Warrior Class

by Dale Brown

  than sixty percent of its size, scattering contaminated and polluted salt across the once-fertile Kazakh plains.

  Pavel Kazakov had continued with the Russian tradition of raping Kazakhstan. He'd chosen the easiest, cheapest, and highest-producing ways to pump oil, no matter how it hurt the land or how badly it polluted the Caspian Sea. Even after the required bribes to Kazak and Russian government officials to bypass what few environmental regulations were enforced, Kazakov had made immense profits. The gamble had paid off big, and Metyorgaz soon became the third-largest oil and gas producer in the Soviet Union, behind government-run Gazprorn and the richest semi-independent Russian oil producer, LUKoil. Metyorgaz became the largest Russian Caspian Sea oil producer by far.

  He increased his wealth and prestige by taking another gamble. The Russian government had mandated that Caspian Sea oil flowing into Russia be transported to the huge oil distribution ten-ninal in Samara, about seven hundred miles north along the Ural River near Kujbysev, through which all of the oil flowing from western Siberia passed. The existing pipeline had a capacity of only three hundred thousand barrels, per day, and Kazakov envisioned pumping six to seven times that volume in just a few short years. He had to find a better way.

  The answer was clear: build his own pipeline. Neither the Russian Federation nor the newly independent Republic of Kazakhstan had money for this, so Kazakov took it upon himself to beg, borrow, and enlist the help of dozens of financiers around the world. He raised more than two and a half billion dollars and started the largest oil and gas pipeline project in the world, a nine-hundred-and-thirty-mile behemoth line from Tengiz, Kazakhstan, to Novorossiysk, Russia, on the Black Sea. Capable of transporting almost a million and a half barrels of oil a day, with expansion possibilities to almost two million barrels per day, the pipeline had opened up previously abandoned terminals and pipelines on the Black Sea in Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Although Kazakov had to pay huge sums in fees, taxes, leases, and bribes to the Russian and Kazakh governments, he still became one of the wealthiest individuals in Europe.

  He used his newfound wealth and started investing in su-

  pertankers and refineries, shifting from the oil-producing and -pumping business to the shipment and refining business. The refineries in Ukraine, Bulgaria,

  and Turkey were happy to have him oversee operations, and they made Kazakov even wealthier. He modernized a half-dozen facilities in those three countries, making them far more efficient and cleaner than any yet developed in Eastern Europe.

  But his core problem still remained: his main customer was still Russia or Russian client-states of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and their oil refining industry was one of the worst in the world, hopelessly outdated and inefficient. Kazakov could pump it profitably, but he lost money every time he sold product to the CIS, because they could not afford to pay very much for it and payments sometimes took a long time. The real money lay in shipping oil to Western European refineries, and that meant shipping oil through the Bosporus Straits into the Mediterranean. The problem was, the number of tankers transiting the Straits was already huge-an average of ten supertankers a day, added to all the other traffic in the Straits, meant wasted time and money, not to mention the tariffs Turkey extracted for each barrel of oil passing through its country. Despite his enormous wealth, Kazakov was a runt among giants when it came to competing with multinational Western oil producers.

  Naturally, as Pavel Gregorievich Kazakov's wealth and prestige grew, so did the rumors. Most claimed he was a Russian Mafia boss, with an organization more influential and powerful than the Russian government; others said he was a drug dealer, tapping into Kazakhstan's other major exportheroin-and using his contacts in both the East and West to transport thousands of pounds of heroin per month throughout Europe; others said he was a spy for the Americans, or the Chinese, or the Japanese, or whoever happened to be the scapegoat of the month.

  The bottom line for Colonel-General Zhurbenko was this: no one, not even he, with all his access to military and civilian intelligence resources, knew for sure. That made Pavel Kazakov a very, very dangerous man, and an even more dangerous

  adversary. Zhurbenko had too many children, grandchildren, dachas, mistresses, and foreign bank accounts to risk stirring up the mud trying to find out-he was sure Kazakov could take all of them for himself if he chose.

  Which is why when Kazakov asked that question about his mother, Zhurbenko replied nervously, "Of course not, Pavel," taking a deep sip of whiskey to calm his nerves. When he looked over at Kazakov again, he saw the young entrepreneur's eyes shaded in the interior lights of the back of the limo, hooded-like a snake's, he thought. "You know as well as 1, Pavel: the Army hasn't been the same since our humiliation in Afghanistan. We could not even bring a bunch of ragtag goat herders to heel there. Afterward, we couldn't defeat one rebel army in our own backyard, even if they were just some unemployed factory workers with a few black market guns. Vilnius, Tbilisi, Baku, Dushanbe, Tiraspol, Kiev, Lvov, Grozny twicethe once feared Red Army has become little more than a bump in the road for any two-bit revolutionary."

  "You let those Albanian peasants chop up my father like a suckling pig!" Kazakov said hotly. "What are you going to do about it? Nothing! What did I read in Interfax this morning? The Russian government is considering removing its peacekeeping forces from Kosovo? Seventeen soldiers are slaughtered by KLA marauders, and now the government wants to turn tail and run? I thought surely we would send a battalion of shock troops or a helicopter assault brigade into Albania and mow down every last one of the rebel bases!"

  "We have only four thousand troops in Kosovo now, Pavel," Zhurbenko argued. "We barely have enough operating funds to keep them minimally operational-"

  " IMinimally operational'? For God's sake, General, our troops are having to forage for food! If I were in charge, I'd take one evening, send in an entire brigade to the last man, and blow every known or suspected KLA base to hell, capture their supplies, interrogate the prisoners, bum their homes, and to hell with world opinion! At the very least, it would give our soldiers something to do. At best, it would allow them to avenge the deaths of their brothers in arms."

  "I agree fully with your passion and your anger, young

  Pavel, but how little you know of politics or how to prosecute a war," Zhurbenko said, trying to keep the tone of his voice lighthearted. Kazakov took an angry gulp of whiskey. Zhurbenko certainly did not want to get on this man's evil side, he thought as he tried to appear as understanding and sympathetic

  as he could. "It takes time, planning, and most important, money, to execute an operation such as that."

  "My father invaded Pristina with less than twelve hours' notice, with troops that were barely qualified to do the job." "Yes, he did," Zhurbenko had to admit, although it was not

  the city of Pristina, just the little regional airport. "Your father was a true leader of men, a risk taker, a born warrior in the tradition of the Slavic kings." That seemed to placate Kazakov.

  But in the intervening silence, Zhurbenko turned over the question in his mind. Go into Kosovo with a brigade? It would take months, perhaps half a year, to mobilize twenty thousand troops to do anything, and the entire world would know about it long before the first regiment was loaded up. No. It was silly. Kosovo was a lose-lose situation. The murder of Colonel Kazakov and sixteen other soldiers in Kosovo only reinforced what Zhurbenko already knew-Russia needed to get out of Kosovo. Kazakov was certainly a brilliant businessman and engineer, but he knew nothing of the simplest mechanisms of modern warfare.

  But perhaps a smaller force, one or two light armored battalions, even a Spetsnaz airborne regiment. Pavel Kazakov's father had parachuted in an infantry company right onto Pristina Airport, right under NATO's nose, and caught the world off guard. It hadn't been a shock force, just a regular infantry unit-Zhurbenko was sure all its members hadn't even been jump-qualified at the time. A well-trained Spetsnaz unit of similar size, p
erhaps reinforced by air, would be ten times more effective. Why couldn't they do it again? NATO's presence in Kosovo was only a bit smaller than it was in 1999, but now they were deeply entrenched in their own little sectors, in secure little compounds, not daring to roam around too much. The Kosovo Liberation Army had free rein. But they weren't regulars-they were guerrilla fighters. Dangerous, even deadly

  in the right situation, but no match for a Russian special forces team on a search-and-destroy mission.

  The general noticed something that he had almost missed in his effort not to anger this young industrialist: Pavel Kazakov was passionate about something-the welfare of Russian soldiers in Kosovo, the ones his murdered father had commanded. He spoke about "our" soldiers, as if he really cared about them. Was it just because his father had been one? Did he now feel some sort of kinship with the soldiers killed in Kosovo? Whatever it was, it was a sudden glimpse behind the eyes of one of the most inscrutable personalities in the world.

  "This is very interesting, Pavel, very interesting," Zhurbenko said. "You would advocate a much stronger, more forceful role in Kosovo?"

  "Kosovo is just the beginning, General," Kazakov replied acidly. "Chechnya was a good example of a conflict well fought-bomb the rebels into submission. Destroy their homes, their places of business, their mosques, their meeting places. Since when does the Russian government condone independence movements within the Federation? Never.

  "Russia has interests outside our borders that need protecting as well," Kazakov went on. Zhurbenko was fully attentive now-because he had been thinking along the very same lines. "The Americans are investing billions of dollars into developing pipelines to ship our oil, oil discovered and developed by Russian engineers, to the West. What do we get out of it? Nothing. A few rubles in transshipment fees, a fraction of what we're entitled to. Why is this allowed to happen? Because we allowed Azerbaijan and Georgia to become independent. The same would have happened in Chechnya if we allowed it to happen."

  "But what about the West? Don't we need their investment capital, their coordination, the cooperation of their oil industry?" "Ridiculous. The Western world condemned our actions

  against Chechnya because it is politically popular to oppose Russia. The Americans are as two-faced as they can be. They condemned our antiterrorist security actions against one of our own republics, but NATO, a military alliance, attacks Serbia,

  a sovereign country and close ally, without a declaration of war, and ignores the indignation of the entire world!"

  "But we did nothing because we needed Western financial aid, Western investments-"

  "Rubbish," Kazakov said, taking an angry gulp of whiskey. "We went along with NATO's aggression against Serbia, remaining silent while our Slav brothers were being bombed, all to try to show support for the West. We were buffaloed into espousing the same rhetoric they were feeding the rest of the world-that opposing Slobodan Milosevic and so-called Serb ethnic cleansing would be more in line with the sentiment of the world community. So we remained silent and then joined the United Nations 'peacekeeping' efforts.

  "So what has the West done for us in return? Nothing! They think of different reasons not to provide us assistance or restructure government loans to suit their own political agenda. First they blamed our actions in Chechnya, then they blamed the election of President Sen'kov and the formation of a coalition government with a few Communists in it, then they blamed so-called human rights abuses, then weapons sales to countries unfriendly to America, then drug dealers and organized crime. The fact is, they just want us to heel. They want us pliable, soft, and nonthreatening. They don't want to invest in us."

  "You sound very much like your father, do you know that?" Zhurbenko said, nodding to his aide to refill the young man's glass. Pavel Kazakov nodded and smiled slightly, the whiskey starting to warm his granite-hard features a bit. He still looked evil and dangerous, but now more like a satisfied crocodile with a fat duck in his mouth than a cobra ready to strike.

  In fact, General Zhurbenko knew, Colonel Gregor Kazakov had never made a political comment in his entire life. He'd been a soldier, first, foremost, and ever. No one-very definitely including Zhurbenko-knew what the elder Kazakov's opinions of his government or their policies had been, because he'd never volunteered his thoughts, no matter how casual the surroundings. But the fiction seemed to work, and the younger Kazakov seemed more animated than ever.

  "So what do we do, Pavel?" Zhurbenko asked. "Attack? Resist? Ally with Germany? What can we do?"

  Zhurbenko could see Kazakov's mind racing furiously, lubricated and uninhibited by the alcohol. He even smiled a mischievous, somewhat malevolent grin. But then he shook his head. "No ... no, General. I am not a military man. I have no idea what can be done. I cannot speak for the government or the president."

  "You're speaking to me, Pavel," Zhurbenko urged him. "No one else around to listen. What you say is not treasonous-in fact, it might be considered patriotic. And you may not be a military man, but your background in international finance and commerce combined with your brilliance and intelligencenot to mention your commendable upbringing as the son of a national military hero--certainly qualifies you to express an educated opinion. What would you do, Pavel Gregorievich? Bomb Kosovo? Bomb Albania? Invade the Balkans?"

  "I am not a politician, General," Kazakov repeated. "I'm just a businessman. But as a businessman, I believe this: a leader, whether a military commander, president, or company chairman, is supposed to take charge and be a leader, not a follower. Our government, our military commanders, must lead. Never let anyone dictate terms. Not the West, not rebels, no one."

  "No one can argue with that, Pavel," Zhurbenko said. "But what would you have us do? Avenge your father's death? Tear Kosovo, possibly Albania, apart looking for his murderers? Or don't you care who the murderers are? Just avenge yourself on any available Muslims?"

  "Damn you, General, why are you taunting me like this?" Kazakov asked. "Are you enjoying this?"

  "I am trying to get through to you, young Gregorievich, that it is easy to point fingers and be the angry young manwhat is hard is to come up with solutions, with answers," Zhurbenko said. "Do you think it was easy for Secretary Yejsk and Deputy Minister Lianov to have to retreat to their cars without grieving with the families? Those men, the entire Kremlin, the entire high command, are suffering just as badly as you, as badly as your mother. Except the anguish you feel

  now is the anguish that we have been feeling for years, as we watch our great nation slip into disarray, powerless to do anything about it."

  "What would you have me say, General?" Kazakov asked. "Start a nuclear war? Go back to a communist empire? Engage the West in another Cold War? No. The

  world is much different now. Russia is different."

  "Different. How?"

  "We have allowed our friends, our former client states, our former protectorates, to break away from us. We built those little republics into nations. We didn't have to let them go. Now they turn on us and turn toward the West." Kazakov sat silently for a moment, sipping whiskey, then said, "They voted for independence-let us compel them to join the Commonwealth again."

  "Now we are getting somewhere, Pavel Gregorievich," Zhurbenko said. "Compel them-how?"

  "Carrot and the stick-then plonzo o plata, lead or gold," Kazakov said.

  "Explain yourself."

  "Oil," Kazakov said. "Look at all we have built over the years, all the places the Soviet Union invested to try to gain a foothold in Western commerce, only to lose it all. Oil terminals and refineries in Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Georgia. We gave billions to Yugoslavia to help build terminals and refineries and pipelines in Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Serbia. They are all going to waste, or they are going to bloodsucking Western conglomerates."

  "What are you talking about, Pavel?"

  "General, I agreed with our participation, my father's participation, in Kosovo, because I believe Russia has a vested interest in the Balkan
s-namely, to help bring Russian oil west." "What oil?"

  "Caspian Sea oil," Kazakov said. "How much oil?"

  "In ten years, with the proper infrastructure in place and under firm political and military control-five million barrels," Kazakov said proudly- "Two and a half billion rubles-about one hundred and fifty million dollars' worth." Zhurbenko

  didn't seem too impressed. He took another sip of whiskeylooking bored, until Kazakov added, "A day, General. One hundred and fifty million dollars a day, every dayfor the next fifty years. And we pay not one ruble to anyone in duties, taxes, fees, or tariffs. The money is all ours."

  Zhurbenko nearly choked on the Jim Beam. He looked at Kazakov in complete shock, a dribble of whiskey running down his cheek. "Wha ... how is that possible?" he gasped. "I didn't know we had that kind of oil reserves anywhere, not even in the Persian Gulf."

  "General, there is oil in the Caspian Sea that hasn't even been discovered yet-perhaps a hundred times more than we have discovered in the past twenty years," Kazakov said. "It could be equivalent to the oil reserves in Siberia or the South China Sea. The problem is, it doesn't all belong to Russia. Russia owns only one-fifth of the known reserves. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran own the rest. But Russian workers and Russian capital built most of those other nations' petroleum industries, General. Now, we pay outlandish prices for limited leases from those same countries-so they can use our equipment and our know-how to pump oil that Russia discovered. We must pay millions in bribes and fees, plus a duty for every barrel we ship out of the country. We pay huge salaries for unskilled foreign laborers while Russian men, educated oilmen, and their families starve right here at home. We do this because Russia didn't have the balls to hold on to what was rightfully theirs all along-the Soviet republics."