Red Storm Rising

8. Further Observations

The TV news crew was having a great time. It had been years since they'd been allowed to film a Soviet military unit in action, and the entertainment value of the mistakes they saw gave plenty of spice for a piece on the NBC Nightly News. As they watched, a tank battalion was stalled at a crossroads on Highway 101, fifty kilometers south of Berlin. They'd taken a wrong turn somewhere, and the battalion commander was screaming at his subordinates. After two minutes of that, a captain stepped forward and made a few gestures at the map. A major was banished from the scene as the younger man apparently solved the problem. The camera followed the dejected major into a staff car, which drove north along the main road. Five minutes later, the battalion was mounted and rolling. The news crew took its time reloading its equipment into their carryall, and the chief reporter took the time to walk over to a French officer who had also observed the procedure.

The Frenchman was a member of the Joint Military Liaison Group, a convenient leftover of the Second World War which enabled both sides to spy on each other. A lean, poker-faced man, he wore paratrooper's wings and smoked Gauloises. He was an intelligence officer, of course.

"What do you make of this, Major?" the NBC reporter asked.

"They made a mistake four kilometers back. They should have turned left, but didn't." A Gallic shrug.

"Not very impressive performance for the Russians, is it?" The reporter laughed. The Frenchman was more thoughtful.

"Did you notice that they had a German officer with them?"

The reporter had noticed the different uniform, but not realized its significance. "Oh, is that what he was? Why didn't they ask him for help?"

"Yes," the French major answered. He didn't say that this was the fourth time he had seen a Soviet officer refrain from asking assistance from his East German guide… and all in the last two days. To have Soviet units get lost was an old story. The Russians used a different alphabet in addition to the different language. That made it easy to make navigational errors, and the Soviets always had DDR officers along to help them find their way around. Until now. He flicked his cigarette onto the road. "What else did you notice, Monsieur?"

"The colonel was pretty mad at that major. Then a captain-I think showed him the mistake, I guess, and how to correct it."

"How long?"

"Less than five minutes after they stopped."

"Very good." The Frenchman smiled. The major was beading back to Berlin, and that battalion had a new operations officer now. The smile disappeared.

"Looks pretty dumb to get lost like that, doesn't it?"

The Frenchman got back into his car to follow the Russians. "Have you ever gotten lost in a foreign country, Monsieur?"

"Yes, who hasn't?"

"But they found their mistake quickly, no?" The major waved to his driver to pull off. And all by themselves this time, he thought. Interessant…

The TV reporter shrugged and walked back to his own vehicle. He followed the last tank in line, annoyed that they were moving at only thirty kilometers per hour. The tanks moved northwest at that speed until they reached Highway 187, where miraculously they joined up with another Soviet unit and, dropping back to their normal speed of twenty kilometers per hour, resumed their progress west toward the exercise area.

It was impressive. As they watched the Moscow television news program, a whole regiment of tanks advanced across a flat landscape. Their objective turned to a horizontal fountain of dirt as an artillery barrage pounded the simulated enemy positions. Fighter-bombers streaked across the sky and helicopters performed their own death-dance. The voice-over commentary proclaimed the readiness of the Soviet Army to meet any foreign threat. It certainly looked that way.

The next five-minute segment concerned the Vienna arms talks. There was the usual complaint about how the United States was fighting over certain aspects of the clearly generous original Soviet proposal, but the speaker went on to say that real progress was being made despite American intransigence, and that a comprehensive agreement was possible by the end of summer. Toland was puzzled by the nature of the Soviet description of the negotiations. He'd never paid much attention to this sort of rhetoric before, and found the good-guy/bad-guy descriptions curious.

"Pretty normal stuff," Lowe responded to the question. "You'll know the deal is close to being struck when the beefs start disappearing. Then they talk about how enlightened our President is for a class enemy. They can get real euphoric around signing time. Really, this stuff is pretty mild. Think about it. What sort of language do they usually use about us?"

"The exercise look normal?"

"It's normal, all right. Ever think about how much fun it is to face a hundred tanks? You did notice that they all carry five-inch guns? Then think about the artillery support they get. Then think about the aircraft. The Russians are real believers in this combined-arms stuff. When they come at you, they come with the whole inventory. They have this set piece stuff down cold."

"How do we counter it?"

"You take the initiative. You let the other guy get all set to fight his battle his way, son, you might as well bag it."

"Same story at sea."

"Yeah."

Alekseyev atypically poured himself a cup of tea at the comer table before approaching his commander's desk. When he walked over, his grin was a meter wide.

"Comrade General, Progress goes well!"

"So I can see, Pavel Leonidovich."

"I would never have believed it. The improvement in our officer corps is extraordinary. The deadwood is being disposed of, and those men whom we've moved up to new posts are eager and capable."

"So, shooting those four colonels has worked?" CINC-Southwest noted sardonically. He'd run the first two days of the exercise from his command headquarters and yearned to get into the field where the real action was. But that was not a theater commander's job. Alekseyev was his best set of eyes for what was really happening.

"A hard choice, but a good one. The results speak for themselves." The edge came off the younger man's enthusiasm. His conscience still remembered that. The problem with hard decisions, he learned, was not making them, but learning to live with the consequences, however necessary. He set the thought aside yet again. "With two more weeks of intensive exercises, the Red Army will be ready. We can do it. We can defeat NATO."

"We don't have to fight NATO, Pasha."

"Then Allah help the Arabs!" Alekseyev said.

"Allah help us. West gets another of our tank divisions." The General held up a dispatch. "The one you were with today, in fact. I wonder how he has been doing?"

"My spies tell me, quite well."

"And you have joined the KGB, Pasha?"

"A classmate of mine is on CINC-West staff. They, too, have adopted a policy for eliminating incompetents. I have seen the benefits. A new man in a posting has much better incentive to do his job properly than one for whom it has become routine."

"Except at the top, of course."

"Commander-in-Chief West is one man I never expected to defend, but everything I've been told leads me to believe he's getting his forces ready in the same way as we."

"Things must indeed be improved if you are this magnanimous."

"They are, Comrade. Another tank division lost to Germany. Well, he needs it more than we. I tell you, we will sweep the Arabs aside like dirt on a smooth tile floor. In truth we always could. There are not so many of them, and if these Arabs are like the Libyans I saw three years ago-these have no mountains to hide in. This is not Afghanistan. Our mission is to conquer, not to pacify. This we can do. I estimate two weeks. The only problem I foresee is the destruction of the oil fields. They can use scorched earth as a defense just as we have, and that will be difficult for us to prevent, even with paratroops. Still and all, our objective is achievable. Our men will be ready."