Red Storm Rising (1986) (7 page)

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 while 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.”

The officers followed Rozhkov from the room to rinse the sweat from their bodies with cold-water showers. Ten minutes later, refreshed and dressed in full uniform, the officers reassembled in a second-floor banquet room. The waiters, many of them KGB informers, noted the subdued mood and quiet conversations that frustrated their efforts to listen in. The generals knew that KGB’s Lefortovo prison was a bare kilometer away.

“Our plans?” CINC-Southwest asked his deputy.

“How many times have we played this war game?” Alekseyev responded. “All the maps and formulae we have examined for years. We know the troop and tank concentrations. We know the routes, the highways, the crossroads that we must use, and those that NATO will use. We know our mobilization schedules, and theirs. The only thing we don’t know is whether our carefully laid plans will in fact work. We should attack at once. Then the unknowns will work against both sides equally.”

“And if our attack goes too well, and NATO relies on a nuclear defense?” the senior officer asked. Alekseyev acknowledged the importance and grave unpredictability of the point.

“They might do that anyway. Comrade, all of our plans depend heavily on surprise, no? A mixture of surprise and success will force the West to consider nuclear weapons—”

“Here you are wrong, my young friend,” CINC-Southwest chided. “The decision to use nuclear weapons is political. To prevent their use is also a political exercise for which time is required.”

“But if we wait over four months—
how can we be assured of strategic surprise?”
Alekseyev demanded.

“Our political leadership has promised it.”

“The year I entered Frunze Academy, the Party told us the date on which we would surely have ‘True Communism in our lifetime.’ A solemn promise. That date was six years ago.”

“Such talk is safe with me, Pasha, I understand you. But if you do not learn to control your tongue—”

“Forgive me, Comrade General. We must allow for the chance that surprise will not be achieved. ‘In combat, despite the most careful preparation, risks cannot be avoided,’ ” Alekseyev quoted from the syllabus of the Frunze Academy. “ ‘Attention must therefore be given, and the most detailed plans prepared, for every reasonable exigency of the overall operation. For this reason, the unsung life of a staff officer is among the most demanding of those honored to serve the State.’ ”

“You have the memory of a
kulak,
Pasha.” CINC-Southwest laughed, filling his deputy’s glass with Georgian wine. “But you are correct.”

“Failure to achieve surprise means that we are forcing a campaign of attrition on a vast scale, a high-technology version of the ‘14—’18 war.”

“Which we will win.” CINC-Ground sat down next to Alekseyev.

“Which we will win,” Alekseyev agreed. All Soviet generals accepted the premise that the inability to force a rapid decision would force a bloody war of attrition that would grind each side down equally. The Soviets had far more reserves of men and material with which to fight such a war. And the political will to use them.
“If and only if
we are able to force the pace of battle, and if our friends in the Navy can prevent the resupply of NATO from America. NATO has war stocks of materiel to sustain them for roughly five weeks. Our pretty, expensive fleet must close the Atlantic.”

“Maslov.” Rozhkov beckoned to the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy. “We wish to hear your opinion of the correlation of forces in the North Atlantic.”

“Our mission?” Maslov asked warily.

“If we fail to achieve surprise in the West, Andrey Petravich, it will be necessary for our beloved comrades in the Navy to isolate Europe from America,” Rozhkov pronounced. He blinked hard at the response.

“Give me a division of airborne troops, and I can fulfill that task,” Maslov responded soberly. He held a glass of mineral water, and had been careful to avoid drink on this cold February night. “The question is whether our strategic stance at sea should be offensive or defensive. The NATO navies—above all the United States Navy—is a direct threat to the
Rodina.
It alone has the aircraft and aircraft carriers with which to attack the homeland, at the Kola Peninsula. In fact, we know that they have plans to do exactly that.”

“So what?” CINC-Southwest observed. “No attack on Soviet soil is to be taken lightly, of course, but we will take severe losses in this campaign no matter how brilliantly we fight it. What matters is the final outcome.”

“If the Americans succeed in attacking Kola, they effectively prevent our closure of the North Atlantic. And you are wrong to shrug off these attacks. American entry into the Barents Sea will constitute a direct threat to our nuclear deterrent forces, and could have more dire consequences than you imagine.” Admiral Maslov leaned forward. “On the other hand, if you persuade STAVKA to give us the resources to execute Operation Polar Glory, we can seize the combat initiative and dictate the nature of operations in the North Atlantic on our chosen terms.” He held up a closed fist. “By doing this we can, first”—he raised a finger—“prevent an American naval attack against the
Rodina;
second”—another finger—“use the majority of our submarine forces in the North Atlantic basin where the trade routes are, instead of keeping them on passive defense; and, third”—a final finger—“make maximum use of our naval aviation assets. At one stroke this operation makes our fleet an offensive rather than a defensive weapon.”

“And to accomplish this you need only one of our Guards Air Rifle divisions? Outline your plan for us, please, Comrade Admiral,” Alekseyev said.

Maslov did so over a period of five minutes. He concluded, “With luck, we will with one blow give the NATO navies more than they can deal with, and leave us with a valuable position for postwar exploitation.”

“Better to draw their carrier forces in and destroy them.” CINC-West joined the discussion.

Maslov responded: “The Americans will have five or six carriers available to use against us in the Atlantic. Each one carries fifty-eight aircraft that can be used in an air superiority or nuclear strike role, aside from those used for fleet defense. I submit, Comrade, that it is in our interest to keep those ships as far from the
Rodina
as possible.”

“Andrey Petravich, I am impressed,” Rozhkov said thoughtfully, noting the respect in Alekseyev’s eyes as well. Polar Glory was both bold and simple. “I want a full briefing on this plan tomorrow afternoon. You say that if we can allocate the resources, success in this venture is highly probable?”

“We have worked on this plan for five years, with particular emphasis on simplicity. If security can be maintained, only two things need go right for success to be achieved.”

Rozhkov nodded. “Then you will have my support.”

The Foreign Minister entered stage left, as he always did, and walked to the lectern with a brisk step that belied his sixty years. Before him was a mob of reporters arrayed by the Soviet Guards into their respective groups, the print press grasping at their pads and backed up by their photographers, the visual media arrayed in front of their portable klieg lights. The Foreign Minister hated the damned things, hated the people in front of them. The Western press with its lack of manners, always prying, always probing, always demanding answers that he need not give to his own people. How odd, he thought, while looking up from his notes, that he often had to speak more openly to these paid foreign spies than to members of the Party Central Committee. Spies, exactly what they were . . .

They could be manipulated, of course, by a skilled man with a collection of carefully prepared disinformation—which was precisely what he was about to do. But on the whole they were a threat because they never stopped doing what it was they did. It was something the Foreign Minister never allowed himself to forget, and the reason he did not hold them in contempt. Dealing with them always held potential danger. Even while being manipulated, they could be dangerous in their quest for information. If only the rest of the Politburo understood.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, speaking in English. “I will be making a brief statement, and I regret that I cannot answer any questions at this time. A full handout will be given to everyone as you leave—that is, I think they are ready by now—” He gestured to a man at the back of the room, who nodded emphatically. The Foreign Minister arranged his papers one more time and began to speak with the precise diction for which he was known.

“The President of the United States has often asked for ‘deeds not words’ in the quest for control of strategic arms.

“As you know, and to the disappointment of the entire world, the ongoing arms negotiations in Vienna have made no significant progress for over a year, with each side blaming the other for the lack of it.