He ran down the long narrow halls and corridors, up a ladder and onto the central deck where Zolkin held forth in his clinic. Usually there would be a line there, but not during battle stations. Fedorov huffed up to the door and pulled on the hatch, surprised to find it was shut tight. Then he heard a voice from the inside, somewhat cautious, yet insistent. It was the Doctor.
“Who is there?”
“It’s me, Doctor. Lieutenant Fedorov. You asked me to come at 1800 hours. If it is inconvenient, I can come another time.”
“Fedorov!” It was the Admiral’s voice. “Look at the emergency hatch latch on top. What do you see?”
Fedorov looked up, shocked to see a small metal padlock slipped through the machined holes in the metal flange to lock the bolt in place. He told the Admiral what he saw, and was ordered to fetch engineers at once with metal cutters or an acetylene torch. What was happening? His mind needed only a few seconds to piece the situation together. It was Karpov, he knew. Karpov and Orlov. They were taking the ship, and god only knew what mischief the Captain had in mind. He had to get to engineering as fast as he could.
Karpov had sealed off the bridge and posted a guard. He checked the hatch latches personally and thumbed off the intercom there to disable incoming calls through the hatch. There was nothing to preclude someone banging on the hatch with a wrench to get attention, but he could ignore it, and it would take time to force the hatch open, even for the ship’s engineers. Time was all he needed now. Tasarov found and killed the enemy submarine, and he realized it must have been a German U-boat.
In fact, it was the boat Fedorov had discussed with the Admiral, U-563, an early arrival with orders to join the Gronland wolfpack forming up south of Iceland, but the boat’s captain had seen something curious that led him astray. He spotted King George V and Repulse hastening west, saw them hit and burning, and came to believe that there must be other U-boats about. Eager to get into the action, he turned west. The British ships were hurt but not sunk, and then made off to the south, but U-563 kept on a course that eventually brought it very near another strange looking vessel, which he tried to engage with a badly planned long shot. He paid for that mistake with his life.
Now Karpov was taking final stock of the situation. He could see that the Americans were getting dangerously close to his ship, yet they did not seem to have very many heavy units in their task groups. He was more concerned about group three on Rodenko’s screen, with at least three battleships, or so he believed. What were the names of the ships? The King, the Prince, and another one. It did not matter. He would sink them all.
“I have been recording signal return characteristics on those units,” said Rodenko. King George V is there again, along with another ship that is nearly identical in its profile.”
“Churchill,” said Karpov, his eyes alight.
“Sir?” Rodenko did not understand what the Captain meant.
“Never mind, Lieutenant.” Karpov decided to engage the heavy British task force he presumed to be the British Home Fleet, ordering Samsonov to fire Moskit-II Sunburns in two missile salvos.
“What about group number one, sir?” Samsonov asked. “It is well inside ninety miles and closing.”
“Those are nothing more than destroyers,” said Karpov. “We’ll deal with them later. For now, target the British-this group.” The Captain pointed at Samsonov’s CIC screen and the weapons officer acknowledged with a deep “Aye, sir.”
The British were steaming with destroyers Icarus and Intrepid, and a screen of three cruisers, Suffolk, Nigeria, and Aurora. Behind them came the battleships King George V and Prince of Wales, with the battlecruiser Repulse at the rear. The missiles would come in on the starboard side of the task force, aiming for its heart.
The first two had been reprogrammed to cancel their terminal sea skimming run, and they plunged down at Prince of Wales, striking her amidships with a thunderous explosion. Her aft stack was blown clean away by one missile, which then went on into the sea in a rain of fire. The second plunged into the heart of the ship, the heavy warhead penetrating four decks and the fuel laden fuselage igniting an inferno at every level.
The next pair fell on Repulse, also from above, where the missiles easily penetrated the thin deck armor, less than two inches at the point of impact. Their heavy 450 kilogram warheads, and the extreme kinetic force behind them, saw both missiles plunge completely through the ship, blowing holes in her hull as they did so. Catastrophic flooding was underway almost immediately. Twenty eight of her forty-two boilers were destroyed in one massive explosion that killed half the engineering crew on the ship. The old battlecruiser floundered to one side, soon settling deep into the water as she began to sink. A massive column of smoke was ejected into the sky above her. Her time had come, but it was nigh at hand in any case, for just a little over four months later she would have met a similar fate, along with Prince of Wales, at the hands of Japanese pilots after having been transferred to the Pacific. The Japanese would not get their chance-with either ship.
Prince of Wales was also wounded and on fire, but still under her own power, with all guns unharmed and ready for action. Yet had the Prime Minister been aboard her at that moment, the Sunburns would have taken his life, striking within a few yards of the state room where he had been quartered. Thankfully, Churchill was hundreds of miles away by now on the cruiser Devonshire, speeding toward his rendezvous with Roosevelt at Argentia Bay.
The next four Sunburns were sea skimmers, again streaking in from the starboard side, and aimed at the vanguard of the British task force this time. One struck the cruiser Nigeria full amidships and blew through her armor causing serious damage. Two more went on through a gap in the formation and struck Prince of Wales, but her heavy fifteen inch main belt was enough protection to save her. The fires amidships, however, were far more severe, and her Captain, John Leach, gave the order to fall off in speed until she was well behind King George V, trailing in her wake near the stricken Repulse. The last of the four missiles struck the destroyer Icarus, which had been leading in the vanguard of the fleet. The damage there was so severe that the small destroyer capsized within fifteen minutes and was floundering in the swelling sea, which became a seething mix of fire and hissing steam as the hot metal hit the cold ocean waters when the ship started to sink.
Admiral Tovey's Home Fleet had been struck a hard blow, decimated by a single barrage of Kirov’s powerful anti-ship missiles. Though King George V and Prince of Wales were still battle worthy, he knew he could not sail on and leave the stricken ships and crew of the Repulse to their fate. The Home Fleet slowed and circled to begin rescue and recovery operations at once while the damage control squads on Prince of Wales desperately fought her fires. If they could be controlled he fully intended to press on with his heavier battleships, though he could see now that even a screen of lighter cruisers and destroyers was of no benefit to him. It was coming down to armor now, he decided. This was a job for his fast battleships. But could he get them within range of the enemy before his ships were pummeled again by these infernal rockets? How many more did the enemy have?
Karpov knew none of this, hearing only that he had scored multiple hits, and determining that some must have caused severe damage when Rodenko reported that the speed of several targeted contacts had diminished considerably. Yet he had expended another eight of his precious Moskit-II Sunburn missiles to achieve these results, and now there were only twenty left in the ship's inventory, the crews below already racing to reload the silos that had fired.
This will not do, he thought. This barrage had wounded the British, to be sure, but the blow was not fatal and the two American task forces to the south had not yet even been engaged. When Rodenko reported yet another contact, a new surface action group coming up from the south very near the British home fleet, the odds began to stack ever higher against him.
“Con, new contact, seven ships, fifteen kilometers southwest of original target.”
Seven more ships, thought Karpov. Seven more. He had twenty Moskit-IIs, ten MOS-IIIs and ten P-90 °Cruise missiles left, just forty anti-ship missiles remaining. Once they were fired the ship's power would be diminished considerably, and Kirov would have to rely on her 152 millimeter deck guns in any future ship to ship engagement, a circumstance that would allow the enemy to come within firing range as well. Her torpedoes were best suited to anti-submarine warfare, and they had already been attacked by one German U-boat. He would need them to counter that threat as well. This was no good. It was simply a matter of math now. He had all of forty missiles, and there were at least twenty-eight ships south of them now, all steaming north hoping to be the first to get within firing range for the vengeance that must surely be burning in the hearts of every man aboard.
Were there more behind them? Karpov’s eyes gleamed, reflecting the milky green phosphorescence of
