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  “It’s something more,” she said it before she could stop herself. “And it has a long, long tail, Gordon.”

  “Yes, and you’ve had hold of that tiger since the first day I set foot on this ship. What is it, Elena? What’s so damn important about that red phone?”

  She lowered her head, eyes glassy, her hand on her brow. The stress of these last days had been heavy on her, and she needed sleep. Her head suddenly felt as light as her heart as she imagined herself telling him everything, opening up the doors and letting him in at long last. Then she did what women have done for generations when there was simply no other way to cross that last impossible gulf between a man and woman so obviously drawn into the well of one another, but forever harried by the curse of forbidden love.

  She fainted.

  “Elena!” MacRae saw her legs go limp and stepped forward quickly as she fell, taking her in his arms. He lifted her easily, carrying her to the nearby sofa and laying her gently down. As he did so her eyes fluttered open again, unfocused, and she felt the heat of the moment, a sheen of perspiration on her forehead.

  “You’re not well,” said MacRae. “Fainted dead away on me. Here, let me get you some water.”

  He was up and over to the wet bar and soon had a glass of cool ice water in hand. He put one big hand behind her head to help her as she took a long sip. Then she closed her eyes, flushed with embarrassment, yet somehow feeling she had just leapt over a great crevasse between them.

  “Oh Gordon,” she said softly. “If you only knew what I know…”

  “What? About this business in the Caspian? Alright, so you’ve got your private line there and the Government leans on you from time to time for special favors. I understand. You’ve called in a number of favors yourself in your day, or why else is Iron Duke out there watching our backside, eh? What’s the big secret this time? You want me to send those men out there in after this Anatoly Alexandrov? Why? Has the government gotten wind of something? What’s itching the Prime Minister’s backside this time?”

  She smiled. “No, it isn’t that,” she said skirting the edge of the hidden truth again. “It’s not the government. Neither Whitehall nor Ten Downing Street has anything to do with it.”

  “What then? Will you at least give me that much before I give the order. Can we hit this operation? Yes we can, but we’ll likely lose good men if we do this, not to mention the X-3s. Tell me why Fairchild Inc. needs to get in on this bar fight, Elena? You tell me that and I’ll move heaven and earth for you. You know I will, but I’ve been mucking about in the dark all these years, carrying on behind these Captain’s stripes. Ours is not to reason why…You know the drill. I’d give you the world if I could hold it in my arms, but you’re a damn hard woman to love…”

  My god, he thought. I’ve said it.

  And she heard it at once, heard what she had been longing to tell him for years. She did something that surprised him now, though it seemed a natural thing to do in the situation, reaching up and touching the side of his face, her hand soft on his cheek, a longing in her eyes, and the beginning of tears. “Gordon MacRae,” she started.

  Words came to him, in the old tongue he still loved and knew so well: “Tá sé níos fearr chun iarracht a dhéanamh ná mar a súil,” he said. “It’s better to try than to hope.” Then he did something that surprised himself even more, and he leaned down and kissed her…

  * * *

  Captain MacRae got his answer, though he sat for a good long hour trying to understand what it meant. Lieutenant Ryan with the X-3 Helo contingent got his orders soon after. He was out on the tarmac at Buzachi airfield north of Fort Shevchenko, watching as the air crews finished up the refueling operation and were rolling the tanker truck away. It wasn’t much of an airfield, just a single hanger and fuel station and a simple asphalt runway. A thin, dull brown road led west toward the Caspian coast and the oil worker’s settlement. His three sleek X-3s sat like birds of prey on the landing strip, the only aircraft there that day, and though he knew he had one of his men over in the number three bird watching radar returns, he still found himself looking north with apprehension.

  The Russians, he thought…They let loose on the company and put Princess Irene on the bottom of the sea. I hope to God we gave them a bloody nose for that one. Word is they have a reinforced rifle division up on the Kazakh border ready to roll on a moment’s notice. If they do move, that will mean they’ll have air cover up as well, and they know exactly where every airfield in the region is now. The longer he sat there on the tarmac the more vulnerable he felt, and he was itching to get his men aboard the X-3s and heading home—until the call came in from Captain MacRae on Argos Fire.

  “Well now,” he said, his Irish blood riled. “A bar fight, Tommy.” His co-pilot Tom Wicks was checking one of the twin turbo-prop engines on the nearest X-3. “Looks like somebody got her skirts ruffled over that incident in the Black Sea.”

  “What skirts?” said Wicks. “She’s got a pair of legs on her, no question about that, but her ladyship never gives us a look at them. Always prancing about in those pants suits and all.”

  “You have it in for the CEO, Tommy?”

  “Me? I’ll have it in anywhere I get a welcome,” he smiled. “What’s this all about, Lieutenant?”

  “I can’t say as I know,” said Ryan. “Just like us Irish. We never know what we want, but we’re prepared to fight to the death until we get it.”

  “Is Fairchild Irish? I thought she was proper British.”

  “That she is, but there’s a wee bit of good Irish honey in her blood, and those lips have kissed the blarney stone, eh? Why else would she plant the company flag on the Isle of Man, right smack in the Irish Sea?”

  “Missing Bradytown, are you?”

  “Aye, we’re a long way from home out here, Tommy. Now we get this new mission and something tells me a good many of us may not ever get home again.”

  Wicks thought that one over, his eyes drifting to one of the rifle squads resting in the open hanger across the way. “What is it we’re supposed to do, exactly?”

  “There’s a Russian base on the other side of that big lake out there.”

  “Lake? You mean the Caspian Sea?”

  “Right-O. Well, we’re paying them a visit, if you know what I mean. Mack Morgan thinks they’re ready to run some kind of Spetsnaz operation from an anchorage just off shore. They want us to crash the party.”

  “Lord almighty! What are we up against?”

  “Not much off shore. Just a big floating power plant, but the Russians seem to be using it as a staging base for some pending operation. They want us to shoot the damn thing up before they get it underway.”

  “Where is the place?”

  “About 15 klicks off the coast near that naval base at Kaspiysk. I make it about 350 kilometers from here.”

  “That sounds like a run and gun mission, Lieutenant. We taking the Argonauts?”

  “Well we’ve got to get them home some way, right? But you’re right, we won’t much need them on a mission like this. My plan is to get them down to Baku—that’s a 500 kilometer run, so we’ll need to refuel there again at the BP facility. Then we run up the coast, go in fast and low, paint the target, and let the missiles do the rest. We can pick the Argonauts up on the way back.”

  “If we make it back,” said Wicks with a shrug. “We’re packing Hydra-70s in the rocket pods. Their effective range is 8,000 meters, and they’re unguided, so we’ll have to be pretty damn close. You think the Russians might know we’re coming? They’ll sure as hell have radar and SAM batteries at that naval base. We’ve got a fairly small radar cross section, but they’ll see us in time.”

  “Aye, and they won’t be happy when they do. Things are getting pretty dicey now. Russians beefed up the 414th Naval Infantry at Kaspiysk. There’s a motorized column from their 58th Army heading for Makhachkala. Could be trouble, and Morgan thinks they mean to make a move on Baku, and grab the Kashagan superfields up here whi
le they’re at it.”

  “What’s this world coming to, Lieutenant?”

  “No good,” said Ryan. “Well, the birds are all fueled and ready to go. Let’s get the Argonauts loaded and get on with it.”

  “What about those Chevron people?”

  “What, Flack and the rest? They come too, at least as far as, Baku. The birds will be heavy but we’ll lift them easily enough. That will take more fuel, which is why we top off at Baku again after we get back. It’ll be another thousand kilometer run back to Argos in the Black Sea. So take a good look at the Caspian while we’re here, Tommy. And I hope to God we never see the damn place again.”

  Ryan turned to the open hanger and gave a loud whistle, waving at the men there. The Argonauts had done what they came for. It was no problem scaring off the local militias near the oil fields. One look at these dangerous looking men in jet black military garb was enough to convince them that their little oil war would best be conducted some other day. They melted away, and Lieutenant Ryan was able to pull out good number of Chevron workers and get them safely back to Buzachi. They were shutting down. The place was just too dangerous now to contemplate any further operations. There had already been a brief air duel between Russian fighter patrols and the Kazakh air force, and it was looking like the conflict would get rolling on the ground any moment.

  They’re just waiting on fuel and equipment, he knew. Once they do move, however, they’ll come hard and fast, and that Kazakh Ready Brigade will have its hands full. Who knows, perhaps this Spetsnaz outfit off the Caspian coast is figuring to be part of that attack. Mack Morgan says they’re moving in a big fat helicopter as part of the force. So I guess we’ll see what kind of sting my X-3s have after all.

  He looked at them, three of his four little darlings, one of the fastest helicopters he’s ever flown. He could fly circles around the Apache in his X-3, but when he thought about the Russian SAM batteries his bravado was quashed. There’s one thing the damn Russians get right, me boyo, he thought, and that’s missiles. We’re going to be out there alone with the gods, and the night will flame with fire.

  And that soon…

  Part III

  The Bull

  “I never trust a fighting man who doesn’t smoke or drink.”

  —Admiral Bull Halsey

  Chapter 7

  Airman J.D. Pickett was scouring the seas ahead in his Helldiver, leading in a section of five planes that morning. Behind him were the lines of the remainder of the squadron, two more flights of five SB2C-5 Helldivers like his own, followed by three groups of five TBM-3 Avenger torpedo bombers. A thousand feet above them were the Hellcats, long lines of fighters, and many with 500 pound bombs under their wings in the fighter/bomber role. Others carried the HVAR Rocket System the men called “Holy Moses” due to the reaction they had when the airmen first saw the weapons fire and streak in towards their targets.

  They were about to see something an order of magnitude better, and then some. Pickett spotted it, coming up at the formation with impossible speed. “What in God’s name is that?” he called through his headset. “Coming up on my twelve o clock! Rocket! Rocket!”

  The explosion said the rest as the rocket flashed in and struck a Corsair flying off the rightmost wing of his flight. He craned his neck to see the bright yellow fireball consume the plane and saw the smoldering remnant falling from the sky.

  “Holy shit!” he yelled, all thoughts of Moses blown from his mind by that fireball. “Did you see that? Anybody see what fired that? I don’t have anything on radar. Can’t see a thing.”

  The first missile was a warning shot. Karpov had ordered Orlan to fire this single missile at the first planes they could track inside 100 kilometers. He was back on the radio to see if Iron Mike might have a change of heart, but the effect of the missile shot was a bit like poking a stick into a hornet’s nest. The Americans quickly shook off the shock and they were calling to one another, orders barked sharply over the airwaves.

  “Louis! Get your Avengers down on the deck! Pickett, you peel off to your left and swing round on 290. Everybody upstairs get ready to rumble!”

  Vern Higman heard the order and reached in to pat the dash board of his plane—‘Round Trip Ticket.’ They were going in again, but even though he had seen planes shot up pretty bad he always came through in one piece. This would be no different. He looked out his cockpit window and saw Wendell Stevens and Lowell Chamberlain both give him the thumbs up. The others were itching to dive the instant they laid eyes on the target—Bob Nouall, Mike Hallard, J.G. Wheeler, who already had one Navy Cross on his chest for blasting the Japanese Cruiser Tone a while back.

  “Let’s get down and dirty,” Higman called to his Helldiver flight mates. “I’ve got me a round trip ticket to the action and a thousand pounds of metal in my belly that I plan to put right on Ivan’s foredeck! You ready Pickett? Lead the charge!”

  Pickett was ready, but so was Orlan.

  * * *

  “Fools rush in,” said Karpov, shaking his head as he watched Orlan firing off his starboard bow.

  “Where Angels fear to tread,” said Rodenko at his side, the duty on his radar assigned to a Lieutenant. He was acting Starpom now, and promoted to Captain Lieutenant. When the ship was at action stations he was up and at Karpov’s side, inwardly proud of his promotion and ready for both the new authority and responsibility it brought him. Always a level headed man, Rodenko remained cool under fire and was a natural leader for all the junior officers in his section during the ship’s earlier ordeals. While he had never mustered the courage to confront Karpov in the beginning when he opposed Admiral Volsky, he regretted that now that he knew what it felt like to be standing in command level officer’s shoes.

  When Fedorov had been promoted to Starpom, and then ship’s Captain during Karpov’s rehabilitation in the Med, Rodenko never fretted or felt passed over. He saw how the young Fedorov was struggling to assume his new role, seeing he was over his head in many ways, and tried to help him as much as he could. The cooperative relationship he managed to forge with Karpov was inspiring to the entire bridge crew, and with Orlov gone, things seemed much more stable on the ship. Now his tactical sense, overall situational awareness born of his years as a radar man, and his general competence made him perfect for the role as the ship’s Starpom, Executive Officer and second in command after Karpov on the fleet’s flagship.

  He admired the Captain’s skill at the helm, particularly in combat, and it was true that Karpov had saved the ship many times in tight situations. But Rodenko had seen, and knew well, the darker side of Karpov, and now that the ship had regressed again in time, he began to perceive the Captain’s shadow thickening on the deck of the bridge again, and flashes of his old self—his ambition and yes, his arrogance was apparent at times, particularly after their battle with the US Captain Tanner and CVBG Washington.

  Rodenko knew that had been a real threat, and that circumstances and strong support from both the Naval Air Arm and the undersea boats had been decisive in the engagement. If the fleet had faced the Americans without them, things might have been very different. The initial eruption of that volcano had also forced the Americans to divert left and right to avoid the ashfall. While Karpov was clever in moving the ship south beneath the ash cloud that morning, they had still seen a Harpoon come within a whisker of striking the ship. Varyag had saved the day, and then all hell broke loose when that volcano erupted again.

  Now, thrown back into the same impossible situation as before, Karpov seemed to regress in his behavior, his own inner Demon restlessly awakening in the heat of imminent battle. Rodenko had seen how both Volsky and Fedorov had served as strong counterfoils to Karpov before, and wondered how he would measure up to that task. In the end he realized it was his job to give the Captain his best judgment in any situation they encountered, and his best effort at the helm.

  “They have no idea what they’re facing,” said Karpov. “And that’s why they seem so brave, I su
ppose. If they knew there was no way they could penetrate our SAM defenses, they might fear the skies over this ship.”

  “But they don’t know,” said Rodenko. “Which is why it hurts a bit to watch this.”

  Karpov turned his head, lowering his field glasses, but said nothing. The light in his eyes was lit by the flames of battle. The action had moved inside the 50 kilometer range circle, and radar reported that the formation was pressing doggedly forward. Orlan had fired three salvos of eight, and she was near perfect. Two of the missiles had consumed the same plane when they tracked in on fireballs, moving too fast to switch to a new target in time. They had listened to the reports on radio from Orlan. 22 kills, and yet they came. Karpov was holding all his precious S-400s in reserve and letting Orlan do the fighting at this point, but now he turned to communications with an order.

  “Mister Nikolin, signal the flotilla. Tell Captain Yeltsin aboard Orlan that they have led the way ably and we will now join the action with our Klinok system while they switch to short range munitions. Admiral Golovko will continue to hold fire unless directly attacked, and then they are authorized to use their close in defense systems.”

  “Aye, sir, signaling now.”

  “Medium range SAM system, Samsonov; salvos of eight. Track and fire when ready.”

  “Sir! Firing now.” Victor Samsonov was only too eager to get into the fight. The aft deck of Kirov sounded off the loud warning claxon, and the hatches opened. The missiles were up soon after, jetting away on fiery tails with ash-white smoke in their wake.

  Four…Eight…Twelve…Sixteen…the weapon was called the Klinok shipboard multi-channel self-defense system, NATO designation SA-N-92 Gauntlet, and the pilots of the oncoming strike wave would soon be running the gauntlet of fire and steel. The short reaction time and high rate of fire for the missiles made it ideal in this role, and the missiles Kirov fired had much improved range over the initial system developed two decades earlier. It was a tried and true multi-channel tracking system with the ability to use laser, TV, or radar to find targets. Each radar could simultaneously prosecute eight targets, and reassign remaining live missiles in the salvo to new missions if their original target was destroyed.