The Best Defense

by Todd A. Stone

  “You and your company are ready for your morning stroll up the hill?” asked one cadre trainer.

  “Volodymr cleared the objective in less than twenty minutes,” commented the training NCO in charge of the lane, sliding a stopwatch back into his pocket. “A very good time. Perhaps you will do as well.”

  “There are at least seven men dead or wounded on that lane!” Stanev said angrily, pointing toward the hill.

  “Da, Captain, but do not worry,” the NCO said. “Casualties do not count against the unit’s score.”

  “Seven?” another NCO asked with urgent interest. “But how many were actually killed? I drew seven KIAs in the pool.”

  Stanev did not notice that his executive officer had disappeared.

  He folded his arms. “My company will not attack the objective in that manner. I will not line my men up as if for a parade, then send them over open ground against an enemy who knows they are coming, and then have them use their bodies to breach an obstacle. I do not care if the machine guns are locked into concrete mounts and if the wire is improperly strung. This objective calls for a flank attack and a supporting attack.”

  “This lane is constructed to the specifications of Colonel Dimonokov himself,” the NCO spat back. “This lane teaches obedience, aggressiveness, speed, and focus on the objective. The attack executed by Captain Volodymr’s company, and by company after company before his, is the correct solution.”

  “And company after company before his must have lost soldier after soldier,” replied Stanev. “I will not lose soldiers just to validate an invalid solution.”

  “Excuse me.” Stanev turned to see Steglyr, the veteran operations sergeant. “Your solution also has its weaknesses. Critical to your plan would be a personal reconnaissance by the unit leadership, designation of specific objectives, and accurate supporting fires placed upon key targets.”

  “I fully intend to conduct such a reconnaissance.”

  “There is no time in the lane training schedule for these kind of maneuvers,” declared the NCO in charge. “Captain Stanev, go prepare your unit.”

  “I will not lead my unit in such a mission,” Stanev said flatly.

  “Indeed you will not,” commanded a dark voice from behind them. The group swiveled to see a furious Dimonokov. “You will return to your quarters and remain there until further notice. Steglyr, you will select an officer from Captain Stanev’s company to conduct the attack.” Dimonokov stalked off.

  Stanev yanked off his helmet and tossed it to the ground in disgust.

  His lieutenant hovered just out of sight, smiling.

  Operations Office

  Headquarters building

  Infernesk Munitions Depot

  Christine cringed when she heard the headquarters’ door slam. In the operations section office, the half-dozen staff members bent over their desks and tried to appear busy. Not that they weren’t, for the first few hours of the new commander’s watch had brought a legion of new requirements and missions, along with so many tongue-lashings that Christine had quit counting. The new boss seemed determined to right all of the depot’s wrongs in one afternoon.

  “The bitch is back,” muttered a soldier under her breath.

  “That will be enough,” snapped Christine. Yet inside she silently agreed. Nothing in her four years at West Point or her Officer Basic Course had prepared her for the shoddy soldiering at the depot, and she was even less ready for the likes of a Major Val Macintyre on the warpath.

  In the motor pool, Major Macintyre crawled under Hummers and trucks and came out grease-stained and mad. In the personnel office, she blasted the sergeant in charge for the number of backlogged promotions and pay changes. In the conventional ammo storage area, she went ballistic when she saw uncovered ammo rusting in the open. When she came to Christine’s area—the nuclear munitions—the young lieutenant thought her superior was so angry that the major would reach critical mass.

  The problem is, Christine thought to herself, the major is right. That thought and the few compliments Val gave her did not, however, soothe the lieutenant’s bruised ego.

  The operations section door opened and Major Macintyre strode in. She dodged Luka, the omnipresent but ignored civilian-hired Russian who did their office cleaning.

  Outside horns honked, air brakes squealed, and big truck engines coughed as they shut down. That’s the last of them, Christine thought. She grabbed her notebook and inspection sheets.

  “Lieutenant Tampier, I need to speak to you in my office.”

  She barely got out a “Yes, Ma’am” before the door swung closed behind the commander.

  Christine trudged towards the major’s office, trying not to track Luka’s freshly mopped floor. Outside a horn sounded.

  “Ma’am,” said Christine as she stuck her head through Val’s door, “could this wait?”

  “Why should it wait?”

  “Because of the truck,” Christine blurted out. “I mean the nuclear rounds. I mean my inspection. I mean...”

  “Take it easy, Tampier. I bark a lot, and my bite can be pretty bad too. Just come in here and tell me.”

  Christine took a breath and came up to Val’s desk, surprised at how close to human the major sounded.

  “That should be the last shipment of nuclear munitions. I personally inspect, log in, and direct the storage of each shipment. I’d like to go do that, so I’ll know what condition every one of those warheads arrived in and what maintenance action we need to take. Then I can complete my report.”

  “You do that personally? With each shipment, each round?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “That’s probably why your area of responsibility has the fewest problems on this depot.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am. We try.”

  Val rose slowly from behind her desk until she stood very close to Christine. “You have to understand,” she said in a quiet, deadly serious voice, “that just trying isn’t enough. Unless you succeed the trying doesn’t count.” She patted Christine on the shoulder. “Now go inspect our latest additions.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. I’ll finish the report when I get back.”

  In the hallway, Luka the janitor bent his head back over his mop.

  ~*~

  Val left her office and walked down the hallway to the operations section. Save for Luka the janitor, who patiently, carefully wiped down each office window, only she and Christine remained. With their lights off the offices grew dimmer in the fading evening light. She opened the operations office door to find Christine bent over her computer. The young officer tapped furiously on the keyboard, then leaned back, sighed, and finally turned on the printer.

  “There it is, Ma’am. A complete inventory of every nuclear munitions taken out of the satellite states.”

  “Now property of the United States government. What did the taxpayers get for their money?”

  Christine pointed to the report. “In this column is the type and yield. Over here is the storage location by bunker and area number, here’s the condition, here’s the status of prescribed additional equipment for the round, here’s date of manufacture, weight and cubic size, and so on.”

  Val spent several minutes perusing the report. Over twelve thousand nuclear weapons. Enough, she thought, to start and end Armageddon in one shot. She felt it was, in a macabre way, fascinating reading. All at once the weight and the strain of the day hit her.

  “Lock this up tight, then we’ll call it day.”

  Even in the evening’s dimness she could see Christine’s fatigue. Val noted that the lieutenant had stayed on to finish the task at hand, and done so without complaint. That’s a good sign, thought Val. It says something about her.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  They heard a cough and looked up. Luka stood in the doorway, pointing first at windows, then at his rag and squeegee.

  “Why doesn’t he just ask?” said Val.

  “He’s deaf and dumb since birth, or so his file says. The Embas
sy’s Civilian Personnel Office sent him to us a couple of months ago, after Dmitri got hurt in some accident off post. His record is clean, and I guess they figured someone with those two handicaps would be ideal to work in this place, with all our classified info and all. He’s learned how to lip-read English, and he wields one hell of a dust rag.”

  “The operations section’s windows will have to wait until tomorrow. We need to secure this place, especially with that report in here.” Val put down the report and with her hands signed for Luka to wait until the morning.

  Luka frowned his lack of understanding.

  “Leave them for the morning, Luka,” said Christine, exaggerating the movements of her mouth so he could understand.

  The Russian nodded and left.

  ~*~

  As per security procedure, Christine copied the file from the computer’s hard drive to a floppy disk and then deleted it from the machine. It did not take them long to lock the disk and printed copy of the report in the operations section safe. On their way out of the building, Val stopped to grill the nighttime duty NCO, then she and Christine walked together, making small talk until Christine’s path to the single officers’ quarters building led one way, and Val’s led another.

  Val walked, with only an undefined worry as an escort, to the small cottage reserved for the depot commander.

  Ditchnesk Training Area

  The winding back road that led to Ditchnesk was deserted, save for one vehicle. The staff car held only three passengers: a general, a driver, and an aide-de-camp.

  General Pavlik Roskotovitch looked out the window. Dawn was still over an hour away, and a thick fog blanked out whatever light the moon and stars might have given. He thought it might strike some as odd that an inspection should begin well before the sun came up: it would be quite difficult to see what one was inspecting. But there was good reason. Military men began their activities very early. It was best to arrive before those activities commence, so as to obtain a complete evaluation. And, Roskotovitch thought, if changes were necessary, then one could intercede early.

  He did not hope that changes would be necessary; rather, he knew so and welcomed it. Like most on the General Staff, Roskotovitch disapproved of the independence that Colonel Dimonokov had been given. He had disapproved of the whole program of “special” regiments with unlimited power.

  Roskotovitch thought Dimonokov’s Special Security was an example of what happened when such a group went unrestrained. Dimonokov raised what amounted to a private army, Roskotovitch thought. Small, to be sure, but private nonetheless, and with its own elaborate medical research facility, its own training area, its own intelligence component, its own weapons, even its own recruiting system. And answering, evidently, to no one but Viktor Dimonokov.

  If Dimonokov was indeed dead, Roskotovitch mused, then perhaps it was not such a bad thing.

  Lieutenant Huzrod, Roskotovitch’s aide, broke the silence. “It is unfortunate Colonel Dimonokov and his brother met such a tragic end,” he said. “Almost as tragic was the destruction of the family dacha. I understand it was magnificent.”

  “The police have positively identified the remains?”

  “Of a Dimonokov, yes,” Huzrod answered. “The reports said the blast and fire burned the other remains beyond recognition. The investigator told me there was insufficient material for even identification with dental records. Colonel Dimonokov’s automobile was found at the scene, though,” he added.

  “His staff also reports he has not returned,” Roskotovitch said. “I am afraid our worst fears are true.”

  Or our greatest hopes, thought Roskotovitch.

  ~*~

  The staff car plowed through wet grayness until it burst into a yellow and white haze. Outside Ditchnesk’s main gates, high-intensity security lamps showed through the rolling fog, their diffused light causing an eerie, disorienting slow dance of glare. Anything more than ten feet from the occupants was flicker, haze, and shadow.

  Ditchnesk was a classified installation, yet no one challenged them. As the vehicle crawled forward, the maw of Ditchnesk’s great wire gates swung open before them. Once through the entrance, Roskotovitch turned and looked back.

  Behind them the gates closed tight.

  They drove slowly, leaving the light of the entrance and again entering thick gloom. Two red taillights appeared ahead, and for the next twenty minutes they seemed to be driving in a maze. Roskotovitch lost all sense of direction, and even the staid Huzrod felt as if some outside force was pulling them along, tormenting them as a malevolent child might an insect before he crushed it.

  The taillights suddenly winked out, and just as suddenly they drove under the glare of a dozen streetlights.

  “Driver, halt!” Roskotovitch barked. They pitched forward as the car stopped.

  The sedan’s four doors were yanked open. At each door a towering Special Security soldier, in full combat dress and camouflage, stood at rigid attention.

  “The Special Security welcomes you to Ditchnesk,” a voice boomed out of the fog and dark.

  Roskotovitch and his aide got out of the car and looked about. They had stopped about a hundred meters from a two-story building. An honor guard of Special Security Troopers lined both sides of the street, then up the stairs and walk that lead to the building’s front door.

  Colonel Viktor Dimonokov strode up and saluted. Roskotovitch returned it.

  “The authorities believed you were dead, Colonel.”

  “They were mistaken, as were my enemies.”

  “Evidently so was your staff.”

  “I regret circumstances made such deception necessary. But the time for deception is past. All will be brought to light, and with magnificent results. Now, if you will follow me.” Dimonokov turned and strode down the street.

  Roskotovitch followed. As they passed between the two rows of stone-faced Special Security soldiers, he noted that each one stood at least half a head taller than he did. Twice he looked over his shoulder, expecting to catch some twitch or slackening in their iron posture now that “the rank”—meaning himself—had passed. Soldiers were only human, after all, and had human drives and failings. Those who’d been standing in the damp and cold for who knew how long would want to relax, even if only for a second. But he saw none of the minor imperfections that separate man from machine. The troops behind him were clearly following their last order. They remained as rigid as those in front of him.

  Dimonokov took them up the steps and into the building. Roskotovitch and Huzrod blinked and squinted in the light. Four Special Security NCOs filed in behind them.

  “This is your infirmary?”

  “No, General,” Dimonokov replied as he led them down a corridor. “There is no room at this facility for the sick.”

  Dimonokov opened a door and ushered them into a dressing room. Clean lab coats and hospital-like surgical smocks and trousers hung from hooks. He chose a lab coat and pulled it on.

  “The areas we will visit are sterile, gentlemen. They require your use of these overgarments.”

  Roskotovitch folded his arms. “I did not come here for a tour.”

  Dimonokov eyed Roskotovitch coolly. “You came to take charge of my organization should I be dead, and relieve me and take charge should I not be. At some point, you would tour the facilities, as any officer would, to assess the situation. As both a matter of honor and of practical necessity then, a tour is appropriate.” Dimonokov’s tone was carefully measured, as if behind the dam of his words lay a wave of violence. “If, at the conclusion of this tour, you still feel compelled to issue your relief orders, then I shall respond to them appropriately. Until then, please be so kind as observe what has been accomplished.”

  “This is ridiculous,” muttered Huzrod. He turned and yanked the dressing room door open. Two sullen, towering Special Security soldiers blocked his way.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “The meaning is clear, gentlemen. You should don the garment
s so we may proceed.”

  The general and aide each took down a set of scrubs.

  ~*~

  “Throughout history,” Dimonokov lectured as he led them down another corridor, “the leaders of armies have sought to develop better soldiers. Soldiers have been outfitted with sharper spears, stronger armor, longbows instead of crossbows, rifles instead of muskets, camouflage instead of brightly colored jackets, and so on. Even now the Americans have a program called 21st Century Land Warrior. They intend to outfit their soldiers in special lightweight body armor, helmet-mounted computer displays, personal communications systems, global positioning receivers, and so on. These are the external tools of war. There has been some crude work on developing the inner warrior. Indeed, every motivational speech or medal for valor tries to make the soldier feel and believe that not only is he doing something special, but also that he is something special. This work has been, rightly enough, the work of professional soldiers. It is not the trade of civilians, nor do they have the training or expertise.

  “And throughout history, there have been elite forces, troops who have been superior fighters. These have been used for impossible missions, where superhuman efforts would be necessary. Our Special Purpose regiments of the Army of the DDR, the Spetsnaz, the American Rangers and Green Berets, the English Special Air Service—these are all modern examples of elite forces.”

  “You state the obvious,” said Roskotovitch.

  Dimonokov ignored him. “Several items are striking about these observations. First, there has been little work to isolate those factors that make not just a good soldier, but an elite one. Except for my own work, few have attempted to identify what might be called the internal tools. Second, almost no army has sought to discover what makes an elite soldier and then to make more of them. In fact, elite forces are normally kept small and kept isolated from the larger, more conventional forces.”

  “So if one were to discover what traits caused the elite to be so named, and using that knowledge created an army of elite soldiers having the best internal tools, then armed those soldiers with the most advanced external tools available, one would have Master Warriors. Masters not only in that they are the ultimate soldiers, but masters in the sense that all others are derivatives of that original.”