Arctic Front

obviously hasn’t learned anything from Iraq. Well, let him withdraw. By the time he’s got his big battalions ready on the ramparts, we’ll be knocking the ramparts out from under him.”

Freeman held up his hand to silence any protest that his stopping was perhaps unwise for the same reasons that he was criticizing his Siberian counterpart, for stopping created a stationary target, and it was a maxim of Freeman’s military strategy that a stationary target in modern warfare has no chance. But neither Norton nor Wain had been about to protest, and Freeman holding up his hand seemed to them more a gesture of doubt than confidence, something they’d not seen in him before. Perhaps the terrible casualty rate on Ratmanov had affected the general more than they thought. At odd moments Norton had seen Freeman, when he thought no one was looking, leaning back, his hands massaging his lower back, still in pain. But for Norton there was no doubt — Freeman had made a sound military decision, right from the textbook. To go on without having consolidated your supply line was always a risky proposition.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Marshal Yesov’s aide was in a hurry, his chauffeur-driven Zil swishing past the great, snow-crowned dome of Novosibirsk’s opera and ballet theater. The statue of Lenin, his noble vision fixed on the future, was even more impressive in the strange, pinkish-brown light of the pollution-colored dusk. The soldier, sailor, and airman on Lenin’s right flanked him proudly; the heroic worker and torchbearer to his left were dusted by snow but looked equally heroic. It added to the aide’s excitement when, arriving at the Akademgorodok or “Science City” apartment block, he ran up the six flights — the elevator wasn’t working — to the apartment of Professor Leonid Grigorenko, the head of the KMK project. But when the door opened it was to Marshal Yesov that the aide blurted out, “On ostanovilsya!”— “He’s stopped! The American has stopped!”

Yesov showed no emotion, his blunt facial features unmoved as he walked back to the apartment’s window looking out on the frozen expanse that was the Ob Sea, where the River Ob had been dammed, and which in summer provided excellent sailing for the privileged ones in Akademgorodok and the party elite. He saw two guards in greatcoats and fur caps trudging as smartly as the snow would allow them along the ice-sheathed concrete slabs that inclined down to the frozen Ob, which in summer, by which time he would beat the American, would serve as a beach for those sunbathing to watch the colorful sailboat races.

He was not so worried about the Allied armies to the west-tired and busy administering Moscow and its environs, they had not yet breached the Urals. He turned from the window, and now that the lights in the city were coming on, pulled the blackout curtains shut, though there was little danger of air raids. To the east Freeman’s forces were further away than those in the west, over fifteen hundred miles from Novosibirsk. Still, it was Freeman’s forces that Marshal Yesov was most concerned about, for while the English Channel, across which the Allies in the west had been resupplied, had effectively been closed by Siberian submarines in the Arctic, Freeman’s supply line from Japan was uninterrupted, Freeman’s troops fresher, and Freeman himself more daring than the more conservative threat faced to the west. “On upryamy”—“He is a tractor,” said Yesov, looking out toward where the Trans-Siberian crossed the frozen expanse of the Ob. “He keeps on. This pause of his will not last long.”

“We will stop him,” said Grigorenko, calmly smoking his thin cigar as he went over the final plans of Chernko’s KMK project. “I hope there have been no more security leaks, however.”

“None,” Yesov assured him, explaining that even the man from engine shop three who had been shot knew only part of the project. Yesov was as confident as Grigorenko that Chernko’s plan would work. But he, Yesov, had had more experience than the scientist who had overseen the design and manufacturing process, and said nothing. Scientists could afford to say what they wanted. They were important to the state, particularly in a modern war, but the general had to be more circumspect, and when the Americans were defeated, Yesov had aspirations to be the president of the United Siberian Soviet Republics. Grigorenko, however, mistook Yesov’s silence for undue concern. “You mustn’t worry, General. Everything is in place, I assure you. The Americans will be demolished — utterly!” As he said this, Grigorenko sat back, stroking his goatee, his piercing gray eyes looking first at the general then his aide. “You know, of course, the supreme irony of the situation.”

The aide guessed it was the Iraqis who had been training in Poland before the Iraqi war for just such a project as Chernko’s— but he wasn’t going to do anything to steal the Akademician’s thunder.

“The Iraqis!” proclaimed Grigorenko, pleased with himself, leaning back and taking a bottle of Smirnoff vodka — the best, something that the average Russian hadn’t seen for months, the aide thought. Everything from nylon stockings to toy production had been conscripted for war materials.

“Yes,” Grigorenko said, pouring the three vodkas, a little extra for himself, the aide noticed. “It will add insult to injury for the Americans, comrades, that half of the attacking force will be Iraqi.”

The aide was trying to look surprised, a difficult thing to do when he knew by heart the story of how Hussein had sent Iraqis to the eastern bloc to train for just such a project in the Gulf war but how, because of Gorbachev’s stupid bungling, and against the advice of his military, the Iraqis were not permitted to carry out such an attack in the Iraqi war. Unable to get back home because of the UN boycott and U.S. intelligence on the lookout for them, the Iraqis, all members of Hussein’s dreaded Mukhabarat—his secret police — were still in Siberia and as expert as their Russian, instructors. Grigorenko passed around the glasses and proposed a toast: “Za porazhenie amerikantsev!”— ‘To the American defeat!”

Yesov rifted the shot glass and allowed a thin smile to crease his otherwise bullish face. “Za unizhenie amerikantsev!”—”To the Americans’ humiliation!”

“Na mnogo luchshe!”—”Much better!” added Grigorenko. The aide was not a believer in psychic phenomena or anything else he called “mind rubbish,” but he could not deny the fact that within seconds of the general having proposed the toast, the call came in from Kultuk, 850 miles east of them at the southwestern end of Lake Baikal and only 76 miles from the Mongolian border, that everything for Chernko’s KMK project was gotov—”ready to go.”

Grigorenko looked across at the commander in chief of all United Siberian Soviet Republic forces like an expectant father, waiting for the general to give the word. The American, Freeman, had stopped at Mukhino, and though it was almost a thousand miles further east of Kultuk, well away from Novosibirsk, the scientist’s expression of pained expectation said it all, that every day Yesov waited — every hour — the Americans got closer to reaching Lake Baikal and Irkutsk. And from Irkutsk their aircraft could strike Novosibirsk. But Yesov refused to be hurried, holding his glass out for another drink. Using it as a pointer, he moved it east to Baikal to the hump of the Amur that formed the Siberian-Chinese border. “Let him reach the very top of the hump, comrades. Then we’re in the clear.”

The aide nodded and glanced knowingly at the general, his look clearly saying that while Grigorenko might be one of the world’s greatest scientists and engineers, his political urn— “savvy”—was about as sophisticated as a yak’s. Chita HQ, halfway in the crescent of mountains and forest between Baikal and the top of the hump, had repeatedly advised Novosibirsk, Yesov specifically, not to act too close to the Chinese border, particularly not anywhere along the Amur where there had been border clashes since time immemorial between the two countries.

“No,” said Yesov, in answer to Grigorenko’s silent plea. “Not yet. The Chinese don’t like the Americans any more than we do, Doctor, but they are very touchy about their border. No, we cannot fire across the hump for fear we may drop short into Chinese territory.” He meant inside the hump. “No, we’ll wait until he is at the top.” Yesov used the rim of the oily vodka glass to indicate the area where he would spring his trap. “Here, between Never and—” The general required his reading glasses. “—Skovorodino.” The seven-and-a-half-mile road between the two towns was 170 miles west of where Freeman had stopped.

“He’ll be reassured, resupplied,” said Yesov. “Tanks topped up.”

“Da,” said Grigorenko approvingly, “all the better. His humiliation will be all the worse.”

* * *

The cruise missiles came in so low that neither Freeman in his advance command Humvee nor the radars of the helicopters flying cover saw them, the eight 672-pound missiles visible only five miles from target along the Never-Skovorodino Road. The first thing that the fifty M-1 tanks and six M-3 Bradley fighting vehicles and six mobile