Kirov III: Pacific Storm

directly toward Kirov, and Fedorov could see that the other planes were on headings intended to cover areas north and south of their position. They considered whether or not to engage at long range, but realized that would simply reveal their position. So they waited, hoping that the enemy planes might not find them, but they were soon disappointed. Three planes began to descend in altitude, obviously getting down to make a possible torpedo run, and Karpov, with a free hand insofar as tactical defense of the ship was concerned, decided it would be best take them out with missiles from the Klinok system. The aft silos were void now but they still had nineteen missiles in the forward deck silos. He used three, downing all three planes at a range of ten miles.

When Number 3 shotai failed to report or return, the Japanese knew they had an approximate location for the enemy ship they had come to call Mizuchi. Yet the commander on the ground at Port Moresby was unwilling to commit more of his precious bombers to a naval strike. His squadrons had not been fully trained for anti-ship operations, and his primary task was to answer the daily bombing raids being sent his way from Cairns, and to soften up the last enemy outpost in New Guinea at Milne Bay. For this reason, he reported the probable location of the enemy ship to Admiral Hara, and let the matter go.

Darkness and rain were welcome friends that night as Kirov completed her hull repairs and eventually got on her way sometime after 21:40 hours. It was slow going at first, ten knots to test the integrity of the hull patch. When it held satisfactorily, Fedorov ordered twenty knots, and then went below to find the Admiral and make a full report. Karpov turned the bridge over to Rodenko as the ship moved slowly south through a warm light rain, into the deep blue Coral Sea.

At that time Hara’s carriers had reached the western approaches to the Torres Straits, and his destroyers were busy sweeping a channel for their passage. With the main Prince of Wales Channel closed by the imposing hulk of Kirishima, an alternate route was sought that night. The Dayman and Simpson Channels to the north were too shallow for the 8.8 meter draft of the carriers so it was decided to risk going south of the large Prince of Wales Island and into Endeavour Strait near Cape York. The Japanese had good charts of the region, and the depth of Endeavor Strait was typically between ten and thirteen meters, enough water to slip the carriers through, though they would come under the watchful eyes of a small Australia Command Outpost on Horn Island.

There Lt. Commander Fenton’s Horn Island Detachment was surveying sites for a possible airfield, guarded by a small militia battalion under Lt. Commander Davies. They got a good look at a small procession of Japanese ships, five destroyers, the heavy cruiser Tone, light carrier Zuiho and then the sleek new fleet carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku. The two other cruisers Nachi and Myoko were able to find passage north of Kirishima’s position, their shallower draft of 6.3 meters enabling them to navigate the waters there better. Far behind, the large battleships Mutsu and Nagato would follow the carriers in time, with another fist full of destroyers.

The men on Horn Island would get a more than a few rounds that night as the price for their front row seat to the parade. They hunkered down in slit trenches with field glasses trained on the glassy sea, sweating it out in the mud and rain as the Japanese fleet moved slowly through the strait. Something big was obviously up if all these ships were moving east, and they made a full report by wireless to coastwatchers on the York Peninsula. Australia Command was soon informed that the Japanese seemed to be moving heaven and earth to get after a mysterious ship that was still at large in the Coral Sea—a ship that had managed to sink heavy cruiser Haguro, leave the battleship Kirishima a burning wreck in the channel, and beat off every air strike the Japanese threw at it.

~ ~ ~

Things were getting very interesting at FRUMEL Headquarters in the Monterey Apartments of Melbourne. Osborne and Novak worked the whole afternoon, taking phone calls from British liaison officers out of Perth that seemed to muddy the water more than anything else. In the meantime, decrypts of Japanese naval signals indicated that the enemy seemed to be extremely concerned about this mysterious ship they had come to call Mizuchi. Osborne and Novak were equally concerned, as there seemed to be no way to explain the ship’s presence, until a strange signal was received from the British near dusk on the 26th of August.

It seems someone had sent a message all the way from Bletchley Park. It hopped into Gibraltar, went out as coded signal to Alexandria where it was relayed to Colombo on Ceylon. From there it was sent to Perth, and then phoned in to Melbourne. The shock was that the British stated their belief that the ship now being scrutinized by FRUMEL analysts had been the same one escorted to the Island of St. Helena, arriving there three days earlier and then simply vanishing.

“Vanishing?” Novak looked at Osborne, clearly astounded. “They used that exact word?”

“They did.”

“The British actually think this is the raider they were after in the Med? My, God, Man. It’s thousands of miles away!”

“7,800 nautical miles, to be more exact,” said Osborne.

“In 24 hours? The damn ship was spotted by our coastwatchers on the 24th. The British have had a little too much brandy, Ozzie. This is nonsense.”

“It came right from Bletchley Park. Hut Four.”

That was enough to give Novak pause, but he was still shaking his head. “Look, you and I both know—”

“Some very big names have signed off on this message, Admiral John Tovey for one. Alan Turing for another.”

“Turing? Well they’ve got it wrong. It won’t be the first time. They kept insisting the Japanese were going to hit us at Pearl, but what came of all that? Nothing.”

“No, but they damn well hit us at Manila, didn’t they, and they’ve been hitting us ever since.”

“That’s another matter,” Novak was adamant. “No ship can move nearly 8000 miles in a single day. I don’t suppose this message cares to explain that little detail, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. But they have their own name for this ship, this sea dragon the Japanese have been after the last three days. They call it Geronimo.”

“Well they can call it whatever they like, it can’t be the ship they escorted to St. Helena, and they’re fools if they think it is.”

Osborne, took a long puff from his pipe, exhaling slowly, and looking at Novak with a serious expression on his face now. “I may be going out on a limb here,” he began. “Ever hear that code name before, Novak?”

“Geronimo? Can’t say as I have.”

“Well I’ve heard it, and it doesn’t surprise me that neither you or anybody else knows about it.”

“What’s so special about you, Mr. Wizard? Where did you get wind of it?”

“That would be telling,” said Osborne evasively. “Let’s just say that the British have held this one close to their chest for at least a year. You know about that incident in the North Atlantic last August, eh?”

“Of course. I knew men on the Mississippi. Nazis made a big mistake setting their U-boat fleet loose on that ship. What did it get them?”

“It wasn’t a U-boat attack,” Osborne said slowly, an edge of caution in his voice.

Now Novak looked over his shoulder at the man, suddenly quiet. Then he turned and pulled out a chair, sitting down and leaning heavily on his elbows, one hand in his dark wavy hair. “Suppose you tell me what really happened then,” he suggested.

“Can’t say as I have all the dope myself,” said Osborne. “But I do know it was no U-boat attack. There was a raider at sea, and the British sortied damn near the whole Home Fleet to go after it. Seems this ship was using some rather formidable weapons—rockets used against both ships and planes.”

“Rockets? Well the Russians have been using them for years. What’s so new about that?”

“The accuracy,” said Osborne slowly. “The impact. These were not like the Russian RS-82 and RS-132s. Not like the British 3 inch rockets, or even our own Forward Firing Aerial Rocket project for ASW work. They were something much bigger, deadly accurate, enough to take out an incoming strike wave of planes miles before it ever got anywhere near the firing ship.”

“I see…” Novak was now very interested.

“Yes, and they had bigger stuff as well. Anti-ship rockets, incredible range, pinpoint accuracy. They walloped