The great social experiment was over. Soyuz was doomed. The Russian
mystic in Khenkin had already accepted the trial-by-combat judgment of Fate.
At the same time, he knew that his death would mean nothing to Vorobyev
or the other militarists, or to Admiral Ivanov steaming north aboard the Kreml
at this moment. The struggle would go on, with thousands more dying to
confirm what he already knew: The Americans fought like demons, their
technology was superior … and the twin battles this day, at Romsdalfjord and
here, had proven that they had a will to fight for what they believed at least
equal to that of the Soviets.
The struggle and the dying would go on. The realization filled him with
sadness.
Beneath the inferno, gasoline and JP5 spewed from ruptured fuel lines,
turning hangar spaces into vast reservoirs of fuel-air explosives. Flames
raging through the paint locker spaces at the carrier’s stern ignited the
mixture. As Khenkin reached for a telephone on the flag bridge, the Soviet
aircraft carrier died around him.
With a crack like the thunder of Judgment Day, flame-licked smoke
mushroomed five hundred meters into the sky. Airplanes and pieces of
airplanes and house-sized pieces of the island and flight deck were whirled
end over end over end high above the stricken carrier, as explosion followed
explosion in a deep-throated barrage of savage detonations, each building one
upon another, a waterfall, a booming, rumbling tidal wave of raw and furious
sound.
In the sea a mile away, Hunter Harrison clung to his inflatable life
raft, his face gone slack with awe as he watched the rending of the skies,
felt the heat wash across his exposed face and hands, felt the terrible power
of that multiple, ongoing thunderclap.
And aboard Intruder 502, Sluf Dodd felt the shudder that reached out and
took the fleeing A6 like a dog worrying a bone. He gritted his teeth and held
the aircraft on course, as flame lit up the inside of the cockpit like a newly
risen sun.
Twisting in his seat, he glimpsed the pillar of smoke rising from the
sea, like the volcanic destruction of some exploding island. Opening the
tactical frequency, Sluf repeated a phrase that had already gone down in Navy
history, one first spoken some fifty-five years before after the sinking of
the Japanese carrier Shoho at the Battle of the Coral Sea.
“Camelot, Dealer One,” he called. “Scratch one flattop.”
Behind him, flames scoured the sky.
CHAPTER 23
Monday, 23 June
0900 hours Zulu (1000 hours Zone)
CBG14
The Norwegian Sea
The last blow struck by the American forces in what was to be known as
the Battle of the Freya Bank was something of an anticlimax. During the air
strike against the Soviet task force, the attack sub Galveston, which had been
dogging the enemy carrier group for days, at last slipped past a pair of
Kashin-class destroyers, located Soyuz and her consorts at a range of nearly
120 miles, and loosed her last two sub-launched Harpoons.
Soviet radar operators on the cruisers escorting the Soyuz, distracted by
the explosion that had demolished the carrier and turned her into a flaming
wreck, never saw the cruise missiles skimming the waves from a totally
unexpected direction–the northwest. Both Harpoons slammed into the cruiser
Admiral Yumashev, one in her helicopter deck astern, the other into her hull
just below her superstructure.
The detonation of warheads, helicopter fuel, and a magazine locker
holding several dozen antisubmarine torpedoes was not nearly as thunderous as
the blast that had destroyed Soyuz, but the Yumashev was a much smaller
vessel. Her spine snapped, she broke in two at 0842 hours and went to the
bottom, taking 303 of her complement of 380 officers and men with her.
Soyuz, meanwhile, continued to burn.
The first American ship to reach the Soyuz was the frigate Stephen
Decatur, but she could not approach closer than a hundred yards because of the
fierce heat from the burning carrier. Explosions aboard had opened Soyuz to
the sea. Already, the waves broke over her stern quarter, while her island
superstructure canted far to starboard.
There was little Decatur could do but try to rescue some of the