Ralph Peters - Red Army

Such a possibility had not occurred to Leonid. Now it reached him in its fullness, stopping him with its power.

The girl sobbed against the wall, bleeding driblets from her lower lip.

She had gone beyond words now, and she merely cried, face turned to one side. Her sounds were those of a weakening animal.

Seryosha thrust with the machine gun, jamming its muzzle hard into her chest like a spear. Then he brought the heavy stock around and smashed it into her face. Leonid watched in wonder. With clumsy speed, Seryosha beat the girl to the ground, hitting her so hard with the machine 183

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gun that she could not meaningfully resist. She waved a pudgy hand at the descending blows, then toppled to the side, crumpling in on herself Seryosha brought the butt of the weapon down on her skull with all of his weight behind it. Then he hit her again. And again.

Finally, the boy straightened, gasping for breath.

"Now she won't tell anybody," he said.

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Starukhin smashed his fist down onto the map table. "Don't sing me a song, you little bastard. Fix it."

"Comrade Army Commander," the shattered chief of signals said,

"the communications complex is a complete loss. A direct hit. It will take some time to restore—"

"I don't have time, you shit. I should send you down with the motorized rifle troops and let you see what war's really like. How can I run an army when I can't talk to anybody?"

"Comrade Army Commander, we can still communicate using manual Morse. And the auxiliary radios will be off the trucks and set up in no time. It's just the multiplexing that will take a little time."

"I don't have time. Time is the one thing I don't have," Starukhin shouted. "You should've had all of the auxiliary systems set up and ready to operate. You're a moron, a disgrace." He looked around the headquarters. "You're all a damned disgrace."

The chief of signals almost replied that, since they had just shifted locations, it was unreasonable, even impossible, to expect that all of the backup systems would be fully prepared for operations. They had still been having trouble with the microwave connections even before the enemy strike. But he realized that it was hopeless to argue. All you could 185

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do was let the army commander blow over you like a storm, then pick up whatever was left.

Starukhin suddenly turned away. He began to pace back and forth like a powerful caged cat. Without warning, he smashed a hanging chart full of figures from the wall.

"I need to talk."

Colonel Shtein watched the artfully crude film of the destruction of Lueneburg on the television monitor. As he watched, the same images were being broadcast over the highest-powered emitters in the German Democratic Republic. Shtein had no doubt that the film would be monitored in the West. It would soon gather the expected attention to itself. Even if the chaotic interference in the air completely blocked a successful broadcast into the heart of West Germany, the NATO elements hanging on in Berlin would monitor it. One way or another, the message would get through. Even the satellite television broadcasts from Moscow carried the report on the regular channels.

. . . Senseless destruction . . . precipitated and carried out by the aggressive NATO forces who are bent on destroying the cities and towns of the Federal Republic of Germany . . . perhaps even turning West Germany into a proving ground for their insane theories of tactical nuclear war . . . in the opinion of experts, a nuclear war restricted to West German soil would cause . . .

And the voice-over was merely ornamentation. The powerful images of toppling medieval buildings, of women and children dashing, falling, cowering, of civilians twisted into the frozen acrobatics of death, and of the Dutch forces firing indiscriminately, were irresistible. Shtein was well aware of how far the skills of Soviet media specialists had come over the years.

Shtein was convinced that this was a war-winner. At least the overall approach. Modern war was hardly a matter of beating each other over the head with a club. Shtein saw it as a highly articulated, challengingly complex conflict of intellects and wills. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. He laughed to himself, remembering his student days. He loved the Germans. They were so absolutely right, and so thoroughly unable to act upon the correctness of their conclusions.

We will beat them with cameras, Shtein thought. With video technology. With their own wonderful tools. He could not understand how the West could neglect so totally its vast array of technology that could potentially be used for propaganda purposes. War was, after all, a matter 186

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of perceptions. Even the most dull-witted historian could tell you that being physically beaten was not nearly as important as being convinced that you had been defeated. Shtein believed that he was one of the pioneers, one of the soldiers of the future.

He admired the wrenching conclusion of the film once again. It would be broadcast again in an hour, then every hour on the hour. It would be supplemented by other clips as the war progressed, shifting the concentration of the propaganda effort as necessary. Fighting for the invisible, for the intangible, for the ultimately vital, Shtein thought. And he smiled.

Yes. The world as will and idea.

Major General Duzov, commander of the Tenth Guards Tank Division, watched the attack from the forward observation post established by the assaulting regiment. He recognized that his presence troubled the regiment's commander. But Duzov didn't care. In an earlier assault, he had lost a regiment of tanks in two hours, in a swirling British counterattack that had ruined both the Soviet force and its antagonist.

And he had not been on the scene to control the situation. Now, if his division was going to take any more catastrophic losses, he at least intended to be present.

Lieutenant General Starukhin, his superior, had been as explicit as he could be. Punch the hole, Duzov. They're worn down. Punch the hole, or don't let me see your face alive.

He had two more chances. This attack, then the commitment of the trailing regiment. Duzov would have preferred to wait until he could strike with both regiments simultaneously, as well as throwing back in the battered motorized rifle regiment that had been working the broken ground to the south and the pathetic remains of the shattered tank regiment. Duzov believed in concentrated blows. And he knew he had one of the very best divisions in the Soviet Army. He hated to see it squandered piecemeal. It went against the grain of everything he had been taught, against all his beliefs.

But Starukhin had been adamant, rising to fury. Hit them. Just hit them again and again. This isn't the General Staff Academy. Drive over them, Duzov. Save your maxims and elegant solutions for your memoirs.

Perhaps Starukhin was right. Keep up the pressure. Don't allow the enemy breathing space.

The earth twitched beneath his feet. The artillery preparation had begun, concentrating all available fires on the known or estimated British positions. The broad, low valley filled with light, as though a bizarre 187

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morning had arrived ahead of schedule. Shells crashed and sputtered, ripping into the horizon by the thousands. Duzov could not understand how men survived such shelling. Yet he knew that some of them always did. It was, at times, amazingly difficult to kill the human animal.