Tom Clancy - Red Storm Rising

Alekseyev stomped off, not even acknowledging the colonel's salute. His adjutant, a full colonel of tank troops, held open the door and got in behind his boss.

"Shaping up rather well, eh?" Alekseyev asked.

"Not well enough, but there has been progress," the colonel allowed. "They have only another six weeks before they have to start moving west."

It was the wrong thing to say. Alekseyev had spent two weeks chivvying this division toward combat readiness, only to learn the day before that it had been allocated to Germany instead of toward his own as-yet incomplete plan to descend into Iraq and Iran. Already four divisions-all of his elite Guards tank units-had been taken away, and each change in CINC-Southwest's order of battle forced him to restructure his own plan for the Gulf An endless circle. He was being forced to select less-ready units, forcing Alekseyev to devote more time to unit training and less time to the plan that had to be completed in another two weeks.

"Those men are going to have a very busy six weeks. What about the commander?" the colonel asked.

Alekseyev shrugged. "He's been in this job too long. Forty-five is too old for this kind of command, and he reads his fucking parade manuals too much instead of going out in the field. But a good man. Too good to be sent counting trees." Alekseyev chuckled heavily. It was a Russian saying that dated back to the czars. People exiled to Siberia were said to have nothing to do but count trees. Another of the things Lenin had changed. Now people in the Gulag had plenty to do. "The last two times they did well enough to succeed, I think. This regiment will be ready, along with the whole division."

"Bridge, sonar: we have a contact bearing zero-nine-four!" announced a voice on the bulkhead-mounted speaker. Commander Morris turned in his elevated swivel chair to watch his officer of the deck respond.

The OOD trained his binoculars to the direction of the contact. There was nothing there: "Bearing is clear."

Morris got up from his chair. "Set Condition I-AS."

"Aye aye. Battle Stations," the OOD acknowledged the order. The boatswain's-mate-of-the-watch walked to the announcing system, and blew a three-note whistle on his bosun's pipe into the speaker. "General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations for anti-submarine warfare." The alarm gong came next, and a quiet forenoon watch ended.

Morris went aft, down the ladder to the Combat Information Center, or CIC. His executive officer would take the conn at the bridge, allowing the captain to control the ship's weapons and sensors from her tactical nerve center. All over the ship, men were running to stations. Watertight doors and hatches were dropped into place and dogged down to give the ship full watertight integrity. Damage-control parties donned emergency equipment. It took just over four minutes. Getting better, Morris noted as the "manned and ready" calls were relayed to him by the CIC talker. Since leaving Norfolk four days before, PHARRIS was averaging three GQ calls per day, as ordered by Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic. No one had confirmed it, but Morris figured that his friend's information had kicked over an anthill. His training routines had been doubled, and the orders for the increase of activity were classified as high as anything he had ever seen. More remarkably, the increased training tempos would interfere with maintenance scheduling, something not lightly set aside.

"All stations report manned and ready!" the talker finally announced. "Condition Zebra set throughout the ship."

"Very well," the tactical action officer acknowledged.

"Report, mister," Morris ordered.

"Sir, the navigation and air-search radars are in stand-by and the sonar is in passive mode," replied the TAO. "Contact looks like a schnorkeling submarine. Came in clear all at once. We've got a target-motion-analysis track going. His bearing is changing fore-to-aft, and pretty fast, too. A little soon to be sure, but it's shaping up like he's on a reciprocal heading, probably no more than ten miles out."

"Contact report off to Norfolk yet?"

"Waiting for your say-so."

"Very well. Let's see how well we can run a hold-down exercise, mister."

Within fifteen minutes, Pharris's helicopter was dropping sonobuoys on the submarine, and the frigate was lashing it with her powerful active sonar. They wouldn't stop until the Soviet submarine admitted defeat by coming back to schnorkeling depth-or until he evaded the frigate, which would put a large black mark in Morris's copybook. The objective of this non-lethal exercise was nasty enough: to break the submarine captain's confidence in his vessel, his crew, and himself.

They were a thousand miles offshore, heading northeast at twenty-five knots. The crew was decidedly unhappy, though they'd all been through this before. What should have been a three-week layover at Norfolk had been cut short at eight days, a bitter pill after a long first cruise. Trips and vacations had been interrupted, and some minor maintenance work supposed to have been done by shoreside technicians was now being done round the clock by her own crew. McCafferty had announced his sealed orders to the crew two hours after diving: conduct two weeks of intensive tracking and torpedo drills, then proceed to the Barents Sea for further intelligence gathering. It was important, he told them. They'd heard that one before, too.

Toland hoped his uniform was properly arranged. It was 0630 on a Wednesday morning, and he'd been up since four rehearsing his presentation, and cursing CINCLANT for an early-riser who probably wanted to get in a round of golf that afternoon. He would spend the afternoon as he had for several weeks, sifting through endless intel documents and copies of Soviet publications in the Intentions cubbyhole half a building away.

The Flag Officers Briefing Room seemed a different world from the rest of the tawdry building, but that was hardly a surprise. Admirals liked their comforts. Bob made a quick trip to the nearby head to eliminate a distraction caused by too much wake-up coffee. By the time he came back, the flag officers were filing in. They exchanged greetings, but there were no jokes, none of the banter one would expect this early in the morning. The officers selected their leather seats by order of rank. Those few who smoked had ashtrays. Each had a note pad. Stewards brought in several pots of coffee, cream, and sugar on silver trays, then withdrew. The cups were already in place. Each officer poured himself a cup as part of the morning ritual. CINCLANT nodded to Toland.

"Good morning, gentlemen. Approximately a month ago, four colonels in the Soviet Army, all regimental commanders in mechanized divisions, were court-martialed and executed for falsifying data on their unit training and readiness reports," Toland began, explaining the significance of this.

"Earlier this week Kraznaya Zvesda, 'Red Star,' the daily newspaper of the entire Soviet military, publicized the execution of a number of privates in the Soviet Army. All but two were in the final six months of their enlistment period, and all were charged with disobeying the orders of their sergeants. Why is this significant?

"The Russian Army has long been known for its tough discipline, but as with many aspects of the Soviet Union, not everything is as it seems. A sergeant in the Soviet Army is not a professional soldier as is the case in most armies. He is a conscript, just like the privates, selected early in his enlistment term for special training due to his intelligence, political reliability, or perceived leadership ability. He is sent to a tough six-month course to make him an instant sergeant, then returned to his operational unit. In fact he has about as little practical experience as his subordinates, and his superior knowledge of tactics and weapons-use is a matter of increments rather than the more dramatic differences between sergeants and new recruits in Western forces.