by Bart Gauvin
Rob was gathering his files as well when he heard Falkner call to him from the head of the table, “Colonel Buckner, a word.”
He began working against the crowd towards the head of the table, passing Admiral Johnson on the way who admonished him quietly to hurry back when the “old man” was done with him, as they had a lot of work to do given the outcome of the meeting.
Falkner was making some annotations on a sheet as Rob approached. The commander of the US 2nd Fleet, responsible for operations in the Atlantic Ocean and presumptive commander of NATO’s powerful Strike Fleet Atlantic in the event of war with the Soviets, motioned for the Marine to sit as he finished up.
Rob contemplated his chief. The man was physically unremarkable. With thinning white hair, he would have fit in easily with the wiry local farmers of the admiral’s hometown in rural southern Minnesota had he been wearing blue jeans instead of Navy khaki. His face was open, friendly, honest. The flint and intelligence behind those blue eyes belied the truth; this man was a leader. After a few seconds the admiral handed his notes to his flag lieutenant, who quietly departed, and then it was just Falkner and Buckner in the room.
Sitting back in his chair Falkner looked up and said “So, Rob, how are you settling in?”
“Well enough sir, thank you.” Rob answered. “My apologies it took me so long to get up here. The people down at Lejeune were less than happy about letting me go early. I appreciate the opportunity to work here.”
That was an understatement. General De Vries had been livid about Buckner’s early departure from 2nd Marine Division.
“You getting along alright with Admiral Johnson?” Falkner asked next.
“No problems on my end, Admiral. I hope he doesn’t hold what I said in the meeting against me, though,” Buckner said.
“He’s a good man. He won’t hold it against you at all. He will be hard on you, but I think you’ll find he’s fair, too. How are Helen and the kids settling in?” Falkner asked without pause.
“They stayed down in North Carolina for a few months, sir. Wanted the kids to finish out the school year before we moved. Helen wasn’t thrilled about it, but I think it’s best,” Rob answered.
“I think you’re right,” Falkner agreed. “My Ellie went to three different high schools in four years. This life is hard on kids, Rob. I appreciate your family making the sacrifice to come up here.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Falkner paused, then went on, “So to business.” He let out a puff of air. “I wanted to take a minute to talk to you about how I’m going to use you on my staff.”
Buckner’s interest was piqued. Positions on a military staff were relatively well defined. He was in charge of planning amphibious operations, reporting to the N3. If Admiral Falkner had something else in mind for him, well, that was intriguing.
“Now I know you were looking forward to being chained to your desk over in the ‘three’ shop,” the older man teased, “but I recruited you for more than coordinating amphibious training plans. I need someone I can use as my eyes and voice around the fleet and with the fleets of our allies. Someone I can trust to understand my orders and explain them in person if necessary, someone who understands my intent and can improvise in a pinch. I can’t go sending my N3 off on courier missions, so I think you’re my man. You up to it?”
“I think so, sir. I’m excited for the opportunity,” Rob answered, feeling gratified at the trust that Falkner was showing in him.
“Good! I know you’re disappointed about not getting your regiment, Rob,” Falkner’s summary of the Marine’s feelings was understated in the extreme, “but I think you’ll find your job here rewarding, and I’m glad to have you. We have a lot of Gulf War veterans around the fleet, and around the military, who seem to think we’ve proven to the world once and for all that no one can beat us. They may well be right, at least right now, but I imagine the Russians see things differently. I actually value the fact that you weren’t over in the desert, Rob. If things ever go hot with the Soviets, I seriously doubt they are going to play into our hand like Saddam did.”
Buckner nodded, gratified that at least one person in the world seemed to value his strengths and career’s worth of experience.
“You are going to have a lot of influence on the fleet’s operations, Rob,” Falkner went on, building up his subordinate. “I’m going to work you hard, and you still work for Johnson too, so you’re going to be pulling some double duty. Expect to travel a lot in your capacity as my liaison. May want to look into one of those new frequent flier programs,” the admiral suggested with a smile.
“Yes sir,” Buckner responded, returning the smile.
“Alright, for now head back to your shop,” Falkner ordered. “I’m sure Xavier has plenty for you to do. He’s aware of how I plan to use you, so don’t worry about that. Get yourself settled in, and let me know when the family gets here.”
Rob stood and departed. As he left the conference room the spark of excitement had returned, this was going to be more than another desk job, he was moving forward into unknown territories.
CHAPTER 9
1000 MSK, Tuesday 29 March 1993
0700 Zulu
Northeast of Pskov, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
GUARDS COLONEL ILYA Romanov stood in the open paratroop door of his Ilyushin Il-76 jet transport looking down over the deep green of the birch forest cover giving way to the lighter green of the drop zone’s rolling grassland. The slipstream whipped around him, tugging at his camouflage uniform as well as the forty-kilogram load of parachutes, rucksack, and weapon hanging from him like saddlebags on a mule. The ribbed cloth padded helmet fastened under his chin hid his close-cropped blond hair, framing an open, high-cheekboned Slavic face. His eyes, a deep blue, hid nothing, though he sometimes wished they did. All he hoped was that when his soldiers looked at him, they saw a confidence and strength that he wished to inspire in them.
Using both hands to brace himself against the metal frame of the open door, the desantnik officer leaned forward until his entire upper body was protruded outside of the aircraft, almost into the one-hundred-fifty knot slipstream, rotating his head to look towards the rear of the aircraft. This part of a jump never failed to thrill him; it was just him, hanging out of a jet aircraft, suspended between earth and sky. He visually inspected the transport’s skin for any protrusions that could harm him or his men when they jumped in the coming seconds. All looked in order, and using his arms he levered himself back into the airplane.
Romanov turned and clapped the jumpmaster on the shoulder, indicating that all was in order. Looking down the dimly-lit cavernous interior of the transport, he could see his “chalk,” the close-packed, swaying line of desantniki who would momentarily follow him out into the void. An identical chalk stood against the opposite side of the fuselage where Major Misha Medvedev was just completing his own door check. These and the rest of his command, the 234th Guards Airborne Regiment of the 76th Guards Airborne Division, were his men, and in such moments of shared danger he cherished the camaraderie with them.
Catching the eye of the next jumper in line, his Jewish commissar, Major Ivan Sviashenik, he smiled. The commander always jumps first, the same as every paratroop unit in the world, but most political officers that Romanov had known were reticent about participating in such training. A look of mutual respect passed between the two officers as their eyes locked briefly, both men swaying with the motion of the aircraft as they neared the drop zone.
The jumpmaster on Romanov’s side of the aircraft clapped his colonel on the shoulder and shouted into his ear over the roar of the wind, “Ten seconds!”
Romanov turned to square up to the door, and waited for the indicator light to switch from red to green.
The deep whine of the jet transports’ turbofan engines increased to a scream as the vee of three Ilyushins flew low
from right to left over the drop zone. Even inside the protection of the enclosed observation tower, Pavel Medvedev could feel the raw power of the engines that propelled each of the blue-, white-, and gray-painted transports. He watched the aircraft through an over-sized set of binoculars from the elevated perch of the climate-controlled tower sheltering him and the other dignitaries from the early spring of the Russian landscape. The large plate glass windows gave a panoramic view of the tree-lined rolling grassland before him. This field was one of the training drop zones for the 76th Guards Airborne Division, stationed south of the nearby medieval city of Pskov.
The president focused on the nearest aircraft. The big jet was moving so slowly it seemed to be floating. Behind the lead vee followed three more aircraft, and three more behind those. He could see the open cargo ramp in the rear and an open door just forward of the high-slung wing. The camouflage-clad silhouette of a man was visible filling the dark rectangle. Medvedev watched the figure intently, waiting for him to jump.
Instead, a large drogue chute billowed out the back of the wide-bodied transport. Pavel shifted his attention just in time to see it yank the dark, boxy, shape of a vehicle out of the aircraft and off the rear cargo ramp. The president’s heart skipped a beat as the vehicle nosed down and plummeted towards the ground, but a huge parachute blossomed into a canopy, almost gently swinging the squat, olive colored vehicle until it was upright underneath the green dome. When it was within a few meters of the ground the straps between parachute and drop platform erupted in a flash, engulfing the vehicle in jets of thick, gray smoke. The entire package settled almost gently onto the damp, grassy clearing, the parachute drifting with the wind until it collapsed a little beyond the landing point. The entire descent had taken less than a minute.
Eight more vehicles had been dropped in a tight pattern by the lead trio of aircraft, a mix of armored BMDs, soft-skinned trucks, and tracked mortar carriers. They all landed in quick succession, wreathed momentarily in the smoke of their firing retro-rockets.
Next to the president, Marshal Rosla noted, “We drop the armored vehicles with their crewmen inside. This means they’re able to move into battle very quickly and the rocket braking system protects them from the impact.”
I would not wish to be one of those crewmen. Pavel imagined the cramped interior of one of the fighting vehicles as it swung through the air under its parachute and grimaced. He was gaining some new insight into why Russians venerated their desantniki, even assigning a national holiday, Airborne Forces Day, to honor those who had served in the elite airborne assault forces.
Medvedev shifted his attention upward where long lines of paratroopers swayed under drab, olive-colored parachutes. While these were still in the air the next trio of transports roared overhead, disgorging their own loads of paratroopers from their doors and the rear ramps. He focused through his binoculars on one man as he stepped from the nearest aircraft, gravity pulling him downward while momentum carried him forward with the vector of the plane. After only a moment, the falling figure’s static line, still attached to the aircraft, yanked out the parachute, which caught the wind and blossomed rearward like smoke on a breezy day, arresting the desantnik’s forward momentum and slowing his descent.
Two more soldiers exited the same door in the time it had taken the first jumper’s canopy to open, and more followed at the rate of one each half second from each of the aircraft’s exits. Soon the entire drop zone lay under a blanket of descending parachutes. Medvedev continued to watch his jumper dangle below his canopy. The man held his legs together and assumed a half-sitting posture as he approached the ground. Pavel felt his own body tense just before the paratrooper landed and collapsed into a controlled roll and then disappeared into the tall grasses and gentle folds of the drop zone.
The roar of the transports turned to a departing moan as Pavel pulled back from his binoculars to take in the whole scene. Desantniki were landing all over the vast, drop zone. Medvedev was surprised at how empty the scene in front of him became even from his perch ten meters off the ground. Occasionally he caught sight of a soldier tramping this way or that under the weight of his equipment, or a parachute draped over a bush, but he was having increasing trouble making sense of the seemingly empty field in front of him. Interesting, he thought, that so many soldiers can just disappear so quickly, even in such open terrain.
“Pavel Ivanovich, if you look over there,” Rosla said, indicating a small depression in the ground several hundred meters distant from their observation tower, “you can see an assembly area for one of the assault subunits. The desantniki will gather there and at other points around their commanders until they have assembled a large enough force, and then they will commence their attack on the objective. Speed and surprise are everything in these sorts of operations.”
Medvedev focused his glasses on the indicated area, though his bad eye slowed the process. There it is. A figure was kneeling in the low area, the man had extended a flimsy telescopic pole with a ragged purple flag at the top, and several other figures were already gathered around him, kneeling and facing out with their weapons ready. Pavel located another assembly area, this one marked by a light blue flag. Turning his attention back to the first group, he saw first one and then a second of the armored vehicles drive slowly into the depression.
“And there is the regimental command group,” Rosla continued, indicating a small knot of figures clustered at the top of a knoll. “Guards Colonel Romanov is commanding.”
Through the binoculars, Pavel could see a figure, which he assumed was the man Rosla had mentioned, kneeling and pointing while balancing what looked to be a folded map on his knee. Next to him was another kneeling soldier with an antenna sprouting from the rucksack on his back. Pavel watched the first figure take a handset from the radioman and speak into it.
A tinny voice came through speakers at the rear of the enclosed observation tower.
“All stations, all stations,” it said, “this is Stork Command. Send update on your assembly progress in sequence. End.”
Marshal Rosla leaned over and softly explained, “That is the regiment’s commander, Colonel Romanov. Now his subunit commanders will update him.”
Medvedev nodded as he shifted his attention back to watch the soldiers assembling around the purple flag. He saw one of them lift a radio handset and heard, “Stork Command, this is Orel One-One-Zero. We are fifty percent assembled and preparing to move into our supporting position.”
Rosla looked at his watch and grunted, “That is bloody fast for an assembly, even in daytime.”
A second voice crackled through the radio speaker. “This is Sova One-One-Zero, we are thirty percent assembled. We will be ready to commence the assault in ten minutes.”
“This is Stork Command. Hurry up, Sova,” came the terse, tinny reply.
Two more similarly brief reports crackled and hissed across the radio net. Then, after several minutes of radio silence, Medvedev heard, “Stork Command, this is Sova One-One-Zero. We have assembled minimum force and are prepared to execute the assault.”
“Acknowledged, Sova,” came Stork’s reply, then, “all subunits, this is Stork Command. Execute Phase Irina. Acknowledge in sequence. End.”
The requisite replies, “Orel, executing,” and so forth followed.
Rosla grunted again, looking at his watch. “That was a very fast assembly,” he said.
The Soviet president looked sideways at his minister of defense and chided, “I thought I instructed you to show me no Potemkin villages, Aleksandr Ivanovich.”
The marshal looked back, catching his president’s eye, and said, “This is no Potemkin village, Pavel Ivanovich. This is a normal, large-scale training exercise. The soldiers participating did not even know you and I would be observing until just before they boarded the aircraft.”
Medvedev nodded. Then a smile crept across Rosla’s serious face and the marshal
said, “Of course, I would be lying to you, sir, if I said I hadn’t selected what I consider to be the finest regiment in the Red Army for your first exposure to our training.”
Medvedev returned the smile, and both men brought their attention back to the panorama before them. After searching for a few moments and refocusing properly, he watched as a group of men followed behind two BMDs as the squat armored vehicles crawled up a slope. Reaching the crest, the men spread out into a skirmish line, vehicles in front and paratroopers going to ground. Soon puffs of smoke appeared, followed seconds later by the pop-pop reports of rifles firing what Medvedev knew were blank rounds.
Medvedev scanned beyond the firing line to the target, a village overgrown with stunted trees and bushes a couple hundred meters beyond them. The houses and buildings were clearly abandoned, the windows and door-frames empty, walls overgrown.
The radio speakers hissed to life, “Stork Command, this is Orel One-One-Zero. We have suppressed the objective.”
“Understood, Orel. Sova, this is Stork Command, execute Phase Katya.”
“Executing, Stork.”
Motion to the left of the village caught Pavel’s attention, and he swiveled his binoculars. Two columns of figures were jogging towards the village in the wake of two more of the turreted BMDs, some firing their weapons as they ran. The fire continued from Orel’s firing line as Sova’s assault element approached the village, the disconnect between the visual puffs and the popping sounds giving the scene a surreal quality. Then the radio crackled again, “Orel, Stork, cease fire.”
“This is Orel, ceasing fire.”
A red signal flare shot up from the advancing element and the firing from Orel’s skirmish line slackened, then ceased. To the left the advancing BMDs halted several dozen meters from the village, both rocking forward slightly on their suspension as the paratroopers that followed, surged past and spread into the village.
“This is where the assault element enters and secures the objective,” explained Rosla, watching through his binoculars.
