He saluted, and took his leave, heading for the KA-40 where Troyak and the Marines had assembled, more than ready to be moving again. They had stewed in confinement for some time, until Fedorov managed to forge his alliance with Kinlan. Most had no idea what was happening, but they had followed Fedorov’s orders to sit tight and stay quiet. He spied Orlov, a thought coming to mind.
“Chief,” he said. “What ever happened to that thing you say you found in Siberia?”
“You mean this?” Orlov reached in his pocket, producing the strange tear shaped object, about the size of a small egg. Fedorov simply extended his hand, waiting for Orlov to hand it over. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Fedorov, “but I’d like to have a closer look at this thing, if you don’t mind. Maybe the ship’s engineers can figure out what it is.”
“Dobrynin? I was going to ask him about it, but he was too busy.”
“You say you were near the Stony Tunguska River when you found this?”
“Very close. We spied something from above, and I thought someone was signaling me. So Troyak and I went down to have a look. I told you what happened. The Sergeant calls it the Devil’s Teardrop. Good name for it. There was something very strange about that place-very bad. In fact, it scared the crap out of me, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. It was as if… well I could feel something was terrible there, a real feeling of doom. Your senses were keened up like a grizzly bear was on your trail, but it was deathly quiet. I never felt anything quite like it. All I could think of was getting the hell away from that place.”
“Yes… Well, I think I’d better hold onto this.”
“Be my guest,” said Orlov, “but be careful. It gets warm sometimes. Damn thing almost burned my hand-right when we saw those odd lights in the desert.”
Fedorov thought about that, but said nothing. He took the object and tucked it into his service jacket pocket, his thoughts musing on the possible connection between this object and the incident involving Kinlan.
Just what I need, he thought, another mystery to solve.
“While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind,"
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.”
The British fleet steered south, away from the action and on a heading that would take it down to Benghazi as planned. Tovey worried that the Franco-German fleet would attempt an immediate engagement before they could slip away, but he was heartened to learn that his radar picket, Argos Fire, reported the enemy was heading east.
What could they be up to, thought Tovey, but he soon realized that Crete could be the target, and the enemy might be planning to strike there even as the Royal Navy steamed on Benghazi. Under any other circumstances I would be trying to engage that fleet, but not with so many ships licking wounds from that air strike. We were lucky to get off as well as we did. Without that rocket defense things would have been much worse. My God, they must have shot down sixty planes, a hard knock to the Germans and Italians, but yet they kept on coming.
And that is the sticky wicket, he thought. They will keep coming. All those planes can be replaced, but not the missiles that shot them down. There is really only so much Kirov and Argos Fire can do for us. It will come down to a steady hand and good fleet air defense from the FAA in the end, just as it always has. What we need here now are more aircraft carriers. Eagle and Hermes can barely do the job, and we simply haven’t the fighter strength in theater to challenge the enemy.
In that he was very correct. There were no more than 77 Hurricanes in the Mediterranean theater at that very moment, and the few FAA fighters that had been assigned to the two carriers. Everything they had sent to Malta was gone. The 12 Swordfish and the Wellington bombers had managed to evacuate, but none of the fighters survived. Most of the German fighter strength had then shifted to North African airfields, but most of the Stukas were still on Sicily, and as long as they remained there, they could dominate the waters of the Central Med unless we can challenge them with good fighters.
