Colonel Bondarenko was careful to keep his face impassive. Despite having written orders from the Defense Minister, and despite belonging to a completely different uniformed service, he was dealing with a general officer with patrons of his own in the Central Committee. But the General, too, had to be wary. Bondarenko was wearing his newest and best-tailored uniform, complete with several rows of ribbons, including two awards for bravery in Afghanistan and the special badge worn by Defense Ministry staff officers.
“Comrade General, I regret whatever inconvenience I have caused you, but I do have my orders.”
“Of course,” Pokryshkin noted with a broadening smile. He gestured to a silver tray. “Tea?”
“Thank you.”
The General poured two cups himself instead of summoning his orderly. “Is that a Red Banner I see? Afghanistan?”
“Yes, Comrade General, I spent some time there.”
“And how did you earn it?”
“I was attached to a Spetznaz unit as a special observer. We were tracking a small band of bandits. Unfortunately, they were smarter than the unit commander believed, and he allowed us to follow them into an ambush. Half the team was killed or wounded, including the unit commander.” Who earned his death, Bondarenko thought. “I assumed command and called in help. The bandits withdrew before we could bring major forces to bear, but they did leave eight bodies behind.”
“How did a communications expert—”
“I volunteered. We were having difficulties with tactical communications, and I decided to take the situation in hand myself. I am not a real combat soldier, Comrade General, but there are some things you have to see for yourself. That is another concern I have with this post. We are perilously close to the Afghan border, and your security seems . . . not lax, but perhaps overly comfortable.”
Pokryshkin nodded agreement. “The security force is KGB, as you have doubtless noted. They report to me, but are not strictly under my orders. For early warning of possible threats, I have an arrangement with Frontal Aviation. Their aerial-reconnaissance school uses the valleys around here as a training area. A classmate of mine at Frunze has arranged coverage of this entire area. If anyone approaches this installation from
Afghanistan, it’s a long walk, and we’ll know about it long before they get here.”
Bondarenko noted this with approval. Procurer for wizards or not, Pokryshkin hadn’t forgotten everything, as too many general officers tended to do.
“So, Gennady Iosifovich, exactly what are you looking for?” the General asked. The atmosphere was somewhat milder now that both men had established their professionalism.
“The Minister wishes an appraisal of the effectiveness and reliability of your systems.”
“Your knowledge of lasers?” Pokryshkin asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I am familiar with the applications side. I was on the team with Academician Goremykin that developed the new laser communications systems.”
“Really? We have some of them here.”
“I didn’t know that,” Bondarenko said.
“Yes. We use them in our guard towers, and to link our laboratory facilities with the shops. It’s easier than stringing telephone lines, and is more secure. Your invention has proven very useful indeed, Gennady Iosifovich. Well. You know our mission here, of course.”
“Yes, Comrade General. How close are you to your goal?”
“We have a major system test coming up in three days.”
“Oh?” Bondarenko was very surprised by that.
“We received permission to run it only yesterday. Perhaps the Ministry hasn’t been fully informed. Can you stay for it?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Excellent.” General Pokryshkin rose. “Come, let’s go to see my wizards.”
The sky was clear and blue, the deeper blue that comes from being above most of the atmosphere. Bondarenko was surprised to see that the General did his own driving in a UAZ-469, the Soviet equivalent of a jeep.
“You do not have to ask, Colonel. I do my own driving because we do not have room up here for unnecessary personnel, and—well, I was a fighter pilot. Why should I trust my life to some beardless boy who barely knows how to shift gears? How do you like our roads?”
Not at all, Bondarenko didn’t say as the General speeded down a slope. The road was barely five meters wide, with a precipitous drop on the passenger side of the car.
“You should try this when it’s icy!” The General laughed.
“We’ve been lucky on weather lately. Last autumn we had nothing but rain for two weeks. Most unusual here; the monsoon’s supposed to drop all the water on India, but the winter has been agreeably dry and clear.” He shifted gears as the road bottomed out. A truck was coming from the other direction, and Bondarenko did all he could not to cringe as the jeep’s right-side tires spun through rocks at the road’s uneven edge. Pokryshkin was having some fun with him, but that was to be expected. The truck swept past with perhaps a meter of clearance, and the General moved back to the center of the blacktopped road. He shifted gears again as they came to an upslope.
“We don’t even have room for a proper office here—for me at any rate,” Pokryshkin noted. “The academicians have priority.”
Bondarenko had seen only one of the guard towers that morning as he ran around the residential facility, and as the jeep climbed the last few meters, the Bright Star test area became visible.
There were three security checkpoints. General Pokryshkin stopped his vehicle and showed his pass at each of them.
“The guard towers?” Bondarenko asked.
“All manned round the clock. It is hard on the chekisti. I had to install electric heaters in the towers.” The General chuckled. “We have more electrical power here than we know how to use. We originally had guard dogs running between the fences, too, but we had to stop that. Two weeks ago several of them froze to death. I didn’t think that would work. We still have a few, but they walk about with the guards. I’d just as soon get rid of them.”
“But—”
“More mouths to feed,” Pokryshkin explained. “As soon as it snows, we have to bring food in by helicopter. To keep guard dogs happy, they must eat meat. Do you know what it does for camp morale to have dogs on a meat diet when our scientists don’t have enough? Dogs aren’t worth the trouble. The KGB commander agrees. He’s trying to get permission to dispense with them altogether. We have starlight-scopes in all the towers. We can see an intruder long before a dog would smell or hear one.”
“How big is your guard force?”
“A reinforced rifle company. One hundred sixteen officers and men, commanded by a lieutenant colonel. There are at least twenty guards on duty round the clock. Half here, half on the other hill. Right here, two men in each of the towers at all times, plus four on roving patrol, and of course the people at the vehicle checkpoints. The area is secure, Colonel. A full rifle company with heavy weapons on top of this mountain—to be sure, we had a Spetznaz team run an assault exercise last October. The umpires ruled them all dead before they got to within four hundred meters of our perimeter. One of them almost was, as a matter of fact. One pink-faced lieutenant damned near fell off the mountain.” Pokryshkin turned. “Satisfied?”
“Yes, Comrade General. Please excuse my overly cautious nature.”
“You didn’t get those pretty ribbons from being a coward,” the General observed lightly. “I am always open to new ideas. If you have something to say, my door is never locked.”
Bondarenko decided that he was going to like General Pokryshkin. He was far enough from Moscow not to act like an officious ass, and unlike most generals, he evidently didn’t see a halo in the mirror when he shaved. Perhaps there was hope for this installation after all. Filitov would be pleased.
“It is like being a mouse, with a hawk in the sky,” Abdul observed.
“Then do what a mouse does,” the Archer replied evenly. “Stay in the shadows.”
He looked up to see the An-26. It was five thousand meters overhead, and the whine of its turbine engines barely reached them. Too far for a missile, which was unfortunate. Other mudjaheddin missileers had shot the Antonovs down, but not the Archer. You could kill as many as forty Russians that way. And the Soviets were learning to use the converted transports for ground surveillance. That made life harder on the guerrillas.
The two men were following a narrow path along the side of yet another mountain, and the sun hadn’t reached them yet, though most of the valley was fully lit under the cloudless winter sky. The bombed-out ruins of a village lay next to a modest river. Perhaps two hundred people had lived there once, until the high-altitude bombers came. He could see the craters, laid out in uneven lines two or three kilometers in length. The bombs had marched through the valley, and those who had not been killed were gone—to Pakistan—leaving only emptiness behind. No food to be shared with the freedom fighters, no hospitality, not even a mosque in which to pray. Part of the Archer still wondered why war had to be so cruel. It was one thing for men to fight one another; there was honor in that, at times enough to be shared with a worthy enemy. But the Russians didn’t fight that way. And they call us savages . . .