Red storm rising - By Tom Clancy Page 0,18

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.

"To reach our maximum readiness will take some months," Alekseyev agreed. His only chance to carry his point with his seniors was to reason with them. He knew that he was almost certainly doomed to failure, but he had to try. "It will be difficult, if not impossible, for us to conceal it."

"As Marshal Rozhkov told us, Pavel Leonidovich, we are promised political and diplomatic maskirovka," a general pointed out.

"I have no doubt that our comrades in the KGB, and our skillful political leadership, will perform miracles." The room just might have functioning bugs, after all. "But is it not asking too much to expect that the Imperialists--as much as they fear and hate us, as active as their agents and spy satellites are--will fail to note a doubling of our training activity? We know that NATO increases its readiness when we go into major unit training, and their preparedness will automatically be increased by their own spring training cycles. If we continue our training beyond the normal pattern, they will be even more alert. Achieving full combat readiness requires that we do too many things out of the ordinary. If nothing else, East Germany is rife with Western spies. NATO will notice. NATO will react. They will meet us on the border with everything in their collective arsenals.

"If, on the other hand, we attack with what we have--now!--we have the advantage. Our men are not off skiing in the fucking Alps! Zhukov-4 is designed to cycle from peace to war in forty-eight hours. There is no way possible for NATO to react in so little time. They'll take forty-eight hours to get their intelligence information organized and presented to their ministers. By that time our shells will be falling on the Fulda Gap, and our tanks will be advancing behind them!"

"Too many things can go wrong!" CINC-West rose so swiftly that the towel nearly came off his waist. His left hand grabbed downward while his right fist shook at the younger man. "What about traffic control? What about training our men in their new battle equipment? What about getting my Frontal Aviation pilots ready for combat operations against the Imperialists? There--right there is an insurmountable problem! Our pilots need at least a month of intensive training. And so do my tankers, and so do my gunners, and so do my riflemen."

If you knew your job, they would be ready now, you worthless, whore-chasing son of a bitch! Alekseyev thought but did not dare to say aloud. CINC-West was a man of sixty-one who liked to demonstrate his manly prowess--boasted of it--to the detriment of his professional duties. Alekseyev had heard that story often enough, whispered jovially in this very room. But CINC-West was politically reliable. Such is the Soviet system, the younger general reflected. We need fighting soldiers and what do we get with which to defend the Rodina? Political reliability! He remembered bitterly what had happened to his father in 1958. But Alekseyev did not allow himself to begrudge the Party its control of the armed forces. The Party was the State, after all, and he was a sworn servant of the State. He had learned these truisms at his father's knee. One more card to play:

"Comrade General, you have good officers commanding your divisions, regiments, and battalions. Trust them to know their duties." It couldn't hurt to wave the standards of the Red Army, Alekseyev reasoned.

Rozhkov stood, and everyone in the room strained to hear his pronouncement. "What you say has merit, Pavel Leonidovich, but do we gamble with the safety of the Motherland?" He shook his head, quoting doctrine exactly, as he had been doing for too many years. "No. We rely on surprise, yes, on the first weighted blow to blast open a path for the daring thrust of our mechanized forces. And we will have our surprise. The Westerners will not wish to believe what is happening, and with the Politburo soothing them even as we prepare the first blow, we will have our strategic surprise. The West will have perhaps three days--four at most--to know what is