Red Army

Fourteen

Starukhin smashed his fist down onto the map table. “Don’t sing me a song, you little bastard. Fix it.”

“Comrade Army Commander,” the shattered chief of signals said, “the communications complex is a complete loss. A direct hit. It will take some time to restore — ”

“I don’t have time, you shit. I should send you down with the motorized rifle troops and let you see what war’s really like. How can I run an army when I can’t talk to anybody?”

“Comrade Army Commander, we can still communicate using manual Morse. And the auxiliary radios will be off the trucks and set up in no time. It’s just the multiplexing that will take a little time.”

“I don’t have time. Time is the one thing I don’t have,” Starukhin shouted. “You should’ve had all of the auxiliary systems set up and ready to operate. You’re a moron, a disgrace.” He looked around the headquarters. “You’re all a damned disgrace.”

The chief of signals almost replied that, since they had just shifted locations, it was unreasonable, even impossible, to expect that all of the backup systems would be fully prepared for operations. They had still been having trouble with the microwave connections even before the enemy strike. But he realized that it was hopeless to argue. All you could do was let the army commander blow over you like a storm, then pick up whatever was left.

Starukhin suddenly turned away. He began to pace back and forth like a powerful caged cat. Without warning, he smashed a hanging chart full of figures from the wall.

“I need to talk.”

Colonel Shtein watched the artfully crude film of the destruction of Lueneburg on the television monitor. As he watched, the same images were being broadcast over the highest-powered emitters in the German Democratic Republic. Shtein had no doubt that the film would be monitored in the West. It would soon gather the expected attention to itself. Even if the chaotic interference in the air completely blocked a successful broadcast into the heart of West Germany, the NATO elements hanging on in Berlin would monitor it. One way or another, the message would get through. Even the satellite television broadcasts from Moscow carried the report on the regular channels.

… Senseless destruction… precipitated and carried out by the aggressive NATO forces who are bent on destroying the cities and towns of the Federal Republic of Germany… perhaps even turning West Germany into a proving ground for their insane theories of tactical nuclear war… in the opinion of experts, a nuclear war restricted to West German soil would cause…

And the voice-over was merely ornamentation. The powerful images of toppling medieval buildings, of women and children dashing, falling, cowering, of civilians twisted into the frozen acrobatics of death, and of the Dutch forces firing indiscriminately, were irresistible. Shtein was well aware of how far the skills of Soviet media specialists had come over the years.

Shtein was convinced that this was a war-winner. At least the overall approach. Modern war was hardly a matter of beating each other over the head with a club. Shtein saw it as a highly articulated, challengingly complex conflict of intellects and wills. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. He laughed to himself, remembering his student days. He loved the Germans. They were so absolutely right, and so thoroughly unable to act upon the correctness of their conclusions.

We will beat them with cameras, Shtein thought. With video technology. With their own wonderful tools. He could not understand how the West could neglect so totally its vast array of technology that could potentially be used for propaganda purposes. War was, after all, a matter of perceptions. Even the most dull-witted historian could tell you that being physically beaten was not nearly as important as being convinced that you had been defeated. Shtein believed that he was one of the pioneers, one of the soldiers of the future.

He admired the wrenching conclusion of the film once again. It would be broadcast again in an hour, then every hour on the hour. It would be supplemented by other clips as the war progressed, shifting the concentration of the propaganda effort as necessary. Fighting for the invisible, for the intangible, for the ultimately vital, Shtein thought. And he smiled.

Yes. The world as will and idea.

Major General Duzov, commander of the Tenth Guards Tank Division, watched the attack from the forward observation post established by the assaulting regiment. He recognized that his presence troubled the regiment’s commander. But Duzov didn’t care. In an earlier assault, he had lost a regiment of tanks in two hours, in a swirling British counterattack that had ruined both the Soviet force and its antagonist. And he had not been on the scene to control the situation. Now, if his division was going to take any more catastrophic losses, he at least intended to be present.

Lieutenant General Starukhin, his superior, had been as explicit as he could be. Punch the hole, Duzov. They’re worn down. Punch the hole, or don’t let me see your face alive.

He had two more chances. This attack, then the commitment of the trailing regiment. Duzov would have preferred to wait until he could strike with both regiments simultaneously, as well as throwing back in the battered motorized rifle regiment that had been working the broken ground to the south and the pathetic remains of the shattered tank regiment. Duzov believed in concentrated blows. And he knew he had one of the very best divisions in the Soviet Army. He hated to see it squandered piecemeal. It went against the grain of everything he had been taught, against all his beliefs.

But Starukhin had been adamant, rising to fury. Hit them. Just hit them again and again. This isn’t the General Staff Academy. Drive over them, Duzov. Save your maxims and elegant solutions for your memoirs.

Perhaps Starukhin was right. Keep up the pressure. Don’t allow the enemy breathing space.

The earth twitched beneath his feet. The artillery preparation had begun, concentrating all available fires on the known or estimated British positions. The broad, low valley filled with light, as though a bizarre morning had arrived ahead of schedule. Shells crashed and sputtered, ripping into the horizon by the thousands. Duzov could not understand how men survived such shelling. Yet he knew that some of them always did. It was, at times, amazingly difficult to kill the human animal.

The streaking dazzle of a multiple rocket launcher barrage rose from the left of the observation post. Then the canopy of scheduled illumination began to unfold, with lines of illumination bursting in crooked ranks, four to six hundred meters apart. The British had a significant gunnery advantage in the dark, so all local units had been ordered to fire a high percentage of illumination, while the heavier rear guns concentrated their efforts on target destruction.

The attacking regiment had been well-drilled, and now, tired from the march, going into battle for the first time, struggling with the unfamiliar terrain, the subunits nonetheless appeared in good order, flooding over the near crests in company columns that soon drilled out into columns of platoons, all the while making good combat speed. Duzov admired his troops and the power of the overall spectacle. On the valley floor, the platoons fanned out and the combat vehicles came on line. Duzov could easily pick out the positions of the company and battalion commanders, of the staggered ranks of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and the air-defense weaponry trailing to the rear. On the trail of the maneuver battalions, the lean-barreled self-propelled guns snooped along, ready to provide immediate fire support to the assault. Then, at the very rear, odd support vehicles and little clusters of ambulances followed. It was one of the most complete maneuvers Duzov had ever seen, and it suddenly translated into timelessness for him. It had never struck him before, but now he saw in the surging lines the perfect modern version of the old Imperial armies marching out in their ready ranks, the men of Suvorov or Kutuzov. The only difference was that today the rank and file wore layers of technology, armor, and mechanization in place of the colorful uniforms of old. In a moment of skepticism and refusal, he told himself that there was really no comparison between these squat, ugly steel bugs beetling across the valley floor and the antique brilliance of hussars and grenadiers. But it was the same. He could not deny it now. It was exactly the same, and the revealed truth of it burned into Duzov. What ever changed about war? he asked himself.

The British gunners and tank crews began to find targets, even with the Soviet artillery still crashing upon them. Duzov had to admire the British. He doubted that many men, especially those who had not previously known war, would even briefly attempt to stand their ground in the face of such an onslaught. Here and there, one of Duzov’s vehicles convulsed into a tiny bonfire or fell, crippled, from the advancing ranks. Duzov returned to his insistent vision. It was all so much the same he could hardly believe it. The way you pictured men falling away at the first enemy musket volleys. Only now the men had been made a part of fighting systems.

Upon reaching the incline on the far side of the valley, his tanks briefly halted, not content with suppression fired from the move. Commanders’ machine guns traced toward targets selected for subunit volleys. The ranks of steel rippled with muzzle blasts and recoils. Then they began to march again, picking up speed as they closed. You could almost hear the drumbeats and clipped, shouted commands issued under sweat-drenched mustaches. Close ranks, close ranks, you scum.

The artillery shifted to a deeper concentration line as the Soviet vehicles approached the military crest. Duzov watched, pained, as more and more of his vehicles fell out, some ending their journeys with volcanic explosions from which no survivors would emerge. Hundreds of garish parachute flares hung in the sky at once, and the battle took on a burnished hyperreality. The effect was as though the entire world were made of metal. The advancing lines wavered as individual tanks or platoons sought ways around local terrain impediments. But the classic, magnificent formations never broke.

As the last artillery lifted a new presence appeared over the battlefield, to the accompaniment of green flares. This element could not be fitted so neatly into Duzov’s historical model. Three pairs of helicopter gunships rode in through the flare-scarred sky, coming from the right, huge flying monsters, frightening in their aspects even to Duzov. The ugly aircraft had a presence both horrid and magical, spitting rockets like flying dragons or slowing into missile-attack runs. Then they disappeared over the waves of Soviet vehicles.

The attack made the crest, and the vehicles continued down into the next valley. A radio set in the observation post squealed and coughed with requests for more illumination, even as another station reported that they had driven through the British position. A spontaneous cheer went up from the group of officers, clerks, and signalers assembled at the observation post. But Duzov surveyed the wastage in the valley and on the far slopes as the last flares sputtered into oblivion.

He turned to the regiment’s commander.

“Don’t stop. Drive them. The British will throw in everything they have now; they’ll try to block you at all costs. But we have the initiative. The Three-thirty-first Tank Regiment will be up shortly after dawn. Do whatever else you must, but don’t let anything stop your tanks.”

Lieutenant General Trimenko closed his eyes to the false dawn that rimmed the horizon, resting as best he could in the shuddering helicopter seat. He knew he needed a few hours of real sleep. But he wanted to make just one more visit forward, to check up on the commander of the Sixteenth Guards Tank Division.

Trimenko felt a weary elation that kept him moving. He kneaded the pouch of pistachio nuts in his pocket, reflecting that he would have to fill it up as soon as he returned to the army command post. The night was going well, after all. It had been a near thing, and the situation still was not entirely under control. But the indicators were good. The German counterattack had been contained, after a few desperate hours, well south of the line of Highway 71. In the end, it appeared that the Germans had only loaded more of their forces deeper into Malinsky’s trap. And the Dutch simply had not mustered enough punch to make a difference. According to the last report he had received, the lead regiments of the Sixteenth Tank were loose in the German rear, amplifying the favorable situation created by the forward detachments and inexorably closing the clamp behind the German operational grouping. Trimenko saw clearly that the only hope for the West German corps at this point was a full-scale breakout attack to the rear, followed by an attempt to stabilize the situation on the Weser River line. But there were no indications that the Germans were even considering such an alternative, and Trimenko doubted that it would come to pass. The Germans were determined to trap themselves. In any case, he was convinced that his forces would be on the Weser in sufficient strength by noon the next day to create panic. No, he corrected his weary brain. Today. Noon today. It’s already today.

Trimenko slipped off his headset, sick of the pilots’ blather. He settled lower behind his seat belt, thinking of Starukhin and how furious his rival would be to find that Trimenko had beaten him to the Weser, while Starukhin himself was still struggling to achieve his own breakthrough. And why stop at the Weser? Trimenko felt confident now that he could beat Starukhin to the Rhine, as well. It was a matter of detailed calculation, of efficiency, of forcing men and events to conform to the rigorous science of war. Starukhin’s reliance on ardor and native wit had brought the Third Shock Army commander up short. Starukhin had had better tank terrain, far better than the muck through which Trimenko had been forced to attack. And Starukhin had had more support from frontal assets. Really, he had enjoyed all of the advantages. But Starukhin was an anachronism.

The pilots saw the tracer rounds rising toward the windshield. The senior pilot had made the decision to fly higher than usual, afraid of snagging power lines in the morbid German darkness. He had not expected any problems with air defenses so far behind Soviet lines.

But the tracers reached insistently toward the little aircraft, pulsing up toward the pilots with a peculiar slow-motion effect. The pilot-navigator shouted from the right-hand seat, and the senior pilot tried to bank the helicopter away from the staccato flashes.

The desperate maneuver of the aircraft woke Trimenko from his reverie. Over the shoulders of the pilots, the distant battlefield turned on end until it was a vertical band of light. Trimenko’s maps and papers skittered off the seat, and he grasped for anything he could use to stabilize himself. Then the aircraft jolted several times in rapid succession, and a shock of white filled Trimenko’s eyes as one of his own mobile air-defense guns blasted him out of the sky.