Ralph Peters - Red Army

"But what's the military purpose? The enemy's bombing the hell out of our air bases, and we're attacking little towns nobody's ever heard of?"

The staff officer's last hesitant smile disappeared. The exchange was underscored by a series of blasts thudding dully up on the surface.

"You will do as you're told," the briefer said. "There is no time—or allowance—for argument. You will all do exactly as you're told."

Kryshinin lay on the canvas litter, waiting for the ambulance to begin moving again. He felt inexplicably weak now, tired beyond reason. He kept his eyes closed because it was so much easier. He could not understand why his wound did not hurt any worse. There was only a dull discomfort, an unwillingness on the part of his torso to move. He felt lightheaded, and he was no longer sure that he was conscious without interruption. Over and over again, the scenes of battle played back in his head, and he was vaguely aware of calling instructions, trying to warn his men. Bylov, the air controller, sat on the roof, and the world was in flames, and Bylov was eating his lunch as though unaware of the violence and waste around him.

"Vera," Kryshinin said. "Vera, I have to explain." He could not understand where Vera had gone. Only a moment ago, his wife had been beside him. Now he could not remember where she had gone.

His immediate surroundings returned. The grimy interior of a battlefield ambulance, waiting, sickening with exhaust fumes and the smells of ruined bodies. Two medical orderlies chatted with each other between the packed litters.

"This one's gone."

"Can't be helped. Nothing to do. If they want to hold us up for everybody in the army to get past, we'll lose them all. None of our doing."

"Have a look. See if it's still tanks going by."

"You have a look if you want. I can tell by the sound that it's tanks."

"You're closer to the door."

They were stuck in a minefield, Kryshinin realized. They needed someone to lead them. He wanted to explain to them how it could be done, but they wouldn't wait for him. He struggled to speak, muttering, but unable to get the words out in order.

"This one looks bad. He needs a transfusion quick," an orderly said.

"He's white as snow."

"Unless piss works, he's out of luck."

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Kryshinin suddenly realized that they were talking about him. And he wanted to reply. But he did not know what to say, or how to say it now.

And it seemed as though it would take an absurd, unreasonable amount of energy to speak.

"Well, to hell with them, anyway. At least they're officers and they get to die in an ambulance."

Vera. He knew he had seen her. She had been there a moment before, wearing her green dress that was growing a bit too tight. No. No. Grip reality. Vera is far away. Hold on to the actual. Don't let go . . . . But it was all so difficult.

He had not thought of Vera once during the battle. Perhaps that was a sign of how far apart they had grown. Nothing had worked out as planned. Nothing ever quite worked between them. They fought over trivial things, and he knew he drank too much at the officers' canteen, but he did it anyway. And Vera carried her resentment in silence until it suddenly exploded into vicious, public anger, for all of the families in the officers' quarters to hear.

But it could all be mended. Kryshinin felt the warmth of conviction. If only he could see her now, it could all be put right. It was all foolishness.

And they must have children. When he found out that Vera had had two abortions without telling him, he had beaten her so badly that she could not go outside for almost two weeks. Two abortions. As if she wanted to kill every part of him that could have gotten inside of her.

"Get away from the window, " Kryshinin shouted. "Get back."

But the lieutenant failed to obey the command. He reached to catch an object hurtling through the air, and he burst apart as though his body were the climax of a fireworks display.

"I need support, can you hear me? / need support. We can't hold.

They're all over us. Please."

Vera surrounded by clouds of black smoke.

"Sounds as if this one had an interesting day," one of the orderlies said in amusement.

"It just gets on your nerves after a while," the other replied.

Halfway between the improvised helipad and the concealed forward command post of the Third Shock Army, the range car carrying Lieutenant General Starukhin down the muddy trail backfired once, shook, and sank to a stop. The sudden absence of mechanical noise startled the general. The world seemed to stop inside the big perceived silence, despite the vigor of the rain and the dull, distant sound of the war like a hangover in the ears. Each rustle of uniforms and wet leather straps 123

Ralph Peters

seemed amplified, and the sour smell of tired men in damp uniforms grew unaccountably sharper.

Overcoming his initial bewilderment and horror, the junior sergeant behind the steering wheel clumsily tried to restart the vehicle, but the engine would not come to life. Instead of waiting for the dispatch of his own vehicle from the headquarters, Starukhin had hurriedly comman-deered the immediately available range car, unwilling to lose the extra ten or fifteen minutes. Now he sat heavily in the little vehicle, with no means of communication, still several kilometers from his command post, mocked by the barrage of rain on the canvas roof.

The young driver carefully avoided looking around, fixing his eyes on the dashboard as though his stare might bully the machine back to life.

The two aides accompanying Starukhin remained carefully silent.

Starukhin listened to the boy's fumbling for as long as he could bear it, then shouted:

"You can't coax it to start, you drizzle ass. Get out and look at the engine."

The boy shot out of the vehicle, banging against the door frame with bruising haste. Beyond the rain-smeared windshield, Starukhin could see him fumbling with the engine cover. In the blurred background, the rain seemed to have scoured all of the color out of the sky and landscape.

"And you two," Starukhin bellowed, turning on his aides. "Get out there and help him. What's the matter with you jackasses?"

The aides moved with the panic of men caught in a terrible crime. One of them, a lieutenant colonel, jostled wildly against Starukhin in his anxiety, and the army commander gave him a hard shove toward the door. Soon the two aides stood glum-faced beside the driver in the steady rain.

They were hopeless. All of them. Starukhin sat back, squaring his shoulders, convinced that he had to carry the entire army on his back. All of his life, he thought, he had had to drive his will head-on into the ponderous complacency characteristic of the system into which he had been born. Every day was a struggle. When something broke, those responsible would sheepishly sit down and wait to be told to fix it. Then they would take their own good time about the task. Unless you drove them. And Starukhin had learned how to drive men. But now, during the great test of his lifetime, he feared his inability to move the men under his command.

More than anything, he feared failure. He feared it because he believed it would reveal some secret incompetence hidden within him. Deep within his soul, where no other human being had ever been allowed to 124

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penetrate, Starukhin doubted himself, and nothing seemed more important to him than the preservation of his pride.

The damned whoring British would not break. It seemed incredible to him that he could not simply will his way through them, hammering them to nothing with his personal determination and the tank-heavy army under his command. He drifted back and forth between his bobbing doubts and waves of immeasurable energy. Now, as he envisioned the defending British, he sensed that it would be impossible for them to resist.