Red Army

The group laughed so hard they swayed and banged their shoulders against one another in the little circle. Even Seryosha laughed. It was a great moment, as if a dog or cat had spoken.

The squad grew boisterous. Everyone was supposed to be quiet, on precombat silence. But there were still no officers around, and you could clearly hear the other squads nearby.

Leonid wondered where the officers had gone, and why it was taking them so long. He wondered what in the world was going on.

Suddenly, a vehicle engine powered up a few hundred meters away.

Then another vehicle came to life, closer this time.

"Here we go again," Seryosha said disgustedly.

They rode crouched in their armored vehicle, with the troop hatches closed. Only the driver and the vehicle commander were allowed to look outside. The interior was cramped and extremely uncomfortable, even though the squad was understrength with only six soldiers. The smells of unwashed bodies and of other men's stale breath mingled with the pungency of the poorly vented exhaust. The jittering of the vehicle's tracks seemed to scramble the brain. Leonid knew from experience that he would soon have a severe headache.

"Where do you think we're going this time?" a voice asked from the darkness.

"Paris," Seryosha said. "New York."

"Seriously."

"Who the hell knows?"

"I think we're going to war," Leonid said with helpless conviction.

All of the voices went heavily silent. The whine of the engine, the clatter of the tracks on the hard-surface road, and the wrenched-bone noise of shifting gears surrounded the quiet of the soldiers.

6

RED ARMY

"You don't know," Seryosha said angrily, doubtfully. "You're just a little pig farmer from the middle of nowhere."

Leonid did not know why he had said it. He recognized that, in fact, he did not know where they were going. But somehow, inside, he was convinced that he was correct. They were going to war. Perhaps it had already begun. NATO had attacked, and men were dying.

The vehicle stopped with a jerk, knocking the soldiers against one another or into the metal furnishings of the vehicle's interior. Road marches were always the same. You went as fast as you could, then came to a sudden, unexplained stop and waited.

"Leonid?" a voice asked seriously, just loud enough to be heard over the idling engine. "Has somebody told you something? Do you really know something? What makes you think we're going to war?"

Leonid shrugged. "It's just my luck."

7

ONE

A r m y General M. M. Malinsky, Commander of the First Western Front, sat alone in his private office, smoking a strong cigarette. The room was dark except for a bright pool where a bank of spotlights reflected off the situation map. Malinsky sat just out of the light, staring absently at the map he knew so well. Beyond the office walls, vivid action coursed through the hallways of the bunker, blood through arteries, despite the late hour. From his chair, Malinsky heard the activity as half-smothered footsteps and voices passing up and down the corridor, resembling valley noises heard from a cloud-wrapped mountain.

And that, Malinsky thought, is what war sounds like. Not just the blasting of artillery, the shooting and shouting. But the haste of a staff officer's footsteps and the ticking of a clerk's typewriter. And, of course, the special, half-magical noises of computers nowadays. Perhaps, Malinsky thought, this will be the last real one, the last great war fought by men aiming weapons. Perhaps the next big one would be fought entirely by means of cybernetics. Things were changing so troublingly fast.

But there would always be a next time. Malinsky was certain of that.

Even if they were foolish enough to toss great nuclear bombs across oceans, Malinsky was convinced that enough of mankind would survive to organize new armies to fight over whatever remained. Mankind would 9

Ralph Peters

remain mankind, and there would always be wars. And there would always be soldiers. And, in his heart, Malinsky was convinced there would always be a Russia.

A discreet hand knocked at the door.

"Enter," Malinsky called, leaning back deeper into the shadows.

A fan of light swept the room, then disappeared as the door shut again.

A staff major padded up to the map without a word and realigned unit symbols.

Malinsky watched in silence. Germany, east and west. Virtually his entire adult life—more, even his straight-backed adolescence as a Suvorov cadet—had been directed to this end. Elbe, Weser, Rhine and Maas. Mosel and Saar. With the low countries and the fields of France beyond, where Colonel of the Guards Count Malinsky had raised his curved saber against the cavalry of Napoleon.