So if he runs home to Leningrad, Fedorov might get a rude awakening to find he can no longer pull strings there. But I can. Kirov’s factories are relocating to Siberian territory, and Siberian troops, oil, resources, are all that is still keeping the Soviet Union in this fight. The Americans and British have finally opened their Second Front, for what it’s worth. I sent more troops to Kirov than all the British and American divisions combined.
Yes, I may be worrying too much about Fedorov now. He’s really quite powerless, isn’t he? That said, he needs to be apprehended and brought to my very annoyed justice. If he did have Troyak and his Marines take down the Irkutsk, that’s one more airship I’ll need to build for the fleet. He’ll pay for that. Yes, he’ll pay for everything the next time we meet. No more parley talk with Fedorov. He’s my enemy now. I should have realized that long ago.
Chapter 33
Fedorov felt right at home again as he settled into a chair in the navigation room, charts spread out before him. They had been just north of the tip of Lake Baikal, and were heading west towards Ilanskiy and Kansk by a little used route when the course change was put in. He double checked the distance to the rendezvous point, seeing it was just under 3500 kilometers. If the weather held clear, they might make 80KPH enroute, but the weather was very fickle in Siberia this time of year. He figured the earliest they might arrive would be 48 hours, possibly longer if they were delayed by any unforeseen circumstances. That was to be an understatement, and by a massive margin.
They had gone to high altitude for the initial leg of their journey, to avoid being observed over more populated areas near the Lena River. It was chilling cold up there, and now they had descended into warmer air, the crew very glad for that. Life on a Zeppelin was a hard existence. The rigging and gas bag crews would have to wear heavy parkas, head gear and gloves at altitude, just to keep from being frozen. Gunners assigned to the top mounted platforms got the worst of it, and they were grateful that they did not have to go to action stations and actually man their weapons, fully exposed to the frigid air. In such circumstances, and with the natural wind chill caused by the forward motion of the airship, gun crews could only remain exposed for ten minutes, and they would rotate that often with other men who were huddled on a small warmed deck space just below the platform.
But it wasn’t the cold that seemed to bother them most as they turned north. There was an unaccountable feeling of discomfort settling on the crew, from Symenko, who was naturally surly, and right on down to the cable linemen, sail makers who mended the canvass tarps, and the bag boys. The gunners, bombers, and sub-cloud car men were thankfully not at their posts, and the naval infantry contingent was standing down at Symenko’s order, but everyone seemed tense. It was a slowly rising sense of anxiety, and not just because most of the crew could not understand why they were navigating this territory instead of the familiar routes they would take on their many patrols. It was something more, an impalpable sense of doom, just below the skin. It was that feeling of rising adrenaline prompting a man to fight or flight, but the crew could do neither. There was no apparent danger in the skies around them, save the ever present threat of a sudden storm, and the ubiquitous cold. There were no enemy ships to worry about out here, and in fact, the crew didn’t really know much about what was going on. But they were edgy, and Symenko could feel it too.
Now Fedorov sat staring at his chart, seeing the plotted line of their course as they passed over the winding flow of the Lena River, doubling back on itself in a series of twists and turns near the small settlement of Makarovo. Beyond that, the wilderness grew more intense, allowing them to get lower. It was very green here, the terrain beneath them relatively flat, yet covered by endless stretches of dense forest. Most of the trees on earth must be gathered here, he thought, his mind wondering what was going on down in that silent world. There were places there, where even in modern times, no human footprint had ever touched the ground. He thought about that, realizing the world there was quietly present, trees, soil, water, wildlife. Most of it did not even know it was there, he thought. It’s just a mindless existence, ancient, unknowing, yet marvelous nonetheless.
A little over three hours after the course change, they passed over the thin stream of the Gulmok River. After that they would cross the Nepa. These small rivers appearing at intervals in the otherwise undifferentiated terrain were their guideposts, yet his eye kept roving on ahead, following the thinly traced course line, and seeing that it was, indeed, taking them over what he now regarded as a most dangerous area.
The fuel situation was their main problem. He was getting regular reports on usage to factor into his thinking, and he now calculated that they would just have enough to make the rendezvous. As much as he felt compelled to avoid the area ahead of them, he knew they would simply have to stay on this plotted course, and it was going to take them right over the dead ground that had been haunted by so many legends and stories of strange events and evil doings.
In modern times he knew there had been many hidden installations out here, secret mines, military depot sites, testing grounds for weapons, and even hidden silos where cold missiles waited in their stony silence. None of that was here now in 1942. The terrain was unblighted by modernity, and its many evils. Yet the course line was taking them right over the terror of the taiga, the place where something came out of space in 1908, heralded by a strange magnetic flux that was picked up by many scientists and observers across the globe before it struck. They were going to fly directly over the site where it fell, the Tunguska Event, the epicenter of all his worst fears about what was happening to the world around him now.
He got some much needed sleep, awakening again six hours out, near the 450 kilometer mark as they overflew the Chupakan River. Next came the Selkii, then they Ayava, and with each passing, the sense of anxiety seemed to grow. Night fell around them quickly when the sun set just before 18:00 hours, the darkness thickening quickly, the cold increasing. The fat gibbous moon would not rise for another hour and a half, so it was just their bad luck that they would pass over the epicenter of Tunguska in this interval of relative darkness, about an hour after that sun had set. In one sense, that was good, for they would skirt very near the inhabited settlement of Vanavara just 15 kilometers to their west. No one would see the slate grey beast in the skies above, passing like a shadow, nothing more than a smudge that moved over the stars.
A silence had fallen over the ship, a sullen dampening of spirits that now weighed heavily on the crew. Some were trying to get fitful sleep, and the bridge crew on the main gondola sat bleary eyed at their posts, the Wheelman, Elevatorman, Engineer, Trim and Ballast Man, Compass Man. Symenko stood nearby, grumbling about the dark and casting dour glances at Fedorov, Troyak and Orlov. The Chief was particularly edgy.
“Sookin Sym, Fedorov. Where have you taken us? It feels like hell on earth, only no fire, just endless black, and this numbing cold. I haven’t felt this bad since we went down with Troyak and I found that thing on the taiga. Remember that Troyak? I nearly shit my pants!”
The burly Sergeant looked at him, blinking. “Remember what?” he grumbled.
“Never mind that, Orlov,” said Fedorov quickly, and he gave the Chief a warning glance. Orlov had a way of blurting things out like that, which was one reason Fedorov wanted him on this mission, and not back on the ship. This Troyak had never been with them on that mission, nor had any of these Marines. That had happened with the old, original crew of Kirov, but this version of the stalwart Sergeant knew nothing about it. This Troyak had never accompanied Fedorov along the Trans-Siberian Rail, never set foot at Ilanskiy, and he never fought in Syria and Iraq when the war took them there, nor did he have a place on that fateful mission with Popski to look for General O’Connor’s downed aircraft.