“We got a wiseguy that way in Jersey City three years ago. Liked to brag in front of women how tough he was, and the guys he whacked, that sort of thing. He’s in Rahway State Prison now on a murder rap. Oleg, a lot more people have talked their way into prison than you’ll ever catch on your own. Trust me. That’s how it is for us, even.”
“I wonder if the Sparrow School has any graduates working …?” Provalov mused.
It wasn’t fair to do it at night, but nobody had ever said war was marked by fairness in its execution. Colonel Boyle was in his command post monitoring the operation of 1st Armored’s Aviation Brigade. It was mainly his Apaches, though some Kiowa Warriors were up, too, as scouts for the heavy shooters. The target was a German heavy battalion, simulating a night’s laagering after a day on the offense. In fact, they were pretending to be Russians-it was a NATO scenario that went back thirty years to the introduction of the first Huey Cobras, back in the 1970s, when the value of a helicopter gunship had first been noticed in Vietnam. And a revelation it had been. Armed for the first time in 1972 with TOW missiles, they’d proven to the tanks of the North Vietnamese just how fearsome a foe a missile-armed chopper could be, and that had been before night-vision systems had come fully on line. Now the Apache turned combat operations into sport shooting, and the Germans were still trying to figure a counter for it. Even their own night-vision gear didn’t compensate for the huge advantage held by the airborne hunters. One idea that had almost worked was to lay a thermal-insulating blanket over the tanks so as to deny the helicopters the heat signature by which they hunted their motionless prey, but the problem there was the tank’s main gun tube, which had proved impractical to conceal, and the blankets had never really worked properly, any more than a twin-bed coverlet could be stretched over a king-size bed. And so, now, the Apaches’ laser-illumination systems were “painting” the Leos for enough seconds to guarantee hits from the Hellfire missiles, and while the German tanks tried to shoot back, they couldn’t seem to make it work. And now the yellow “I’m dead” lights were blinking, and yet another tank battalion had fallen victim to yet another administrative attack.
“They should have tried putting SAM teams outside their perimeter,” Colonel Boyle observed, watching the computer screen. Instead, the German colonel had tried IR lures, which the Apache gunners had learned to distinguish from the real thing. Under the rules of the scenario, proper tank decoys had not been allowed. They were a little harder to discriminate-the American-made ones almost exactly replicated the visual signature of an M1 tank, and had an internal heat source for fooling infrared gear at night-
“Pegasus Lead to Archangel, over,” the digital radio called. With the new radios, it was no longer a static- marred crackle.
“Archangel to Pegasus,” Colonel Boyle answered.
“Sir, we are Winchester and just about out of targets. No friendly casualties. Pegasus is RTB, over.”
“Roger, Pegasus. Looks good from here. Out.”
And with that, the Apache battalion of attack choppers and their Kiowa bird-dogs turned back for their airfield for the mission debrief and post-game beers.
Boyle looked over at General Diggs. “Sir, I don’t know how to do it much better than that.”
“Our hosts are going to be pissed.”
“The Bundeswehr isn’t what it used to be. Their political leadership thinks peace has broken out all the way, and their troopers know it. They could have put some of their own choppers up to run interference, but my boys are pretty good at air-to-air-we train for it, and my pilots really like the idea of making ace on their own-but their chopper drivers aren’t getting all the gas they need for operational training. Their best chopper drivers are down in the Balkans doing traffic observation.”
Diggs nodded thoughtfully. The problems of the Bundeswehr were not, strictly speaking, his problems. “Colonel, that was well done. Please convey my pleasure to your people. What’s next for you?”
“General, we have a maintenance stand-down tomorrow, and two days later we’re going to run a major search-and-rescue exercise with my Blackhawks. You’re welcome to come over and watch.”
“I just might, Colonel Boyle. You done good. Be seeing you.”
“Yes, sir.” The colonel saluted, and General Diggs walked out to his HMMWV, with Colonel Masterman in attendance.
“Well, Duke?”
“Like I told you, sir, Boyle’s been feeding his boys and girls a steady diet of nails and human babies.”
“Well, his next fitness report’s going to get him a star, I think.”
“His Apache commander’s not bad either.”
“That’s a fact,” the divisional G-3 agreed. “Pegasus” was his call sign, and he’d kicked some serious ass this night.
“What’s next?”
“Sir, in three days we have a big SimNet exercise against the Big Red One at Fort Riley. Our boys are pretty hot for it.”
“Divisional readiness?” Diggs asked.
“We’re pushing ninety-five percent, General. Not much slack left to take up. I mean, sir, to go any farther, we gotta take the troops out to Fort Irwin or maybe the Negev Training Area. Are we as good as the Tenth Cav or the Eleventh? No, we don’t get to play in the field as much as they do.” And, he didn’t have to add, no division in any army in the world got the money to train that hard. “But given the limitations we have to live with, there’s not a whole lot more we can do. I figure we play hard on SimNet to keep the kids interested, but we’re just about as far as we can go, sir.”
“I think you’re right, Duke. You know, sometimes I kinda wish the Cold War could come back-for training purposes, anyway. The Germans won’t let us play the way we used to back then, and that’s what we need to take the next step.”
“Unless somebody springs for the tickets to fly a brigade out to California.” Masterman nodded.
“That ain’t gonna happen, Duke,” Diggs told his operations officer. And more was the pity. First Tanks’ troops were almost ready to give the Blackhorse a run for their money. Close enough, Diggs thought, that he’d pay to watch. “How’s a beer grab you, Colonel?”
“If the General is buying, I will gladly assist him in spending his money,” Duke Masterman said graciously, as their sergeant driver pulled up to the
Good morning, Comrade General,” Gogol said, pulling himself to attention.
Bondarenko had felt guilt at coming to see this old soldier so early in the morning, but he’d heard the day before that the ancient warrior was not one to waste daylight. And so he wasn’t, the general saw.
“You kill wolves,” Gennady Iosifovich observed, seeing the gleaming pelts hanging on the wall of this rough cabin.
“And bear, but when you gild the pelts, they grow too heavy,” the old man agreed, fetching tea for his guests.
“These are amazing,” Colonel Aliyev said, touching one of the remaining wolf pelts. Most had been carried off.
“It’s an amusement for an old hunter,” Gogol said, lighting a cigarette.
General Bondarenko looked at his rifles, the new Austrian-made one, and the old Russian M1891 Mosin- Nagant sniper rifle.
“How many with this one?” Bondarenko asked.
“Wolves, bears?”
“Germans,” the general clarified, with coldness in his voice.
“I stopped counting at thirty, Comrade General. That was before Kiev. There were many more after that. I see we share a decoration,” Gogol observed, pointing to his visitor’s gold star, for Hero of the Soviet Union, which he’d won in Afghanistan. Gogol had two, one from Ukraine and the other in Germany.
“You have the look of a soldier, Pavel Petrovich, and a good one.” Bondarenko sipped his tea, served properly,
