diplomacy were about to be washed away in an ill conceived military adventure of dubious value. He still could not understand how stupid and blind the other members of the Politburo were. They were opening Pandora's box, and only he saw it.
The General Secretary opened his eyes slightly and looked at the Foreign Minister. 'You still do not believe we can succeed, do you?'
The Foreign Minister turned his blank stare to the General Secretary.
'Succeed? It all depends on what you consider to be a success. If we want to own a few thousand more square kilometers of sand and rock, we will succeed. If our goal is, as you say, to fulfill our national destiny and seize a warm-water port, we will succeed. If it is our goal to put a stranglehold on the West's oil supply, we will succeed.
But I ask you, Comrade, will the price be worth it? Will we ever be able to gain the confidence of the West again? Even if no one lifts a finger to stop us, which I doubt, what kind of arms race will this start and where will it end?'
Without moving or changing expression, the General Secretary replied,
'It would appear that I have selected a conservative for a Foreign Minister.
You have become, over these past few months, quite a spokesman for the 'loyal' opposition.'
The emphasis on 'loyal' caused the Foreign Secretary's face to flush with anger. 'I am, and always will be, a loyal Party member. It is my duty to show you the reality of the world, even when it goes against the conventional wisdom of the rest of the pack.'
Still showing no emotion, the General Secretary continued, 'No one doubts your loyalty to the Party or me. You must, however, see that the time for debate is over. We are committed. You know as well as I that it is useless to have power and not use it. Our Party and our nation depend on the continuous and measured exercise of power. The world respects, and fears, our power. No one would respect a toothless bear. The day we become too timid to use it will be the end of the Soviet Union. We will decay from within and without. Besides, the West has short memory. The securing of Eastern Europe was a matter of great concern in 1948 and an accepted fact by 1960. Afghanistan was seen as a threat to world peace in 1979 and forgotten by the time we signed the INF Treaty in 1987. No, I see great gains with little to lose.'
The Foreign Secretary did not respond. He merely turned back to the window and looked at the buildings that raced by, buildings that held fellow countrymen unaware that in a matter of minutes they would be at war again.
The road that ran from Herat in Afghanistan to Mashhad in Iran really didn't deserve the title of 'road. As he lay on the sand dune, peering through his binoculars, Senior Lieutenant Mikhail Kurpov considered the road for a moment. He had seen, and traveled, many bad roads in his three years as a member of the 89th Reconnaissance Battalion. This road, however, had to be the worst. While the tracked vehicles could travel it with no problems, he wondered how well the supply trucks would be able to hold up. Everything the 89th Motorized Rifle Division would need during the operation they were about to launch would have to travel down that road. No doubt, the road would claim many a truck.
Unfortunately, the road was better than what the division would eventually have to depend upon for a supply route. Once into Iran, the 89th MRD would advance twenty kilometers to Kariz, then strike southwest for Birjand, 155 kilometers to the southwest across desert, with dirt roads and goat trails the division's only link with the rear.
It was the job of Kurpov's scout-car platoon to find the best goat trails and mark them for the 208th Motorized Rifle Regiment that would follow him on the division's western axis. The other scout-car platoon of the company would do the same thing to the east, leading the 209th MRR. If at all possible, the division commander wanted to keep the division on two different axes of advance. Kurpov had his doubts as to whether they could do that. There just weren't that many decent roads or trails.
Movement to Kurpov's left interrupted his thoughts. He turned to watch three BMP infantry-fighting vehicles from the battalion's BMP company creep forward up the spine of a low ridge into firing positions. Four more square, squat BMPs sat just off the road, engines idling, in a wadi. The squeaking of sprockets and tracks and the rumble of the BMPs' engines cut through the predawn quiet. To Kurpov, the noise was enough to wake the dead.
He turned and looked at the Iranian border post again to see whether the guards had also heard the noise. The two Iranians who had been on duty for the last two hours were still there, in the same positions they had assumed when they relieved their comrades. One was leaning up against the side of the building, arms folded and rifle slung over his shoulder. The second was sitting in a chair at the pole barrier with his rifle across his lap and his head hanging. Kurpov was sure they were asleep. He looked up from his binoculars back to the BMPs moving into position. They were ready. A quick glance at his watch showed there were only two minutes left. He turned his body toward the BMPs in the wadi. With a red-filtered flashlight, Kurpov signaled to the commander of the BMPs- two short flashes, which meant that the Iranians did not appear to be alert. The commander waved back in acknowledgment.
His role finished for the moment, Kurpov looked beyond the BMPs in the wadi, toward the east. Although he couldn't see a thing, he knew that there were over twelve thousand men and thousands of tracked and wheeled vehicles hidden in wadis and behind sand dunes, ready to rush forward into enemy territory. Just as the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon, the chatter of three machine guns, followed by the boom of a BMP's 73mm. main gun, split the dawn silence. Kurpov swung back around and looked toward the border post in time to see the first 73mm. round hit the building. He put the binoculars up to his eyes and searched for the two border guards who had been on duty. A bright-red splotch was on the wall of the building where the one guard had been leaning. The guard who had been in the chair at the pole barrier had been knocked over backward and was sprawled across the road. Other Iranians began to rush out of the building, only to be cut down in a hail of machine-gun fire.
The four BMPs in the wadi revved their engine and rolled out onto either side of the road. Once on line, they began to fire their machine guns.
Though not as accurate as the BMPs that were firing from the stationary positions, they appeared to be more threatening as they moved forward.
Two more Iranians came out of the building-now enveloped in flames-with their hands up. But their gestures were ignored as all seven BMPs turned their machine guns on them.
Kurpov let his binoculars drop slowly. For a moment, he took in the whole scene before him. The BMPs were now passing the burning building. As they went by, the two nearest the building turned their turrets toward it and sprayed it with machine-gun fire. The bodies of a dozen Iranians lay strewn about, cut down before they had had a chance to fire a single round.
So, this is war. Kurpov held that thought as he scrambled down the sand dune to his BRDM reconnaissance vehicle.
The conference room was slowly filling with commanders and staff officers of the St. with Brigade, so called be cause of the stand its heraldic predecessor had made at Saint-with, Belgium, against overwhelming odds during World War II. The brigade executive officer stood at the front of the room giving last-minute directions to the enlisted men setting up the room, while mentally taking note of who was still missing from the orders group.
As his eyes swept the room, they stopped when he came to the brigade assistant intelligence officer off to the side, going over briefing notes.
The intelligence officer, or S-2, could not be contacted, off camping somewhere. Ordinarily this situation would have been chalked up to poor timing or bad luck and left to the assistant to handle. But both the brigade commander and the executive officer had serious reservations about the ability of this assistant S-2, First Lieutenant Matthews-who not only was new to the staff, recently transferred from the 10th Corps G-2 section, but was the first female officer to serve on the brigade staff.
Despite years of equal-opportunity training and the slow evolutionary change of the character of the U.S. Army, the XO was ill at ease having Lieutenant Matthews on the staff. At five foot seven, Amanda Matthews had a figure that looked good even in her baggy BDUs. Her short blond hair framed a face that could only be described as stunning. The XO thought how terribly out of place she seemed. In a few minutes they would be talking about war, a real war that was going on as they sat there. A war that they were preparing to join. One tour in the closing days
