Arctic Front wi-4

by Ian Slater

  “Full circle, eh?” he said to the major.

  “I don’t understand, Comrade President.”

  “Insurance, Major. Our KGB building in Dzerzhinsky Square was once an insurance building. Fitting, don’t you think?”

  As one of the security team took over as driver and the babushka, an agent in her early thirties, folded up the stroller, the Zil moved off back along the long, bedraggled line of people who, since the war had started, continued to line up day after day all the way down past the Alexander Garden toward Lenin’s Mausoleum — not to pay homage to the founder of the revolution but to receive their daily ration of sawdust bread. Already fights were breaking out in the line, and Chernko sat grim-faced, staring ahead. The very idea, let alone the sight, of any disorder was deeply disturbing to him. Not only did it signify the end of the long reign of the Revolution, but if he could not protect himself he would lose all rank, all privilege, and be cast among them.

  “Now, Major,” Chernko said with renewed urgency, “To the new headquarters to transmit my proposal to Novosibirsk.” He meant to the KGB shelter at their new HQ in the outer ring. “Before the Americans reach us.”

  “Comrade President, if I might mention something I heard at the officers’—”

  “Yes?” Chernko said curtly.

  “The plan you have to offer the Siberians…” The major hesitated. “Is it ex-War Minister Marchenko’s plan you are… borrowing?”

  “Borrow? I didn’t borrow any such idea, Major.”

  “Of course,” put in the major quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “I stole it,” said Chernko. “Srazmakhom”— “Holus-bolus.” He turned, his steely blue eyes boring into his aide.”What does it matter where our strategy — where our tactics — come from? The trouble with you, Major, is you’re a child of Gorbachev. In the revolution and now in this war there’s no room for that sentimental bourgeois tripe about taking somebody else’s idea-somebody else’s property. We are ‘the sword and shield of the State’—that is all that matters. The point is to deliver the blow wherever we see the opportunity present itself.”

  “A blow?” said the major, nonplussed. “When we have surrendered?”

  “We’ve surrendered. Siberia has not. If Siberia were to defeat the Americans—” Chernko paused. “What is it the Americans say, Major? ‘It’s not over until it’s over’?” They were approaching the KGB bunker. “As soon as we arrive,” Chernko instructed the major, “I want you to send up the file.”

  “Yes, sir.” But the major sounded distinctly apprehensive.

  “Don’t worry,” Chernko assured him, the president’s mood now buoyant. “In a month we’ll be watching news reports of the Americans reeling — while we’re eating their rations. I call that sweet revenge, Major. And no matter what the Siberians think of us, they’ll be grateful for the plan — the weapon I’m about to give them. They’re not stupid. They’ll want it spread around that anyone who helps them against the Americans will be rewarded. If my plan works, the Americans will be sent packing. For the it will mean full membership in Novosibirsk’s Central Committee. You to full colonel — perhaps general — with all the benefits of rank in the postwar Siberian forces. Would that be satisfactory, Comrade?”

  “Very,” replied the major, knowing generalship would at the very least rate a chauffeur and access to the party’s special stores. Chernko, of course, would probably get yet another dacha out of it — a few more and he could start a hotel chain after the war-after the American army had been chopped up piecemeal and swallowed by the vast winter that was called Siberia,

  * * *

  Gen. Douglas Freeman alighted from his military transport plane at Monterey Airport at 4:00 p.m., his impending arrival unannounced to the press by the Pentagon. In any event his departure from Washington had been deliberately delayed at the last minute by the Pentagon so that his arrival on the West Coast would be too late for the New York networks’ evening news. This would minimize, the Pentagon hoped, any damage Freeman might do in an open press conference should he be asked any questions about the Russians.

  Now that the brief if intense applause for him in the New York parade had died, the ticker tape swept away, Freeman didn’t expect a hero’s welcome on the West Coast. America was demobilizing much faster than it had mobilized, anxious to get on with enjoying the fruits of a hard-won victory, racing to put the war behind it.

  As the general’s car, pennant furled, headed south on Highway 1, the blood-streaked sun was sinking beneath the sharp black line of the sea. Freeman wondered aloud to his driver how quickly she thought the feats of First Army would be forgotten. The trim driver, blond hair swept back in a bun, was watching the road too intently to really think much about the general’s question and said she didn’t know. Normally the khaki Chevrolet would have been flanked by four MP outriders, but the general, ostentatious enough when it suited First Army’s purposes, had set a frugal example throughout the war, insisting on stringent conservation measures regarding the use of gasoline now that the Middle East fields were once again in ruin. Freeman caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and was momentarily lost to the contemplation of whether or not he should stay in the army. At fifty-five he was hardly old, even in a modern, youth-oriented, high-tech military. Nevertheless, he and everyone else knew he was being put out to pasture. What made it worse was that he understood the Pentagon’s decision. Damn them! They were right — he was a warrior. He had the spittle for battle but not for peace. He recalled the memo to the White House from the British liaison officer in Washington, Brigadier Soames, who had advised the president that London, like the U.S. State Department, considered Freeman “a tad too Hobbesian.”

  “Superior son of a bitch,” muttered Freeman. Probably figured his memo wouldn’t be understood by anyone who hadn’t gone “up” to Oxford and “read philosophy.”

  “Well,” Freeman had told his boss, General of the U.S. Army James Grey, “I’ve read my Hobbes and my Bugs Bunny. I know what that limey son of a bitch means, General. He’s claiming I see man’s natural condition as one of war.”

  “Now, Douglas,” Grey had told him. “Don’t go getting yourself all riled up.”

  “Well,” Freeman had replied, pulling on his leather gloves tighter, flexing his fist. “Limey bastard’s right. I do. Peace is war by other means, General. When you cut through the thin veneer of civilization, only thing that keeps the goddamn yahoos from running this world is strength of arms. Question is, whose arms? Ours or some Commie son of a bitch who’d take whatever freedom the IRS has left us? Lord — didn’t we learn anything from what happened to Gorbachev? While every Tom, Dick, and Jane Fonda in the West were going ga-ga over Gorby all those Marxist-Leninist pals of his were just going along for the ride — till he fell ‘ill.’ Then by God look what we got. Suzlov and now Chernko and his pals. Same old gang. Remember, General, we all wanted peace. The British lion sheathed her claws. The American eagle clipped talons and beak. And the Russian bear — why he was just so darned happy about it he hugged ‘em both to death.”

  “Go home, Douglas,” Grey had told him. “Enjoy your ocean view. You’ve done yourself and First Army proud. The country’s grateful. You ever doubt that, look at those rows of decorations you have — from every corner of the world. But you’re smart enough to know that the peace — whether it’s another form of war or not, Douglas — will be fought in board rooms and with diplomacy, God help us. The brigadier’s right, Douglas, ‘it’s not your cup of tea.’ “

  Freeman grimaced. Even though he knew they were right the very thought of sitting in the bleachers while other players took the field and the glory was anathema to him. He knew it was pride—”pride right through,” as he remembered Henry the Eighth had said of Cardinal Wolsey — but Douglas Freeman saw his pride as a God-given hubris—as natural as salt in the blood, as undeniable as the steel blue of his eyes and his graying hair. It was the fuel that drove his consuming ambition: to be the
greatest commander in the history of the United States — in the history of the world — an ambition that had burned fiercely within him as a boy, long before his first glimpse of the plain at West Point. Intellectually, politically, he understood Washington was correct to recall him now the battle was over and peace secured; but in his heart the tunes of glory would always call, the snare drum’s roll the sweetest music.

  He remembered watching Apocalypse Now, at the armored school at Fort Hood, to which he and other officers had returned fresh from their victories in the Iraqi war. The gung-ho colonel in the film had confidently whipped away the yellow cravat of the Air Cavalry from his throat and, hands on nips, announced to a terrified subaltern, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Everyone in the theater had laughed derisively. Everyone except Freeman. He didn’t like the smell of napalm in the morning or any other time — it plugged his sinuses — but he knew what that colonel had meant, what he felt. He, too, loved the smell, the sting of battle that shot adrenaline to his chest. Only then did he feel fully alive. Some men he knew were born with the same feeling and spent their lives hypocritically denying it in deference to the civilized world, but Freeman made no apology, believing his destiny, his responsibility, was to put it to good purpose, to preserve the civilized world — to defend his America against all those who sought to destroy her. Yet now, his career having finally rounded the corner, “heading into the straight,” as his father would have said, the race was suddenly over, his purpose fulfilled in the clash of armor around Minsk and Moscow that had brought the Russian surrender. Suddenly he was adrift, his past glory flat as the twilight sea. Glory was like sex, he mused — having just had it you felt you’d never need it again. Then an hour later…

  Outside his fog-shrouded house on the Monterey beachfront, a bungalow design with a six-foot-high, chocolate-brown fence running around it to ward off the encroaching dune grass, a crowd of well-wishers had gathered. One of the signs read “Welcome home, General Freeman”; another, “Freedom’s Freeman!” Instead of her usual gradual braking, the corporal was forced to hit the brakes hard as the crowd surged forward unexpectedly, revealing a long, yellow tape, which at first she had thought was a yellow ribbon of remembrance. She now saw it ran clear around the house. Freeman could smell the fresh tang of the sea. Three army Humvees were parked about ten yards apart, right of the crowd by the curb, one of the vehicles sprouting its.50 caliber machine gun on a swivel mount immediately behind the six-man cabin. A California highway patrolman, in khaki cap and uniform, and one of the MPs from the Humvees looked as if they were arguing. Left of them a man in white shorts and T-shirt, his left hand on the lip of the curb which was overrun by dune grass, lay sprawled in the gutter. The white shorts were red with blood.

  Now Freeman saw more policemen pushing the crowd back as the man was photographed from different angles. For a second the general thought he saw his wife, Doreen, in the crowd but it was difficult to tell with so many people, a hundred or more, milling and flowing about the house. A man in jeans and wildly colored Hawaiian shirt tried to duck under the yellow tape near the curb, holding up a newspaper with a picture of Freeman at the surrender ceremony at Minsk. A patrolman pushed him back behind the tape.

  “So much for crowd control, Corporal,” joked Freeman.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Whether it was the sight of the army Humvees or the strange excitement of the crowd that tensed up his lumbar muscles Freeman didn’t know, but it hurt like hell, and for a moment he was back in the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket just after he’d given the order for the breakout, the “end run” that had outflanked the enemy and ultimately brought Chernko and his STAVKA to its knees. After leaving his headquarters near Munster the concussion from a 122-millimeter Soviet shell had knocked his Humvee right off the road, lifting the vehicle and flinging it into a ditch. His back took most of the impact against the Humvee’s steering column and the driver’s steel helmet.

  The pain was still with him and bone deep. Determined not to show signs of what doctors insisted on calling “discomfort” to make themselves feel better, Freeman hauled himself quickly out of the Chevrolet, asking the corporal to answer the car’s cellular phone that was bipping annoyingly in the back as Freeman alighted. It was a small detail, opening the door himself, but the kind that newspapers, hungry for copy, used to define what they called the “hands-on, no-nonsense Freeman style.” The reporters didn’t realize that the general opening the door for himself was more a sign of his impatience to get things done than it was disdain for ceremony.

  As he emerged from the car the fog lifted, the sun’s dying rays catching the edge of his decorations’ strips, the blue-red-blue of his Silver Star vibrant in the fading light.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Following the Kremlin’s surrender, President Mayne thought he had finished with the White House’s subterranean “simulation room.” Now, two floors below his oval office, he found himself once again walking past the Marine guards into the “bunker,” its fluorescent light, oppressive as usual, illuminating the huge map stand with its clusters of blue and red pins showing the disposition of Allied and Russian forces at the moment of Moscow’s unconditional capitulation. Glancing at the alert board, however, he saw there’d been a change. All Allied forces had been placed in DefCon II— “attack believed imminent.” Press aide Trainor, who had been normally gung-ho even in the worst moments of the war, looked drained, as pale as the bluish white light. The silence among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Allied liaison officers was deafening. Trainor handed the president the message. It was from SACEUR — Supreme Allied Commander Europe — Lieut. Gen. William Merton, and read:

  Autonomous Siberian republic has disregarded Moscow’s surrender. Novosibirsk has issued orders for all Siberian armies to resist “Anglo-American-European aggression against the ‘Motherland.’ “ We are now facing forty Siberian divisions along Sino-Soviet border plus TVD air forces commanded out of Khabarovsk and entire Soviet Pacific Fleet egressing Vladivostok. Our forward units one hundred miles east of Moscow already under attack by elements of West Siberian Second and Fourth—

  “Jesus Christ!” It was the first time Trainor had heard the president blaspheme, and despite Trainor’s secularity it made him wince.

  “Where’s the rest of the message?” asked President Mayne, looking up at Trainor and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  “Satellite communications were cut, Mr. President,” answered Trainor. “Or rather jammed. By the Siberians.”

  “God Almighty!” said Mayne, looking down again at the message in disbelief. Brigadier Soames, Britain’s European-U.S. liaison officer, cleared his throat politely. “London’s received the same response, Mr. President,” advised Soames. “Looks rather sticky, I’m afraid. But your chap Merton is in error regarding the Siberian divisions. There aren’t forty.”

  “Well, thank God for that!” said the president. The brigadier looked around, untypically nonplussed, glancing for help at the Chiefs of Staff, but found he was on his own. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but what I mean is that there aren’t forty divisions. It’s fifty-seven to be exact. With — ah — four Mongolian divisions in reserve around Lake Baikal.”

  President Mayne sat down, the message dangling from his left hand, his right unconsciously massaging his temple. “What the hell’s happened? I mean, these divisions must be reservists?”

  Army Chief of Staff Grey shook his head. “Afraid not, Mr. President. The Siberian divisions have a combat, Afghanistan-trained cadre of officers and NCOs. Crack divisions trained for a Sino-Soviet conflict. Moscow used to be more scared of China than NATO. Trouble is, it’s not only the number of Siberian armies we’re faced with — the place is so damn big. Westernmost border of Siberia doesn’t even start till you get a thousand miles east beyond Moscow — then it goes on for more than three and a half thousand miles to the Pacific and, despite popular misconception, it has as varied a topography as the U.S. Far as the Siberians are concerned, M
oscow’s in another country.”

  Looking at the map, Mayne saw the Siberian divisions were stretched out from Siberia’s East Cape then inland behind the mountainous Kamchatka Peninsula all the way down to Vladivostok and the Manchurian border, a dark red cluster showing enemy surface vessels and submarines off the coast around Vladivostok and Nakhodka. “Thought we gave their Pacific Fleet a bloody nose off north Japan?” he asked Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Horton.

  “Elements of the Pacific Fleet, yes, Mr. President,” answered the CNO. “But the hemorrhaging stopped apparently.”

  “Their air forces?” Mayne asked Air Force Chief Allet.

  “Fifteen hundred tactical aircraft, including MiG 29E fighters and Backfire bombers. The Fulcrums — MiG 29Es — are faster and more maneuverable than our F-18s. To qualify for Siberian station you have to have had combat experience in western Europe. Only the best, Mr. President.” General Allet indicated airfields far to the northeast, near Siberia’s East Cape. “They clearly don’t intend letting us get across the Bering Strait from Alaska.”

  The president was shaking his head. The vastness of the new threat had descended like sheet lightning upon what, until only moments ago, had been the promising dawn of the Russian surrender. Blindsided by Siberia — the essence of the awful Allied blunder the assumption that all the Soviets would automatically follow Moscow’s decree. It was so obvious now that Mayne wondered why they hadn’t thought of it before. The only comparable miscalculation he could think of was the CIA’s confident report, several months before the Shah of Iran’s fall, that no such overthrow was in the offing. But men, the more he thought about it, the more he understood how the seed of the blunder had taken root; for he, too, had always lumped Soviets and Russians together. Oh yes, he’d known how dissident the Baltic republics were, and some of the Asian republics, but Siberia— so far from Moscow, a place where Moscow sent dissidents — had never been thought of as a separate entity. But now the full impact of the differences between the two Russian republics — the United Soviet Socialist Republics and the newly declared United Siberian Soviet Republics — hit him as the CIA overlay, each color representing a different ethnic group in the mix that was the Siberyaka, covered the huge expanse of Siberia which, in turn, overlaid the map of the Americas on the same scale, completely obscuring the U.S. The region of the Yakut alone was three times the size of Texas. The other Siberian regions— the Tartar, Kalmyk, Komi, Bashykur and the Karelian autonomous republic — were all united in their common determination with Novosibirsk not to surrender.