“Hostilities will commence on 15 June,” Shavyrin replied. “We must be ready, Yuri. And what choice did I have? Would you have had me say, ‘I am sorry, Comrade General Secretary, but the Soviet Army is unable to carry out this task’? I would have been dismissed and replaced by someone more tractable—you know who my replacement will be. Would you rather answer to Marshal Bukharin—”
“That fool!” Rozhkov growled. It had been the then-Lieutenant General Bukharin whose brilliant plan had led the Soviet Army into Afghanistan. Professionally a nonentity, his political connections had not only saved him, but continued his career to near the pinnacle of uniformed power. A clever man, Bukharin. Never involved in the mountain campaigns himself, he could point to his brilliant paper plan and complain that it had been poorly executed, after he had moved on to command of the Kiev Military District, historically the shining gate to marshal’s rank.
“So, would you have him in this office, dictating your plans to you?” Shavyrin asked. Rozhkov shook his head. The two men had been friends and comrades since each had commanded a tank troop in the same regiment, just in time for the final surge toward Vienna in 1945.
“How are we to go about it?” Rozhkov asked.
“Red Storm,” the Marshal replied simply. Red Storm was the plan for a mechanized attack into West Germany and the Low Countries. Constantly updated for changes in the force structures of both sides, it called for a two- to three-week campaign commencing after a rapid escalation of tension between East and West. Despite this, in accordance with standard Soviet strategic doctrine, it called for strategic surprise as a precondition for success, and the use of conventional weapons only.
“At least they aren’t talking about atomic arms.” Rozhkov grunted. Other plans with other names applied to different scenarios, including many for the use of tactical and even strategic nuclear arms, something no one in uniform wished to contemplate. Despite all the saber-rattling of their political masters, these professional soldiers knew all too well that the use of nuclear arms made only for ghastly uncertainties. “And the maskirovka?”
“In two parts. The first is purely political, to work against the United States. The second part, immediately before the war begins, is from KGB. You know it, from KGB Group Nord. We reviewed it two years ago.”
Rozhkov grunted. Group Nord was an ad hoc committee of KGB department chiefs, first assembled by then-chief of the KGB Yuri Andropov in the mid-1970s. Its purpose was to research means of splitting the NATO alliance, and in general to conduct political and psychological operations aimed at undermining Western will. Its specific plan to shake the NATO military and political structure in preparation for a shooting war was Nord’s proudest example of legerdemain. But would it work? The two senior officers shared an ironic look. Like most professional soldiers, they distrusted spies and all their plans.
“Four months,” Rozhkov repeated. “We have much to do. And if this KGB magic fails to work?”
“It is a good plan. It need only deceive the West for a week, though two weeks would be better. The key, of course, is how quickly NATO can reach full readiness. If we can delay the mobilization process seven days, victory is assured—”
“And if not?” Rozhkov asked sharply, knowing that even a seven-day delay was no guarantee.
“Then it is not assured, but the balance of forces is on our side. You know that, Yuri.” The option of recalling the mobilized forces had never been discussed with the Chief of the General Staff.
“We will need to improve discipline throughout the force first of all,” CINC-Ground said. “And I need to inform our senior commanders at once. We need to implement intense training operations. Just how awful is this fuel problem?”
Shavyrin handed his subordinate the notes. “It could be worse. We have enough for extended unit training. Your task is no easy one, Yuri, but four months is a long time for this task, is it not?”
It wasn’t, but there was no point in saying so. “As you say, four months to instill fighting discipline. I will have a free hand?”
“Within limits.”
“It is one thing to make a private soldier snap to the orders of his sergeant. It might be another for officers conditioned to pushing paper to change into combat leaders.” Rozhkov skirted the issue, but his superior received the message clearly enough.
“A free hand on both, Yuri. But act carefully, for both our sakes.”
Rozhkov nodded briefly. He knew whom he’d use to get this done. “With the troops we led forty years ago, Andrey, we could do this.” Rozhkov sat down. “And in truth we have the same raw material now that we had then—and better weapons. The chief unknown remains the men. When we drove our tanks into Vienna, our men were tough, hard veterans—”
“And so were the SS bastards we crushed.” Shavyrin smiled, remembering. “Keep in mind that the same forces are at work in the West, even more so. How well will they fight, surprised, divided? It can work. We must make it work.”
“I’m meeting with our field commanders Monday. I will tell them myself.”
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
“I hope you take good care of it,” the Mayor said.
It was a moment before Commander Daniel X. McCafferty reacted. USS Chicago had been in commission for only six weeks, her completion delayed by a yard fire and her commissioning ceremony marred by the absence of the Mayor of Chicago due to a strike of city workers. Just back from five tough weeks of workups in the Atlantic, his crew was now loading provisions for their first operational deployment. McCafferty was still entranced with his new command, and never tired of looking at her. He’d just walked the Mayor along the curved upper deck, the first part of any submarine tour, even though there was almost nothing to be seen there. “Excuse me?”
“Take good care of our ship,” said the Mayor of Chicago.
“We call them boats, sir, and we’ll take good care of her for you. Will you join us in the wardroom?”
“More ladders.” The Mayor pretended to grimace, but McCafferty knew him to be a former fire chief. Would have been useful a few months back, the captain thought. “Where are you heading tomorrow?”
“To sea, sir.” The captain started down the ladder. The Mayor of Chicago followed him.
“I figured that.” For a man in his late fifties, he handled the steel ladder easily enough. They met again at the bottom. “What exactly do you do in these things?”
“Sir, the Navy calls it ‘Oceanographic Research.’ ” McCafferty led him forward, turning for a smile with his answer to the awkward question. Things were starting quickly for Chicago. The Navy wanted to see just how effective her new quieting systems were. Everything looked good in the acoustical test range off the Bahamas. Now they wanted to see how well things worked in the Barents Sea.
The Mayor laughed at that one. “Oh, I suppose you’ll be counting the whales for Greenpeace!”
“Well, I can say that there are whales where we’re heading.”
“What’s with the tile on your deck? I never heard of rubber decks on a ship.”
“It’s called anechoic tile, sir. The rubber absorbs sound waves. It makes us quieter to operate, and makes it harder to detect us on sonar if somebody pings at us. Coffee?”
“You’d think that on a day like this—”
The captain chuckled. “Me, too. But it’s against regulations.”
The Mayor hoisted his cup and clicked against McCafferty’s. “Luck.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.
They met at the Main Officers Club of the Moscow Military District on Ulitsa Krasnokazarmennaya, a massively impressive building dating back to Czarist times. It was the normal time of year for senior field commanders to confer in Moscow, and such events were always punctuated by elaborate ceremonial dinners. Rozhkov greeted his fellow officers at the main entrance, and when all were assembled, he led them downstairs to the ornate steam baths. Present were all Theater commanders, each accompanied by his deput
y, his air force commander, and the fleet commanders: a small galaxy of stars, ribbons, and braid. Ten minutes later, naked but for a pair of towels and a handful of birch branches each, they were just another group of middle-aged men, perhaps a bit fitter than was the average in the Soviet Union.
They all knew one another. Though many were rivals, they were members of the same profession nevertheless, and with an intimacy characteristic of the Russian steam baths they exchanged small talk for several minutes. Several of them were grandfathers now, and spoke with animation about the continuation of their lines. Regardless of personal rivalries, it was expected that senior officers would look out for the careers of their comrades’ sons, and so information was briefly exchanged on whose son was in which command and wanted advancement to what new posting. Finally came the classically Russian dispute over the “strength” of the steam. Rozhkov peremptorily settled the argument with a thin but steady stream of cold water onto the heated bricks in the center of the room. The resulting hiss would be sufficient to interfere with any listening devices in the room, if the foggy air hadn’t already corroded them to junk. Rozhkov had not given the first hint of what was happening. Better, he thought, to shock them into the situation and get candid reactions to the situation at hand.
“Comrades, I must make an announcement.”
Conversation stilled, and the men looked inquiringly in his direction.
Here we go. “Comrades, on 15 June of this year, just four months from now, we launch an offensive against NATO.”
For a moment, only the hiss of the steam could be heard, then three men laughed, having imbibed a few stiff drinks in the sanctity of their staff cars on the drive over from the Kremlin. Those close enough to see CINC-Ground’s face did not.
“You are serious, Comrade Marshal?” asked the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater. Receiving a nod in reply, he said, “Then perhaps you will be so kind as to explain the reason for this action?”
“Of course. You are all aware of the Nizhnevartovsk oil-field disaster. What you have not yet learned are its strategic and political implications.” It took six brisk minutes to outline everything the Politburo had decided. “In just over four months from now, we shall launch the most crucial military operation in the history of the Soviet Union: the destruction of NATO as a political and military force. And we will succeed.”
Finished, he stared at the officer in silence. The steam was having its desired effects on the assembly of flag officers. Its searing heat assaulted their breathing passages, sobering those who had been drinking. And it made them sweat. They’d be doing a lot of that in the next few months, Rozhkov thought.
Then Pavel Alekseyev, deputy commander of the South-western Theater, spoke. “I heard rumors,” he said. “But that bad?”
“Yes. We have sufficient POL supplies for twelve months of normal operations, or enough for sixty days of war operations after a brief period of increased training activity.” At the cost, he didn’t say, of crippling the national economy by mid-August.
Alekseyev leaned forward and swatted himself with his bundle of branches. The action was strangely like a lion’s swishing its tail. At fifty, he was the second-youngest officer there, a respected intellectual soldier and a fit, handsome man with the shoulders of a lumberjack. His intense, dark eyes squinted down through the rising cloud of steam.
“Mid-June?”
“Yes,” Rozhkov said. “We have that long to prepare our plans and our troops.” CINC-Ground looked around the room. Already the ceiling had become partially obscured by a mist.
“I presume we are here so that we may speak frankly among ourselves, no?”
“This is so, Pavel Leonidovich.” Rozhkov replied, not the least surprised that Alekseyev had been the first to speak. CINC-GROUND had carefully advanced the man’s career over the last decade. He was the only son of a hard-charging tank general of the Great Motherland War, one of the many good men pensioned off during the bloodless purges under Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s.
“Comrades.” Alekseyev stood, climbing slowly down the benches to the marble floor. “I accept everything Marshal Rozhkov has told us. But—four months! Four months in which we may be detected, four months in which we may lose all the element of surprise. Then what may happen? No, we have a plan already for this: Zhukov-4! Instant mobilization! We can all be back to our command posts in six hours. If we are going to conduct a surprise attack, then let us make it one no one can detect in time—seventy-two hours from now!”
Again the only sound in the room was that of the water flashing to steam on the dun-colored bricks, then the room erupted with noise. Zhukov-4 was the winter variant of a plan which hypothesized discovery of NATO’s intention to launch a surprise attack of its own on the Warsaw Pact. In such a case, standard Soviet military doctrine was the same as anyone else’s: the best defense is a good offense—preempt the NATO armies by attacking at once with the Category-A mechanized divisions in East Germany.
“But we are not ready!” objected CINC-West. His was the “point” command with headquarters in Berlin, the single most powerful military command in the world. An attack into West Germany was primarily his responsibility.
Alekseyev held up his hands. “Neither are they. In fact, they are less ready than we,” he said reasonably. “Look, consider our intelligence data. Fourteen percent of their officers are on holidays. They are coming off a training cycle, true, but because of it much of their equipment will be down for maintenance, and many of their senior officers will be away in their respective capitals for consultations, just as we are now. Their troops are in winter quarters, on a winter routine. This is the time of year for maintenance and paperwork. Physical training is curtailed—who wants to run in the snow, eh? Their men are cold, and drinking more than usual. This is our time to act! We all know that historically the Soviet fighting man performs at his best in winter, and NATO is at its lowest state of readiness.”
“But so are we, you young fool!” CINC-Western Theater growled back.
“We can change that in forty-eight hours,” Alekseyev countered.
“Impossible,” observed West’s deputy, careful to back up his boss.
“To reach our maximum readiness will take some months,” Alekseyev agreed. His only chance to carry his point with his seniors was to reason with them. He knew that he was almost certainly doomed to failure, but he had to try. “It will be difficult, if not impossible, for us to conceal it.”
“As Marshal Rozhkov told us, Pavel Leonidovich, we are promised political and diplomatic maskirovka,” a general pointed out.
“I have no doubt that our comrades in the KGB, and our skillful political leadership, will perform miracles.” The room just might have functioning bugs, after all. “But is it not asking too much to expect that the Imperialists—as much as they fear and hate us, as active as their agents and spy satellites are—will fail to note a doubling of our training activity? We know that NATO increases its readiness when we go into major unit training, and their preparedness will automatically be increased by their own spring training cycles. If we continue our training beyond the normal pattern, they will be even more alert. Achieving full combat readiness requires that we do too many things out of the ordinary. If nothing else, East Germany is rife with Western spies. NATO will notice. NATO will react. They will meet us on the border with everything in their collective arsenals.
“If, on the other hand, we attack with what we have—now!—we have the advantage. Our men are not off skiing in the fucking Alps! Zhukov-4 is designed to cycle from peace to war in forty-eight hours. There is no way possible for NATO to react in so little time. They’ll take forty-eight hours to get their intelligence information organized and presented to their ministers. By that time our shells will be falling on the Fulda Gap, and our tanks will be advancing behind them!”
“Too many things can go wrong!” CINC-West rose so swiftly that the towel nearly came off his waist. His left hand grabbed downward whi
le his right fist shook at the younger man. “What about traffic control? What about training our men in their new battle equipment? What about getting my Frontal Aviation pilots ready for combat operations against the Imperialists? There—right there is an insurmountable problem! Our pilots need at least a month of intensive training. And so do my tankers, and so do my gunners, and so do my riflemen.”
If you knew your job, they would be ready now, you worthless, whore-chasing son of a bitch! Alekseyev thought but did not dare to say aloud. CINC-West was a man of sixty-one who liked to demonstrate his manly prowess—boasted of it—to the detriment of his professional duties. Alekseyev had heard that story often enough, whispered jovially in this very room. But CINC-West was politically reliable. Such is the Soviet system, the younger general reflected. We need fighting soldiers and what do we get with which to defend the Rodina? Political reliability! He remembered bitterly what had happened to his father in 1958. But Alekseyev did not allow himself to begrudge the Party its control of the armed forces. The Party was the State, after all, and he was a sworn servant of the State. He had learned these truisms at his father’s knee. One more card to play:
“Comrade General, you have good officers commanding your divisions, regiments, and battalions. Trust them to know their duties.” It couldn’t hurt to wave the standards of the Red Army, Alekseyev reasoned.
Rozhkov stood, and everyone in the room strained to hear his pronouncement. “What you say has merit, Pavel Leonidovich, but do we gamble with the safety of the Motherland?” He shook his head, quoting doctrine exactly, as he had been doing for too many years. “No. We rely on surprise, yes, on the first weighted blow to blast open a path for the daring thrust of our mechanized forces. And we will have our surprise. The Westerners will not wish to believe what is happening, and with the Politburo soothing them even as we prepare the first blow, we will have our strategic surprise. The West will have perhaps three days—four at most—to know what is coming, and even then they will not be mentally prepared for us.”