WW III

then our reactions now to our comrades in North Korea will decide the issue.” No one stirred or even raised an eyebrow at the defense minister’s use of “God forbid”—Gorbachev had used it all the time during his years in office. “The question for them, Comrades,” continued the minister, “will be, why should we fight to protect the Soviet Union’s borders? Why should we be the buffer zone in Eastern Europe if the Soviet Union does not move to aid one of our brother socialist countries in North Korea?”

Colonel Marchenko made eye contact with the most powerful man in the Soviet Union, though he knew that as colonel he was not entitled to speak at such a high-level meeting unless specifically invited to do so. STAVKA not only supported the premier’s position regarding the Eastern Fleet and China but also shared the defense minister’s concern. Marchenko’s intelligence sources had painted an even more frightening picture of the spread of underground dissident movements within the republics. Gorbachev and his precious perestroika had lifted the lid from the can of worms. Encouraged by his call for reforms, the underground, indeed everybody, from the decadent rock and roll stars—”Bye-bye, Miss American Pie”—to literary professors quoting the leftist traitor Orwell, had started yelling about freedom. Freedom for what? Marchenko wanted to know. Freedom to be degenerate — sex, drugs, and mayhem in the streets? The KGB had over three million files on “latent dissidents” who had surfaced in the Gorbachev years, in addition to those already known as “dubious characters,” all of them just waiting and watching like delinquents for the first sign of the parents’ discipline weakening. But even this was as nothing compared to the threat posed by the clique of “delinquent generals” on overcrowded Taiwan. Agents who often sent in conflicting assessments were as one in their reports that the Taiwan clique were positively drooling at the prospect of a Soviet-U.S. conflict and/or Chinese preoccupation in a Sino-Soviet conflict over Far Eastern borders. And the present North/South Korean War was a prime time, one that would not come again, for Taiwan’s American-equipped navy, vastly superior to Mainland China’s, to retake some of the offshore islands.

“Yes, Colonel?” said the premier encouragingly, struck by the officer’s fearlessness in the presence of so much top brass.

“Mr. Premier,” began Marchenko, “I suggest that the Far Eastern Fleet be authorized to carry out AIRTAC exercises in the South China Sea, supported by amphibious elements from our base at Cam Rahn Bay. This would be enough of a departure from normal Far Eastern Fleet maneuvers to give a clear signal to the Americans but still be part of the usual exercises so that it should not unduly alarm Washington. It would also be far enough south of Korea not to be viewed by the Americans as Moscow interfering with Korea. It would also mean our fleet would be strategically positioned between the offshore China islands and Taiwan to signal the opportunist generals in Taipei, very clearly, that we will not tolerate an attack upon Mainland Chinese territory which would further destabilize our Far Eastern border situation. This would also put us in Beijing’s favor and may reduce tensions on the Far Eastern border itself.”

Premier Suzlov nodded, pondering the suggestion. “A double play?” he said, using an American baseball expression he had picked up years before during his stint as KGB head of station in Washington. Suzlov turned to the Politburo. “Well—?” his gaze resting on the ranking minister of defense. “Ilya?”

“Yes,” said the Georgian, “but we must still be seen supporting Pyongyang. Not to do so will only encourage the Americans to become further involved. They already have reservists en route from Japan. The problem will only—”

“A volunteer force,” cut in Marchenko. “From all socialist countries. We could fly them out from Berlin.” The STAVKA colonel realized this time he’d not only spoken out of turn but jumped the gun, butting in on the defense minister’s response. But, as the British said, “In for a penny, in for a pound.” “Dobrovol’tsy”— “Volunteers,” he continued, “from all socialist countries would absolve Moscow of any direct intervention, yet we would all be aiding our North Korean comrades.” Suzlov looked quickly about the room as Marchenko added, “Socialist solidarity.” It was heartfelt for the colonel, no mere slogan. He hated America — a “mongrel mix of races,” he called it, his father, an adviser in North Vietnam, killed by the American Division outside Khe Sahn.

The defense minister turned toward Suzlov, unable to decide whether the upstart colonel deserved a damned quick put-down or a promotion. Never would have happened before Gorbachev, of course. Gorbachev was the one who had encouraged this kind of “spontaneous” exhibitionism the colonel was indulging in. Still, the defense minister saw the colonel’s point was supporting his. “Where,” the defense minister asked Marchenko, “would you get these volunteers from?”

“Cuba. East Germany—” Marchenko paused. “We were still able to get volunteers for SPETSNAZ for Afghanistan—”

“Afghanistan was a mistake,” said the air marshal. It was the party line; it had also cost the air marshal many pilots and put pay once and for all to the idea, as the Americans had learned in Vietnam, that air superiority alone could decide a war. Unless you dropped atomic bombs.

“Yes,” agreed Premier Suzlov, “but the colonel is correct. We did get volunteers despite the unpopularity of the war. And for SPETSNAZ.” He was referring to the toughest, most hazardous duty of all, the special forces.

“And,” said the colonel, pausing, a little more cautious, “we could offer some kind of inducement. Recognition by the state.” He meant bonuses, of course. Cash, coupons for the specialty stores normally open only to the Party.

Suzlov saw the heads nodding. Lenin would have understood perfectly. He was no fool, this colonel.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The moment NATO HQ in Brussels had heard that the North Korean army had crossed the DMZ, all units along the NATO front, from Jutland in the north to Austria in the south, went from normal “alert” status to “military vigilance.” If the Soviet-Warsaw Pact armies were to invade the West, there were three “most probable” points of entry. The first was the Fulda Gap. Here the end of the barbed wire East German funnel thrust into West Germany between Mount Fichtel Gebirge in the south and the Harz Mountains in the north, where Hitler had used thousands of SS-controlled slave laborers to build the V-2 rockets in the deep underground tunnels near Nordhausen. The second probable point of attack was in the far south near Burghausen on the Austrian-West German border, where tanks could race through the Hof Corridor, utilizing the plain about the Danube northeast of Munich. The third most probable point of entry was in the far north along the Elbe on the North German Plain. Here attacking forces would almost certainly try to isolate Jutland while racing to Hamburg and Bremerhaven to cut off the vital ports needed by NATO for the massive U.S. reinforcements, which after one week of war would have to start pouring in if NATO was to have any hope of stopping the Soviet-Warsaw Pact juggernaut.

It was clearly understood, as laid out in the UN Charter, that an attack on any of the sixteen NATO signatories would be considered by the United States as an attack upon it. It was possible, of course, that the Soviet-Warsaw Pact forces could attack all three points at once. This was considered highly unlikely, however, as even with the Soviets’ overwhelming numerical advantage of forty thousand main battle tanks against NATO’s twenty thousand, six combat soldiers to NATO’s one, it would mean the S-WP splitting their forces against the numerically inferior but mechanically superior NATO armor.

In Fulda Gap, fifty kilometers northeast of Fulda on the central German front, stood “Tower Alfa,” NATO’s forwardmost observation post along the “trace,” the fifty-yard-wide DMZ that stretched for 550 miles, separating the two Germanys. Here the Americans of the U.S. Fifth Army’s Blackstone Regiment had the responsibility of guarding the fifteen miles of the arrowhead-shaped sector.

Not far back from the tower, in the platoon hut, they had been through the routine quite literally a thousand times, snatching up rifles on the double, the white and turquoise walls of the hut a blur as they raced out to man the machine-gun posts and the M-1s, never knowing when the choking “horn” sounding the jump from normal “alert” to “military vigilance” to “reinforced alert” and finally to “general alert” meant a drill or the real thing. But the American’s were always keen no matter how many times they’d been through it, as mindful as Hans Meir, the Wermacht liaison officer serving with them, that if the Russian T-90s came bursting through the Gap, the men at Alfa would be at the point of maximum danger, that a world war might stop or proceed, depending on the swiftness and the bravery of their response. Meir had never forgotten his grandfather telling him how if just one officer, one man, had stood firm on the bridge across the Rhine in that fateful summer of ‘36, World War II might never have begun, Hitler having secretly ordered his men not to proceed if resistance was met. After that, Meir’s grandfather