Red Army

by Ralph Peters

  The air-assault commander was disappointed to learn how few tanks Bezarin had with him, and he was alarmed to hear that they were virtually out of ammunition. But Bezarin felt confident. Surely, the enemy had received reports that Soviet tanks had entered Bad Oeynhausen. That would slow down any planned countermeasures until the enemy assessed the impact of the change in the situation.

  Bezarin ordered Dagliev to recross to the east bank and block any enemy counterattacks from that direction, then he returned to properly position his remaining tanks against a threat from the south or west. Small-arms engagements continued to flare in the center of the town, but the noise did not seem to worry the air-assault commander. The bridge, after all, was everything.

  Now it was a matter of waiting to see who would arrive first, an enemy counterattack or formations of Soviet armor. Bezarin expected more high drama, perhaps even a sort of siege. But reality disappointed him. More small Soviet elements began to filter in, while some reconnaissance elements pushed on to the west. Another forward detachment found its way through, and its commander was disappointed that Bezarin had beaten him to the linkup. Regimental forward security detachments and advance guards arrived, often with vehicles from different units jumbled together. Lead elements from an army corps appeared, demanding that their vehicles receive unconditional right-of-way. The orders of march often made little sense, judged by the prescriptions of the manuals. But within an hour, enough combat power had crossed the Bad Oeynhausen bridge to hold the area against any counterattack the enemy was likely to launch. When Bezarin reestablished radio contact with his elements left behind at Rinteln, he learned that other Soviet units were crossing there, as well.

  Mission accomplished, Bezarin attempted to make out his after-action report, huddled in the stinking interior of his tank. He felt a desperate need to explain the day’s events from the perspective of his battalion. He was unsure whether he was a hero or a war criminal. He intended to be as honest as possible about the situation that had gotten out of hand during the engagement amid the refugee column. He wanted to get it out in the open. He did not intend to live with it as a secret, like one of the tormented characters in Anna’s beloved novels. In any case, he doubted that it would be possible to hide it. It was too big, too terrible. He remembered the girl in the torn sweater, how her arm had flown high over a spray of blood in the moment before she fell. In his imagination, he could see each of her bony fingers, reaching higher and higher, even though she had been too far away for him actually to have made out the fine details he now traced in his mind. Then the fleeing girl was Anna, reaching to touch the coppery leaves of a birch tree in the Galician autumn, and it all made perfect sense to him as he fell into an iron sleep.

  Twenty

  Chibisov felt the strain of the war in his lungs. The days and nights of near-sleeplessness and the stress involved in maintaining the objective conditions for troop control as NATO pounded away at the front’s infrastructure had clamped his asthma around his chest like a shrinking jacket of steel. He had already taken twice the allowed dosage of his East German medications, but he continued to feel as though his body constantly remained several breaths behind its real need. He worried that his powers of thought would deteriorate to a dangerous degree, that illness would rob him of his focus. Already, he had been forced by the crush of events to make decisions for the commander that would have been unthinkable just days before, despite the level of trust between the two of them. The staffs ability to function had been terribly shaken. In two days, Chibisov had learned to make drastic, immediate choices in Malinsky’s absence, making decisions that killed numbers still uncounted, judging only by the powerful law of the plan and his insights into Malinsky’s approach to military operations. Sequential and even concurrent methods of support for decision-making and planning had largely broken down. The truly crucial decisions had to be made upon the immediately available information in the executive manner. Under the circumstances, Chibisov did his best to be a perfect chief of staff and deputy commander for the old man, struggling not to insert his personal views, always seeking to act as a pure extension of the commander’s will. But now Chibisov worried that he might make a false move out of the sort of temperamental spitefulness that sickness brought out in the human animal.

  He had not been outside the bunker since the beginning of combat operations. Malinsky flew around the battlefield, applying his personal skills and attention at the points of decision, while Chibisov remained at the main command post, working the routine levers and gears. Chibisov had no doubt that Malinsky’s presence forward made a difference. The old man had the knack, the touch of the born general, able to see through the fog of war to the essence. Perhaps, Chibisov thought, there was something to bloodlines. Perhaps all of the centuries of family soldiering had made this difference in Malinsky, breeding a special, ultimately undefinable perfection in the man.

  Chibisov smiled bitterly at the shortness in his lungs. Yes, and if bloodlines determined fate, then what did that imply for him? A little Jew from the ghetto of Kiev or Odessa, sputtering the arcane formulas of a new metal religion. Worshiping the correlation of forces and means, the norms of consumption and the mathematical coefficients of combat results. He sensed that he was, after all, an impostor. How could he be otherwise? How could any of them have been otherwise? His father had fought for the Soviet Union and the international cause of socialism in Spain, and had nearly died in Stalin’s camps for his suspicious voluntarism within a viciously capricious system. Only the German invasion had saved the man from death in the snows of Magadan. As with Malinsky’s father, Chibisov well knew. And he laughed. What would the Hitlerite Germans have thought had they known that their invasion actually freed Jews? To fight them from Maikop to Potsdam. Jews who would have sons to fight their sons.

  Chibisov was never fully aware of the extent to which he accepted his Jewishness in the end. He mocked it to himself, working to hate it. Yet he inevitably cast himself in the term against which he so rebelled, insinuating it into the speech and thoughts of his comrades.

  Yes, he thought, the great socialist experiment has been a failure for some of us. May we never annihilate the past? My father came out of the camps without reproach or even a question, to join the struggle as though he had only been on sick leave. And his father’s father had played cat and mouse with the Okhrana, the czarist secret police, plotting the future by smoky lamps in back rooms in the near-medieval Ukraine. His grandfather had manned the barricades, fighting fanatically to bring a new world to birth. In the years of the troubles, he had withheld food from the starving, from his own people by any definition, to shorten the long and agonizing labor. Every weapon had been justified. The final result was to absolve all guilt.

  But there never was a final result. The golden age receded again and again. Next year in Jerusalem, Chibisov thought sarcastically.

  Why did we believe? Why us, out of all of them? The Russians and Ukrainians, wretched in their superstition and drunkenness… it was easy to understand their blindness, their madness. But how were we so deceived?

  We deceived ourselves, of course. Because we, of all the peoples of this earth, wanted most passionately to believe. Religious natures, with a weakness for mysticism. And the new religion of the revolution, of shining, benevolent socialism, the ideology of an unprecedented dispensation, of a new holiness… that was the new Jerusalem. New heavens and, above all, a new earth. It was, Chibisov thought, as though history had painstakingly set us up to be the fools.

  And yet, we had to believe. What else was there except belief? Belief in any religion. Even the religion of war. Am I of the blood of David, of Joshua and Gideon? Or the crouched asthmatic son of willing fools?

  Chibisov knocked lightly at the door to Malinsky’s private office. The old man had returned exhausted from visiting the front and army forward command posts, and despite the compounding successes of the day, he had ripped through the staff, unusually biting in his comments as he dema
nded key pieces of information. Chibisov had been relieved when he finally managed to steer the old man off for a bit of sleep.

  Now, all too soon, he had to disturb Malinsky. This was not a matter he felt he could address by himself. It was, potentially at least, far too big. The one great variable.

  Chibisov wondered to what extent Trimenko’s death had upset Malinsky. Of course, any flying would be hopelessly nerve-wracking after that. No. The old man would not have worried about the personal danger. But the unanticipated loss of Trimenko had been a blow to them all. If Starukhin was a wild bull who could break down the stoutest fences, Trimenko had been the front’s cat, always able to find a quick and clever way around the most formidable obstacles. Chibisov sensed that, with Trimenko’s loss, some intangible yet important balance had been upset within the front. Oh, his deputy commander would do well enough. This was a powerful new generation of leaders, and the situation in the north met all of the objective conditions for success, with the Germans encircled and Soviet forward detachments on the west bank of the Weser at Verden and Nienburg. The Dutch forces who had not been pushed out of the way and trapped against the North Sea on the Cuxhaven peninsula were dying piecemeal. But the loss of Trimenko was somehow greater than its purely operational significance.

  Perhaps that’s only my view, Chibisov thought. My unjustifiable emotional prejudice. Because Trimenko was like me in his methods and in his fondness for numbers and machines that emulate the more dependable aspects of human thought. Perhaps I merely feel a bit more alone.

  Chibisov knocked again. But there was still no response from within Malinsky’s office. He wished he could let the old man sleep. But there was important intelligence from the Western High Command of Forces, laden with rumors of political movement. And, internal to the front, the situation was growing troublesome in new respects. As NATO’s deep attacks destroyed more and more intelligence-collection systems Dudorov’s splendid picture of the battlefield was rapidly deteriorating. The loss of intelligence platforms and the resultant clouding of the battlefield left Chibisov with the sensation of a man going helplessly, relentlessly blind.

  Chibisov let himself in. Much to his surprise, he found that Malinsky was not asleep. The old man sat before the map, staring at its intense intermingling of friendly and enemy symbols. Despite the labor of clever staff officers, the situation map now appeared almost as though the different colors of the opposing forces had been thrown on randomly between the East-West German border and the Weser River. Here and there, a cluster of enemy symbols showed some integrity. The Germans, for example, had been pocketed in a vast area between Hannover and the southern forests of the Lueneburg Heath. But in other areas, expanding red arrows had overwhelmed the diminishing enemy markers. In between, it appeared as though the colors had been swirled together. Enemy forces remained behind the Soviet advance, while the Soviet elements that had penetrated most deeply appeared stranded in the blue rear. Chibisov made a mental note to order one of the operations officers to come in and clean up the map. So many units had been depicted that the graphics no longer telegraphed their meaning with directness and clarity — indispensable requirements for a commander’s map.

  Malinsky turned his head in slow motion. Chibisov felt that they were both captives of the same wearying spell in the darkness. He moved closer to the lighted magic show of the map.

  “Oh, it’s you, Pavel Pavlovitch,” Malinsky said, as though he had bumped into an acquaintance on a city street.

  “Comrade Front Commander,” Chibisov began, armored in his formality, “we have a bulletin from the High Command of Forces Intelligence Directorate.”

  Malinsky looked up at him. The old man’s face appeared ashen, almost lifeless, in the harsh pool of light near the map. There was no lack of the accustomed intelligence or dignity. But there seemed to be a profound change in Malinsky’s age. The quality of the eyes and skin, of simple health, had altered radically in a matter of days.

  Chibisov experienced a rush of emotion, which he refused to allow into his outward expression. He wished he could do still more for this man, to lighten the burden weighing so heavily upon him. But he could think of nothing acceptable to do or say, always terrified of revealing any emotional weakness, conditioned by a solitary lifetime to withhold the most trivial symptoms of human vulnerability.

  “Comrade Front Commander, the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff has informed the High Command of Forces that the American and British militaries have requested nuclear release. Apparently, there is a great deal of turmoil within the NATO alliance about granting the request, as well as about the terms of nuclear weapons employment, should release be granted. The West Germans are reportedly reluctant — perhaps the propaganda broadcasts and the business with Lueneburg have had some effect, although it’s natural enough not to want your homeland turned into a nuclear battlefield, in any case.”

  Chibisov had expected a shot of energy to enliven Malinsky at the mention of nuclear weapons. But the old man merely raised his eyebrows slightly, as at the poor taste of a cup of field tea.

  “There are no indications that nuclear release has been granted at this time,” Chibisov went on, “and Dudorov’s convinced the Germans will disrupt the process. But measures must be taken — ”

  “Sit down, Pavel Pavlovitch,” Malinsky said, interrupting him. “Sit down for a moment.” Chibisov stiffened at first, spinsterish, unused to being interrupted even by Malinsky. Then he calmly took a seat. The smoke of burned-down cigarettes hovered in the lamplight, as though the smoke of battle were drifting up from the situation map. Chibisov labored to control his breathing, to conceal the weakness he felt diminishing him.

  “Look at the map,” Malinsky said. “Just look at it. And if they do get their nuclear release? What will they do with it, Pavel Pavlovitch? How could they strike us now without slaughtering their own?”

  “Comrade Front Commander, they could still strike deep targets. Inside the German Democratic Republic or Poland. Our assessment shows that an unacceptably high level of strike aircraft remain operative within the NATO air forces.”

  Malinsky brushed at the air with his fingers, dismissing the idea. “The best measures we can take are to proceed with the plan. Push deeper into their rear. And load everything onto West German soil that we can.” Malinsky turned his eyes on Chibisov, narrowing them until he looked almost Asiatic. “And hostages. Give me hostages, Pavel Pavlovitch.”

  For a moment, Chibisov could not follow the old man’s train of thought. The notion of hostages seemed so out of character. To Chibisov, hostages meant frightened illiterates herded out of lice-ridden kishlaks in the valleys of Afghanistan.

  “We must refocus our efforts slightly,” Malinsky went on. “You told me earlier about the problems with prisoner transport. But you sounded proud of the problems, Pavel Pavlovitch, you truly did, because you solved them with your usual efficiency.” The old man smiled slightly. “What good are prisoners to us? We need to watch them, feed them, move them, even protect them. And we haven’t time. Much better to have hostages.” Malinsky pointed at the map with a nicotine-stained finger. “There. Hannover. And the entire area still held by the German operational grouping. That… is a collection of hostages on a nuclear battlefield. Let them dare toss nuclear bombs at us. No, Pavel Pavlovitch, we must insure that our commanders do not tighten the more critical nooses too snugly. We must leave the bypassed or surrounded enemy forces just enough spatial integrity to make them prime targets. And drive them into the cities. NATO military units and formations backed up into German cities, that’s what I want. Then let them rattle their nuclear toys.”

  Chibisov had never heard quite this tone in Malinsky’s voice. Even in Afghanistan, where the demands of military operations and the pervasiveness of small brutalities had not brought out the best in men, Malinsky had seemed above the rest of them — a soldier, but with no special lust for killing, no trivializing callousness. Chibisov realized that he had, in fact,
considered Malinsky essentially a warmhearted man, one who loved his profession and his soldiers, and who adored his wife and son. To Chibisov, Malinsky had come to personify the goodness of Russia, the possibilities latent within the frustrating Russian character. Now, to hear him speak so coolly of replying to any future NATO nuclear strikes by methodically destroying German cities and military forces that had ceased to pose an operational threat, Chibisov again felt his own baffling difference from all of them. He realized that he had, indeed, underestimated what it meant to be born a blood Russian.

  “I do not want to precipitate a nuclear exchange, if one can be avoided,” Malinsky went on. “We all have enough blood on our hands. But should it become apparent that our enemy will resort to such a course, he must be preempted. He cannot be allowed to strike first. It’s no longer a matter of political bantering and competing for the international limelight. I want you to begin preparations — with an appropriate level of discretion. Have the nuclear support units move to the highest readiness level. Wake up our friends from the KGB and have them visit me. We will begin to put our formal mechanisms into motion. I will tell you, though, Pavel Pavlovitch, that I expect the devolution of nuclear targeting authority as soon as it becomes apparent that NATO is seriously preparing for a nuclearization of the battlefield.” Malinsky picked up his shoulders, regaining his usual erectness in his chair. “Meanwhile, see that the reconnaissance strike apparatus is reorganized to exploit nuclear targets. I do not want an atmosphere of rumor and panic. Employ the strictest security measures. But release the commander’s reserve of missile troops. Let Voltov position them as he sees fit, but make sure he understands the psychological-political dimensions of the problem, as well as the purely military considerations. We’ll see what our chief of missile troops and artillery is made of.”