As German panzer divisions pushed toward the Russian rear with incredible speed, the Luftwaffe blasted their inexperienced and badly trained Russian counterparts. As a result of this Blitzkrieg, the Baltic states were swiftly overrun. The damage inflicted by the Germans was catastrophic. By November, vital agricultural, industrial, transportation, and communications centers had been destroyed. More than 2 million Russian soldiers had been captured. Three hundred and fifty thousand Russian troops had been killed. Three hundred and seventy-eight thousand were missing. And 1 million had been wounded. In Leningrad alone, 900,000 civilians were killed during the enemy siege. It wasn’t until the last days of December that the battered but resilient Russians-helped by -200 temperatures that shattered German boot soles, froze their equipment, and destroyed morale-were able to mount their first successful counterattack. As a result of this counteroffensive, the Russians were just able to keep Moscow from enemy hands.
Ultimately, Operation Barbarossa was a disaster for the Germans. But it taught the Soviets an important lesson about the desirability of fighting an offensive rather than a defensive war. For the next forty years, their military grew with the almost fanatical goal of being able to launch and sustain an offensive war-as General Mikhail Kosigan had once put it in a speech to his troops, “to fight the next world war, if it comes, on everyone else’s territory.” To this end, missions for commanders of first-echelon tactical units were comprised of three components designed to destroy or capture enemy troops and equipment and seize and control key territory: the immediate mission, or blizhaiashcha zadacha; the subsequent mission, or posledyushchaia zadacha; and the follow-up mission, or napravlenie dal’neishego nastupleniia. Within those broad missions, regiments were often assigned a key mission of the day, or zadacha dnia, which were goals that had to be completed within a specific time frame-no excuses accepted.
Whether it was in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan in 1979, or Chechnya in 1994, Moscow relied on its military and not on diplomacy to solve problems in its own backyard. Its guiding principles were supriz, neozhadennost’ and vnezapnost’: surprise, anticipation of the unexpected, and causing the unexpected. Often their efforts were successful, and sometimes they were not. But the mind-set remained, and Interior Minister Dogin knew it. He also knew that many Russian commanders yearned for the opportunity to redeem themselves after nine bloody years in Af- ghanistan and the lengthy and costly suppression of the rebels in Chechnya.
The time had come to give them a chance. Many of his men had been moved to Russia’s border with Ukraine, where, unlike Afghanistan and Chechnya, they wouldn’t be fighting rebel armies and partisan guerrillas. This war, this aktivnost, this initiative, would be different.
At 12:30 A.M., local time, in Przemysl, Poland, less than ten miles from the Ukranian border, a powerful pipe bomb exploded in the two-story brick building that served as the headquarters of the Polish Communist Party. Two editors working on the semiweekly newspaper Obywatel, the Citizen, were blown into the surrounding trees, their blood and ink splashed on the two walls that remained standing, newsprint and flesh burned onto the chairs and file cabinets by the heat of the explosion. Within minutes, Communist sympathizers were in the streets, protesting the attack and storming the post office and police station. A local munitions depot was pelted with Molotov cocktails and exploded, killing a soldier. At 12:46 the local constable telephoned Warsaw to request military assistance to quell the uprising. The call was intercepted and simultaneously transcribed by a military intelligence station in Kiev and was passed to President Vesnik.
At exactly 2:49 A.M. President Vesnik telephoned General Kosigan to ask for his help in containing what looked like it might be a “situation” on the border between Poland and the Ukraine. At 2:50 A.M. 150,000 Russian troops entered Ukraine, from the ancient city of Novgorod in the north to the administrative center of Voroshilovgrad in the south. Infantry, motorized rifle regiments, tank divisions, artillery battalions, and air squadrons moved in frightening lockstep, showing none of the disorder or slovenly behavior that had marked the move against Chechnya, or the retreat from Afghanistan.
In Moscow, at precisely 2:50:30 A.M., the Kremlin received an urgent communication from President Vesnik in Kiev requesting troops to help the Ukranian forces protect the nearly three hundred miles of border the Ukraine shared with Poland.
Russian President Kiril Zhanin was awakened with the news and was caught utterly off guard by the request. Even before he had reached his office in the Kremlin, Zhanin was telephoned in his car with another message from the Ukranian President. As this one was read to him, it surprised him even more than the first:
“Thank you for your prompt action. The timely arrival of General Kosigan’s forces will not only keep the population from panicking, but reaffirms the traditional ties between Russia and Ukraine. I have instructed Ambassador Rozevna to inform the United Nations and Secretary General Brophy that the incursion was by invitation and design. ”
Ordinarily, Zhanin’s woolly mustache and shaggy eyebrows gave his oval face a paternal, even jovial look. But now his dark brown eyes were afire, his small mouth tight and trembling.
He turned to his secretary, Larisa Shachtur, a middleaged brunette dressed smartly in a Western-style business suit, and told her to get General Kosigan on the telephone. She only got as far as General Leonid Sarik, senior liaison officer of the aviations operation group and combined tank army. Mavik informed her that General Kosigan had imposed a strict radio silence for the duration of the march itself, and that it would be lifted
Only when Unit troops were fully deployed.
“General Mavik,” said the secretary, “it is the President calling.”
The General replied, “Then he will understand the need for security as we honor our defense pact with a fellow republic of the Commonwealth.”
The General excused himself to attend to his duties and hung up, leaving the President and his secretary listening to the gentle puff of the engine.
Zhanin looked through the tinted, bulletproof window as the dark spires of the Kremlin came into view against the night sky and deep gray clouds.
“As a young man,” he said, breathing deeply to calm himself, “I managed to get a copy of Svetlana Stalin’s book about her father. Do you remember it?”
“Yes,” said Larisa. “It was banned for years.”
“That’s right. Even though she was critical of a man who had fallen from grace, a so-called nonperson. One thing she wrote about Stalin struck me. She said that toward the end of the 1930s, she felt he had reached the stage of what she called ‘persecution mania.’ Enemies were everywhere. He had fifty thousand of his own officers purged. He murdered more Russian officers at or above the rank of colonel than the Germans killed in the entire war.” He filled his chest and exhaled slowly. “It frightens me, Larisa, to think that he may not have been as mad or paranoid as everyone thought.”
The woman squeezed his hand reassuringly as the black BMW turned off Kalinina Prospekt and headed toward the northwest side of the Kremlin, Trinity Gate.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Tuesday, 3:05 A.M., over the Barents Sea
The II-76T landed in Helsinki shortly before midnight, and the Striker crew, their cold-weather gear, and their arsenal were aboard ten minutes later. Their arsenal consisted of four trunks, each five by four by three feet, loaded with guns and explosives, ropes and pitons, gas masks and medical supplies. A half hour after they were aboard, the plane was refueled and airborne.
The initial phase of the flight had carried the craft northeast over Finland, then east across the Barents Sea and another time zone, flying just below the Arctic Ocean as it skirted the northern coast of Russia.
Lieutenant Colonel Squires’s eyes were shut, but he wasn’t sleeping. Nasty habit, he knew: he couldn’t sleep unless he knew where he was going and why. He knew that further instructions from Op-Center would be forthcoming, since they were rapidly approaching the end of their flight plan, which carried them to where the Barents met the Pechora Sea. Still, it was frustrating not to be able to focus on an objective and stay zeroed in. Crossing the Atlantic, he’d been able to concentrate on St. Petersburg and the mission there. Now that was in Private George’s hands, and Squires had nothing. When he had nothing, the officer always played a little game to keep his mind from wandering to his wife and son and what they’d do if he didn’t come back.
It was the What Am I Doing Here? game, in which he picked an appropriate word or two, reached deep into his guts, and tried to understand why he loved being a Striker so damn much.
The first time he’d played it, en route to Cape Canaveral to try and find out who put a bomb on board a space shuttle, he’d decided that he was here to defend America, not just because it was the best place to be but because our nation’s energy and ideals were what motivated the whole world. If we were to go away, Squires was convinced that the planet would become a battleground for dictators who wanted to rule, not autonomous states that were competitive and vital.