Red storm rising - By Tom Clancy Page 0,330

him to the double doors of the conference room. Alekseyev ordered his aide to wait as he entered, his visored cap tucked tightly under his arm.

"Comrades: General Colonel P. L. Alekseyev reports as ordered!"

"Welcome to Moscow, Comrade General," the Defense Minister said. "What is the situation in Germany?"

"Both sides are exhausted but still fighting. The current tactical situation is one of stalemate. We have more troops and weapons available, but we are critically short of fuel."

"Can you win?" the General Secretary asked.

"Yes, Comrade Secretary! Given several days to organize my forces, and if I can do some crucial work with the arriving reserve formations, I think it likely that we can sunder the NATO front."

"Likely? Not certain?" the Defense Minister asked.

"In war there is no certainty," Alekseyev answered simply.

"We have learned that," the Foreign Minister answered dryly. "Why have we not won yet?"

"Comrades, we failed initially to achieve strategic and tactical surprise. Surprise is the most important variable factor in war. With it we would probably--almost certainly--have succeeded in two or three weeks."

"To achieve certain success now, what else will you need?"

"Comrade Defense Minister, I need the support of the people and the Party, and I need a little time."

"You evade the question!" Marshal Bukharin said.

"We were never allowed to use our chemical weapons in the initial assault. That could have been a decisive advantage--"

"The political cost of those weapons was deemed too great," the Foreign Minister said defensively.

"Could you make profitable use of them now?" the General Secretary asked.

"I think not. Those weapons should have been used from the first on equipment-storage depots. The depots are now mainly empty, and hitting them would have only a limited effect. Use of chemicals at the front is no longer a viable option. The newly arriving C formations lack the modern equipment necessary to operate efficiently in a chemical environment."

"Again I ask the question," the Defense Minister repeated. "What do you need to make victory certain?"

"To achieve a decisive breakthrough, we need to be able to blast a hole in NATO lines at least thirty kilometers wide and twenty kilometers in depth. To do that, I need ten full-strength divisions on line, ready to advance. I need several days to prepare that force."

"How about tactical nuclear weapons?" Alekseyev's face did not change. Are you mad, Comrade General Secretary?

"The risks are high." There's a prize understatement.

"And if we can prevent, politically, NATO retaliation?" Defense asked.

"I do not know how that is possible." And neither do you.

"But if we can make it possible?"

"Then it would increase our chances measurably." Alekesyev paused, inwardly chilled at what he saw in those faces. They want to use nuclear weapons at the front--and when NATO responds in kind and vaporizes my troops, then what? Will it stop with a single exchange or will more and more be used, the explosions advancing west and east? If I tell them they are crazy, they will find a general who will not. "The problem is one of control, Comrades."

"Explain."

If he were to stay alive and prevent this ... Alekseyev spoke carefully, mixing truth and lies and guesses. Dissimulation did not come easily to the General, but at least this was an issue he had discussed with his peers for over a decade. "Comrade General Secretary, nuclear weapons are, foremost, political weapons for both sides, controlled by political leaders. This limits their battlefield utility. A decision to use an atomic warhead in a tactical environment must be passed on by those leaders. By the time approval is granted, the tactical situation will almost certainly have changed, and the weapon is no longer useful. NATO never has seemed to grasp this. The weapons they have are mainly designed to be used by battlefield commanders, yet I have never thought myself that NATO's political leadership would lightly give use authority to those battlefield commanders. Because of this, the weapons they would more probably use against us are actually strategic weapons aimed at strategic targets, not the tactical weapons in the field."

"That is not what they say," Defense objected.

"You will note that when we made our breakthroughs at Alfeld and Ruhle, nuclear weapons were not used on the bridgeheads even though some pre-war NATO writings would seem to suggest they should have been. I conclude that there are more variable factors in the equation than were fully appreciated. We have learned ourselves that the reality of war can be different from the theory of war."

"So you support our decision to use tactical nuclear weapons?" the