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  “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 when ready. Remember our briefing. Your first task is to discover the year and date!”

  Yes, yes, Dobrynin remembered the briefing. The key dates were September 30 thru October 5, 1942. He was to secure the Anatoly Alexandrov, then get a scouting detail ashore north of Makhachkala and begin his search. Troyak would be broadcasting his position, and he had the exact frequency so he could monitor it 24/7. Once a signal was received he was to put men ashore in force with any of the equipment that made it back with him, and use any means necessary to secure his objective and get safely home. Yet two more control rods had been received, one from Vladivostok and this last one from Severomorsk. They were to be loaded on the helicopter the Admiral mentioned. What was in the Admiral’s vodka this time?

  The Mi-26 had been used to move in the last of their equipment, and was now at rest, its enormous bulk squatting on the roof of Anatoly Alexandrov like a giant bug, the eight long props drooping toward the landing pad like enormous spider legs. Bukin had been promoted from Corporal to Sergeant and he was now in charge of a small detachment of Marines, five men. One was a pilot, and the others stood in as flight engineers, but all were trained for combat, and armed to the teeth. They had supplies consisting mostly of food and ammunition, and the entire cargo section of the helo was packed with as much aviation fuel as the Mi-26 could carry.

  Wherever they are going it must be some good long way, thought Dobrynin. He had enough to worry about getting the reactor certified and ready for use. Let Bukin handle the helicopter mission.

  * * *

  Now Volsky sat in the deep underground bunker beneath Naval Headquarters Fokino, a precaution given the steady buildup of American bomber assets in the Pacific. That and the rain of ash fall from the Demon volcano had cast a pall over the entire region, imposing a lull on operations as nature revealed her awesome temper. It was humbling to look out and see the titanic column of smoke and ash billowing up into the atmosphere, even to the edge of space. The first night after the eruption had been black beyond measure, as if the sky itself had been broiled to char. No moonlight could penetrate the thickening air, and a muffled silence fell over the sea and land as more and more material billowed up into the brimstone night. It created a deeply ominous feeling in the gut, a sense of warning and desperate urgency settling over the Admiral’s mind.

  This war was a ragged and haphazard affair, he thought, and a tempest in a teacup compared to that Demon. Hokkaido Island is being inundated with ash, and the Americans have pulled everything they had out of Misawa in northernmost Honshu for bases on the main island further south. China seems single mindedly focused on Taiwan, and now the North Koreans are launching missiles for the Americans to shoot down.

  The great standoff with the American fleet was suddenly held in abeyance. CVBG Nimitz had altered course and was now steaming to join the stricken Washington strike group in the Marianas. The third carrier, CVBG Eisenhower had also diverted from its course and was heading east through the Sulu Sea and into the Philippines, apparently also bound for Guam. They were moving their principle assets to a secure forward base to reorganize prior to resuming operations.

  Karpov had beaten the Washington group with his daring and aggressive tactic of getting in that all important first salvo. Volsky wondered what he might have accomplished if he had carried out the remainder of his plan. After code Longarm sent the last of their longer range missiles out after the carrier, the fleet itself was going to execute a hard right and make a high speed rush south. Karpov planned to use the initial plume from the smaller eruption of the volcano as top cover, surging south beneath the pall to get his ships inside the 300 kilometer range. At that point he had P-900s on all three ships in the core fleet for another massed barrage of 42 missiles. These would fire even as the fleet continued south at their best speed, and if they got inside 200 kilometers the Moskit-II Sunburns on Kirov would fire next, followed by the high speed MOS-III Starfires, 30 more missiles with another eight P-800s on Golovko. After that it would be down to deck guns.

  Against a single carrier battlegroup we had the force to prevail, he thought. But the US Navy was not just a single battlegroup. They could bring that same force to the battle five times over here in the Pacific. We have fleet enough to hold our own credibly against only 20% of their real naval power here. Satellites were already picking up movement west from the 3rd Fleet sector on the US Pacific coast. CVBG Ford was coming.

  Against that I’ve got Admiral Kuznetsov hiding up in the Sea of Okhotsk to get away from that ashfall and have the benefit of land based air cover. Perhaps I can keep that ship afloat for another week. The two Udaloys that made it back to Vladivostok are useless in an offensive role. All I have left are the submarines, safe from the Demon’s wrath as they cruised deep beneath the sea.

  Reports there had been mixed. The Americans had found and killed an Oscar after the Russian subs revealed their position when they fired at the carrier. The other Oscar fled north, and Yasen was also still alive, but running silent. He did not know what the Americans had beneath the sea, but there were probably a fistful of deadly hunter killer subs on the prowl by now. What to do next? The battle was over for the time being, and his thoughts drifted to the operation underway in the Caspian.

  If I had it to do over I would have put that control rod we found in Vladivostok on a submarine. Then it would have been right here to find Karpov and surface to deliver the rod. Perhaps it could have hovered beneath the ship and come home when Kirov shifted, but the more he thought about his plan the wilder it seemed. How do we even know these new rods will work? Kapustin had been very confident, and his revelation the previous night had been very telling.

  “Because I told you,” he told them with certainty. “I know everything there is to know about these control rods, where they were manufactured, where they were shipped and stored, and one thing more—where the materials used in their manufacture came from…” He let that dangle, a teasing look in his eyes.

  “Very well,” said Kamenski, “enlighten us, Gerasim.”

  “There’s nothing unusual about the manufacturer,” Kapustin continued. “Rosatomica makes a good percentage of our control rods, but I ran down the materials composition and source data, and found something very interesting. It may be nothing, but then again…”

  “Yes, yes, what is it?”

  “Well the materials are sampled for purity, of course, and any residual elements or minerals are documented. That’s what caught my eye, because this Rod-25 seems to have a higher reading for calcite and calcium carbonate particles.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Kamenski.

  “I’m not sure I do either,” Kapustin admitted. “But that reading led me to check the materials source. These rods are basically steel tubes housing materials that easily absorb neutrons without undergoing fission. They use lots of things, silver, indium, cadmium, boron, cobalt and a witch’s brew of other elements, many I’ve never even heard of. The Americans use something called hafnium in their naval reactors—very rare—but we’ve been experimenting with some new substances and alloys of various sorts, like dysprosium titanate. The engineers note it has a much higher melting point and is very stable, producing almost no radioactive waste. It’s a ceramic material, a kind of spin ice with
magnetic properties. And this is interesting, the readings that caught my eye were for a material called Silverberg. It’s also called Iceland Spar because it was originally mined in Iceland, and they called it silver-rock there. If you had a lump in your hand it would look like a big crystal, and it has some very interesting properties in addition to magnetic effects. It splits light! Some say it was used as a navigation aid centuries ago.”

  “A navigation aid?” Volsky did not follow him.

  “Yes, yes,” said Kamenski. “I have heard of this. The Vikings called it Sunstone. They could hold the crystal up under a completely overcast sky, and by moving it across the sky and observing the stone they could find the position of the sun. It can polarize light—even infrared. In effect, it’s a doubly refracting Calcite. They use it with lasers in our day and who know what else.”

  “You mean something like a prism?” Volsky had some grasp on it now.

  “I think more like a doubling effect of the light. It takes the light rays and decomposes them into two rays. Double or nothing, eh?”

  “This material is in Rod-25?” asked Volsky.

  “Yes,” said Kapustin, “and in very high residual quantities relative to other impurities listed. And now comes the real surprise. I ran down the purchase orders to find out where these materials were mined. This particular batch had a significant shipment from a mining operation just north of Vanavara, a little strip mine right on the river there.” He tapped his pen on the computer screen as if to indicate the place.

  Kamenski’s eyes seemed to glitter, the light of his thinking doubled as the Inspector went on, but the Admiral had a clueless expression on his face, and it was clear he was not seeing the importance of any of this.

  “Vanavara? And the name of the river where this strip mine is located?” Kamenski asked the question as if he already knew the answer, and Kapustin smiled.

  “I knew you would make the connection, Pavel.”

  “What river?” said Volsky.

  “The Stony Tunguska.” Kapustin folded his arms, a satisfied grin on his face.

  “Tunguska? You mean the place where that asteroid fell?”

  “Correct,” said Kapustin. “In fact, the mine is located right on the outer rim of the area scientists have delineated as the perimeter of the explosion. They’ve been looking for exotic materials there for some time now.”

  “Very interesting,” said Kamenski, the light of recollection in his eyes. “A team of Italian researchers think Cheko Lake is the actual impact site there, and they have been trying to take samples of compressed material beneath the lake that may be from the asteroid itself. So what you are telling us is that this Rod-25 has a high percentage of residual material—this Iceland Spar Calcite—and it was mined along the Stony Tunguska River north of Vanavara?”

  “Precisely, and it may have come from the same mysterious object that exploded over Tunguska.”

  “And this Iceland Spar is refractive; it splits and doubles light rays passing through it.”

  “Correct.” Kapustin smiled. “It’s distributed all through this particular control rod, scattered like powder. If it can split light rays, who knows what else it might be doing when exposed to the radiation within a nuclear reactor?”

  “Amazing,” said Kamenski. “The other two rods from this batch, do they also show this same residual material?”

  “Of course. Like father and son. In fact, the one we had stored here had even higher readings than Rod-25. So these other control rods may exhibit the very same properties and effects, unless all of this is completely irrelevant. Who knows?”

  “I don’t understand the science,” said Volsky, “but there is no denying the effects. I’ve lived them. It was mere happenstance that we eventually came to see the twelve day shift pattern aboard Kirov, and mate it with Dobrynin’s maintenance schedule on the reactor. And you have already told me that a significant nuclear explosion produces time displacement. That alone is cause for amazement.”

  “Or a massive geothermal explosion,” Kamenski put in. “Perhaps this control rod redoubles the effects of nuclear fission in some way when it is inserted into the reactor,” Kamenski held up a finger, thinking about it further. “We won’t figure all this out here, but let’s put some good minds to work on this—quietly. In the meantime, we have already seen the effects produced by this control rod, and seeing is believing. If these other two rods also have this material in them, and they work as we hope they will, then we may have made one of the greatest discoveries in human history. Congratulations, Gerasim! You may have just discovered the secret of time travel!”

  Volsky recalled the look on the Inspector’s face, a restrained jubilation, clouded by a squall of confusion and surprise. Yet he realized now what Kamenski was saying—they could now willfully create these control rods, experimenting with different materials and quantities of this strange substance mined from the perimeter of the Tunguska explosion, and yes, they would figure this all out in time. In time…Assuming they had any to spare in the enterprise.

  What have we done? If these other control rods also work…if these effects can be duplicated any time we wish…What have we done? The implications of the discovery loomed like a massive eruption of that volcano in his mind, clouding his thoughts with the ashfall of a thousand generations.

  Chapter 6

  “You want us to attack the operation?” MacRae had an astonished look on his face. “With three helicopters and thirty men?”

  “Can it be done?” Elena Fairchild knew that if she wanted it done something would happen, but she wanted to know what her odds were.

  “That depends,” the big Scott folded his arms, thinking. “What does Mack Morgan have for us on the situation?”

  “They’re up to something. That much is clear. The activity is centered on this floating nuclear reactor site, the Anatoly Alexandrov I told you about earlier. Mack says they’ve moved in hovercraft from the naval base at Kaspiysk, and set up additional SAM batteries there. Now he’s learned there’s a contingent of Russian Naval Marines out on that ship, barge, whatever it is. And they’ve moved in a big helicopter as well. Drones got a good look at it before the Russians painted them with targeting radars and NATO pulled out. They’re loading a lot of aviation fuel, and something that looks like missile canisters.”

  “Well there’s a war on, and you may have noticed that when Princess Irene went down.” MacRae was frustrated, and still bothered by his failure on that score. “Why and God’s name do we have to get involved? To even the score?” Now he realized his remark was a bit too pointed, and he apologized.

  “Don’t worry about that, Gordon,” said Elena. “The oil doesn’t matter now.”

  That took MacRae by surprise. “It doesn’t matter? Don’t tell me you’re giving up the ghost on this mission because we lost Princess Irene. Look, we’ve still got two million barrels of oil on the other two tankers, and we’re well protected now that the Turks have thrown in with their naval/air assets. And Mack tells me they were able to get a significant amount of oil off Princess Royal and pump it into another empty tanker. No room to bunker it at Fujairah now. The Iranians made a mess of the whole storage sector, and they’ll be fighting fires there for weeks. But we got a goodly amount off and you can count that toward your debt to Chevron. With the oil at $300 a barrel now you’ve still got good margins here.”

  “That may be so, but there’s something else involved.” She seemed to hesitate, as if about to say something and then catching herself. He could see her thinking, wondering, as if she desperately wanted to tell him something but was holding back.

  MacRae decided he had enough good will in the bank after his years of service to press her. “What is it, Elena?” There, he’d did it. He finally used her first name, dropping the veil of propriety and protocol now and taking the matter to a personal level.

  She could hear it in his voice, the softening of his tone, and see it in his eyes now as he looked at her. He had the look of a m
an who would do anything he could to take the burden from her shoulders, and she had seen it in the eyes of few other men in her life. Deep down, she wanted to think she saw love there, real love, not mere concern and dutiful attendance from a subordinate in her employ. And when she looked at him her heart ached to tell him more, to tell him everything, and to finally feel that the burden she carried might be shared by the two of them, up on his broad shoulders where she knew he could carry it easily—everything she had dragged about in her life for decades, all in his big arms. And they’d carry it together.

  The two of them…

  “I… I can’t say more, Gordon. You’ll have to trust me on this.” The words stumbled out, even as she chided herself inwardly for not going further, for not reaching for what she longed to take hold of in her mind and heart. Gordon MacRae, she thought in a wink of her soul. My God, I love the man…

  MacRae looked at her, seeing more there than she realized she had shown him. He put his hands in his jacket pocket, surprised to feel the note he had received from the Black Line days ago warning of the imminent attack on Princess Royal in the Gulf. He realized he was still wearing dress whites! One thing had led to another and he never found time to switch out to his navy blues. Now he stood there, his mind alert enough and perceptive enough to know that she was hiding something she dearly wanted to reveal. And the only big mystery in the woman’s life is right behind that movable bulkhead on the other side of the room, he thought. Then he spoke his mind.

  “It’s that damn red phone back there, isn’t it?”

  She looked at him, lips tightening.

  “Another call came in, am I right? What is it, Elena? Is it government business? The Prime Minister chewing on your ear for something? Well, the Royal Navy has been able to see to the Crown’s business for the last thousand years well enough. What in God’s name have we got to do with this? It was good of them to lend a hand here with the Iron Duke, but we’ve no need to repay the favor.”