Red Storm Rising

It was one of their new Blackhawks. The helicopter flared and settled gracefully to the grassy meadow, with the pair of Mi-24s circling overhead. The door didn't open at once. The pilot killed his engines, and the rotor took two minutes to slow to a complete stop. Then the door slid open and the General stepped out hatless.

Tall for a paratrooper, Alekseyev thought.

SACEUR could have brought the bone-handled.45 Colt that he'd been given in Vietnam, but he judged it better to impress the Russian by coming unarmed in ordinary fatigues. Four black stars adorned his collar, and the badges of a master parachutist and combat infantrymen were sewn on his left breast. On the right side was a simple nametag: ROBINSON. I don't have to show off, Ivan. I've won.

"Tell the men in the woods to stand down and withdraw."

"But, Comrade General!" It was a new aide and he didn't know his general yet.

"Quickly. If I need an interpreter I will wave." Alekseyev walked toward the NATO commander. The aides gravitated together.

Salutes were exchanged, but neither wanted to offer a hand first.

"You are Alekseyev," General Robinson said. "I expected someone else."

"Marshal Bukharin is in retirement-your Russian is excellent, General Robinson."

"Thank you, General Alekseyev. Some years ago I got interested in the plays of Chekhov. You can really understand a play only in its original language. Since then I have read a good deal of Russian literature."

Alekseyev nodded. "The better to understand your enemy." He went on in English. "Very sensible of you. Shall we take a walk?"

"How many men do you have in the trees?"

"A platoon of motor-riflemen." Alekseyev switched back to his native language. Robinson's mastery of Russian was better than his of English, and Pasha had made his point. "How were we to know what would come out of the helicopter?"

"True," SACEUR conceded. Yet you were standing out in the open-to show me that you are fearless. "What shall we talk about?"

"A termination of hostilities, perhaps."

"I am listening."

"You know of course that I had no part in starting this madness."

Robinson's head turned. "What soldier ever does, General? We merely shed the blood and get the blame. Your father was a soldier, was he not?"

"A tanker. He was luckier than your father."

"That's often what it is, isn't it? Luck."

"We should not tell our political leaders that." Alekseyev amost ventured a smile until he saw that he'd given Robinson an opening.

"Who are your political leaders? If we are to reach a workable agreement, I must be able to tell mine who is in charge."

"The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is Mikhail Eduardovich Sergetov."

Who? SACEUR wondered. He did not remember the name. He'd refreshed his memory on all the full Politburo members, but that name wasn't on the list. He temporized. "What the hell happened?"

Alekseyev saw the puzzlement on Robinson's face, and this time he did venture a smile. You do not know who he is, do you, Comrade General? There is an unknown for you to ponder. "As you Americans are fond of saying, it was time for a change."

Who taught you to play poker, son? SACEUR wondered. But I'm holding aces over kings. What are you holding?

"What is your proposal?"

"I do not know how to be a diplomat, only how to be a soldier," Alekseyev said. "We propose a cease-fire in place, followed by a phased withdrawal to pre-war positions over a period of two weeks."

"In two weeks I can achieve that without a cease-fire," Robinson said coldly.

"At great cost-and greater risk," the Russian pointed out.

"We know that you are short of fuel. Your entire national economy could come apart."

"Yes, General Robinson, and if our army comes apart, as you say, we have only one defense option to safeguard the State."

"Your country has launched a war of aggression against the NATO alliance. Do you suppose that we can let you return to status quo ante, nothing else?" SACEUR asked quietly. He was keeping close rein on his emotions. He'd already made one slip, and that was two too many. "And don't tell me about the Kremlin Bomb Plot-you know sure as hell we had no part of that."

"I have told you that I had no part in this. I follow orders-but did you expect the Politburo to sit still while our national economy ground to a halt? What political pressure would you have put on us, eh? If you knew about our oil shortage-"

"We didn't until a few days ago."

The maskirovka worked?

"Why didn't you tell us you needed oil?" Robinson asked.

"And you would have given it to us? Robinson, I do not have your degree in international relations, but I am not so much of a fool as that."

"We would have demanded and gotten concessions of some kind-but don't you think we would have tried to prevent all this?"

Alekseyev tore a leaf off a tree. He stared at it for a moment. The marvelous networking of veins, everything interconnected with everything else. You have just killed another living thing, Pasha.

"I suppose the Politburo never thought about that."