“Comrades, I must make an announcement.”
Conversation stilled, and the men looked inquiringly in his direction.
Here we go. “Comrades, on 15 June of this year, just four months from now, we launch an offensive against NATO.”
For a moment, only the hiss of the steam could be heard, then three men laughed, having imbibed a few stiff drinks in the sanctity of their staff cars on the drive over from the Kremlin. Those close enough to see CINC-Ground’s face did not.
“You are serious, Comrade Marshal?” asked the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater. Receiving a nod in reply, he said, “Then perhaps you will be so kind as to explain the reason for this action?”
“Of course. You are all aware of the Nizhnevartovsk oil-field disaster. What you have not yet learned are its strategic and political implications.” It took six brisk minutes to outline everything the Politburo had decided. “In just over four months from now, we shall launch the most crucial military operation in the history of the Soviet Union: the destruction of NATO as a political and military force. And we will succeed.”
Finished, he stared at the officer in silence. The steam was having its desired effects on the assembly of flag officers. Its searing heat assaulted their breathing passages, sobering those who had been drinking. And it made them sweat. They’d be doing a lot of that in the next few months, Rozhkov thought.
Then Pavel Alekseyev, deputy commander of the Southwestern Theater, spoke. “I heard rumors,” he said. “But that bad?”
“Yes. We have sufficient POL supplies for twelve months of normal operations, or enough for sixty days of war operations after a brief period of increased training activity.” At the cost, he didn’t say, of crippling the national economy by mid-August.
Alekseyev leaned forward and swatted himself with his bundle of branches. The action was strangely like a lion’s swishing its tail. At fifty, he was the second-youngest officer there, a respected intellectual soldier and a fit, handsome man with the shoulders of a lumberjack. His intense, dark eyes squinted down through the rising cloud of steam.
“Mid-June?”
“Yes,” Rozhkov said. “We have that long to prepare our plans and our troops.” CINC-Ground looked around the room. Already the ceiling had become partially obscured by a mist.
“I presume we are here so that we may speak frankly among ourselves, no?”
“This is so, Pavel Leonidovich.” Rozhkov replied, not the least surprised that Alekseyev had been the first to speak. CINC-Ground had carefully advanced the man’s career over the last decade. He was the only son of a hard-charging tank general of the Great Motherland War, one of the many good men pensioned off during the bloodless purges under Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s.
“Comrades.” Alekseyev stood, climbing slowly down the benches to the marble floor. “I accept everything Marshal Rozhkov has told us. But-four months! Four months in which we may be detected, four months in which we may lose all the element of surprise. Then what may happen? No, we have a plan already for this: Zhukov-4! Instant mobilization! We can all be back to our command posts in six hours. If we are going to conduct a surprise attack, then let us make it one no one can detect in time-seventy-two hours from now!”
Again the only sound in the room was that of the water flashing to steam on the dun-colored bricks, then the room erupted with noise. Zhukov-4 was the winter variant of a plan which hypothesized discovery of NATO’s intention to launch a surprise attack of its own on the Warsaw Pact. In such a case, standard Soviet military doctrine was the same as anyone else’s: the best defense is a good offense-preempt the NATO armies by attacking at once with the Category-A mechanized divisions in East Germany.
“But we are not ready!” objected CINC-West. His was the “point” command with headquarters in Berlin, the single most powerful military command in the world. An attack into West Germany was primarily his responsibility.
Alekseyev held up his hands. “Neither are they. In fact, they are less ready than we,” he said reasonably. “Look, consider our intelligence data. Fourteen percent of their officers are on holidays. They are coming off a training cycle, true, but because of it much of their equipment will be down for maintenance, and many of their senior officers will be away in their respective capitals for consultations, just as we are now. Their troops are in winter quarters, on a winter routine. This is the time of year for maintenance and paperwork. Physical training is curtailed-who wants to run in the snow, eh? Their men are cold, and drinking more than usual. This is our time to act! We all know that historically the Soviet fighting man performs at his best in winter, and NATO is at its lowest state of readiness.”
“But so are we, you young fool!” CINC-Western Theater growled back.
“We can change that in forty-eight hours,” Alekseyev countered.
“Impossible,” observed West’s deputy, careful to back up his boss.
“To reach our maximum readiness will take some months,” Alekseyev agreed. His only chance to carry his point with his seniors was to reason with them. He knew that he was almost certainly doomed to failure, but he had to try. “It will be difficult, if not impossible, for us to conceal it.”
“As Marshal Rozhkov told us, Pavel Leonidovich, we are promised political and diplomatic maskirovka, ” a general pointed out.
“I have no doubt that our comrades in the KGB, and our skillful political leadership, will perform miracles.” The room just might have functioning bugs, after all. “But is it not asking too much to expect that the Imperialists-as much as they fear and hate us, as active as their agents and spy satellites are-will fail to note a doubling of our training activity? We know that NATO increases its readiness when we go into major unit training, and their preparedness will automatically be increased by their own spring training cycles. If we continue our training beyond the normal pattern, they will be even more alert. Achieving full combat readiness requires that we do too many things out of the ordinary. If nothing else, East Germany is rife with Western spies. NATO will notice. NATO will react. They will meet us on the border with everything in their collective arsenals.
“If, on the other hand, we attack with what we have-now!-we have the advantage. Our men are not off skiing in the fucking Alps! Zhukov-4 is designed to cycle from peace to war in forty-eight hours. There is no way possible for NATO to react in so little time. They’ll take forty-eight hours to get their intelligence information organized and presented to their ministers. By that time our shells will be falling on the Fulda Gap, and our tanks will be advancing behind them!”
“Too many things can go wrong!” CINC-West rose so swiftly that the towel nearly came off his waist. His left hand grabbed downward while his right fist shook at the younger man. “What about traffic control? What about training our men in their new battle equipment? What about getting my Frontal Aviation pilots ready for combat operations against the Imperialists? There-right there is an insurmountable problem! Our pilots need at least a month of intensive training. And so do my tankers, and so do my gunners, and so do my riflemen.”
If you knew your job, they would be ready now, you worthless, whore chasing son of a bitch! Alekseyev thought but did not dare to say aloud. CINC-West was a man of sixty-one who liked to demonstrate his manly prowess-boasted of it-to the detriment of his professional duties. Alekseyev had heard that story often enough, whispered jovially in this very room. But CINC-West was politically reliable. Such is the Soviet system, the younger general reflected. We need fighting soldiers and what do we get with which to defend the Rodina? Political reliability! He remembered bitterly what had happened to his father in 1958. But Alekseyev did not allow himself to begrudge the Party its control of the armed forces. The Party was the State, after all, and he was a sworn servant of the State. He had learned these truisms at his father’s knee. One more card to play:
“Comrade General, you have good officers commanding your divisions, regiments, and battalions. Trust them to know their duties.” It couldn’t hurt to wave the standards of the Red Army, Alekseyev reasoned.
Rozhkov stood, and everyone in the room strained to hear his pronouncement. “What you say has merit, Pavel Leonidovich, but do we gamble with the safety of the Motherland?” He shook his head, quoting doctrine exactly, as he had been doing for too many years. “No. We rely on surprise, yes, on the first weighted blow to blast open a path for the daring thrust of our mechanized forces. And we will have our surprise. The Westerners will not wish to believe what is happening, and with the Politburo soothing them even as we prepare the first blow, we will have our strategic surprise. The West will have perhaps three days-four at most-to know what is coming, and even then they will not be mentally prepared for us.”