Red Storm Rising

Conversation stilled, and the men looked inquiringly in his direction.

Here we go. "Comrades, on 15 June of this year, just four months from now, we launch an offensive against NATO."

For a moment, only the hiss of the steam could be heard, then three men laughed, having imbibed a few stiff drinks in the sanctity of their staff cars on the drive over from the Kremlin. Those close enough to see CINC-Ground's face did not.

"You are serious, Comrade Marshal?" asked the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater. Receiving a nod in reply, he said, "Then perhaps you will be so kind as to explain the reason for this action?"

"Of course. You are all aware of the Nizhnevartovsk oil-field disaster. What you have not yet learned are its strategic and political implications." It took six brisk minutes to outline everything the Politburo had decided. "In just over four months from now, we shall launch the most crucial military operation in the history of the Soviet Union: the destruction of NATO as a political and military force. And we will succeed."

Finished, he stared at the officer in silence. The steam was having its desired effects on the assembly of flag officers. Its searing heat assaulted their breathing passages, sobering those who had been drinking. And it made them sweat. They'd be doing a lot of that in the next few months, Rozhkov thought.

Then Pavel Alekseyev, deputy commander of the Southwestern Theater, spoke. "I heard rumors," he said. "But that bad?"

"Yes. We have sufficient POL supplies for twelve months of normal operations, or enough for sixty days of war operations after a brief period of increased training activity." At the cost, he didn't say, of crippling the national economy by mid-August.

Alekseyev leaned forward and swatted himself with his bundle of branches. The action was strangely like a lion's swishing its tail. At fifty, he was the second-youngest officer there, a respected intellectual soldier and a fit, handsome man with the shoulders of a lumberjack. His intense, dark eyes squinted down through the rising cloud of steam.

"Mid-June?"

"Yes," Rozhkov said. "We have that long to prepare our plans and our troops." CINC-Ground looked around the room. Already the ceiling had become partially obscured by a mist.

"I presume we are here so that we may speak frankly among ourselves, no?"

"This is so, Pavel Leonidovich." Rozhkov replied, not the least surprised that Alekseyev had been the first to speak. CINC-Ground had carefully advanced the man's career over the last decade. He was the only son of a hard-charging tank general of the Great Motherland War, one of the many good men pensioned off during the bloodless purges under Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s.

"Comrades." Alekseyev stood, climbing slowly down the benches to the marble floor. "I accept everything Marshal Rozhkov has told us. But-four months! Four months in which we may be detected, four months in which we may lose all the element of surprise. Then what may happen? No, we have a plan already for this: Zhukov-4! Instant mobilization! We can all be back to our command posts in six hours. If we are going to conduct a surprise attack, then let us make it one no one can detect in time-seventy-two hours from now!"

Again the only sound in the room was that of the water flashing to steam on the dun-colored bricks, then the room erupted with noise. Zhukov-4 was the winter variant of a plan which hypothesized discovery of NATO's intention to launch a surprise attack of its own on the Warsaw Pact. In such a case, standard Soviet military doctrine was the same as anyone else's: the best defense is a good offense-preempt the NATO armies by attacking at once with the Category-A mechanized divisions in East Germany.

"But we are not ready!" objected CINC-West. His was the "point" command with headquarters in Berlin, the single most powerful military command in the world. An attack into West Germany was primarily his responsibility.

Alekseyev held up his hands. "Neither are they. In fact, they are less ready than we," he said reasonably. "Look, consider our intelligence data. Fourteen percent of their officers are on holidays. They are coming off a training cycle, true, but because of it much of their equipment will be down for maintenance, and many of their senior officers will be away in their respective capitals for consultations, just as we are now. Their troops are in winter quarters, on a winter routine. This is the time of year for maintenance and paperwork. Physical training is curtailed-who wants to run in the snow, eh? Their men are cold, and drinking more than usual. This is our time to act! We all know that historically the Soviet fighting man performs at his best in winter, and NATO is at its lowest state of readiness."

"But so are we, you young fool!" CINC-Western Theater growled back.

"We can change that in forty-eight hours," Alekseyev countered.

"Impossible," observed West's deputy, careful to back up his boss.