Red Army

Two

The meeting broke up behind Malinsky. Officers hurriedly folded maps and pulled on their wet-weather garments. A few lower-ranking officers gleaned the remnants of the refreshments that had been set out earlier, while others discussed problems in low, urgent voices. The images were the same as those at the end of a thousand other briefings, but the air had an unmistakably different feel to it, an intensity that would have been rare even in Afghanistan.

Chibisov had another meeting to attend, and a host of actions to consolidate or check on, but he hoped to sneak a few minutes outside of the bunker, breathing fresh air. The East German medicine he took for his asthma now was better than that available in the Soviet Union, but the smoke-filled briefing room nonetheless made his lungs feel as though they had shrunk to the size of a baby’s and would not accept enough oxygen to keep him going. The fresh night air, thick and damp though it might be, would feel like a cool drink going down. But Chibisov could not leave until all of the other key officers had cleared off. Patiently, ready with answers to any of their possible questions, he watched the others leave, judging their fitness for the tasks at hand.

Starukhin, the oversized Third Shock Army commander, suddenly veered in Chibisov’s direction, followed by his usual entourage, augmented now by a lost-looking East German divisional commander and his operations officer. Starukhin was the sort of commander who was never alone, who always needed the presence of fawning admirers and drinking companions. He was a tall, beefy, red-faced man who looked as though he belonged in a steel mill, not in a general’s uniform. His heavy muscles were softening into fat, but he still cultivated a persona of ready violence. Starukhin was definitely old school, and he only survived the restructuring period — bitterly nicknamed “the purges” by its victims — because Malinsky had protected him, much to Chibisov’s surprise.

Chibisov and Starukhin had known each other on and off for years, and they casually disliked one another. At the army commander’s approach, Chibisov drew himself up to his full height, but he still only came up to Starukhin’s shoulders. The army commander smoked long cigars, a habit he had acquired as an adviser in Cuba. Now he stepped very close to Chibisov, releasing a cloud of reeking smoke that carried a faint overtone of alcohol. And he smiled.

“Chibisov, you know that’s nothing but crap about the aircraft.” Starukhin gave his admirers time to appreciate his style. They gathered around the two men, smirking like children. “The Air Force always wants an absurd margin of safety. There are plenty of aircraft. I know, I’ve examined the figures personally. And Dudorov, that fat little swine, needs to get his head out of the clouds and do some real work. You know the British won’t give up all of their tank reserves. I’ll be stuck in unnecessary meeting engagements when I should be pissing in the Weser.”

“Comrade Army Commander,” Chibisov said, “the front commander has taken his decision on the matter of aircraft allocation.” He chose his usual armor of formality, even though he and Starukhin wore the same rank now and Starukhin was technically subordinate by virtue of their respective duty positions. In an odd way, though, he sympathized with Starukhin. Beyond the dramatics, Starukhin, too, was a tough professional. Now he was trying to build his own margin of safety, a type of behavior the shadow system taught every perceptive officer as a lieutenant. But there was nothing to be done.

“Oh, don’t tell me that, Chibisov. Everybody knows he does whatever you want him to do. Comrade Lieutenant General Chibisov, the grand vizier of the Group of Forces. Just get me a few extra aircraft, say one hundred additional sorties. And tell Dudorov his number-one job is to find the British reserves so I can send the aircraft after them. Oh, and Nicki Borisov tells me I need more one-five-two ammunition.”

“Two more units of fire per gun would be good,” Borisov put in from Starukhin’s side. Borisov was a talented enough officer, a recent Voroshilov graduate who was betting on Starukhin to pull him along.

“Comrade Army Commander,” Chibisov said, “at present, you have received a greater proportion of the front’s allocation of virtually every type of ammunition than your comrades. You have more march routes with fewer water obstacles. You have more hauling capacity than any other army. You have more rotary-wing aircraft of every type. You have two deception battalions in support of you, as well as an extra signal battalion that came right out of the front’s hide. You have the lion’s share of the front’s artillery division, you — ”

“I have the best maneuver terrain” — Starukhin cut him off — ”and I have forty-six percent of the tactical bridging assets to cross under thirty-four percent of the projected water obstacles. Don’t play numbers with me, Chibisov. I also have the main attack, and the toughest opponents. In addition to which I expect half of the German Corps to come down on my northern flank when Trimenko gets stuck in the mud.”

“That’s nonsense. The Germans will hold on too far forward and too long. It’s a given. And if they hit anybody, it’ll be Trimenko.”

“A few damned aircraft, Chibisov.”

Chibisov could tell now that Starukhin was sorry that he had initiated the exchange and that he was looking for a token prize so that he would not be embarrassed in front of his officers.

“Comrade Army Commander, as the aircraft become available, I promise you will have priority.”

“But I need to plan.” Suddenly, Starukhin lost his temper. “Listen, I don’t have to beg you, you little…”

Say it, Chibisov thought, looking Starukhin dead in the eyes. Go ahead, say it, you Cossack bastard, say the word. Chibisov knew Starukhin better than the army commander realized. Dudorov had a finger in everything — he was a superb chief of intelligence — as a result of which Chibisov knew that Starukhin strongly encouraged his officers to affiliate with Pamyat, a right-wing nationalist hate group that wanted to revive the days of the Black Hundreds and to rid the sacred Motherland of Asians and other subhuman creatures, such as Chibisov himself. Oh, he knew the bully with the big cigar. His grandfathers had come for a drunken frolic in the ghetto, coming by the hundreds, to cut a few beards and perhaps a few throats, to rape the women… and to steal. The Slav was a born thief. And Chibisov’s ancestors, but a few generations removed, would not have resisted. They would have bowed and prayed.

Those days were over. And the Starukhins of the world would never bring them back. Even for officers who were not Party members, such affiliations were illegal. Pamyat had even reprinted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous Jew-baiting book of the Czarist Okhrana so beloved of the Hitlerite Germans. Chibisov needed all of his self-control now not to spit in the army commander’s face. He consoled himself with the thought that he could destroy Starukhin, if it proved absolutely necessary.

“You were about to say something, Comrade Army Commander?”

“Pavel Pavlovitch,” Starukhin began again, switching suddenly to the ingratiating tone that Russian alcoholics always kept at the ready, “our concerns should be identical. The Third Shock Army has a terribly difficult mission to accomplish under unprecedented time constraints. I only want to insure that we have covered every requirement.”

He would really have to watch Starukhin now, Chibisov realized. Now and forever. In a moment’s embarrassment, they had become eternal enemies.

No, Chibisov corrected himself, the enmity between them had merely been uncovered. The Starukhins and the Chibisovs of the world had always been enemies.

“Comrade Army Commander, I am convinced that our concerns are truly identical. As soon as ground-attack aircraft become available, you’ll have your fair share of sorties.”

Staruhkin looked at him. Chibisov had great faith in Starukhin’s ability to bully his way through the enemy. But just in case there were problems, he wanted to be certain that they fell on Starukhin’s shoulders, and that there were as few excuses as possible available to the man.

“About the ammunition,” Chibisov went on, “I believe I can help you with that. Front can provide an additional point-five units of fire for your heavy guns, and perhaps even for your multiple-rocket launchers, if we can align the transport. There’s a projected movement window opening up behind your divisions in midafternoon. Have your chief of the rear call Zdanyuk and tell him where you want it delivered. We’ll bring it right to the divisional guns. And the best of luck tomorrow, Comrade Army Commander.”

Starukhin went off without thanks, without even an acknowledgment, like a man turning away from an empty shop window. When the army commander’s entourage had left the room, Chibisov turned to one of his staff assistants.

“Tell Colonel Shtein that I’m a bit behind. Then see that Comrade Army Commander Trimenko has some refreshments and ask if he needs access to any communications means. Have Shtein begin the tapes as soon as General Trimenko has settled in. I’ll be down in a few minutes. Oh, and make sure Samurukov knows he’s to sit in.”

The staff officer turned smartly to execute his mission. The handful of technical and service officers remaining in the room had no immediate call on Chibisov’s time, and he went out into the hallway, fighting back his cough.

Even the stale air in the corridor felt refreshing after the smog of the briefing room. Chibisov strolled down the hall to the main tunnel corridor, not allowing himself to hurry. The officers and men of the front staff were careful to allow plenty of room as Chibisov passed. But the chief of staff was not prowling for defects tonight. He just wanted to breathe.

As soon as he reached the backup stairwell and found it deserted, he nearly collapsed with pent-up coughing. He felt as though his face must be changing color with the intensity of the struggle for breath. He went up the stairs slowly, lungs clotted shut. With no one to see him, he spit as though ridding himself of wreckage. He hurriedly took one of his steroid pills, which were only to be used in emergencies, washing it down with his own saliva. In the cemented stairwell, his coughing sounded especially destructive.

What did that bastard Starukhin see when he looked at him? An asthmatic little Jew? Chibisov had come up through the airborne forces, and he had been a martial-arts specialist as a young officer. He had done everything possible to toughen himself, to reject every weak, infuriating image clinging to him from a thousand years of pathetic East European Jewish history. He resolutely turned his back on all aspects of Jewishness. He worked to be a better Soviet patriot than any of them, a better Russian patriot, as had his father and his grandfather, the first enlightened members of a fiercely traditional family. He even downplayed his intellectual abilities when it came to studying the theoretical aspects of socialism and communism, since he felt it was too Jewish to overly master political philosophy. Instead, he had turned to military engineering and mathematics, to cybernetics and troop control theory. Then they tried to turn him into an instructor, the star young theorist on the staff of the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School. But he maneuvered his way back into a fighter’s job, even volunteering, although already in his middle thirties, for training as a special operations officer.

Accepted despite his age, he survived the agonizing training only to be defeated by an unreasonable and unexpected enemy: asthma. It was as though a millennium of weak-lunged Jewishness, of reeking ghettos, had taken their revenge on him, as though some bitter and malicious Jehovah were having his little joke. He completed his training only to collapse and end up in a military sanatorium in Baku. His jumping days were over.

But he refused to give in. He fought to remain an officer, obsessive in his determination to wear the uniform. He knew they did not understand him. He had never in his life attended a Jewish service. He had no understanding of the Jews who wanted to leave the Soviet Union, to leave Russia, their home. To Chibisov, the émigrés were incomprehensible, weak, and selfish. For him, Israel was a distant land of superstition and fascist enthusiasms. And yet he knew that his fellow officers always saw him as the little Jew, a born staff” man, perhaps meant to be a senior bookkeeper in some great Jewish banking house, or a student of arcane texts, shut in a musty study. Chibisov, the little Jew who wanted to be a Soviet paratroop officer.

Chibisov left the stairwell, sweating, near exhaustion. He labored up the ramp to the massive blast-proof entry doors. The interior guards saluted with their weapons, and, behind a glass panel, the duty officer jumped to his feet. Everyone knew the little Jew chief of staff, Chibisov thought bitterly.

He stood in limbo for a moment as the inner door shut behind him. Then the outer door began to slide back, and the cool air raced in, carrying flecks of rain and a multilayered drone of constant noise from the trails and roads and highways. The forecast called for a wet first day of the war, and Chibisov felt lucky to emerge from the bunker at a moment when the rain had softened to little more than a mist. As the outer door closed Chibisov stood still, breathing as deeply as his lungs would permit, almost gasping. The nearest sounds came from the departing helicopters that carried away the more important briefing attendees. The blades hacked at the darkness to gain lift. Underlying the throb of the rotors, countless vehicles groaned toward carefully planned destinations. Chibisov’s mind filled with timetables. It had been a key consideration that the Soviet forces could not close on their jump-off positions too early. It was unthinkable to put everything neatly into place, then wait in a silence that telegraphed to the enemy that you were ready to attack, with your final deployments even telling him where the main effort would come. The plan kept forces on the move, shifting, realigning toward a fluid perfection that would appear no different than the preceding days of road marches and hasty bivouacs, but that would allow the swift convergence of overwhelming forces at the points of decision, achieving tactical surprise, and even a measure of operational surprise. Chibisov looked at his watch. If the march tables were on schedule, the noise in the distance would be from one of the divisions of the Seventh Tank Army, leapfrogging closer to the Elbe. As the lead echelons moved into the attack the follow-on forces would already be closing on their vacated positions, leaving as few exploitable gaps as possible. Chibisov had confidence in the mathematical model and in its tolerances. Yet he recognized that, to the drivers and the junior commanders out on the roads, it probably seemed like chaos. It was important to cultivate Malinsky’s talent for standing back, Chibisov thought. Not to get caught up in the frustrating details, even though you remained aware of them. From the grand perspective, the minor scenes of confusion on the roads or in assembly areas simply disappeared, consumed by the macro-efficiencies of the model.

It only seemed remarkable to Chibisov that the enemy had not reached out to strike a preemptive blow. He and Dudorov had discussed the situation at length with Malinsky. In the twenty-four hours prior to the attack, the posture of virtually all of the Warsaw Pact forces, and especially their supply and rear services deployments, was terribly vulnerable. But so far, NATO had done nothing. Dudorov was convinced that there was absolutely no danger of NATO striking first. But neither Chibisov nor Malinsky could quite believe that the enemy would passively wait to receive the obviously impending blow.

Chibisov tasted the night air. The passages of his lungs had reopened slightly, and he felt like a man reprieved. He thought that the plan for a high-powered, relentless offensive would be like depriving a man of oxygen. NATO would have its wind taken away by the initial impact, and it would never be allowed to regain its breath. The damp night air felt vivid with power; the vehicle noise sounded as if the earth itself were moving. In just a few hours, the first wave of aircraft would be on their way. And still the enemy did nothing.

A lone helicopter growled by overhead. Probably Starukhin, Chibisov thought. But the army commander had already receded in his mind.

The last faint rain stopped. Chibisov could feel that it would return, stronger than before. But for the moment, he stood peacefully in the spongy air and thought of Malinsky, who had saved him. Recovering from his collapse in the sanatorium, Chibisov found that paperwork had been initiated without his knowledge to remove him from active service. The old anti-Semitism. He struggled through the bureaucracy until he managed an interview with the deputy commander of the Transcaucasus Military District. That was the first time he met Malinsky. Comrade Deputy Commander, the army is my life. I’m as good as any officer in this uniform. Malinsky listened, watching him in silence, unlike the blustering, self-important general officers with whom Chibisov was familiar. The Starukhins of the world.

Malinsky put a stop to the separation proceedings and gave Chibisov a trial job in his operations department. They were designing contingency plans for the invasion of Iran at the time, and they needed someone with a solid background in airborne matters. Chibisov quickly discovered something new in himself. Perhaps because of his technical training, he had an eye for the telling detail, and he almost intuitively understood how to make a plan intelligible to its executors. He loved the work.

He especially enjoyed working under Malinsky. Brilliant operational concepts and dazzling variations seemed to come effortlessly to Malinsky. Chibisov had never seen anyone who could grasp the overall context and true military essentials of a situation as thoroughly and as quickly as Malinsky. The two men seemed fated to work together, Malinsky rich with ideas and Chibisov perfectly suited to turn those ideas into the words and tables, the graphics and the monumental paperwork that moved armies and brought them efficiently to bear. In the end, Afghanistan had put all of the Iran plans on hold, possibly forever. But Chibisov had gone with Malinsky to the general’s first military district command, his trial run, in the Volga Military District. Chibisov had been the most junior military district chief of staff in the Soviet Army, and he did not underestimate the jealousies, or the pressure Malinsky received over the matter. The two men had worked together almost constantly since then, and it was Chibisov’s sole regret that he was not the sort of man who could ever tell Malinsky how deeply grateful he was to him.

Breathing regularly now, Chibisov turned back toward the bunker. There was no more time to waste. Trimenko, the Second Guards Tank Army Commander, would be almost through watching the videotapes now, and Chibisov did not want to waste any of the man’s time. He had no doubt that Trimenko, whose horizons did not extend beyond the strictly military, would be angry, impatient, and skeptical by now.

The tape was still running as Chibisov entered the darkened room. He stood until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, watching the colorful footage of destruction and disaster, some filmed on rainy days, other segments reflecting good weather in order to be prepared for either circumstance. Then he made his way to the chair that had remained empty for him between Colonel General Trimenko and Major General Dudorov. Samurukov, the front’s deputy commander for airborne and special operations forces, sat on the other side of Trimenko. Colonel Shtein, the master of ceremonies, stood beside the television screen.

Chibisov had seen the footage before, but it still seemed remarkable to him. The filmed destruction of a West German town that had not yet been taken in a war that had yet to begin. Shtein had been sent to the First Western Front directly from the special propaganda subdepartment of the general staff in Moscow. As Chibisov watched he was convinced by the sights and sounds that this was, indeed, what modern war must look like. The filming was magnificently done, never too artful, never too clear. The viewer always had the feeling that the cameraman was well aware of his own mortality. Chibisov could not understand the German voice-over, but it had all been explained to him the day before, when he and Malinsky saw the film for the first time. Only then had certain directives suddenly made sense to them. Malinsky had been furious that he had not been trusted longer in advance, and he was sincerely uneasy about the whole business. There was something old-fashioned, almost gallant about Malinsky, and this particular special operation was not well-suited to his temperament. The staff called Malinsky “the Count” behind his back, half-jokingly, half in affection. Such a thing would not even have passed as a joke when Chibisov was a junior officer, and he forbade the use of the nickname. But he secretly understood how it had developed. It was not just a matter of the well-known lineage, which Malinsky vainly imagined might be ignored. There was something aristocratic about the man himself.

Malinsky had readily agreed with Chibisov’s suggestion that he handle the matter with Shtein, freeing the commander for battlefield concerns. Chibisov had recognized the arrangement immediately as the only practical solution. Personally, he remained undecided on the potential effectiveness of the planned film and radio broadcasts. The approach was to attempt to convince populations under attack that it was only their resistance that made the destruction of their homes inevitable, and, further, to convince the West Germans that their allies took a cavalier attitude toward the destruction of their country. The goals were to create panic and a loss of the will to fight, while dividing the NATO allies. Chibisov doubted that such an approach would be effective against Russians, but Western Europeans remained something of an enigma to him.

Colonel Shtein commented on a few salient points as the film reached its climax. Then the screen suddenly fuzzed, and Shtein moved to turn up the lights.

Trimenko turned to Chibisov. It was clear from the bewildered look on the army commander’s face that he had not grasped the total context. Chibisov felt a certain kinship with Trimenko, although they were both men who kept their distance. Both of them were committed to the development and utilization of automated troop control systems as well as sharing the no-nonsense temperaments of accomplished technicians. In staff matters, they were both perfectionists, although Trimenko was quicker to ruin a subordinate’s career over a single error.

“At least,” Trimenko said coldly, “I now understand all the fuss about rapidly seizing Lueneburg. It never made military sense to me before — and I’m not certain it really makes military sense now.” Trimenko glanced at Shtein, hardly concealing his disgust. “Our friend from the general staff has explained his rationale to me. But I frankly view the scheme as frivolous, a diversion of critical resources. And” — Trimenko looked down at the floor, then back into Chibisov’s eyes — ”we’re not barbarians.”

Trimenko’s concern mirrored Chibisov’s own. But the chief of staff knew he had no choice but to support the General Staffs position. Overall, he was relieved that there had been so little interference with the front’s plan. Marshal Kribov’s approval had been good enough. This matter with Shtein was a special case, and it was important not to make too much of it. But Trimenko had to support it, one way or another.

“Comrade Army Commander, let me try to put it in a better perspective,” Chibisov said, unsure that he could manage to do what he was promising. “As you know, we are living in an age in which there has been something of a revolution in military affairs. Personally, I would say a series of revolutions — first the nuclear revolution, which may have been a false side road in history, then the automation revolution, with which you are intimately familiar. In the West, they speak of the ‘information age,’ and perhaps they’re correct in doing so. The Soviet system has always realized the value of information — for instance, the power of correct propaganda. Today, the powerful new means of arranging and disseminating information have opened new possibilities. In light of the successes of our propaganda efforts in the past, we must at least be open to the new and expanded opportunities offered by technology. Certainly, we both realize the value of battlefield deception, of blinding the enemy to your true activities and intentions, of confusing him, or even of steering him toward the decision you desire him to make. But how do we define the battlefield today? If warfare has expanded to include conflict between entire systems, then perhaps we must also be prepared to redefine the battlefield, or to accept that there are, in fact, a variety of battlefields. This little film is an information weapon, a deception weapon, aimed above the heads of the militarists. It targets the governments and populations of the West.”

“If the film is as accurate as Colonel Shtein tells us it is,” Trimenko said, “what’s the point of diverting a portion of my forces to actually destroy this town?”

“Lueneburg has been carefully selected by the general staff,” Chibisov said, parroting Shtein’s own arguments now. “It is easily within the grasp of our initial operations, it is defended by one of the weak sisters, and it has great sentimental value to the West Germans because of its medieval structures. Yet the town has no real economic value. Colonel Shtein’s department went to great expense to construct the model of the town square and other well-known features so that they could be destroyed for this film. The wonders of the Soviet film industry, you might say. But when this film is broadcast twenty-four hours from now, it must be augmented with additional dating footage, and, most importantly, it must stand up to any hasty enemy attempts at verification. The historic district must be flattened. We must destroy the real town now that we have filmed the destruction of the model.”

Trimenko was not yet ready to give in. Chibisov knew him as a hard and stubborn man, and he recognized the locked expression on the army commander’s face. “But what good does it do? Really? One of my divisions squanders its momentum, you tie up air-assault elements needed elsewhere, aircraft are diverted, and perhaps irreplaceable helicopters are lost. For what, Chibisov? So we can show the West Germans a movie? So we can broadcast to the world that we are barbarians after all?”

Chibisov sympathized but could not relent. Malinsky had commented that this was the sort of thing the Mongols would have done, had they possessed the technology.

“But you see,” Chibisov said, “the broadcasts will portray future incidents of this nature as avoidable. Tomorrow we will have film crews all over the battlefield. I expect Goettingen will be a positive example of what happens when there is little or no resistance. We’ll see. But what the West German people and their government get is a threat that, if resistance continues, there will be more Lueneburgs — because of their resistance, not because of any will to destruction on our part. They’ll also see undestroyed cities and towns where we were not forced to fight. Anyway, we can easily convince a substantial portion of the West German population that the Dutch are more responsible for the town’s destruction than are we, simply because they chose to fight to defend it. We would not have harmed the town, had they not forced us into a fight.”

“What if the Dutch don’t fight for Lueneburg?”

“Immaterial. You saw the film. Even if the Dutch fade away tomorrow, they will still have caused the destruction of that town on the film. And film doesn’t lie, Comrade Army Commander. Technically, the Dutch may have proof to the contrary. But frightened men have no patience with involved explanations. What could the Dutch, or NATO, bring as an effective counterargument? A bluster of outrage? Denials are always weaker than accusations. It’s elementary physics, you might say.”

Colonel Shtein interrupted the conversation. As a representative of the general staff on a special mission, he was not about to let slight differences in rank get in his way.

“Comrades,” he told them, lecturing, “it is the assessment of the general staff that the West Germans have grown so materialistic, so comfortable, that they will not be able to endure the thought of seeing their country destroyed again. They have lost their will. The Bundeswehr will fight, initially. But the officer corps is not representative of the people. This operation will complement your encirclement of the German corps and its threatened destruction. And consider its veiled threat should NATO look to nuclear weapons for their salvation. It sets up numerous options for conflict termination.”

The army commander looked at the staff colonel. “And if it doesn’t work? If they simply ignore it? Or if they fight all the harder because of it?”

“They won’t,” Shtein said. “But no matter if they did respond that way initially. We have similar film for Hameln. And we may actually be required to strike one mid-sized city very hard, say Bremen or Hannover. But in the end, the General Staff is convinced that this approach will help bring the war to a rapid conclusion, and on very favorable terms.”

Trimenko turned to Chibisov. “I don’t like it. It’s unsoldierly. We mustn’t divert any assets from the true points of decision.”

Chibisov noted a change in Trimenko’s voice. The army commander was no longer as adamant in tone, despite his choice of words. He would accept his responsibility, as Chibisov had accepted his own. Now it just required another push, for form’s sake.

Chibisov turned to Dudorov, the chief of intelligence. “Yuri, what do you think of all this? You understand the West Germans better than any of us.” Dudorov always preferred to be called by his first name without the patronymic, another of his Western tastes.

Dudorov looked at Chibisov and the army commander with all of the solemnity his chubby face could manage. And he was unusually slow in speaking. “Comrade Generals… I think this is absolutely brilliant.”

Chibisov wandered down to the operations center after seeing Trimenko off. The local air controller did not want to clear Trimenko’s helicopter for takeoff, due to expected traffic. The air controller did not know that the traffic would be the beginning of the air offensive, only that he had been ordered to keep the skies cleared beginning one hour before military dawn for priority air movements. The clearance had required Chibisov’s personal involvement, and the delay further contributed to Trimenko’s bad mood. He needed to be at his army command post now. Shortly, the skies would be very crowded indeed, as aircraft shot to the west, their flights cross-timed with the launch of short-range missiles and artillery blasting corridors through the enemy’s air defenses. Then the entire front would erupt.

The operations center was calmer, quieter than Chibisov expected. The calm before the storm, he thought to himself. Malinsky was still napping, and Chibisov let him sleep. Tomorrow, Malinsky would move forward to be with the army commanders during critical periods and to direct operations from the front’s forward command post closer to the West German border. He needed all the rest he could get. Chibisov required less sleep than the front commander, and they had an unspoken arrangement between them on that, too.

An officer-clerk moved to the big map now and then, while other officers took information over telephones. The bank of control radios remained quiet, except for routine administrative traffic that the enemy would be expecting. Out in the darkness, formations and units were sending just enough routine transmissions, usually from bogus locations, to lull the enemy into a sense of normalcy. But the critical war nets still slumbered.

Seven minutes, and the first plane would take off from an airfield in Poland. Then the other aircraft between Poland and the great dividing line would come up in sequence, a metal blanket lifting into the sky. Chibisov agreed with Malinsky. The air offensive was critical.

Chibisov walked around a bank of data processors to the second row of desks back from the master situation map. He stopped at the position of the front’s radio electronic combat duty officer. He put his hand on the shoulder of the lieutenant colonel, signaling him to remain at his screen.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes, Comrade General.”

“No surprises?”

“Not yet. We won’t know for at least half an hour, maybe longer if it gets really bad. Nothing on this scale has ever been attempted before.”

Chibisov was aware of the potential problems. When you attempted to employ these weapons of the new age, attacking the enemy’s communications complexes and radars, there was always the worry that you would strike your own critical networks — that, somehow, key aspects had been overlooked or inadequately tested. There was so much that was about to happen for the first time. Chibisov pictured the electromagnetic spectrum as crowded with an almost visible flood of power. The manipulation of nature itself, Chibisov thought, of natural laws and properties, more of the deadly wonders of technology. Yet he knew that there were men out there, waiting to blast and fill and tear at the border barriers, waiting at the literal edge of war, who were as frightened as their earliest ancestors had been when they came out of their caves to do battle.

Chibisov moved on to check the latest returns on fuel consumption.