Kirov III: Pacific Storm

slowly to the forward view pane to look at the sea, thinking he felt a slight shudder, and a ripple of movement underfoot.

“Did anyone else feel that?”

“Yes sir,” said Fedorov. “It was very subtle, and I felt the same thing before those planes came in.”

Nikolin was suddenly alert again, his head cocked to one side, and a perplexed look on his face. “Admiral I… I think I’m hearing something again.” But the signal was gone, an echo lost in the wash of static.

Fedorov had a grim expression on his face. “It isn’t over,” he said. “We’re still moving, pulsing again. Perhaps we have not yet settled into a new timeframe.”

They felt it a second time, a deeper thrum, followed by a slight roll of the ship, as though it had hit an unseen wave and was jostled about, though the seas were still and calm. Nikolin heard much more now, voices and signals quavering in his headset. Rodenko’s Top Mast radar screen seemed to trace out cloudy contacts, but when the line swept around to that point again, the scope was clean. Then his scope seemed to come to life, the signals clear and sharp. Nikolin confirmed that something had happened as well.

“I have heavy radio traffic again,” he said. “Just as I did earlier.”

“Conn… Airborne contact at ten thousand feet and descending. Strong signal!”

Everyone instinctively looked up, as if they expected another Japanese dive bomber to come barreling through the roof of the citadel at any moment. Then Rodenko blinked at the screen. “Wait a second—it’s the KA-40! I just got IFF telemetry and it’s reading green.”

“I had almost forgotten about the helo,” said Karpov. “I saw it fire its air defense load-out at those dive bombers!”

“Contact that helo, Mister Nikolin.” The Admiral came shuffling over to his radio man’s station.

“Mother one to KA-40, do you copy, over?”

They had an answer seconds later.

“KA-40 to Kirov, thank God we’ve found you! Where have you been? We’re running low on fuel. Request permission for immediate landing.” It was Lieutenant Alexie Rykov. He had been top of the duty list for helo operations that morning and had seen the show of a lifetime as he watched the Japanese planes come in for that last attack. He fired off the only four air-to-air missiles he had, then could do little else. When his telemetry link to the ship faded out, his first thought was that Kirov had been hit, but he could see no sign of an explosion below, and the Japanese planes still seemed to be buzzing about like agitated flies. Yet there was no sign of the ship, visually or on his radar. In one heart-rending moment he thought Kirov had sunk, and he had been searching for the ship ever since, long hours, putting sonobuoys in the sea and using dipping sonar in the water, but finding nothing.

‘Tell him to land immediately,” said Volsky. Then he looked at Fedorov.

“Well our little experiment worked, Fedorov, yet not for long. The presence of that helicopter out there tells us we must have shifted back again, yes? Back to the same point in time we have just come from. Surely it did not move with us.”

“I have no further contact on those Japanese planes,” said Rodenko. “My screen is clear.”

“Your radar always acts up when we move,” said Karpov. “The ship is still at alert one. Let’s leave things that way.”

“Probably best, Captain,” said Fedorov, “but I don’t think we have anything more to worry about from those planes. Look at the sun!”

For the first time they noticed that the sun was high in the sky, well past its zenith for the day. The entire morning had passed in less than an hour, lost in the welcome peace and calm of some other era, and they would never know exactly where they had been. Only one thing was certain. The KA-40 could not have moved with them to that other time. It was simply too far away from the ship. But if they were now watching it land on the aft fantail deck, they must surely be back on the date and time they had come from.

It was August 27, 1942, yet they had reappeared seven hours later, at 12:30 hours, and the noon day sun was already falling towards the sea.

Chapter 24

At a meeting of the senior staff in the officer’s briefing room Yamamoto listened quietly to the report made by Kuroshima, his face a mask, eyes set and distant. Events to the east near Guadalcanal had not gone well that morning. The American carriers had been found easily enough, but they had put up a ferocious fight. Admiral Nagumo had been first to reach strike range at dawn, approaching from the deep Pacific but there had been a strange radio communications failure just after sunrise. He had been unable to ascertain the exact position of the Western pincer under Admiral Yamashiro, and even communications at short range to his forward screening force had proved spotty, the airwaves broken up by an undulating wave of static.

Frustrated, he had come to conclude that the Americans must be using some new kind of jamming equipment, and paced nervously on the bridge of his flagship Kaga, trying to decide what to do. He was approaching the northernmost region of the Santa Cruz Islands and, unbeknownst to him, the Americans had been operating several seaplanes from Graciosa Bay off Nendo Island there. His task force had been spotted and a signal sent before his fighters could get to the seaplane and shoot it down. Now he realized that the Americans must know exactly where he was, and that it would be imperative that he get his planes in the air as soon as possible.

The Japanese knew where the Americans were as well, northeast of Guadalcanal, just as Genda had argued. And he had also emphasized the importance of striking first. Yet the two arms of the Japanese pincers were coming from different directions, widely separated from one another, and Yamashiro’s warning to coordinate their operations was also in his mind.

At 05:20 hrs, Nagumo decided he could wait no longer. No matter where the Western Group was, he had to strike now, lest he see the morning skies filled with American planes, catching his own strike wave flat footed on the decks of Kaga and Akagi. It was a fateful decision. Just after his formations finished their launching operations and began winging their way southwest, the alarms rang out. A large enemy air strike was heading his way, and the A6M2s were already scrambling to intercept. But they would not be enough.

The Americans had emptied the decks of all three of their fleet carriers grouped in a tight fist northeast of Guadalcanal. There Enterprise, Hornet and Saratoga stood a worrisome watch over the second day landing operations for Vandegrift’s 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal. Their strike wave was massive and well coordinated, and in spite of a gallant defense mounted by Nagumo’s fighters, it blew through the combat air patrols and soon the air was filled with the gleaming of Dauntless dive bombers as they swooped down on the Japanese task force.

Ten minutes later both Kaga and Akagi were on fire, the latter listing heavily from two torpedo hits amid ships. The heavy cruiser Chikuma had also taken two bomb hits, and two destroyers were sunk. The Kaga was still seaworthy, but her flight deck had been ripped apart by three bombs and the fires had proved difficult to control. It was soon clear that Akagi could not correct her list, and the carrier began to slowly capsize at 06:30 hours, hastened to her doom by a torpedo fired by one of her escorting destroyers. The Americans would not be permitted to take her as a trophy.

Nagumo stared at his shattered carrier division realizing that he now had only the small light carrier Ryujo operational. It had taken one bomb on the fantail, but the damage had been controlled. Neither of his fleet carriers could receive the returning waves of planes, and Ryujo could accommodate no more than thirty aircraft. He had sent eighty strike planes and twenty fighters against the Americans, pleased to learn that they had scored hits on two of the three carriers there, and that a battleship had also been hit. Thirty planes had been lost in the attack, but where would the remainder go? He also had fighters aloft and needed Ryujo for defense operations over his task force, or he would certainly lose Kaga should the American planes return for a second strike. The dogged American Marines had also wrested control of the airfield on Guadalcanal at Lunga, so