Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (25 page)

“We’ll have to maintain this slow
speed for some time yet,” said Fedorov. They were approaching Burke Islets,
with the Warrior Reefs off their port side. “Once we get past York Island ahead
I can probably increase to fifteen knots up to Bligh Entrance.”

A second salvo of two rounds came in,
this time corrected nicely, and 500 meters closer. The blue dye was evident now
in the tall waterspouts.

“This is getting dangerous,” said
Karpov. “Mister Samsonov, ready on the P-900 system.” He looked at Fedorov.
“With your permission, sir.”

“Granted,” said Fedorov. The sight of
those tall geysers was enough for him to realize that they had to hit this
enemy battleship harder.

“Very well,” Karpov stood taller, his
arms locked behind his back, eyes on the overhead HD video. “Two missiles,
Mister Samsonov, and I want them on the superstructure, please. Use your laser
rangefinders and HD video for in-flight targeting.”

“Aye, sir. Missiles seven and six
ready in silos and firing at five second intervals.”

“Fire.”

The sound of the warning claxon was
loud on the forward deck, and Karpov turned to watch the hatch flip open. The
missile ejected, declining and igniting its engine flawlessly. Seconds later it
was followed by the second missile. They had put one 450kg warhead on the
target earlier with a Moskit-II; this time Karpov would hit them with two 400kg
warheads on the cruise missiles. Samsonov was now using an HD video display,
and designating his target with a light pen on the image itself. In effect, he
was using his own eyes to fly the missile to the point he wanted, the tall
pagoda main mast of the ship making for an inviting target.

They saw the enemy fire a third time
just before the first cruise missile hit home, striking low on the pagoda with
a distant roar. Seconds later the second missile hit higher, right into the
heart of the tower, and the ship was soon masked in flame and smoke.

 *
* *

Executive
officer Koro Ono saw the missiles
first, gaping at their fiery tails and thin vapor trails. “Enemy fire!” he
shouted, and Captain Iwabuchi instinctively braced himself near the binnacle.
The slower approach of the P-900s was spellbinding, and then they began a wild
evasive dance, low over the sea, and every man on the bridge stared out the
forward viewports, one junior officer shirking just as the first missile came
driving in at the base of the tower. There was a shuddering explosion, two men
thrown from their feet, then the second missile struck even higher on the
tower, just below the bridge itself.

Ono was thrown back as the windows
shattered and a violent spray of broken glass and shrapnel flew in. Iwabuchi
clutched the binnacle, managing to stay on his feet, but three other men were
down, and
Tokono
Horishi
,
Ikeda’s second officer for the light gunnery detail, was also wounded.

Ono lay stunned on the deck as black
smoke billowed in through the broken windows. The men were coughing, shielding
their eyes, and groping for bulkheads to steady themselves. Through it all
Iwabuchi stood stalwart, a light of fire and anger in his eyes, a streak of
blood on his cheek where glass had cut him. He screamed out the order to fire,
but the forward guns did not answer. The first round had struck the number two
turret, and it was put out of action, the concussion enough to stun the men
inside, their ears bleeding from the shock. Even for a slow missile, the P-900
packed a hard wallop. Designated the P-900
Kalibr
-NK
missile by the Russians, it was called the SS-N-27 “Sizzler” by NATO when it
was first introduced in 2012. It weighed over 1700 kilograms, adding a strong
kinetic attack in addition to the 400kg explosive warhead.

Kirishima
was shaken and hurt, with fires below
the bridge and around number two turret, but she was in no danger of sinking.
Enraged that he could not return fire with his forward guns, Iwabuchi gave the
helm an order to turn north so he could bring his two aft turrets into action.
He had not yet come to the Torres Strait itself, so there was plenty of sea
room for him to maneuver. But by the time he had effected the turn, and the
fire control parties had lessened the thick black smoke shrouding the ship,
Mizuchi
has slipped north as well, out of the narrow channel and into more open waters
beyond.

Koro Ono was back on his feet,
clutching a bleeding right arm where he had been grazed with shrapnel. “Sir,”
he said. “Those rockets must be
piloted
. It is the only way they could
dance over the sea like that and then turn to hit us so accurately! The channel
ahead is too narrow to fight here. We will have to slow to ten knots or less to
navigate the strait. If they send more…”

“Don’t bother me with navigation,”
Iwabuchi batted the remark away. “Koshino! Are the aft batteries ready to fire?
What is taking so long?”

“The smoke has made it difficult to
plot the range, sir.”

“Fire anyway. Fire both turrets at
once! Then do your spotting, you fool!”

“Aye sir.” Koshino rushed to a voice
tube and gave the order to fire, the aft turrets answering soon after with a
mighty roar.

Iwabuchi smiled when he heard the
guns, and his eyes found Ono’s. “We must let them know they have not hurt us,”
he said darkly. “You say the British must be piloting those demon rockets? Yes,
it seems so, though I find it hard to believe. Where are Hara’s planes now? Let
his pilots show the same bravery and smash this ship. This is a perfect time to
strike from the air while they are at reduced speed in these restricted
waters.”

Ono blinked away the smoke, coughing.
“Hara’s planes are mostly at the bottom of the sea, sir, as we may be if you do
not proceed with more caution here. I remind you that we must sail these same
waters if we are to continue this chase.”

Iwabuchi turned on the man, a rage in
his eyes, but he said nothing. His body language was enough.

 *
* *

“That
hurt them,” said Karpov. “Those fires
will make it very difficult for their gunnery officers.”

They watched yet another salvo, this
time four shells, but it was very wide, the rounds falling well beyond the
Warrior Reefs to their port side.

“I have an idea,” said Fedorov. “Do we
have any mines in the magazine, Captain?”

Karpov’s eyes lit up at the
suggestion. “We may have some MDM-7s. Good Idea, Fedorov! I must be slipping. I
should have thought of it myself. Let me call down to Martinov and I will see
about it.”

The MDM-7 was a ship launched mine
that could be dropped in their wake, activating two minutes later to give the
ship time to avoid its own weapon. It could be rigged to explode by contact, or
by acoustic trigger, which was a preferred method, and the large 1500kg warhead
was a powerful explosion that could cause severe damage if it detonated
anywhere near a ship. In the narrow channel, they could prove a perfect weapon
against the pursuing enemy ships.

Martinov called back minutes later.
They had ten MDM-7 mines and six older MDM-3s, which were an air dropped
version. “Let’s lay some eggs,” said Fedorov. “I want the KA-40 up at once, and
have them lay all six MDM-3s in the Prince Of Wales Channel. We can also drop
five or six MDM-7s around these islets as well.” It was a perfect defensive
strategy, and it would mean they would not have to use any more missiles if the
enemy ships chose this same route.

“Once we reach the Bligh Entrance
ahead we’ll be turning south to take the Outer Channel past the
Portlock
Reefs to Pandora Passage. We’ll drop the last of
the MDM-7s there. It’s the last narrows before we get out into the Coral Sea.”

“Pandora’s Passage,” said Karpov.
“What are we sailing into there, I wonder?” The ancient warning concerning
‘Pandora’s Box’ was in his mind, the jar that contained all the evils of the
world.

“That jar was opened long ago,” said
Fedorov. “Just look at this war we’ve been sailing through these last weeks. We
crossed the whole of the world and still it finds us. But there was one thing
left at the bottom of the jar after Pandora opened it,” he smiled at Karpov
now. “
Elpis
, the Spirit of Hope. We will have
to hold fast to that once we Get into the Coral Sea. Work out the mining
operations, Mister Karpov. I’ll have to keep my eyes on these navigation charts
for the next forty minutes to an hour.”

Chapter
18

Pandora
had yet one other thing in the bottom
of her jar, the Japanese
Kaichu
Type submarine
Ro-33
. She was a double hulled sub, K-5 class and she packed a dangerous
sting with four forward torpedo tubes firing the deadly Type 95 torpedo, the
submarine variant of the dread ‘Long Lance.’
Ro-33
was a prototype
model, 960 tons, with a large planned rollout, but only two boats were ever
built in the K-5 series, the
Ro-33
and her sister
Ro-34,
though
there were twenty K class boats in all, mostly designated the K-6 variant. The
sub could make nearly twenty knots with her two diesel engines on the surface,
and 8 knots when submerged on two 1200 horsepower electric motors. Only one of
the twenty would survive the war.

 Her number was the same as the
year of construction at the Kure naval yard when she was laid down on August 8,
1933. Seven different men commanded the sub in her early pre-war years, and she
was eventually designated the flagship of
SubDiv
21
in May of 1941.

To date number 33 had had little luck
in the war. She had been involved in patrols supporting the Malay campaign, and
in the Java Sea earlier that year. Out in the Indian Ocean she took a shot at
the destroyer USS
Whipple
when she came up on it involved in a rescue
mission for a damaged oiler
Pecos
, but the nimble destroyer evaded her
lance. Some months later she was instrumental in scouting out the Russell and
Deboyne
Islands for anchorages prior to Operation MO and
the successful seizure of Port Moresby.

Lt. Commander Shigeyuki Kuriyama took
over the boat after that operation and on August 6 he was out on the fourth war
patrol for
Ro-33
when he happened across the Australian merchant ship
Mamutu
off Murray Island. The shallow waters and
reefs in the area prompted her to surface and start a merry chase, using her 3
inch deck gun to hunt down the hapless 300 ton motor vessel, and she
immediately scored two hits, one silencing the radio room and the second killing
the ship’s Master. A half hour later
Mamutu
was listing in the water, easy prey, with many of her 108 passengers already in
the sea. Kuriyama was merciless, ordering his boat to sail past the burning
ship and machine gun the survivors, killing many passengers as he went by. It
was the only notch in the sub’s belt after four long patrols, and the crew was
eager to put their torpedoes to better use.

They got their chance in the early
evening of August 26th, 1942 while they were hovering just off Pandora’s
Passage. A coded message bearing the name
Mizuchi
had come in three
hours earlier, and it ordered the boat to leave off its defensive patrol near
Port Moresby and make haste for the Torres Strait. A big enemy ship was running
the gauntlet of reefs and shoals there, and attempting to break out into the
Coral Sea.
Ro-33
was to assume a blocking position and wait for the
beast, and she was in position well before the looming silhouette of
Kirov
was sighted by her commander, his eyes alight with the first opportunity to
fire on an enemy warship in nearly six months.

Three days from now in the history
Fedorov might have read in his
Chronology of the War At Sea
,
Ro-33
was supposed to have been in the Gulf of Papua west of Port Moresby where she
would spot the 3300 ton merchant ship
Malaita
escorted by the Australian
destroyer
Arunta
. She would put a torpedo into the
Malaita
, but
later be found ten miles southeast of Port Moresby by the
Arunta
and hit
with Mark VII depth charges, sinking the boat and killing all of her 70 man
crew. Yet fate had ordained that she would not make that appointment on the
29th. The Australians had lost Port Moresby and neither the
Malaita
nor
the
Arunta
were anywhere near the area now. Instead
Ro-33
was
three days early to the grinning smile of death, where he waited for her on a
ship the like of which Kuriyama had never seen. But with torpedoes that could
fire at a very long range, he would not go down without a fight that evening.

Four
Type 95 torpedoes were in the tubes before Tasarov found
the sub, hovering silently, some 15,000 meters off the exit to the Pandora
Passage. He had been just making ready to cease active sonar when his well
trained ear caught a return that sounded much different from the echoes of rock
and shoal he had been processing for the last hour. No…This was different, and
it had a sinister edge to it. He immediately announced possible submarine,
confidence high, and designated the contact Alpha One, feeding targeting
information to Samsonov.