Coming Soon, another Kirov Series adventure, and this one will be a wild ride through several time periods. It all begins with that DF-100 attack that ended the last Volume, An Hour for Vengeance. In this next one, Karpov indulges Fedorov’s thirst for discovery. I hope you have such a thirst as well. Here’s a slice from Chapter 12….
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The Rage of Fujin
From Chapter 12
The Maelstrom
At 10:30 a Hawkeye based at Nyutabaru AFB in southern Kyushu took off and climbed into the wind. With a 30,000 foot ceiling, it would not be able to get above the storm, and with that 24 foot rotating disk above, it promised to be a rough ride. But the 26 ton plane had four vertical stabilizers and three rudders. It was a five man crew as opposed to about 25 on an E-3 Sentry, and they could do the same job.
The pilot and co-pilot were in the cockpit, and behind them there was the RO, or Radio Operator, the ACO or Air Control Officer, and the CICO, the Combat Information Center Officer. The CICO was the commanding officer and group leader. That was the job every flight officer in the AEW Squadron was gunning for, to become one of those five “moles” and hitch a ride on a butt-ugly aircraft to sit in the narrow tube of the fuselage talking over the roar of those big turboprops; for hours on end. The mission chatter was constant, the ride uncomfortable and the job needed constant focus and attention to detail. But the men would get up there, in clear weather or in a Typhoon, and shine that radar where it was most needed.
The Hawkeye was the quarterback on the field, its radar data linked to ships hundreds of miles away. They could even transmit that data right into the cockpit of friendly fighters to provide the pilots with amazing situational awareness. Yet the Hawkeye was a seabird by trade, and did not see low lying threats easily over land clutter. Its computer systems had aged by standards in 2027. Most Americans would be surprised to learn that their desktops and laptops were better computers than anything the military was using in even its most cutting edge weapons and equipment.
The job the Hawkeye did was as dangerous as it was uncomfortable. One of the first things they would do is check the IFF transponder response on any fighters or strike planes launched under their purview. They would assist with the designation of those planes as either “Sweet” if their IFF was good, or “Sour” if it was not good. The Sour planes would be sent to a designated area above their home carrier called “the penalty box” until they got their equipment sorted out.
The Hawkeye would then assign planes to link up with a tanker for refueling, which in some cases was the Hawkeye itself. Then the Hawkeye would also adjudicate “Bogeys,” which were suspected hostile aircraft, and graduate them to “Bandits” which were confirmed hostile. Up against the USAF or Navy pilots, or the Marine aviators in F-35s, a designated Bandit had a very short lifespan.
The Chinese PL-15 was always a threat because of its 108 mile range, so the Hawkeye crews were always glad to send a flight of fighters forward to screen for them. The Hawkeye over Kyushu was probably in safe territory, but it was still good to know that friendlies were up there too.
With three major military airfields and three big ports, Kyushu was like a Morning Star mace at the southern end of the Japanese Islands, bristling with threats. There were eight coastal Missile batteries and seven SAM sites between Fukuoka and Goto Island, and Japanese diesel boats often prowled those waters as well.
At 10:45 that morning the Hawkeye noted the eyewall of Typhoon Fujin had just crossed 30 degrees North, bearing 15.9 degrees on the compass, towards Jeju Island as the models predicted. Its sustained winds were now 96 knots with gusts to 120, which made it a Category 3 storm, and it was expected to strengthen to 120 sustained with gusts to 150 or better soon—Category 4. If those winds got over 130 it would be designated a Category 5 Super Typhoon, and Fujin looked to be reaching for that title.
Kirov had also just crossed the 30 North Latitude, and the storm eyewall was now 165 miles due west. Karpov went out on the weather deck briefly to feel it. He had to snug down his wool Ushanka against the wind right away. Earlier, while he lay asleep in the Ready Room, he had dreamed. He had been thinking about the storm, and how it lowered the chance of a man’s survival in the water by great degrees. Now, out there on this morning sea, there are ships making way under these grey skies that will not still be afloat come sunset. Their crews will be lucky to have made it into a life boat, for those that did not would surely die in these seas.
The water wasn’t cold, but it was running high, and the rolling swells would exhaust a man in little time if he didn’t have something to keep him on the surface. Then his dream came to him with sharp recollection. The storm was raging, the sea impossible, and its churning gyre had bored a hole in the waves to create a great maelstrom. Round and round those waters went, lashed and whipped by the cruel racing wind. It was there, right in the center of the eye, the sea so contorted by the eyewall itself that this maelstrom had formed. All around it, he saw the stolid grey shapes of warships. There were carriers, cruisers, and destroyers, some near its churning edge, others farther out, but all circling, circling, caught in the grip of that whirling sea.
In the center of the Maelstrom an evil twisting tornado rose, with lightning dancing on its flanks, where no wind should be at all. A destroyer struggled with all its might to escape the merciless gravity of the maelstrom until the ship’s aft quarter was pulled over the boiling edge and the screws spun with futile energy. It was too late, and he saw the destroyer pulled over that edge and down into the unfathomable swirling blackness of the sea. Were all the others doomed to suffer the same fate? Was it just a matter of time? One of the carriers, circling the maelstrom 500 meters from its edge, looked much like the early Chinese carriers bought from Russia. A helicopter hovered nearby, shuddering, ready to make good its escape from the fate that awaited its mother ship, yet barely able to stay aloft in the wind.
In the background there was life saving land, the tree sewn edge of a shore surrounding a city, but as he looked at it, Karpov saw the buildings were strange, odd looking spires, as if from some far distant future where the squat rectangles of contemporary architecture had given way to piercing needles of steel. In the background, beneath the jagged reaches of a higher mountain range, he spied a pair of great radar dishes inclined towards the sky. It was clear now that this maelstrom was not well out on the open sea, but in a sheltered bay, with land on many sides.
What was that all about, he thought? I dream of monstrous maelstroms sucking down ships to their doom; malevolent winds twisted to a fine tornadic knot with their rage; an electric sky alight with wild energy, and that bottomless, unplumbed hole in the ocean, the death of any ship that came to near its edge. All about that virulent tornado at its center, he saw flying debris that had been pulled from nearby ships, small radars, a life boat, and then one poor sailor, yanked right off the deck and flung up into the sky to his doom.
He felt the real wind against him now, bracing himself against the outer rail of the weather deck. That was when he remembered the heaving of the ship that sent him up and over that rail, and down into the waters off Iki Island. That was when he remembered again that moment he had raised his pistol to his head, the sharp crack as it fired, the stab of pain as the round scored his chin, his hand jarred just enough by the rocking ship to save his life. Into the sea he went; into the cold, cruel, heartless sea. But for Karpov, that was a baptism, a christening, the moment he let go of one version of his self and turned to face the birth of another. He would not know this until much later, cradled in the back of a small fishing boat, and gently rocked by the motion of the sea, like an infant under a swaddling wool blanket. Unwilling to repeat the experience, his fist tightened on the railing.
He remembered how he saw an old man’s face peering at him, thin taut skin, wrinkled like a prune; brow filmy as boiled cabbage, narrow eye slits under thin whisps of grey brows. Where was he? Where was Fedorov, Samsonov? Where was the ship? Then he remembered that awful moment on the weather deck, and how the ship had bucked and cast him off into the sea; and he remembered the great transgression that had provided ample reason for that. Yes, I should have been cast out, he chided himself.
A wave of shame washed over him, but he bore it like a rock in the surf. He eased himself up, looking around at calm waters; feeling warm sunlight on his face; seeing the smile creasing the old fisherman’s face, and hearing him speaking to him in some unintelligible language. There was no maelstrom here; no twisted lightning-scored tornado. This was another life…
Karpov looked at his watch, seeing it was 10:45 Local—bagel time. He had gotten into the pleasant habit of toasting half a bagel and shmearing it with cream cheese at this midmorning hour. He turned and headed for the hatch to the bridge.
Entering, he saw Fedorov hunched over his desk at Navigation, studying a chart where he had been plotting the actual path of the Typhoon against a predicted track in red. There was Samsonov, toggling switches at the CIC as he checked missile readiness, sending a query to each waiting cell, a parent checking on his sleeping children. Rodenko was standing tall, arms folded on his chest, eyes on the main screen of the new Top Dome Radar. Tasarov was lost beneath his headset, eyes closed, looking almost as if he was asleep, though Karpov knew that was not the case. Nikolin was also flipping switches and rotating dials as he put his ears to good use as well.
A feeling swept over Karpov like a wave. Who was he without all these other men at his side? Who was he if not for this ship, this bridge? He did not know who he would be or where. He was so far from his old life in the oil business that he could scarcely even remember it now. Kirov was all he knew, and all he loved, and this band of brothers was at the heart of that love. He desperately needed this ship, this place, these men, for this was home, the one place on this earth where he knew he belonged, where his presence truly mattered. He had earned his way to this refuge, stripe by stripe, star by star.
He made for the ready room toaster oven to get his bagel and Veggie Shmear. Karpov did not know what this day might bring, but one thing was certain. He would hear the jangle of the alarms, the sound of heavy booted feet running on the decks below as men rushed to battle stations. He would hear the whoosh of missiles and the roar of their fiery engines as he sent them out to kill and destroy. But all of that was another time—not this hour—this was bagel time.
He smiled.