Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“A political excuse,” the general observed. “You know, Vladimir Konstantinovich, once upon a time, the Germans were sending high-flying reconnaissance aircraft deep into Western Russia, scouting us out prior to their invasion. There was a special squadron of fighters able to reach their altitude, and their regimental commander asked for permission to intercept them. He was relieved of his command on the spot. I suppose he was lucky that he wasn’t shot. He ended up a major ace and a Hero of the Soviet Union before some German fighter got him. You see, Stalin was afraid of provoking Hitler, too!”

“Comrade Colonel?” Heads turned. It was a young sergeant with an armful of large-format photographs.

“Here, quickly!”

The sergeant laid them on the table, obscuring the topographical maps that had occupied the previous four hours. The quality wasn’t good. The imagery had been transmitted over a fax machine instead of a proper photographic printer, but it was good enough for their purposes. There were even inserts, small white boxes with legends typed in, in English, to tell the ignorant what was in the pretty little pictures. The intelligence officer was the first to make sense of it all.

“Here they come,” the colonel breathed. He checked the coordinates and the time indicated in the lower-right corner of the top photo. “That’s a complete tank division, and it’s right”-he turned back to the printed map-“right here, just as we expected. Their marshaling point is Harbin. Well, it had to be. All their rail lines converge there. Their first objective will be Belogorsk.”

“And right up the valley from there,” Bondarenko agreed. “Through this pass, then northwest.” One didn’t need to be a Nobel laureate to predict a line of advance. The terrain was the prime objective condition to which all ambitions and plans had to bend. Bondarenko could read the mind of the enemy commander well enough, because any trained soldier would see the contour lines on the map and analyze them the same way. Flat was better than sloped. Clear was better than wooded. Dry was better than wet. There was a lot of sloped terrain on the border, but it smoothed out, and there were too many valleys inviting speedy advance. With enough troops, he could have made every one of those valleys a deathtrap, but if he’d had enough troops, the Chinese wouldn’t be lined up on his border. They’d be sitting in their own prepared defenses, fearing him. But that was not the shape of the current world for Commander-in-Chief Far East.

The 265th Motor Rifle was a hundred kilometers back from the border. The troops were undergoing frantic gunnery training now, because that would generate the most rapid return for investment. The battalion and regimental officers were in their command posts running map-table exercises, because Bondarenko needed them thinking, not shooting. He had sergeants for that. The good news for Bondarenko was that his soldiers enjoyed shooting live rounds, and their skill levels were improving rapidly. The bad news was that for every trained tank crew he had, the Chinese had over twenty.

“What an ambush we could lay, if we only had the men,” Tolkunov breathed.

“When I was in America, watching them train, I heard a good if-only joke. If only your aunt had balls, then she’d be your uncle, Vladimir Konstantinovich.”

“Quite so, Comrade General.” They both turned back to the maps and the photos.

So, they know what we’re doing,” Qian Kun observed. ”This is not a good development.”

“You can know what a robber will do, but if he has a pistol and you don’t, what difference does it make?” Zhang Han San asked in return. “Comrade Marshal?”

“One cannot hide so large a movement of troops,” Marshal Luo said blandly. “Tactical surprise is always hard to achieve. But we do have strategic surprise.”

“That is true,” Tan Deshi told the Politburo. “The Russians have alerted some of their divisions for movement, but they are all in the west, and days away, and all will approach down this rail line, and our air force can close it, can’t you, Luo?”

“Easily,” the Defense Minister agreed.

“And what of the Americans?” Fang Gan asked. “In that note we just got, they have told us that they regard the Russians as allies. How many times have people underestimated the Americans, Zhang? Including yourself,” he added.

“There are objective conditions which apply even to the Americans, for all their magic,” Luo assured the assembly.

“And in three years we will be selling them oil and gold,” Zhang assured them all in turn. “The Americans have no political memory. They always adapt to the changing shape of the world. In 1949, they drafted the NATO Treaty, which included their bitter enemies in Germany. Look at what they did with Japan, after dropping atomic bombs on them. The only thing we should consider: though few Americans will be deployed, and they will have to take their chances along with everyone else, perhaps we should avoid inflicting too many casualties. We would also do well to treat prisoners and captured civilians gently-the world does have sensibilities we must regard somewhat, I suppose.”

“Comrades,” Fang said, summoning up his courage for one last display of his inner feelings. “We still have the chance to stop this from happening, as Marshal Luo told us some days ago. We are not fully committed until shots are fired. Until then, we can say we were running a defense exercise, and the world will go along with that explanation, for the reasons my friend Zhang has just told us. But once hostilities are begun, the tiger is out of the cage. Men defend what is theirs with tenacity. You will recall that Hitler underestimated the Russians, to his ultimate sorrow. Iran underestimated the Americans just last year, causing disaster for them and the death of their leader. Are we sure that we can prevail in this adventure?” he asked. “Sure? We gamble with the life of our country here. We ought not to forget that.”

“Fang, my old comrade, you are wise and thoughtful as ever,” Zhang responded graciously. “And I know you speak on behalf of our nation and our people, but as we must not underestimate our enemies, so we ought not to underestimate ourselves. We fought the Americans once before, and we gave them the worst military defeat in their history, did we not?”

“Yes, we did surprise them, but in the end we lost a million men, including Mao’s own son. And why? Because we over estimated our own abilities.”

“Not this time, Fang,” Luo assured them all. “Not this time. We will do to the Russians the same thing we did to the Americans at the Yalu River. We will strike with power and surprise. Where they are weak, we will rush through. Where they are strong, we will encircle and surround. In 1950, we were a peasant army with only light weapons. Today,” Luo went on, “we are a fully modern army. We can do things today such as even the Americas could not dream of back then. We will prevail,” the Defense Minister concluded with firm conviction.

“Comrades, do we wish to stop now?” Zhang asked, to focus the debate. “Do we wish to doom our country’s economic and political future? For that is the issue at hand. If we stand still, we risk national death. Who among us wishes to stand still then?”

Predictably no one, not even Qian, moved to pick up that gauntlet. The vote was entirely pro forma, and unanimous. As always, the Politburo achieved collegiality for its own sake. The ministers returned to their various offices. Zhang buttonholed Tan Deshi for several minutes before heading back to his. An hour after that, he dropped in on his friend, Fang Gan.

“You are not cross with me?” Fang asked.