Would NATO try to invade? His operations officer said it was impossible unless the Americans were able to destroy the long-range bombers flying out of Kirovsk first, and the whole point of seizing Iceland had been to prevent the American carriers from moving to a position from which they could do just that. On paper, then, the General expected only increased air attacks, and he had surface-to-air missiles to defend against those. But he hadn’t become a divisional commander by merely shuffling papers.
NORTH ATLANTIC
“What the hell happened?” The captain looked up to see a tube stuck in his arm. The last thing he remembered was being on the bridge halfway through the afternoon watch. Now the porthole on the starboard side of his stateroom was covered. Darkened ship: it was night outside.
“You passed out, Captain,” the chief hospital corpsman said. “Don’t-”
The captain tried to rise. His head made it about eighteen inches off the pillow when his strength gave way.
“You have to rest. You got internal bleeding, skipper. You threw up blood last night. I think it’s a perforated ulcer. You scared the hell outa me last night. Why didn’t you come see me?” The chief held up a bottle of Maalox tablets. People gotta be so damned smart about everything. “Your blood pressure’s down twenty points and you durned near went into shock on me. This ain’t no bellyache you got, Captain. You might have to have surgery. There’s a helo on the way out now to medevac you to the beach.”
“I can’t leave the ship,
“Doc’s orders, Captain. If you die on me I lose my perfect record. I’m sorry, sir, but unless you get real medical attention real quick, you could be in real trouble. You’re heading for the beach.”
32 – New Names, New Faces
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
“Good morning, Ed.” Commander, Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet was seated behind a desk covered with dispatches that seemed to be organized into piles. Morning-half an hour after midnight. Morris hadn’t left Norfolk since arriving at dawn on the previous day. If he went home, he’d have to sleep again …
“Morning, sir. What can I do for you?” Morris didn’t want to sit down.
“You want to go back out?” COMNAVSURFLANT asked bluntly.
“Who with?”
“Reuben James’s skipper came down with a bleeding ulcer. They flew him in this morning. She arrives in another hour with the ‘phibs from PACFLT. I’m assigning her to convoy duty. We have a big one assembling in New York harbor. Eighty ships, all big, all fast, loaded with heavy equipment for Germany. It sails in four days with a heavy U.S./ U.K. escort, plus carrier support. Reuben James will be in port long enough to refuel and reprovision. She sails for New York this evening in company with HMS Battleaxe. If you’re up to it, I want you to take her.” The Vice Admiral eyed Morris closely. “She’s yours if you want her. You up to it?”
“My personal gear’s still aboard Pharris.” Morris temporized. Did he really want to go back out?
“Packed up and on the way down, Ed.”
There were plenty of men who could do it, Morris thought. The operations staff he’d been working with since he arrived in Norfolk was full of people who’d leap at this. Go back to sea and put it on the line again-or drive back every night to an empty home and nightmares?
“If you want me, I’ll take her.”
FÖLZIEHAUSEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
The northern horizon flashed with artillery fire that backlit the trees. The sky was never free of the thunder. The drive to the divisional command post was a mere fifteen kilometers from Alfeld. Three vicious air attacks and twenty separate artillery barrages had converted the morning drive into a nightmare lasting into dusk and beyond.
The forward headquarters of 20th Tanks was now the command post for the entire drive toward Hameln. Lieutenant General Beregovoy, who had relieved Alekseyev, now wore the hats of commander 20th Tanks and operational maneuver group commander The OMG concept had been one of the most precious Soviet pre-war ideas. The “daring thrust” would open a corridor into the enemy’s rear, and the operational-maneuver group would exploit it, racing into the corridor to seize important economic or political targets. Alekseyev stood with his back against an armored vehicle, looking north at the flashing outline of a forest. Another thing that hasn’t gone according to plan, he thought. As if we expected NATO to cooperate with our plans!
There was a yellow flash overhead. Alekseyev blinked his eyes clear and watched the fireball turn to a comet that fell to the earth, landing several kilometers away. Ours or theirs? he wondered. Another promising young life snuffed out by a missile. Now we kill our young men with robots. Who said mankind was not using his technology to worthwhile ends?
He had prepared his whole life for this. Four years in officer school. The difficult initiation as a junior officer, promotion to command a company. Three more years at Frunze Military Academy in Moscow after he’d been recognized as a rising star. Then command of a battalion. Back to Moscow to the Voroshilov Academy of the General Staff. Top man in his class. Command of a regiment, then a division. All for this?
A field hospital was in the trees five hundred meters away, and the wind carried the shrieks of the wounded to the command post. Not like that in the movies he’d watched as a child-and still watched. The wounded were supposed to suffer in quiet, determined dignity, puffing on cigarettes proffered by the kindly, hardworking medics, waiting their turn for the courageous, hardworking surgeons and the pretty, dedicated nurses. A fucking lie, all of it a monstrous fucking lie, he told himself The profession for which he had prepared his life was organized murder. He sent boys with pimples on their faces into a landscape rained on with steel and watered with blood. The burns were the worst. The tank crews who escaped from their brewed-up vehicles with their clothes alight-they never stopped screaming. Those killed by shock or the pistol of a merciful officer were only replaced by more. The lucky ones who reached the casualty-clearing stations found medics too busy to offer cigarettes, and doctors who were dropping from fatigue.
His brilliant tactical success at Alfeld had led nowhere yet, and he wondered in his soul if it ever would, if he had cast young lives away for nothing more than words in books written by men who did their best to forget the horrors they had inflicted and endured.
Second thoughts now, Pasha? he asked himself. And what of those four colonels you had shot? Rather late to discover a conscience, isn’t it? But now it wasn’t a map-table game or an exercise at Shpola, nor a handful of routine training accidents. It was one thing for a company commander to see all this after following orders from above. It was another for the man who gave the orders to view his handiwork.
“There is nothing so terrible as a battle won-except a battle lost.” Alekseyev remembered the quote from Wellington’s commentary on Waterloo, one of the two million books in the Frunze library. Certainly not something written by a Russian general. Why had he ever been allowed to read that? If soldiers read more of those remarks and less of glory, then what would they do when their political masters ordered them to march? Now there, the General told himself, there is a radical idea . . . He urinated against a tree and walked back towards the command post.
He found Beregovoy leaning over the map. A good man, and an effective soldier, Alekseyev knew, what did he think of all this?
“Comrade, that Belgian brigade just reappeared. It’s attacking our left flank. They caught two regiments moving into new positions. We have a problem here.”
Alekseyev strode to Beregovoy’s side and surveyed the available units. NATO still was not cooperating. The attack had come at the junction of two divisions, one worn out, the other fresh but unblooded. A lieutenant moved some counters. The Soviet regiments were pulling back.
“Keep the reserve regiment in place,” Alekseyev ordered. “Have this one move northwest. We’ll try to catch the Belgians’ flank as they approach this road junction.” Professionalism dies hard in the soldier.
ICELAND
“Well, there it is.” Edwards handed his binoculars to Sergeant Smith. Hvammsfjordur was still miles away. Their first sight of it came from the top of a two-thousand-foot hill. A sparkling river below them fed into the fjord, more than ten miles away. Everyone kept low, afraid to be skylined with the low sun behind them. Edwards broke out his radio.
“Doghouse, this is Beagle. The objective is in sight.” This was a particularly dumb thing to say, Edwards knew. Hvammsfjordur was almost thirty miles long, about ten miles across at its widest point.