“So, Gennady Iosifovich, what do I tell Eduard Petrovich?” Golovko asked, as he leaned across the desk to give his guest a little more of the fine Starka vodka,
Bondarenko lifted the glass to salute his host. “Comrade Minister, you will please tell our president that he has a new CINC—Far East.”
C H A P T E R – 18
Evolutions
The interesting part for Mancuso in his new job was that he now commanded aircraft, which he could fairly well understand, but also ground troops, which he hardly understood at all. This latter contingent included the 3rd Marine Division based on Okinawa, and the Army’s 25th Light Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks on Oahu. Mancuso had never directly commanded more than one hundred fifty or so men, all of whom had been aboard his first and last real—as he thought of it—command, USS Dallas. That was a good number, large enough that it felt larger than even an extended family, and small enough that you knew every face and name. Pacific Command wasn’t anything like that. The square of Dallas’s crew didn’t begin to comprise the manpower which he could direct from his desk.
He’d been through the Capstone course. That was a program designed to introduce new flag officers to the other branches of the service. He’d walked in the woods with Army soldiers, crawled in the mud with Marines, even watched an aerial refueling from the jump seat of a C-SB transport (the most unnatural act he ever expected to see, two airplanes mating in midair at three hundred knots), and played with the Army’s heavy troops at Fort Irwin, California, where he’d tried his hand at driving and shooting tanks and Bradleys. But seeing it all and playing with the kids, and getting mud on his clothing, wasn’t really the same as knowing it. He had some very rough ideas of what it looked and sounded and smelled like. He’d seen the confident look on the faces of men who wore uniforms of different color, and told himself about a hundred times that they were, really, all the same. The sergeant commanding an Abrams tank was little different in spirit from a leading torpedoman on a fast-attack boat, just not recently showered, and a Green Beret was little different from a fighter pilot in his godlike self-confidence. But to command such people effectively, he ought to know more, CINCPAC told himself. He ought to have had more ‘joint” training. But then he told himself that he could take the best fighter jock in the Air Force or the Navy, and even then it would take months for them to understand what he’d done on Dallas. Hell, just getting them to understand the importance of reactor safety would take a year—about what it had taken him to learn all those things once upon a time, and Mancuso wasn’t a “nuc” by training. He’d always been a front-end guy. The services were all different in their feel for the mission, and that was because the missions were all as different in nature as a sheepdog was from a pit bull.
But he had to command them all, and do so effectively, lest he make a mistake that resulted in a telegram coming to Mrs. Smith’s home to announce the untimely death of her son or husband because some senior officer had fucked up. Well, Admiral Bart Mancuso told himself, that was why he had such a wide collection of staff officers, including a surface guy to explain what that sort of target did (to Mancuso any sort of surface ship was a target), an Airedale to explain what naval aircraft did, a Marine and some soldiers to explain life in the mud, and some Air Force wing-wipers to tell him what their birds were capable of. All of them offered advice, which, as soon as he took it, became his idea alone, because he was in command, and command meant being responsible for everything that happened in or near the Pacific Ocean, including when some newly promoted B-4 petty officer commented lustily on the tits of another E-4 who happened to have them—a recent development in the Navy, and one which Mancuso would just as soon have put off for another decade. They were even letting women on submarines now, and the admiral didn’t regret having missed that one little bit. What the hell would Mush Morton and his crop of WWII submarines have made of that?
He figured he knew how to set up a naval exercise, one of those grand training evolutions in which half of 7th Fleet would administratively attack and destroy the other half, followed by the simulated forced-entry landing of a Marine battalion. Navy fighters would tangle with Air Force ones, and after it was all over, computer records would show who’d won and who’d lost, and bets of various sorts would be paid off in various bars—and there’d be some hard feelings, because fitness reports (and with them, careers) could ride on outcomes of simulated engagements.
Of all his services, Mancuso figured his submarine force was in the best shape, which made sense, since his previous job had been COMSUBPAC, and he’d ruthlessly whipped his boats into shape. And, besides, the little shooting war they’d engaged in two years before had given everyone the proper sense of mission, to the point that the crews of the boomers who’d laid on a submarine ambush worthy of Charlie Lockwood’s best day still swaggered around when on the beach. The boomers remained in service as auxiliary fast-attacks because Mancuso had made his case to the CNO, who was his friend, Dave Seaton, and Seaton had made his case to Congress to get some additional funding, and Congress was nice and tame, what with two recent conflicts to show them that people in uniform did have more purposes than opening and closing doors for the people’s elected representatives. Besides, the Ohio-class boats were just too expensive to throw away, and they were mainly off doing valuable oceanographic missions in the North Pacific, which appealed to the tree- (actually fish- and dolphin- in this case) huggers, who had far too much political power in the eyes of this white-suited warrior.
With every new day came his official morning briefing, usually run by Brigadier General Mike Lahr, his J-2 Intelligence Officer. This was particularly good news. On the morning of 7 December, 1941, the United States had learned the advantage of providing senior area commanders with the intelligence they might need, and so this CINCPAC, unlike Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, got to hear a lot.
“Morning, Mike,” Mancuso said in greeting, while a chief steward’s mate set up morning coffee.
“Good morning, sir,” the one-star replied.
“What’s new in the Pacific?”
“Well, top of the news this morning, the Russians have appointed a new guy to head their Far Eastern Military District. His name is Gennady Bondarenko. His last job was J-3 operations officer for the Russian army. His background’s pretty interesting. He started off in signals, not a combat arm, but he distinguished himself in Afghanistan toward the end of that adventure on their part. He’s got the Order of the Red Banner and he’s a Hero of the Soviet Union—got both of those as a colonel. He moved rapidly up from there. Good political connections. He’s worked closely with a guy named Golovko—he’s a former KGB officer who’s still in the spook business and is personally known to the President—ours, that is. Golovko is essentially the operational XO for the Russian President Grushavoy—like a chief minister or something. Grushavoy listens to him on a lot of issues, and he’s a pipeline into the White House on matters ‘of mutual interest.’”
“Great. So the Russians have Jack Ryan’s ear via this guy. What sort of mensch is he?” CINCPAC asked.
“Very smart and very capable, our friends at Langley say. Anyway, back to Bondarenko. The book on the guy says he’s also very smart and also very capable, a contender for further advancement. Brains and personal bravery can be career—enhancing in their military, just like ours.”
“What sort of shape is his new command in?”
“Not very good at all, sir. We see eight division-sized formations, six motor-rifle divisions, one tank, and one artillery division. All appear to be under strength on our overheads, and they don’t spend much time in the field. Bondarenko will change that, if he goes according to the form card.”
“Think so?”
“As their J-3, he agitated for higher training standards— and he’s a bit of an intellectual. He published a lengthy essay last year on the Roman legions. It was called ‘Soldiers of the Caesars.’ It had that great quote from Josephus, ‘Their drills are bloodless battles and their battles are bloody drills.’ Anyway, it was a straight historical piece, sources like Josephus and Vegetius, but the implication was clear. He was crying out for better training in the Russian army, and also for career NCOs. He spent a lot of time with Vegetsius’s discussion of how you build centurions. The Soviet army didn’t really have sergeants as we understand the term, and Bondarenko is one of the new crop of senior officers who’s saying that the new Russian army should reintroduce that institution. Which makes good sense,” Lahr thought.