She had liked being Clara Pullman.
For a while she had actually believed she was capable of being a normal, living breathing woman and in her hubris she had made the mistake of believing that the World would let her be Clara forever.
Stumbling through the labyrinth of forgotten lofts and attic storerooms, haltingly tracing the eastern line of the great wall of the Citadel, with every step carrying her closer to the upper levels of Admiral Christopher’s Headquarters, her right hand closed ever more tightly on the trigger guard of her Kalashnikov.
Chapter 58
Captain Anderson Farragut Schmidt paced the bridge of the battleship as it thundered north west on a course that, if unaltered, would run the great ship aground off Delimara Point, one of the most southern promontories of the island of Malta. He was cursing the fact that there had been no time to reactivate two of the USS Iowa’s eight fire rooms. He was two boilers light when he needed them most!
Notwithstanding that their bunkers were running low; he had ordered the Iowa’s two screening Charles F. Adams class guided missile destroyers ahead at flank speed. He had authorised the captains of the USS Berkeley and the USS John King to ‘run their bunkers dry’ if they had to if that’s what it took to get in range ‘to engage the enemy’. The two destroyers had creamed off into the distance at better than thirty-three knots, leaving the Iowa wallowing in their wakes as the old battlewagon gradually worked up to her best speed on six boilers of about thirty knots.
“The Berkeley has cleared the coast sufficiently to open the range for her sensors and main battery, sir!”
The destroyers had Tartar surface-to-air missiles, useless against surface targets; and two automatic Mark 42 five-inch 54 calibre turret-mounted — fore and aft — guns capable of firing up to forty radar-ranged and predicted rounds per minute.
The 5-inch rapid-firing guns would be a problem for the Sverdlov class ship but the Yavuz was a dreadnought built around a virtually impenetrable armoured raft. The old ship had ten to twelve inches of cemented Krupp armour around her sides, even thicker armour protecting her turret barbettes and conning tower. Her decks were more lightly protected; even so no 5-inch round was going to penetrate to her vitals. Only Iowa’s main battery could actually puncture the dinosaur’s steely carapace.
“The Berkeley has commenced firing, sir!”
Chapter 59
The two big enemy ships had reversed course and in the process, the clumsier, coal-burning Yavuz had taken station as lead ship. For almost three minutes the cannonade bracketing and drenching HMS Talavera had relented but not before near misses had killed and wounded a dozen men and punctured the thin side plates of the destroyer in scores of places. Something had penetrated the port boiler room, nicking a steam line and briefly cutting seven knots off Talavera’s speed.
“Nine thousand yards!”
The whole side of the Yavuz seemed to disappear in a series of unimaginably violent crimson explosions, and for at least a dozen seconds the ship was invisible behind billowing clouds of white cordite smoke. Because of the way the old ship’s two amidships main battery turrets were sited — at an angle one from the other on opposite sides of the battlecruiser’s centre line and therefore capable of firing only on one beam — only eight of her ten 11-inch guns could be fired in broadside. However, to an unarmoured ship at a range of only nine thousand yards, virtually point blank range for guns of that calibre — the missing twenty percent of the Yavuz’s main battery was by and large, academic.
Peter Christopher knew there was nothing he could do except to present the smallest possible target to the enemy. That meant driving straight at the Yavuz. If he flinched and ordered the tiniest course change he would expose the length of his command’s paper thin hull to those great onrushing projectiles.
Waiting for the broadside to arrive he involuntarily did what any sensible man would do.
He shut his eyes.
“Short! Somebody screamed.
Peter Christopher opened his eyes.
Half-a-mile ahead the sea was an impenetrable wall of giant shell splashes.
He thought he was dreaming but an object travelling so fast that all he saw was a blur of phantom blackness seemed to be coming straight at him. He stood transfixed, the thing that was coming towards him so impossibly fast seemed as though it was going to hit him in the middle of his forehead.
It did not, of course.
Because the 11-inch shell actually crashed into and through the lattice foremast about three feet below the Type 293 ranging aerial. There was no explosion; it must have been an armour piecing round but the top twenty feet of the mast, and incidentally, the top of the gun director tower simply ceased to exist. Debris blasted back down the length of the vessel and into the surging waters through which she charged.
Peter Christopher stared stupidly at the stump of the great lattice foremast.
The main battery was still firing.
Damage control reports started coming in as he stepped to the back of the bridge and surveyed the wreckage of his recently repaired and re-modelled command. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that the mainmast still standing.
A destroyer captain tended to feel a tad naked in the absence of something to fly a big flag from…
“Somebody find the battle flag that was streaming from the foremast halyards!” He shouted. “Run it up the mainmast jack stay!”
On a day like this a ship was simply not properly dressed without her battle flag flying!
“What’s going on with the Yarmouth?”
The Type-12 frigate had come roaring out of the South Comino Channel separating the main Island of Malta from the second largest island, Gozo, and its smaller neighbour, Comino shooting, of all things, star shell to attract the enemy’s attention. Yarmouth had immediately come under fire from the Yavuz’s 6-inch secondary battery, and soon afterwards from plunging fire from the third large ship approaching from the north. Approaching the Yavuz and the Sverdlov class cruiser from a more oblique angle than Talavera she presented a bigger target and had suffered accordingly.
“Yarmouth is on fire forward and abaft her stack, sir. She’s slowed down but she’s still closing with the enemy!”
Talavera was straddled by a shower of smaller projectiles.
There was a sickening metallic crash somewhere beneath Peter Christopher’s feet.
“Range eight thousand yards!”
Chapter 60
Ever since she had been a little girl Clara had hated heights. The roof of the final building sloped precipitously to the very edge of the ramparts; if she slipped there was a two hundred feet sheer drop to the foot of the Citadel rock. She had kicked off her shoes; they were ruined with blood, anyway. She hoped her bare feet would give her better purchase on the lichen damp, fragile slates. It was only a few steps; it might have been a thousand miles. Yet all she had to do was traverse a few steps across the slanting tiles, climb over the low retaining brick wall and then the roof beyond was flat. She would have to be careful not to make a sound crossing to the skylight; and leaving her shoes behind would help with that, assuming that she did not fall to her death first.