Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) Read Online Free PDF

due in just a few days time, it was
imperative that the fighters and bombers on Malta keep the seas clear of heavy
enemy units, and Melville-Jackson did not have to wait long before he made his
first contact. Squinting through his forward windshield, his eye was pulled to
a strange glow on the sea below. He nudged the stick and eased his plane down a
few degrees for a better look .
    “What’s
this, Lizzy?” he said aloud, invoking the name of his sweetheart and wife back
home. “What have we got here?”
    He spoke
into his face mask, somewhat annoyed that he had not been advised of the
contact sooner. “Sleeping are you, Tommy? What’s that down there at three
o-clock? Not much good having these new radars in the nose if you’re not going
to use them, eh?” He squinted at the strange glow below them, as if the water
was upwelling from bottom and churning the surface of a quarter mile swath of
the sea. There he could now vaguely discern a dark shadow in the center of the disturbance.
Was it a submarine coming up from below? Impossible. This was much too big for
a U-Boat.
    Designed as
a night fighter, his Beaufighter was also equipped with Britain’s latest airborne
intercept radar set in its nose, the Mark VIII unit with one of the newest
concentric screens, and he wanted to know if it had the contact as well on this
initial dry run. All the other Beaus had the older AI Mark IV radars, and the Germans
had found its bandwidth and were doing a good job of jamming it in recent
weeks. It was hoped his new set would solve the problem.
    “Not a
whisper of anything on my screen the whole way out,” said Thomason on radar,
“but right you are now… reading something at five miles—very odd though.”
    “It looks
big! I suppose we had best get down and have a look.”
    Melville-Jackson
put the plane into a fast descent, racing down through the pre-dawn sky with
his two powerful supercharged radial engines roaring as he went. His navigator
and radar man snapped alert now in the rear cupola when the plane went into action.
    As he dove
on the contact Jackson tightened his jaw, lips pursed beneath his sandy
mustache, expecting the skies to light up with flak at any moment, but none
came. A moment later the shadow on the sea took on the ominous shape of a
warship, its superstructure and battlements now quite evident as he closed the
distance.
    “What, have
we caught the Macaronis flat footed this time?” He smiled, sure he had come
upon a big Italian cruiser positioning itself to lay in wait for the convoy.
“Let’s announce ourselves, Tommy,” he shouted through the headset.
    The
Beaufighter was one of the most powerful long range fighters in the RAF
inventory. It’s bomb bays on the lower fuselage had been removed to mount four
20mm cannon there, and this was augmented by six Browning .303 machineguns in
the wings, more firepower than any smaller fighter, and even more than many
heavier bombers might muster.
    As the plane
descended he could see no markings or service flags, but he was certain from
flight briefings that there would be no friendly ships in these waters if he
encountered anything. On another day he might have made one high altitude flyby
for an IFF run before he made a strafing attack, but not today, not with
hostilities impending and the noose tightening on the island fortress as never
before. Rommel had pushed damn near all the way to the Nile and Jerry was keen
on smashing what was left of resistance on Malta so they could get him the
supplies he needed for one last big push. If this new General Montgomery was to
have any chance of stopping him short of Alexandria, they would have to make
sure the sea lanes remained a hostile environment for Axis supply ships. Malta
was the key to that effort—Malta and men like Melville-Jackson in his Bristol
Beau. He tightened his finger on the gun triggers as he aimed the plane at the ship
below, amazed to see a pulsing light surround the shadow on the sea.
    “Get