He knew General Zucharnin had formed a phantom Division out of various units he had been able to siphon off without them being noticed. Staff officers and specialists had been drawn from the punishment battalions. Grigori looked at the names he had so far, he only knew a few but among them were some of the best strategic and tactical thinkers in the Army. It was their cleverness that had made the Kremlin suspicious of them and reduced them from exalted ranks down to privates and NCOs. One of them had been a general, top of his class at Staff College; others had been colonels and staff majors. Brilliant men whose original thinking had jarred with the small minds of the Army Council. At least four engineering works and a small car plant had been redirected to produce the larger and more sophisticated equipment an assault required. Bridging sections, radio-jamming devices, conversion mounts for anti-tank missiles, to fit them to scout cars. If the information was to be believed Zucharnin had intercepted two convoys of brand new trucks and had them fitted with rocket launchers. It was an incredible achievement. His admiration though was dangerously misplaced, Grigori knew that condemnation, not congratulation was what was called for unless he wanted to be tarred with the same brush.
But still, to equip and train thousands of men, keep them secret and to prepare them for a major attack! It was not something he could have done himself, he was forced to admit that. He would never have had the nerve to do such a thing.
The clock struck six. Its musical chimes and chunky mahogany case made it out of place. It had been Grigoris’ mothers and he trusted its time keeping more than the utilitarian wall clocks beside the map. One hour to go if his informant had told him the truth. The methods he had allowed his thuggish HQ military police section to employ would certainly have extracted that. The matter of the time puzzled him. It would be light, or almost so, when Zucharnins troops crossed the start line and commenced the assault. He was sure they had virtually no armour. Odd infantry units could disappear without trace in the vast behemoth that was the Warsaw Pact Armies but not tanks, not in meaningful numbers. Without armour to lead the assault they should have needed the cover of darkness for their approach. It was almost as if they wanted to be seen. But then much of the information coming in did not make sense.
Sitting at his desk he prepared to write the final draft of his signal. He found his hands were shaking, and he had to grip the pen with both to stop it. Until now he had always had a senior officer above him to deal with the Marshals and politicians. If he did this and moved up to command of a whole sector then that burden would fall on him. The shaking slowed, almost stopped. Sweat stung as it dripped in to his eyes.
A rap at the door and a signaller came in, handing over a sheaf of messages at arms length, as though he feared contamination from them.
Going through them carefully Grigori noted that most duplicated information he had obtained from other sources and by other means. The last two lines were the most important. Zucharnins assault force had failed to reach its start line on time. The attack had been put back one hour. It was what he could have hoped for; things were already starting to go wrong for the General.
“Sorry about that. Our gunners have never seen one of these things before. You were lucky you were travelling fast and they had time to get off only one.” The Lieutenant Colonel watched while Dooley tried to hammer out the shell that had struck, partially penetrated and fused to the sloped front of the hovercrafts turret.
“What about my report Sir.”
“That the Ruskies are going to attack? This morning? I don’t think so Major Revell. This has been a quiet sector for a long time. Apart from a little more refugee activity than usual there is nothing going on over the other side.”
Revell had done all he could. The colonel had been surprisingly reasonable about being woken so early but resolutely refused to countenance the possibility of the Russians crossing no mans land.
“We’ve got the measure of them. Lord knows we’ve had long enough to get to know them. The colonel waved at his map. The Russian territory opposite the NATO line showed a sparse sprinkling of pins. “Look at that. We could walk over them with two cooks and the sanitary corporal. But why bother, it’s a quiet sector and I am happy to see it stay that way.”
“Can’t you at least move your men to a greater state of readiness.” It was a last attempt, a compromise, but at least it would have been something. Revell waited for the response.
“No, I don’t want to provoke anything. Let sleeping dogs lie I always say. In the meantime though I would be very grateful if you would motor on out of town with that cargo of yours and you’d best take your prisoner with you. My medic’s say your guy did a good job on him, he’s stable and in no immediate danger. I have an idea that who ever collects your bomb will want him as well My men don’t have the knowledge to interrogate him properly.”
A telephone rang and a signals clerk languidly picked it up and listened in open-mouthed confusion.
Revell had been about to leave; now he paused and waited expectantly. He looked at a clock. It was just seven.
“Colonel, we’re getting loads of calls from the front, by land line. All the radios are jammed.”
“Well?”
“They report that thousands of civvies are trekking out of the Russian lines and straight towards them.”
“Tell them to look again.” Revell interrupted before the Commanding Officer could snap him self out of his surprise. “Tell them to look for Soviet troops among them.” He turned to the Colonel. “In the next few minutes you have decisions to make. I don’t envy you but I did warn you.”
There had already been a massive attrition rate and the Russian executioners following the advance had stopped killing those who couldn’t keep up. There were too many. The last five kilometres of the route was almost paved with the young and infirm, and when the children especially fell back, their parents tried to stay with them. For their attempted compassion they were booted and clubbed back in to line.
The troops tried to keep in formation among the crowds. Obstructions diverted the human tidal wave again and again and it broke up units until some battalions were split into their component companies, then platoons and some of those were splintered further until individual riflemen were plodding on surrounded by a personal escort of cowed refugees.
Armoured personnel carriers escorted by missile carrying scout cars began to catch up to the throng and men, women and children were forced to ride on top of some. The clung to anything that would give them a hold but many times that grip failed and those who fell clear of the tracks, breaking legs and arms were the lucky ones.
Every effort by the officers could not maintain the cohesion of the advance and when the head of the huge column breasted a slight rise and saw the broken and churned ground ahead they faltered, almost coming to a stop and were only kept going by the pressure of those behind and the beatings administered by the troops around them.
In the centre of the advance, draped with terrified civilians were the enormous self-propelled guns. Their broad tracks left a wide trail of flattened earth in which followed their supply echelon of fuel tankers and ammunition trucks. They too were festooned with refugees. Ropes had been fastened to the sides of the camouflaged bowsers and their human shield clung tight until their hands bled.
As they stepped out in to no-mans land the artillery opened up from further back, probing for the NATO batteries. Instantly drowning those loud reports was the deafening howl of the heavy Katusha rockets firing salvo after salvo over their heads.