Devil's Garden

Chapter 6

Yeltsin was on the bridge, where any Captain should be in battle, when the second bomb came in. He had been maneuvering the ship, the speed reduced to just 20 knots now with the damage aft affecting his propulsion shafts. The fire there had finally been contained, but the damage was extensive. The Bat Bomb had taken a huge bite out of the ship with its thousand pounds of explosive. He had no idea what had actually struck the first blow, but it was fitting that it would be a fledgling missile, a guided missile developed by the Americans in WWII. The Allies had seen the weapon modeled for them throughout many hard engagements with the mysterious raider Geronimo, and ideas for weapons soon became deadly reality in time of war. Orlan, with Russia’s latest missile technology from the year 2021 had been punishing the American air wings fiercely, now she was struck a hard blow from a radar guided glide bomb. Tit for tat.

The second bomb was a standard 500 pounder delivered by a lucky Helldiver that had survived the Russian missile gauntlet, and it did the one thing that would now seal the ship’s fate, smashing down on the deck very near the Kashtan CWIS system and blowing it to pieces. Orlan still had another 18 SAMs in her forward deck VLS tubes, but now there looked to be about 140 planes bearing down on her from all compass headings. The math was simple and blunt.

It was over.

The Russian ship’s surface radar had also just spotted another large contact on the horizon, a second battleship from the looks of its tall main mast and superstructure on the long range imaging system. Yeltsin saw the ship fire its forward guns, blasting out a challenge in spite of what had happened to its sister ship. Minutes later they heard the wail and whoosh of the rounds coming in, and saw six big water spouts where they fell off the starboard side of the ship.

“CIC,” he said resolutely. “Activate ship-to-ship missile system, P-900 missile number ten please.”

“The young officer may have thought it odd to be enabling just one missile under these circumstances. They had seen what Kirov had done to the first American battleship, then he realized what the Captain was ordering-it was the number ten missile! They were going to blow this ship to oblivion as well!

“Sir, Aye, Aye. Your number ten missile is keyed and ready.”

Yeltzin walked slowly over to the CIC station, hearing a watch stander call out yet another warning.

“Conn-torpedo wakes off the port bow! Spread of three!”

The Captain saw the horizon light up and knew the enemy battleship had fired yet again. “Steady as you go,” he said calmly. He had reached the CIC and was inserting his firing key. The men watched his deliberate action, as though he had all the time in the world, one man looking out to see the torpedo wakes that had been reported with obvious fear on his face.

“Helm, come left ten degrees.” The Captain ordered an evasive turn, winking at the young Lieutenant, which gave the man heart. He had seen the Captain avoid three torpedoes in the last five minutes, and now he turned his attention to his equipment with renewed confidence.

No man should die in fear, thought Yeltsin.

The sound of incoming heavy rounds loomed in the tense air, drowning out the drone of the aircraft overhead. Too bad for them, he thought. They made it through our missile umbrella only to die here, just as their spirits were rising with the heat of their attack.

He caught the first column of seawater as the rounds came in, very near the ship in what he thought to be an amazing feat of naval gunnery. Then he flipped open the missile fire toggle and pushed his thumb down hard.

* * *

“Make your range 28,000 yards and fire when ready!” Sprague turned to the Bridge gunnery officer. “Let’s blow the fuck out of them!”

“Sir, aye, aye!” The claxon sounded a warning and then Wisconsin fired, her full broadside lighting up the gathering evening with bright orange fire that glowed on the swells of the sea, beating down the waves with their fierce concussion. He counted the seconds as the rounds streaked out, arcing up and up and then tipping over to begin the dreadful downward plunge. The Admiral was looking at his watch as the rounds began to fall. Now was the time.

The horizon erupted with white fire, a searing flash of light followed by a rippling crack that shook the ship with an intense vibration. Everyone on the bridge shirked with alarm. There came a sudden wind, awful in sound and effect, as if some great portal had opened, the gates of hell itself yawning at the edge of oblivion.

The evil orange glow illuminated surrounding clouds, slowly fading as the fireball expanded outward like a star going supernova. The evening sky was bathed in the light for miles in every direction, and the golden fire of the explosion glimmered on the rising seas like molten gold. Soon the light deepened to a tawny shade of ocher, reddening like the early crimson light of sunrise. Clouds evaporated, to a fine steam above the roiling fireball, crowning it with pale smooth inverted dishes of fog. The shock wave radiating out from the erupting column raked the sea to lathered foam as it spread out in a perfect circle about the base, where a raging vortex of fire seemed to suck the ocean up into the reddening fist of fire above. High up, in the windswept heights above, ice clouds formed in a pristine nimbus that fell like gossamer veils to envelop the fireball in a shroud of mist. The great incandescent dome threw off a cascade of fire falls, which billowed down into the boiling ocean, causing it to hiss as the water fled to steam.

“Holy mother of God…” Ziggy Sprague was reaching for his field glasses, the intense light abated enough for him to see the broiling fireball churning up at the top of a seething column of seawater. He had seen ships go up before, but never like this!

“Looks like we hit the sons-of-bitches!” It was Captain John Wesley Roper, skipper of the Wisconsin, grinning from ear to ear.

“It does indeed,” said Sprague. “That looks like something a whole lot bigger than what we were firing.”

“We may have hit their magazines, Admiral. When Yamato went up she sent up a column of smoke and steam like that over three miles high.”

Sprague gave the Captain a look of agreement. “Well then,” he sighed. “I suppose that settles the matter. Radio Admiral Halsey. Tell him Old Wisky has evened the score. Tell him we just blew the Russians into the ninth level of hell.”

“With pleasure, sir.” Roper saluted, heading for the radio room with the good news. Some minutes later the reply came back from Halsey. It was simple, direct, and to the point.

“Sir, the Admiral sends his regards, and says he’ll get you a case a beer for that one.”

Sprague just smiled. It was finally over.

* * *

But it wasn’t over. The politicians weren’t done with it yet.

When word hit the papers on the fate of Iowa the nation was up like wailing banshees and wanting a rope around Stalin’s neck. The headline in the New York Times bawled out the sentiment:

RUSSIANS SINK BATTLESHIP IOWA WITH ATOMIC BOMB!

TRUMAN WARNS STALIN OF A ‘RAIN OF RUIN’

US Readies Atomic Weapons In Reprisal

Truman was on the radio at once, informing the nation:

“We have known the Russians have been working on these weapons for some time, as early as 1941, and before this war began for our great nation. Well, I am here to tell the Russians, and all of you today, that we have been working on them as well. Our friends in Great Britain have also been working, feverishly, day and night, to harness this great power, and we have succeeded.

“The weapons I now speak of are no ordinary bombs. They have more power than 20,000 tons of TNT; more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare…Until this dark day.

“It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against us in an act of utter depravity. It is our believe that the Russians thought they might frighten us, and so secure their claims to territories occupied on the European Front and in the Pacific where this dastardly crime was perpetrated.

“To strike at one’s enemy in war is expected. But to betray your allies in arms with an act of this magnitude is inexcusable, and it will not go unanswered.

“I can report this day that the Russian forces responsible for this attack have already been hunted down and utterly destroyed by elements of the United States Navy. Our own battleship Wisconsin, sister ship of the stricken Iowa, has had the final word at sea, but I will have yet one more word here today. The enormity of what the Soviet Union has done cannot be pardoned. It is treachery at its blackest root, perfidious betrayal of a wartime friend, and it shall be answered in no uncertain terms.

“I am today demanding, and ordering, that all units of the Red Army west of the Oder River must withdraw to Russian territory at once, and that no unit of the Soviet army will be permitted to land anywhere on the Japanese mainland, or on any islands in the Pacific that were the former territory of Japan.

“If the Soviet government does not accede to this order and ultimatum immediately, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such number and with such power as they have not yet seen…”

The Russians, of course, denied any involvement in the attack the President was speaking of, claiming Truman and Churchill sought to define the post war era in their favor and refusing to withdraw from any territory then occupied by Soviet forces. In truth, they had no idea what Truman was talking about, and said as much.

The Presidential order went out that same day, and it was answered by the 509th Composite Air Group on the island of Tinian. And so three days after the Second World War ended, the third war started, and it would rage for nine days of continued madness until the world had finally had enough.

* * *

Colonel Tibbets got the call two hours later. It was Go, Go, Go! The entire 509th would fly with him, as well as over a hundred other B-29s in a massive show of force intended to convince the Russians that any further deployment or use of atomic weapons would lead to their swift and utter destruction.

In truth, the United States was taking the gravest possible risk in hand with the order that Tibbets received that day. Yes, they had the bomb ready just as Truman had boasted, but there were only two available, and both were in the Pacific. Operations at the ultra top secret Manhattan Project in New Mexico were ramping up as never before in a desperate effort to enrich more nuclear fuel and assemble more bombs should they be needed.

The US was already well behind in the race to atomic supremacy. Now they believed the Russians had tested their first bomb in the North Atlantic as early as August of 1941, though the Allies had first thought the Germans were responsible when the Mississippi went down. Years of intelligence work had slowly brought them to another conclusion-that it was a Russian ship, and not the Germans, who had attacked TF-16 in the North Atlantic. It was that conclusion that fed the fires of suspicion where the Russians were concerned for the remainder of the war.

The Russians had the bomb…Why they never used it again on the Germans remained a mystery, and it was eventually decided that the considerable resources, technical knowhow and time required to produce a bomb while under all out attack from Germany had prevented them from creating any more bombs until late in the war. By the time they were ready, Germany had already been defeated.

Yet now the Russians appeared again, with the same blighting footprint on the hallowed ground of peace as before. They used it not on their enemies, but on their friends, or so the Americans believed. They blasted yet another American battleship in a gruesome echo of the dastardly attack made in 1941. Only a very few knew of the fate of the Mississippi and TF-16, and of these no more than ten men alive on the earth at that time knew all of what had really transpired.

But none of that mattered now. Tibbets got the order, and the Enola Gay got the bomb. The planes were in the air the day after the Iowa was sunk, and not two hours after the Soviet authorities had issued a venomous denial of all charges leveled against them and a refusal to withdraw.

The skies were bright and clear that morning, but they had floodlights up to illuminate the runway just the same. The video cameras would record the takeoff for posterity, a newsreel for the ages. One by one the big engines sputtered to life, turning over and spinning the massive props on the enormous engines of the bombers. Tibbets felt the vibration of all four engines shaking his plane, and just before he taxied away he leaned out the side window and waved. Then it was out on the tarmac and down the long runway of North Field, Tinian.

“Hey JS, look at ‘em go!” A group a Seabees were watching near the hangers. “And to think we built the damn airfield that made all this possible.”

They had seen the bombers go many times before, but never with this kind of fanfare, and by direct Presidential order. It was awesome, as all real military power was meant to be. And it was terrible beyond the soul’s capacity to measure, 425 superfortresses in the sky, and one with the power of the sun itself in its belly, all flying north for the vengeance the nation demanded. Only the final raids on Japan had been bigger, with two massive raids involving 464 and 520 planes in late May.

There was no sign of the awful fire that had ravaged the seas the night before. The B-29 bombers were in the air, flying in a massive formation northwest from Tinian. It was a little over 2000 miles to Vladivostok, and with a range just over 3500 miles the bombers would not be returning to the island that day. Instead they would land on airfields cleared and now well established on Okinawa.

If the Russians had any more ships equipped with their new missile weaponry, they would have 425 planes to shoot at, and odds were that the Enola Gay would get through. The Russians had built at least two bombs, and the great risk was that they had more. What if they were to load one on another of their fearsome new aerial defense rockets to blast the entire bomber formation? In the end it was decided that, in spite of Truman’s dire fair warning, the US would have the element of surprise.