Red Metal

CHAPTER 6

Colonel General Boris Lazar felt like a stranger in Moscow. He was born here, had graduated from Frunze Military Academy here, and had served multiple postings earlier in his long and storied career at the Ministry of Defense building overlooking the Moskva River. But the vast majority of his forty-one years of service had been far away from the Russian capital; in the Caucasus and in East Germany, in Ukraine and in Belarus, in Afghanistan and in Siberia, and when he came back here, he always felt like he drew stares.

And he was drawing stares now. He stood at the interior security entrance at Kutafya Tower inside the gates of the Kremlin, and in front of him a half dozen armed guards in full dress uniforms gawked at him in a way that made him think he had a damn horn sticking out of his forehead.

But an instant before he asked the men what they were looking at, a colonel approached and saluted, apologized for the delay, and escorted the general out into the warm August morning toward the Troitskaya Tower.

“What’s wrong with your men, Colonel?”

“I apologize, sir. They see a lot of celebrities at the VIP visitor entrance. Politicians, entertainers, and the like. But you have a special place in the hearts of the troops. Surely you are aware.”

Lazar just sniffed. He’d been more of a celebrity twenty years earlier, before some of those pimple-faced boys were born, but he wasn’t going to mention this to the colonel and risk appearing like he gave a shit about his fame or his legacy.

They walked on.

Lazar had no idea why he’d been asked here today. As commanding general of the Southern Military District, he lived and worked more than eight thousand kilometers from Moscow, in Khabarovsk, so he knew this was no social invitation.

The only thing in the world Lazar cared about was his army, and he worried today would have nothing to do with it. If he was being summoned to Moscow to receive military orders, those orders would be handed to him in the Ministry of Defense building just down the river, so he didn’t expect today to revolve around anything he gave a damn about. The meeting would likely be with some minister of President Rivkin, it would be about politics, and Lazar would have to force himself to endure it before he could get back to his tanks and his men, and wash off the stench of the suits at the Kremlin.

He was led into an ornate conference room and immediately saw there was one other person already inside. The stranger faced away, admiring a massive painting on the wall depicting the Battle of Vyborg Bay, a 1790 naval engagement during the Russo-Swedish War.

But even without seeing the man’s face, Lazar knew what he did for a living. He was wearing the exact same uniform Lazar himself wore. He was an army general, and where Lazar was short, thick, and barrel-chested, this man was tall and lean.

Just as the man turned toward him, Lazar realized who he was, and his confusion about today’s meeting only increased.

“Eduard?”

Colonel General Eduard Sabaneyev looked at Lazar, blinked hard as if in surprise, and moved quickly around the table with his hand extended. “Boris Petrovitch! Wonderful to see you.”

Sabaneyev was commander of the Western Operational Strategic Command, based in St. Petersburg.

“What are you doing here?” Lazar asked.

“I know nothing,” Sabaneyev admitted as they shook hands. “Strange, isn’t it? Stranger, still, seeing you. They brought you all the way from Khabarovsk for this?”

“Yes. Whatever this is.”

Sabaneyev was twelve years younger than Lazar, but the men were equal in rank. They’d known each other for all of the younger officer’s military career, and Sabaneyev had been a protégé of Lazar’s much of that time. They greeted each other warmly.

“It’s been years,” Sabaneyev said.

“Too long, for certain, Eduard.”

The door to the conference room opened suddenly and both generals were surprised again, because they found themselves facing a small man with piercing, intense eyes and a confident manner.

It was the Russian president, Anatoly Rivkin.

Rivkin shook both men’s hands with a wide smile, asked after their families, and then paused. Lazar thought he was going to invite them to sit down at the conference table, but instead he remained standing while he spoke.

Rivkin said, “I know you’ve been watching the news in the Pacific. The United States is turning its attention to the Far East. China says it will invade Taiwan in late December if they reelect their leader, and since there is no other viable candidate, it appears a conflict will happen. The United States is trying to get China to back down by sending a carrier battle group into the area, and we are hearing talk of more movements of American military power to come.

“This was planned and forecast and it affords us a unique opportunity, right now, but only if we are willing to do everything within our power to exploit it.”

The generals exchanged a glance and then returned their attention to the president.

Rivkin said, “It’s been a difficult time for our nation these past few years. With sanctions from the West, with the illegal business dealings by America and its partners, the rodina has suffered greatly.

“But, Generals, I have wonderful news for you both. The decision has been made to fight back against this aggression, and the two of you have been chosen to lead Russia in its quest to retain its proper place in the world.”

Sabaneyev nodded appreciatively. “What is our objective, sir?”

Rivkin smiled and put a hand on a shoulder of each man. “You will get your orders presently. I only wanted to drop by first to urge you gentlemen forward and to wish you great fortune.”

Again the generals shared a glance. This time Lazar spoke: “I will read the orders with great interest, Mr. President.”

Rivkin eyed the men gravely now. “What will be asked of all of us will require incredible fortitude. Ruthlessness. This is difficult, even unpalatable work for civilized men, I know. But the moment we accept that our survival, the survival of our families, the survival of our people, is at stake… only then can we do all that must be done.”

Sabaneyev said, “We will not fail you or the motherland, Mr. President.”

“I know you will not. We will strike with speed and complete surprise, and we will be victorious.”

And seconds later Rivkin was gone.

Sabaneyev and Lazar looked at each other in silence for a moment; then the younger, blond-haired man said, “I suppose that means you and I are off to war.”

Lazar said, “‘Surprise’? Did he say ‘surprise’? Is he unaware of the impossibility of strategic surprise?” Lazar knew, as did Sabaneyev, that Russian military planners had determined that any conventional attack on Europe would take at least two years of preparations — preparations that could not be hidden from Western satellites, spies, and signals intelligence collection. NATO knew this fact, too, and a key part of NATO’s defense was close monitoring of military production, training, force mobilization schedules, and the like.

Lazar could think of no way he and his army could surprise anyone in the West.

Sabaneyev said, “He didn’t say the target was Europe. It’s Africa — I’m sure of it. A small armored force to retake the mine that was stolen from us.”

Lazar shrugged. “Africa by what route? Have you taught your tanks to swim, Eduard? As of yet, mine cannot.”

Before Sabaneyev could reply, a colonel entered the room via the same double doors Rivkin had used and he placed briefing packets on the table next to where the generals stood.

Both men were clearly confused. Sabaneyev said, “I’ve never been handed field orders at the Kremlin. Why aren’t we at the Ministry of Defense for this?”

The colonel replied, “Security reasons.”

Lazar chuckled at what he saw as the absurdity of this. “We are being given orders, but we can’t let anyone at MoD know? Can we tell our armies, or will we be driving our tanks ourselves? Firing them, too?”

Sabaneyev laughed, but the colonel remained professionally cool. “At this early stage, Colonel General, President Rivkin and Colonel Borbikov thought it should be done this way.”

Sabaneyev started to speak, but Lazar cut him off. “Colonel who?”

“May I ask you to please read the orders? I believe your packets will have more answers than I am able to provide. Colonel Borbikov very much looks forward to meeting you and receiving your feedback as soon as you are finished.”

The colonel left the room.

“Who the fuck is Borbikov?” Lazar asked.

Sabaneyev shrugged, and the two generals sat several seats apart at the conference table and opened the packets left for them. Each leather-bound folio was sixty pages of typewritten orders, clarifications, and charts, with a second sheaf of printed maps.

On the title page of the booklet, three words were written.

Operacyia Krasnyi Metal. Operation Red Metal.

Below that was a date: 24 December 2020. Less than four months away.

Sixty-four-year-old Colonel General Boris Lazar put on his eyeglasses and hunched over his papers, and fifty-two-year-old Colonel General Eduard Sabaneyev lifted his pages, leaned back, and crossed a booted leg over a knee. The men did not speak to each other; instead they just read.

Five minutes into the reading, Sabaneyev let out a loud gasp but said nothing.

Lazar caught up to the other general a minute later and he spoke under his breath: “You’ve got to be joking.”

After Russia vacated the Mrima Hill rare-earth metal mine, they took their case to the International Criminal Court, where a hearing on the issue was blocked by Western powers.

But the Kremlin never gave up on their goal of returning to the mine.

Russian president Anatoly Rivkin had suffered a devastating hit to his domestic support after his promises to his people about the windfalls they would reap from Africa failed to materialize, and although there was some benefit to demonizing the West, claiming the Russian people had once again been humiliated by America, Western Europe, and Canada, he realized his choke hold on power was weakening by the day.

Additionally, he and his partners had lost billions of dollars. Not only were his political fortunes on the brink of ruin; his own personal fortune was in jeopardy.

The REMs meant the survival of Rivkin’s regime, of Rivkin himself, and he quickly determined he had to use the full force of the Russian military to regain control of them.

It was no tough sell to get the military behind him. He had the support of his nation’s generals and admirals, because if Rivkin needed REMs to survive, his military needed them to remain strong. Every aircraft, communications network, missile, computer, and guidance system utilized these resources, and with the West taking over two-thirds of the known world supplies, and China owning most of the rest, Russia would be at the mercy of China and the West to exist as a military power.

And this would not do.

Rivkin’s Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense moved in secret but in lockstep, and they determined they needed a plan to retake the mines by force.

It didn’t take long to produce one, because the plan had already been written.

Yuri Vladimirovich Borbikov, the commander of the Spetsnaz forces at the mine during the standoff, had written a proposal at the Russian Federation Armed Forces Combined Arms Academy that was immediately classified at the highest levels of secrecy in the Russian military. The proposal was a plan to retake the Russian strategic resources under the soil in Kenya using an incredibly bold strategy.

Borbikov had worked on his operation for two years, meeting unofficially with hundreds of military, intelligence, and political experts all over Russia. Using his own money and time, he had traveled to several different countries to look at the lay of the land in person.

The proposal was so audacious, Borbikov was written off by many at the Ministry of Defense as a crackpot, and the document seemed destined to cripple his meteoric ascendency in the Russian army.

Until that day Anatoly Rivkin demanded a bold strategy from his generals, damn the costs and the consequences.

Some in the Ministry of Defense wanted to suppress the paper, worrying that a desperate Kremlin might actually entertain the far-fetched plan as somehow feasible. But others saw Borbikov and his blueprint to take the mines by force as exactly what Russia needed in this desperate time, and they leaked to government officials the existence of the Borbikov proposal. As it was, it was just the right tactic at just the right political moment.

The president of Russia himself contacted the defense minister and demanded that the proposal be presented to him by the architect himself, and three days later Yuri Borbikov entered the Kremlin in his crisp uniform, ready to defend his plan to save Russia from ruin.

Nine months after Borbikov and Rivkin first met, and days after the assassination in Taiwan and the release of the compromising video that dealt a blow to American military leadership in the Pacific, Russia’s two most iconic generals sat in silence at a conference table in the Kremlin and read Borbikov’s detailed operation. An operation that had been fully approved by the president of Russia.