Ralph Peters

by The war in 2020

  "Merry," Taylor said, "I want you to call up our Russian friends. Get Kozlov. Or, better yet, go straight to old Ivanov. Ask them ... ask them if they would please send a detail out to the staging area. See if there's anything . . . see if . . . damn it, you know what I mean."

  The bodies. Anything identifiable. To bury in their native soil.

  "Yes, sir," Meredith said.

  "Parker?"

  "Yes, sir?" the assistant S-3 replied.

  "What's your first name?"

  "Horace, sir."

  "No. I mean, what do people call you?"

  "Hank."

  "Okay, Hank. While Merry's calling our Russian brethren, you can start reprogramming our route. Just get us to the AA Silver as quickly as possible. Head straight for Orsk."

  "Do you think they're lying?" General Ivanov asked.

  "No, sir," Kozlov said. "The picture's still a bit muddy— we've got so many gaps in our coverage—but it's evident that the Iranians think they've just been struck by the wrath of God. Their communications discipline has fallen apart completely, and they're cursing the Japanese for all they're worth." Kozlov touched a dead tooth with his tongue. "It almost sounds as though the Japanese are going to have a mutiny on their hands. If they can't manage to pull things back together in short order."

  "And the Japanese themselves?"

  "Harder to tell."

  General Ivanov paced across the room. He stopped in front of a wall that bore cheaply framed prints of the heroes of Russia's bygone wars with Islam in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Suvorov, Yermolov, Paskevich, and half a dozen others. Kozlov could feel a deep sadness in the general as his illustrious predecessors confronted him with his failures from a remove of two centuries.

  "Incredible," Ivanov said, turning back to Kozlov. "Simply incredible. Even if the Americans are exaggerating the numbers twice over. It's virtually unthinkable."

  "It provides us with a real opportunity," Kozlov said. Ivanov lowered his eyebrows. The expression on the general's face did not make sense to Kozlov under the circumstances.

  "I mean, in order to mount local counterattacks, sir," Kozlov continued. "To stabilize the lines. And then—well, who knows? If the Americans have really—"

  "Stop talking nonsense, Kozlov."

  A diseased tooth telegraphed a message of startling pain throughout Kozlov's jaw.

  "There are things of which you know nothing," General Ivanov said bluntly. "The situation is more complex than you imagine. I want you to get the staff moving. Draw up hasty plans that specify the maximum troop dispersion that the integrity of the defense will permit. And don't waste a minute. Send out preliminary orders immediately."

  "But... we promised the Americans that we'd support them, that we would attack ..."

  "The situation does not permit it."

  "But—"

  The Americans were having a splendid day, covering themselves in glory. Their only setback appeared to be a minor air strike on the tail end of their support establishment out at the industrial complex. But, for Kozlov, things were going from bad to worse. There were rumors of extraordinary KGB activities in Moscow, including a wave of arrests without precedent since the long period of turmoil in the wake of the Gorbachev era. The security services had already run out of control in the rear of the combat zone, executing "traitors," while the front collapsed into ever greater chaos. Now, on top of everything else, it appeared that there was a significant secret about which he knew nothing. He had served with Ivanov since their days together in Baku, in the reoccupation army, and it stunned him to be so little trusted. He realized that the secret must be a very important one indeed.

  His teeth ached unmercifully. He worried that he would have to have them removed. All of them.

  "Comrade General," Kozlov began again, "can you please tell me what's going on? How can I direct the staff? How can I plan effectively when I don't know what's happening?"

  Ivanov had turned away again, positioning himself before the lithograph of Suvorov's old greyhound face. "Simply do as you're told, Viktor Sergeyevich. Disperse our forces to the maximum extent compatible with the maintenance of the defense and unit integrity."

  What defense? The little islands of half-frozen units stranded on the steppes, unsure of which way to point their empty weapons? And what unit integrity? The fantasies of the wall charts in headquarters where the latest information was three battles old? The true unit designators of regiments and divisions that had been slaughtered, forgotten by everyone but God and a few obscure staff officers?

  The lessons of Russian history were clear to Kozlov. When the heavens were collapsing overhead, the only thing left to do was to counterattack. With bayonets. With stones and fists, if necessary. The Americans had shown them the way. And now it appeared that it was all for nothing.

  "There is little time," Ivanov said, with despair suddenly evident in his voice.

  "Yes, sir," Kozlov responded. He turned to leave and carry out the general's order.

  "Viktor Sergeyevich?" Ivanov called out after his subordinate. The practiced severity of his voice relented slightly, reminding Kozlov of better days when they had served together under clear blue skies. "Don't be too impatient with me. You'll understand soon enough. Too soon, perhaps." The general moved wearily toward the plush chair behind his oversize desk. But he did not sit down. Instead, he braced himself with an old man's hand on the back of the chair and stared past the younger officer.

  "You see, it's like a game," Ivanov said, "in which we are now merely interested spectators. First, the Japanese underestimated the Americans. And now the Americans are terribly underestimating the Japanese."

  18

  3 November 2020

  SCRAMBLED EGGS. PALE, OVERCOOKED, THEN LEFT SITTING too long on a serving tray, they were by no means the finest scrambled eggs Ryder had ever encountered. Liberally dusted with salt and pepper, they tasted of little more than pepper and salt. Further tormented with several hearty splats of the Louisiana Hot Sauce one of Ryder's fellow warrant officers carried with him everywhere in the world, the eggs finally took on a hint of flavor reminiscent of the dehydrated atrocities served up on maneuvers. The portion was meager, the texture resilient, and Ryder had to remove a short black hair from the margarine-colored clump. These were, at best, imperfect scrambled eggs. But Ryder was wordlessly grateful for them, just as he was grateful for the woman.

  Breakfast in the threadbare Moscow hotel was always unpredictable in its details. The detachment of staff personnel from the Tenth Cavalry, waiting grumpily in their civilian clothes, received whatever happened to be available on that particular day in the capital of all the Russias. There was always bread-—occasionally stale—or a bit of pastry dripping with weary cream. Sometimes cheese appeared, or even carefully apportioned slivers of ham. On days when the inadequacies of the system decided to assert themselves, the yawning waiters presented formless, nameless, sickness-scented constructions few of the Americans were brave enough or sufficiently hungry to eat.

  Once, shredded cardboard fish in gelatin had been lurking in wait for the early risers—the waiters had been uncharacteristically animated, insisting that the fish was a great delicacy. The sole saving grace of the meal was the scalding gray coffee, which, blessedly, never seemed to run out.

  And so, presented with this sudden gift of scrambled eggs, delivered straight from heaven with only the briefest of layovers in the Russian countryside, Ryder felt as though his life had accelerated into a realm of fresh possibilities, as though Christmas had come unexpectedly early along with this withered mound of cholesterol.

  The woman was primarily responsible for this bloom of optimism, of course. The eggs were merely a gracious answer to the real physical appetite his night with Valya had excited in him. He could not remember the last time he had been this hungry, and despite the little sleep he had managed, he did everything with alacrity, whether spreading the slightly rancid butter on his bread, drinking the burning coffee, or thi
nking about the future.

  He would see her again. In the sweat-stale morning she had jarred him by bolting from the bed, jabbering in Russian. He had finally reached the stout fortress walls of real sleep, and the first moments of waking had an aura of madness about them. Torn away from him, the girl spit words into the darkness as she noisily tried to find her way. The brain behind his forehead had gone to lead. He turned on the bedside lamp and saw Valya wrestling her slip down over her head and shoulders. It looked as if a white silken animal were attacking her. The instant froze in his memory—the still visible breasts suggesting themselves from the thin chest, the flat white belly, and the trove of low hair glinting like sprung copper wires. Patches of glaze topped her thighs. Then the white cloth fell down like a curtain, and the eyes of a smart animal took his measure.

  "I'm late," she told him, speaking English.

  "What?"

  "I'm late. It's terrible. I must go."

  "What? Go where? What's the matter?"

  With an unbroken series of movements, she scooped up her stockings, turned about, and dropped her bottom on the side of the bed, then leaned back and kissed him over her shoulder. It was the kind of noisy, quick kiss offered a child. She leaned forward and began working her panty hose over her toes.

  "But I have told you. I am a schoolteacher. I must go to the class."

  "Valya," he said, trying the name in the light. "Valya . . ." He reached out toward her, capturing the paucity of a breast in his hand.

  She offered him a little moan, half sex and half impatience.

  "But you must understand," she said, going about the merciless business of dressing as she spoke, "even if I want to stay, I must go. For the children."

  He trailed his hand downward from the breast he had kissed raw, tracing her frailness beneath the fabric. "Valya ... I'm glad about what happened last night." She looked at him quizzically, panty hose stalled below her knees.

  "I mean," he went on, "I'm glad you stayed. That you stayed with me."

  "Oh, yes," she said. "Everything is nice." And she bounced to her feet to draw the hose over her slender thighs. Her slip rose on the back of her hands, and he wanted terribly to pull her back down, to lift the fabric a little higher still and to plunge back inside her, without the least further preparation. He felt as though he wanted her more fiercely now than he had at any time during the night, when he had only to turn her to him and briefly warn her with his hand.

  "Can I see you again?" he asked carefully. "Will you have dinner with me again tonight?"

  She looked at him as though he had surprised her utterly. Then she smiled:

  "Tonight? You wish for us to have dinner again?"

  "Yes. If you don't have other plans."

  "No, no. No, I think this is a very good idea ... Jeff." She threw herself back down on the bed, kissing him again, first on his morning-dead mouth, then along the flat field of muscle between shoulder and breast. "You are so wonderful," she said quickly. "I thought you do not want to see me anymore."

  Before he could get a grip on her, before his body could insist that she delay her departure, she slipped away from him again, stepping into her red dress. Ryder did not know much about Russian classroom customs, but he was pretty sure she was going to go home and change rather than confront the system in that particular outfit.

  "Tonight," she said gaily. "And at what hour?"

  Work crowded back into his mind. He knew there would be a tremendous amount to do. In the wake of the breakthrough with the Japanese computer system. He would be a focal point of the exploration effort. The timing was terrible.

  "Around eight?" he said, reaching for a compromise between duty and desire. Standing there on the verge of leaving, the woman looked as vulnerably beautiful to him is any woman had ever appeared. With her face that wanted washing for yesterday's makeup and her rebellious hair. "But wait for me, if I'm not there exactly at eight. Please. I might be running late. On business."

  "Oh, yes," she half sang. "I will wait for you. We will have dinner with one another. And we will talk."

  "Yes," he said. "We have a lot to talk about."

  Then she was gone, in the wake of a blown kiss and the slam of an ill-mounted door. Her footsteps died away in the early gloom of the corridor.

  While showering, he had been stricken by a sudden fear. He hurried, towel-wrapped, back into the bedroom. Frantically, he rifled through his wallet, then checked his other valuables.

  His watch and the holstered computer were still in place. No money was missing. His credit cards lay neatly ranked in their leather nest.

  He stood by the nightstand, dripping, ashamed of himself for suspecting her. Then the remembrance of her excited him so powerfully that he had a hard time tucking himself into his shorts.

  He went down to breakfast with a gigantic emptiness in his belly, ready to eat every slice of brown bread on the table. And to his wonderment, the waiter laid a plate of scrambled eggs before him.

  He sat across from Dicker Sienkiewicz, the granddaddy of the staff warrants. When the question involved the order of battle of foreign armies, Dicker could beat most computers to the answer. And he had phenomenal connections. He seemed to have a personal line to every other veteran who had survived the series of reductions-in-force that had devastated the United States Army back in the nineteen nineties. He was also, in Ryder's view, a good man. Bald-headed and requisitely grumpy, he would nurse a beer or two in the bar with the other warrants, but then he would go back to his room, alone, to continue the day's work. Ryder felt he was a kindred spirit, despite the gap in their ages, and he trusted the old man.

  When the waiters faded beyond hearing distance, Dicker leaned across the table toward Ryder.

  "Heard the news, Jeff?"

  Ryder looked at the other two warrants who shared the table, then back toward Dicker, shaking his head. He forked up another load of scrambled eggs.

  Dicker leaned even closer, whispering. "The attack went in last night. I have it from a good source that the Seventh's kicking butt." The older warrant smiled slightly, but proudly. His Army was back in the field and doing its duty.

  "That's great,'' Ryder said, reaching for another piece of bread.

  Dicker nodded. "You know, I've got an old buddy down with the Seventh. Flies for old man Taylor himself. Flapper Krebs. I wonder what the hell he's doing right now?"

  One of the other warrants, whose age fell between that of Ryder and the bald-headed veteran, said, "Yeah, I know Krebs. All dried-up and used up. Kind of like you, Dicker."

  The older warrant reddened right up through the desert of his scalp. The other warrants loved to tease him, since he never failed to rise to the bait.

  "Chief Krebs," he said angrily, "could chew you up and spit you out. Why, I remember back in Africa—"

  His tormentor made a face of mock curiosity. "What the hell were you doing in Africa, Dicker? Vacation or something?"

  The teasing inspired the old warrant to begin a lengthy defense of the achievements of a long career. Ryder waited politely, if impatiently, until he could get a word in, then asked quickly:

  "Dicker, you going to eat those eggs?"

  "Well, fuck me dead," Ryder's third tablemate said, looking up from the wreckage of his breakfast.

  Ryder looked in the indicated direction. Colonel Williams, the commander of the Tenth Cavalry, had entered the dining room. It was the first time during the deployment that Ryder had seen the colonel, who spent his time out at the field sites, directing the actions of his electronic warfare squadrons. It was apparent that something important was going down, since Colonel Williams had marched right in wearing his field gear over a worn-looking camouflage uniform. His boots marked his progress with traces of mud. The colonel looked impatient.

  Lieutenant Colonel Manzetti, the senior officer in the staff detachment billeted in the hotel, erupted from his table, dropping his napkin on the floor as he hurried toward the regimental commander. Manzetti chewed and swallowe
d as he maneuvered through the tables. The lieutenant colonel was a holdover from the days before Colonel Williams had been given the command with the mission of clearing out the deadwood and the homesteaders, and Manzetti's haste to intercept Williams reminded Ryder of the movement of a frightened animal.

  The two officers nearly collided. Colonel Williams stood with his hands on his hips, braced off his web belt. Manzetti sculpted excuses with his hands. It was impossible to hear what they were discussing, but the situation did not appear to be promising.

  "Wonder what's up?" Ryder said to his tablemates. He lifted the last forkful of scrambled eggs to his lips, catching the woman's scent off his hand, despite his shower.

  Tonight, he promised himself.

  As the warrants watched in collective horror Manzetti suddenly pointed toward their table. Without an instant's delay Colonel Williams headed their way, leaving the lieutenant colonel behind with a devastated expression on his face. Williams looked angry.

  "Oh, shit," Dicker muttered.

  A warning bell sounded in Ryder's head, and the stew of eggs began to weigh heavily in his stomach.

  "This can't be good news," said the warrant who had been tormenting Dicker. Each of the warrants carefully avoided looking at the approaching colonel, making a careful show of breakfasting.

  Ryder already knew this had something to do with him. The cracking of the Japanese computer system had been too important an achievement to leave unexploited. Due to the special classification of his work, even Ryder's tablemates did not know exactly what had occurred the day before. But Ryder knew beyond any doubt that Colonel Williams had digested the information.

  The colonel stopped just short of their table. Towering above them. Tucker Williams was a veteran of every shooting match in which the United States had been involved since the Zaire intervention. He was notoriously zealous and uncompromising, and when he was angry, the outlines of his RD scars showed through his cheeks and forehead, despite the artistry of the Army's plastic surgeons. He was said to be an old pal of Colonel George Taylor, the Army's number one living legend, and the scuttlebutt had it that one thing Williams and Taylor unmistakably held in common was that dozens of comfortable, satisfied midcareer officers had resigned rather than go to work for either man.