people did.
“Their defenses look ill-maintained,” Peng observed.
“That is so, Comrade,” the colonel commanding the border-defense regiment agreed. “We see little regular activity there.”
“They are too busy selling their weapons to civilians for vodka,” the army political officer observed. “Their morale is poor, and they do not train anything like we do.”
“They have a new theater commander,” the army’s intelligence chief countered. “A General-Colonel Bondarenko. He is well regarded in Moscow as an intellect and as a courageous battlefield commander from Afghanistan.”
“That means he survived contact once,” Political observed. “Probably with a Kabul whore.”
“It is dangerous to underestimate an adversary,” Intelligence warned.
“And foolish to overestimate one.”
Peng just looked through the glasses. He’d heard his intelligence and political officer spar before. Intelligence tended to be an old woman, but many intelligence officers were like that, and Political, like so many of his colleagues, was sufficiently aggressive to make Genghis Khan seem womanly. As in the theater, officers played the roles assigned to them. His role, of course, was to be the wise and confident commander of one of his country’s premier striking arms, and Peng played that role well enough that he was in the running for promotion to General First Class, and if he played his cards very carefully, in another eight years or so, maybe Marshal. With that rank came real political power and personal riches beyond counting, with whole factories working for his own enrichment. Some of those factories were managed by mere colonels, people with the best of political credentials who knew how to kowtow to their seniors, but Peng had never gone that route. He enjoyed soldiering far more than he enjoyed pushing paper and screaming at worker-peasants. As a new second lieutenant, he’d fought the Russians, not very far from this very spot. It had been a mixed experience. His regiment had enjoyed initial success, then had been hammered by a storm of artillery. That had been back when the Red Army, the real Soviet Army of old, had fielded whole artillery divisions whose concentrated fire could shake the very earth and sky, and that border clash had incurred the wrath of the nation the Russians had once been. But no longer. Intelligence told him that the Russian troops on the far side of this cold river were not even a proper shadow of what had once been there. Four divisions, perhaps, and not all of them at full strength. So, however clever this Bondarenko fellow was, if a clash came, he’d have his hands very full indeed.
But that was a political question, wasn’t it? Of course. All the really important things were.
“How are the bridging engineers?” Peng asked, surveying the watery obstacle below.
“Their last exercise went very well, Comrade General,” Operations replied. Like every other army in the world, the PLA had copied the Russian “ribbon” bridge, designed by Soviet engineers in the 1960s to force crossings of all the streams of Western Germany in a NATO/Warsaw Pact war so long expected, but never realized. Except in fiction, mainly Western fiction that had had the NATO side win in every case. Of course. Would capitalists spend money on books that ended their culture? Peng chuckled to himself. Such people enjoyed their illusions ...
... almost as much as his own country’s Politburo members. That’s the way it was all over the world, Peng figured. The rulers of every land held images in their heads, and tried to make the world conform to them. Some succeeded, and those were the ones who wrote the history books.
“So, what do we expect here?”
“From the Russians?” Intelligence asked. “Nothing that I have heard about. Their army is training a little more, but nothing to be concerned about. If they wanted to come south across that river, I hope they can swim in the cold.”
“The Russians like their comforts too much for that. They’ve grown soft with their new political regime,” Political proclaimed.
“And if we are ordered north?” Peng asked.
“If we give them one hard kick, the whole rotten mess will fall down,” Political answered. He didn’t know that he was exactly quoting another enemy of the Russians.
CHAPTER 43
Decisions
The colonel flying Air Force One executed an even better landing than usual. Jack and Cathy Ryan were already awake and showered to alertness, helped by a light breakfast heavy on fine coffee. The President looked out the window to his left and saw troops formed up in precise lines, as the aircraft taxied to its assigned place.
“Welcome to Poland, babe. What do