World War III

“That’s movie stuff, Sergeant. It doesn’t work in real combat. There’s no way we can meet them in force unless we want to give them one swift kick in the balls, maul them pretty good and show a lot of flag and muscle. But we’d only get one shot before they blew our little asses away. We’re outmanned and outgunned eight or ten to one. Our one advantage is our mobility.” He nodded toward the helicopters outside.

“There isn’t time to give you the full course in tactical strategy against a superior force. We’re not looking for one decisive battle. They’d eat our lunch. So, we avoid exposure to their flanks and leapfrog platoons with our birds, meet them sliding off their front and disengage before they bring up their heavy firepower. We’ll drive them crazy, which means they’ll have to be more cautious, move slower.

And that’s all we want.”

“Can we do it, sir?” A lieutenant stood up at the back who was the company adjutant. “I mean, can we keep it up for three days? I don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir. We all know of your reputation and we heard how you tricked that Russian patrol on the ridge with the snowmobile, but… well—”

“It looks good on paper but how will it work when real bullets are flying?” Caffey nodded. “I understand, Lieutenant. I won’t try to minimize the risks or feed you some bullshit about all of us getting home again. This is going to be one goddamn bitch of a game we’re playing — tickling a dragon’s tail. Men are going to die. You will see horrible death in combat. But fewer men will die if we do our jobs. That’s a fact, gentlemen.” He looked around the room again. “Anything else?”

“Ammunition,” Kate whispered from the radio operator’s seat.

“Right. We are low on everything and I mean everything. You’re going to have to make every round count. Impress that on your platoons.” Caffey picked up Cordobes’s inventory log. “We have eighty-six M-16s, ten thousand rounds of ammunition, six 7.62-caliber machine guns mounted on the Hueys, one M-72 missile-launcher with twelve antitank rounds, six 45-caliber pistols and two thousand rounds, two hundred grenades and thirty thousand gallons of medium-octane fuel for the choppers.” He glanced up from the page. “That’s all. It has to last three days. Ten thousand rounds is not a hell of a lot when you remember we’re supplying the Huey gunships from that stockpile. Tell your men to save their expended clips. When a man goes down his buddy is responsible for taking his rifle and cartridge belt.

We don’t leave any weapons behind.”

“What about the buddy?” someone asked.

“We leave our dead,” Caffey said grimly. “We get our wounded out, if possible.”

The room was terribly quiet for several moments. A corporal sitting on the floor directly in front of Caffey cleared his throat. “Sir, some of us never saw a dead body before. How will we know if—”

“You’ll know,” Caffey said. He glanced across the faces in the room. “It’s one of the first things you learn in combat.”

MOSCOW

Gorny was in a rage. He was in his “official” office, quickly thumbing through a thick folder detailing the size and disposition of units within the Soviet Army. He was standing before a large map that had been brought in by a pair of Soviet security officers and set up beside his desk. The map emphasized northeastern Siberia. A line of yellow-flagged pins marked off a route from the Chukchi Peninsula across the Bering Sea and ended in north Alaska.

Rudenski was also in the room, seated in a chair near the windows with a view of Red Square. Standing at attention directly in front of Gorny’s desk was Major Konstantin Suloff, formerly attached to Moscow Center’s military headquarters as a KGB aide. His hands were manacled in front of him.

“We have denied the unit exists!” Gorny was saying. He tore at the folder, searching. “If the unit does exist it is…”—he turned several more pages until he stopped—”it is the 22nd Infantry Brigade of the Far Eastern Military District.” He looked up at Suloff.

“Comrade Chairman, we don’t have a 22nd Infantry Brigade of the Far Eastern Military District. That unit was disbanded in 1979.”

Gorny slammed the folder closed. “Damnit, Suloff! Perhaps it’s the 19th Brigade, or the six hundredth!

I can’t follow the movements of an army of four million! But Intelligence — not your KGB — my Intelligence informs me that—”

“That the 51st Arctic Combat Brigade of the 9th Army has not reported back from special training maneuvers off the Chukchi Peninsula. From the base at Provideniya, to be specific.”

“What special training maneuvers?”

“That unit has been assigned special task-force duties by the KGB, Section D, Detail 101.”

“And Section D, Detail 101 is whose desk at the KGB?”

“It’s my desk, comrade Chairman,” Suloff answered calmly. “Which, I assume, is why you’ve sent for me.”