“Signalman! Notify Malaya we’re foundering forward and not likely to correct the problem any time soon.” It was a hard message for the young ensign to bear, but the man saluted, and was off at the run to the W/T room.
Then Queen Elizabeth shook again with the heavy jolt and explosion of another big round. This time it was Bismarck that had laid its hands upon her, a 15 inch shell plunging into the ship near the funnel. The explosion batted the long cantilevered seaplane catapult away at an odd angle, flames licking the steel trellis as it moved with the roll of the ship. Shrapnel from the explosion struck a ship’s bell, and the sound rang out, a mournful note of pain.
It was then that Captain Barry saw something in the western sky, bright fiery lights with tails of smoke high up, but diving for the sea like meteors. He watched, spellbound at the scene as they pulled out of the dive, coming low over the restless sea.
Argos Fire saw them coming as well. The radar had identified the missiles as Russian P-800 Onyx systems, a weapon that was not on the IFF list given to him by Admiral Volsky. So the old man was keeping something under his hat as well, he thought with a smile. The missile warning was sounding loudly, and he gave a sharp order to terminate the alarm. Argos Fire wanted to get after the missiles with her Sea Vipers, but MacRae kept a firm hand on the reigns.
“Belay that Air defense system,” he said with a growl. “That has to be the Russians. Where are they, Mister Healy?”
The Lieutenant looked over his shoulder, the surprise in his face plain enough. “I don’t have them sir. No other surface vessel on that heading within range of our SAMPSON system.”
“Then he must have better eyes than we thought. Mister Dean, what’s the range of those missiles?”
“Sir… I’m reading them as SS-N-26, the Russian P-800 Onyx — eight missiles-range 300 kilometers for high altitude flight profile, 120 for low altitude trajectory. But sir, Lieutenant Healy has radar tracks and the point of origin is no more than fifty kilometers west of our position.”
“What’s that you say? Fifty klicks west?”
“Yes sir. We should be seeing the Russian battlecruiser on SAMPSON, but he’s just not there. I have no contacts on that heading whatsoever.”
“Well fancy that,” said MacRae, watching the missiles screaming in towards the enemy ships. “Who the hell is firing those missiles?” He looked at Morgan now, instinctively eyeing his intelligence master as if he had the answer to everything on a note pad in his shirt pocket, and only had to look.
“Beat’s me,” said Mack. “But it reminds me of a lady I was courting once. My cab was late on our first date, but she turned up late too, and that’s when I fell in love with her.”
“Missiles report target lock, sir,” said radarman Yevgeni Gorban. “They should be down on their terminal run now.”
The Captain ran a hand over his close cropped hair, eyes looking up as though he were seeing it all through the hull. Gromyko had fired, and instinct serving him well, he had quickly maneuvered off his firing axis, diving as any submariner would.
Kazan had been a long time coming, all the way from the Cape of Good Hope where they had rendezvoused with Kirov. It was a long, silent journey, passing several convoys which they identified as British ships, but making no contact. Admiral Volsky had told him to keep his presence here a secret as far as was possible, and with a submarine as stealthy as Kazan, that was an order Gromyko could easily fill.
The boat had sailed right through the British operations aimed at the Cape Verde and Canary Islands, moving like a silent murmur in the sea. It was not until they had reached the Western approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar that Gromyko spent some time consulting his charts. He had entered there many times before, drifting silently through the channel, and always at night. He found the strait was patrolled by three French Destroyers that were now operating from Gibraltar, but they had not heard a whisper of the quiet passing of Kazan. Once in the Alboran Sea, Gromyko increased speed to make for his assigned patrol post off the Sicilian Narrows, over 1400 kilometers to the east.
By the time he reached that place the Franco-German fleet had already decided to make their transit at Messina, and even as they emerged to drive off the British Fleet, Gromyko decided to move east between Malta and Sicily and see what he might find. He had been ordered to maintain operational silence, and communicate only in the event he found it necessary to use his weapons.
