“Contact all regimental commanders,” Rostopchin continued. “I want them here for a final briefing by 1600 hours. And move the division supply trains forward. I want all our vehicles fully topped off with fuel before sunset.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rostopchin left the communications tent, striding briskly toward his personal trailer. He had competent subordinates who were perfectly able to handle the purely mechanical, last-minute details involved in readying the division for combat. Instead, he wanted to spend the next several hours going over his plans one more time.
Not that he expected much trouble when the time came. Far from it.
With eight divisions already on the border and another four en route, Russia’s invasion army should crush the lone Polish division facing them in a matter of hours. Rostopchin shrugged. Given the existing correlation of forces in the region, the campaign against Poland and its allies would be more a maneuver exercise than a real war.
Colonel General Vasiliy Uvarov, commander of the First Aviation Army, looked down from Grodno’s central tower with undisguised satisfaction and a growing sense of fierce anticipation. Thousands of hours of staff work and intricate preparation were paying off as the last elements of Russia’s aerial strike force touched down.
The shelters lining the air base’s runways were already crowded with newly arrived aircraft, and other planes were still flying in from bases further back in Russia. Long-range, swing-wing Su-24 Fencer strike aircraft taxied past pairs of smaller, more heavily armored Su-25 Frogfoots — the counterparts of America’s A-10 Thunderbolt tank-killers — parked between the massive concrete structures.
All across the giant base, flight crews and maintenance technicians hurried to their posts, dodging trolleys hauling bombs, air-launched missiles, and gun ammunition to the flight line and aircraft shelters. In the distance, barely visible among low hills and stands of trees, weapons crews worked feverishly to ready the SA-10 and SA-15 SAM batteries deployed along the base perimeter.
Uvarov knew the scenes he was watching were being duplicated at dozens of other air bases along the frontier. Whole regiments of strike aircraft and MiG-29 and MiG-23 fighters, held back to deceive Western spy satellites for as long as possible, were flying in — marrying up with ground support personnel deployed days ago by truck and by train. Once Marshal Kaminov reached agreement with the French, the First Aviation Army would be ready to hurl nearly a thousand warplanes into the skies over Poland.
The colonel general nodded, pleased by the prospect. As a pilot and then a commander in the Soviet Air Forces, he had spent his adult life preparing for a war that was lost without ever being fought. Now, by serving under the Russian tricolor, a flag that was both new and old at the same time, he and his pilots would have a welcome opportunity to show the world their power and their skills.
Several hundred feet beneath the earth’s surface, General Viktor Grechko watched the status lights on his missile control boards change color, moving from amber to green as individual SS-24 crews reported full readiness. After years spent in a kind of politically imposed stasis, his solid-fueled ICBMs were being brought back to operational status. Originally slated for deployment aboard special, mobile rail launchers, the SS-24s under his command had instead been fitted inside fixed silos first built for much older SS-11s. In his view, that was a mistake. Silo-based missiles were vulnerable missiles. The U.S. air strike against the French weapons on the Plateau d’Albion proved that beyond all doubt. Nevertheless, each of his ICBMs had a range of more than five thousand nautical miles and carried ten highly accurate 550-kiloton nuclear warheads. And this far inside Russia, even in their silos, they would be vulnerable to American attack only if the Americans fired their missiles first.
When the last lights turned green, the general picked up his direct line to Moscow. “This is General Grechko. The Teykovo field is active. Our systems checks are complete. All crews are on alert. All enable and launch code lists and launch keys have been distributed. Standing by.”
If the United States or Great Britain tried to fend off Russia’s move into Poland with nuclear threats or nuclear weapons, Russia would be ready to respond in kind.
Ten-year-old Christian Petersen stood on a low, grassy hill, peering out to sea — transfixed by the sight of the long, silent parade of gray ships steaming east past Bornholm. His school-books lay tumbled at his feet, forgotten in his sudden excitement. A brisk wind ruffled the small boy’s fair hair and tugged at the blue and yellow windbreaker his mother always made him wear to ward against the early morning chill.
Ten. Twelve. Fifteen. Christian’s eyes widened as he counted aloud. There were dozens of ships out there! More vessels than he had ever seen at one time, and all of them bigger than the interisland ferries that usually plied these waters. Most were rust-streaked freighters, massive oil tankers, or big new container ships, but he could see smaller, antenna-studded warships prowling beyond the merchantmen.
Gray-painted helicopters, with the sunlight flashing off their rotors, probed ahead and behind the enormous formation. High overhead, tiny specks orbited — U.S., British, and Norwegian fighters ready to fend off any EurCon air attack.
The Danish schoolboy didn’t know it, but he was watching the first convoy carrying substantial reinforcements from the United States to Poland. The ships carrying the tanks, APCs, and artillery pieces belonging to the U.S. 24th Mechanized and 1st Armored divisions were just two hundred miles from Gdansk.
Major Paul Duroc leaned over a desk in one of the DGSE’s windowless, electromagnetically shielded offices, studying the photographs his surveillance team had taken of Colonel Valentin Soloviev talking with a striking auburn-haired woman. He looked up at tall, powerfully built Michel Woerner. “Foret and Verdier are sure this was a rendezvous and not just a chance encounter?”
The big man nodded. “Very sure. The Russian left his car in the Defense Ministry parking lot, went straight to this part of the Arbat, encountered this woman, and then went straight back to the ministry.”
“Yes…” Duroc’s fingers drummed briefly on the desk while he considered that assessment. He nodded to himself. His operatives were right. Soloviev’s behavior fit the classical pattern of a man making a clandestine contact. But with whom? He looked up at Woerner again. “And we still have no identification of this woman?”
“No, Major.” The other man shook his head. “We’ve run her picture through the files both here and over the satellite link to Paris. They weren’t able to make any matches with any known intelligence agent of any country.”
“I’m not terribly surprised,” Duroc said caustically. After years on the operational side of the French intelligence service, he had very little respect left for those in the administrative and analytical sections — men he considered little better than glorified file clerks.
He studied the woman shown standing next to Soloviev again. Who the devil was she? She didn’t look Russian, but then who could really tell? Even with the old Soviet Union’s outlying provinces stripped away, this damned country was still a polyglot mishmash of different ethnic groups. Still, everything about her — the shape of her face, her clothes, her posture — shouted “foreigner” to him. But a foreigner from which country? Britain? America? Germany?
“Perhaps we should ask the Russians,” Woerner offered. “The FIS might have a file on her.”
Duroc snorted. “Them? Not likely.” His eyes narrowed in thought. “In any case, Michel, running to the FIS could prove a huge mistake. What if this Soloviev’s actions are sanctioned by Kaminov himself? What if that old Russian bastard is playing a double game with us, eh? Bargaining with us and with the British and Americans at the same time?”
“Then should we alert Paris?” Woerner asked.
“No.” Duroc scowled. He tapped the photos. “Not until we have something more conclusive than these.” He doubted that his unimaginative higher-ups would see anything very wrong or suspicious in a Russian colonel meeting publicly with a beautiful woman. If anything, a cable to Paris at this point would probably only earn him another reprimand for straining at the procedural leash they’d looped around his neck.
No, he would need a lot more than unsubstantiated supposition to convince his superiors that something was very wrong in Moscow. He would need hard proof of Soloviev’s treachery — evidence that would either prompt the Russians to move against the colonel themselves or expose Kaminov’s own duplicity.
Duroc stood up straight and shoved the surveillance photos aside. From what he could see, the negotiations with the marshal and his fellow hard-liners were at a critical stage. Ambassador Sauret expected a major breakthrough sometime in the next several hours. And, with time at a premium, there was only one sure and
