Ian Slater - WW III

“Maybe, sir, but hope can go either way. Doesn’t necessarily mean the Ukrainians, the Azerbaijanians, and all the rest of the republics will side with us to overthrow the Russians. Ukrainians hated Stalin’s guts and he slaughtered eighty percent of his officers in the purges, but when the Nazis hit him, what did he fall back on? No call for the revolution to be defended — no, sir. It was all Mother Russia.”

“He was lucky,” countered Mayne. “When the Wermacht drove into the Ukraine, the peasants hailed them as conquering heros.”

“That didn’t last for long, though, Mr. President.”

“No, and you know why? Sent in the SS after the army, and they started their usual horseshit — worse than the Russians — so the Ukrainians went back to Uncle Joe. Missed opportunity, Bill. Could have changed everything — which is why I want Voice of America telling those people the truth — that with all our warts, our side’s the right side and we’ll help them get their independence if they throw in their lot with us.”

“Problem there, Mr. President,” said Trainor as they passed the situation room’s marine guards, “is anyone with a radio or TV set on the wrong channel is going to end up in a salt mine in Siberia.”

“They don’t have salt mines in Siberia, Bill. Old wives’ tale.” Mayne paused, glanced at a White House secretary, and nodded at the chiefs and aides. But his mind was still on the Voice of America possibility and the whole range of propaganda that might help him. What they needed in Europe — hell, what they needed everywhere — was time. If they could get the Hungarians and Poles to do something — not actually fight the Russians, which would cause massive reprisals, but perhaps get them to use go-slow tactics — that would help. Solidarity should know how to arrange “accidental” breakdowns in the war industries.

Problem was, the puppet states had tried it a few times already — Hungary in ‘56, Czechoslovakia in ‘68—and only got their faces kicked in. And with the Soviet-WP pushing NATO back… which brought him to the first question of the meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. NATO’s communications as well as VOA and Radio Free Europe were in a shambles from Austria to Belgium. Why was it, Mayne asked, that the only hard intelligence the Pentagon was getting the last few hours was coming from the French?

“That’s because,” said Army General Gray, “Suzlov, or whoever’s in charge over there, is playing footsie with France. The Russians want France left out of it — that way they can concentrate all their forces—” Gray turned toward the map stand.

“I can read a map, General,” interjected Mayne. “What I’m asking is, haven’t we got underground units in Eastern Europe that should be doing the same thing with Soviet communications?”

There was a pronounced silence.

“Well, don’t all speak at once,” said Mayne, looking about, his gaze shifting from General Gray to Admiral Horton, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and NATO’s SACLANT. “Well?” pressed Mayne. “Why aren’t the bridges in eastern Germany and up there on the Northern Plain cut? Why haven’t they been taken out?”

“Most of them have been, Mr. President,” said General Gray — after all, he was the army authority—”but the one thing Ruskies are very good at is quick pontooning. They can get four tank regiments across in less than an hour. They open the valves, sinking the pontoons a few inches, and we can’t see them from the air.”

“Can anyone tell me if we’re holding ground anywhere?”

“West Germans and some of our forces are holding the Thurian Alps, sir.”

“Well, why wouldn’t they be? Why in hell would the Russians try climbing over mountains when they’ve already got us on the run? Are we holding our own in the air?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Air Force General Allet. “For now.”

Next the president turned around to the Marine Corps commandant, General Barry. “I hear your boys are giving a hundred and ten percent at Fulda, General.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are we holding them?”

“I don’t honestly know, Mr. President. It’s an hour-by-hour situation — their tanks are breaking down faster than ours, but we’re getting hurt, too. At Fulda we need a six-to-one kill ratio just to stay even.”

The use of the phrase “kill ratio” got the attention of the secretaries present. Up until then, things had been so frantic, the war meetings were much like any other major White House crisis — hostage taking, attacks on embassies — but “kill ratios” was not the usual pre-press-conference banter.

In all, the meeting was short and gloomy, each service giving its report. The central front was sagging but holding here and there. The question was, for how long. But Korea was all bad, ROK and U.S. units still in what reports were pleased to call “retreats in force.”

“Which means,” the president responded, “we’re getting our ass kicked.” He turned to Admiral Horton. “Can you give us what we need, Admiral?”

“We’ve been practicing this one for a long time, as you know, Mr. President.”

“And what were your casualties during practice, Admiral?”

“High, sir. Considerably higher than we anticipated.”

“Well, fill me in. Is anything moving out there?”

“There’s a convoy under way this minute, sir. Out of Southampton. NATO escorts, which we will take over from halfway, northeast of Newfoundland.”

“Our sub fleet?”

“Already at sea.”

“Very well.” The president stood up and left the room. One thing he had learned in politics was that it was essential you husband your time. Right now, this night, there were vast armies of men locked in mortal combat, and until the situation changed sufficiently to warrant his intervention, there was only one sensible thing to do.

“I’m going to bed, Bill. Wake me if it’s Code One.”

“Will do, sir.”

William Spence was a cook’s helper aboard HMS Peregrine— not yet a chef, but determined to become one. Cooking was the thing he loved to do best because he’d seldom seen people happier than when they were enjoying a good meal. His parents, Richard Spence, an industrial chemist for a large heavy industrial adhesive company in London, and Anne Spence, a retired grammar school teacher, lived in one of the upper-middle-class green belt housing estates near Oxshott in the south of England — forty minutes by train from Waterloo. Young William had never intended to join the navy — certainly it had not been his father’s intention for him. But with the middle class increasingly distrustful of the secular state schools, demand and fees for private schools had gone up dramatically. Richard and Anne Spence had scraped and saved early in their marriage so that their two eldest children could go to private school. For Rosemary, now thirty, it had been the school best equipped to get her into teacher’s training college, and for Georgina, now twenty-five, the school best suited to win her entry, via scholarship, to the markedly secular but reasonably prestigious LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science.

William, on the other hand, had not been “planned,” and when Anne in her early forties had found she was pregnant, there had been a frightful row between her and Richard, but one conducted in the absence of the two girls. Anne finally decided not to abort, but now Richard, on the verge of his sixties, when both he and Anne had anticipated early retirement, was faced with paying the bills for William to be at a private school. It meant delayed retirement for Richard for at least another five years. Resentment of his predicament, however, had long ago given way to a love for his son that he had not thought possible, and certainly the kind he had achingly missed with his father.