NATO forces couldn’t stop the enemy tanks at Fulda Gap and NATO tanks had to go into the Gap, then the stochastic mines would be just as much a menace to his U.S. M-1s, German Leopards, and British Challenger tanks.
The Fulda Gap was now a caldron of flying steel and volcanic earth as the Russians’ spearhead column littered the ground, many of its tanks still burning, crews dead or dying aboard, hulls of others ripped apart, but still the Russians kept coming. With a six-to-one-man ratio over NATO, the gap might still be breached, MiGs and F-15s thundering overhead in the night, contesting the space above the potential breakthrough point.
All Meir and Malvinsky, eyes red with fatigue and fear, could do was to keep changing dugout positions as much as they could, trying not to expose themselves to either enemy or “friendly” fire as they watched tracer arcing out from the M-1s, machine guns finding the range, the M-1s’ lasers put out of action either by the tanks’ own reactive armor packs exploding or direct Russian fire, over a hundred of the M-1s destroyed by East German 125- millimeter armor-piercing discarding sabot rounds, capable of piercing the M-1s’ twenty-centimeter steel.
It was now twenty minutes after two on the morning of September 3 when, because of the massive blackout of communication along NATO’s line, NATO’s European commander in Brussels, General Koch, had no alternative but to formally release, by pay telephones (those not plugged into the fiber-optic system) and dispatch riders, all sector commanders to proceed on their own initiative. He emphasized the main tenet of NATO’s “forward defense, flexible response” strategy — that the enemy should be engaged as far forward as possible to buy the desperate one week needed for the American reserves to enter the war — the nuclear option being the strategy of last resort and only permissible under the express orders of the NATO council.
For Koch, there were only two decisions he could have made: one, to do as he had done, or secondly, to defer to the NATO council. But in the time it would have taken him to convene the council, he was ordering the recall of “dual-based” troops from the United States, that is, those troops who, on paper, were in Europe but were only at half strength, an economic measure left over from the habit of bleeding the United States’ European garrisons to put reserves into Vietnam. Koch knew the decision he made to recall the dual-based troops was in effect a decision that might force the U.S. president’s hand. Unlike his NATO brief, Koch did not have the authority to move any U.S. unit higher than a forty-thousand-man corps. His request for the dual-based troops, a request that he knew would be known as quickly by Moscow as Washington, would be one that in effect would widen the war, but if not made, would make it impossible for the United States to reinforce Europe in time. Besides, if he didn’t issue the order, the Russians would see this as a weakness, and what might have been an intention simply to gobble up territory along the near front would expand anyway, encouraging the S-WP forces to press on farther into Western Europe, knowing the farther they went, the less likely it was that NATO’s nuclear option would be invoked.
Koch fully understood what it would mean for President Mayne, but historians could argue about it — if there was anything left to write about, which there wouldn’t be if the Russians broke through. The president could refuse the request, of course, but this also would be seen by Moscow as a lack of resolve, another Munich sellout, and would only encourage Moscow to grab even more territory.
When Press Secretary Trainor got the request, he was at once shaken and relieved. He and the president had been holding a decidedly gloomy discussion in the Oval Office with the Joint Chiefs about the political necessity of ascertaining whether or not the missiles that hit the
“The North Koreans have tripped the whole goddamned thing off anyway,” said Trainor.
A call came in from Premier Suzlov. He was demanding that Mayne order NATO to cease its fighting and surrender all territory gained by the Soviet-Warsaw Pact countries.
“Mr. Premier,” answered the president, “I don’t want this. You don’t want this. Call off your people in Korea.”
“I have no people in Korea.
“I mean call off Pyongyang.”
“We have no people in Pyongyang. It would be interference in the internal affairs—”
“Then,” said Mayne calmly, “call off the ‘fraternal assistance’ you are giving East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia—”
“We did not begin this, Mr. President. Your act of terrorist aggression in East Berlin—”
‘ “That might well have been terrorist, Mr. Premier, but it was not an act of any government in the NATO alliance. Of this I can assure you.”
“Assure me? You can assure me of nothing. However, if you contain your NATO armies, I will agree to —”
“Mr. Premier?”
The line went dead.
“What the hell—” began Mayne.
The NSA electronic experts overseeing the White House and situation room communications punched all the right buttons, including time-of-conversation-cessation tone for number coding into the computer. Most likely explanation, they informed the president, “connections purposely cut.”
The president looked up, astounded. “By whom?”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff knew and Trainor knew they knew, but coming from them, it could look almost self- serving. It was for a moment as if each of the Joint Chiefs, aware that history was being made, did not want to come out on the wrong side of it.
“Some of Suzlov’s generals see this as their chance,” Trainor proffered quietly, adding in an even quieter but more chilling tone, “As the British would say, ‘in for a penny, in for a pound.’ “
“What in hell does that mean?” snapped the president.
“Go for broke,” Trainor answered quietly. “The NATO forces might be reeling. They won’t get another chance like this for a hundred years.”
Harry Schuman, sitting next to Admiral Horton, was nodding in agreement. “Hardliners have been fretting ever since Gorbachev’s reductions. I think Mr. Trainor is correct in his assessment.”
Mayne was rubbing his forehead. “All right, General Gray. What’ll it take?”
“Rollover, sir.” He meant the NATO policy of “Atlantic necessity,” of the U.S., British, and other NATO navies, but primarily the U.S. and British, having to accept enormous losses, simply roll over them, to get the reinforcements of men, materiel, and food to reinforce Europe if they were to have any hope of pushing the Russians back.
“Mr. President,” said Admiral Horton, “in the first hundred and eighty days we’re looking at a minimum of six thousand cargo ships. Each ship making six round trips. Means a minimum of thirty-four cargo ships a day — excluding naval battle groups for escort and carrier air cover for the convoys.”
“Can we do it?”
“We do it or we lose Europe.”
“Do it,” said Mayne.
At that moment Trainor knew that from here on in the government of the United States would function from the bombproof shelter of the White House situation room and that Senator Leyland had just lost his bid for the presidency.
On Capitol Hill, the entire place under the heaviest security ever seen in Congress, President Mayne, for purposes of national as well as European morale, made his address from the House of Representatives, as Roosevelt had done, to show Europe that both Democrats and Republicans supported him. As he mounted the podium, the silence was palpable as the speaker invited the president to address the Congress.
“This day, as you know, war has broken out in Europe. Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies have attacked the NATO alliance through the very Iron Curtain that for years past has been the front line between the forces of freedom and those of oppression. And once again the United States has been called upon to stem the tide of
