Red Army

Kolovets slumped against the turret ring. Now they would have to move. He answered the lieutenant's radio call, hoping it wasn't a major problem. He just wanted everything to go smoothly.

But things were not destined to go smoothly. The left flank security element had discovered a backed-up column of enemy vehicles just to the south. There were artillery pieces, engineer vehicles, and kilometers of trucks. None of them showed any concern about an enemy presence.

They were just sitting at a halt between an autobahn crossing point and a small town. Some of the drivers had even gotten out of their vehicles without their weapons. The lieutenant insisted that the column was defenseless.

Kolovets was not so sure. He had never been in combat. As an officer of tank troops, he had been able to steer clear of Afghanistan, since there were not too many tank units in the Soviet contingent, and there were always plenty of ambitious officer volunteers. Further, Kolovets had 178

RED ARMY

never commanded a forward detachment, even in an exercise. His receipt of the mission had resulted solely from the accidental configuration of the march serials, from his unit's immediate availability.

Kolovets weighed alternatives. He wished he had one of the fancy decision-making support computers that higher echelons used to figure things out. That way, if things went wrong, he could blame the computer.

Now he felt trapped. He could attack the enemy column. Of course, that could turn out badly. What if there were enemy tanks? On the other hand, if he didn't attack, the lieutenant might report him or let something slip. Then he would be in trouble for not showing initiative. It could even be portrayed as cowardice, or dereliction of the assigned mission. Of course, Kolovets thought, he could always keep going toward the Weser River. Perhaps he would not encounter any further enemy activity. If he did make contact with the enemy near the Weser, however, he would be even farther from friendly support.

Kolovets felt as though a great injustice was being done to him. He believed that he was quite a good officer, all in all, even if he wasn't a fanatic about it like the snots who were always working on correspon-dence courses or reading the deadly dull stuff that came out of the military publishing houses. He was also quite conscientious and careful about the misappropriation of military goods. He never got greedy or took anything that could reasonably be missed. A bit of gasoline here and there was the commander's perogative, just so a man could make ends meet. Kolovets did not mind all of the nonsense the system put a man through. But he did not believe that it should be his responsibility to make decisions of this sort. He was a good officer who followed orders.

The lieutenant called in an updated report, virtually begging Kolovets to attack the stalled enemy column.

In response, Kolovets tried one more time to reach his next higher commander. The attempt failed as bluntly as had all of the others.

Kolovets hated the lieutenant for putting him in such an awkward position. Probably some nasty little Komsomol twit. The kind who would run to report the slightest perceived failings in his legitimate superiors. The army wasn't what it used to be. All of the restructuring nonsense had ruined it. Nowadays everybody was a tattler, and careers ended abruptly for trivial reasons. Things had gone downhill to the point where lieutenants could criticize higher officers in the pages of Red Star, the military's primary newspaper. No one seemed to have any respect for the tried-and-true way of doing things.

Kolovets felt cursed. He did not have a real choice that he could see.

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Ralph Peters

Perhaps there really were no enemy tanks in the halted column. The enemy couldn't have tanks everywhere, could they? And even if things turned out badly, they couldn't very well punish you for fighting.

Reluctantly, feeling as though his fate had been stolen from his hands, Kolovets ordered his unit to move out of the woods and begin prebattle deployment across the high fields to the south. He had his best company commander on the guiding flank. The boy was a good map-reader, and Kolovets was not about to trust his own skills in the dark and at a time like this. He made it very plain to the boy what he wanted: no nonsense, just get everybody out on line and hit the enemy from an oblique angle.

Kolovets tried to phrase the orders over the radio so that everyone listening would know that, should the attack fail, it would obviously be the company commander's fault.

As the firing calmed, moving on to other killing grounds, Seryosha suggested to Leonid that they hide in the basement. Occasional local shots, like strings of firecrackers, underscored the magnitude of any decision to move at all. Leonid felt miserable, lying in his wet tunic with splinters of plastic from the cassettes he had stuffed in his trouser pockets jabbing him in the thighs and groin.