Red Storm Rising

by Tom Clancy

“I don’t think anybody could do it, even the Russians themselves. It’s got to be a layered defense. X-ray machines. Sniffer dogs. A couple of hundred guards, all from three different commands, the Army, KGB, MVD, probably their militia, too. Hell, Bob, you know how paranoid they are against their own people. How do you suppose they feel about Germans?”

“So they can’t say he was a crazy operating on his own.” “Which leaves . . .”

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

“Children!” Alekseyev barely said aloud. “For our maskirovka the Party murders children! Our own children. What have we come to?”

There will come a day of reckoning, Pasha told himself, a day of reckoning for all the crimes committed in the name of Socialist Progress. He wondered if he’d live to see it and decided he probably wouldn’t.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

He was surprised to see an American crew with their Soviet counterparts. So, we have made mass murder an international spectator sport.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

Traveled a lot. In short, many people knew he existed, quite a few did business with his firm, but nobody really knew a thing about him.

“Okay, maybe just an operation to cripple the Russians so that they can reunite Germany once and for all. That’s what Ivan is saying, Bob.”

“What we have here is a classic intelligence op. This guy Falken is a stone spook. No way in hell we can tell who he is, where he comes from, or, of course, who he’s working for, unless something big breaks, and I’ll wager you that it doesn’t. We know—we think—that the Germans aren’t this crazy, but the only evidence there is points to them. Tell the Admiral something bad is happening.”

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

“We are the professional officers of the Soviet Army. We know what our task is. We know why we have it. The life of the Rodina depends on our ability to carry out our mission. Nothing else matters,” he concluded. The hell it doesn’t . . .

11

Order of ...

SHPOLA, THE UKRAINE

By this time the hilltop objective was nearly hidden by explosions and flying dirt as the artillery fire marched back and forth across it. Alekseyev’s trained eye evaluated the exercise closely. Anyone on that hilltop would be having a very hard time. Even in a small, deep, protective hole, even in a defiladed tank, that artillery fire would be terrifying, enough to distract the guided-weapons crews, enough to rattle communications men, perhaps enough to impede the officers there. Perhaps. But what of return fire from enemy artillery? What of antitank helicopters and aircraft that could sweep over the advancing tank battalions? So many unknowns in battle. So many imponderables. So many reasons to gamble, and so many reasons not to. What if there were Germans on that hill? Did the Germans get rattled—even in 1945 at the gates of Berlin, had Germans ever been rattled?

“How ready are we for Red Storm?” “The improvement since January is remarkable. Our men are fit. They have been drilling in their tasks continuously. I would honestly prefer another two months, but, yes, I think we are ready.” “Well said, Pavel Leonidovich. Now shall we speak the truth?” The Politburo member said this with a smile, but Alekseyev was instantly on guard. “I am not a fool, Comrade Minister. Lying to you would be madness.” “In our country, truth is often greater madness. Let us speak frankly. I am a candidate member of the Politburo. I have power, yes, but you and I both know what the limits of that power are. Only candidate members are out with our forces now, and we are tasked with reporting back to the full members. You might also draw some meaning from the fact that I am here with you, not in Germany.”

“Are we truly ready, Comrade General? Will we win?” “If we have strategic surprise, and if the maskirovka succeeds, yes, I believe we should win,” Alekseyev said cautiously. “Not ‘we will surely win’?” “You have served in uniform, Comrade Minister. On the field of battle there are no certainties. The measure of an army is not known until it has been blooded. Ours has not. We have done everything we know how to do to make our Army ready—”

He quoted Soviet doctrine exactly. “Surprise is the greatest factor in war. There are two kinds, tactical and strategic. Tactical surprise is an operational art. A skilled unit commander can generally achieve it. Strategic surprise is attained on the political level. That is your mission, not mine, and it is far more important than anything we in the Army can do. With true strategic surprise, if our maskirovka works, yes, we will almost certainly win on the battlefield.”

“So, this unit goes to Germany?” “The end of the week.” “And you?” “During the initial phase we are tasked to be the strategic reserve for CINC-West’s operations, plus to defend the Motherland against possible incursions from the southern flank. That does not concern us greatly. To threaten us, Greece and Turkey must cooperate. They will not, unless our intelligence information is completely false. My commander and I will later execute Phase 2 of the plan, and seize the Persian Gulf. Again, this will not be a problem. The Arabs are armed to the teeth, but there are not so many of them. What is your son doing now?”

“In war I trust no one. If your son is good at these languages, I will find a use for him, be sure of that.” The formal agreement was made with nods, and each wondered if the other had planned it that way.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

“No further information on Mr. Falken. The NATO intelligence services have run up against a blank wall, and there’s been nothing new from Moscow, not even a date for the public trial. The Germans say that they have no knowledge whatever of the guy. It’s just as though he appeared fully grown at age thirty-one when he started his business. His apartment was taken apart one stick at a time. No incriminating evidence was found—”

“Admiral, Falken is a Soviet sleeper agent who was inserted into the Federal Republic thirteen years ago and used for very few missions, or more probably none at all, until this.”

“Sir, at the very least they are trying to put enormous political pressure on West Germany, perhaps to force them out of NATO. At worst—”

“What’s their fleet doing?” “Admiral, we have no satellite photos of the Murmansk area. Too much cloud cover, but we expect clear weather tomorrow afternoon. The Norwegians are running increased air patrols in the Barents Sea, and they say that, aside from submarines, the Russians have relatively few ships at sea at the moment. Of course, they’ve had relatively few ships at sea for a month.”

“I talked with the Secretary of Defense right before I came here. He’s going to meet with the President today and request a DEFCON-3 alert, global. The Germans are requesting that we keep Spiral Green in operation until the Russians show signs of easing things off. What do you think the Russians will do, Commander?” CINCLANT asked.

The speech took forty minutes, three-quarters of which was standard political phraseology. At the end, however, the Chairman announced mobilization of Category-B reserve units to meet the potential German threat.

12

Funeral Arran...

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

The Chairman dropped down to her side even before her husband did, and pulled her head into his shoulder. A moment later he helped her back to her feet, moving her gently toward the protective arm of her husband, a captain in the Soviet Army whose face was a stone mask of rage.

God almighty, Toland thought. They couldn’t have staged that any better with Eisenstein himself directing.

MOSCOW, R.S...

You cold-hearted bastard, Sergetov sa...

Such a masquerade! Sergetov told himself. See how kind we are to the families of those we have murdered! He had seen many lies in his thirty-five years in the Party. He had told enough of them himself—but never anything that came close to this. Just as well, he thought, that I’ve had nothing to eat today.

He wondered what the KGB team that had done the deed thought of their mission now. If they were still alive, he reflected. So easy to put them on an airplane and crash it into the ground so that not even executioners would know of them. All records of the bomb plot were already destroyed, he was sure, and of the thirty men who knew of it, more than half were right there, standing in line with him. Sergetov almost wished he had entered the building five minutes sooner. Better to be dead than to be a beneficiary of such infamy—but he knew better. In that case he would have played an even larger role in this brutal farce.

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

“Comrades, to the families of these innocent children, and to the families of these three fine men, I say that a reckoning will come. I say that their deaths will not be forgotten. I say that there will be justice for this vicious crime . . .”

“Yeah. There’s going to be a war. We have a linguistic team across the street doing a full translation, Bob. Let’s go see the boss.”

“It’s possible they will settle for something less, sir,” Toland replied. “But I don’t think so. Everything about this exercise has been run in such a way as to inflame the Russian population to a degree I’ve never seen before.”

“Admiral, either we believe that or we believe that the West German government has decided to precipitate a war against the Soviet Union on their own hook. In the second case the Germans would have to be totally out of their fucking minds, sir,” Toland blurted, forgetting that only admirals swear in front of admirals.

CROFTON, MARYLAND

A carrier was the best-protected ship in the fleet because she had to be: the carrier was also the number-one target for the Russians.

13

The Strangers Arrive and Depart

AACHEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

He never even saw the accelerating Peugeot. It was not moving fast, only twenty-five kilometers per hour. Fast enough.

He was knocked unconscious before he knew what had happened, which was just as well, since his legs remained in the street and the Peugeot’s rear wheel crushed both ankles.