Clark understood.
The connection clicked and the line fell silent. The hardware had worked perfectly — just as designed. But the human link in the system had failed. Something always failed. War was never the result of a series of successes.
Clark wanted the native Alaskan scouts he was seeing. He needed them in Siberia. It was freezing out, but they went about their business. The unit’s commander lectured Clark as they walked. ‘Artillery, mortars, landmines, hand grenades — they’re ineffective in deep snow. They don’t explode. Or they’re smothered. Or lateral fragmentation is zero. Command-detonated mines in the upper branches of trees work, though.’ Clark absorbed all the facts he could. ‘Artillery rates of fire fall way off. Even with cold-resistant grease and oil, mechanisms get sticky and sluggish. Strikers and springs break like glass. Ammunition areas get covered in snow.’
Barrels of weapons protruded from well-concealed fighting positions.
‘Snow and ice get in your sights and barrel. You can’t take your gloves off to clean the weapon. But if you take it inside, you gotta strip it completely. It’s covered in condensation. It’ll freeze up when you go back out’
‘Your men seem to handle this weather easily,’ Clark commented. ‘Is it because you’re from the north? You’ve lived up here?’
‘No, sir. There’s a big difference between growing up where there’s cold weather, and never bein’ able to get out of it. Same goes for those northern Chinese. When bad weather comes through, they go to barracks. And in severe cold, they’ll die in thirty minutes if you don’t rotate them.’
A Kiowa scout helicopter swooped low overhead. It disappeared into the falling snow. Clark had suspended peacetime operating minimums. He wanted pilots flying in dangerous shit.
‘You gotta check your people constantly,’ the colonel said. ‘Change socks. Wash your feet. Use foot powder. People get numbed by the cold. They’ll take a nap out in the open and die. They’ll get snow blindness ’cause they forgot their sunglasses. And you gotta exercise ’em. Stamp your feet. Clench and unclench. Wiggle your toes. Knee bends. It can keep you from losing an appendage. You gotta check the snow flower after they urinate. If it’s dark yellow they’re dyin’ of dehydration. And you can’t let ’em drink liquor. We had a master sergeant up here on an exercise. He took a swig from a bottle of Jack Black he’d left outside overnight. Alcohol doesn’t freeze, so what poured down his throat was at minus twenty degrees. Burned him so bad he almost couldn’t breathe.’
Nate’s war had been different. Hot. He asked about casualties.
‘You evacuate them with sleds. Two men on the flats. Three in the mountains. Just pile blankets on top. Casualties are low on defense. And the intensity of the combat slows in winter. You spend your time in self-preservation. If temperatures go down to minus twenty, vehicles require five times as much maintenance. At minus forty, forget large-scale operations. Siberia gets even colder. Plus there’s wind chill. You can feel it just walking. Open vehicles and helicopter downdrafts are dangerous. Storms kill massively. Add a twenty-knot wind to minus twenty degrees and the wind chill is minus sixty-five. It’d then take maximum effort to do even the simplest task out in the open. Exposed flesh would freeze in thirty seconds. Your men go under canvas and your vehicles in laager. You survive. A ten-man Arctic tent and a Yukon stove will get you by… but just barely.’
Two squads silently trudged past. Clark wanted to know everything.
‘You still gotta send people out. You patrol for the sake of morale. You got two enemies — the opposing army, and the cold. And the cold is always there. Men get down. The only cure is activity. You can’t just stand sentry. You get all bundled up cocoon-like in your hood. You look out… but you don’t see. You withdraw. It’s dangerous — psychologically. You gotta patrol. Draw ’em out. Make ’em think about livin’. Care about it.’
They proceeded into an ever-stiffening breeze.
‘You can’t go far or fast. Twenty inches slows foot marches to half a mile an hour. Any deeper and men risk sweating. Thick woods and high crests are best. Snow doesn’t accumulate. Frozen watercourses and lakes are fine. Make good LZs — even airfields. But sound-ranging teams with seismological gear can fix you. Ambushers can conceal themselves very well in snow. You gotta look for shadows. Either that or hope they’ve frozen to death during the wait.’
Nate’s thighs were beginning to bum from less than ten inches of snow.
‘Skis are good for long-range recon. You can tow a squad behind a Humvee. You can break a trail — tramp a path. But you gotta take ’em off to fight. And you lose ’em every time. You can’t carry heavy loads. And for the deep stuff — bushland, draws, ditches — you gotta use over-snow equipment. If you don’t have any, just hope it crusts over enough to hold your weight. And hard-frozen snow is noisy as hell. Sound travels a lo-ong way on a cold night. The question boils down to how much you can leave behind and still survive? Hundred-pound loads are cut to forty — thirty for ski troops. Every squad’s gotta carry two radios because small-unit tactics predominate. And you’d be surprised how much water you’ve got to carry. And large quantities of high-energy foods like fats, breads and sugars. You bum calories like a runner just keepin’ your body warm. And of course you carry automatic weapons. Fighting is at close range in the Arctic. High cyclic rates of fire win firefights. You’d rather have one machine-gun with a thousand rounds, than a thousand men with one round.’
On the hill below there was an attack. The infantry looked to be stuck in molasses.
‘You can’t mount a classic attack,’ the colonel continued. ‘You crawl forward, digging in as you go. Don’t plan on taking advantage of artillery prep. You can’t move fast enough. The enemy is heads up before you even make it to the killing zone. And if your attack bogs down… withdraw. Sweating men will freeze to death in the open. Or you could try infiltration. Dress up in captured outer gear. All bundled up you can merge with returning patrols. In extended formation you can slip inside the perimeter. We always have somebody with an M-60 doin’ a head count at the wire.’
They talked for half an hour. Of windproof parkas for patrols. Of Gore-Tex for sweat-prone ski troops. Of fur overcoats for sentries and drivers. Of saunas that toughened the body, built resistance, cut down on illness, and helped morale. And of dogs to hunt for casualties in the snow.
‘Snow covers irregularities. In Arctic whites, prone, in flat light — you can’t see ’em. And it’s like somebody failin’ overboard in cold water. They don’t last long. Ten, fifteen minutes. The Arctic gives pilots a helluva time with navigation. You can’t see coastlines if there’s ice. Flat vapor layers hang over the ground like still fog. They’re impossible to tell from snow. Landing in a chopper can be kinda chancy.’
But it was something toward the end of their talk that Clark remembered most. It was what stood out most in his memory. It was a simple statement made by the colonel. But it crystallized in Clark’s mind and in his plans.
‘Defenders win the battles in winter.’
Pyotr and Olga Andreev were curled up on the sofa under a blanket. Pyotr’s shotgun was propped against the wall beside them. They were bleary-eyed from the election coverage, but they were glued to the flickering light of the television.
‘I’ve got to go to the bathroom,’ Olga said. She climbed out from under the blanket.