support. There were two battalions of infantry dug in deep and hard on the outskirts of Alfeld, supported by a squadron of tanks. He heard the overhead whistling of artillery shells, the new kind that dropped mines on the fog-shrouded battlefield ahead of him. The whistling changed as he mounted his tank. Incoming.
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
"It's taken too long to get them moving," Alekseyev growled to his operations officer.
"It's still three divisions, and they are moving now."
"But how many reinforcements have arrived?"
The operations man had warned Alekseyev against trying to coordinate a two-pronged attack, but the General had stuck to the plan. Beregovoy's A tank division was now in place to strike from the west, while the three C reserve divisions hit from the east. The regular tank force had no artillery--they'd had to move too fast to bring it--but three hundred tanks and six hundred personnel carriers were a formidable force all by themselves, the General thought... but what were they up against, and how many vehicles had been destroyed or damaged by air attack on the approach march?
Sergetov arrived. His class-A uniform was rumpled from his traveling.
"And how was Moscow?" Alekseyev asked.
"Dark, Comrade General. The attack, how did it go?"
"Just starting now."
"Oh?" The major was surprised at the delay. He looked rather closely at the Theater Operations Officer, who hovered over the map table, frowning at the dispositions while the plotting officers prepared to mark the progress of the attack.
"I have a message from high command for you, Comrade General." Sergetov handed over an official-looking form. Alekseyev scanned it--and stopped reading. His fingers went taut on the paper briefly before he regained self-control.
"Come to my office." The General said nothing more until the door was closed. "Are you sure of this?"
"I was told by Director Kosov himself."
Alekseyev sat on the edge of his desk. He lit a match and burned the message form, watching the flame march across the paper almost to his fingertips as he twisted it in his hand.
"That fucking weasel. Stukach!" An informer on my own staff! "What else?"
Sergetov related the other information he'd learned. The General was silent for a minute, computing his fuel requirements against fuel reserves.
"If today's attack fails ... we've--" He turned away, unwilling, unable, to make himself say it aloud. I have not trained my whole life to fail! He remembered the first notice he'd had of the campaign against NATO. I told them to attack at once. I told them that we needed strategic surprise, and that we'd have difficulty achieving it if we waited so long. I told them that we'd have to close the North Atlantic to prevent resupply of the NATO forces. So. Now that we've accomplished none of these, my friend is in a KGB prison and my own life is in jeopardy because I may fail to do what I told them we could not do--because I was right all along!
Come now, Pasha. Why should the Politburo listen to its soldiers when it can just as easily shoot them?
The Theater Operations Officer stuck his head through the door. "The troops are moving."
"Thank you, Yevgeny Ilych," Alekseyev answered amiably. He rose from the desk. "Come, Major, let's see how quickly we can smash through the NATO lines!"
ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
"Bar fight," Woody said from his gunner's position.
"Looks like it," Mackall agreed.
They'd been told to expect two or three Soviet reserve divisions. Together they had perhaps the artillery strength of two regular units, and they were firing at both sides of the river. The miserable visibility hurt both sides. The Russians could not direct their artillery fire well, and the NATO troops would have minimal air support. As usual, the worst part of the preliminary bombardment was the rockets, which lasted two minutes, the unguided missiles falling like hail. Though men died and vehicles exploded, the defending force was well prepared and casualties were light.
Woody switched on his thermal-imaging sights. It allowed him to see roughly a thousand yards, double the visual range. On the left side of the turret, the loader sat nervously, his foot resting lightly on the pedal that controlled the doors to the ammo compartment. The driver in his coffin-sized box under the main gun drummed his fingers on the control bar.
"Heads up. Friendlies coming in," Mackall told his crew. "Movement reported to the east."
"I see 'em," Woody acknowledged. Just a few infantrymen were returning from their forward listening posts. Not as many as there should have been, Mackall thought. So