Читать книгу The Crucible - Joaquin De Torres - Страница 8

The Kim Il-Sung sat droning at the misty pier like a dragon engulfed in its own breath. Work lights illuminated the ship as groups of workers quietly attended her. The paint was still fresh, her decks gleamed clean, and her flags snapped crisply in the wind.

But it wasn’t always like this. This was a ship that had come back from the dead. She was one of a few vessels saved from the white-flamed heat of a scrapper’s torch and the metal block crusher. Sitting like a condemned building, reduced to an iron shell, she sat at Abrek Harbor near Vladivostok, stripped and left for dead for more than 15 years. Her name was Lazarev.

The Lazarev was the second of four siblings from the monstrous Kirov-class of nuclear-powered battlecruisers first laid down in 1977. Although they were considered four of the Soviet Union’s greatest surface force achievements, the Kirov and the Lazarev, steamed for less than 20 years. The funds to maintain and refit these behemoths dwindled as the nation struggled to finance their arsenal and their forces stationed abroad. The Lazarev joined the growing population of ships decommissioned before their prime in the early ‘90s. Sitting pier-side as historical monuments, or left to rot in dilapidated harbors, the greatest examples of Cold War technology sat in decay, and their highly trained crews were sent home or reassigned.

In the summer of 1996, China’s Force Budget chairman contacted the head of Baltic Shipyard #189 in Leningrad, to talk about the possibility of buying members of the dying fleet. A deal was struck and thus began a purchasing partnership between the PRC and Russia that would see the transferring of over twenty-five vessels. Months later, North Korea signed a partnership with the PRC to buy several of the vessels at a reduced price. They specifically asked for a large vessel; they got two: the Lazarev and her twin sister, the Ushakov. They would become the largest vessels ever commissioned in the history of the Korean Peninsula. Even more alarming to Asia and the U.S. was that the Chinese would also provide the North Korean navy the weapons and electronics for the new inventory of thirteen total ex-Soviet ships.

After 21 months in dry dock, the Lazarev was alive again. Refitted and refurbished, she was now the Kim Il-Sung, named after their great Communist leader of the twentieth century. The Ushakov became the Kim Jong-il, named after his son. In separate ports, both ships sat like proud centurions, once again prepared to stand guard over their embattled nation.

Only two-thirds of the ship was equipped and operational by the time she was ready to sail. Without the full range of systems, the crew consisted of only 735 officers and men, 165 less than Lazarev’s original crew. Massively armed yet stripped down for speed, she was a juggernaut designed to slam into an enemy navy like a tsunami. She was assigned one of the nation’s most experienced captains, Admiral Park Woo-kuen, who was quoted as saying he would bring down the Iron Clad blockade singlehandedly if he had to.

As workers, engineers and sailors loaded supplies under the blanket of dense cloud cover, many paused to gaze up at the ship. The Kim Il-Sung dwarfed every vessel in the harbor with her sheer mass: 820 feet long, 92 feet wide, and displacing over 24,000 tons. The summits of her fore and aft split superstructures towered over 100 feet above the waterline. Deck by deck, tier upon tier, she exuded the cold invincibility of a vessel flawlessly engineered for war. On her forward deck, the forecastle, flush forward of the bridge laid 20 iron doors, the deck silos for her vertically-launched SS-N-19 Shipwreck anti-ship cruise missiles, one of the most feared weapons of her arsenal. These were the weapons that were configured with thermobaric warheads and feared most in the world. Twenty-four hours later, the Kim Il-Sung would be heading northeast through the Sea of Japan in search of her prey.

“Good evening. This is a CNN special late-breaking report. I’m Gloria Hawk. This just in.

“U.S. Navy sources report that three North Korean fighters intercepted a Navy AWACS reconnaissance plane in international waters over the Tsushima Straits just 30 minutes ago. Navy officials said that at approximately 5:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, three North Korean MIG-29 Fulcrum fighters, recently purchased from China, intercepted the AWACS and briefly locked their fire control radars onto it.

“The AWACS, flying from the USS John C. Stennis, was doing a routine reconnaissance flight and was within international airspace when it was intercepted. Two Stennis F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters, flying some 20 miles south responded, chasing the MIGs out of the area. No shots were fired. Interestingly, just two hours prior to this incident, four Chinese Fulcrum fighters flew across the Taiwan Strait and into Taiwanese airspace for approximately 45 seconds until Taiwanese jets scrambled to intercept them. Fighters from the USS Ronald Reagan also responded, but the MIGs had already flown back to China before her fighters arrived.

“We will bring you more details as we follow the intensifying North Korean and Taiwanese situations. This has been a special late-breaking update. Live for CNN in Seoul, I’m Gloria Hawk.”