BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.
"How long?" SACEUR asked.
"Three days. We"ll be able to attack with four divisions."
What"s left of four divisions, SACEUR thought. We"ve stopped them, all right, but what do we have to drive them back with?
They did have confidence. NATO had begun the war with an advantage only in its technology, which was even more p.r.o.nounced now. The Russian stocks of new tanks and guns had been ravaged, and the divisions coming into the line now had twenty-year-old castoffs. They still had numbers, though, and any offensive SACEUR planned would have to be carefully planned and executed. Only in the air did he have an important advantage, and air power had never won a war. The Germans were pus.h.i.+ng hard for a counterstrike. Too much of their land, and too many of their citizens, were on the wrong side of the line. Already the Bundeswehr was probing aggressively on several fronts, but they"d have to wait. The German Army was not strong enough to push forward alone. They"d taken too many losses in their prime role of stopping the Soviet advance.
KAZAN, R.S.F.S.R.
The youngsters were too excited to sleep. The older men were too worried to sleep. Conditions didn"t help. The men of the 77th Motor-Rifle Division were crammed into pa.s.senger cars, and while all had seats, it was at the cost of rubbing against their comrades even as they breathed. The troop trains moved along at a speed of a hundred kilometers per hour. The tracks were set in the Russian way, with the rail segments ending together instead of offset; so, instead of the clickity-click familiar to Western riders, the men of this C division heard only a series of thuds. It tested nerves already raw.
The interval between the jarring sounds slowed. A few soldiers looked out to see that their train was stopping at Kazan. The officers were surprised. They weren"t supposed to stop until they got to Moscow. The mystery was soon solved. No sooner had the twenty-car train stopped than new men filed into the carriages.
"Attention," called one loud voice. "Combat soldiers arriving!"
Though they had been issued new uniforms, their boots showed the weeks of abuse. Their swagger marked them as veterans. About twenty got onto each pa.s.senger car, and rapidly secured comfortable seating for themselves. Those displaced would have to stand. There were officers, too, and they found their counterparts. The officers of the 77th began to get firsthand information of NATO doctrine and tactics, what worked and what didn"t work, all the lessons paid for in blood by the soldiers who did not join the division at Kazan. The enlisted men got no such lessons. They watched men who were able to sleep even as they rode to the fighting front.
FASLANE, SCOTLAND.
Chicago was alongside the pier, loading torpedoes and missiles for her next mission. Half her crew was ash.o.r.e stretching their legs and buying drinks for the crew of Torbay.
Their boat had acquired quite a reputation for her work in the Barents Sea, enough so that they"d be heading back as soon as she was ready, to escort the carrier battle groups now in the Norwegian Sea, heading for the Soviet bases on the Kola Peninsula.
McCafferty sat alone in his stateroom, wondering why a mission that had ended in disaster was considered successful, hoping that he wouldn"t be sent out again-but knowing that he would . . .
MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.
"Good news, Comrade General!" A colonel stuck his head in the office Alekseyev had taken for himself. "Your people were able to join up with the 77th at Kazan."
"Thank you." Alekseyev"s head went back to his maps when the colonel withdrew.
"It"s amazing."
"What"s that, Vanya?"
"The men you selected for the 77th, the paperwork, the orders-they went through just like that!"
"A routine transfer of personnel-why shouldn"t it go through?" the General asked. "The Politburo approved the procedure."
"But this is the only group of men flown out."
"They had the farthest to go." Alekseyev held up a message form he"d just filled out. Captain-no, now he was Major Arkady Semyonovich Sorokin of the 76th Guards Airborne Division was ordered to report to Moscow immediately. He would fly also. A pity he could not have the captain bring some of his men along, but they were where no Soviet general could reach.
"So, Mikhail Eduardovich, what does General Alekseyev plan?"
Sergetov handed over some notes. Kosov leafed through the pages in a few minutes.
"If he succeeds, at least an Order of Lenin from us, yes?" That general is overly smart. Too bad for him.
"We are far from that point. What about the timing? We depend on you to set the stage."
"I have a colonel who specializes in this sort of thing."
"I"m sure."
"One other thing we should do," Kosov said. He explained for several minutes before taking his leave. Sergetov shredded the notes he had from Alekseyev and had Vitaly burn them.
The trouble light and buzzer caught the dispatcher"s attention at once. Something was wrong with the trackage on the Elektrozavodskaya Bridge, three kilometers east of Kazan Station.
"Get an inspector out there."
"There"s a train half a kilometer away," his a.s.sistant warned.
"Tell it to stop at once!" The dispatcher flipped the switch controlling the tower signal.
The deputy dispatcher lifted his radiotelephone. "Train eleven ninety-one, this is Kazan Central Dispatch. Trouble on the bridge ahead, stop immediately!"
"I see the signal! Stopping now," the engineer replied. "We won"t make it!"
And he couldn"t. Eleven ninety-one was a hundred-car unit, flatcars loaded with armored vehicles and boxcars loaded with munitions. Sparks flew in the pre-dawn light as the engineer applied the brakes on every car, but he needed more than a few hundred meters to halt the train. He peered ahead looking for the problem-a bad signal, he hoped.
No! A track was loose just at the west side of the bridge. The engineer shouted a warning to his crew and cringed. The locomotive jumped the track and ground sideways to a halt. This could not prevent the three engines behind it and eight flatcars from surging forward. They too jumped off the track, and only the bridge"s steel framework prevented them from spilling into the Yauza River. The track inspector arrived a minute later. He cursed all the way to the telephone box.
"We need two big wreckers here!"
"How bad?" the dispatcher asked.
"Not as bad as the one last August. Twelve hours, perhaps sixteen."
"What went wrong?"
"All the traffic on this bridge-what do you think?"
"Anyone hurt?"
"Don"t think so-they weren"t going very fast."
"I"ll have a crew out there in ten minutes." The dispatcher looked up at the blackboard list of arriving trains.
"d.a.m.n! What are we going to do with these?"
"We can"t split them up, it"s a whole Army division traveling as a unit. They were supposed to go around the north side. We can"t send them around to the south either. Novodanilovskiy Bridge is packed solid for hours."
"Reroute them into Kursk Station. I"ll call the Rzhevskaya dispatcher and see if he can get us a routing on his track."
The trains arrived at seven-thirty. One by one they were shunted onto the sidings at Kursk Station and stopped. Many of the troops aboard had never been to Moscow before, but except for those on the outermost sidings, all they could see were the trains of their fellow soldiers.
"A deliberate attempt to sabotage the State railroads!" the KGB colonel said.
"More probably it was worn trackage, Comrade," the Kazan dispatcher said. "But you are correct to be prudent."
"Worn trackage?" the colonel snarled. He knew for certain that it had been a different cause. "I think perhaps you do not take this seriously enough."
The dispatcher"s blood chilled at that statement. "I have my responsibilities, too. For the moment that means clearing the wreckage off that d.a.m.ned bridge and getting my trains rolling again. Now, I have a seven-train unit sitting at Kursk, and unless I can get them moving north-"
"From what I see of your map, moving all the traffic around the city"s northern perimeter depends on a single switch."
"Well, yes, but that"s the responsibility of the Rzhevskaya dispatcher."
"Has it ever occurred to you that saboteurs are not a.s.signed in the same way as dispatchers? Perhaps the same man could operate in a different district! Has anyone checked that switch?"
"I don"t know."
"Well, find out! No, no, I will send my own people to check before you railroad fools wreck anything else."
"But, my scheduling . . ." The dispatcher was a proud man, but he knew that he had pressed his luck too far already.
"Welcome to Moscow," Alekseyev said genially.
Major Arkady Semyonovich Sorokin was short, like most paratroop officers. A handsome young man with light brown hair, his blue eyes burned for a reason that Alekseyev understood better than the major did. He limped slightly from two bullets he"d taken in the leg during the initial a.s.sault on the Keflavik air base on Iceland. On his breast was the ribbon of the Order of the Red Banner, earned for leading his company into enemy fire. Sorokin and most of the early casualties had been flown out for medical treatment. He and they were now awaiting new a.s.signment since their division had been captured on Iceland.
"How may I serve the General?" Sorokin asked.
"I need a new aide, and I prefer officers with combat experience. More than that, Arkady Semyonovich, I will need you to perform a delicate task. But before we discuss that, there is something I need to explain to you. Please sit down. Your leg?"
"The doctors advised me not to run on it for another week. They were right. I tried to do my ten kilometers yesterday and pulled up lame after only two." He didn"t smile. Alekseyev imagined that the boy hadn"t smiled at all since May. The General explained to him for the first time why this was true. Five minutes later, Sorokin"s hand was opening and closing beside the arm of the leather chair, about where his pistol holster would be if he"d been standing.
"Major, the essence of a soldier is discipline," Alekseyev concluded. "I have brought you here for a reason, but I must know that you will carry out your orders exactly. I will understand if you cannot."
There was no emotion on his face at all, but the hand relaxed. "Yes, Comrade General, and I thank you from my soul for bringing me here. It will be exactly as you say."
"Come, then. We have work to do."
The General"s car was already waiting. Alekseyev and Sorokin drove to the inner ring road around central Moscow that changes its name every few kilometers. It is called Chkalova where it pa.s.ses the Star Theater toward the Kursk Railroad Station.
The commander of the 77th Motor-Rifle Division was dozing. He had a new deputy commander, a brigadier from the front to replace the overaged colonel who had held the post. They had talked for ten hours on NATO tactics, and now the Generals were taking advantage of their unexpectedly extended stop in Moscow to get some sleep.
"What the h.e.l.l is this!"
The 77th"s commander opened his eyes to see a four-star general staring down at him. He jumped to attention like a cadet.
"Good morning, Comrade General!"
"And good morning to you! What the h.e.l.l is a division of the Soviet Army doing asleep on a G.o.dd.a.m.ned railroad siding while men are dying in Germany!" Alekseyev nearly screamed at the man.
"We-we can"t make the trains move, there is some problem with the tracks."
"There is a problem with the tracks? You have your vehicles, don"t you?"
"The train goes to Kiev Station, where we switch locomotives for the trip to Poland."
"I"ll arrange transport for you. We don"t have time," Alekseyev explained as though to a wayward child, "to have a fighting division sit on its a.s.s. If the train can"t move, you can! Roll your vehicles off the flatcars, we"ll take you through Moscow, and you can get to Kiev Station yourself. Now rub the sleep out of your eyes and get this division rolling before I find someone else who can!"
It never failed to amaze the General what a little screaming could do. Alekseyev watched the division commander scream at his regimental commanders, who went off to scream at their battalion commanders. In ten minutes the screaming was done at the squad level. Ten minutes after that, the tie-down chains were being stripped off the BTR-60 infantry carriers and the first of them rolled off the back of the train for a.s.sembly in Korskogo Square in front of the station. The infantrymen mounted their vehicles, looking very dangerous in battle dress, their weapons in their hands.
"You got your new communications officers?" Alekseyev asked.
"Yes, they have completely replaced my own people," the division commander nodded.
"Good. We"ve learned the hard way about communications security at the front. Your new men will serve you well. And the new riflemen?"
"One company of veterans in each regiment, plus others spread individually throughout the rifle companies." The commander was also pleased to have some new combat officers to replace a few of his less-well-regarded subordinates. Alekseyev had clearly sent him good ones.
"Good, get your division formed up in columns of regiments. Let"s show the people something, Comrade. Show them what a Soviet Army division is supposed to look like. They need it."
"How do we proceed through the city?"