World in Flames wi-3

by Ian Slater

  “Don’t be insulting!” said Kiril Marchenko, looking at his son angrily. There was a long silence as they continued walking, the only sound that of their boots, now out of step, in the snow. “Colonel Nefski,” began the general, “is in a difficult position. If these saboteurs aren’t caught and they cut the Trans-Siberian, our garrisons out here would be seriously—”

  “I know that,” said Sergei impatiently.

  “Your own squadron will feel the effect, too,” the general continued. “Not only from the railway delays but the munitions being made out here.”

  “We’ve already had problems,” said Sergei.

  “Oh—” The general slowed. “Nefski never told me that.”

  “Some of the Aphids,” said Sergei.

  “What are they?”

  “Air-to-air. They appear not to have exploded on the target range — though it’s possible they could have gone into the ocean. It’s difficult sometimes to—”

  “You see,” said the general, seizing the opportunity. “This is precisely what I mean, Sergei. This mission against the American general, Freeman. Imagine if, after all that trouble, a rocket didn’t—” He stopped. “You haven’t volunteered, have you?”

  “Of course.”

  Kiril Marchenko had said it before his professional obligation had had a chance to override his feelings as a father. “Then—” he said, “I’m proud of you.”

  Sergei said nothing. They were approaching the control tower, a dark obelisk in the sporadic moonlight that was shining through wisps of stratus, the air redolent with pine, and in the distance somewhere a convoy, the faint slits of its air raid headlights approaching the base like some strange, segmented yellow snake weaving through the forest. The saboteurs, Sergei remembered, had also cut the Khabarovsk and Volochayevka roadway.

  “Would be nice,” said Kiril Marchenko, changing the subject, “if you wrote your mother more often.”

  “Yes,” said Sergei, “I mean to but—”

  Kiril held his gloved hand up. “I know. I was the same. But I told her I’d order you.”

  Sergei couldn’t see his father’s face clearly but sensed the attempt at good humor.

  “Is she all right?” asked Sergei.

  “Thriving. She’s soon to be promoted — head of chemical defense for all of Moscow. The first woman. It’s quite an honor.”

  “You think it will come to that?”

  “No,” said the general. “The Americans don’t have the stomach for it. Not after they’ve seen what we’ve done with our sleepers in their own country — their water supplies and the like. It’s the one great advantage we have over them, Sergei. One must admit that for all his childish idealism, Gorbachev did at least make it easier for Chernko to flood the United States with our agents. Happily, it’s never been the other way around.” The general paused for a moment, looking about to see whether any of the air traffic control sentries were nearby, lowering his voice. “But if we’re attacked with it, we’ll use it. Suzlov won’t hesitate.”

  “Neither will the STAVKA,” put in Sergei. He said it without rancor but as a matter of fact.

  Kiril saw a guard at the door, silhouetted against a faint glow from the officers’ mess. He called out to the man, reminding him it was an air raid precaution violation and to have the shutters drawn securely.

  “Sergei, I wouldn’t be surprised if Comrade Nefski gives you a call — to warn you off this woman. Try not to be rude. It won’t do you any good. Just accept you’ve made an error.” The general hurried on. “You can find another outlet for your passions — you understand, eh?” He slapped Sergei on the back. “Find a good Russian girl or one of the brown-skinned ones, eh?” He paused at the entrance to the mess.

  “My plane leaves in half an hour.” Sergei still said nothing. It was Sergei’s worst failing, in his father’s view. On the battlefield his son had distinguished himself more than once, but he had retained a childish propensity to sulk. Or was it only with his father that he behaved so? “Look,” said Kiril. “A man must be sensible about these things. If you need more money in order to—”

  “Huh — so I can buy a woman?”

  “If necessary, yes,” said Kiril Marchenko. “If you go to a clean place, at least you know what you’re getting. You’re not the first soldier to—”

  “I don’t need money,” said Sergei. “I have enough.” His father hadn’t even used her name. Again there was a long, awkward silence between them. Finally Sergei murmured, “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

  “Good,” said the general. They hugged.

  “Write to your mother.”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  In the officers’ mess, Sergei was flipping through a finger-worn copy of a German pornographic magazine, lingering over a blonde, tarted up in a top hat and tails, no shirt — her long, red-nailed fingers clasping the silver top of a long walking stick. Sergei and his wing man, Boris, were trying to discover whether the blonde’s attributes were natural or silicone-assisted. Such procedures were rare in the Soviet Union but apparently quite common in Germany.

  “Our women have bigger breasts than that,” said Boris.

  “And bigger bottoms,” countered Sergei.

  “So what’s wrong with that?” parried Boris. “I like something you can grab on to.”

  “All I want to grab,” put in the ground crew captain, “are enormous, great, pendulous—”

  “Major—Major — Marchenko!”

  “Da?”

  “Telefon.”

  When Sergei heard Nefski’s voice, he was immediately on guard, at once struck by his father’s warning that his association with the Jewess was bound to incur a warning from the KGB to stay away from the Yevreysk autonomous region.

  “Major. We believe you know the girl Alexsandra Malof?”

  “Yes,” Marchenko said, then, as he was wont to do in a dogfight, seizing offense as the best defense, added, “She’s a Jew.”

  “Ah — now, there you are. You see—” The KGB colonel seemed to be talking to someone else at the other end, then came back on the line. “—I was just telling my assistant, Major, that you are just like your father. A man who gets straight to the heart of things.”

  No, thought Sergei, I am not like my father. I won’t do a dance around it. The Jewess was the best lay he’d had during the entire war. Besides, what could Nefski do to an air ace? It would make the local KGB boss very unpopular, not only with the STAVKA HQ in Moscow but with all the propaganda cadres throughout the sixteen military districts and the four air armies.

  “I would like to talk to you,” said Nefski, his tone upbeat, casual.

  “Yes?” said Sergei guardedly, waiting.

  “No, no,” said the colonel. “Not on the phone. Let us have a meal — dinner — at the Bear Inn?”

  Marchenko knew the place in Khabarovsk. It specialized in Yakut food.

  “What is there to talk about, Comrade Colonel?”

  “Let’s talk.”

  “I can’t tonight.”

  “I realize that,” said Nefski, Marchenko surprised that the colonel apparently knew about “Operatsiya otmorozhennaya”—”Operation Frostbite”—the planned intercept of the plane that reportedly would be flying the legendary American General Freeman across the Sea of Japan to Korea. But then, Sergei told himself, he should have guessed that Nefski would have spies everywhere — probably knew what the base commander had for breakfast.

  “Tomorrow night then,” said Nefski congenially, “when you return.”

  Marchenko knew that what Nefski meant was “Ifyou return.” Or had he merely guessed that Sergei had volunteered to go on the mission? No, Sergei concluded, the colonel would know not only that he had volunteered but was also leading the mission.

  “Major? Would sixteen hundred hours be satisfactory?”

  “Yes,” agreed Marchenko.

  “Good,” said Nefski. “I hope you understand we have no objections to our men in uniform
going out with the Jewish faith. Such prejudice is against Soviet law.”

  “I know,” said Sergei pointedly. It wasn’t that he loved Alexsandra. He didn’t. She was merely an attractive brunette, her figure enough to satisfy even his ground captain’s more outrageous fantasies. It would be easy for him to ditch her— there was a lot more pussy around Khabarovsk. Besides, being an ace meant having the highest pay scale of any field combatants — he could buy what his uniform and medals couldn’t attract. No, what he objected to was the politicos like Nefski telling him whom he could screw and whom he couldn’t. The odd thing, however, was that Nefski’s tone, despite his parroting official policy of nondiscrimination against minorities, made it sound as if the colonel didn’t really hate Jews. Which was unusual.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  During the retreat from the frozen jumble of ice that was the Yalu River, its chopped-up appearance due to sections refreezing after American 105-millimeter artillery shells had holed it, the Third Infantry Division, under Gen. Arthur C. Creigh, now in full retreat from the river, was encountering the worst Korean winter for the past seventeen years. Medics were carrying their morphine ampules in their mouths in order to keep the morphine warm enough to pass through a syringe. Many of the wounded, waiting in the heavy snow for the “khaki angels,” the helo Medevacs, died before the choppers could reach the besieged Changsong Road that lead back from the river toward the MASH units of Kusong. Many of the wounded, covered with snow, slipped into the warm sleep of hypothermia as plasma froze solid, drip pouches split open, and the men still able to march discarded everything nonessential, including mess kits, using their helmets instead. Others ate the freeze-dried emergency C ration as it was, unable to get hot water except for rare moments when a tank, or rather those tanks still moving, could provide the heat from their engines.

  While the freeze-dried food kept some of the troops going, many of the wounded, who normally would have survived the relatively quick Medevac, ate the food, using snow to wash it down, and in doing so, reduced vital body heat before the consumed food had time to do any good. Since coming under heavy fire from the Chinese artillery, much of which had been carried piece by piece by the Chinese and Korean infantry to the ridges overlooking the road, Creigh’s division had suffered over four thousand casualties.

  At 1400 hours the snowfall swallowed up the sun, thereby limiting the vital air support that had been coming in from the carrier Salt Lake City. It gave the Chinese perfect opportunities for ambush and close-in fighting, for which they had been especially trained. By 1630, the divisions’ casualties had climbed to over five thousand, making it — apart from the mass U.S. surrender on Corregidor in World War II — one of the worst disasters in U.S. military history.

  As fresh Chinese and North Korean divisions continued to pour across the Yalu, General Kim’s North Korean regulars formed the eastern arm of a pincer soon to be completed by an artillery-supported right hook of four Chinese divisions — over sixty thousand Chinese and North Koreans in all — closing on the beleaguered Americans.

  The next morning, December 25 in Korea, Christmas Eve in the United States, millions of viewers across America were riveted and sickened by astonishing clear TV-satellite-relayed pictures from the Changsong “gauntlet,” seeing haggard, hollow-eyed American infantrymen, many too weak either from exhaustion, wounds, or both, struggling to fight off repeated Chinese attacks, which at times cut the road into segments in which they hoped to annihilate the U.S. troops, the fighting often hand to hand, after which the remaining Chinese, cannibalizing the retreating GIs’ equipment, re-formed for yet more attacks on the flanks of the demoralized and retreating American army.

  In all the television footage, however, one shot, a lingering pan of a quarter-mile section of road that had been white but was now red with American blood and littered with American dead, was the picture that traumatized civilians back home. About the road, brown boils of uprooted earth marked the spots where shells from the Chinese artillery had bracketed the retreating Americans. And now, in this war, the taboo that had been so long and meticulously observed right up to and including Vietnam — never to show a dead American’s face on film if possible — was broken. The taboo had not been violated through any willfulness of field reporters but because of the sheer efficiency of the electronic media whose signals were received in real time only seconds after the action had taken place. What, at first, viewers assumed were long shots of crumpled clothing turned out to be close-up photos of dismembered American soldiers blown apart by the Chinese artillery and high-velocity close-in weapons fired only seconds before.

  Throughout the television coverage, one of the most persistent comments concerned the bravery of the television cameramen who, though their pictures often shook violently from time to time, more from the pressure waves of the few remaining American 105s and mortars than from fear, kept filming some of the worst of the fighting. Even the older generation of civilians at home who, though too young to have remembered the Vietnam War, had seen footage of it later on, had never seen such carnage.

  What the U.S. media didn’t know, however, was that North Korean General Kim, whose favorite expression at Panmunjom during the prewar days was “Be careful, you Americans, or you will end up like Kennedy. Shot like a dog in the street,” had issued orders, with threat of severe punishment if not obeyed, that enemy TV cameramen and crew were not to be harmed wherever possible.

  “They are your allies in the struggle against the American warmongers,” Kim had explained to his comrades. “The way to defeat Americans is to show what is happening to their children. They are a weak people. They will cry for armistice as they did when our forefathers defeated them over fifty years ago. Remember, Comrades, American television was one of the most decisive strategies of our comrades in Vietnam. Show them American casualties and the antifascist youth of America will clamor for their brothers’ return. This is particularly true of the American bourgeoisie — the middle class. Show them how we are cutting the Americans to pieces and there will be mass demonstrations in the streets to bring their sons home.”

  * * *

  When the first reports, both visual and decoded military traffic, of Creigh’s retreat first reached Douglas Freeman, his plane, en route to Korea, was approaching Hawaii, and against all normal safety procedures, he not only refused to leave the plane while it was being refueled but ordered all thirty electronic warfare and other console operators to stay aboard as well. The situation in Korea was too critical for anyone to leave the plane, Freeman having decided to immediately issue orders for Creigh to stand and fight.

  “Not a matter of heroics, Jim,” he told Colonel Norton, “but if this casualty rake keeps up, the entire division’ll be wiped out before they get anywhere near Kusong. That’s over forty miles away. My God — what’s the matter with Creigh?”

  Norton handed him a sheaf of “eyes only” transmits from Creigh’s retreating HQ, the messages routed via Seoul.

  “Sir,” one of Freeman’s aides cut in, “we’ve got reports here from General Waverley, Two Brigade commander in Creigh’s outfit. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but you can read between the lines. Waverley’s saying Creigh’s stressed out!”

  “Stressed out!” bellowed Freeman. “Goddamn it! I’ll give him stress.” He stood up from his seat in the plane’s forward command booth. “Riley!”

  The radio operator came running down through the “canyon” between the two rows of consoles.

  “Yes, General?”

  “ ‘Top secret,’ priority rush to General Creigh, Second Infantry Division, Korean Northern Command. If you can’t pinpoint his position and beam it down, funnel it through Seoul, but get it there.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Riley, flipping out his notepad.

  “Message reads,” began Freeman, glowering as if Creigh, a popular commander by all accounts, was standing before him, Freeman starting to pace up and down the aisle just beyond the radio control like a caged b
ear. “Second Division is to cease retreat immediately. If you are incapable of command, you should transfer all authority at once. Repeat ‘at once.’ Shoot any man refusing to fight. I accept full responsibility. Freeman, C in C Korea. Message ends.”

  “By God,” said Freeman, turning to address the two lanes of operators. “Stressed! That’s just a fancy word for funk. Word gets out about Creigh shitting in his pants, we’ll have desertion on that road.” His voice was rising. “We’ll leave more than blood on that road, gentlemen. We’ll leave American honor.” He paused — Norton taking the opportunity to follow the radio operator down through the canyon. “Now,” continued Freeman, “I want everyone here to remember that. I don’t ever want to hear ‘stressed out’ in this command— goddamn pansy excuse for not working hard. Not doing your job. Do I make myself clear?”

  There was murmured assent.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir!” came a chorus.

  * * *

  Down by the radio console, Norton stood behind the operator and spoke in a quiet, even tone, to Riley, who was feeding the message into code pretransmission. “Change the first part of the message, Riley,” Norton told him. “Replace ‘if you are incapable’ with ‘if you are incapacitated.’ “

  Riley looked up worriedly at the colonel.

  “Just do it, son,” said Norton. “If it hits the fan, I’ll take the flak.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  In the halls of the Admiralty in London’s Whitehall and in Brussels HQ, a crisis of another kind was building, one of whose consequences, if nothing was done about it, would be infinitely more terrible than those facing the Americans in Korea. The operations board told the story in cold, unemotional figures — the rate of Soviet submarines sunk in the Atlantic had fallen off drastically, and the Allied convoys from the United States and Canada devoted to maintaining the rollover necessary to resupply Allied Europe were being sunk at a rate greater than that which had occurred in the early months of the war. For NATO’s C in Cs, the danger, suspected earlier, was now being confirmed with yet another convoy of fifty ships having suffered over sixty percent losses barely a hundred miles north of the Azores. How the Russians submarines were doing it, neither Admiralty in Whitehall nor Norfolk, Virginia, knew, but the mathematical equations gave them the stark warning: If rollover faltered any further, then not only would Europe face the possibility of being starved into submission through lack of conventional munitions as well as food from America, but this lack would force the Allies to the weapons of last resort, which might be the last of everything.