the trigger. The old tank rocked backwards from the shot. Gunner and commander watched the tracer arcing out ...
“Over, damn it, too high. Load another HEAT.”
The loader slammed another round into the breech in a second: “Loaded!”
“I’ll get the bastard this time,” the gunner promised, adjusting his sights down a hair. The poor bastard out there didn’t even know he’d been shot at the first time ...
“Fire!”
“Firing ...”
Yet another recoil, and ...
“Hit! Good shooting Vanya!”
Three Company was doing well. The time spent in gunnery practice was paying off handsomely, Komanov thought. This was much better than sitting in a damned bunker and waiting for them to come to you ...
What is that?” Marshal Luo asked.
“Comrade Marshal, come here and see,” the young lieutenant colonel urged.
“What is this?” the Defense Minister asked with a trailing-off voice ... “Cao ni ma,” he breathed. Then he thundered: “What the hell is this?”
“Comrade Marshal, this is a web site, from the Internet. It purports to be a live television program from the battlefield in Siberia.” The young field-grade officer was almost breathless. “It shows the Russians fighting Thirty-fourth Shock Army ...”
“And?”
“And they’re slaughtering our men, according to this,” the lieutenant colonel went on.
“Wait a minute—what—how is this possible?” Luo demanded.
“Comrade, this heading here says darkstar. ‘Dark Star’ is the name of an American unmanned aerial vehicle, a reconnaissance drone, reported to be a stealth aircraft used to collect tactical intelligence. Thus, it appears that they are using this to feed information, and putting the information on the Internet as a propaganda tool.” He had to say it that way, and it was, in fact, the way he thought about it.
“Tell me more.”
The officer was an intelligence specialist. “This explains the success they’ve had against us, Comrade Marshal. They can see everything we do, almost before we do it. It’s as though they listen to our command circuit, or even listen into our staff and planning meetings. There is no defense against this,” the staff officer concluded.
“You young defeatist!” the marshal raged.
“Perhaps there is a way to overcome this advantage, but I do not know what it is. Systems like this can see in the dark as well as they can in the sunlight. Do you understand, Comrade Marshal? With this tool they can see everything we do, see it long before we approach their formations. It eliminates any possibility of surprise ... see here,” he said, pointing at the screen. “One of Thirty-fourth Army’s mechanized divisions is maneuvering east. They are here”—he pointed to a printer map on the table—“and the enemy is here. If our troops get to this point unseen, then perhaps they can hit the Russians on their left flank, but it will take two hours to get there. For the Russians to get one of their units to a blocking position will take but one hour. That is the advantage,” he concluded.
“The Americans do that to us?”
“Clearly, the feed on the Internet is from America, from their CIA.”
“This is how the Russians have countered us, then?”
“Clearly. They’ve outguessed us at every turn today. This must be how they do it.”
“Why do the Americans put this information out where everyone can see it?” Luo wondered. The obvious answer didn’t occur to him. Information given out to the public had to be carefully measured and flavored for the peasants and workers to draw the proper conclusions from it.
“Comrade, it will be difficult to say on state television that things are going well when this is available to anyone with a computer.”
“Ahh.” Less a sound of satisfaction than one of sudden dread. “Anyone can see this?”
“Anyone with a computer and a telephone line.” The young lieutenant colonel looked up, only to see Luo’s receding form.
“I’m surprised he didn’t shoot me,” the officer observed.
“He still might,” a full colonel told him. “But I think you frightened him.” He looked at the wall clock. It was sixteen hours, four in the afternoon.
“Well, it is a concern.”
“You young fool. Don’t you see? Now he can’t even conceal the truth from the Politburo.”
Hello, Yuri,” lark said. It was different to be in Moscow in time of war. The mood of the people on the street was unlike anything he’d ever seen. They were concerned and serious—you didn’t go to Russia to see the smiling people any more than you went to England for the coffee—but there was something else, too. Indignation. Anger ... determination? Television coverage of the war was not as strident and defiant as he’d