by Ralph Peters
Kolovets was not so sure. He had never been in combat. As an officer of tank troops, he had been able to steer clear of Afghanistan, since there were not too many tank units in the Soviet contingent, and there were always plenty of ambitious officer volunteers. Further, Kolovets had never commanded a forward detachment, even in an exercise. His receipt of the mission had resulted solely from the accidental configuration of the march serials, from his unit’s immediate availability.
Kolovets weighed alternatives. He wished he had one of the fancy decision-making support computers that higher echelons used to figure things out. That way, if things went wrong, he could blame the computer. Now he felt trapped. He could attack the enemy column. Of course, that could turn out badly. What if there were enemy tanks? On the other hand, if he didn’t attack, the lieutenant might report him or let something slip. Then he would be in trouble for not showing initiative. It could even be portrayed as cowardice, or dereliction of the assigned mission. Of course, Kolovets thought, he could always keep going toward the Weser River. Perhaps he would not encounter any further enemy activity. If he did make contact with the enemy near the Weser, however, he would be even farther from friendly support.
Kolovets felt as though a great injustice was being done to him. He believed that he was quite a good officer, all in all, even if he wasn’t a fanatic about it like the snots who were always working on correspondence courses or reading the deadly dull stuff that came out of the military publishing houses. He was also quite conscientious and careful about the misappropriation of military goods. He never got greedy or took anything that could reasonably be missed. A bit of gasoline here and there was the commander’s prerogative, just so a man could make ends meet. Kolovets did not mind all of the nonsense the system put a man through. But he did not believe that it should be his responsibility to make decisions of this sort. He was a good officer who followed orders.
The lieutenant called in an updated report, virtually begging Kolovets to attack the stalled enemy column.
In response, Kolovets tried one more time to reach his next higher commander. The attempt failed as bluntly as had all of the others.
Kolovets hated the lieutenant for putting him in such an awkward position. Probably some nasty little Komsomol twit. The kind who would run to report the slightest perceived failings in his legitimate superiors. The army wasn’t what it used to be. All of the restructuring nonsense had ruined it. Nowadays everybody was a tattler, and careers ended abruptly for trivial reasons. Things had gone downhill to the point where lieutenants could criticize higher officers in the pages of Red Star, the military’s primary newspaper. No one seemed to have any respect for the tried-and-true way of doing things.
Kolovets felt cursed. He did not have a real choice that he could see.
Perhaps there really were no enemy tanks in the halted column. The enemy couldn’t have tanks everywhere, could they? And even if things turned out badly, they couldn’t very well punish you for fighting.
Reluctantly, feeling as though his fate had been stolen from his hands, Kolovets ordered his unit to move out of the woods and begin prebattle deployment across the high fields to the south. He had his best company commander on the guiding flank. The boy was a good map-reader, and Kolovets was not about to trust his own skills in the dark and at a time like this. He made it very plain to the boy what he wanted: no nonsense, just get everybody out on line and hit the enemy from an oblique angle. Kolovets tried to phrase the orders over the radio so that everyone listening would know that, should the attack fail, it would obviously be the company commander’s fault.
As the firing calmed, moving on to other killing grounds, Seryosha suggested to Leonid that they hide in the basement. Occasional local shots, like strings of firecrackers, underscored the magnitude of any decision to move at all. Leonid felt miserable, lying in his wet tunic with splinters of plastic from the cassettes he had stuffed in his trouser pockets jabbing him in the thighs and groin.
“What if they’re still downstairs?” he said. “What if they’re just being quiet and waiting?”
Seryosha considered the possibility. “I can’t hear anything,” he answered nervously. “Can you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If they come back, they’re bound to find us up here. Anyway, there’s more protection from the artillery and everything down in the basement.”
“You know how to get there?”
“I think so.”
Leonid did not much like the idea of being shut up in a dark, foreign basement. But he realized that Seryosha was right. The fighting had so shaken the floor beneath them that he had expected the house to fall apart under the strain.
Simultaneously, the two boys began to rise.
“You’re clacking,” Seryosha said. “What have you got in your pockets?”
Leonid pushed at his comrade. “Just go.”
Seryosha led the way, stepping cautiously down the littered stairs. There was so much plaster and glass scattered about that it was impossible to be really quiet. Seryosha took one step at a time, and Leonid imitated him, pausing at each new level to await a violent response.
A scab of plaster crunched under Leonid’s boot. But the rest of the house remained still. It felt distinctly empty now. As they finished with the ordeal of the stairs they could see each other’s features clearly in the pinkish-orange glow of fires lowering beyond the broken-out windows.
“There was a door back in the kitchen,” Seryosha said. “That had to be it.”
But as they turned into the downstairs hallway, the lumpish outline of a corpse blocked their path. The dark outline of the helmet identified the body as Soviet.
Leonid and Seryosha edged past the dead soldier, careful to avoid any contact, as though the body bore a special contagion in the darkness.
They found their way to the kitchen. A fluttering glow lit the room where they had happily stuffed themselves just a few hours earlier. Now the room lay in a jagged shambles.
“The door was over there,” Seryosha said, gesturing with the long barrel of the light machine gun. He stopped, and Leonid understood that now it was his turn to go first.
All right, Leonid thought, trying to steel himself. He knew now that he was not a brave man. He felt terribly, unmistakably afraid. He forced his legs to carry him across the room. The door to the basement creaked as he opened it, and the sound seemed so loud that he was sure every enemy soldier in the area must have heard it. He stood indecisively at the top of a black chasm.
“I can’t see anything. It’s pitch black.”
“Here. Take this.” Seryosha poked a small cylinder into Leonid’s hand. It took him a moment before he realized that it was a cigarette lighter, looted from somewhere.
“It’s all right,” Seryosha went on. “I have another one.”
Leonid flicked on the little flame with his left hand, holding his assault rifle at the ready with his right.
“Get the light down out of sight,” Seryosha insisted.
Leonid advanced downward into the darkness, testing the steps. He heard the reassuring noises of Seryosha close behind him. The stairs were narrow and there was no handrail. Leonid shifted his weight, tapping down to find the next level. The small ring of light from the lighter’s flame failed to reach into the depths of the cellar.
Leonid felt his fingers burn, and he let the lighter go out. He halted abruptly.
“What’s the matter?”
“It got too hot,” Leonid whispered. “Just wait a minute.”
The two boys stood in the middle of the stairs, balancing in the darkness. The sound of his own breath seemed like the winter wind to Leonid. As soon as he judged it possible, he ignited the lighter again.
Something moved.
Leonid fired his weapon in the direction of the movement, stumbling down the last few stairs, tripping, falling face down. He scrambled and rolled out of the way, firing haphazardly, until he found a wall against which he could huddle.
The noise of the shots fired in the enclosed space echoed and rang in his ears. He felt as though he had been slapped hard on both sides of the head.
Seryosha brought the machine gun to bear. It sounded like a cannon firing. Leonid fired again, emptying his magazine in what he hoped was the right direction.
Someone screamed. Another voice shouted foreign words. Seryosha swept the machine gun through the darkness. But no one fired back. Streaks of light zigzagged crazily in the darkness, pinging and sparking off the walls.
“Stop it,” Leonid shouted, “stop firing.” He had suddenly realized that the ricochets were as likely to kill them as were any enemy actions.
Seryosha ceased firing.
“Surrender,” Leonid screamed at their phantom opponents.
A female voice shrieked in response, rising over the low notes of male groans.
“Surrender,” Leonid shouted, confused, his voice cracking. “Surrender.”
A female voice soared hideously in a strange language, babbling.
“What the hell is going on?” Seryosha said. His voice sounded near panic.
Leonid lifted himself from the floor, all bruised knees and elbows and the burning feel of scraped skin. He lunged toward the foreign voice.
“Surrender,” he ordered, his mind wild with fragments of thoughts that would not connect. He clicked on the lighter.
A heavyset girl stood with her back pressed against the wall, hands clutched to her face. She screamed in an animal fear that Leonid could not understand. It had never occurred to him that anyone might be afraid of him.
A few feet away from the girl, two bodies lay — a crumpled man and the thick form of a woman. The moans had stopped now, and the bodies lay remarkably still, with the man hunched over the woman as though he were shielding her.
It struck Leonid that the broken tapes in his pockets probably belonged to this girl, and he suddenly felt ashamed, as though he had been discovered as a thief.
The girl’s screams wheezed down into sobs. Leonid let the lighter go out, shaking his singed fingers to soothe them. Seryosha clicked on his own lighter. And the girl howled again. She rubbed herself from side to side against the cinderblock wall, as though she wanted to grind herself into it.
“Oh, no,” Leonid said suddenly, as the situation began to come clear to him. “No… I didn’t mean it…” He wished he could make the girl understand. He looked at her, gesturing thoughtlessly with his reeking weapon. “I didn’t mean it,” he repeated. “It was all an accident.”
The girl’s voice welled up again.
Seryosha stepped forward, slapping the girl with the hand that held the lighter. When it went out, Leonid took his turn again, working the flint with his sore fingers.
“Shut up,” Seryosha ordered. “You just shut up.” He slapped the girl again. There was a totally unfamiliar tone in Seryosha’s voice now.
The girl hushed slightly, as though she understood. But Leonid knew she didn’t understand at all.
“I’m sorry,” he told her again, anyway.
“You bet you’re sorry,” Seryosha told him angrily. Then he punched the girl. “Shut up.”
“Stop it,” Leonid told him.
“What do you mean, stop it?” Seryosha asked. “Who are you? You just killed them. Do you realize what’s going to happen to us if somebody hears her and comes down here? They’ll kill us.”
Such a possibility had not occurred to Leonid. Now it reached him in its fullness, stopping him with its power.
The girl sobbed against the wall, bleeding driblets from her lower lip. She had gone beyond words now, and she merely cried, face turned to one side. Her sounds were those of a weakening animal.
Seryosha thrust with the machine gun, jamming its muzzle hard into her chest like a spear. Then he brought the heavy stock around and smashed it into her face. Leonid watched in wonder. With clumsy speed, Seryosha beat the girl to the ground, hitting her so hard with the machine gun that she could not meaningfully resist. She waved a pudgy hand at the descending blows, then toppled to the side, crumpling in on herself. Seryosha brought the butt of the weapon down on her skull with all of his weight behind it. Then he hit her again. And again.
Finally, the boy straightened, gasping for breath.
“Now she won’t tell anybody,” he said.
Fourteen
Starukhin smashed his fist down onto the map table. “Don’t sing me a song, you little bastard. Fix it.”
“Comrade Army Commander,” the shattered chief of signals said, “the communications complex is a complete loss. A direct hit. It will take some time to restore — ”
“I don’t have time, you shit. I should send you down with the motorized rifle troops and let you see what war’s really like. How can I run an army when I can’t talk to anybody?”
“Comrade Army Commander, we can still communicate using manual Morse. And the auxiliary radios will be off the trucks and set up in no time. It’s just the multiplexing that will take a little time.”
“I don’t have time. Time is the one thing I don’t have,” Starukhin shouted. “You should’ve had all of the auxiliary systems set up and ready to operate. You’re a moron, a disgrace.” He looked around the headquarters. “You’re all a damned disgrace.”
The chief of signals almost replied that, since they had just shifted locations, it was unreasonable, even impossible, to expect that all of the backup systems would be fully prepared for operations. They had still been having trouble with the microwave connections even before the enemy strike. But he realized that it was hopeless to argue. All you could do was let the army commander blow over you like a storm, then pick up whatever was left.
Starukhin suddenly turned away. He began to pace back and forth like a powerful caged cat. Without warning, he smashed a hanging chart full of figures from the wall.
“I need to talk.”
Colonel Shtein watched the artfully crude film of the destruction of Lueneburg on the television monitor. As he watched, the same images were being broadcast over the highest-powered emitters in the German Democratic Republic. Shtein had no doubt that the film would be monitored in the West. It would soon gather the expected attention to itself. Even if the chaotic interference in the air completely blocked a successful broadcast into the heart of West Germany, the NATO elements hanging on in Berlin would monitor it. One way or another, the message would get through. Even the satellite television broadcasts from Moscow carried the report on the regular channels.
… Senseless destruction… precipitated and carried out by the aggressive NATO forces who are bent on destroying the cities and towns of the Federal Republic of Germany… perhaps even turning West Germany into a proving ground for their insane theories of tactical nuclear war… in the opinion of experts, a nuclear war restricted to West German soil would cause…
And the voice-over was merely ornamentation. The powerful images of toppling medieval buildings, of women and children dashing, falling, cowering, of civilians twisted into the frozen acrobatics of death, and of the Dutch forces firing indiscriminately, were irresistible. Shtein was well aware of how far the skills of Soviet media specialists had come over the years.
Shtein was convinced that this was a war-winner. At least the overall approach. Modern war was hardly a matter of beating each other over the head with a club. Shtein saw it as a highly articulated, challengingly complex conflict of intellects and wills. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. He laughed to himself, remembering his student days. He loved the Germans. They were so absolutely right, and so thoroughly unable to act upon the correctness of their conclusions.
We will beat them with cameras, Shtein thought. With video technology. With their own wonderful tools. He could not understand how the West could neglect so totally its vast array of technology that could potentially be used for propaganda purposes. War was, after all, a matter of perceptions. Even the most dull-witted historian could tell you that being physically beaten was not nearly as important
as being convinced that you had been defeated. Shtein believed that he was one of the pioneers, one of the soldiers of the future.
He admired the wrenching conclusion of the film once again. It would be broadcast again in an hour, then every hour on the hour. It would be supplemented by other clips as the war progressed, shifting the concentration of the propaganda effort as necessary. Fighting for the invisible, for the intangible, for the ultimately vital, Shtein thought. And he smiled.
Yes. The world as will and idea.
Major General Duzov, commander of the Tenth Guards Tank Division, watched the attack from the forward observation post established by the assaulting regiment. He recognized that his presence troubled the regiment’s commander. But Duzov didn’t care. In an earlier assault, he had lost a regiment of tanks in two hours, in a swirling British counterattack that had ruined both the Soviet force and its antagonist. And he had not been on the scene to control the situation. Now, if his division was going to take any more catastrophic losses, he at least intended to be present.
Lieutenant General Starukhin, his superior, had been as explicit as he could be. Punch the hole, Duzov. They’re worn down. Punch the hole, or don’t let me see your face alive.
He had two more chances. This attack, then the commitment of the trailing regiment. Duzov would have preferred to wait until he could strike with both regiments simultaneously, as well as throwing back in the battered motorized rifle regiment that had been working the broken ground to the south and the pathetic remains of the shattered tank regiment. Duzov believed in concentrated blows. And he knew he had one of the very best divisions in the Soviet Army. He hated to see it squandered piecemeal. It went against the grain of everything he had been taught, against all his beliefs.
But Starukhin had been adamant, rising to fury. Hit them. Just hit them again and again. This isn’t the General Staff Academy. Drive over them, Duzov. Save your maxims and elegant solutions for your memoirs.