by Bart Gauvin
Medvedev again lost sight of many of the figures as they moved in and among the buildings, but little scenes here and there showed that the mock assault was still ongoing. Down one alley he saw a camouflage-clad figure toss a small object through a window and then flatten himself against the wall, simulating a grenade attack. At the corner of another building he saw one soldier kneel and point his weapon, while four more moved swiftly past him and burst through the open door of a small house. After several minutes Pavel could discern no further movement. Then the radio speaker crackled again.
“Stork Command,” the voice in the speaker said, “this is Sova One-One-Zero. The objective is secure. End.”
“This is Stork, copy. All elements proceed to the objective. End,” came the reply.
Events seemed to have slowed to a standstill from Medvedev’s perspective, but now the fields around the village came alive with organized movement. At different points around the drop zone groups of figures stood, shouldered their packs, and began trudging towards the group of buildings that occupied the center of the vast clearing.
“The exercise is concluding,” said Rosla. “I am very pleased with their level of training and proficiency. Would you like to meet the regiment’s officers, Pavel Ivanovich?”
“Very much so,” answered the president, setting down his binoculars.
The two men, followed by their aides and plain clothes security detail, exited the observation tower via a rear door and descended the three flights of grated metal stairs to the wet gravel below. Rosla and Medvedev wedged their big frames into an UAZ-469 jeep and with a command from the marshal the vehicle bounced along a dirt road, really just two muddy tire ruts, leading down the gentle slope. A small convoy followed.
As they drove, Medvedev watched as small groups of paratroopers trudged under the weight of their equipment toward the village. About a hundred meters ahead he saw a small truck, bogged down in a mud hole to the left of the trail, its rear wheels spinning and throwing up rooster tails of dark, wet earth. Several muddy figures were straining against the vehicle’s rear frame, helping push the truck out of its predicament.
As the jeep approached the mired truck, Medvedev saw another group, one carrying a radio pack, jog up to the vehicle, drop their weapons and packs and put their backs into freeing the truck. Everyone was knee-deep in mud behind the rear tires, but the vehicle started rocking. Successive oscillating heaves, coupled with revs of the engine that covered the helpers with yet more wet earth, finally freed the truck, which climbed tentatively out of the hole before bouncing away.
Marshal Rosla ordered the driver to stop. As the jeep bounced to a halt, he stepped out into the mud. Surprised, Medvedev followed suit. His dress shoes, ill-suited to the wet conditions, slipped and slid, picking up large chunks of mud as he joined his defense minister in front of the vehicle.
Rosla walked confidently towards the milling knot of mud-splattered soldiers as they turned in surprise at the incongruous sight of the marshal, dressed in his olive tunic complete with shoulder boards and ribbons. Two members of the group stepped forward and stiffened to attention just as Rosla called out, “Colonel Romanov, I should have known I’d find you doing some labor below your rank,” his tone was loud, good-natured.
“One cannot just walk past an important task and expect others to come along and do it, tovarich Marshal,” came the equally good-natured reply. The speaker was a fit, well-built figure as far as Medvedev could tell through the mud and grime that coated the man’s uniform.
Rosla marched up and shook Romanov’s hand, then pulled him into a warm embrace. Stepping back, the marshal proclaimed, “It is good to see you, Ilya Georgiyevich. It has been too long.” Turning back to the president, Rosla said, “Sir, allow me to introduce the commander of this operation, the Colonel of the 234th Guards Airborne Regiment, Guards Colonel Ilya Georgiyevich Romanov.”
Medvedev stepped forward and took Romanov’s hand. Romanov possessed handsome features, but not rakishly so. His eyes were blue, his hair hidden underneath the brown helmet. The entire effect of the man’s open, angular demeanor inspired instinctive trust from Medvedev, as the president was sure it did for the colonel’s soldiers. He was thinner than Medvedev and Rosla, athletic, of medium height and build, clearly in the prime of physical conditioning. “Greetings, Colonel. I offer you my compliments on the exercise. From what the defense minister explains, your soldiers performed very well.”
“Thank you, sir,” responded Romanov, “I am very proud of my men. They’ve worked hard in the past months. There are still many things we can improve, particularly the speed of our assault force assembly, but any faults are mine, not the men’s.”
“I judged that your forces assembled very fast, Ilya. You’re too hard on yourself, as usual,” chided Rosla.
“Perhaps, sir. We reduced the minimum force requirements for the assault unit, to improve how rapidly they could transition into the attack, but I would like to see them move a few minutes faster to maintain surprise and initiative,” answered Romanov, respectfully.
Rosla nodded, conceding the point. He turned to face Medvedev, clapped a meaty paw on Romanov’s shoulder, and said, “I knew this rascal when he was a young officer on his first tour in Afghanistan. He had some odd ideas about how we should interact with the locals, trying to understand them or allow them to preserve their backwards way of life or some such nonsense. We held on to him anyway.” The last was delivered in a teasing tone of voice.
Romanov smiled and responded, “I don’t deny it. I believe some of our methods in that war were,” the man paused, and said, diplomatically, “heavy-handed. At times counterproductive. I wrote as much in an article published in Military Thought last year.”
Medvedev’s guard was immediately up. He possessed the typical Russian disdain for Asiatics, and he considered the Afghans to be worst of all after the past decade. If this man has sympathies for those ragheads…
“…and how are the new contracted soldiers working, Ilya?” Rosla was asking. Introducing limited volunteer service to the Red Army, soldiers who agreed to a longer term of service than the typical srochniki, or draftees, in exchange for better pay and other benefits, had been one of the more controversial of Medvedev’s military reforms. The vice president almost had a stroke when we agreed to that one, Medvedev remembered with a smirk.
“Very well, sir,” Romanov answered. “We have few of them to date, but those who have joined us are displaying a higher level of moral-psychological motivation. I just promoted one to junior sergeant last week. Send us more! We have benefited very much from a slower tempo of operations of late as well. Time to train rather than be policemen.” The 76th Guards Airborne Division had been used and reused over the past several years to quash unrest in the Caucasus, the Baltics, and in Ukraine.
Foreign sympathies aside, Medvedev could not help liking Romanov. He exuded an openness, an honesty that Pavel found too rarely in the corridors of power. Over the colonel’s shoulder the president noticed another officer, still braced at attention, but a slight smirk turning up one corner of his mouth. “And who is this officer?”
Romanov turned, then said warmly, “Ah sir, allow me to introduce my regiment’s zampolit, Major Ivan Avramovich Sviashenik.”
A Jew for a political officer? Medvedev thought, surprised, noting the man’s patronym “Avramovich,” which meant “son of Abraham.” That is unusual. He reached out and shook the major’s hand. “How do you like being in the desantniki, Major?” he asked.
“I fancy it very much, tovarich President,” responded the zampolit. “I wished to join the airborne forces as a combat officer in my younger years, but there were circumstances that were in the way.” The man said, slowly, “Then I discovered that most zampoliti do not volunteer for the VDV, and, well, I saw the opportunity to join these fine men in another capacity, and promote proper Marxist-Leninist ideology, of course,” he a
dded, almost as an afterthought.
Circumstances like your ethnicity, I am sure, reflected Medvedev, not buying the man’s half-hearted endorsement of socialist thought. The president turned his attention back to the commander. “Colonel, I understand that my son is an officer in your regiment. I am sure he is not here now because he is avoiding me. He does not like to think that his name influences his success as a military officer.”
Romanov smiled an easy smile, nodding, “You are correct, sir. Major Medvedev asked to be assigned to duties at the far end of the drop zone and I obliged.” Romanov’s face turned earnest, though still friendly. “Of course, your son need not worry, tovarich President. He is a good officer. I am pleased to have him on my staff.”
Medvedev knew sycophancy when he saw it, and this compliment bore no mark of it. It was an honest comment from a professional to the father of one of his subordinates, and Medvedev accepted the praise at face value. His chest swelled with pride.
“Well, you keep that scallywag in line,” Pavel said warmly, “and tell him I am still expecting him to come hunting with me on his leave in June.”
“I will sir,” answered Romanov.
“Tell the president what you are doing now,” Rosla prompted, guiding the conversation back to military matters.
Romanov nodded again. “Of course, sir. We are making our way to the objective, the village up there. The regiment’s officers are gathering and then we will conduct an after-action review. It is something the Americans do in their training, they get together and determine what went well and what needs improvement after an exercise. I find it to be a very intelligent procedure. I’ve tried to instill my officers with a sense of humility, a desire to learn and improve. We conduct one of these reviews after every exercise. Anyone can speak, and anyone can be criticized, even,” he touched his chest with a smile, “the commander. We have seen great improvements come out of it.”
Again, Medvedev was impressed. He tried to imagine a group of political apparatchiks similarly sitting around and honestly critiquing each other. He found it likely that such an exercise would end in shouting and blood within minutes.
“I would like to implement this method throughout the Red Army,” Rosla agreed, “but I believe we must overcome some issues of culture before this is viable. Not every commander is a Colonel Romanov!”
“I thank you, sir,” Romanov said, clearly embarrassed.
“Well,” the marshal said, “tovarich President, we should allow the colonel and his officers to conduct their review. There are other things I would like to show you. The division commander has a briefing for us back at Pskov.”
The men shook hands all around and parted ways, Medvedev and Rosla to their jeep, the desantnik officers re-shouldering their packs and weapons and trudging on towards the mock village.
Inside the jeep, as he was trying to scrape the mud from his shoes, Medvedev looked back at his defense minister and asked, “You mentioned the colonel’s sympathy for the Afghanistansi. He seems very impressive, but is that not a sign of weakness?”
“Weakness?” Rosla’s face showed shock. “Pavel Ivanovich, that man should have a Hero of the Soviet Union medal pinned on his chest!” Rosla shook his head, “Weakness. I was his commander in Afghanistan and let me tell you a story about a young Captain Romanov. We were conducting a helicopter insertion in a mountainous area to interdict a Mujahideen caravan route. The altitude was very high, over three thousand meters, so the helicopters could only hold half of the normal compliment of soldiers, and the landing zone was small due to the terrain, only large enough for one aircraft to land at a time. Well, the Mujahideen were waiting for us. I don’t know how they knew where we would land, but they did. Romanov was on the first aircraft to land. The enemy allowed the first two choppers to unload, then they opened a heavy fire on the third and forced it to break off. Romanov was stranded on that mountainside with barely a dozen men, and now those Mujahideen were closing in, firing, trying to finish him off.”
Rosla had Medvedev’s full attention, the president leaning in, as the marshal excitedly recounted the war story. “But did he panic? Not Romanov. He grabbed a radio from his forward air controller, who was panicking, and called in the supporting gunships almost on top of his own position, really within fifteen meters. Then he led his men forward with bayonets, bayonets, Pavel Ivanovich, and drove those ragheads completely off the mountain. I was there, in the regimental command post. I heard the whole thing over command net. That man is the best we have in our army, maybe in any army. If his instincts say to go soft on the Afghanistansi, well, I trust him.”
Medvedev nodded, impressed. What his son Misha had said about his commander had also been positive. Now Pavel was especially glad to have his son working under such a man. Satisfied, he changed the subject. “How is Plan Boyar coming along?”
The marshal let out a sigh. Boyar was the codename they had settled upon for the contingency plans for intervention in Poland and the actions taken to counter NATO interference in that country. “Not as well as we would wish,” Rosla admitted. “We are gathering indications that NATO is making preparations of their own to improve their readiness by this December. They may be in a much better position to counter us in Poland than is acceptable.”
“Regardless,” Medvedev countered, “I wish to review the plan while I am in Siberia in June. Can you have it to me by then?”
“You will have it,” Rosla acknowledged, “but I warn you that many things may change between now and December.”
Several hundred meters farther up the road, Colonel Romanov and his staff were still trudging under their packs, covered in mud, towards the village for their review. The colonel was teasing his zampolit.
“‘And promote Marxist-Leninist ideology, of course,’” Romanov mimicked his political officer. “Some priest of Marxism-Leninism you are!” The ribbing was good-natured, and it was nothing new. Major Sviashenik was anything but a good socialist, had worked and studied to become a zampolit solely to secure his place among the desantniki that his race had otherwise denied him. Romanov knew this, and he did not care. Sviashenik was a good officer, zampolit or not, and the colonel was glad to have him. The younger man was always volunteering to be the first jumper from an aircraft, to lead reconnaissance missions, to do all the things Ilya usually expected of a young, motivated combat officer.
“Well, you were not the model of political tact, either, my Colonel,” countered the major with good humor, “telling the president that our policy towards the Afghanistansi was all wrong.”
The whole staff chuckled as they walked. Romanov had worked hard to create an easygoing atmosphere among his officers, albeit one in which he was the undisputed, benevolent autocrat. “Perhaps we all need more political tutoring,” said Romanov shaking his head in mock despair. “Say, Sviashenik, isn’t that your job?” More chuckling.
“You have me there, Colonel. I suppose I will need to continue to study the works of Marx and Lenin to ensure that our regiment can obtain even greater heights of excellence.” The riposte was delivered with a slight undertone of bitterness, and Romanov let off.
They continued in a jovial silence towards what future they did not yet know.
CHAPTER 10
1100 EST, Monday 14 June 1993
1600 Zulu
Aboard HMCS Onondaga, off Cape St. Charles, Labrador, Canada
“UP PERISCOPE.”
The burnished metal tube hissed upwards in front of Lieutenant Commander Eddie “Skip” Hughes, captain of one of the Royal Canadian Navy’s three British-built Oberon-class diesel-electric submarines, the Onondaga. As the tube containing the boat’s search periscope extended to its full height, Hughes stepped forward, slapped down the handles, and grasped them at a crouch to bring his face level with the optic’s eye pieces.
Sergeant David Strong watched the process from a kneeling position in the c
orridor. He was wedged between the small submarine’s banks of silent diesel generators in the compartment aft of the cramped control room. Strong and the three other members of his special forces team, Tenny, Brown, and Roy were out of their element aboard HMCS Onondaga. They had conducted dozens of exercises in the preceding months, but this was the first in which they would actually transfer from ship to shore. This exercise represented a culmination of their rigorous training regimen and a chance to validate themselves in the type of mission they would be called upon to execute should war ever arise.
Indeed, this was the first time since World War II that a Canadian submarine would be used for such a purpose, but in wartime special forces would almost certainly deploy covertly from a boat like Onondaga, which was small, quiet, highly maneuverable—and expendable. Strong and his team were to become the designated experts in maritime deployment within their squadron, and this was their first chance to exercise under realistic conditions. Strong was fascinated, having only ever experienced this sort of thing in movies up until now.
The captain hurriedly crab-walked the periscope through a full circle. He paused twice, mashed a button with his thumb, and called out, “Northern headland, bearing three-three-zero. Southern headland, bearing two-four-three. Surface is clear.” Then slapped the handles back up, stepped away, and ordered, “Down periscope.”
As the tube slid downwards into its well, Strong saw the chief petty officer click a stopwatch and announce: “Eleven-point-three seconds, sir.”
Hughes swore under his breath, grimaced, and stepped forward. He squeezed between the periscope tube and the chief petty officer to join the navigator at a small table no larger than the kind of fold-down tray one would find in the back of a typical airline seat. He used a compass and protractor to plot the boat’s position.
“Five meters under the keel,” the navigator said softly.
