Ralph Peters - Red Army

" RED ARMY

on cue, the radio crackled with unintelligible sounds. Then an electronically filtered voice called over the airwaves in Russian.

Come for it. Come on, Gordunov thought. You know you want it.

The radioman moaned, face down, his radio teasing the foreign soldiers.

Take the chance, Gordunov thought. Come on.

Movement caught his eye. And Gordunov was back in the hills of Afghanistan, brilliantly alive. He didn't let the leading figure distract him. He watched the point of origin for the covering man. When he had him fixed, he put a burst of fire into him, then shifted his weapon to catch the forward man against the side of a building.

The point man returned fire. But it sprayed wildly.

Gordunov pushed up far enough to break in the door. Then he scrambled to drag the radioman inside.

His hands slicked with blood. It reminded him of dragging a wet rolled-up tent. The boy seemed to be falling apart as he dragged him. He had clearly caught a full burst. Amazingly, he still whimpered with life.

Gordunov peeled the radio from the boy's shoulders, flicking the moisture off the mike.

"Falcon, this is Eagle."

"This is Falcon. Are you all right? We thought we saw a firefight."

"My radioman's down. I'm about a block down from you, just off on one of the side streets. Can you get somebody down here?"

"We're all ready to move out."

'Wo.'" Gordunov screamed. He twisted his body around so that his weapon just cleared the wounded boy, and he held the trigger back until the weapon clicked empty. The approaching shadow danced backward as the rounds flashed into it, crashing against a wall. Gordunov hurriedly reloaded, then pulled out his penlight, careful to hold the point of light well away from his torso.

It was an old man. With a hunting rifle.

Stupid shit, Gordunov thought. The damned old fool.

But it had spooked him. For the first time in years, Gordunov knew he had been caught completely off guard.

The wounded boy was praying. It didn't surprise Gordunov. Religious or not, he had known many a dying soldier to pray in Afghanistan. Even political officers, professional atheists, were not above appealing to a hoped-for god in their final moments. Gordunov forced himself back to business.

"Vulture, this is Eagle."

"This is Vulture."

145

Ralph Peters

"What's your status?"

"We have the southern bridge. Intermittent fighting in the town on both sides of the river. The organization you requested is on the way."

"Casualties?"

"Heavy. The British ambushed us the first time we went for the bridge.

But we cleared them out."

"How bad?"

"I've got about a hundred left."

"With your company?"

"Including everybody. Never found the antitank platoon. They must have gone down. We have about twenty prisoners. About the same number of wounded."

"All right. Just get in the buildings and hang on. Keep the wounded with you. I'll send a doctor down from the hospital. Get the mortars to shoot in to support Falcon. Establish a layered defense on both sides of the river."

"I'll do my best."

The radioman died. Gordunov could feel the difference in the room.

When the radio went silent, it felt to Gordunov as though he were in a haunted place.

"Eagle, this is Falcon."

"Eagle."

"We can't find you. What's your location?"

"Never mind," Gordunov said. "I don't need the help anymore. Just watch for me coming in."

Gordunov sat in silence for a moment, marshaling his strength. There was no sound close in. Only the ebb and flow of firing up the street. In the bowl of almost-silence, the pain in his ankle seemed to amplify, as though someone were methodically turning up a volume dial wired to his, limb.

Gordunov rose onto his knees. With a deep breath, he caught the radio on his shoulders. At the last moment, he remembered to go through the dead boy's pockets for the communications technical data pads. The papers had sponged up the boy's blood. He wiped the pads ancLhis hands on an upholstered chair, slopping back and forth over the coarse material in the darkness. Then he climbed to his feet.

He toppled back down. His ankle would 'not accept the additional weight of the radio. As he fell the corner of a table jammed him in the small of his back.

Breathing deeply, trying to drown the pain in a flood of oxygen, Gordunov forced himself back onto his feet.

146

One step. Then another.

He stepped down into the street. No sign of Karchenko. Just as well, he thought. Up the road to the north, near what appeared to be a rail crossing, the buildings blazed, featuring the black hull of a ruptured tank in silhouette. There was firing down the first alleyway, as well.

The random bodies of the dead glistened and shone where eyes remained open or teeth caught the fluttering light. Gordunov felt no emotional response. The corpses were abstractions, possessed of no inherent meaning now. He walked upright and slowly. Each step under the weight of the radio jolted currents of pain up his leg. He pictured the pain as a green liquid fire, racing up his nerves. It was impossible to move with any tactical finesse now.

The growing fires lit the street more brightly than a full moon could have done. As Gordunov approached the network of unengaged positions by the bridgehead no one challenged him. Instead, Karchenko and another soldier rushed out to intercept him.

"Are you crazy? Get down," Karchenko demanded. Belatedly, he added, "Comrade Battalion Commander."

"Help me, Karchenko. I have a problem with my leg."

Karchenko reached out, pausing only at the last moment before touching Gordunov. Then he closed in, and Gordunov put his arm around the company commander's shoulders, easing his weight.

"It's all right," Gordunov said. "We have both the bridges."

"Let me take the radio. Here. Massenikov, take the radio from the commander."

"It's all right," Gordunov repeated. "Now we just hang on. I've been through this before."

ELEVEN

Chibisov watched the front commander eat, reckoning Malinsky's mood by his mannerisms. The old man's table manners were normally very precise. But now he absentmindedly forked up bits of cutlet and beans, simply fueling his body, as though it was just another piece of warmaking machinery. An aura of urgency had accompanied Malinsky back from his visits to the forward army commanders. Chibisov, however, remained unsure about how much of the front commander's anxiety was genuine worry and how much arose from the need to personally accomplish an overwhelming number of practical tasks, despite the support of his staff. The complexity of the contemporary battlefield was enough to break any commander who paused too long to think about it. Overall, the situation appeared extraordinarily favorable, especially in the north, in Trimenko's sector. But there were also potentially enormous difficulties, more of them each hour. Some of the difficulties had been adequately forecast, and the system had been designed with substantial tolerances. Other difficulties, such as the speed with which units on both sides essentially ceased to exist, and the tempo of movement, strained the troop control system at all levels to a dangerous point. While these difficulties had been argued theoretically in peacetime, virtually no one had internalized the practical considera-148

RED ARMY

tions. While Chibisov himself had encountered few intellectual surprises, on a visceral level he found the reports from the formations engaged in combat almost unnerving.

As usual, Malinsky had declined to receive a full staff briefing.

Although the Front Commander understood the value of ceremony and personal control, he also recognized the dangers of formalism. At the moment, continuity of effort was crucial. The staff was nearly swamped with requirements and demands, and a break in the pattern of work might have been inordinately costly. Malinsky had simply asked the chief of staff to brief him on key events and items of particular interest while he himself had a meal in his office.