Red Army

At the mention of Lueneburg, Trimenko's temper quickened. But his facial expression gave no indication of any change. He still chafed at the thought of the Lueneburg operation. He had not been allowed to explain its purpose to anyone else; as far as his staff knew, it was a serious undertaking with a military purpose. But it irritated Trimenko that none of them seemed to question it. To him, it was obviously a stupid diversion of combat power. Yet his officers accepted it without a murmur.

He looked at his operations chief. The man's mind was too slow; he was always too ready to state the self-evident. Trimenko felt disgustedly that he could think at least twice as fast and several times more clearly than any of his subordinates. He reached for another pistachio.

"If we rupture their corps boundary," Trimenko said in a voice that was clearly unwilling to accept further discussion, "we'll turn Lueneburg from the south at our convenience." He felt as though he were lecturing cadets at one of the second-rate academies. "I'm going to split them like a melon under a cleaver." He turned to his chief of staff. "Babryshkin, order Malyshev and Khrenov to execute the center option. Adjust the boundary accordingly." Suddenly, he stood up, unwilling to trust the staff to work incisively and swiftly enough to meet the demands of the situation. "Put the boundary here. Just offset from Route 71. Get Malyshev moving. If he hasn't made his preparations properly, I'll relieve him. Has Khrenov reported on the status of his crossing?"

"Comrade Army Commander, the divisional crossing operation is underway at this time."

Trimenko sensed that his operations officer didn't know any further details. He almost lashed out at the officer but managed to control himself. His fingernails worked at the pistachio shell. "All right. Everyone get started. Babryshkin, get me the front commander on the line. If he's not available, I'll talk to General Chibisov. And get my helicopter ready. I'm going forward. Make sure my pilot has a good fix on Khrenov's forward command post. If Khrenov isn't there, I'll take over his division myself."

Trimenko felt a familiar fury. He could not make them move at the pace he believed appropriate to the occasion. But he realized that if he drove them any harder now, they would only grow sloppy in their haste.

He kept his hand on the throttle of the staff, striving for the maximum 73

Ralph Peters

effective control of his officers, for the highest possible levels of performance and efficiency. And when he paused to reflect, he realized that his was a good staff, as staffs went. But the human animal was simply too slow, too inconsistent for him. You had to drive it with a lash, applying pain skillfully so that it spurred the animal onward but did not cause permanent injury. Occasionally an animal was too weak, and it failed and had to be destroyed. Other animals learned to respond to the very sound. But the requirement for the lash never disappeared, although the form taken by the instrument might change.

Trimenko was determined to fulfill the front plan so well that Malinsky would be forced to change it, cutting back Starukhin's role. He believed he would have an ally in Chibisov, Malinsky's clever little Jew, whom he took pains to cultivate. Trimenko regarded Starukhin as grossly overrated, a holdover from another, more slovenly era. Trimenko didn't believe modern war was for cossacks. Not at the operational level. Now it was for computers. And until they had better computers—computers that could replace the weaker type of men—war belonged to the men who were as much like computers as possible: exact, devoid of sentiment, and very, very fast.

Captain Kryshinin finally heard from the missing combat reconnaissance patrol. They had run into enemy opposition and had slipped off further to the south of Bad Bevensen. On Kryshinin's map, the patrol had moved outside of the unit's assigned boundary. But the good news was that they had seized a crossing site on the Elbe-Seiten Canal.

Kryshinin had gotten his forward security element on the move again, and the minefield and the lieutenant's sacrifice lay several kilometers to the rear. Kryshinin felt as though he would need to perform very well now to make up for his earlier lapse. He wondered what his other officers thought of him now.

He tried to reach division on the radio, and, when that failed, he attempted to reach the advance guard that was somewhere on his trail.

He needed someone in a position of authority to make a decision on further violation of the unit boundary. But his element's route led through low ground now, and all he could hear was static and faint strains of music. He was not sure whether his radio was being jammed or if the nets had simply gotten out of control. Earlier, foreign-language voices had come up on his internal net, having a conversation.

Kryshinin desperately wanted to report the seizure of the crossing site.