Captain Thorne cursed himself for allowing his surface assets to be fired upon. His weapons officer was reporting that Houston could not get weapons solutions for either vessel entering the eye of the storm.
“Weapons, as soon as those ships clear the hurricane, target two Mark-48s for each. ASROC, prepare to launch.”
Battle stations was the call, and Houston came alive as never before.
Captain Johnson cursed. He slammed his fist into the steel railing of the bridge wing as De Zeven made her run to save lives.
His first officer came out to the bridge wing and handed him a communication. The XO’s face had lost all its color.
“What is it, Sam?” he asked as he reached for the message flimsy.
TO ALL NATO SHIPS IN THE AREA, STAND DOWN OR AGAIN BE FIRED UPON. THE VESSEL YOU HAVE IN TOW IS THE PROPERTY OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE, AND YOU WILL SURRENDER IT IMMEDIATELY.
SIGNED, KRESHENKO.
“What do we do, Captain?” the XO asked.
“Target same area. Get the ASROCs warmed up. Send this to Kreshenko, whoever he is: ‘NATO invites you to come and get it.’”
Johnson knew his anger had overwhelmed his better judgment. Instead of calming things down, he just exacerbated the situation. He watched his XO vanish into the bridge area, and then he turned and examined the spot he thought their enemy would emerge from the outer edges of Tildy. His guess was only off by a mile.
“Oh, my God.”
The largest battle cruiser in the world with another, smaller escort ship broke through the outer edges of the hurricane and into the calmer eye. She made for a spectacular scene as her raked bow cut the seas apart in her race to face the NATO force. Johnson immediately recognized the form of Peter the Great, one of the nastier fears of all Western navies.
The Russians had arrived.
PART TWO
CRACKED MIRRORS
Unlikely people,
From unlikely worlds,
Are never meant to be together.
7
Jack pulled up a sputtering Charlie Ellenshaw. He had yanked him up by his floating white hair to the surface, where both men spit out salt water and tried their best to stay afloat. Collins looked around as heads began to bob to the surface of the softly rolling sea.
The last thing of the Night Owl he saw was the tail boom as it slid beneath the water. He spied Jason Ryan soon afterward surface with a gagging and spitting copilot of the V-25. Then he saw Henri and Carl as they assisted the Royal Marines. Collins and Charlie swam toward Ryan.
“Any other crew get out?” he shouted.
Ryan made sure the copilot was all right and then turned to face Jack. “No, I couldn’t find the master chief, either.”
Suddenly, the water erupted next to them as Jenks surfaced. He pulled heavily on something, and then the frightened face of the Royal Navy pilot came into view. He threw up seawater as Jenks pulled off his flight helmet.
“Come on, breathe, you limey bastard!”
Finally, the pilot took a deep breath and then vomited again.
“That’s it. You’ll live.”
“You always act surprised when your plans go straight to hell. Flying through a hurricane usually means bad things to the rest of the world, but you Americans always think you can pull off the impossible.”
Jack looked over at a drenched and bleeding Henri Farbeaux. “Glad to see you made it, Henri.”
Collins started counting the heads that were visible. He stopped at thirty-six. That meant they had lost seventeen men. He slapped the water angrily, as he knew that whoever had fired that missile was now in deep debt with the Royal Navy.
“We lost one hell of a lot of people, Jack.”
Collins looked over and saw Everett. He had gathered some of the equipment bags that had almost gone down with the V-25.
“I know. Let’s get aboard that damnable ship and get this over with before some asshole tries that again.”
A line hit the water next to Ryan’s head as he joined them. They turned and saw that it was the Shiloh’s rigging crew aboard the Simbirsk who had thrown the ropes.
Jack watched as the De Zeven, initially tagged for the rescue, turned and made her way back to Shiloh. Evidently, Captain Johnson wanted his escort back to multiply defensive weaponry in case they were attacked again. Prudent thinking as far as Jack was concerned.
“I hope they have coffee going on that tub,” Jenks said as he tied the thick rope around the pilot and signaled Simbirsk to haul him aboard.
Jack looked at the World War II Russian cruiser and saw that she looked as if she had come out of her commissioning birth just last week. She was in pristine condition and looked like any warship from that era. There was one notable exception — the coiled wiring that covered her hull from stem to stern. They looked like old-fashioned coil springs from an army cot. They were gray in color to match the ship’s paint scheme. He saw the American riggers on board as they managed to throw five more lines into the water. Collins felt a strange electrical sensation gently coursing through his body. It wasn’t painful, but he knew it was there. It was like the feeling you get just before a close encounter with a lightning strike.
“Shall we see what all the hubbub is about, Colonel? At least to take cover in case someone starts shooting missiles at us again.”
Jack nodded at Carl, who also turned to see the ghost ship in front of them.
The Russian battle cruiser Simbirsk waited like an old haunted house from stories told to make you frightened of your own shadow when you were a child. It was Ellenshaw who put the right words to it.
“That ship has gone bad,” he said as he was pulled toward the derelict by the lifeline.
At that moment, a Russian-made Ka-27 antisubmarine helicopter swooped low over the floating men and the towed Simbirsk. The counter-rotating blades made a heavy whump as they passed. Jack’s eyes narrowed when the Russian was joined by an American Seahawk. They dueled in the sky over their heads, each helicopter coming closer and closer together in ever-more dangerous maneuvering.
“I guess Hurricane Tildy is the place to be. All the best people are here.”
As soon as Jack and his remaining men were aboard, he was handed a radio. Now that his team had arrived, the mission had become his operational command. Everett stood next to him, trying to shake some of the cold water from his nylon BDU. Before Jack raised the radio to his mouth, he quickly made sure everyone was safely aboard. After the excitement of their arrival, it took him a moment to remember the code name for the operation.
“This is Dynamo actual, over,” he said as he caught his breath from the strenuous climb to the high decking of the old warship.
“Dynamo actual, this is Captain Ezra Johnson. I think we can drop the pretense here. I think the damn Russians know about our presence, over.”
Before Jack could respond, the Russian helicopter broke with the Seahawk and turned and swooped low over the bow of the ship — low enough that all aboard dove for cover. Collins raised his head with an angry look but forcibly calmed himself as the twin counter-rotating blades buffeted the exposed men. The Royal Navy lieutenant was organizing his remaining men to prepare to resist an onboard assault. He dispersed them throughout the upper deck into hidden positions. Jack nodded at the young officer’s move.