Show of Force (8 page)

Silence! The ambassador turned halfway to Collier. “Bob, what happened?” Silence. “Can you get him back? We have more time before they're out of range.”

The Admiral looked at his men, one at a time. The looks on their faces were all that he required. "Mr. Ambassador, we're on our own now. I'm sure if we had any other means of communications with Washington, we'd learn shortly that our satellite was just destroyed. If it's any comfort to you, it was likely a missile. Destruction of that type will be obvious to a number of countries, and I'm sure the U.S. will learn about this provocation in the next half hour.

“In the meantime, sir, we have no contact with Washington, and I doubt we will have any for some time. As a matter of fact, if you go to your quarters and look out in the square, I'll bet you'll see there are even more guards than before.”

In the aura of the dim street lights on the Tschaikowskistrasse, Ambassador Simpson saw not only more people, but they now wore the uniforms of the Red Army.

T
he office was austere, much like the man who sat behind the large wooden desk. The desk and the comfortable chair he sat in were the only items in the room that signified his authority. There was a drab rug of a nondescript brownish color on the floor, and there were no curtains on the windows, only the folding wooden blinds, so familiar in Russia, that slid on squeaky metal tracks to cut out a too-bright sun. The wails and ceiling were of a pale beige color, and minute cracks showed in the plaster, which needed renewing. The only decorations were on the wall opposite the desk where he could look up at them from his work. Behind him were the normal charts and scrolls that signified various awards he had won in his long naval career. They were there for effect, for he wanted visitors to see them when he talked. There were two smallish windows to his right. He leaned back in his chair to look out at the lightly falling snow in the Kremlin yard. The air was still bright with the light crystal snow that fell this time of year from the fluffy clouds. They skittered across the sun, the one that never rose very high in the wintry Moscow sky. He pushed back from his desk, putting his hands behind his bald head. What little hair he had left provided a gray fringe around the base of his skull. This made his ears look bigger than they were, and his jowls, not large for a man nearly seventy years old, were also emphasized. He had a big head, wide, with a pronounced forehead and high Slavic cheekbones. To complete this tough-looking appearance, his eyes should have been a steely gray. But they were a soft brown instead. It might have been a handsome face, but the many hard years during the war, coupled with the sternness of a senior Russian military official, produced a perpetual downturn at the corners of his mouth.

His military blouse was open, one of the rare times he allowed himself this relaxation. He needed that comfort when he was alone with his thoughts. His chest carried an impressive array of combat ribbons, and the gold on his sleeves signified his position as the single Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union. He was not only the man who had built the Soviet Navy after the Great Patriotic War, he was still in total command of it. Only moments before, he had given the order for destruction of the U.S. satellite in retaliation for whatever the Americans had done to his own.

He was well aware of the fire at the American Embassy, although that had been the work of the K.G.B. They would handle the Americans in Moscow. His responsibility was coordinating the confrontation at Islas Piedras in the Indian Ocean, working closely with both the Premier and Admiral Kupinsky aboard the flagship
Lenin.
The phone on his desk buzzed briefly, and his secretary explained that the head of the K.G.B. was waiting to talk with him.

He picked up the phone and identified himself, then listened intently, not responding but nodding his head a few times to himself. When the caller had finished, he thanked him briefly for the information, hanging up before the other could add anything else to the one-sided conversation. It was simply formal notification that communications between the United States Embassy and Washington had been completely cut for the time being. The Americans were isolated.

There was a sharp knock at the single door to his office. An aide appeared after a respectful wait, wheeling in a chart of the. Indian Ocean. Admiral Gorenko wanted nothing cluttering his office, nothing that would interfere when he was thinking. All the charts, television screens, communications equipment, computer consoles, and assorted command paraphernalia were kept in the command room next to his office. He had asked to be brought up to date every two hours, but did not care to step into the noise of the next room, where its occupants would invariably snap to attention as he entered.

The aide saluted. “The position of
Lenin
at seven A.M. was exactly here, Admiral Gorenko,” and he pointed to a spot well marked on the chart. “The American force is located here,”—he pointed to another distinctly marked spot—“northeast of Islas Piedras. They changed course in the middle of the day as you expected, bringing them to this point at sixteen hundred, about one thousand miles from our own force.”

Gorenko's eyes turned from the chart to the aide. “Are there still just six ships in that formation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any sign of
Nimitz?”
“No, sir. We believe she's still heading for Simonstown,”

“Don't believe. Check again.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “She will be turned back north, and she will be joined by all of those ships spread out on your chart. That you can be certain of, and I want to know instantly when she does.” His head lowered back to the papers on the desk.

But he could not concentrate. He leaned back in his chair again, and found himself looking at a photograph on the wall. There were two men in the picture standing side by side, dressed in combat gear, guns slung on their shoulders. The backdrop was rubble. No buildings were standing. Written in the lower right-hand corner was “Stalingrad, Nov. 18, 1942.” One of the men was Gorenko, hardly recognizable today because of the strange clothes he wore then and the forty-year difference in time. The other was his friend, Georgi Kupinsky, Alex's father. And now, he thought to himself, I may be sending the son to his death.

. . . The clothes they had worn then made them look like awkward bears, but they were warm, much warmer than the Germans or Rumanians. Their hats, with short visors to accommodate their helmets, had earflaps that encircled all but nose and eyes. The sheepskin coats were bulky and hung below their knees, and their weight made fast movement difficult, but it was preferable to freezing to death. The Volga was already filled with ice flows, and it would get much colder before the next offensive was over. They had warm gloves that were pliable enough to allow them freedom of movement, but the best- part of their uniforms were their
valenki,
the felt-covered, padded boots. It was said that armies traveled on their stomachs, but since there was little food the 62nd Army managed to get by with warm feet. The Germans they were able to capture could not run because their feet had frozen in their straw-stuffed boots, worthless protection in the Russian winter.

The photo had been taken between one of the many pitched battles during the street fighting in Stalingrad. They were standing near the Central Railroad Station, a place that General Chuikov had decided would be a “must hold” position. It was near Mamai Hill, another of the bluffs in the city that had seesawed back and forth. They were not allowed to give up the station as long as they were still alive.

That was another order that had been forgotten with time. Russians in Stalingrad had to be dead before they gave ground.

It had been decreed that the city would be the turning point of the war. If they did not stop the advance here, then the Germans would move on the Baku oil fields. They had been told they had only two obligations to the state—continue to fight or die. The Germans seemed to be of the same mind. They fought fiercely, giving up an attack only when there was no one left to fight. The Rumanians to the north and the Italians to the south, who were fighting for the Germans, were not as motivated. They preferred to take their chances as prisoners. They did not fear the torture the German soldiers expected if they were captured. Himmler's doctrine of Untermensch, the Commissar Decree of May 1941, ordered all Russian political officials and army political commissars killed on capture. The German soldiers expected no less.

The Admiral's thoughts drifted back to the early days of the war, after Hitler had surprised Stalin by striking on three fronts. Gorenko had been a young captain of his own destroyer in the Black Sea Reel. He had been too junior to be caught up in the purges of 1937 and 1938, and the loss of so many of his superiors had created a rapid career path for him. He had then been made a commander of a squadron of destroyers, and when the Germans were sweeping into the Odessa region he had been charged with organizing the “sailor army.” It was September, 1941, and his sailors had delayed the Germans until late October. The plan was to slow them down as much as possible until they were stopped completely by the Russian winter.

They had evacuated the sailors after Odessa fell. Then they became part of the Azov Flotilla, trying to keep the supply lanes open through the Azov Sea and up the Don near Stalingrad. He had organized the Kerch Landing in the struggle to save Sebastopol. The German armies were relentless and their tanks gradually drove the Russians back to the sea. But they held the city through the winter, effectively stalling Hitler's advance until the spring. It was Gorenko's sailor army that had fought the Germans 50 bravely, time and again throwing back the advances and taking such heavy losses. They were forced to evacuate Kerch in May of that year and in July of 1942 Sebastopol finally fell. There were few of those sailor soldiers left. The citizens never forgot the brave “five sailors of Sebastopol” who threw themselves under advancing German tanks. It was a defense of the homeland and each sailor was committed to die on land or sea.

On his wall, next to the photo from Stalingrad, was the simple message found on the body of one of his sailors at Firing Point Number Eleven:

Russia, my country, my native land! Dear Comrade Stalin! I, a Black Sea sailor, and a son of Lenin's Komsomol, fought as my heart told me to fight. I slew the beasts as long as my heart beat in my breast. Now I am dying, but I know we shall win. Sailors of the Black Sea Navy! Fight harder still, kill the mad fascist dogs. I have been faithful to my soldier's oath.

No one ever passed through his office without having it pointed out. Gorenko expected no less of his sailors forty years later.

By August, they had lost control of the Azov Sea to the Germans, and Gorenko led his small band of survivors toward Stalingrad, where the final stand would be made. If the Germans took Stalin's city and captured the oil fields, then the war was lost. Word of mouth preceded him as he led his men up the Don, skirmishing with German elements as they made their way to the next front. They did not go hungry, for the peasants brought what little they had to the sailors, whose commander was already a myth.

He lost more men at Kalach when they successfully destroyed a German fuel depot, the primary one the Panzer divisions depended on in the struggle for Stalingrad. Then, they captured a freight train and ran it along the canal to the great city. They arrived during the hardest month, October, the month in which General Paulus knew he must capture the city or face another cruel winter. The defenses had already pulled within the city limits and reinforcements from the Volga's eastern bank found themselves instantly in the front lines. The heroes were greeted for five minutes and then immediately sent to General Gorishnyi's 62nd Army, a unit already famous in its own right. Perhaps Chuikov had realized that the two heroic units should be charged with defending that part of the city -that protected the supply paths over the Volga behind them. At any rate, the remainder of those sailors who had left their ships to defend Odessa, Sebastapol, and now Stalingrad would never again see the Black Sea. They died defending Mamai Hill, and a Central Railroad Station that was already unrecognizable when they got there.

There was a sharp knocking at his door. “Yes.” His aide entered, saluting as he stepped inside. “A report from Admiral Kupinsky, sir.”

Gorenko nodded, not answering, as was his habit. “Two aircraft were sent to harass the Americans. They fired missiles from long range making one hit on a cruiser. Little damage reported. One of the Rigas was brought down by a low-level missile we were unaware of. The remaining aircraft successfully evaded the others.”

“Is there any sign of
Nimitz
yet, or any of her screening or supply ships'?”

“Nothing, Admiral.”

He pondered for a moment, then looked up to the aide. “Message to Admiral Kupinsky—continue harrassment. Sacrifice if necessary to determine any other new weapon systems.”

“At once, Admiral.” He wheeled and left, shutting the door quietly behind him and leaving Gorenko to his thoughts again.

Gorenko rose from behind his desk and moved over to the windows, looking into the courtyard below. The snow had stopped, and there were already many footprints through the light dusting. Soon, flakes would again drift down, erasing those prints and making room for new wanderers, though there were few in this section of the Kremlin. A brief flash of midday sun glanced off one of the domes on the Cathedral of the Archangel. He turned and looked directly at the photo.

The smells came back to him again, the gut-wrenching odor of death that hung over the city no matter where you were, and the calming blend of black bread and cabbage and makhorka tobacco in the basement command post. They had lost Mamai Hill once again and the General had been forced to move his headquarters. A fuel-storage depot had been bombed and burning oil was running into the basements. It was quiet outside because the Germans did not usually attack during the day. Gorenko was eating a hasty meal with Kupinsky, the young sergeant who had just been made lieutenant to replace the last officer in his unit who had been killed that morning.

Gorenko decided to stay close to this man, for his troops still had a full supply of ammunition, especially grenades, which slowed any attack. And Kupinsky and his men were brave and experienced. They had been there since early September, always near Mamai Hill. Young Georgi Kupinsky had liked the Navy man, and they found that the defenders of Sebastopol and the defenders of Mamai Hill fought well together.

Their newly designated basement headquarters were by the Stalingrad Tractor Plant. They would soon try to take back the Hill.

“Tell me, Commander,” inquired the young man, as he lit one of the foul-smelling cigarettes, “now that they have allowed us to finish a meal, do you think they will attack soon? Or do you think they are already aware of the counteroffensive?” It was November 18, and General Chuikov had planned a massive counterattack to take place simultaneously on each of the fronts around the city.