“Then you went into SDI, I gather,” Olson observed, getting himself some CIC coffee. The black-gang coffee, from the ship’s engineers, was traditionally the best on any ship, but this wasn’t bad.
“Yeah, spent a lot of years in that, but it all kinda fizzled out, and TRW hired me away before I made bird. When you were at Dartmouth, Bob Jastrow ran the department?”
“Yeah, he was involved in SDI, too, wasn’t he?”
Gregory nodded. “Yeah, Bob’s pretty smart.” In his lexicon, pretty smart meant doing the calculus in your head.
“What do you do at TRW?”
“I’m heading up the SAM project at the moment, from my SDI work, but they lend me out a lot to other stuff. I mainly do software and the theoretical engineering.”
“And you’re playing with our SM-2s now?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a software fix for one of the problems. Works on the ‘puter, anyway, and the next job’s reprogramming the seeker heads on the Block IVs.”
“How you going to do that?”
“Come on over and I’ll show you,” Gregory said. He and Olson wandered to a desk, with the chief in tow. “The trick is fixing the way the laser nutates. Here’s how the software works …” This started an hour’s worth of discussion, and Senior Chief Leek got to watch a professional software geek explaining his craft to a gifted amateur. Next they’d have to sell all this to the Combat Systems Officer—”Weps”—before they could run the first computer simulations, but it looked to Leek as though Olson was pretty well sold already. Then they’d have to get the ship back in the water to see if all this bullshit actually worked.
The sleep had worked, Bondarenko told himself. Thirteen hours, and he hadn’t even awakened to relieve his bladder—so, he must have really needed it. Then and there he decided that Colonel Aliyev would screen successfully for general’s stars.
He walked into his evening staff meeting feeling pretty good, until he saw the looks on their faces.
“Well?” he asked, taking his seat.
“Nothing new to report,” Colonel Tolkunov reported for the intelligence staff. “Our aerial photos show little, but we know they’re there, and they’re still not using their radios at all. Presumably they have a lot of phone lines laid. There are scattered reports of people with binoculars on the southern hilltops. That’s all. But they’re ready, and it could start at any time—oh, yes, just got this from Moscow,” the G-2 said. “The Federal Security Service arrested one K. I. Suvorov on suspicion of conspiring to assassinate President Grushavoy.”
“What?” Aliyev asked.
“Just a one-line dispatch with no elaboration. It could mean many things, none of them good,” the intelligence officer told them. “But nothing definite either.”
“An attempt to unsettle our political leadership? That’s an act of war,” Bondarenko said. He decided he had to call Sergey Golovko himself about that one!
“Operations?” he asked next.
“The 265th Motor Rifle is standing-to. Our air-defense radars are all up and operating. We have interceptor aircraft flying combat air patrol within twenty kilometers of the border. The border defenses are on full alert, and the reserve formation—”
“Have a name for it yet?” the commanding general asked.
“BOYAR,” Colonel Aliyev answered. “We have three companies of motorized infantry deployed to evacuate the border troops if necessary, the rest are out of their depot and working up north of Never. They’ve done gunnery all day.”
“And?”
“And for reservists they did acceptably,” Aliyev answered. Bondarenko didn’t ask what that meant, partly because he was afraid to.
“Anything else we can do? I want ideas, comrades,” General Bondarenko said. But all he saw were headshakes. “Very well. I’m going to get some dinner. If anything happens, I want to know about it. Anything at all, comrades.” This generated nods, and he walked back to his quarters. There he got on the phone.
“Greetings, General,” Golovko said. It was still afternoon in Moscow. “How are things at your end?”
“Tense, Comrade Chairman. What can you tell me of this attempt on the president?”
“We arrested a chap named Suvorov earlier today. We’re interrogating him and one other right now. We believe that he was an agent of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, and we believe also that he was conspiring to kill Eduard Petrovich.”
“So, in addition to preparing an invasion, they also wish to cripple our political leadership?”
“So it would seem,” Golovko agreed gravely.
“Why weren’t we given fuller information?” Far East demanded.
“You weren’t?” The chairman sounded surprised.
“No!” Bondarenko nearly shouted.
“That was an error. I am sorry, Gennady Iosifovich. Now, you tell me: Are you ready?”
“All of our forces are at maximum alert, but the correlation of forces is adverse in the extreme.”
“Can you stop them?”
“If you give me more forces, probably yes. If you do not, probably no. What help can I expect?”
“We have three motor-rifle divisions on trains at this moment crossing the Urals. We have additional air power heading to you, and the Americans are beginning to arrive. What is your plan?”
“I will not try to stop them at the border. That would merely cost me all of my troops to little gain. I will let the Chinese in and let them march north. I will harass them as much as possible, and then when they are well within our borders, I will kill the body of the snake and watch the head die. If, that is, you give me the support I need.”
“We are working on it. The Americans are being very helpful. One of their tank divisions is now approaching Poland on trains. We’ll send them right through to where you are.”
“What units?”
“Their First Tank division, commanded by a Negro chap named Diggs.”
“Marion Diggs? I know him.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, he commanded their National Training Center and also commanded the force they deployed to the Saudi kingdom last year. He’s excellent. When will he arrive?”
“Five days, I should imagine. You’ll have three Russian divisions well before then. Will that be enough, Gennady?”
“I do not know,” Bondarenko replied. “We have not yet taken the measure of the Chinese. Their air power worries me most of all. If they attack our railhead at Chita, deploying our reinforcements could be very difficult.” Bondarenko paused. “We are well set up to move forces laterally, west to east, but to stop them we need to move them northeast from their drop-off points. It will be largely a race to see who can go north faster. The Chinese will also be using infantry to wall off the western flank of their advance. I’ve been training my men hard. They’re getting better, but I need more time and more men. Is there any way to slow them down politically?”
“All political approaches have been ignored. They pretend nothing untoward is happening. The Americans have approached them as well, in hope of discouraging them, but to no avail.”
“So, it comes to a test of arms?”
“Probably,” Golovko agreed. “You’re our best man, Gennady Iosifovich. We believe in you, and you will have all the support we can muster.”
“Very well,” the general replied, wondering if it would be enough. “I will let you know of any developments here.”
General Bondarenko knew that a proper general—the sort they had in movies, that is—would now eat the combat rations his men were having, but no, he’d eat the best food available because he needed his strength, and false modesty would not impress his men at all. He did refrain from alcohol, which was probably more than his sergeants and privates were doing. The Russian soldier loves his vodka, and the reservists had probably all brought their own bottles to ease the chill of the nights—such would be the spoken excuse. He could have issued an order forbidding it, but there was little sense in drafting an order that his men would ignore. It only undermined discipline, and discipline was something he needed. That would have to come from within his men. The great unknown, as Bondarenko thought of it. When Hitler had struck Russia in 1941—well, it was part of Russian mythology, how the ordinary men of the land had risen up with ferocious determination. From the first day of the war, the courage of the Russian soldier had given the Germans pause. Their battlefield skills might have been lacking, but never their courage. For Bondarenko, both were needed; a skillful man need not be all that brave, because skill would defeat what bravery would only defy. Training. It was always training. He yearned to train the Russian soldier as the Americans trained their men. Above all, to train them to think—to encourage them to think. A thinking German soldier had nearly destroyed the Soviet Union—how close it had been was something the movies never admitted, and it was hard enough to learn about it at the General Staff academies, hut three times it had been devilishly close, and for some reason the gods of war had sided with Mother Russia on all three occasions.