“Captain Carpenter and Master Sergeant Hurlburt are in the uniforms they were issued, just like mine you might want to notice, and they’ve had no access to booze for weeks. They were on your terminal floor scruffy and sleeping and covered with mud and blood because they’d just been evacuated from a battle zone after they spent the last seventy two hours without sleep desperately fighting for their lives and killing a bunch of people up close and personal.”
“So you miserable shitheads better listen up real good. I’m going to keep checking on you three and this fucked up base. I hear one peep about any more false reports being filed, or another man being hassled or delayed in any way when he comes through here, and I’m going to see all three of you up on gross dereliction of duty charges—because your men aren’t properly trained and supervised.”
“Now get the cuffs off those two men and get the fuck out of my sight before I change my mind.”
“And you two get on the plane and get something to eat and some sleep. We’re going to Brussels.” And then home.
Then I stomped through the rain back to the plane feeling both self-righteous and foolish. Now I’ll probably catch a goddamn cold.
******
It was a long flight from Okinawa to Europe and everyone but me caught up on their sleep while I read through a bunch of NATO and Detachment reports. It wasn’t until we were coming into Brussels that Captain Carpenter and Sergeant Hurlburt finally woke up and I finally had a chance to ask how they were feeling.
“Good Sir, thank you….Uh, Well Sir, Sergeant Hurlburt and I want to thank you, for standing up for us I mean… By the way, Sir, my grandpa said to say hello and give you his best regards. He says he met you in Iraq years ago when you were sitting on a wooden ammo case getting your back sewed up.”
“Really? Who’s your grandpa?”
“Clyde Jackson, Sir. He was the commander of the 510 Tank Battalion when he met you.”
“My God, Clyde Jackson of the Nickel-Dime. I sure do remember the first time I met him. Very vividly, in fact. He was one hell of a soldier just as you are. Must run in the family. Please give him my very warmest and most respectful regards. “
“And please give me his address; I’d like to write to him myself.”
Chapter Fifteen
Reinforcements.
The seriously overloaded missile cruiser Admiral Markov finished loading everything it could squeeze on to its deck and into its holds just before 2200 on Thursday. It immediately cast off and moved into the rainy darkness for a high speed run to Vladivostok.
Russia’s new plan was simple and probably the best Moscow could come up with under the circumstances: Get every ship they can get their hands on crammed with all the immediately available troops and equipment it can carry and on its way towards Vladivostok and the East China Sea at its highest sustainable speed.
Markov and the other ships Russia was sending to the Russian East will stop at Vladivostok to drop off the troops and supplies they were carrying. Then they’d either return to Russia to pick up more troops and equipment, or they would join Russia’s subs in positioning themselves outside Chinese waters so they can attack Chinese ports and shipping if there is a war.
The only exceptions would be a few destroyers and frigates. They would drop off whatever they were carrying at Vladivostok, and then continue on to patrol off Sakhalin Island in an effort to discourage a Japanese landing—and oppose it if the Japanese attempted to land.
If there was any good news, it was that Moscow finally seemed to understand the urgent need for the Russian Navy to get as many reinforcements as possible into Vladivostok. They needed to be offloaded and moving north before the war started and the Chinese cut the rail and road links. What Moscow still didn’t know was where the Chinese attacks would be concentrated and how Danovsky intended to respond.
To the absolute fury of Admiral Krusak, Danovsky told me with a smile in his voice, the ships Krusak had expected to command were being controlled directly from Moscow. More importantly, Moscow instantly agreed when Danovsky ordered Kruak to immediately send all of Vladivostok’s remaining naval infantry north to Khabarovsk for redeployment into the interior where the main battles of the war will be waged.
The Admiral’s only consolation was that once the railroad to Khabarovsk is cut, the ground forces available to defend the port would be restored and strengthened as more and more ships arrived with reinforcements from Russia that could no longer be sent north because the railroad was cut.
It was increasingly obvious that Danovsky and his officers were beginning to see their situation as comparable to what Russia faced in World War Two at Leningrad and Stalingrad: They were fully on board with the idea that Vladivostok and Khabarovsk were to be held at all costs with minimal numbers of sailors and troops while the main battle was fought elsewhere by the bulk of the Russian forces under Danovsky's direct command. Hopefully, Moscow does not yet know how the naval infantry and reinforcements Danovsky is getting will be used; if it did, the Chinese would surely be told.
In any event, making a stand in a city to fight off invaders is something every Russian understands—only this time the invaders are coming from the east and the reinforcements everyone hopes will turn the tide of the battle are coming from the west.
******
Russia’s huge Baltic naval base at Kalingrad was the main staging area for the troops and equipment Moscow was sending by sea to reinforce the Far Eastern Military District. They were available because NATO didn’t waste resources destroying them during the Turkish War. As a result, the railroad line and roads from Moscow and interior of western Russia were packed with military shipments.
Even better, the Russian units in the area were largely intact and immediately available to head towards Kalingrad naval base and embark for the east—because NATO did not waste its limited resources on them during the war once we destroyed the bridges so Russian reinforcements from the east couldn’t get to Turkey and join the battle.
Russia’s basic problem, of course, was that time was running out to get its troops and their equipment to Kalingrad and loaded on the limited amount of ships that were available to carry it east.
Its immediate problem, however, was that once the Russian equipment arrived at the port, it could not be loaded on the available ships fast enough. The men could march aboard the hastily readied ships and eat the field rations they were carrying if necessary, but there were not enough working cranes and cargo helicopters to quickly load their equipment and supplies. The result was a railhead and naval base that was increasingly paralyzed with a military traffic jam approaching epic proportions; equipment and supplies were arriving faster than they could be loaded on the outbound ships.
Holding up one of the aerial photos of the Kalingrad naval base for me to see, Jack Brigham said “this has got to be one of the largest and most fucked up concentrations of troops and military equipment in the history of the world. The Russians better hope the Chinese don’t have some missile subs hanging about offshore to hit it when the war starts.” Jeez, he’s right.
Something needed to be done, and fast.
“Mort, Dick Evans here,” I said to Morton Stanfield, the commander of our Atlantic Fleet. “Mort, the Russians have a problem at their Kalingrad naval base. They’ve got a huge and growing traffic jam of the armor and vehicles being brought in to load for Vladivostok. It’s about the juiciest target I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, really.”… “Well the thing is this. We need you to get some attack subs and surface vessels up there to help the Russians keep a close eye out for Chinese subs with missile-launching capacities?” Mort’s going to jump on this; it’s an excuse to keep some of his ships and subs in the Atlantic instead of sending them to the Pacific Fleet.
******
Initially, the Russian troops and equipment were loaded at Kalingrad on the relatively few surface vessels which the Russian naval commander at Kalingrad grudgingly released for reassignment to Admiral Kru
sak’s Far Eastern Fleet. That changed in a hurry when Moscow replaced him and the new admiral emphatically ordered all seaworthy Russian ships, both navy and civilian, to load everything they could cram on board and get underway for Vladivostok and the east. And do it fast "or else."
According to the NSA report I read the next day, Moscow made it crystal clear that any bureaucratic delays and red tape were to result in immediate and extremely severe disciplinary consequences for everyone involved, meaning they would shot on the spot. Maybe my little “come to Jesus” speech helped.
Good. Russian officials are finally beginning to respond to the growing chaos at Kalingrad and Danovsky’s increasingly desperate calls for reinforcements and supplies. To Danovsky’s surprise, the new port commander at Kalingrad called him to ask what he needed most and then ordered that the priority use of the loading cranes and port equipment was to be the loading of helicopters and helicopter-related supplies on Russia’s three aircraft carriers.
Russia’s carriers had sat out the Turkish War tied up to the Kalingrad carrier dock with skeleton crews. The Russian admirals apparently considered them too valuable to risk losing in a war. But then why the fuck did they build them? I wonder if there is something missing in the selection process for admirals; ours acted the same way in the past.
In any event, all three of the functioning Russian carriers have been ordered to load and head to Vladivostok—the relatively new small helicopter carriers Moska II and Leningrad II which carried fourteen helicopters each which had recently joined the fleet to replace their similarly named predecessors, and the Kuznetsov, Russia’s only real carrier, which normally carried a complement of thirty-three planes and twelve helicopters. At least our surface navy and carriers joined the fight in the last war; the Eastern Union's surface navy, including all of their carriers, basically stayed in port and sat it out.
The Russians have a fourth carrier, the Kuznetsov Class Minsk II. But sometime just before the recent war the Minsk II had a major problem that rendered it unseaworthy. According to the CIA, its officers, at the order of the commander of the Navy, sabotaged the Minsk’s power plants when the military command ordered the Minsk II to sortie and support the attack on Turkey.
Allegedly some or all of the carrier’s big turbines have been repaired and the Minsk II will soon be loaded and join the long string of Russian ships slated to carry reinforcements to the Russian East.
Each of the Russian carriers and its escorts will immediately leave for Vladivostok and soon as they finish stuffing aboard all the helicopters they can carry and as much armor and other tracked equipment as they can load. The carriers' planes will fly out on their own.
In the end, loading the troops turned out to be the least of the Russians’ problems; they all got on board before the carriers finished loading the equipment. The carriers were packed like cans of sardines.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kuznetsov doesn’t set a record for the most people ever on a single ship. It sailed carrying an entire Russian armored infantry division and all its armor, its navy crew, and the overflow from the divisions assigned to the two smaller carriers—and not enough food to feed them all so the troops ended up eating their combat rations.
******
Both the railroad and the deteriorating and heavily potholed two lane concrete highway from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk were jammed with men and equipment moving north. When they arrived at Khabarovsk, they turned east without stopping and kept going towards Podovsk and Chita.
As Bill Hammond and I explained to the President and the National Security Council over and over again—how many of the potential reinforcements leaving Vladivostok will actually reach Chita will depend on how soon the Chinese attack begins, and how soon thereafter and where the railroad and road running from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk to Chita are cut.
******
Oh Shit. Bill Hammond just called to tell me that the NSA and the CIA are both confirming that the Russian navy has received an order to fight if the Japanese try to land troops at Sakhalin. He also reported that negotiations are underway between Russia and Taiwan for Russian ships to use Taiwanese ports, and that Moscow is actively negotiating, using its natural gas supplies as bait, to regain some of the ships that were taken over by the Ukraine and Georgia when the Easterm Union collapsed.
Getting some of the Eastern Union ships back from the Ukraine and the other former Eastern Union countries really didn’t mean much; there was little chance that any of those ships could be crewed up and sufficiently serviced and loaded in time to get them to Vladivostok before the war starts and the railroad is cut. But it was still the right thing to do; they’d be needed if the war dragged on.
Washington’s reaction to the unfolding situation was chaotic and confused.
On one hand Secretary Sanders was reassuring the Japanese that we would honor our defense treaty even it meant helping them fight the Russians. On the other hand, we were moving ships, particularly fleet oilers and supply ships, to Okinawa, Taiwan, and the Philippines so we could, if the President so ordered, refuel and resupply the Russian ships.
We were also returning the Pacific fleet, which had come to Europe to help fight the recently concluded war, back to the Pacific. Some of the ships of the European Fleet were going with them as part our foreign policy's “pivot to the east.” Whatever the hell that means.
Secretary Sanders and the Pentagon admirals were sure that returning so many of the American Navy’s ships to the Pacific this will somehow “send an important message” to the Chinese—even though they couldn’t quite explain exactly what the message might be, particularly since they are simultaneously promising not to use the fleet.
Even I was confused. On one hand, we were sending ships to the Pacific from Europe and the Mediterranean to support the Russians and discourage the Chinese; on the other hand, Sanders and the admirals were simultaneously telling Congress and an increasingly nervous American public that the ships being sent to the Pacific would “under no circumstances” be involved in any hostilities that might break out between China and Russia or between Russia and Japan.
What’s the message—if we change our minds we’ll be ready?
******
Day was passing into a rainy night as the missile cruiser Admiral Markov slowly pulled away from its Kalingrad dock—and then revved up its two steam turbine engines and rushed into the stormy Baltic to start a high speed run to Vladivostok. The Markov was among the first of the many Russian ships that would carry Russian reinforcements half way around the world to the Russian East.
Things went wrong from the start. The Markov was top heavy and it was rolling badly in the heavy seas of the Baltic. It had always been top heavy, but it was even more so now that it had been overloaded with tanks and armored personnel carriers on its deck and helicopter pad.
On the Markov’s helicopter landing pad alone were nine PT-76 light tanks and five BMD infantry fighting vehicles. Three more BMDs were lifted by shipyard cranes into place in the bow even though they blocked the Markov’s missile launchers and anti-aircraft guns. Pallets of artillery ammunition were piled everywhere and four containers of tank ammunition and spare parts were stacked on top of each other and lashed down on the helicopter pad next to the armor.
Down below wedged into the Markov’s little two-helicopter hangar were two assault helicopters and an anti-submarine helicopter. They were carried down by the helicopter elevator and all three were able to be accommodated by using the mechanics' work space next to the missile cruiser’s one and only anti-submarine helicopter.
The elevator itself then went back up to be part of the deck. At the moment, it had three BMD infantry fighting vehicles parked on it with cases of ammunition and spare parts stacked on top of them. It was a "fix" that would work unless the Markov needed its now unusable anti-submarine chopper.
The lieutenant colonel commanding the Russian naval infantry battalion on the Markov, Russian Marines, had decided to keep the carrier�
��s anti-subMarine helicopter aboard instead of replacing it with another assault helicopter—because it could be quickly configured to carry ten passengers instead of anti-subMarine torpedoes. Maybe I’ll need it to move me and my men around was his unspoken thought.
It would be a gross understatement to say that the men on the ship were in for an unpleasant voyage as the top heavy ship rolled and shuddered as it forced its way through the stormy Baltic and Atlantic Oceans.
One of the Markov’s big problems was the number of men on the ship. It was sailing with more than triple the number of men it was designed to carry and feed. The ship itself was operating with a skeleton crew of 261 men instead of its regular crew of 380—so that it could squeeze aboard an entire 920-man battalion of naval infantry and all of their weapons and equipment.
And "squeeze" was the right word. The Markov’s enlisted crewmen were hot bunking to free up space for the Marines' officers and senior NCOs—they were allowed an eight hour sleep shift and then had to turn their bunk over to someone else. This freed up more than two hundred bunks for use by double-bunking the Marine officers and triple-bunking battalion’s NCOs.
The enlisted sailors, at least, had bunks to sleep in—most of the enlisted Russian Marines did not. They were sleeping and throwing up on the floors of the passage ways, under the bunks and in the corridors of the sickbay and common areas, and anywhere else they could find space including in and under the helicopters and on top of the stacked supplies of ammunition and equipment.
That things were not going well aboard the heavily loaded and top heavy missile cruiser was an understatement. Three days into the voyage and the crowded conditions and sixteen hour work days for the crew and boredom for the seasick Marines were already beginning to take their toll. Worse, one of the ship’s two steam turbine engines overheated and had to be shut down only six hours after the Markov cast off and began its long trek around the world to Vladivostok.
Our Next Great War Page 23