Kirov Saga Men of War

Chapter 27



Karpov stared at the page Fedorov handed him, still reading, a look of shock and amazement on his face.

“Fedorov, are you reading this? Are you listening? I know you must have spent many long nights in your search. Well here I am! Yes, Gennadi Orlov, the Chief, the one who bruised your cheek that day in the officer’s mess. Here I am at Kizlyar, out here in the middle of nowhere, and back on a truck for Baku. I came to find my grandmother, and to see her in all her innocence and youth before she went north and Commissar Molla put his hands on her, but I was too late. I will find him soon enough, and kill him before he ever gets the chance to set his eyes on her again, but we ran into some trouble. The Germans! Sookin syn!

I’m with Beria’s men, and I don’t think they like my story, or the NKVD badge on my hat. They couldn’t find me in their book of names. So they gave me an interesting choice—either to die as a deserter or return to the work crews at Baku. I chose the latter, and the Germans sent us on our way. Svoloch! Something tells me I’m headed for a good long stay in Bayil. I always did have a Bolshevik heart. It’s not that I am not afraid to die. I worked my ass off in the service because I love my people, my country, my Motherland. I want to tell my comrades in arms that I have never known cowardice or panic. I left you all to find a life here on my own, and one I never could have before. I do not know what may have happened to you and the ship and crew I once served. My dying wish is that you destroy our enemies once and for all. Be heroes, be valiant men of war so that history will remember you as defenders of the Rodina. Should you ever find this, and learn my fate, I hope that you, courageous Russian sailors, will avenge my death.”

—Gennadi Orlov, 30 September, 1942



Karpov folded the paper solemnly, slowly handing it back to Fedorov. “So Orlov finally found his backbone.”

“I found references to that action at Kizlyar, but it wasn’t in our history. Books we might find here today record that the German Sixteenth Motorized Division pushed elements of its reconnaissance battalion toward Kizlyar in late September, 1942. They were after the oil in Baku, of course, but they got stopped—not only there, but elsewhere along the line of the Terek. The action seemed to be thought of as particularly important. It prevented a wide general envelopment of the Terek river line defenses.”

“So they send him off to Baku. Where did you find this letter?”

“The letter? It took a lot of digging, but it turned up on an obscure web site. A fellow named Smerdlov was publishing the last letters from Soviet men and women who died in the war, both on the front and in the prisons and camps. He called it ‘Letters from the Dead.’

“Then this is Orlov’s last letter? It’s over? You mean to say he is already dead?”

“It’s 2021, of course he’s dead. But he was alive at the time he wrote that, in 1942. It could be that Orlov wrote this later in a diary at the work camp, or even in Bayil—that’s the infamous prison on the south bay of the city there, sometimes called Bailkovka. Tens of thousands were shipped off to Siberia during that damn war, but the prison was full in Bayil just the same. It was a miserable place. Did you know that Stalin even served time there in 1908? Poor Orlov…Maybe he died there, maybe not. There’s a lot we still don’t know.”

“Well if he’s dead then Orlov can’t change anything.”

“Think again, Captain. He’s already changed things. The result is what we see outside—the headlines being written for the newscast tonight. This war is coming, as sure as night follows day. The Admiral has been haggling with Moscow, but they’re taking a hard line there, or so I have heard. Here we sit, getting the ship ready for battle again, and if we thought we had trouble before, this fight is going to be the real hell. Did Orlov cause all this? Did we? Or was it meant to happen in any case. We can’t know any of that for sure, but Orlov changed something, just as we did, just as Markov did. There are cracks in the mirror, and before long we won’t be able to see ourselves there any longer. We’ve got to do something about this.”

“Something tells me you have a plan.”

“Look at the date on that letter, Captain. The one thing we do know for sure now is Orlov’s location at a given point in time. He’s at Kizlyar on the 30 September, 1942. He says he was on a truck to Baku, so we have a good fix on his whereabouts.”

“But it isn’t 1942, Fedorov. We’re here in the year 2021!”

“At the moment….” He let that hang there, the implications of what he was saying obvious to them both. But Karpov pushed on that half open door just the same, and heard it squeak with an ominous sound.

“What are you suggesting?”

“You asked what can we do about it.” Fedorov closed his book with a hard thump. “Yes, we can still change things, Captain. We can go and get the man, that’s what we can do. We can find Orlov and bring him back where he belongs—him and that damn computer jacket he took with him. That’s the real threat now and we have the power to change things with Rod-25. And we need to get to him before he ends up in Bayil.”

“My God, Fedorov, your suggesting we pull that hat trick again? With the ship?”

“I have an idea…”

Karpov shook his head, somewhat exasperated. Here he was trying to pull the ship and crew together for imminent war, and now his first officer comes to him with this! Yet even as he thought this he heard the voice of Admiral Volsky in his head: “And one more thing…Fedorov…Listen to him, Captain. Listen to him. He is Starpom this time around and you have the ship, but don’t forget those moments on the bridge when that situation was reversed. Become the same mind and heart together that saw us safely home. Do what you must, but we both know that there is something much greater than the fate of the ship at stake now, something much bigger than our own lives. We are the only ones who know what is coming, Karpov, and fate will never forgive us if we fail her this time.” He could at least listen to what Fedorov was saying. He owed him that much.

“Alright, Fedorov, out with it. What crazy idea do you have this time?”

“There are two ways we can try this,” Fedorov began, somewhat excitedly. “One way is to use the ship as before. We would have to get Rod-25 back and mount it as the maintenance control rod.”

“Then what?” Karpov would be the devil’s advocate. The grave situation they were facing demanded it, but he would listen nonetheless. “Do we just sail out and vanish again?”

“Something like that,” said Fedorov. “I was thinking we get up into the Sea of Okhotsk, or in the gulf west of Sakhalin Island south of the Tartar Strait. We’d be less visible there. The fog is thick as pea soup. Then we put men ashore and travel to Kizlyar.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“I’ll go. And I was thinking of asking Troyak and some of the Marines—volunteers.”

“A rescue operation, eh? That’s a thousand miles from the coast. None of our helos could even fly that far, let alone back again.”

“We go by the Siberian rail.”

“Then you get there and do what? Ask around for Orlov? The place would be crawling with NKVD. And what about the Germans? Meanwhile what do the rest of us do? We just sit there in the ship off Sakhalin Island, waiting while all hell breaks loose here with this war? This is madness, Fedorov. And when they learn Kirov sailed and disappeared again, what will they think? I’ll tell you as much. They’ll think a big fat American submarine ripped open our belly and put us at the bottom of the sea, that’s what. Only they won’t have time to look for us, because the missiles will be flying. The nation needs this ship desperately now if it does come to war. All eyes will be on us if we sail again, and the hope of the nation. Have you considered that?”

“I have…Not that I relish the prospect of Kirov going to war again. All we’ll do is push the world a little closer to the abyss if we do that, and you and I both know that this ship has a lot of muscle left, wounded or not. If we push, we push hard.”

“I understand what you are saying, but consider the men, they’ve been through hell. We can’t ask them to do this again. If we have to fight here, that’s one thing. The men will understand that. It’s why they signed onto the navy in the first place.”

Fedorov shrugged. “Alright, then there’s another way. We leave Rod-25 where it is and go back from the Primorskiy Engineering Center…Just like Markov…”

Karpov just looked at him. “But how will you get back?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well neither do I. Here you sit worried about a man like Orlov and his Portable Wiki, and you assume this situation we’re facing here can be laid at his feet, but then you can glibly suggest you go back yourself with Troyak and his Marines? After what we saw with Markov? Damn it, Fedorov. Listen to yourself! What makes you think Orlov is the devil incarnate now? For all you know he died there, or in Baku, and that was the end of it. Anybody who found his jacket wouldn’t have the slightest idea what they had in their hands. Orlov may have done nothing. He could be completely innocent of the crime you fear he has already committed.”

Fedorov looked down, rubbing his forehead. Karpov was correct. What did he really know? Who was he to say that Orlov was responsible for anything going on in the world now. Was it just an easy way for him to excuse himself, the Admiral, Karpov and the ship? No. They were all equally guilty if any crime had been committed here. When he looked in that broken mirror he would have to be man enough to say he saw his own face there.

“Perhaps you’re right, Captain,” he said, feeling somewhat deflated. “Yes, it is a crazy idea. There’s no way we could take the ship and do what I propose under these circumstances, and what you say about plan B is equally compelling. If we try to follow Markov and go back that way, then we’d all be trapped there in the past. I’d like to think that I would be cautious enough to behave myself there, but I’d be the man who knew tomorrow, and that is a temptation I would not wish on any man.”

“And then there would be Troyak and the Marines to think of as well,” Karpov put in.

“I know…” Fedorov had a defeated look on his face. The Captain was the voice of reason this time, and he had to put his wild notions aside and face the reality of their situation now.

“What’s going on out there, Captain? I’ve had my nose in 1942 the last two days.”

Karpov scratched his head, thinking. “I’ve been watching the headlines and I can rattle them off from memory: Russian Fighter Jets Breach Japan Airspace, Japan Warns China Over Missile Attack, Vows Reprisal, North Korea Warned Against Provocative Actions, Taiwan Enters Fray In China Japan Sea Spat. They’ve kicked the football into the U.N. Security Council for the moment, but you and I both know what’s going on behind the scenes—the telephone calls, the angry words, the threats. And I have little doubt that men in every military base on the globe are sharpening their spears. I heard they flew in two squadrons of strategic bombers and new squadron of T-50 PAK-FA fighters. That’s our fifth generation stealth fighter, so you know they mean business.”

“How much time do you think we have?”

“Hard to say. If things are taking the course we fear, then the U.N. won’t resolve anything. Japan will ask for a resolution condemning China’s ballistic missile attack on Okinawa. China will veto it. That was a big mistake the UN made long ago to allow any single permanent member a veto. A vote of four to one from permanent members should have been decisive.”

“In another world,” said Fedorov.

“Precisely. Well, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Russia would have voted with the Chinese. As it stands now the Japanese have a small detachment camping out on those worthless islands, and both sides are moving ships and planes around. But the real threat is Taiwan. It was the major flash point in that newspaper we found, yes?”

“That’s what it sounded like.”

“The Admiral called me yesterday to ask about the ship. He told me the satellites have been seeing a big Chinese buildup along the Taiwan Strait. He thinks this business over the Diaoyutai Islands is nothing more than the overture. The curtain is about to open on act one of this little drama, and soon.”

“He thinks the Chinese will attack Taiwan?”

“Most certainly. It will start with a demand, of course. Then China will pass some kind of resolution declaring Taiwan as an integral part of the People’s Republic. The Taiwanese government will rebuke them and on and on it will go for a few days while the Americans move their carriers.”

“Yes, the carriers. That’s how it really caught fire according to that article. Remember, the Chinese moved the Liaoning out to sea and the US stopped it with a submarine. That led to the attack on the Eisenhower. Any news on that ship?”

“It’s coming,” said Karpov. “Volsky says it’s in the Indian Ocean at Diego Garcia.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Fedorov fretted. “They may be loading nuclear warheads from stockpiles kept there.”

“Sharpening their teeth? Most likely, just as we are. They made a special delivery today.”

Fedorov was not happy. “How many?”

“You know that is always undisclosed until we actually put to sea with orders.”

“Martinov knows.”

“Of course Martinov knows. How do you think I pulled off that nonsense in the Atlantic? Well I’m not asking him this time, and believe me, I’m have no great urge to see any of them mounted on a missile after what we’ve been through and seen. In the meantime, I hope we’ve put this plan of yours to rest, Fedorov. We have more on our duty list than worries about Orlov.”

Fedorov looked down at the folded paper he had handed Karpov, the letter from the dead, feeling a strange connection with the man who must have surely met his own fate and died decades ago. They were living now in the world Orlov and the men and women of that generation left them. To think that Orlov alone could shape the contours of the entire world was nonsense. Yet something told him that voice of reason was wrong, some aching sense of warning that set his adrenaline rising. Deep down, that persistent inner voice still whispered the truth: they had to get Orlov or the world would end in fire.





Part X



Enter The Dragon





“If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you.

If you try to confront the dragon it will overpower you.

If you ride the dragon, you will take advantage

of its might and power.”



— A Chinese Proverb