Arctic Front

steel blue of his eyes and his graying hair. It was the fuel that drove his consuming ambition: to be the greatest commander in the history of the United States — in the history of the world — an ambition that had burned fiercely within him as a boy, long before his first glimpse of the plain at West Point. Intellectually, politically, he understood Washington was correct to recall him now the battle was over and peace secured; but in his heart the tunes of glory would always call, the snare drum’s roll the sweetest music.

He remembered watching Apocalypse Now, at the armored school at Fort Hood, to which he and other officers had returned fresh from their victories in the Iraqi war. The gung-ho colonel in the film had confidently whipped away the yellow cravat of the Air Cavalry from his throat and, hands on nips, announced to a terrified subaltern, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Everyone in the theater had laughed derisively. Everyone except Freeman. He didn’t like the smell of napalm in the morning or any other time — it plugged his sinuses — but he knew what that colonel had meant, what he felt. He, too, loved the smell, the sting of battle that shot adrenaline to his chest. Only then did he feel fully alive. Some men he knew were born with the same feeling and spent their lives hypocritically denying it in deference to the civilized world, but Freeman made no apology, believing his destiny, his responsibility, was to put it to good purpose, to preserve the civilized world — to defend his America against all those who sought to destroy her. Yet now, his career having finally rounded the corner, “heading into the straight,” as his father would have said, the race was suddenly over, his purpose fulfilled in the clash of armor around Minsk and Moscow that had brought the Russian surrender. Suddenly he was adrift, his past glory flat as the twilight sea. Glory was like sex, he mused — having just had it you felt you’d never need it again. Then an hour later…

Outside his fog-shrouded house on the Monterey beachfront, a bungalow design with a six-foot-high, chocolate-brown fence running around it to ward off the encroaching dune grass, a crowd of well-wishers had gathered. One of the signs read “Welcome home, General Freeman”; another, “Freedom’s Freeman!” Instead of her usual gradual braking, the corporal was forced to hit the brakes hard as the crowd surged forward unexpectedly, revealing a long, yellow tape, which at first she had thought was a yellow ribbon of remembrance. She now saw it ran clear around the house. Freeman could smell the fresh tang of the sea. Three army Humvees were parked about ten yards apart, right of the crowd by the curb, one of the vehicles sprouting its.50 caliber machine gun on a swivel mount immediately behind the six-man cabin. A California highway patrolman, in khaki cap and uniform, and one of the MPs from the Humvees looked as if they were arguing. Left of them a man in white shorts and T-shirt, his left hand on the lip of the curb which was overrun by dune grass, lay sprawled in the gutter. The white shorts were red with blood.

Now Freeman saw more policemen pushing the crowd back as the man was photographed from different angles. For a second the general thought he saw his wife, Doreen, in the crowd but it was difficult to tell with so many people, a hundred or more, milling and flowing about the house. A man in jeans and wildly colored Hawaiian shirt tried to duck under the yellow tape near the curb, holding up a newspaper with a picture of Freeman at the surrender ceremony at Minsk. A patrolman pushed him back behind the tape.

“So much for crowd control, Corporal,” joked Freeman.

“Yes, sir.”

Whether it was the sight of the army Humvees or the strange excitement of the crowd that tensed up his lumbar muscles Freeman didn’t know, but it hurt like hell, and for a moment he was back in the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket just after he’d given the order for the breakout, the “end run” that had outflanked the enemy and ultimately brought Chernko and his STAVKA to its knees. After leaving his headquarters near Munster the concussion from a 122-millimeter Soviet shell had knocked his Humvee right off the road, lifting the vehicle and flinging it into a ditch. His back took most of the impact against the Humvee’s steering column and the driver’s steel helmet.

The pain was still with him and bone deep. Determined not to show signs of what doctors insisted on calling “discomfort” to make themselves feel better, Freeman hauled himself quickly out of the Chevrolet, asking the corporal to answer the car’s cellular phone that was bipping annoyingly in the back as Freeman alighted. It was a small detail, opening the door himself, but the kind that newspapers, hungry for copy, used to define what they called the “hands-on, no-nonsense Freeman style.” The reporters didn’t realize that the general opening the door for himself was more a sign of his impatience to get things done than it was disdain for ceremony.

As he emerged from the car the fog lifted, the sun’s dying rays catching the edge of his decorations’ strips, the blue-red-blue of his Silver Star vibrant in the fading light.

CHAPTER THREE

Following the Kremlin’s surrender, President Mayne thought he had finished with the White House’s subterranean “simulation room.” Now, two floors below his oval office, he found himself once again walking past the Marine guards into the “bunker,” its fluorescent light, oppressive as usual, illuminating the huge map stand with its clusters of blue and red pins showing the disposition of Allied and Russian forces at the moment of Moscow’s unconditional capitulation. Glancing at the alert board, however, he saw there’d been a change. All Allied forces had been placed in DefCon II— “attack believed imminent.” Press aide Trainor, who had been normally gung-ho even in the worst moments of the war, looked drained, as pale as the bluish white light. The silence among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Allied liaison officers was deafening. Trainor handed the president the message. It was from SACEUR — Supreme Allied Commander Europe — Lieut. Gen. William Merton, and read:

Autonomous Siberian republic has disregarded Moscow’s surrender. Novosibirsk has issued orders for all Siberian armies to resist “Anglo-American-European aggression against the ‘Motherland.’ “ We are now facing forty Siberian divisions along Sino-Soviet border plus TVD air forces commanded out of Khabarovsk and entire Soviet Pacific Fleet egressing Vladivostok. Our forward units one hundred miles east of Moscow already under attack by elements of West Siberian Second and Fourth—

“Jesus Christ!” It was the first time Trainor had heard the president blaspheme, and despite Trainor’s secularity it made him wince.

“Where’s the rest of the message?” asked President Mayne, looking up at Trainor and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Satellite communications were cut, Mr. President,” answered Trainor. “Or rather jammed. By the Siberians.”

“God Almighty!” said Mayne, looking down again at the message in disbelief. Brigadier Soames, Britain’s European-U.S. liaison officer, cleared his throat politely. “London’s received the same response, Mr. President,” advised Soames. “Looks rather sticky, I’m afraid. But your chap Merton is in error regarding the Siberian divisions. There aren’t forty.”

“Well, thank God for that!” said the president. The brigadier looked around, untypically nonplussed, glancing for help at the Chiefs of Staff, but found he was on his own. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but what I mean is that there aren’t forty divisions. It’s fifty-seven to be exact. With — ah — four Mongolian divisions in reserve around Lake Baikal.”

President Mayne sat down, the message dangling from his left hand, his right unconsciously massaging his temple. “What the hell’s happened? I mean, these divisions must be reservists?”

Army Chief of Staff Grey shook his head. “Afraid not, Mr. President. The Siberian divisions have a combat, Afghanistan-trained cadre of officers and NCOs. Crack divisions trained for a Sino-Soviet conflict. Moscow used to be more scared of China than NATO. Trouble is, it’s not only the number of Siberian armies we’re faced with — the place is so damn big. Westernmost border of Siberia doesn’t even start till you get a thousand miles east beyond Moscow — then it goes on for more than three and a half thousand miles to the Pacific and, despite popular misconception, it has as varied a topography as the U.S. Far as the Siberians are concerned, Moscow’s in another country.”

Looking at the map, Mayne saw the Siberian divisions were stretched out from Siberia’s East Cape then inland behind the mountainous Kamchatka Peninsula all the way down to Vladivostok and the Manchurian border, a dark red cluster showing enemy surface vessels and submarines off the coast around Vladivostok and Nakhodka. “Thought we gave their Pacific Fleet a bloody nose off north Japan?” he asked Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Horton.

“Elements of the Pacific Fleet, yes, Mr. President,” answered the CNO. “But the