The word “camouflage,” meaning a trick to be played or a ruse, is French in origin. It really ought to be Russian, however, because Russians were the world’s experts at this military art. The storage sites for the real tanks that formed the backbone of Bondarenko’s theoretical army were so skillfully hidden that only his own staff knew where they were. A good fraction of the sites had even evaded American spy satellites that had searched for years for the locations. Even the roads leading to the storage sites were painted with deceptive colors, or planted with false conifer trees. This was all one more lesson of World War II, when the Soviet Army had totally befuddled the Germans so often that one wondered why the Wehrmacht even bothered employing intelligence officers, they had been snookered so frequently.
“We’re getting orders out now,” Colonel Aliyev replied. “With luck, half of them ought to find people who’ve worn the uniform. We could do better if we made a public announcement.”
“No,” Bondarenko replied. “We can’t let them know we’re getting ready. What about the officer corps?”
“For the reserve formations? Well, we have an ample supply of lieutenants and captains, just no privates or NCOs for them to command. I suppose if we need to we can field a complete regiment or so of junior officers driving tanks,” Aliyev observed dryly.
“Well, such a regiment ought to be fairly proficient,” the general observed with what passed for light humor. “How fast to make the call-up happen?”
“The letters are already addressed and stamped. They should all be delivered in three days.”
“Mail them at once. See to it yourself, Andrey,” Bondarenko ordered.
“By your command, Comrade General.” Then he paused. “What do you make of this NATO business?”
“If it brings us help, then I am for it. I’d love to have American aircraft at my command. I remember what they did to Iraq. There are a lot of bridges I’d like to see dropped into the rivers they span.”
“And their land forces?”
“Do not underestimate them. I’ve seen how they train, and I’ve driven some of their equipment. It’s excellent, and their men know how to make use of it. One company of American tanks, competently led and supported, can hold off a whole regiment. Remember what they did to the army of the United Islamic Republic. Two active-duty regiments and a brigade of territorials crushed two heavy corps as if it were a sand-table exercise. That’s why I want to upgrade our training. Our men are as good as theirs, Andrey Petrovich, but their training is the best I have ever seen. Couple that to their equipment, and there you have their advantage.”
“And their commanders?”
“Good, but no better than ours. Shit, they copy our doctrine time and again. I’ve challenged them on this face-to-face, and they freely admit that they admire our operational thinking. But they make better use of our doctrine than we do—because they train their men better.”
“And they train better because they have more money to spend.”
“There you have it. They don’t have tank commanders painting rocks around the motor pool, as we do,” Bondarenko noted sourly. He’d just begun to change that, but just-begun was a long way from mission accomplished. “Get the call-up letters out, and remember, we must keep this quiet. Go. I have to talk to Moscow.”
“Yes, Comrade General.” The G-3 made his departure.
“Well, ain’t that something?” Major General Diggs commented after watching the TV show.
“Makes you wonder what NATO is for,” Colonel Masterman agreed.
“Duke, I grew up expecting to see T-72 tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap like cockroaches on a Bronx apartment floor. Hell, now they’re our friends?” He had to shake his head in disbelief. “I’ve met a few of their senior people, like that Bondarenko guy running the Far East Theater. He’s pretty smart, serious professional. Visited me at Fort
Irwin. Caught on real fast, really hit it off with Al Hamm and the Blackhorse. Our kind of soldier.”
“Well, sir, I guess he really is now, eh?”
That’s when the phone rang. Diggs lifted it. “General Diggs. Okay, put him through. . . . Morning, sir. . . . Just fine, thanks, and—yes? What’s that? . . . This is serious, I presume. . . . Yes, sir. Yes, sir, we’re ready as hell. Very well, sir. Bye.” He set the phone back down. “Duke, good thing you’re sitting down.”
“What gives?”
“That was SACEUR. We got alert orders to be ready to entrain and move east.”
“East where?” the divisional operations officer asked, surprised. An unscheduled exercise in Eastern Germany, maybe?
“Maybe as far as Russia, the eastern part. Siberia, maybe,” Diggs added in a voice that didn’t entirely believe what it said.
“What the hell?”
“NCA is concerned about a possible dust-up between the Russians and the Chinese. If it happens, we may have to go east to support Ivan.”
“What the hell?” Masterman observed yet again.
“He’s sending his J-2 down to brief us in on what he’s got from Washington. Ought to be here in half an hour.”
“Who else? Is this a NATO tasking?”
“He didn’t say. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. For the moment just you and the staff, the ADC, and the brigade sixes are in on the brief.”
“Yes, sir,” Masterman said, there being little else he could say.
The Air Force sends a number of aircraft when the President travels. Among these were C-5B Galaxies. Known to the Navy as “the aluminum cloud” for its huge bulk, the transport is capable of carrying whole tanks in its cavernous interior. In this case, however, they carried VC-60 helicopters, larger than a tank in dimensions, but far lighter in weight.
The VH-60 is a version of the Sikorsky Blackhawk troop-carrier, somewhat cleaned up and appointed for VIP passengers. The pilot was Colonel Dan Malloy, a Marine with over five thousand hours of stick time in rotary-wing aircraft, whose radio call sign was “Bear.” Cathy
Ryan knew him well. He usually flew her to Johns Hopkins in the morning in a twin to this aircraft. There was a co-pilot, a lieutenant who looked impossibly young to be a professional aviator, and a crew chief, a Marine staff sergeant E-6 who saw to it that everyone was properly strapped in, something that Cathy did better than Jack, who was not used to the different restraints in this aircraft.
Aside from that the Blackhawk flew superbly, not at all like the earthquake-while-sitting-on-a-chandelier sensation usually associated with such contrivances. The flight took almost an hour, with the President listening in on the headset/ear protectors. Overhead, all aerial traffic was closed down, even commercial flights in and out of every commercial airport to which they came close. The Polish government was concerned with his safety.
“There it is,” Malloy said over the intercom. “Eleven o’clock.”
The aircraft banked left to give everyone a good look out the polycarbonate windows. Ryan felt a sudden sense of enforced sobriety come over him. There was a rudimentary railroad station building with two tracks, and another spur that ran off through the arch in yet another building. There were a few other structures, but mainly just concrete pads to show where there had been a large number of others, and Ryan’s mind could see them from the black-and-white movies shot from aircraft, probably Russian ones, in World War II. They’d been oddly warehouse-like buildings, he remembered. But the wares stored in them had been human beings, though the people who’d built this place hadn’t seen it that way; they had regarded them as vermin, insects or rats, something to be eliminated as efficiently and coldly as possible.
That’s when the chill hit. It was not a warm morning, the temperature in the upper fifties or so, Jack thought, but his skin felt colder than that number indicated. The chopper landed softly, and the sergeant got the door open and the President stepped out onto the landing pad that had recently been laid for just this purpose. An official of the Polish government came up and shook his hand, introducing himself, but Ryan missed it all, suddenly a tourist in Hell itself, or so it felt. The official who would be serving as guide led them to a car for the short drive closer to the facility. Jack slid in beside his wife.
“Jack …” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “Yeah, babe, I know.” And he spoke not another word, not even hearing the well prepared commentary the Pole was giving him.
“Arbeit Macht Frei” the wrought-iron arch read. Work makes free was the literal meaning, perhaps the most callously cynical motto ever crafted by the twisted minds of men calling themselves civilized. Finally, the car stopped, and they got out into the air again, and again the guide led them from place to place, telling them things they didn’t hear but rather felt, because the very air seemed heavy with evil. The grass was wonderfully green, almost like a golf course from the spring rain . . . from the nutrients in the soil? Jack wondered. Lots of those. More than two million people had met death in this place. Two million. Maybe three. After a while, counting lost its meaning, and it became just a number, a figure on a ledger, written in by some accountant or other who’d long since stopped considering what the digits represented.