Ian Slater - Arctic Front

It had the makings of a disaster. Dracheev knew that if he failed to hold the Americans until Novosibirsk HQ had time to reinforce the Siberian coastal defenses, it would be best if he stayed on the island rather than make a run for it aboard his chopper to the mainland, for he would almost certainly be shot for his failure. But then he had what he called his osenivshaya ideya— “brain wave”—born of the fear of what would happen if he didn’t hold the island — and from the deep anger he had experienced at being duped by the American Freeman’s fake paratroopers, a humiliation made worse for Dracheev by the fact that in addition to his regular troops manning the island’s underground AA network, he was answerable for the effective use of the SPETS, Siberia’s elite force.

“We don’t have much time,” he quickly told his aides in Ratmanov control. “We’ll use two emergency exits. Exit one for complex one, exit two for complex two.”

“Eto originalno”— “That’s original,” murmured one of the SPETS, but Dracheev did not demand an apology. He had made a serious mistake sending out the SPETS before he had visual confirmation that they were really Allied paratroopers descending and not dummies, and the SPETS had every right to expect him to correct it. “I ‘m confident,” he told them, “that the Smart bombs, while they may take out one or two of the exits the Americans have discovered, will not—”

“Samolyoty vraga priblizhayutsya!”— ”Hostile aircraft approaching! Rising from Seward Peninsula.”

“All second-level plates are to be sealed!” Dracheev ordered. He meant each exit’s number two hatch, slotted in at the sixty-foot level in every one-hundred-foot spiral stair exit, had to be sealed like the hatches of a diving submarine, just in case any of the Smart bombs’ high-explosive charges were, despite the lack of laser beam accuracy, lucky enough to blow out the top Saddam seal.

Within minutes the bombs started to fall. The lights in Control flickered momentarily as circuits were broken and auxiliary generators kicked in. General Dracheev, his legs shaking involuntarily from the Smart weapons’ bombardment, turned anxiously and angrily to his aide. “The American flyer we captured. Do you think he knows what Freeman’s strategy is?”

“He hasn’t talked yet, General. He’s a tough customer. We’ve tried to…”

“Then try again!” snapped Dracheev. The aide nodded to one of the two SPETS nearby. “Anyone can be made to talk!”

“With pleasure,” said the SPETS who, on his way down the corridor, announced matter-of-factly to his colleague, “The general’s right. Everyone has their breaking point.”

“Even you?” asked the other SPETS challengingly.

“Yes. Of course. I couldn’t withstand what I’m about to do to that American bastard. You’ll see.”

Electronic monitors were telling General Dracheev that four of the manhole covers had been breached and that the other six should not have their secondary hatches opened, even after the air raid had ended, for fear of red-hot debris raining down the shaft.

“Then that’s decided it,” General Dracheev told his SPETS commando leader. “We only use the two emergency exits. Your men’ll have to move swiftly to get out in time—”

“To do what?” asked the SPETS commander. Red lights were blinking all over at the control center’s console, indicating that rock flour, thick in the air from the bombs, had choked off some of the air filters, overheating them.

Soon the red lights faded, the backup filters holding, and the duty officer informed him that all electronic indications were that the six exits he had decided not to use might be usable after all. Dracheev, however, would not be deterred from his plan. He never doubted for a second that an Allied airborne assault would now follow, but to use the six exits would be suicidal. They were almost certainly pinpointed by the Americans and would be among the first targets should another bombardment precede the Allied troop drop. Only this time, Dracheev told them, they’d outwit the Americans. To this end he called a hasty radio conference of the ten company commanders of the two SPETS battalions. He told the commanders, “The Allies’ll realize they cannot bomb us out, that no matter how many bombs they drop, ultimately they will have to use troops. In this, gentlemen, we have the overwhelming advantage, for when they try to dig us out they can’t be dropping bombs on their own men.” He turned to the SPETS commander, his tone crisp with confidence.

The SPETS commander, a full colonel, soon understood the reason for the general’s rush of confidence. Dracheev was good on his feet — a commander who didn’t need hours to ponder a problem and used the American general’s initiative as a spur to his own. The SPETS commander heartily endorsed the plan; it was brilliant and would cut the Americans to pieces. The colonel also knew that a citation from General Dracheev for the Ratmanov victory would slash his waiting time for an apartment in half. He told his battalion’s political officer, the Zampolit, that he almost felt sorry for the enemy.

Dracheev’s assumption was that the American general would attack soon after the bombing had shot its wad — and attack quickly. The American would know that every hour he failed to breach Ratmanov’s defenses was that much more time for the Far Eastern TVD to build up Siberia’s eastern flank. Some of the chukchee members of the SPETS — men chosen for their special knowledge of the area — didn’t like General Dracheev, as he was a Yakut from central Siberia. But even so they, like the SPETS commander, had to admit — grudgingly — that he was making it easier for them. It would be nothing more than a seal hunt: all you’d have to do after is go out and club them. American cigarettes, gold teeth, watches. Burial would be the hardest job of course; the American dead would be frozen solid. No good covering them up with the. snow; come spring the stench would keep even walrus away. Best thing, the Yakuts believed, would be to burn them, but General Dracheev probably wouldn’t allow that, fuel consumption being one of his priorities. So in the end the corpses would be left to the blue foxes and the murres. The birds’d clean them to the bone come spring. And there were the golden eagles from Alaska. A feast. For the SPETS the idea of American eagles eating American dead was appealing and spawned many a joke as they waited for Freeman to take the bait.

Freeman, standing in his blast-protected mobile-home HQ, was dwarfed by the wall map of the Bering Sea. He donned his reading glasses and contemplated the Diomedes halfway across the funnel, showing up on the aerial recon photos as white fists thrusting up through the ice. “I’m glad you’re here, Dick,” he said, turning to welcome Colonel Richard Norton, a solidly built, amiable, at times intensely serious, five-foot-eight logistics officer and New Yorker who’d been with Freeman in Europe. But there was no time to talk over old times. Freeman told the colonel that the Siberian commander wouldn’t be caught “with his pants down” twice. “Other problem, Dick, is half these jokers don’t know a damn thing about Arctic warfare. Like those poor bastards Washington sent up to the Aleutians in forty-two in summer uniform. No wonder the Japs were all over them. I told the quartermaster this evening to make everything ready for an airborne attack on Ratmanov, jump time an hour before civil twilight. Hell, he thought I was talking about some dame called ‘Sybil.’ Then he thought it was the end of the day. So I told him, first light—”

“Eleven oh six hours,” said Norton, taking his cap off, running his fingers through hair as gray as Freeman’s. “Sunset around seventeen forty-one?”