Ralph Peters - Red Army

In detail, it was a far-from-perfect vision. Some columns were at a standstill. Here and there, crossroads teemed with such confusion that Trimenko could almost hear the curses and arguments. Soviet hulks had been shoved off the roadways where the enemy's air power or long-range 88

RED ARMY

artillery fires had caught them. Incredible panoramas opened up, then closed again beneath the speeding helicopter.

Trimenko realized that, to those on the ground, waiting nervously for a column to move or for an order to come, the war probably seemed like a colossal mess on the edge of disaster. But from the sky, from the god's-eye view, the columns moved well enough. For every march serial that had bogged down, two or three others rushed along parallel routes.

And the flow carried them all in the right general direction. Trimenko knew that one division already had pushed its lead elements across the canal a bit to the north, even as a major assault crossing operation was being conducted in another divisional sector. Some units had penetrated to a depth in excess of thirty kilometers from their start lines, and one reconnaissance patrol had reported in from a location fifty-two kilometers west of the border. Meanwhile, the enemy's power to strike out to halt the flow of Soviet forces had proven surprisingly weak. Trimenko had already heard the fearful casualty reports from the morning's engagements. Kept in perspective, the numbers were acceptable—and he had no doubt that they were somewhat exaggerated in the heat of combat and in the process of hastily relaying data up the echelons. The prospect of inaccurate data for his forecasting calculations troubled Trimenko more than did the thought of the casualties themselves.

Jet aircraft, invisible in the haze, passed nearby, and the sound slammed into the helicopter. Trimenko thought that Malinsky had been absolutely correct to support the air offensive so heavily. With the low number and limited range of the surface-to-surface missiles available to the enemy now, air power had been the great enemy threat. In his private, less-assured moments, Trimenko had worried that NATO would catch them right at the border-crossing sites, where the engineers had opened gaps in the frontier barriers. But the threat had not materialized. NATO's ground attacks with aircraft were deadly, but haphazard, and Trimenko suspected that many of NATO's aircraft had, indeed, been caught on the ground. Starukhin had been an ass to press the issue of initial close air support with Malinsky, and the present obviousness of it pleased Trimenko. Starukhin, he mused, was the sort of Russian officer he himself most despised, and a type still far too common—the man who raged and stamped and shouted to announce his own power and grandeur, to convince a skeptical world of how much he mattered.

Trimenko, no less concerned with his own importance, found tantrums inefficient and primitive. He believed that the times called for a more sophisticated approach to the exploitation of resources, whether material or human.

89

Ralph Peters

Trimenko stared out over his army as it marched deeper into West Germany. The spectacle offered nothing but confusion to the man with a narrow, low-level perspective, he realized, but it revealed its hidden power, incredible power in an irresistible flood, to the man who could look down.

"Afterburners now."

"Fifty-eight, I'm still in the capture zone. I'm hot."

"Open it up, Fifty-nine. Flares away. Get out of the kitchen."

"He's on me. He's on me."

"Turning now. Go."

The junior pilot in the wing aircraft fired his flares and banked, engines flushing a burst of power.

"More angle, little brother. Pull it around."

Pilot First Class Captain Sobelev watched as an enemy air-defense missile miraculously passed beside his wingman's aircraft and carried about five hundred feet before exploding. Sobelev felt his own aircraft buck like a wild horse at the blast.

"Steady now. Keep her steady, Fifty-nine."

The planes had come out two and two, but the trailing pair had been shot down before they even reached the Weser River. Now, deep in the enemy's rear, the air defenses had thinned. But it was still nightmarish flying. It was not at all like Afghanistan. Flying in and out of Kabul and good old Bagram had been bad enough. With the eternal haze over Kabul, filthy dust on the hot wind, and later the horribly accurate American Stinger missiles. But all of that had been child's play compared to this.

"Fifty-eight, my artificial horizon's out."

Shit, Sobelev thought. "Just stay with me," he answered. "We're going to do just fine."

Sobelev sympathized with the lieutenant's nervousness. It was their second combat mission of the day, and today was the lieutenant's first taste of war. If Afghanistan had been this bad, Sobelev thought, I might have quit flying.

"Stay with me, little brother. Talk to me."

"I'm with you, Fifty-eight."

"Good boy. Target heading, thirty degrees."

"Roger."

"Keep those wings level now . . . final reference point in s i g h t . . . go to attack altitude . . . talk to me, Fifty-nine."

RED ARMY

"I have the reference point."

"Executing version one."

"Correcting to follow your approach."

"On the combat course . . . now . . . hold on, it's going to be hot."

"Roger."

"Target. . . ten kilometers . . . steady . . . I have visual."

Sobelev saw the airfield coming up at them like a table spread for dinner. Enemy aircraft continued to land and take off.

"Hit the apron. I've got the main runway."

"Roger."

Air-defense artillery suddenly came to life in their path, drilling the sky with points of light.

"Let's do this clean . . . hold it . . . hold straight. . . straighten your wings."

In Afghanistan, you flew high and tossed outdated ordnance at the kishlaks with their mud buildings that had not changed for a thousand years. The bombs changed them in an instant.

Sobelev was determined to bring his wingman out. Wingboy, he thought, children at war, already forgetting how young he had been on his first tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Sobelev led them right into the general flight paths of the NATO

aircraft taking off, making it impossible for the air-defense guns to follow them.

"Now."

The lieutenant shouted into the radio in childish elation. The two planes lifted away from the enemy airfield, and, as they banked, Sobelev caught a glimpse of the heavy damage that already had been dealt to the base by previous sorties. Black burned patches and craters on the hardstand. Smoking ruins in the support area. Emergency vehicles raced through corridors of fire. Sobelev heard his flight's payload detonate, adding to the destruction.

"Let's go home, little brother . . . heading . . . one . . . six . . . five."

An enemy plane suddenly shot straight up in front of Sobelev. He recognized a NATO F-16. As the plane twisted into the sky, disappearing from view in the grayness, Sobelev's mouth opened behind his face mask.

He had never seen a plane . . . a pilot. . . maneuver like that. It shocked him.

After a long, long few seconds, he spoke. "Hostiles, Fifty-nine . . . do what I do . . . do exactly what I do . . . do you understand?"

"Roger." But the exuberance was gone from the lieutenant's voice. He, 91

Ralph Peters •

too, had seen the enemy fighter's acrobatic climb. Now they both wondered where the enemy aircraft had gone. Sobelev looked at his radar screen. It was a mess. Busy sky.

"Follow me now, Fifty-nine," Sobelev commanded. And hope I know what I'm doing.