B00DSDUWIQ EBOK by John Schettler Read Free Book Online Page A

of the Black
Sea Fleet home to Novorossiysk, his war over for the moment.
    In
his wake, far to the south, Princess Irene would burn all night before her
hull gave way and she listed heavily into the massive oil slick blighting the
sea. Turkish ships were out on a rescue operation, trying to fish as many of
the crew out of the sea as possible. Half a million barrels of oil would go down
with her, and now the hopes of the Fairchild company rested on those two last
tankers, slowly creeping west along the Anatolian coast and soon joined by two
more Turkish Frigates in escort. NATO was late to the game, but they were welcome,
as were the flights of Turkish fighters up now to provide additional air cover.
    By
dawn of the fourth day of the war, Argos Fire had but one last charge to
recover. The ship still had three of her X-3 helos and thirty Argonauts in the Caspian
Sea region, and each minute that passed extended the range and stretched the
tether of safe recovery thinner and thinner. Captain MacRae headed to the
Executive cabin to see the company CEO and explain what had happened. He was
determined to push for the immediate extraction of the Argonauts and a speedy
run for the Bosporus before the Russians could scrape up more aircraft for
another attack.
    When
he got there the little nightmare of naval combat that had darkened his watch was
about to deepen to yet another shade of black.
     

Chapter 5
     
    “Steady on that winch!” said Dobrynin, hands on his
hips as he supervised the loading operation. They had a crane up on the upper
roof of the Anatoly Alexandrov, and they were hoisting up a long metal
tube that might resemble a missile canister to any watchful eyes. Cover of darkness
and overhead clouds would prevent satellites from looking in, but they had seen
NATO drones earlier, and it was obvious that someone was taking an interest in
the operation being mounted on the Caspian coast.
    Dobrynin
watched until the tube was safely hoisted up and lowered into an ordnance mover.
It wasn’t a missile canister, but a radiation safe container housing some very
special cargo, a fresh delivery from Admiral Volsky that had been flown all the
way from Severomorsk up north. The Admiral had spoken to him an hour ago on a
very secure channel.
    “Is
Rod-25 mounted, Dobrynin?”
    “Yes
sir, and I have the reactor up and ready for operations.”
    “Good
news. Well, I’m sending you a backup.” The Admiral went on to explain the complex new twist in the mission they had planned,
and the longer Dobrynin listened, the more he began to silently shake his head.
    “1945?”
he said incredulously. “How could it happen, Admiral? We had Rod-25 safe with us
here.”
    Volsky
explained what he could, but the fact remained that it was all still a mystery. Kirov was gone, and so were Orlan and Admiral Golovko . Aside
from his submarines he now had no Red Banner Pacific Fleet to speak of, and the
Black Sea Fleet had just been gutted and largely neutralized as an effective fighting
force in a scrap with the British. Everything was now riding on this mission,
Volsky explained. It wasn’t only to try and bring Fedorov home again, or even
Orlov. Now there were three ships and over 1500 officers and crew to worry
about as well.
    “I’m
sending you a big helicopter and a lot of extra aviation fuel.”
    “But
Admiral, we can’t bring the ships home with that. What is this for?”
    Volsky
explained, and Dobrynin’s eyes got wider and wider. “As for your part,” the
Admiral concluded, “you just focus on Fedorov. Bukin is going to handle the
mission involving the Mi-26. My question to you is this—can the landing pad on
Anatoly Alexandrov hold up if we land the Mi-26 there?”
    “Yes
sir. It’s a heavy, reinforced structure. In fact we used Mi-26 helos to load the
reactor elements and other equipment and supplies last year when we commissioned
the barge.”
    “Very
good. Carry on, Chief. I’m counting on you. You may launch your mission