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Malinsky thought briefly of the Hameln operation. There had been no contact with the Soviet air-assault force for several hours, and he had to assume that the enemy had retaken the town. The deception plan and the diversionary attack had worked almost perfectly, and the British Army and the German Territorial Forces had squandered combat power in their efforts to dislodge a few air-assault forces, losing all perspective on the greater situation. Still, Malinsky could not help thinking of his men who had been sacrificed at Hameln. They certainly had not known that they were part of a deception operation. And they had bravely played out their roles. In sacrifice. The idea of sacrificing his soldiers, of ordering them quite literally to their deaths, repelled Malinsky. It was not a course of action to be taken lightly. Yet he had done it. Twice in Afghanistan, on a much smaller scale. And now here. Sacrifice. The word held no splendor for him. It was only another word for death.

But the river line was open now. The Forty-ninth Corps, functioning as an operational maneuver group directly under the front's control, had passed three of its four maneuver brigades to the west. The hastily reorganizing divisions of Starukhin's army were readying themselves to follow in force. The first follow-on army was approaching the border, hurrying along the cluttered, broken roads, despite the desperation of NATO's air attacks.

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Trimenko's army had reported . . . Malinsky stopped himself. It was no longer Trimenko's army. Trimenko was dead, replaced by his deputy commander. Nonetheless, the Second Guards Tank Army had reported a lone forward detachment approaching the Dutch border with no opposition, while a reconnaissance patrol mounted in wheeled carriers claimed it had reached the banks of the Rhine across from Xanten on the western side. The advance party of an airborne division that had been subordinated to the front had struck the Dusseldorf civilian airport, although the outcome of that operation had yet to be decided. Due to the heavy transport losses going in, Malinsky had decided to hold back the heavy lifts. He counted on the Forty-ninth Corps moving quickly. One of the leading brigades was in position to reach Dusseldorf within twelve hours, unless the Americans put in an early appearance.

The business with the Americans gnawed at Malinsky. He realized that he was behaving in a less-than-scientific manner, counting on his luck to hold just a little longer. The battlefield, for all of the front's fine successes, had become quite a fragile thing. The first-echelon armies were out of breath, and even a beast like Starukhin could only whip a horse back up onto its legs so many times before the animal gave out. The Forty-ninth Corps would have to carry the initiative for the front until the initial follow-on army came up. The front had moved so far, so fast, and had suffered such losses, that the units and even formations were disorganized. There was a lack of control out there that Malinsky could sense through the darkness, a battlefield on the edge of anarchy. If it materialized, the American attack would need to be dealt with swiftly and violently, before it could discover and exploit the front's weakness.

He expected the Americans to attempt to sweep north across the Paderborn plain. Theoretically, an attack into the base of the operational penetration would be more desirable, but it was impractical at this point.

The Americans would be desperate to blunt the penetration before substantial Soviet forces reached and crossed the Rhine. And if the Americans did attack in the Paderborn direction, the trail brigades of the Forty-ninth would have the mission of stopping them. His son's brigade would be directly in the line of attack. Malinsky recognized the danger but refused to think about it in any more depth. Such were the fortunes of war, and his son would fight well, he had no doubt.

If the corps alone could not break the American attack, Starukhin would have to do it. His divisions were badly disorganized and intermingled, but there was still substantial combat power available, and Starukhin would just have to sort it all out. If they couldn't hold the 299

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Americans west of the high ridge of the Teutoburg, they could always shape them into a pocket between the ridge and the Weser. And the Second Guards Tank Army could close the trap behind them, from the north.