Arctic Front

altogether.”

“General, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’ve got a marine captain — medical corps — wants to see you.”

“Oh, hell, I told them I’m fine. No aftereffects. Just got a bump on my head, that’s all.”

“He insists on seeing you, sir.”

“All right, Dick. Send him in. Meanwhile, I want you to get the invasion book.” It was a six-inch-thick computer printout of everything from guns to gum that American forces would need for the Siberian campaign. “I don’t want to give Novosibirsk any more time man I have to. Landings have to be made simultaneously and within three weeks. What’s the SITREP on the European front? That’s where the Siberians’ll expect our major push.”

“You’re right, General. That’s why it’s a stalemate. They’ve thrown in another ten divisions — a hundred and thirty thousand fresh troops, and they’re keeping our boys and the Brits stalled. We’re still over a hundred miles west of the Urals.”

But already Norton could see Freeman was thinking of the East Siberian offensive, the general telling him, “We’re going to have to make up for a fall-off in navy protection…”

“Sir. The marine captain?”

“What? Oh, yes. All right, send him in. Meantime you can get a progress report for the on that Kommandorsky battle group of ours. I want the Missouri and Wisconsin pounding the bejaysus out of the air field and the sub bases mere. After Ratmanov that’s the one forward bastion we have to knock off. Otherwise the bastards’ll harass our supply lines right across the North Pacific. Salt Lake City’s giving them air cover, right?

“Yes, General.”

“And find out what the Japanese are doing — whether the president’s got them off their ass to help us or whether they’re doing another Gulf, sit-on-your-ass routine.”

“I’ll get on to it right away, sir.”

* * *

Capt. Michael Devine was a small, stocky man with an M.D. that had given him his captain’s bars. It struck Freeman, though he hadn’t noticed it while he was on the chopper’s stretcher litter, that the captain must have barely made the marine height requirement.

“Captain,” said Freeman smiling, “now I appreciate your concern for your commanding officer. Commendable but I feel just dandy. So thank you for coming but—”

“General, that’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh.” The diminutive captain looked even smaller as Freeman cocked his head back in surprise.

“Can I speak plainly, sir?”

“Only way, Captain. Shoot.”

“Sir, you requested — ordered — my medics to take you off the stretcher.”

“I did.”

“I understand they — you argued with them.”

Freeman was scowling. “I told them, Captain, to unstrap the from that goddamn contraption so I could get back to killing Russians. That’s what I’m paid for.” Freeman glowered down at Devine. “What’s your beef?”

“General, it took at least forty-five seconds to get you out of that air safety harness. It takes an enemy mortar crew only thirty seconds to bracket us from the moment we land. That means from the point of touchdown to takeoff my men have thirty seconds to load four stretchers litters and to be clear for the chopper’s takeoff. The kind of delay you caused us could cost the a chopper, crew, and wounded.”

Freeman was reddening by the second. He walked to within a foot of the captain’s face, his voice filling the room. “I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life, Captain. I suppose you’re one of those jokers who thinks talking back to the old man gets you kudos.”

“No, sir, but I’m responsible for my men out there. I can’t run a MUST if half my men are killed.” Devine was pasty-faced from the effort.

“Devane, I think you’d better leave. Dismissed!”

“Sir,” said Devine, stepping back, saluting smartly but turning about shakily.

For a moment Freeman was speechless; then he kicked the wastebasket so violently that editorials exploded from it. Putting his glasses on he tried to concentrate on the map of Siberia. The railway, that was the key. In ‘45 Russkies had surprised the Japanese by being able to shift four entire armies from the western front to the far eastern theater in just eight weeks, utilizing 136,000 rail cars on the Trans-Siberian. The gall of that pipsqueak captain walking in… Where the hell did he think he was? Goddamn AMA convention? He snatched the phone. “Dick!”

“Yes, General?”

“That runt of a captain you sent the tore a goddamn strip off me. Me! Said I was endangering his chopper crew. How d’you like that? All I wanted to do was get back in the fighting. Said I could have cost him his whole crew — medics and all. Insolent son of a bitch told the enemy only took thirty seconds to bracket.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir, what?” demanded Freeman.

“He’s correct, General.”

“No, he isn’t!” roared Freeman. “It’s twenty-five seconds to bracket, not thirty. Dick?”

“General?”

“Second that son of a bitch from MEU to my HQ. So goddamned smart he can run all the MUSTs.”

“Beg pardon, General, but not as captain. You have to be at least a colonel.”

“All right, make him a colonel. Field commission. No, I don’t want to hear any flak about normal channels. Remember what Von Runstedt said about normal channels, Dick.”

“Have an idea I’m about to find out, General.”

“A trap for officers without initiative. That Devane, he’s read-”

“Devine, sir. Name’s Devine.”

“Well, hell, Dick, with a name like that we’ll have to make him bishop. Walked right up to the and told the I’d screwed up. We need men like that. But Dick—”

“Sir?”

“Not too many.”

“No, sir.”

* * *

Freeman was now studying the enlarged satellite pictures of the Kamchatka Peninsula, in particular the region about Petropavlovsk where the enemy had built bombproof sub pens in the nineteen-eighties for forward naval defense. For a moment he couldn’t find his glasses and, cursing, patted his pockets, making a mental note to have one of his aides drill a hole in the magnifying glass handle. As he was shortsighted in only one eye, it would save him forever searching. No way would he wear one of those chains. He grabbed his parka and told the duty officer he’d be outside.

After the pipeline sabotage, two guards had been ordered by Norton to accompany the general wherever he went, just to be on the safe side — with the stipulation, however, that they must stay well back and make as little noise as possible. Pulling his forage cap down tightly beneath the parka hood, the general walked through snow flurries, head down against the wind and thwacking his thermal overlays with a swagger stick given him by CINCLANT — commander in chief Atlantic — at Norwood, U.K., before he’d left Europe.

Trudging through the snow he was doing what Norton and other aides referred to as his “Moses in the Desert”—meditating upon the forthcoming campaign, recalling, as was his wont, the great commanders of history; not their virtues — everyone knew those — but their defects, their mistakes. At such moments he was lost in a kind of reverie of anticipation and awesome responsibility, and now in the flurries of snow that soon gave way to a steady wind, the thought that stole quietly upon him then possessed him and would fuel all his tactics was a conviction that wherever possible he must choose the battleground— not the Siberians. He must force them to come to him — though it was their country — to fight on the ground of his choosing.

The trick, of course, was how to do it. It would involve doing precisely the opposite of what they would