Morsin laughed and pointed out to sea, slowly turning and sweeping his single finger across the horizon.
Enjoying his moment, he prescribed a full circumference before coming to a halt, looking at the naval officer, and pointing to the ground.
“You’re standing on it, Comrade Kapitan.”
Kalinin had seen the inside before, but only in drawings and a scale model that had long since been burned in the courtyard of the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol.
In the flesh, the construction was more impressive than he had imagined.
Much of the work had been done during the interwar years and on into the Patriotic War when, given the impending demise of Nazi Germany and her cohorts, work on the special facility had been halted.
The imperatives and requirements of the new conflict, and, in particular, Operation Raduga, meant that the inoffensively named ‘Vinogradar Young Communists Sailing Club’ was reborn and work continued.
The whole floor area was flat, broken by two types of constructions.
Firstly there were steel pillars, rising to the rock ceiling, offering the additional support needed to the hewn rock curve that ran for nearly two hundred metres, side to side.
Secondly were the bays, six of them, each twenty metres wide and one hundred and fifty metres long, two dry and containing the parts of submarines under construction, the other four wet and ready to receive whatever was allowed to proceed through the huge doors that protected the entrance.
The six bays were slightly angled in, so as to present their openings at a better angle to the entrance.
Had Kalinin been able to work it out, he would have seen the old boathouse sat across the join of the two doors, obscuring their presence as had been intended.
The Captain moved around, observing the sections that had been transported from the Baltic to the Black Sea being put together by the best quality ship builders the Soviet Union could find.
The two type XXIs required no less than the best.
Elsewhere, the offices, stores, fuel tanks, and armouries that would make the base into an operational covert facility were being made ready by different but equally skilled men.
One tunnel was already guarded by NKVD soldiers, and Kalinin, lacking the necessary authority, was refused entry.
He did not push the matter, for he had seen what lay beyond in model form and had little need to see it in the flesh, at least not until it was occupied by the weapons of Raduga.
In the antechamber, to the side of the XXI berths, he could not help but admire the sleek forms waiting silently, their potential unrealised, their deadly task ahead of them, his part known only to him and a handful of others.
Morsin slapped him on the back, a comradely slap that Kalinin did not in the slightest welcome. None the less, he felt invigorated by what he had just seen, so he let it go with a smile.
“Beautiful aren’t they, Comrade Kapitan.”
The engineer looked up at the quiet sentinels and sighed.
“How I wish I had designed and built them. I’d have the Hero Award for it, I tell you. Anyway, they’re ours and I’m sure that our glorious leaders have found a way to use them properly. Now… come… lunch with the facility commander awaits.”
Kalinin turned away to follow in the hungry Morsin’s wake, but risked one further look at the deadly weapons.
‘One day soon, you will fly for the Rodina!’
He followed on quickly, leaving the silent V2s behind him.
Camp Rose was, as far as any enquiry would reveal, a medical staging facility, through which wounded men were returned to active units after additional training.
That was, in fact, its main job, and explained the comings and goings of experienced soldiers.
The camp spread itself down the west side of the lake, seemingly clinging to every open space from the forest’s edge to the waterside.
However, there was another part, a secret part, that dwelt inside the woods and occupied a clearing that could not be observed by accident, and that clearing held the men destined to serve as members of Operational Group Steel, a joint US Army/OSS project.
The concept was to reinstate the ability of the US Army to project force behind enemy lines, and therefore train a unit of battalion size that could operate by itself, in conditions of low supply and support, and trained in stealth warfare and all that entailed.
To that end, the instructors were the very best, or worst, depending on who you asked, drawn from the SAS, Commandos, and US Rangers.
The group was so secret that it had not called for volunteers, but had quietly cherry-picked men from units across the spectrum of the US forces. Resistance from some unit commanders had met with secret and unimpeachable orders, supported by assurances of an unhealthy interest in their career progression, interest of a type not necessarily conducive to advancement.
One group of men recently arrived at Camp Steel was on parade, ready to be given some sort of idea what hellhole they had landed in.
The veteran soldiers, ranked from private to lieutenant, understood enough to know that, whatever it was, it would result in going in harm’s way.
The array of divisional badges was impressive, with very few of the experienced European divisions being unrepresented amongst the one hundred and thirty men in the group.
As the murmuring rose, the paraded men were brought to attention by a sharp barked command, issued by a Commando RSM who clearly would not have their best intentions at heart.
The four lines came crisply to the correct position and all eyes followed the prowling RSM, whose moustache was waxed to points that almost reached his ears.
Having given piercing eye contact to as many of the ‘yanks’ as his time allowed, the martinet returned to the main office building and came to attention, throwing up the most immaculate of immaculate salutes to the emerging officers, who returned the honour as best they could.
The three men marched forward in easy style, coming to a halt in a triangle in front of the group.
The full colonel nodded to the RSM, who brought the men to the parade rest position, or ‘stand at ease’, as he shouted it.
“Men, thank you for coming here today. I know you’re here blind, and had no choice. We were the ones with choice, and we chose each of you.”
The colonel relaxed into his speech and put his hands on his hips.
“You ain’t here to polish your boots or do rifle drill. You’re here to learn how to soldier in a special operations unit. We ain’t being put together for fun… we’ll be used… and we’ll be ready for anything the generals ask of us. Keep your noses clean… no old soldier tricks… the instructors know them all and probably invented most of them… work hard, train hard, fight hard. We’ll ask no more of you.”
He smiled disarmingly.
“Now, if any of you don’t wanna stay after you’ve been here two weeks, then you’ll be able to go back to your own units… no questions… but you won’t be able to talk about this place or the men you leave behind. That’s the deal and it ain’t negotiable.”
Coming back to a less relaxed position, he continued.
“Your platoon officers will now detail you to your new units, thirty-two men each, and then you will be assigned to a barracks. As of now, you are men of Zebra Company, and the last company to be established in this battalion. Today, you’ll settle in. Chow is at 1800. Your platoon officers will brief you on camp rules. There will be no infractions.”
He smiled, the face suddenly becoming less friendly and welcoming.
“Reveille will be at 0530. That is all.”
He nodded to the Commando NCO, whose voice literally made some of the combat veterans jump.