up the Stars, and Stripes and the Union Jack over Rat Island.
“You bastards!” It was one of the marine medics shouting at the SPETS prisoners while helping another marine steer Shirer toward a Medevac chopper, the first-aid bandage they’d put about his eye already soaked with blood.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The President of the United States was not as forgiving of his general as David Brentwood thought he would be. Mayne didn’t question Freeman’s decision to use FAE — after all, the White House and the Chiefs of Staff had given him the authority, and Mayne knew the burden of such responsibility.
“My congratulations, General, on your victory,” said Mayne tersely over the satellite hookup between the White House and Freeman’s Cape Prince of Wales HQ. “Now what in hell were you doing disobeying an order by your commander in chief?”
“Mr. President. I didn’t lead the attack. I went in when I thought the situation warranted it.”
“Don’t dance with me, General. You may have thought the situation warranted it, but I thought I made it clear to you, what we need is your strategy, not your bravado.”
“Mr. President, I understand, but if you’ll forgive me, we didn’t have time for a cabinet meeting on that Starlifter. Sometimes you have to know all the rules in order to break one of them.” He paused. “When necessary.”
President Mayne conceded the point but then, with Trainor and che Joint Chiefs of Staff listening in, he told General Freeman of the pipeline sabotage and how this meant an increased surveillance responsibility for the navy on the West Coast and substantially less naval force to protect Freeman’s flank. Outside the White House the sleet was turning to rain, splattering against the windows, sweeping torrentially across the forlorn patio. “You’ve done the job, Douglas. You’ve knocked out Ratmanov and secured the shortest route to Siberia, but I have to tell you that Intelligence…” He paused, and Freeman could hear him conferring momentarily with Trainor and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including General Grey.
“Douglas… Signal Intelligence as well as Human Intelligence confirm the Siberians have moved the Fifth Army eastward, spearheaded by their Thirty-first Motorized Division.” He was referring to the famed Thirty-first “Stalingrad” Motorized Division, whose forebears had crushed the best the Wermacht had, causing Von Paulus to surrender the entire German Sixth Army.
Freeman knew that what the president was telling him was that Ratmanov had been the easy part. The hard part was about to begin.
The criticism of Freeman’s use of FAE on his own troops was savage; editorial writers across the country lost no time in pointing out that he had lost 51 percent casualties, the highest in any one action since the Tet Offensive and the marines’ fighting retreat from Chosin Reservoir in Korea.
“Well, Dick,” said Freeman philosophically, running the fingers of one hand through his thinning gray hair while he held the offending editorials in his other, “It’s a short step from hosanna to hoot!”
“Yes, sir.”
“By God!” said Freeman, his ire rising, slapping the editorial. “In Europe they said the attack on Minsk was the most brilliant since Sherman wheeled and drove through to the sea. Now they’re pillorying me. Those sons of bitches always root out the negative. And those powdered pricks hiding behind their goddamn cameras, criticizing us with a five-second clip. If they can’t find anything to bitch about, they make it up.” He looked angrily across at Norton. “I don’t read anything here about that pilot of ours.”
“Shirer,” put in Norton.
“Yes, Shirer, that’s it. Remember him from Korea. Brave man. Went in on the deck to try and protect us. No editorials about what those animals — the Siberian ‘elite’—did to him, what they would have done to all of our boys if we’d lost that godforsaken rock.” He picked up his reading glasses and walked over to the map, shaking his head, stopping, taking off his glasses, and tapping Ratmanov.”They don’t think I bleed for those boys, but damn it. Seventy-four casualties, Dick, seventy-four! We lose more than that on the roads every day.” His glasses were tapping the bunch of editorials in his other hand. “Criticism like this, it’s — it’s disproportionate. Fecal diatribe. First operation in history where we went in outnumbered ten to one! Yes, yes, the MEU followed, but
Norton said nothing. Part of being Freeman’s aide was the ability to let the general vent his spleen against “rancid reporters,” whose ego, thundered Freeman, “is ten times as big as any general’s I know.” He paused. “Including mine.”
Norton risked a smile but knew that for the time being silence was the most prudent policy. It was still touch and go.
“For crying out loud, Schwarzkopf lost more than that!”
Norton thought it inadvisable to point out that “Stormin’ Norman” had fielded over half a million men, that Freeman’s 51 percent casualty rate for Schwarzkopf would have meant a quarter of a million casualties. But he knew the general was right, too — it was comparing apples and oranges. It wasn’t simply a numbers game, and he suspected that in the supposedly cool, “objective” halls of the Pentagon there was sheer envy of Freeman’s grandstand style.
“Well, General,” hazarded Norton, “you’re going to have a chance to prove them wrong about you.”
It was a sobering thought, and it stopped Freeman’s outrage against the newspapers and TV editors dead in its tracks. The “opportunity,” he knew, was Siberia. Siberia to Ratmanov was as a sea to an island, its danger far more widespread and unknown. The “tooth to tail”—logistical — problem alone would be the greatest military undertaking in history.
Freeman held the editorials over the waste bin. “One of these—” He indicated a
When the cold air hit him it took his breath away, and in the sheen of twilight, filled with the heavy drumming of transport planes overhead escorting the airborne sapper and engineer battalions who were clearing any remaining minefields and the ice crust off Ratmanov’s summertime airfield, he saw a squiggle of water between the ice floes, and reached for his field glasses.
In the binoculars’ circle he saw a seabird covered with oil, flapping and slipping helplessly on the ice in a futile effort to get airborne, exhausting itself on the floe. Another oil-soaked bird watched helplessly nearby. He thought of Doreen, and how he had not thought of her at all during the battle, of how he might never see her again, and of how many American mothers and sweethearts would think of him as a butcher. But he could not cry — not because at that moment he did not want to or would have been ashamed of it, but because he felt himself constrained by a sense of destiny, of mission. He couldn’t explain it to others, but he knew it was true and would not afford him the luxury of self-pity, calling instead to his side Churchill’s stirring rendition of the ancient psalm: “Arm yourselves and be ye men of valor and be in readiness for the conflict, for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altars. As the will of God is in Heaven even so let it do.”
The brief daylight of the strait was gone and across the darkness that at that moment seemed impenetrable yet across which he knew he must lead the great invasion, lay Sibir — ethereally silent and waiting, a land so vast, so used to consuming her own, that he knew she would not be loath to devour an enemy.
Back inside there were more faxes of editorial criticism. “Armchair strategists!” Freeman harrumphed.”They’re all suffering from Iraqi fever, Dick — the conviction that you can go in against a dug-in enemy and suffer next to no casualties, based on the erroneous assumption that every enemy commander will be as incompetent as Saddam Insane.” Freeman held up his hand as if to forestall any objection. “I’m taking nothing from Schwarzkopf. Didn’t know what they’d be up against, had every right to expect major resistance. And by God, what those pilots did — our boys and those British Tornadoes going in on the deck like that. Magnificent! Brave as the Argentine flyers when they went for the warships instead of the transports in the Falklands. Course the Iraqis — most of ‘em — don’t want to the for a madman. But the Sibirs, Dick—” Freeman shook his head. “Different breed
