“My father told me that you have been conditioned, just as the science of Communism says men can be conditioned. You have been told all your life that the Army serves the Party, that you are the guardian of the State. He told me to remind you that you are a man of the Party, that it is time for the people to reclaim the Party for themselves.”
“Ali, this is why he conspires with the Director of the KGB!”
“Perhaps you would prefer that we have some bearded priests from the Orthodox Church, or some dissident Jews from the Gulag to make the revolution a pure one? We must fight with what we have.” It was heady wine indeed for Sergetov to talk this way to a man with whom he had served under fire, but he knew that his father was right. Twice in fifty years, the Party had broken the Army to its will. For all their pride and power, the generals of the Soviet Army had as much instinct for rebellion as a lapdog. But once the decision is made, his father had told him . . . “The Rodina cries out for rescue, Comrade General.”
“Don’t tell me about the Motherland!” The Party is the soul of the people. Alekseyev remembered the slogan for a thousand repetitions.
“Then what of the children of Pskov?”
“The KGB did that!”
“Do you blame the sword for the hand that wields it? If so, what does that make you?”
Alekseyev wavered. “It is not an easy thing to overturn the State, Ivan Mikhailovich.”
“Comrade General, is it your duty to carry out orders that will only bring about its destruction? We do not seek to overturn the State,” Sergetov said gently. “We seek to restore the State.”
“We will probably fail.” Alekseyev took a perverse comfort in the statement. He sat down at his desk. “But if I must die, better that it should be as a man than a dog.” The General took out a pad of paper and a pencil. He began to formulate a plan to ensure that they would not fail, and that he would not die until he had accomplished at least one thing.
HILL 914, ICELAND
They were good troops up there, Colonel Lowe knew. Nearly all of the division’s artillery was lashing the hill, plus continuous air attacks, plus the battleships’ five-inch guns. He watched his troops advancing up the steep slopes under fire from the remaining Russians. The battlewagons were close inshore, delivering VT proximity rounds from their secondary batteries. The shells exploded twenty feet or so from the ground in ugly black puffs that sprayed the hill with fragments, while the Marines’ own heavy guns plowed up the hilltop. Every few minutes the artillery would stop for a moment to allow the aircraft to swoop in with napalm and cluster bombs-and still the Russians fought back.
“Now-move the choppers now!” Lowe ordered.
Ten minutes later, he heard the stuttering sound of rotors as fifteen helicopters passed his command post to the east, curving around the back side of the hill. His artillery coordinator called to halt the fire briefly as the two companies of men landed on the hill’s southern rim. They were supported by SeaCobra attack choppers and advanced at a run toward the Russian positions on the northern crests.
The Russian commander was wounded, and his second in command was slow to realize that he had enemy troops in his rear. When he did, a hopeless situation became one of despair. The word got out slowly. Many of the Russian radios were destroyed. Some of the troopers never got the word and had to be killed in their holes. But they were the exceptions. Most heard the diminishing fire and saw the raised hands. With a mixture of shame and relief, they disabled their weapons and waited for capture. The battle for the hill had lasted four hours.
“Hill 914 does not answer, Comrade General,” the communications officer said.
“It’s hopeless,” Andreyev muttered to himself. His artillery was destroyed, his SAMs were gone. He’d been ordered to hold the island for only a few weeks, been promised seaborne reinforcement, been told that the war in Europe would last two weeks, four at the most. He’d held longer than that. One of his regiments had been destroyed north of Reykjavik, and now that the Americans had hill 914, they could see into the island’s capital. Two thousand of his men were dead or missing, another thousand wounded. It was enough.
“See if you can raise the American commander on the radio. Say that I request a cease-fire and desire to meet with him at a place of his choosing.”
USS NASSAU
“So, you’re Beagle?”
“Yes, General.” Edwards tried to sit up a little straighter in the bed. The tubes in his arm and the cast on his leg didn’t help. The landing ship’s hospital was full of wounded men.
“And this must be Miss Vigdis. They told me you were pretty. I have a daughter about your age.”
The Navy corpsmen had gotten her clothes that nearly fit. A doctor had examined her and pronounced her pregnancy normal and healthy. She was rested and bathed; to Mike and everyone else who had seen her she was a reminder of better times and better things.
“Except for Michael, I would be dead.”
“So I’ve heard. Is there anything you need, miss?”
She looked down at Edwards, and that answered the question.
“You’ve done pretty well for a weatherman, Lieutenant.”
“Sir, all we did was keep out of the way.”
“No. You told us what Ivan had on this rock, and where they were-well, at least where they weren’t. You and your people did a lot more than just keep out of the way, son.” The General pulled a small box out of his pocket. “Well done, Marine!”
“Sir, I’m Air Force.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, this here says you’re a Marine.” The General pinned a Navy Cross to his pillow. A major approached the General and handed him a message form. The General pocketed it and looked down the rows of hospital beds.
“About time,” he breathed. “Miss Vigdis, would you please look after this man for us?”
SVERDLOVSK, R.S.F.S.R.
Two more days and they’d be leaving for the front. The 77th Motor-Rifle Division was a Category-C unit, and like all such units was composed of reservists in their thirties and possessed a little over a third of its normal outlay of equipment. Since mobilization they had been training incessantly, the older men with military experience passing along their knowledge to the newly inducted conscripts. It was a strange match. The young arrivals were physically fit but ignorant of military life. The older men remembered much of their own military service, but had softened with age. The young men had the ardor of youth, and as much as they naturally feared exposure to danger on the battlefield, they would not hesitate to defend their country. The older men with families had much more to lose. Lectures to their officers from a veteran combat officer had fiItered down to the ranks. Germany would not be pleasant. A sergeant from communications receipted the message, and the word got out quickly: experienced combat officers and NCOs would join them at Moscow. The experienced reservists knew that they’d need such men to teach them the lessons hard-won at the front.
They knew something else it meant: the 77th Motor-Rifle Division would be committed to action within a week. It was quiet that night in the encampment. Men stood outside the unheated barracks, looking at the pine forests on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains.
MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.
“Why are we not attacking?” the General Secretary demanded.
“General Alekseyev has informed me that he is preparing for a major attack now. He says he needs time to organize his forces for a weighted blow,” Bukharin answered.
“You tell Comrade General Alekseyev,” the Defense Minister said, “that we want action, not words!”
“Comrades,” Sergetov said, “I seem to recall from my own military service that one should not attack until one has a decisive advantage in men and weapons. If we order Alekseyev to attack before he is ready, we condemn our army to failure. We must give him time to do his job properly.”
“And now you are an expert on defense matters?” the Defense Minister inquired. “A pity you are not so expert in your own field, or we should not be in this predicament!”
“Comrade Minister, I told you that your projections for oil use at the front were overly optimistic, and I was correct. You said ‘Give us the fuel, and we’ll see it is properly used,’ did you not? You said a two-week campaign, four at the worst, did you not?” Sergetov looked around the table. “Such expertise as this has brought us to disaster!”
“We will not fail! We will defeat the West.”