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"He wishes to report to you personally, Comrade Major."

Astanbegyan stepped over to the communications area and took the receiver from the specialist.

"Six-Four-Zero. Go ahead."

"This is Six-Four-Five. I have two systems down. Enemy air-to-surface missiles, antiradiation, I think. We got the bastard, though."

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"All right," Astanbegyan said, although he was far from happy with the news. What could you do, order your subordinates to go back and start from the beginning and not lose the systems next time? "How are you receiving your encoded instructions?"

There was a momentary silence on the other end.

"This is Six-Four-Five," the voice returned. "I haven't received any for the last hour."

Astanbegyan felt his self-control drain away. "Damn it, man, this isn't an exercise. We've been sending constantly. Check your battery console."

"Checking it now."

"And next time don't wait until you have to call me and tell me you've lost the rest of your battery."

"Understood." But the voice shook. "Listen, Comrade Major . . .

we're running low on missiles."

"You can't possibly have fired everything on your transporters."

"Comrade Maj—I mean, Six-Four-Zero, I haven't seen the trucks all day. The technical services officer became separated from the unit. You wouldn't believe what the roads are like out here."

"You find those damned trucks. If you have to walk to Poland. Better yet— you walk forward. Send somebody else to the rear. What the hell good are you without missiles? You ought to be court-martialed."

"You don't know what it's like out here."

"Comrade Major," a radar-tracking specialist shouted, interrupting.

"Multiple hostiles, subsector seven, moving to four."

Immediately, the shriek of jets flying low penetrated the walls of the van complex, shaking the maps and charts on the walls, and drawing loud curses from electronics operators whose equipment flickered or failed.

"Where did they come from?" Astanbegyan screamed, giving up his last attempt at composure.

"They were ours, Comrade Major."

Astanbegyan ran his hand back over his scalp, soothing himself. A good thing, too, he thought.

93

SEVEN

Colonel Tkachenko, the Second Guards Tank Army's chief of engineers, watched the assault crossing operation from the lead regiment's combat observation post. Intermittently, he could see as far as the canal line through the periscope. He had studied this canal for a long time, and he knew it well. There were sectors where it was elevated above the landscape, with tunnels passing beneath it, and other sectors, like this one, where the waterway was only a flat, dull trace along the valley floor.

This sector had been carefully chosen, partly because of its suitability for an assault crossing, but largely because it was a point at which the enemy would not expect a major crossing effort, since the connectivity to the high-speed roads was marginal. Surprise was the most important single factor in such an operation, and the local trails and farm roads would be good enough to allow them to punch out and roll up the enemy. Then there would be better sites, with better connectivity, at a much lower cost. Tkachenko refocused the optics, looking at the sole bridge where it lay broken-backed in the water. A few hundred meters beyond, the smokescreen blotted out the horizon. Under its cover, the air assault troops had gone in by helicopter to secure the far bank, and now the assault engineers on the near bank appeared as tiny toys rushing forward with

— thei

— r rafts and demolitions. Beyon

9

d the smoke-cordoned arena

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fires of dozens of batteries of artillery blocked the far approaches to any enemy reserves.

A flight of helicopters shuttled additional security troops, with porta-ble antitank weapons, to the far bank. Yet the action appeared very different now than it looked in the demonstration exercises in the training area crossing sites. The only order seemed to be in the overall direction of the activity, and the noise level, even from a distance, cut painfully into the ears. There was no well-rehearsed feel to this crossing, only the desperation of men hurrying to accomplish dangerous tasks, with random death teasing them. The banks of the canal were steep and reinforced with steel. There were no easy points of entry for amphibious vehicles. Everything had to be prepared. Ingress, egress. With the enemy's searching fires crashing down.

The enemy artillery shot blindly at the banks of the canal. The Soviet smokescreen had been fired in along a ten-kilometer-long stretch of the waterway, and the enemy gunners were forced to guess the exact location of the crossing activities. Despite the difficulties, occasional shells found their mark, shredding tiny figures, hurling them about on waves of mud, and setting unlucky vehicles ablaze.

A flight of two Soviet gunships passed overhead, flying echelon right.