Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series) (14 page)

Now strange thoughts that might
bother Fedorov came to his mind. What if someone down there is sitting quietly
on the tree of life in the branches below where he and his men now sat? He
doubted if there was anyone down there from the Chiuchi peninsula where he had
been born, but he had men here in his contingent with roots from all over the
homeland. What would happen if one of their great grandfathers was down there,
and they died here in this fight?

He shook his head, realizing that
those were useless thoughts. He had enough to worry about if he took his
Marines into battle. The bullets and mortar rounds would be more than enough,
clear and present dangers that would quantify themselves in bright red blood
when they struck home. An unseen death of annihilation because of all this time
business was not anything he could fathom or worry about now. Yet the thought
of killing his fellow Russians if it came to it did give him some pause.

Time passed, and Zykov’s eyes seemed
clouded over with frustration. He looked up at Troyak, shaking his head. “I
don’t get it,” he said. “We can receive now, but I just can’t seem to get a
signal through on any of the military bands that Nikolin will be monitoring.
The interference is very close. Its clouding over here, at the source—not out
there somewhere.” Zykov pointed plaintively.

Troyak nodded. So it wouldn’t be
up to the Admiral or Fedorov after all. Orlov would throw his two cents in, but
Troyak had his orders. I was to make the final decision if we were unable to
get through. Orlov was not to be considered in command. So it’s down to me now,
he realized, not the Admirals and Captains and deputy Directors. It’s down to a
Marine Gunnery Sergeant with a hankering to get on the ground and kick some
ass.

And that was exactly what he was
going to do.

* * *

In
Russia they were called
the ‘Black Death,’ the elite Russian Naval Marines, their faces streaked with
dark grease paint, black berets and dark coats, with heavier mushroom shaped
helmets netted with camo scheme when called for. They were called for now.

Troyak had three squads of seven
men each, and they were heavily armed with assault rifles, grenade launchers,
RPGs, a
Pecheneg
Bullpup 7.62 machine gun, and a handheld
Ilga
SAM in each squad. Their motto was a simple one: “Where we are, there is
victory.”

“A chance to put my Bizon-2 SMG back
to work,” said Zykov naming his weapon as he checked the gun mechanism. “High
impulse Makarov rounds in a helical sixty-four round magazine. Very good in a
firefight, particularly at close quarters.” He never tired of saying that about
his weapon.

“I’ll stick with my Bullpup,”
said Chenko. “It combines the firepower of a good heavy machine gun and the mobility
of an LMG. Superb accuracy, excellent durability, and with the night vision
sight I can hit targets at 1500 meters with this little boy.”

Kolnov was checking ammo on his GM-94
multi-shot grenade launcher. It had pump action, with a three round tube
magazine of 43mm grenades, and could be hand fired for close quarters action,
which is what it was designed for. That was his fallback. His primary role was
fire support with the AGS-30, a belt fed automatic grenade launcher with a high
fire rate 30 round drum. It had an adjustable day or night sight, and could
range out 2100 meters.

Another man carried an RPG-30
Kryuk
,
or “Hook,” which was a man portable 105mm anti-tank weapon, with rounds that
could defeat 650 mm of rolled homogenous armor, or blast through 1500mm of
reinforced concrete and 2000mm of brick. That was almost eighty inches! The
Sergeant considered whether or not to take a mortar, but with light, powerful
weapons like this at his disposal, he decided against it.

The fighting man had a kind of
love affair with his weapon. He lived with it, day in and day out, and would
die without it in combat. The other Marines were carrying more standard AK-12 Kalashnikov
assault rifles, all with night sights, muzzle fired grenade packs, and plenty
of ammo. By WWII standards the three squads would make up a platoon with the
firepower of a full company. The typical Russian WWII infantry squad might have
two sub-machine guns and eight carbines. Troyak’s squads had the equivalent of
seven machine guns, and with much more support fire from the RPGs, and other hand
held anti-tank and SAM weapons they were packing. The Black Death was ready to
rumble.

Now all Troyak had to do was
convince Captain Selikov to get them a bit closer. “There’s a fight going on
down there,” he said. “I’d like to get my men into it fresh, and not after an
eighteen hour hike.”

“You mean to go down anyway?”

“I have my orders.”

Selikov naturally looked to
Orlov, who was standing with arms folded, brooding on the matter. The Chief
said nothing, still wondering what was so damn important about this
mission—Fedorov’s mission. It had something to do with all this time travel
nonsense, but he was not exactly sure what was going down here. Beyond that, he
was still steamed up with the thought that he had not been properly briefed.

“What is your mission, Troyak?
What’s the objective?”

“As I said, we deploy to
Ilanskiy, take and hold the railway inn and make contact with the ship to report
our status.”

“Well that isn’t going to happen.
We can’t get through.”

“Then my orders were clear,” said
Troyak. “I was to destroy the facility.”

“Destroy it? We came all this way
to blow up a railway inn? What in god’s name for?”

Troyak just shrugged. “I don’t
ask things like that when I get an order, Chief. They want it destroyed—that I
can do.”

“And you say there’s a fight
underway down there?”

“We’ve heard the combat radio
traffic. Some of those airships must have put men down too.”

“For the damn railway inn?”

“Who knows, Orlov? They have
their orders—I have mine.”

The best laid plans of mice and
men have often gone awry.

Selikov smiled. “That’s this
whole damn war in a nutshell, isn’t it. Alright, Sergeant. I can get you
closer. We’ll have to drop down low, and it will be damn risky if another
airship gets elevation on us.
Narva
is a big ship, but we don’t climb
fast. If someone catches me hovering to put your men down we could be in real
trouble.”

“Don’t worry about that, Captain.
We brought along a few things that can get you out of the stew if that
situation arises.”

Orlov grinned at that. “Alright
then, how many men are you taking—just the two squads as planned?”

Troyak hesitated a moment. He
wanted all his men with him now, but how could he convince Orlov to stay aboard
the airship as the Admiral and Fedorov wanted?

“I’ll need twenty men,” he said.

“All three squads then?”

“Correct, but I have a problem,
Chief.”

“What problem?”

“We need someone who knows what
they’re doing here on overwatch. I need a man here on our radio set, and
someone who can handle a needle and thread.”

“Needle and thread?”

Troyak nodded his head to a
nearby weapons cache where two of the
Ilga
, “needle” SAM missiles, were
leaning against a bulkhead wall. “If what the Captain warns about should
happen, I need a man who will know what to do about it. Can you man that post,
Chief?”

“Me?”

“This airship has some good recoilless
rifles mounted,” said Troyak, “and we may also need fire support. I’d like you
to coordinate all that with the Captain here, protect the ship, and read our
signals for the extraction.”

“Then assign a private, Troyak. I
was figuring to get on the ground.”

“Are you ready for combat? All my
men are. That’s all we train for. Once we get down there we’re going to be
moving fast and humping a lot of equipment and firepower. It’s going to be
tough work, and we may have to engage anyone that gets in our way. Besides, I
can’t hand off ship overwatch and extraction to a private here, or even a
corporal.” A little
Lozh
now, and some butter on Orlov’s bread was in
order.

“You’re senior officer,” Troyak
finished. “You’re the only man who can hold this thing together on this end.
You command from here.”

It was probably more than Troyak
had said at any given one time for months. He was a man of few words, and hard
actions, but he knew he had been ordered to make sure Orlov stayed on the
airship, and he did his best to convince him here. Then, seeing Orlov hesitate,
he said one last thing, and in a tone that Orlov instinctively could hear and
understand.

“Those are my orders, direct from
Admiral Volsky. You are to coordinate with Selikov, manage the defense of the
airship, and oversee the extraction on overwatch. I am to handle the ground
operation with my Marines.”

Orlov also heard something more
there—my Marines. Even though Orlov had once been busted and placed in Troyak’s
detail he knew he was never a member of the club. He was a ship’s officer, not
a ground pounder, and Troyak was also correct to point out this would be a combat
mission, and Orlov had never been trained for that. He knew that trying to buck
the gritty Sergeant would lead to nothing more than a needless confrontation,
so he relented.

“Alright, Troyak. Take your men
in. I’ve got your back.”

Troyak walked over and clasped
him by the arm. “We’ll be counting on you, Chief.”

Part
V

Paradox
Dreams

“Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?”

—Edgar Allan Poe

Chapter 13

Narva
hovered in a
wide clearing between two stands of pine and was slowly retracting the cargo
basket after delivering the last of Troyak’s Marines. Captain Selikov had taken
a risk to get the men closer to their objective, particularly when they saw the
zeppelin duel to the south was slowly migrating north of Ilanskiy. He swung the
airship a bit east, away from that action, and then turned south to approach
Ilanskiy from the northeast, getting to within about 20 kilometers before Orlov,
who was monitoring the
Oko
radar panel, reported that an airship had
taken notice of them and was now heading in their direction.

“Then up we go,” said Selikov.
“And we must be quick about it. We’re twenty men light, so that’s a lot of
weight gone. We should be able to get up beyond 2000 meters in no time, but I
would expect that contact is much higher.”

“I make it 4500 meters,” said
Orlov.

“Then we go up as well. I can’t
take the chance that they will get elevation on me. We’ve a lot of lift now, and
I don’t think they can match us if it comes to a reach for altitude. Fifteen
degree up-bubble and all engines ahead full. God speed to your Marines, Orlov.
I don’t like the looks of this situation.”

“Nor do I,” said Orlov.

They made a rapid ascent, passing
through 4000 meters in just ten minutes and still climbing. The other airship
they had been monitoring was circling now, and Orlov wondered if they might
also have them on some form of rudimentary radar. It can’t be seeing anything
very well with this interference, he thought. My
Oko
panel is still only
able to give me 50 kilometers coverage—very strange. That’s a third of its
range and it is very resistant to jamming. What could be jamming us here in any
case? Certainly nothing from this era.

Down on the ground Troyak called
in on the radio. His voice was cloudy, but their modern equipment had the power
to push through the static and maintain contact at this close range. The Marines
were assembled and already moving out to the south. They had set down near a
small logging hamlet, then skirted a high tree line that screened that place
and started off, soon coming to a thin wagon trail, which they followed south.

The terrain was not bad, and
there was a lot of open ground that had firmed up over the cold nights, which
made for easy walking. Troyak took in the smell of the land, the trees and
fauna, and was reminded of home. All the men felt it as well. They had finally
set foot on Mother Russia again, after what seemed like an eternity aboard the
ship. It gave them an eager feeling of completion, though the thought that they
might be marching into a combat situation was somewhat distressing. They were
no strangers to combat, veterans all, but these were not Germans like they had
fought in the Caspian. They were their fellow Russians.

They made an easy six kilometers
per hour and were coming up on another small settlement noted as Tamara on
Troyak’s map. It was then that they heard the distant sound of small arms fire,
and the mood of the men suddenly shifted to the purpose of their mission. Their
senses keened up. Marines hefted their weapons, and Troyak moved from line of
march to a two up, one back, deployment of his three squads. Zykov was on his
left as he led the detachment forward into thick woods just south of the
settlement.

This is good ground, he thought.
We’ll easily skirt that hamlet and move through these woods like fish in water.
An hour later the woods began to thin and break up into wide clearings, and the
sound of a ground battle was more evident. Troyak saw that the trees thickened
east of Ilanskiy where the rail line approached. There was a small stream that
ran just north, and parallel to the rail, and it was well wooded, offering his
men a perfect avenue to approach the town unseen. When they reached the end of
this feature the ground opened again where segments of the woodland had been logged
and cleared.

The Sergeant was in constant
communication with Zykov and Chenko, who was leading the number three platoon
behind him. He knelt, raising a silent fist as a signal to his own squad, which
crouched low, waiting. Then he spoke through his collar microphone to Zykov.