NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
"I hope you take good care of it," the Mayor said.
It was a moment before Commander Daniel X. McCafferty reacted. USS Chicago had been in commission for only six weeks, her completion delayed by a yard fire and her commissioning ceremony marred by the absence of the Mayor of Chicago due to a strike of city workers. Just back from five tough weeks of workups in the Atlantic, his crew was now loading provisions for their first operational deployment. McCafferty was still entranced with his new command, and never tired of looking at her. He'd just walked with the Mayor along the curved upper deck, the first part of any submarine tour, even though there was almost nothing to be seen there. "Excuse me?"
"Take good care of our ship," said the Mayor of Chicago.
"We call them boats, sir, and we'll take good care of her for you. Will you join us in the wardroom?"
"More ladders." The Mayor pretended to grimace, but McCafferty knew him to be a former fire chief. Would have been useful a few months back, the captain thought. "Where are you heading tomorrow?"
"To sea, sir." The captain started down the ladder. The Mayor of Chicago followed him.
"I figured that." For a man in his late fifties, he handled the steel ladder easily enough. They met again at the bottom. "What exactly do you do in these things?"
"Sir, the Navy calls it 'Oceanographic Research.' " McCafferty led him forward, turning for a smile with his answer to the awkward question. Things were starting quickly for Chicago. The Navy wanted to see just how effective her new quieting systems were. Everything looked good in the acoustical test range off the Bahamas. Now they wanted to see how well things worked in the Barents Sea.
The Mayor laughed at that one. "Oh, I suppose you'll be counting the whales for Greenpeace!"
"Well, I can say that there are whales where we're heading."
"What's with the tile on your deck? I never heard of rubber decks on a ship."
"It's called anechoic tile, sir. The rubber absorbs sound waves. It makes us quieter to operate, and makes it harder to detect us on sonar if somebody pings at us. Coffee?"
"You'd think that on a day like this-"
The captain chuckled. "Me, too. But it's against regulations."
The Mayor hoisted his cup and clicked against McCafferty's. "Luck."
"I'll drink to that."
MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.
They met at the Main Officers Club of the Moscow Military District on Ulitsa Krasnokazarmennaya, a massively impressive building dating back to Czarist times. It was the normal time of year for senior field commanders to confer in Moscow, and such events were always punctuated by elaborate ceremonial dinners. Rozhkov greeted his fellow officers at the main entrance, and when all were assembled, he led them downstairs to the ornate steam baths. Present were all Theater commanders, each accompanied by his deputy, his air force commander, and the fleet commanders: a small galaxy of stars, ribbons, and braid. Ten minutes later, naked but for a pair of towels and a handful of birch branches each, they were just another group of middle-aged men, perhaps a bit fitter than was the average in the Soviet Union.
They all knew one another. Though many were rivals, they were members of the same profession nevertheless, and with an intimacy characteristic of the Russian steam baths they exchanged small talk for several minutes. Several of them were grandfathers now, and spoke with animation about the continuation of their lines. Regardless of personal rivalries, it was expected that senior officers would look out for the careers of their comrades' sons, and so information was briefly exchanged on whose son was in which command and wanted advancement to what new posting. Finally came the classically Russian dispute over the "strength" of the steam. Rozhkov peremptorily settled the argument with a thin but steady stream of cold water onto the heated bricks in the center of the room. The resulting hiss would be sufficient to interfere with any listening devices in the room, if the foggy air hadn't already corroded them to junk. Rozhkov had not given the first hint of what was happening. Better, he thought, to shock them into the situation and get candid reactions to the situation at hand.
"Comrades, I must make an announcement."
Conversation stilled, and the men looked inquiringly in his direction.
Here we go. "Comrades, on 15 June of this year, just four months from now, we launch an offensive against NATO."
For a moment, only the hiss of the steam could be heard, then three men laughed, having imbibed a few stiff drinks in the sanctity of their staff cars on the drive over from the Kremlin. Those close enough to see CINC-Ground's face did not.
"You are serious, Comrade Marshal?" asked the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Theater. Receiving a nod in reply, he said, "Then perhaps you will be so kind as to explain the reason for this action?"
"Of course. You are all aware of the Nizhnevartovsk oil-field disaster. What you have not yet learned are its strategic and political implications." It took six brisk minutes to outline everything the Politburo had decided. "In just over four months from now, we shall launch the most crucial military operation in the history of the Soviet Union: the destruction of NATO as a political and military force. And we will succeed."
Finished, he stared at the officer in silence. The steam was having its desired effects on the assembly of flag officers. Its searing heat assaulted their breathing passages, sobering those who had been drinking. And it made them sweat. They'd be doing a lot of that in the next few months, Rozhkov thought.
Then Pavel Alekseyev, deputy commander of the Southwestern Theater, spoke. "I heard rumors," he said. "But that bad?"
"Yes. We have sufficient POL supplies for twelve months of normal operations, or enough for sixty days of war operations after a brief period of increased training activity." At the cost, he didn't say, of crippling the national economy by mid-August.
Alekseyev leaned forward and swatted himself with his bundle of branches. The action was strangely like a lion's swishing its tail. At fifty, he was the second-youngest officer there, a respected intellectual soldier and a fit, handsome man with the shoulders of a lumberjack. His intense, dark eyes squinted down through the rising cloud of steam.
"Mid-June?"
"Yes," Rozhkov said. "We have that long to prepare our plans and our troops." CINC-Ground looked around the room. Already the ceiling had become partially obscured by a mist.
"I presume we are here so that we may speak frankly among ourselves, no?"
"This is so, Pavel Leonidovich." Rozhkov replied, not the least surprised that Alekseyev had been the first to speak. CINC-Ground had carefully advanced the man's career over the last decade. He was the only son of a hard-charging tank general of the Great Motherland War, one of the many good men pensioned off during the bloodless purges under Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s.
"Comrades." Alekseyev stood, climbing slowly down the benches to the marble floor. "I accept everything Marshal Rozhkov has told us. But-four months! Four months in which we may be detected, four months in which we may lose all the element of surprise. Then what may happen? No, we have a plan already for this: Zhukov-4! Instant mobilization! We can all be back to our command posts in six hours. If we are going to conduct a surprise attack, then let us make it one no one can detect in time-seventy-two hours from now!"
Again the only sound in the room was that of the water flashing to steam on the dun-colored bricks, then the room erupted with noise. Zhukov-4 was the winter variant of a plan which hypothesized discovery of NATO's intention to launch a surprise attack of its own on the Warsaw Pact. In such a case, standard Soviet military doctrine was the same as anyone else's: the best defense is a good offense-preempt the NATO armies by attacking at once with the Category-A mechanized divisions in East Germany.