Red Army (50 page)

“Yes, Comrade Commander. Behind us. I’ve verified the coordinates. The transport officer swears he saw them with his own eyes. They overran the brigade resupply column.”

Anton turned his head to look into the face of this bearer of bad news.

“Damage?”

“Severe.”

This cannot be happening, Anton thought. I have no control over any of this. He laid his hand on the map, bracing himself, but attempting to disguise the action as a gesture of decisiveness.

“Order all units to halt where they are and assume a hasty defense.
All
units this time.” He looked at the map. The colored arrows seemed to be teasing him, refusing to hold still. If the Americans had already slipped some elements behind them, his brigade could still block any forces that tried to follow in the wake of the lead elements. Yet no one seemed to know exactly where the enemy was located. It was all such a mess. There were too many possibilities.

Anton swept his hand along the trace of the brigade’s march routes. “Defend the intersections. Block them. Commandeer any civilian vehicles in the area and build antivehicle barricades. Use our support vehicles, if necessary. But I want every major intersection blocked and covered with fire.”

“Artillery?” the chief of staff asked.

Anton tried to think. He wanted to be firm, to offer a worthy example to his staff. But it all seemed a bit distant and dreamlike.

“The guns will be positioned near the roads, where they can bring direct fires to bear in an emergency.” Anton thought. There was a dull physical pain associated with each new thought now. “Protect the rocket launchers. Position them at a central location where they can support as much of the brigade as possible.”

He felt nauseated. Dizzy. He had to sit down. Hold on, Anton told himself. Just hold on. It can’t last forever.

General Malinsky carefully avoided contradicting Starukhin in front of the Third Shock Army staff, but he watched and listened closely, ready to intervene if the situation became critical. He had complete faith in Starukhin in the attack, but he worried that the passionate aggressiveness that served an advancing force so well might prove unsuited to the very different demands of a hasty defense and the give-and-take exchanges required to stabilize a major enemy counterattack. Malinsky found himself wishing that Trimenko were still alive and in command of this sector. Trimenko had possessed balance, a cool mind behind a steel fist. Malinsky looked at Starukhin’s broad back. He realized that the army commander was behaving with unusual restraint in his presence, aware that Malinsky did not like incessant displays of temper. It was like a game between them.

Would nuclear weapons soon be a part of a greater game? Since the alarm in the night, the High Command of Forces had been silent on the subject, and the KGB boys were pulling their own twisted strings. Malinsky dreaded the thought of a battlefield turned nuclear. But he did not want to be caught unprepared. He did not want to give the enemy the first blow. It was bad enough now with the damned Americans.

The Americans had moved more quickly and powerfully than anyone had expected. The bits and pieces of intelligence information that had been trickling in now seemed like obvious clues in retrospect. But they had all committed the age-old sin of underestimating the enemy.

Malinsky shrugged to himself. He was not interested in history lessons. But he made a mental note. For the next war. The technical means of reconnaissance were sufficiently powerful. But the men behind them, who had to analyze the data and make judgments, needed further development. One good man like Dudorov could not do it all by himself.

Starukhin’s quartering party had selected a fine site for the command post, tucked into a row of West German warehouses spacious enough to hold all of the command and support vehicles. The lessons of the first two days had been assimilated very quickly. Command posts set up in the countryside could be located and targeted almost effortlessly. The cover and concealment of built-up areas at least offered a chance at survival. Increasingly, this was a war of cities and towns, and of roads.

The din of generators wrapped the command post in a cocoon of noise within the outer shell of the warehouses, and fumes clotted the atmosphere. But the opportunity to work with all of the lights turned on around the clock more than compensated for the bad air.

Starukhin suddenly raised his voice, drawing Malinsky’s eyes. The army commander quickly got his temper back under control, but it was clear that things were not going well. In the rear, the encircled German corps was attempting a breakout from the Hannover area. Malinsky believed that the inner ring of the encirclement was sufficiently powerful to hold the Germans, or, at a minimum, to channel them onto routes where they would become hopelessly vulnerable and impotent to affect the main thrusts of the front. Still, the added pressure of yet another subbattle was hardly welcome at the moment.

Starukhin dispatched a nervous staff colonel on a mission, waving his big paws in the air. Then the army commander turned toward Malinsky, wearing the look of a dog who suspects he might have a beating coming.

Starukhin came up so close that Malinsky could smell the big man’s stale sweat. The army commander looked down at his superior, clearly ill at ease.

“What is it?” Malinsky asked.

“Comrade Front Commander ... the situation along your son’s route of march has become critical.”

“You mean the situation along the route of march of the Third Brigade of the Forty-ninth Corps,” Malinsky corrected, struggling to control his facial muscles.

“Yes, the Third Brigade,” Starukhin agreed. “It’s very bad, Comrade Front Commander.”

“What does the corps commander have to say? Does Anseev believe he can master the situation?”

Anton. Malinsky knew that it was not right to think of the boy now. He risked losing all perspective. Thinking of the boy who had grown into a man, yet who would always remain a boy to him. Malinsky ached to see his son. And, he realized helplessly, he wanted to protect him. To shield him from the harms of the grown-up world.

But Anton was a soldier. A guards colonel in the Malinsky tradition. In the
Russian
tradition. He would have to do his duty.

Anton. Malinsky could see his son’s fine, clear features before him. Surely, he would look disheveled now. Black circles. The boy would be tired. He had been on the march for a long time. Malinsky imagined the scene at the brigade command post. Anton weary, but firmly in control, a pillar of strength for his subordinates. Or perhaps he had already gone forward, to direct the combat action in person. It was, of course, a difficult question, given the temporal and spatial issues of modern war.

To what extent could a commander permit himself to be drawn into the fight? How much distance did he have to maintain to retain an adequate, objective overview? Malinsky felt confident that his son would evaluate the situation and do the right thing.

“Comrade Front Commander,” Starukhin continued, “we have temporarily lost communications with the corps-level command posts. We can talk to your son’s -- I mean the Third Brigade -- however.”

“You can’t have lost all means of communications.”

The buildings trembled as distant explosions walloped the earth, dusting the already bad air.

“The Americans are conducting extensive radio electronic combat operations to support their attack.”

Or they’ve hit Anseev’s command posts, Malinsky thought. Anseev was a good man. Why couldn’t he get his corps under control?

“Have you tried the corps’ rear control post?” Malinsky asked.

Starukhin nodded. “Oh, yes. We can talk to them. But they can’t reach Anseev, either. The rear is in the dark worse than anybody.”

Malinsky pondered the situation for a moment, then reached for a cigarette. Calmly, he told himself, do it calmly. Do not let him see a trace of emotion.

“And your situation? Tell me about the Third Shock Army.”

“We’ll manage. We’ll hold them. They’ll never cross the Weser River line.”

“What about the Hameln crossing site? They could be heading straight for it.”

Starukhin wiped a paw across his unshaven chin. “They’d have to break in. I have a tank regiment on the west bank. And if they broke in, they’d never get back out. The British force in Hameln is sealed off. They’re fighting like savages to keep us out, but they’ll just provide that many more prisoners in the end.”

“Any further communications from our air-assault force in Hameln?”

“Nothing further,” Starukhin said. “Not since yesterday.”

Malinsky carefully lit his cigarette. “Go on.”

“I’m moving covering troops and forward detachments across the river at multiple points. The first line of defense will be in front of the hills beyond the river. The Tenth Guards Tank Division holds the Bad Oeynhausen sector, with a grouping from the Seventh at Rinteln. The Forty-seventh Tank Division and the Twelfth are committed to the encirclement of the German operational grouping and the Hannover fight, in conjunction with elements of the Second Guards Tank Army. I’m reorganizing my East German division as a counterattack force.”

Malinsky was surprised. “They’ve done well, then, our little German comrades?”

“Good tools,” Starukhin said. “They make very good tools, the Germans.” He smiled.

“All right. But don’t commit the counterattack force without my approval. I want to know exactly where the Americans are headed. We must not commit prematurely. Also, I’m going to order the release of a mechanized airborne force to you. You’ll have two reinforced regiments. I want you to employ them as light armor, working around urbanized terrain.”

Starukhin bobbed his head in agreement, obviously pleased with the gift of additional forces, minor though they were. Malinsky knew that Starukhin would fight hard with every weapon put into his hand. It was only his impulsiveness that worried the front commander.

“Yes,” Malinsky said. “The most desirable thing is certainly to hold them west of the Weser and south of the Rinteln-Herford-Borgholzhausen line. I don’t want them interfering with the progress of the Second Guards Tank Army. And we need to hold open as many bridgeheads as possible for follow-on forces.”

“How long do you think we’ll need to hold on,” Starukhin asked, “before fresh divisions come up?” It was unprecedented for Starukhin to ask such a question, so totally devoid of swagger. It brought home the seriousness of the situation to Malinsky.

The front commander put down his cigarette and pushed back his sleeve. He checked his watch. To his surprise, he found that it was full morning. It would be broad daylight outside.

“Twelve hours,” he guessed, wishing Chibisov was on hand, ready with his clear-cut, confident answers.

A staff officer approached the two generals. From the movement of his eyes, Malinsky could see that the officer was far more worried about Starukhin’s possible reaction to his presence than about Malinsky.

Malinsky’s stare caused Starukhin to turn.

“Well?” Starukhin said, in a voice of measured restraint.

“Comrade Commanders,” the staffer said, looking back and forth between them. “The Third Brigade of the Forty-ninth Corps is being overrun.”

The sounds of combat action reverberated in the middle distance. When large-caliber shells struck, the roughly erected tentage sheltering the area between the vehicles of Anton’s command post shivered, jouncing the maps lining the canvas walls. The radios sputtered with grim updates. The manning of the command post had been reduced so that a defensive perimeter could be established at the edge of the grove. There was still no enemy contact in the immediate vicinity, but American forces had passed by on both flanks.

“Try to raise corps again,” Anton said to the staff at large. “There are helicopters. We’ve been promised helicopters.” He half remembered a meeting in the night with the corps commander. They had spoken of helicopters that would come to the rescue.

Anton had a budding suspicion that his staff had begun to work around him, struggling to carry out his orders to block every key intersection and to establish a hasty defense. They had been caught, and caught badly. The brigade, the entire corps, was a splendid offensive weapon, well-structured to fight meeting engagements. But they had moved too swiftly, brigades out of contact with one another, and with gaps between elements of the individual brigades. It had all been too fast, and the intelligence had been too slow, and now they were paying the price.

Yet even if all of that was true, the failure remained his, Anton realized. He tried to blame the acid sickness in his guts and the fever and his flesh rubbed so raw it hurt to sit. And the dizziness that made it difficult to stand. He should have turned over the brigade to someone more capable.

But to whom? Where did duty end? What would his father have thought? Perhaps even that he was a coward. A Malinsky brought low by a bad digestion. In any event, it would have shamed the old man. And Anton would not do it. No matter what it cost.

He thought of Zena, of all the things he had to tell her. They often talked together. They shared everything. Yet it seemed to him now that an incredible amount had been left unspoken.

“Where are the helicopters?” Anton asked suddenly.

“Comrade Commander, we can’t reach the corps.”

“Try manual Morse.”

“Comrade Commander, we’ve tried everything.”

“Don’t tell me that you can’t do this and can’t do that,” Anton shouted.
“Get the helicopters.
Do you understand me?”

“I’ll try to relay through the Fourth Brigade.”

“Why didn’t you tell me we have communications with the Fourth Brigade?”

There was no response. Anton looked around him. Work had almost stopped. Several officers stared at him.

“What is the situation of the Fourth Brigade?” Anton demanded.

“They are ... in contact. To the north of us. Comrade Commander, you listened to the report as it came in.”

Anton tried to make sense of this. The north was the wrong side. He remembered that much. And the Americans were to the north of them now.