Through front companies in Brussels, the world’s arms capital, Yesov ordered shipments of the new Israeli Arrow antimissile missile in lieu of the American Patriot. It wasn’t only that the American Patriot was unobtainable, even through third-party arms dealers, but that the Siberians had long suspected, even before
One of Yesov’s younger generals, Minsky, commander of the Siberians’ Far Eastern Military District’s elite
“To hell with the cease-fire!” he proclaimed defiantly in the Siberians’ Irkutsk HQ. No general would have dared spoken in the marshal’s presence like this in the old days. But since Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and now Chernko, the up-and-coming young “Turks,” as Minsky’s ilk were called, could get away with it — if they showed results, as Minsky had in suppressing breakaway minorities farther north in the Yakutsk region. “I say push the bastards back to the sea!” he enjoined his colleagues. “We outnumber them five to one at least.”
Attending to his maps, Yesov said nothing. He was an old Soviet strategist of the Frunze Military Academy, a believer in the big battalions school of warfare dominated by artillery, the
Minsky, however, highly decorated in the Afghanistan War, was undeterred by Yesov’s Frunze Academy caution. He thought Yesov an old fogy. In turn, Yesov thought that dealing with Minsky was like staring down the laser sights of one of the new T-80’s 135mm, the biggest MBT — main battle tank gun — in the world. One frontal shot against the tank’s glacis armor plate wouldn’t be enough to stop it. Sometimes, Yesov knew, it was more prudent to withdraw to defilade position — to sit and wait.
“The Americans are dug in,” Minsky pressed. “Freezing their asses off. Snow — why, it’s mother’s milk to us. But not to the Americans. I say hit them before the ice starts to crack and close our roads.” There being precious few roads at all in Siberia, the frozen rivers were the only trustworthy supply lines along which the logistics “tail” could keep up with the head. “Besides,” added Minsky, indicating the map of eastern Siberia around Lake Baikal and south into Outer Mongolia, “we have the Trans-Siberian. In ‘forty-five it only took us two months to move four armies across from the west. And during the cease-fire, we’ve been moving supplies across the taiga constantly. Why doesn’t Novosibirsk attack?”
None of his colleagues answered. They were loyal to Minsky, but they knew his reference to Novosibirsk was really a dig at Yesov, who would have the final military say on whether to hold the cease-fire or not after Novosibirsk’s political decision.
“Well, what are we going to do?” said Minsky.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do, General,” said Yesov, putting on his greatcoat, his peaked, crimson- banded gray cap, and his gloves against the bitter winter cold. “But I’m going to dinner.”
But Minsky was not easily put off. Inside the officers’ mess he wondered aloud about the special vulnerability of Americans when they were so far from home. “I tell you, the Americans are crybabies. Three months away and they start to blubber for Mama.”
“General Minsky,” said Yesov quietly, his massive jaws demolishing thick, black bread, “perhaps the Americans will move against us.”
The other officers, nonplussed, glanced at one another, but for Minsky there was no doubt.
“They won’t,” he said confidently. “Washington wouldn’t permit Freeman to violate the cease-fire.”
The marshal took out his cigarette case and lit a Sobraine, holding it meditatively between thumb and forefinger, both of which were stained a dark yellow with nicotine. “Perhaps, comrades. We’ll see. But this Freeman — he has a flair for the unorthodox.”
Just how unorthodox, Yesov could have had no idea.
CHAPTER FIVE
Freeman’s insistence that a team of navy SEAL — sea, air, and land — commandos be trained by deaf mutes, and that “Wolf dung! Lots of it!” be collected and brought to his HQ at Khabarovsk were two of the strangest orders issued by the commander of all American and Allied forces in eastern Siberia.
The victor of his daring nighttime commando raid on Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, early in the war, and of his equally audacious airborne attack on Ratmanov Island, in the Bering Strait, only twenty-five miles from Alaska, Freeman had never approved of the cease-fire agreed to by the White House. “If we don’t finish it now,” Freeman warned Washington, “we’ll have to do it later at a higher cost.” But, as Schwarzkopf was told not to pursue the Republican Guard in Iraq any farther, so Washington had similarly ordered Freeman not to press his rout of the Siberian Fifth Army, spearheaded by the once-famed but now badly mauled Thirty-first Stalingrad Division.
The general’s order for wolf dung during the cease-fire Washington and Novosibirsk had pressed upon him, perplexed his aide, Dick Norton. But Freeman, as if his words were explanation enough, merely pointed out that “Intelligence reports all wolves have been taken from the Beijing Zoo and sent to the northern boundaries of the Beijing Military Region.”
In his Khabarovsk Quonset hut HQ, Freeman was studying the huge twelve-by-six-foot map of eastern Siberia, its green, mountainous terrain to the south contrasting with the treeless humps and plains of Mongolia to the south and west. His eyes followed the outline of a huge rectangle, the western edge formed by Lake Baikal, the annexed Mongolian People’s Republic to his south, the Yakutsk region of Siberia to his north, and behind him the Sea of Japan. There were many fancy military euphemisms for it, but every private in Freeman’s Second Army knew what it meant if the cease-fire didn’t hold. They’d be boxed in.
“Why can’t the damn fools see it?” demanded Freeman. “Novosibirsk is playing Washington for a sucker — again. I don’t trust those vodka-swilling sons of bitches as far as I can kick ‘em.” He turned from the map to face Norton and the other officers of his Khabarovsk HQ, some of them new boys flown in from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, on rotation. “You know what the new republics’ military were doing when Bush and Gorby were shaking hands, gentlemen?”
Norton knew — it was a rite of passage for any newcomer to his staff as far as Freeman was concerned.
“Well,” said Freeman, “there was a little mystery NATO couldn’t figure out. You all remember NATO?”
“North American Trust Organization?” proffered a cocky if ill-advised young captain — obviously not a career soldier.
Freeman ignored the smartass remark, but he’d already noted the man’s name: Tyler, M., a junior officer, liaison between Freeman’s G-2, intelligence section, and his first armored division. Cheeky bastard like Tyler would
