From the moment the Suslov was seized by the wave until it capsized and disappeared from view, less than ten seconds elapsed. By then the crest of the wave was racing upstream, scattering the Red fleet like chaff.
The slender destroyers were easy victims of the wave’s fury. One was caught broadside and thrown, like a stick to a dog, high up on the banks of the channel, streaks of fire licking at its hull. Minutes later, as the waters drained away, the few bruised and dazed sur-
vivors heard the clatter of feet on the decks above. Wounded, unable to fight, the crew waited terror-struck and helpless in their darkened compartments as the flashlight beams of vengeful Texans sought them out.
In Fubar, Ken Clover lived a nightmare. Though he knew what appeared on his screens was actually happening, he couldn’t quite grasp it. As the wave struck the line of ships, they rode to the top one by one in slow motion, there to be enveloped by flames, which set off machine-gun ammunition like strings of Chinese fire crackers. But as the wave slid away from under them, their fates were various. Like the Suslov, some were flipped end over end and plunged straight to the bottom. Others balanced on stern or bow at the peak of the wave, then fell with sickening suddenness, their hulls striking the water with a bone-shattering jolt that sent a sheet of boiling waters and fire a thousand meters in all directions. Even the stoutest ships are not built to resist tsunamis, and all along the line hull plates were sprung and water flooded engine rooms while bilge pumps worked frantically against the rising tide. Only the biggest ships survived, and not all of them. Stunned but still afloat were the flagship, super-battle cruiser Karl Marx, the helicopter carriers Beria and Yezhov, the missile cruisers Rykov and Litvinov, and the aircraft carrier Dzerzhinsky.
Six ships, of a fleet which a moment before had been twenty-three.
All had been flung on their beam’s ends. Their superstructures had been smashed out of shape by the crushing impact of the water. All of the helicopters and planes and most of the men aboard were at least temporarily out of action. Enveloped by flaming napalm, many of the crew on weather decks leapt in agony from their ships, to drown in the channel’s muddy waters. Lifeboats were ablaze, the proud bunting was but a string of dangling cinders, and the smoke from countless fires rose in a pall around each of the six ships.
Leaks from ruptured plates sent dark channel waters coursing through their lower decks, and emergency power was switched on to run the pumps and lights at top speed while damage control parties rigged collision mats against the worst rips in the hull. Injured seamen screamed in pain, but their grievously bruised and shaken shipmates could spare no time for them. They staggered to their emergency stations down smoke-filled passageways, men drunk on the dark wine of disaster.
Once the wave receded in the distance, the channel was silent except for the cries of the wounded and dying, many of them on the channel banks. The water itself swirled with eddies from the suction of sunken ships, trapped communist bodies making a few pointless revolutions on circular currents before sinking into a darkness as black as a Siberian winter’s night. Bubbles belched up from the channel bottom as water invaded the inner spaces of the sunken ships. Occasional secondary explosions occurred as hidden fires reached munitions or overheated cryogenic accumulators. The entire waterway was littered with smoking, floating human remains, the wreckage of lifeboats, wooden ammunition boxes, and the roofs of nearby houses carried away by the wave. Atop one crouched a black cat, aloof and uncaring. Coating the water and flotsam was a greasy layer of oil from sunken ships, patches of which were aflame, quickly to spread the width of the channel.
The fate of the thousands of sailors lined up for parade on Campbell’s Run was quick, nasty, and inevitable: those who weren’t crushed by the wave drowned in it, and those who didn’t drown-along with those who did-were promptly cremated by the blazing napalm.
Ken Clover urged the pilot to lower levels. He realized he risked the fire of antiaircraft crews crazed and vengeful by the sudden catastrophe, but that day God was his copilot. So busy were the Russians merely trying to keep their ships afloat that none looked up, no more than a man clinging to a precipice notices the circling butterfly. He filmed it all, making pass after pass, from directly overhead to near water level, as order slowly returned to the ragged remains of the fleet. Fires on deck were extinguished, one by one. Soaked, sooty and disheveled sailors and officers appeared on deck, heaving dead bodies over the side along with other wreckage. But almost as soon as they appeared they took cover again, as sniper fire from the channel banks peppered their exposed decks. The Texans ashore poured in fire as if they would never have another chance. Indeed, they wouldn’t, once the Russian gunners manned their proton guns.
Ken Clover felt he had been recording the carnage for hours. He glanced at the digital clock. He was shocked. Five and a half minutes had elapsed. Unbelievable, until he observed that the Karl Marx was still rolling gently from side to side, the oscillations set up by the wave not quite yet dampened.
He looked down at the monitors from which his eye had wandered and realized that he had missed something: the flashes of ten thousand Texan guns had abruptly ceased. The men who had been shooting from behind the concealment of uprooted trees and overturned automobiles suddenly stood up, looked downstream, and ran for their lives, up and away from the channel banks.
7 JULY 1998:11:34 A.M.
Gwillam Forte struggled to his knees. He was too old for this, he told himself. Running up and down ladders, popping in and out of ovens, being chased by a would-be murderer with short pants and a long gun- that was young men’s work. He shook his head to remove the last vestiges of muzziness, and wondered how long he had been unconscious.
Not long, for the Texas was still where it had been when the big explosion rent the skies. Down in SD-1 his scientists would now be watching the clock, their fingers hovering over the button. He wondered whether they had witnessed the chase on the closed-circuit television monitors that had first detected Hobe Caulkins. They must have, but they might not realize that, even though he had left the ship and was now out of camera range, Caulkins was still close enough to kill him.
Caulkins was facing away from the Texas now, looking upstream from his vantage point atop the concessionaire’s stand about two hundred yards from the ship, which he had mounted to follow the wave’s progress. In a minute or two, it would strike the first ships in line, too far away for Caulkins to see anything, but his busy mind would fill in the details. With Caulkins’ attention thus engaged, Forte could steal off the ship and hide someplace where Caulkins had already searched.
Forte moved noiselessly toward the gangway. He had just reached the brow when a voice crackled over the ship’s public address system:
“Thirty seconds, Will,” came the voice of Ed Curry.
“Get clear! Countdown has begun. Thirty seconds . . . twenty-nine . . . twenty-eight . . .”
Hobe Caulkins’s head snapped around, his eyes fastened on Gwillam Forte. In the next instant he had leapt lightly to the ground and was running across the parking lot toward the Texas.
Cut off, Forte could only retreat the way he had come. For a moment he considered leaping into the water to swim for it, but reflected that even Caulkins could hardly miss him at that range. Despite his battered leg and sixty-nine years, Forte moved fast, seeking a ladder that would even out the odds between himself and his pursuer.
“Twenty-one . . . twenty . . . nineteen-get the hell out of there, Will!-seventeen . . . sixteen . . .” Curry’s voice was becoming frantic.
Forte reached the foremast and was scrambling up the signal bridge ladder. He reached the top just as Caulkins put his foot on the bottom rung. At least Caulkins wouldn’t shoot before he found out what was going on. Forte limped over to the next ladder and went on climbing. By the time he reached the navigation bridge, Caulkins had closed to half a ladder length.
Forte seized the rails to the flag bridge ladder and nearly fell on his face when his hands slipped on the oily surface. He had forgotten all about the oil. He ran athwartships, wiping his hands on his trousers, and stumbled over the oil can he had thrown at Caulkins. He scooped it up and limped on.