up their speed.”

  The news that came back was not encouraging. The fire had spread to involve the number two boiler room, and Manchester was down to 28 knots, laboring to make even that. Madden decided to steer for the weather, turning both ships full about and then south by southwest, into the edge of the oncoming front. For the moment the enemy fire had abated, and the British cruisers were still well out in front, but now the tables had been suddenly turned and the hunters had become the hunted.

  He slowed to 28 knots to keep apace of Manchester, knowing that if the Germans wanted to burn the fuel, they could work up to 32 knots and slowly close the range. It was going to be a very dangerous evening.

  “How far off were those brigands when they made that hit, Mister Ward?”

  “I made the range about 18,600 yards, sir.”

  “Damn good shooting. Let’s let Admiral Holland in on our embarrassment. Tell him we’ve three wolves on our heels and send our present heading and speed. Any assistance he might render would be much appreciated. And amend that Sunderland sighting report. Simply say we are under fire from 11-inch guns. Let the Admiralty decide which ship is firing at us.”

  Captain Madden looked at his watch. If they come full out, he thought, then they could shave 8000 yards off our lead in an hour. In that event these will be the Twins. The pocket battleships can only make 28 knots and could not close on us if we keep up this speed. We’ve no radar and visibility will be down to twenty cables or less in another ten minutes from the look of things. But I doubt they’ll come full out. As long as Manchester can keep up speed we should be safe, and it would be easy to lose them in this weather-but damnit, that wasn’t my job! I was here to find them, and that I’ve done. Now how to best get round behind them and become a shadow when they have the speed to turn and engage us at any time?

  Let’s hope Holland isn’t too far off.

  Chapter 20

  Denmark Strait ~ June 16, 17:30 hrs, 1940

  Rodenko saw the action unfold on radar, calling Fedorov to his side so they could plot the positions on the electronic situation map.

  “It looks like a pair of British cruisers have run into something to the north,” he said. “See these residual signal tracings? Those are gun shells in flight. There’s a battle underway.”

  Fedorov had been reading up on the general situation, knowing that none of that history might matter, but it at least gave him a template of sorts. “My guess is that the Germans are trying to push a couple raiders through,” he said. “Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would have to move quickly to be here after the conclusion of the British evacuation of Norway. Nikolin and I have confirmed that happened roughly on schedule. In that event those two ships would have mov
ed to Trondheim, and Scharnhorst was supposed to be meeting up with a repair ship to fix torpedo damage. Yet those details can’t be confirmed. They weren’t supposed to make their breakout attempt into the Atlantic until January of 1941, so if I am correct then things have changed here. How many contacts north?”

  “Three. Two with a little more return integrity than the last.”

  “Then I’m guessing two battlecruisers and a cruiser, most likely Admiral Hipper.”

  “Note these two contacts coming up from the south.” Rodenko pointed out the position on the map. “They’re about 250 kilometers southeast of our position at the moment and making 30 knots.”

  “Thirty knots? Then they will be fast cruisers or battlecruisers.”

  “Their return characteristics would argue the latter,” said Rodenko.

  “The British had Hood, Renown and Repulse capable of making that speed, but nothing else.” He turned to Admiral Volsky now, explaining their analysis and briefing him on the situation ahead.

  “It seems we’re sailing right into the middle of a battle here, sir.”

  “What is the situation with those two cruisers?” Volsky was seated in the Captain’s bridge chair, and now he swiveled to face the younger officers. Is the fight still underway?”

  “I think the gunfire has concluded for the moment according to Rodenko’s signal analysis.”

  “And how far off is that fight?”

  “Just under 100 kilometers, sir. The British cruisers are moving on a heading of 260 now, running west towards Greenland, but that will bring them right across our bow if we stay on this heading. The German ships have gained on them slightly, but not by much. As things stand adding our speed and theirs we’ll encounter the British in an hour.”

  “Plot a course to evade that encounter, Mister Fedorov.”

  “We could run due east, sir. There’s plenty of sea room there as we are still at least 300 kilometers from Iceland on a heading of zero-nine-zero.”

  “Make it so. I think we will watch this one from the gallery for the moment and then see if we can slip out of the theater unnoticed.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The drama unfolding soon took another turn, however. Rodenko noted that the speed of the British cruisers suddenly fell off to 20 knots.

  “There’s no reason for that,” said Fedorov, “other than battle damage.”

  “It looks that way, sir. At their new speed I calculate the Germans are gaining on them at a rate of 10 knots per hour now. But what is interesting here is that they have just made a course correction to intercept the new British heading.”

  “In this weather?” Fedorov folded his arms. “Your situation plot shows those cruisers in the thick of that oncoming front.”

  “Correct. It looked to me as though the British were steering to try and side-slip the Germans and let them pass them by in the storm, but the Germans just came ten points to starboard. They could just be steering to take advantage of the weather front for cover, but something tells my radar nose that-”

  “They are tracking them…very strange. The German ships had Seetakt radar on the battlecruisers. Both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were equipped with two sets of that system on their forward and rear gun directors. They thought its primary use would be for gun ranging, not surface search.”

  “They may have already put it to good use,” said Rodenko. “That initial action was at over 18,000 meters.”

  “Seetakt sets could range from 14 to 25 kilometers depending on conditions.”

  “If they are tracking them then they’ll catch those cruisers in less than an hour at this rate, Fedorov.”

  “We could balance the scales a bit here and see about jamming that German radar.”

  Volsky raised an eyebrow at that. “You are suggesting intervention, Mister Fedorov?”

  “Well, Admiral. We are here for the short run, and possibly for longer than we may know, and we are right in the middle of the soup. We will have to discuss and decide that question, because I feel it will be decided for us soon if we do not act on our own.”

  “Probably true,” said Volsky. “I would prefer to choose a friend here before one side, or both, make us an enemy. Karpov was of the mind that the British were our real enemy, along with the Americans. He lectured us at length about the cold war and its oppressive effect on Russia.”

  “On Stalin’s Soviet Russia, sir. But we have still not heard a whisper of Stalin’s name. remember that now it is Sergei Kirov’s Russia.” He said that with an enlivened tone, as if he found hope in that prospect that the post war history could play out differently and that Russia and the West could become friends instead of enemies frozen in the chill of the long cold war. If anything that might be the one thing that could prevent the war they found themselves facing in 2021. Perhaps this was the only way to achieve what they hoped all along.

  “I will say one thing,” said Volsky. “We certainly cannot side with Nazi Germany, so that narrows the decision here somewhat. Do you agree?”

  “I would, sir.”

  “Rodenko?”

  “Admiral, if we must intervene in any way I cannot see the ship supporting Germany, particularly if they do attack Russia again in this war.”

  “And if we are to make friends on these seas the Royal Navy would be a good place to start,” Volsky concluded. “Very well. See if we can assist these two cruisers and jam that German radar.”

  “Any idea what frequencies I should target, Fedorov?”

  “Give me a second…” He was already working on his pad device, calling up facts and figures from the war. “Here it is. The Seetakt radar operated at 368 megacycles, initially at 14 kW, though the sets were upgraded to operate at 100 kW on the 80 cm wavelength.”

  “Good enough. They’ll be blind in ten minutes. Just let me recalibrate our jamming equipment.”

  They turned on 090 east and soon found they had broken through the weather front where the British were hiding, though the lowering sun was still masked by the heavy cloud. The rising sea had a dull gleam of polished steel, and the tang of coming rain. Temperatures were dropping ahead of the front, promising a cold night ahead.

  Admiral Volsky was out the weather bridge where he had been watching the sea alone for the last ten minutes. He could still see the stain of dried blood there, and made a mental note to have it cleaned, but the sight of it brought Karpov to mind again.

  So, Vladimir, we have made a choice you may not have agreed with here, he thought. You were adamant that the British and Americans were our enemies, and every intervention you made was aimed at trying to defeat them. But as you have seen, these are nations destined to rise on the world stage, and not so easily cowed. Suppose now there is a man in Moscow that Churchill and Roosevelt might trust and not also fear as they did Stalin? Suppose that man is Sergei Kirov, and that he is there because of Fedorov’s lucky chance and his quiet whisper to the man at that railway inn? Suppose we save these two British cruisers from harm here and make amends with the Royal Navy? This war does not have to end with an Iron Curtain dividing East from West and fifty years of cold enmity. What if we see that does not happen by making a friend here, and not trying to crush the British as an enemy?

  You may have had something to do with this all along-you and Orlov. Something tells me he bore you no good will after that first failed attempt to take the ship. I gave you my forgiveness and a chance to redeem yourself, but Orlov’s lot was demotion and a posting to the Marines on the Helo deck. I wonder what really happened on that KA-226? What was Orlov doing there? Was there really a fire, or was he trying to jump ship? One way or another, the dominoes fell. Fedorov went after Orlov and now look at us, and look at the world that resulted from that mission.

  He breathed in deeply, smelling the rain coming, the cool texture of the air, a sailor’s rain. It would not be a bad storm. His tooth told the tale, and it was not throbbing as it might in a real cruel low pressure zone, with the wintery blast of an icy wind at the lead
ing edge. No, this is around a thousand millibars. Just a typical low coming in from the west. But it will rain tonight, and the air smells fresh and clean, does it not?

  The farther north they went, the more the air seemed to carry the scent of home. Kirov was like a salmon, swimming upstream again to the place it was spawned, returning home, battered, weary, but home. It was a last brave struggle to fulfill some unseen destiny, just as that salmon came home to spawn again. What will we give rise to if we keep to this course, he wondered?

  He passed a moment thinking of his wife, not yet born in this reality, yet somewhere in a future he might never see again, sitting quietly by the fire at home with her tea and a book. We give up so much to go to war, he thought. So very much…

  He came in through the hatch, his nose red from the cold, reaching in his pocket for a handkerchief. The bridge crew was quietly at work, selfless, dutiful, yet obviously having thoughts as he might. They, too, had left wives, children, lovers, girlfriends and everything else behind, sailing out to what they thought would be a routine cruise, just a simple live fire exercise and then a long pleasant cruise to Vladivostok. Well, we had to take a few detours along the way. God bless these men, he prayed, and help me keep them from harm.

  Fedorov came up to greet him. “We’re running on a converging course to those two contacts coming up from the south, Admiral. I suggest we come either east or west to avoid a collision.”

  “Use your best judgment, Mister Fedorov.”

  “Then I will turn on 305 degrees, sir. That will take us into the storm and towards Greenland. The chance we might be sighted visually again would be much reduced.”

  “Do so,” said Volsky. “Who might be on those ships of any note, Fedorov?”

  “If you’d like to scout them with the KA-40 I could give you a much better answer, sir. They’re about a hundred kilometers southeast of us now.”

  “Do they have radar as well?”