Arctic Front wi-4

by Ian Slater

  “Won’t they deal?” asked the president.

  “Why should they?” proffered the brigadier, realizing at once that he’d overstepped the line of deference accorded the president of the American republic. “With all due respect, Mr. President, our Allied forces in and around Moscow are, by all accounts, battle weary — quite simply worn out. Our supply lines through western Europe are overextended to say the least.” Soames glanced at the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, their glum faces evidence enough that they agreed. Then he turned back to address Mayne. “Holding Moscow might seem a compelling victory to the general public in the West, sir, but—” He turned toward the map, his hand making a small arc across the expanse of Siberia. “Capturing Moscow, I’m afraid, is nothing geographically or strategically speaking. And now, it seems, not even politically. Our troops have, as General Grey pointed out, another thousand miles to go before they even reach the Urals, the western border of Siberia. Then there’s the rest — almost four thousand miles of mountains, taiga, rivers and plains, deep in snow — thrown in for good measure. They’ve got the Ural Mountains on their western flank and the more mountainous Kamchatka Peninsula on the east. They could give away half of it and we’d still be in enormous difficulty. No, sir, I’m afraid the Siberian chiefs of staff in Novosibirsk have thought this one out rather carefully. It’s a very sticky wicket indeed.”

  The president frowned, not because he didn’t know what “sticky wicket” meant — the tone conveyed all the meaning he needed — but because the Englishman was right. What in hell could the Allies do?

  “Sticky wicket means being between a rock and a hard—” began Trainor.

  “I know what it means,” snapped the president. “What I want someone to tell the is what in hell are we going to do about this mess?” He looked up at his CNO, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Horton. “Can we bracket them with our boomers, Dick?” He meant the Allies’ ICBM submarines.

  “Already have, sir. The Trident subs can drop an ICBM on them anywhere, but they can do the same to us even without their subs. Most of their ICBM sites are now in Siberia. Especially on the eastern flank down Kamchatka Peninsula. It would mean all-out nuclear war. And one thing the Russians — including the Siberians — were always ahead of us in, Mr. President, is civil defense for such an eventuality. We’d come out much worse than they would.”

  “Yes, yes, I know that. A nuclear strike’s no option.” Next he turned to the army chief of staff.

  “Sir,” said General Grey, “Brigadier Soames is correct in his estimation. We’ve shot our wad for the time being in and around Moscow. It’d be another two months at the very least before we could muster enough men even to attack the Urals with any hope of breaking through. Best we can hope for there is to keep it at a stalemate.”

  “What about their eastern flank?” shot back the president.

  “If we could get enough men across the Bering Strait fast. Perhaps. But there’s still Kamchatka Peninsula further south. It’s heavily garrisoned. And now it looks as if the whole coast— from the East Cape all the way south to Vladivostok — is also well protected. They’ve even got Soviet forces on the Kuril Islands running down from Kamchatka — case the Japanese move to reclaim the islands they lost in the Second World War. But either way we’d have to get men across the strait — take command of their East Cape airfields. Once we did that we could hit them further south without constantly worrying about their East Cape planes.”

  “How about our air force?” cut in the president. “General Allet, can you secure air cover over the Bering Strait so that we can get our boys across to their East Cape — secure a beachhead? What is it across there? Only fifty miles or so from Alaska?”

  “Fifty-two miles, sir.”

  “Well then?”

  “Sir, before we could move anybody across there we’d have to have air supremacy. We’d have to take out the AA missile batteries, SAM sites, and the like on Big Diomede. It’s shallow around there, some places no more than twenty fathoms — not deep enough for our subs.”

  “Big Diomede?” asked the president.

  “Largest of two islands, sir. Little Diomede, ours, is the smallest — on our side of the international date line. Big Diomede is theirs. High and solid rock. Locked in by ice and covered in snow this time of year. It’s a fortress — five miles long, one-and-a-half to two miles wide, with deeply recessed and super-hardened AA missile and AA gun battery defenses. They’ve also got half a dozen long-range naval guns in place that can shell Alaska’s Cape Prince of Wales — our staging area for any invasion.”

  “You telling the that they can shell us from over twenty miles away?”

  Admiral Horton looked surprised that the president didn’t know this. “They’ve had the long-barrelled gun — got it from South Africa after that Canadian inventor Bull sold it to Iraq and—”

  “Never mind the history lesson,” cut in Mayne. “I want to know what the hell we’re going to do. If the air force can’t guarantee it can take out this Big Diomede, can we try naval bombardment?”

  “Too much ice for the battle wagons to get within range,” said the CNO. “But we can try carrier-borne aircraft from further south.”

  “Then get ready to try, Dick, and while you’re doing that I want you,” he turned to General Grey, “to send this to the Siberians and all Allied commands.” As he began writing the message, he asked, “Our K-16 satellite still operational?”

  “Far as I know, Mr. President. But with all that snow in Siberia and the Siberians’ camouflage, it’s going to be difficult even for our satellite to pinpoint their positions.”

  “Maybe so, General,” said President Mayne, his writing hand moving with singular determination. “But I have a hunch the Siberians might just be bluffing. I don’t mean about what They’ve got to throw at us but whether this central committee or whatever it is in Novosibirsk has really been able to break free of Moscow’s political arm.” The president depressed the tip of his ballpoint, adroitly slipping it inside his suit jacket. “Has it occurred to you gentlemen that we might be getting all steamed up for nothing? Anyway—” He handed the message to General Grey. “—this’ll answer that.”

  The president’s message to the Novosibirsk central Siberian command read, “You have twenty-four hours in which to surrender all your forces to Allied command. If you have not done so by 0800 tomorrow Washington time, the Allied armies will reengage with maximum force.”

  “Mr. President,” asked General Grey, “you think there might be some confusion about what we mean by ‘maximum force’?”

  The president smiled. “Yes. That’s for them to figure out, Jimmy.” He turned to Air Force General Allet. “Bill, I want ‘covers off’ at least a dozen. Midwest. And just in case the Siberians aren’t getting any satellite readings of their own, have our K-16 photographs of our MX silos when their lids are off beamed down to Siberian air space. Put them clearly in the picture.”

  Brigadier Soames felt it his duty to voice his skepticism.”Mr. President, I really don’t think the Siberians would have gone on the offensive against our troops in the Urals in the western sector if they didn’t think they could win this thing. And if we use nuclear weapons no one wins. I don’t think they’re bluffing, Mr. President. I didn’t want to unduly depress anyone, but my aide informs the that I’m also incorrect in my estimate of how many divisions the Siberians have at hand. It is in fact in excess of sixty-five. That’s well over a million and a—”

  “Yes, yes, I know, Brigadier, but threatening to use the MX doesn’t mean we have to. Our bluff could work. They might just cave in when they see our determination.”

  “I beg to differ, sir. I think—”

  “Well, let’s give it the old college try, shall we, Brigadier?”

  “By all means, sir. By all means.”

  Just as Press Secretary Trainor had never heard the president take, as Mayne would have put it, “the Lord’s name in vain,” neither had he heard the pre
sident use “shall we?” before. The president, he thought, had handled the brigadier — and thus in effect the joint Allied high command’s anticipated criticism— rather well. “Shall we?” had just the right tone to it — one of confident authority, unbowed by the frightening possibility of having to confront more man sixty fresh, highly trained Siberian divisions — twice the total number of U.S. divisions. Perhaps the president was right. Maybe the Siberian colossus had not shucked off the long political reach of Moscow and would think twice about it, seeing the missiles “standing proud”—that is, their warheads above the silo openings. Perhaps the Siberians would blink.

  The president’s message was transmitted in plain language so that all the Siberian forces would be aware of it. A smart move, Trainor acknowledged, in that there might have been some Siberian units reluctant to go along with Novosibirsk’s decision to attack the Allied forces east of Moscow.

  Though he didn’t know it, Trainor was right. There had been such resistance, notably in the person of Vladimir Cherlak, the general commanding the Siberian Third Motorized Rifle Division at Tyumen, halfway between Novosibirsk and Moscow. Though no friend of President Chernko, Cherlak, like so many senior Russian officers, had attended the Frunze Military Academy. Using this tenuous connection with Chernko to maximum effect, Cherlak stated flatly that he had no intention of disobeying Moscow’s directive to surrender.

  Novosibirsk’s Central Committee said it respected his loyalty to Moscow but appealed to Cherlak to place his responsibility to the United Siberian Soviet Republics above any personal loyalty to a defeated Moscow. Cherlak replied that his hesitancy to throw in his lot with Novosibirsk was not merely a matter of personal loyalty but one stemming from the oath he had taken to the Russian federation which Chernko now headed.

  Novosibirsk decided there were only two ways of dealing with Cherlak: shoot him as an example to any other undecided officers or show him Chernko’s plan. They sent an emissary to Tyumen. Cherlak was notoriously self-centered — some said he was so full of himself he must think himself a czar. But he knew when he had met his match, and upon seeing Chernko’s plan was unabashedly awed.

  “It’s brilliant,” he conceded. “Tell Novosibirsk the Third Motorized is with them.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As Freeman walked toward his house, the wind, cold for Monterey, carried with it the invigorating tang of sea air mixed with the oppressive smell of a high-sulfur-content oil, the lower grade of crude still being rationed for civilian use, while consumer and antipollution groups pressed hard for the less sulfurous grades previously reserved for the military to be released for the domestic market now that the war was over. Freeman saw that the man spread-eagled in the sand and dune grass was dead, his T-shirt dark cherry red, a Beethoven motif faintly visible in the clinging stain of blood. Freeman heard the sound of sirens in the distance; seemed to be one coming, one going. His battle-trained hearing was acute; he did not make the mistake of confusing the echo for its origin — a mistake that had proved fatal for those troops during the war who had come up against the five-truck platoons of forty multiple-layered BM-21 Katyushas — truck-mounted rockets — for the first time.

  “General Freeman?”

  “Yes?”

  It was a young female police officer, — short-cropped blond hair, sky-blue eyes, her khaki uniform smart, creases crisply ironed, green side piping without a wrinkle, the Smith and Wesson.38 high on her left side, he noticed. “My wife?” he said, the smile he’d had for the welcome-home crowd now gone. He could have been back at Minsk asking for SITREPS on unit deployment, his tone concerned, his control born in part from having witnessed what the Russians had called the boynya— “abattoir”—in Germany’s Fulda Gap. There the Russian armored echelons had poured through in right and left hooks before being stopped in the south by the American and Bundeswehr divisions, and in the north by the British Army of the Rhine — the choking dust literally dampened by blood as motorized infantry of both sides were torn apart in the shrapnel-filled air.

  “Is she all right?” asked the general, a cheek muscle taut, his gloved right hand now a fist.

  “Critical, sir, I’m afraid. She’s en route to Peninsula Hospital.”

  “What happened?” A young boy, smiling, grasping a tiny stars and stripes, started beneath the ribbon toward the general. One of the MPs gently cut him off.

  “We’re not exactly sure, General,” the female officer told him.”We got a 459 in progress — breaking and entering — about eighteen minutes ago. When we got here—” The officer turned, Freeman’s gaze following her outstretched hand, her notebook obscuring the man’s legs for a moment. “We found the front gate open. Back door was closed but not locked. Apparently he entered that way — round the back. We found some blood on the back pathway. It looks as if your wife fired two shots, but he made it to the sidewalk before he collapsed.” She paused. “He’s dead.”

  Freeman turned back toward the army car, its khaki/black/green wave camouflage paint dulled even further by moody stratus threatening the coast as far up as Santa Cruz. His driver was pale, waiting anxiously, the situation obviously beyond her experience.

  “General, sir—” said the policewoman. “I know it’s inconvenient, but could you identify the weapon your wife fired?”

  “What?”

  “The weapon your wife fired, sir. The man who broke in — well, he — he used a knife, General. We assume that Mrs. Freeman was the one who—”

  Freeman seemed to be looking through the crowd, through the house, his right fist balling in his left. “Walther,” he said. “Nine millimeter.”

  “This it, sir?” asked another police officer, holding up a Ziplock plastic bag containing a nine-millimeter automatic.

  “Looks like it,” said Freeman, glancing at the gun. “Serial number’s in safety deposit.” He was looking out to sea, eyes squinting in the metallic glare that was still present though the sun was covered with cloud. “First Savings and Loan,” he told them. “Duplicate license at the base. Fort Ord.”

  “Registered in your name, General?”

  “Yes. Look, I’d like to get to the hospital. If there are any more questions you can—”

  A flashbulb popped. He froze — first rule for any combat soldier caught in a flare. Natural instinct was to dive, but movement was what the enemy was looking for. If you could steel yourself to stand perfectly still, chances were they either wouldn’t see you or would mistake you for something else. It was only a second, but to the crowd outside his house it looked as if the general were momentarily transfixed with fright. Freeman sensed it and glowered furiously at the photographer.

  Before Freeman arrived at the emergency ward at Peninsula Hospital there was a story on all the networks that the wife of General Douglas Freeman had been the victim of an attempted burglary gone wrong, was critically wounded, and that the general was — as the still photo accompanying the sound bite seemed to indicate—”visibly shaken.” The photo was also picked up by Reuters and UPI, and the implicit suggestion, made explicitly in the tabloids of the La Roche chain, was that the reason Freeman had been recalled in such haste after the Moscow surrender was due to the “hard-to-disguise fact” that the general’s nerves were already shot.

  * * *

  When Trainor handed the president the green file, a crimson diagonal stripe on its cover, containing the eight-by-ten blowups, he bent the gooseneck lamp down closer in the semidarkness of the working study with double steel reinforced walls in the south wing. Not far from the Oval Office, the smaller office was favored by the president not simply because it was more protected but because it had an older, comforting smell, reminiscent of his childhood — an air of old leather lounge chairs, of security, of how things used to be, of how he wished they could be again in the rapidly changing world. Also, here he could better work in the subdued light — a necessity, not a choice, when he was afflicted with the migraines that had plagued him ever since his Congressional days and which
were as much a secret between Trainor, the president, and his secretary as were the codes for nuclear war in the possession of the air force officer who even now was sitting outside the study with the briefcase, or “football,” containing the daily “Go” codes. The headaches didn’t slow Mayne down; on the contrary, he held to Nietzsche’s adage that that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and believed the will required to surmount the pain served him better than those whose faculties were not tried by any such ordeal. It was a constant reminder to him of what could be done, despite the obstacles, if you set your mind to it. He examined the photographs before him more closely, but the mountain range continued to puzzle him. Nebraska and Montana were as flat as a pancake — unless these MX sites he was looking at were smack up against the Big Horn Mountains or the Rockies of the Continental Divide that rose so dramatically from the prairie.”What was the name of that old Jimmy Stewart movie?” he mused aloud to Trainor. ‘ “The Far Country?”

  “That’s not the western states,” answered Trainor, moving around to look over the president’s shoulder. “It’s supposed to be Kamchatka. Yeah — it is.”