by Ian Slater
“Bullshit!” announced Beria. “My infantry’ll be the force that’ll settle the matter. You’ll see.” He slapped Cherkashin on the shoulder. “Your air defense missiles and tank rounds can’t take out every individual, Sergei. I tell you, my lads’ll be onto whoever survives their drop.”
“Drop?” said Abramov brusquely. “They’re not crazy enough to try parachuting their force in. Besides, bad weather is coming. It will be like duck shooting for our men. No, General, the Americans’ll be ferrying them in by helicopter.” Abramov then turned to Cherkashin. “Your missile batteries should find them easily.”
“Not a problem, Comrade. We’ll blow them out of the sky. It’ll be raining Americans. Dead Americans.”
They all laughed. While none of the three believed it would be a cakewalk, it was obvious that the American MEU force of two-thousand-plus marines had no chance of surprising ABC when it had to move in from the Sea of Japan before unleashing any attack. Even so, the three rebel Russian generals were determined not to burden themselves with any time-wasting formalities that would slow down ABC’s production lines. Accordingly, the triumvirate phoned each of the company’s commanders, pointing out to them that insofar as everyone’s financial future, from general to private, was on the line, there’d be no time to implement what they called the “restraints” of the Geneva Convention. There would be no American prisoners taken.
“Should we issue a written directive?” posited Beria.
“Why?” said Abramov, shrugging at the infantry general’s question. “Then it’s on paper. You’re not in the party anymore, Viktor.” He paused, then added, “Remember what happened at the Wannsee Conference?”
Viktor and Sergei Cherkashin nodded. It had been the meeting convened by Reinhard Heydrich at Wannsee in Berlin where the final solution of the so-called Jewish Question was settled, of which no copies were to be kept, but one copy was, and because of this copy Adolph Eichmann and others paid the price. At the beginning of ABC’s formation they had rationalized their willingness to sell their souls to a terrorist clientele as a decision that was really based on an intention to rebuild and reassert Soviet might. But Putin and others hadn’t been able to get a handle on the Chechen terrorists, and so ABC had adopted the oldest rationale for corruption in mankind’s history: If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. And when they realized the enormous profits to be made selling hitherto stockpiled Soviet weaponry to terrorists, the crisp sound of newly printed currency soon drowned the conscience of any lingering party loyalist. Besides, there was no turning back. The dream of making a bundle, retiring to a dacha on the Black Sea, held them in its thrall. There would be swimming pools, caviar by the bowlful, your own private security as you lay in the hot Caspian sun. And flunkie lawyers arranging for you to go legitimate by investing in the big American pipeline being built through the Stans, the seven countries that before Gorbachev had been Soviet republics, kept in line by the kind of iron discipline the three generals had used to establish and maintain order at the Lake Khanka complex.
“Any sight of them yet?” Cherkashin, the most impatient of the three, asked his duty officer, who was monitoring the big screen of the air defense radar.
“No, sir. But we’ll know the second they take off from that helo carrier, the Yorktown.”
“You sure?” pressed Abramov.
“Yes, General. We have people on the coast.”
Abramov was now looking down to the right of the radar console at the situation table of the kind used by Royal Air Force controllers during the crucial Battle of Britain, contemplating the cutout silhouettes of the twelve American vessels. His old-fashioned reliance on the blackboard amused the younger computer-age duty officer. But all three of the Russian generals had seen what had happened to Saddam Hussein’s air force when the Americans had taken out the Iraqis’ early warning radar with Stealths. The Iraqis, with their sophisticated radar knocked out and without a “situation table” of the kind Abramov was now studying, were literally working in the dark and rapidly losing control of their dire situation.
“Question is,” pressed Abramov, “whether the Americans will launch fighters from the McCain.”
“No,” said Cherkashin confidently. “Moscow might turn a blind eye to a quick insertion of U.S. troops on our soil. After all, we accepted Allied intervention in 1917 in Archangel, but Moscow’s pride’ll draw the line at permitting foreign fighters in Russian airspace.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Abramov, is how American intelligence found its way to us.”
“Luck,” proffered Beria. “Pure, stupid American luck.”
“Whatever it was,” put in Cherkashin, “we should make damn sure we get this Freeman. He’s a cunning bastard. He’s like that Patton. And this’ll be the second time he’s been here. We don’t want to have to deal with him again.”
On this there was unanimous agreement.
“Well,” said Beria, “last I heard, our Arab friends were working with someone in Hamas.” He paused. “Or perhaps it was the Abu Haf’s al-Masri Martyr Brigades. Some youngster who has lived in America, studied there.”
“A bomber, you mean?” said Cherkashin.
“Perhaps,” said Beria.
“I don’t know,” said Cherkashin. “If the Americans see anyone coming near them they’ll shoot first and ask questions later. They’ve learned in Iraq what we learned in Afghanistan. Arabs have used kids as bombers.”
“Do we have such people?” inquired Beria.
“No,” answered Abramov. “But Beria has a point. Last time I was in Palestine, closing the deal for what will be our first batch of the super-cavitating MANPADs, I also came across one of Hamas’s leaders, an Iranian officer with the Abu Haf’s al-Masri Martyr Brigades who had been given the job of mentoring a young boy with jet-black hair and blue eyes. He was about eleven, maybe twelve years old. Orphaned as a baby in the Iraq War. A true little Muslim fanatic who, the officer told me, had been schooled for a time in America — immersed in the enemy’s culture.”
“So?” said Cherkashin who, despite his brilliance as an air defense commander, lacked the kind of forward-looking imagination Abramov possessed.
“Ah, too young,” said Beria dismissively.
“Exactly!” said Abramov, warming to his own logic. “That’s precisely my point.”
Beria nodded approvingly, eager to show that he was as quick as Abramov, and certainly quicker than Cherkashin in seeing where the tank general was going. “Yes, a blue-eyed kid. Clever.” He paused, his forehead creased in concentration as he sought to extrapolate from Abramov’s, or rather, the terrorists’, idea. “The boy could appear injured, perhaps caught between us and the Americans.”
Cherkashin was mulling it over. “But they’d search him for weapons.”
“Yes,” said Abramov. “But that wouldn’t be our problem. All that’s necessary is to have him found by the Americans — wandering, dazed, frightened. The Americans are suckers for a lost kid.”
“But,” Cherkashin cautioned, “all this presupposes Freeman will be here, that he won’t be directing operations aboard York City.”
“Yorktown,” Abramov corrected him, adding, “I hope your knowledge of our air defense ring, Sergei, is better than your knowledge of General Freeman. Like Patton, he’s always with his men. He’ll come, believe me. He’ll lead them in.”
“The kid you saw,” pressed Beria. “This blue-eyed American-hater. You say he’s been to America?”
“Yes, yes,” said Abramov. “Of course. Probably sent him in with illegals. Across the Canadian border. For how long, I don’t know, but he’s now back in Pakistan, at one of their “holy-war” madrassa schools. I saw him briefly in Islamabad when I did the last arms sale.”
“You think it might be possible,” asked Beria, “for Hamas to get him here in, say, the next twenty-four hours?”
“Of course,” said Abramov sharply. “If we offer to help them kill an American legend, the Arabs will send him o
n a flying carpet. Don’t worry, we’ll get him. One way or the other. Which reminds me, have all platoon commanders been shown that photo of him on the Net?”
“Every infantryman has the photo,” Beria assured the tank commander. “And I’ve personally put a bonus of ten thousand dollars on his head.”
Abramov, pleasantly surprised, gave one of his rare smiles. “And your men, Commander?” he asked Cherkashin.
“My men have also been promised high bonuses.” He thought of his brother, grimacing with the memory of the day he was killed in combat against the U.S.-led U.N. peacekeeping action in Sibir. A 120 mm Sabot round from one of Freeman’s Abrams tanks had hit the T-80. Cherkashin looked as if he could see straight through the thick cement walls of the subterranean bunker. There had been nothing left. His brother had been vaporized.
“If my men capture him,” Beria told Cherkashin, “I’ll make sure they hand him over to you.”
“And my men,” Abramov assured him, “will do the same.”
It was near dusk, and before it got too dark, Abramov wanted to inspect the Sixth’s tank commanders and make sure everyone was maintaining high alert. And with Cherkashin’s mention of tank ammunition, he wanted to quiz the gunners to make certain that in addition to HE rounds, they would have enough armor-piercing Sabot rounds with which to repel the Americans who, because of ABC’s first-rate camouflage, would be coming in blind, if they’d be coming at all. Many at ABC’s Lake Khanka complex believed that after all the huffing and puffing in Washington was over, there would be no attack, that the Americans were all talk. As Abramov walked outside, as expected he couldn’t see any tanks, and the marshland waters were turning golden in the fading sun.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On the lower decks of the Wasp-class helo-carrier-transport Yorktown, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, under the command of Colonel Jack Tibbet, was being assembled. The air was thick with the smell of oil and the shuddering roar of engines and giant exhaust fans as Tibbet’s marines reviewed last-minute details prior to going topside to hear the mission commander, General Freeman, give his pre-op address. There was an understandable expectation that the general, if not being outright contrite after the humiliation of losing the terrorists’ trail, would at least be apologetic about having to put the MEU in harm’s way because of his foul-up at Priest Lake back home. In both the foreign anti-American press and the left-of-center liberal press at home, he was being portrayed, despite his earlier accomplishments and battle honors, as a “loser.”
As he slowly, reluctantly, shuffled his way in the confusion of the lower deck toward the elevator, young Peter Norton, the son of Robert Norton, Freeman’s former second-in-command from his Russia days, was one of those marines who weren’t looking forward to what must be the general’s mea culpa. To have the terrorists’ “AMERICANS SUCK” note flashed around the world by Al Jazeera was bad enough, but to have the man who had failed the mission bare himself in front of the men and women he was now expected to lead fearlessly into battle was something that no marine wanted to either hear or witness. It was a violation of strict marine tradition to go into a battle zone under anyone but their own, even if Freeman was an ex — full general of the army.
But if there was one thing that the American-led war against terrorism all over the world had taught the marines and every other branch of the armed services, it was that traditional ways of doing things often had to be overruled in the interest of expediency. Yorktown was the nearest MEU ready to go; it had been as simple as that.
There was a somber mood throughout the ship and little of the light banter that normally preceded an MEU op. Everyone knew that Freeman’s foray into this rebel-held Russian territory could be Freeman’s Folly if what was euphemistically referred to as “unsettled weather” conspired with the crack Russian defenders whose forebears, in their ubiquitous T-34s, had stopped the German Panzers in the terrible massed winter battles of 1943 and 1944.
Peter Norton, harboring the chilling possibility of having to drive his 6,000-pound cargo-carrying Hummer in the vicinity of the rebel Russian tanks, was in the grip of an ice-cold fear. Having been demoted from full-combat-marine status to combat driver, he was depressed enough already without having to think about being thrust into or anywhere near a heavily defended enemy position. He had begun experiencing the chest-gripping, profuse-sweating, “I’m going to die” anxiety attacks a few months before. Out of concern for his own well-being and as a machine gunner aboard one of the MEU’s ground team’s armored Hummers, he had dutifully reported to sick bay, and the panic attacks had quickly been brought under control by a daily dose of ten milligrams of the anti-anxiety medication Paxil. But he had not been sufficiently alert to the fact that the navy, into whose organization the marines were integrated, remains the most tradition-bound of the armed services. As well as being the most “senior” service, it remains deeply suspicious of “shrinks,” whether they be psychologists or psychiatrists. In Peter Norton’s case, the navy was even more rattled by the acronym PIUS — possible instability under stress.
Peter hadn’t told any of his marine buddies about his connection with Freeman. Nor had he tried to use his father or Freeman, who it was unlikely even knew he was on the Yorktown, to pull strings to overturn the damning psychological profile that he was sure had cost him promotion and a reduction in pay. When he heard the criticism of Freeman aboard Yorktown, Peter was even more convinced that he had done the right thing in not owning up to any connection to the man whom most of Peter’s marine buddies resented having been placed in overall command of the MEU. But he did regret reporting the panic attacks. Though nothing was said to him directly, Norton found his responsibilities further decreased, and when the mission was announced, his official designation was no longer combat driver but standby support driver. And the only reason he had been assigned this job as a food-supply driver in Colonel Tibbet’s battalion HQ was that the armed forces were spread so thinly in the far-flung world war against terrorism that all trained personnel, including drivers, were scarce.
In the tightly packed, claustrophobic, fuel-laden atmosphere on the vehicle decks he was finding it difficult to breathe. He felt the old, chest-gripping fear rising in him and, as a psychological diversionary tactic, began checking his stack of dark brown, plastic-wrapped MAMEs, marine meals, which, as cold rations designed out of the marine battle lab in Quantico, Virginia, were far superior to the usual MREs, meals ready-to-eat, which troops frequently threw away because what the MREs provided in nutrients, they lacked in taste. Colonel Tibbet passed by, the tall, lean marine commanding officer, nodding to Norton on his way. Then he stopped and turned on his heel. “Norton? Peter Norton? Right?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Peter, with some timidity.
“You were the guy who suggested we stock up on — what was it, Mars bars, for the next combat ration?”
“Yessir,” replied Peter obediently, then typically added, “but it wasn’t my idea, sir. It was General Freeman’s.”
“Freeman’s?” said Tibbet with obvious surprise. “You know General Freeman?”
“No, sir. Well, not personally, but he sent a memo to the quartermaster general after he’d found out how the Brits on the ships during the Falklands War passed on all their rations and went instead for Mars bars.”
Tibbet was nodding knowingly. “Huh — sugar surge, I guess. Makes sense. But General Freeman should’ve recommended Hershey bars.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tibbet moved on toward the TOW anti-tank-missile-loaded Humvees that would be airlifted by one of the Yorktown’s Super Stallions, unless there was interference in the assemblage of the air force from the Yorktown by foreign aircraft. In such a case the Yorktown’s marine V-STOL Harriers would provide a potent protective screen for the MEU force. The Harriers were tasked with going in to destroy what the MEU S-2 intel chief had been convinced by McCain’s signal exploitation space and by HUMINT routed to the McCain by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the Sh
anghai trade office was a Russian complex near Lake Khanka and its marshlands.
There was a problem, however, with the SATPIX. It showed an H-shaped building but no anti-aircraft emplacements, and a mobile AA battery was everyone’s nightmare on such an op — that is, one of the nightmares.
It was General Freeman’s comment about the unusual number of airborne birds cluttering the satellite images of the area that had first aroused the MEU’s intel chief’s interest. Freeman had pointed out to him that the fact of the birds constantly rising, circling, and landing on the lake—“neurotically,” Freeman had said — pointed to a terrestrial anomaly that “must be frightening the shit out of the cranes, et cetera,” causing them to take flight much more often than what an ornithological report confirmed was normal. If there was an earthquake, Freeman had told the officers’ mess on Yorktown, the entire area would liquefy.
“It’s liquefied already, General.”
“True. What I meant, Captain, was that even the wooded areas that we might rely on would simply become a vast slurry. Awful for armor.” What spooked the marines’ intel officer most was the sheer volume of bird traffic being monitored in the “blue tile country,” the blue-tiled inner sanctum of the U.S.S. McCain’s signal exploitation space compared to what was normal. “Neurotic,” he decided, was an apt description of the avian activity.
Now Colonel Tibbet was inspecting the line of Stinger-mounted Humvees. Two swivel-mounted boxes on each one of the ten vehicles contained four anti-aircraft missiles, eight Stingers in all, a potent defense system by any measure. After a quick inspection of these units, he walked quickly past the supply Humvees which, because his mission was not an amphibious-landing op as such, would have to be delivered, together with extra fuel bladders, by helo sling and would have to carry the total supply load, from prepackaged meals to gas masks, a job usually shared by the marines’ five-ton trucks which the Yorktown’s big landing craft ferried ashore after the troops disembarked. But this KITDO, or kick-in-the-door operation, as the troops called it, to Lake Khanka was to be confined to airlift only. Tibbet was about to leave the vehicle deck and walk up one of the many internal ramps between decks to the big hangar, when he paused and called back to Peter Norton, “How’d you know it was General Freeman who sent that memo?”