Golovko had to grant his visitor’s concern. “Yes, they are exercising their military forces more than they used to.” What had once been a cause for concern had become, with its continuance, a matter of routine, and Golovko, like many, tended to lose such information in the seemingly random noise of daily life. “But there are no diplomatic reasons for concern. Relations between our countries are cordial.”
“Comrade Minister, I am not a diplomat, nor am 1 an intelligence officer, but I do study history. I recall that the Soviet Union’s relations with Hitler’s Germany were cordial right up until June 23, 1941. The leading German elements passed Soviet trains running westbound with oil and grain to the fascisti. I conclude from this that diplomatic discourse is not always an indicator of a nation’s intentions.”
“That is true, and that is why we have an intelligence service.”
“And then you will also recall that the People’s Republic has in the past looked with envy on the mineral riches of Siberia. That envy has probably grown with the discoveries we have made. We have not publicized them, but we may assume that the Chinese have intelligence sources right here in Moscow, yes?”
“It is a possibility not to be discounted,” Golovko admitted. He didn’t add that those sources would most probably be true-believing communists from Russia’s past, people who lamented the fall of their nation’s previous political system, and saw in China the means, perhaps, to restore Russia to the true faith of Marxism-Leninism, albeit with a little Mao tossed in. Both men had been Communist Party members in their day: Bondarenko because advancement in the Soviet Army had absolutely demanded it, and Golovko because he would never have been entrusted with a post in KGB without it. Both had mouthed the words, and kept their eyes mostly open during party meetings, in both cases while checking out the women in the meetings or just day-dreaming about things of more immediate interest. But there were those who had listened and thought about it, who had actually believed all that political rubbish. Both Bondarenko and Golovko were pragmatists, interested mainly in a reality they could touch and feel rather than some model of words that might or might not come to pass someday. Fortunately for both, they’d found their way into professions more concerned with reality than theory, where their intellectual explorations were more easily tolerated, because men of vision were always needed, even in a nation where vision was supposed to be controlled. “But you will have ample assets to act upon your concerns.”
Not really, the general thought. He’d have—what? Six motor-rifle divisions, a tank division, and a divisional formation of artillery, all regular-army formations at about seventy percent nominal strength and dubious training—that would be his first task, and not a minor one, to crack those uniformed boys into Red Army soldiers of the sort who had crushed the Germans at Kursk, and moved on to capture Berlin. That would be a major feat to accomplish, but who was better suited to this task? Bondarenko asked himself. There were some promising young generals he knew of, and maybe he’d steal one, but for his own age group Gennady Iosifovich Bondarenko felt himself to be the best brain in his nation’s armed forces. Well, then, he’d have an active command and a chance to prove it. The chance of failure was always there, but men such as he are the kind who see opportunities where others see dangers.
“I presume I will have a free hand?” he asked, after some final contemplation.
“Within reason.” Golovko nodded. “We’d prefer that you did not start a war out there.”
“I have no desire to drive to Beijing. I have never enjoyed their cooking,” Bondarenko replied lightly. And Russians should be better soldiers. The fighting ability of the Russian male had never been an issue for doubt. He just needed good training, good equipment, and proper leadership. Bondarenko thought he could supply two of those needs, and that would have to do. Already, his mind was racing east, thinking about his headquarters, what sort of staff officer he would find, whom he’d have to replace, and where the replacements would come from. There’d be drones out there, careerist officers just serving their time and filling out their forms, as if that were what it meant to be a field-grade officer. Those men would see their careers aborted—well, he’d give everyone thirty days to straighten up, and if he knew himself, he’d inspire some to rediscover their vocations. His best hope was in the individual soldiers, the young boys wearing their country’s uniform indifferently because no one had told them exactly what they were and how important that thing was. But he’d fix that. They were soldiers, those boys. Guardians of their country, and they deserved to be proud guardians. With proper training, in nine months they’d wear the uniforms better, stand straighter, and swagger a bit on leave, as soldiers were supposed to do. He’d show them how to do it, and he’d become their surrogate father, pushing and cajoling his new crop of sons toward manhood. It was as worthy a goal as any man could wish, and as Commander-in-Chief Far East, he just might set a standard for his country’s armed forces to emulate.
“So, Gennady Iosifovich, what do I tell Eduard Petrovich?” Golovko asked, as he leaned across the desk to give his guest a little more of the fine Starka vodka.
Bondarenko lifted the glass to salute his host. “Comrade Minister, you will please tell our president that he has a new CINC-Far East.”
CHAPTER 18
Evolutions
The interesting part for Mancuso in his new job was that he now commanded aircraft, which he could fairly well understand, but also ground troops, which he hardly understood at all. This latter contingent included the 3rd Marine Division based on Okinawa, and the Army’s 25th Light Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks on Oahu. Mancuso had never directly commanded more than one hundred fifty or so men, all of whom had been aboard his first and last real—as he thought of it—command, USS Dallas. That was a good number, large enough that it felt larger than even an extended family, and small enough that you knew every face and name. Pacific Command wasn’t anything like that. The square of Dallas’s crew didn’t begin to comprise the manpower which he could direct from his desk.
He’d been through the Capstone course. That was a program designed to introduce new flag officers to the other branches of the service. He’d walked in the woods with Army soldiers, crawled in the mud with Marines, even watched an aerial refueling from the jump seat of a C-5B transport (the most unnatural act he ever expected to see, two airplanes mating in midair at three hundred knots), and played with the Army’s heavy troops at Fort Irwin, California, where he’d tried his hand at driving and shooting tanks and Bradleys. But seeing it all and playing with the kids, and getting mud on his clothing, wasn’t really the same as knowing it. He had some very rough ideas of what it looked and sounded and smelled like. He’d seen the confident look on the faces of men who wore uniforms of different color, and told himself about a hundred times that they were, really, all the same. The sergeant commanding an Abrams tank was little different in spirit from a leading torpedoman on a fast-attack boat, just not recently showered, and a Green Beret was little different from a fighter pilot in his godlike self-confidence. But to command such people effectively, he ought to know more, CINCPAC told himself. He ought to have had more “joint” training. But then he told himself that he could take the best fighter jock in the Air Force or the Navy, and even then it would take months for them to understand what he’d done on Dallas. Hell, just getting them to understand the importance of reactor safety would take a year—about what it had taken him to learn all those things once upon a time, and Mancuso wasn’t a “nuc” by training. He’d always been a front-end guy. The services were all different in their feel for the mission, and that was because the missions were all as different in nature as a sheepdog was from a pit bull.
But he had to command them all, and do so effectively, lest he make a mistake that resulted in a telegram coming to Mrs. Smith’s home to announce the untimely death of her son or husband because some senior officer had fucked up. Well, Admiral Bart Mancuso told himself, that was why he had such a wide col
lection of staff officers, including a surface guy to explain what that sort of target did (to Mancuso any sort of surface ship was a target), an Airedale to explain what naval aircraft did, a Marine and some soldiers to explain life in the mud, and some Air Force wing-wipers to tell him what their birds were capable of. All of them offered advice, which, as soon as he took it, became his idea alone, because he was in command, and command meant being responsible for everything that happened in or near the Pacific Ocean, including when some newly promoted E- 4 petty officer commented lustily on the tits of another E-4 who happened to have them—a recent development in the Navy, and one which Mancuso would just as soon have put off for another decade. They were even letting women on submarines now, and the admiral didn’t regret having missed that one little bit. What the hell would Mush Morton and his crop of WWII submarines have made of that?
He figured he knew how to set up a naval exercise, one of those grand training evolutions in which half of 7th Fleet would administratively attack and destroy the other half, followed by the simulated forced-entry landing of a Marine battalion. Navy fighters would tangle with Air Force ones, and after it was all over, computer records would show who’d won and who’d lost, and bets of various sorts would be paid off in various bars—and there’d be some hard feelings, because fitness reports (and with them, careers) could ride on outcomes of simulated engagements.
Of all his services, Mancuso figured his submarine force was in the best shape, which made sense, since his previous job had been COMSUBPAC, and he’d ruthlessly whipped his boats into shape. And, besides, the little shooting war they’d engaged in two years before had given everyone the proper sense of mission, to the point that the crews of the boomers who’d laid on a submarine ambush worthy of Charlie Lockwood’s best day still swaggered around when on the beach. The boomers remained in service as auxiliary fast-attacks because Mancuso had made his case to the CNO, who was his friend, Dave Seaton, and Seaton had made his case to Congress to get some additional funding, and Congress was nice and tame, what with two recent conflicts to show them that people in uniform did have more purposes than opening and closing doors for the people’s elected representatives. Besides, the Ohio-class boats were just too expensive to throw away, and they were mainly off doing valuable oceanographic missions in the North Pacific, which appealed to the tree- (actually fish- and dolphin- in this case) huggers, who had far too much political power in the eyes of this white-suited warrior.
With every new day came his official morning briefing, usually run by Brigadier General Mike Lahr, his J-2 Intelligence Officer. This was particularly good news. On the morning of 7 December, 1941, the United States had learned the advantage of providing senior area commanders with the intelligence they might need, and so this CINCPAC, unlike Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, got to hear a lot.
“Morning, Mike,” Mancuso said in greeting, while a chief steward’s mate set up morning coffee.
“Good morning, sir,” the one-star replied.
“What’s new in the Pacific?”
“Well, top of the news this morning, the Russians have appointed a new guy to head their Far Eastern Military District. His name is Gennady Bondarenko. His last job was J-3 operations officer for the Russian army. His background’s pretty interesting. He started off in signals, not a combat arm, but he distinguished himself in Afghanistan toward the end of that adventure on their part. He’s got the Order of the Red Banner and he’s a Hero of the Soviet Union—got both of those as a colonel. He moved rapidly up from there. Good political connections. He’s worked closely with a guy named Golovko—he’s a former KGB officer who’s still in the spook business and is personally known to the President—ours, that is. Golovko is essentially the operational XO for the Russian President Grushavoy—like a chief minister or something. Grushavoy listens to him on a lot of issues, and he’s a pipeline into the White House on matters ‘of mutual interest.’ ”
“Great. So the Russians have Jack Ryan’s ear via this guy. What sort of mensch is he?” CINCPAC asked.
“Very smart and very capable, our friends at Langley say. Anyway, back to Bondarenko. The book on the guy says he’s also very smart and also very capable, a contender for further advancement. Brains and personal bravery can be career-enhancing in their military, just like ours.”
“What sort of shape is his new command in?”
“Not very good at all, sir. We see eight division-sized formations, six motor-rifle divisions, one tank, and one artillery division. All appear to be under strength on our overheads, and they don’t spend much time in the field. Bondarenko will change that, if he goes according to the form card.”
“Think so?”
“As their J-3, he agitated for higher training standards—and he’s a bit of an intellectual. He published a lengthy essay last year on the Roman legions. It was called ‘Soldiers of the Caesars.’ It had that great quote from Josephus, ‘Their drills are bloodless battles and their battles are bloody drills.’ Anyway, it was a straight historical piece, sources like Josephus and Vegetius, but the implication was clear. He was crying out for better training in the Russian army, and also for career NCOs. He spent a lot of time with Vegetius’s discussion of how you build centurions. The Soviet army didn’t really have sergeants as we understand the term, and Bondarenko is one of the new crop of senior officers who’s saying that the new Russian army should reintroduce that institution. Which makes good sense,” Lahr thought.
“So, you think he’s going to whip his people into shape. What about the Russian navy?”
“They don’t belong to him. He’s got Frontal Aviation tactical aircraft and ground troops, but that’s all.”
“Well, their navy’s so far down the shitter they can’t see where the paper roll is,” Mancuso observed. “What else?”
“A bunch of political stuff you can read up on at your leisure. The Chinese are still active in the field. They’re running a four-division exercise now south of the Amur River.”
“That big?”
“Admiral, they’ve been on an increased training regimen for almost three years now. Nothing frantic or anything, but they’ve been spending money to get the PLA up to speed. This one’s heavy with tanks and APCs. Lots of artillery live-fire exercises. That’s a good training area for them, not much in the way of civilians, kinda like Nevada but not as flat. At first when they started this we kept a close eye on it, but it’s fairly routine now.”
“Oh, yeah? What do the Russians think about it?”
Lahr stretched in his chair. “Sir, that’s probably why Bondarenko drew this assignment. This is backward from how the Russians trained to fight. The Chinese have them heavily outnumbered in theater, but nobody sees hostilities happening. The politics are pretty smooth at the moment.”
“Uh-huh,” CINCPAC grunted behind his desk. “And Taiwan?”
“Some increased training near the strait, but those are mainly infantry formations, and nothing even vaguely like amphibious exercises. We keep a close eye on that, with help from our ROC friends.”
Mancuso nodded. He had a filing cabinet full of plans to send 7th Fleet west, and there was almost always one of his surface ships making a “courtesy call” to that island. For his sailors, the Republic of China was one hell of a good liberty port, with lots of women whose services were subject to commercial negotiations. And having a gray U.S. Navy warship tied alongside pretty well put that city off-limits for a missile attack. Even scratching an American warship was classified delicately as a casus belli, a reason for war. And nobody thought the ChiComms were ready for that sort of thing yet. To keep things that way, Mancuso had his carriers doing constant workups, exercising their interceptor and strike-fighter forces in the manner of the 1980s. He always had at least one fast-attack or boomer slow-attack submarine in the Formosa Strait, too, something that was advertised only by casual references allowed to leak to the media from time to time. Only very rarely would a submarine make a local port call, however. They were
more effective when not seen. But in another filing cabinet he had lots of periscope photos of Chinese warships, and some “hull shots,” photos made from directly underneath, which was mainly good for testing the nerve of his submarine drivers.
He also occasionally had his people track ChiComm submarines, much as he’d done in Dallas against the former Soviet navy. But this was much easier. The Chinese nuclear-power plants were so noisy that fish avoided them to prevent damage to their ears, or so his sonarmen joked. As much as the PRC had rattled its saber at Taiwan, an actual attack, if opposed by his 7th Fleet, would rapidly turn into a bloody shambles, and he hoped Beijing knew that. If they didn’t, finding out would be a messy and expensive exercise. But the ChiComms didn’t have much in the way of amphibious capability yet, and showed no signs of building it.
“So, looks like a routine day in theater?” Mancuso asked, as the briefing wound down.
“Pretty much,” General Lahr confirmed.
“What sort of assets do we have tasked to keep an eye on our Chinese friends?”
“Mainly overheads,” the J-2 replied. “We’ve never had much in the way of human intelligence in the PRC—at least not that I ever heard about.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, in simplest terms it would be kind of hard for you or me to disappear into their society, and most of our Asian citizens work for computer-software companies, last time I checked.”
“Not many of them in the Navy. How about the Army?”
“Not many, sir. They’re pretty underrepresented.”
“I wonder why.”
“Sir, I’m an intelligence officer, not a demographer,” Lahr pointed out.
“I guess that job is hard enough, Mike. Okay, if anything interesting happens, let me know.”
“You bet, sir.” Lahr headed out the door, to be replaced by Mancuso’s J-3 operations officer, who would tell him what all his theater assets were up to this fine day, plus which ships and airplanes were broken and needed fixing.