She jammed her eyes shut in expectation of an enormous explosion as the missile streaked by. Nothing happened. When she opened her eyes, she saw two shiny wires over the earthen ditch. The missile had missed its target — one of the armored vehicles which roared past.
Next up in Kate’s nightmare were the dark forms of men diving into the ditch with loud grunts. Soon, the slit was filled with over a dozen Russian soldiers. It had been another anonymous tip that had sent Kate and Woody to the tense Army base. There had been no other journalists there. Another scoop, Kate had thought as she and Woody had set up on the road just overhead. Woody had warned her. They were on the main road from the front gate. If the caller was right and there was going to be fighting… But Kate was energized by the prospect of the air time they would get. She had shamed him into cooperating with joking comments about his manhood. It had never occurred to her that maybe the other foreign journalists weren’t at the base because they knew better than she what was coming.
The Russian soldiers in the ditch around them rose to charge barracks full of other Russian soldiers. They didn’t get far before a brilliant explosion hurled several bodies into the air. Kate had felt the earth shake beneath her. From the road, tanks attacked with infantry across the green lawns of the base. Other tanks raced out from the buildings and fired. She watched in horror as geysers of pyrotechnics gushed from dozens of vehicles. All the men and vehicles looked identical. The Russian Army was fighting itself.
Both attacks faltered. Men sprinted back across the tabletop-flat lawn in ones and twos. Their hands pumped furiously as they fled in panic. Most had discarded their weapons.
‘How do you feel fighting other soldiers in your own army?’ Kate shouted over the noise of battle.
The one Russian soldier who could speak broken English opened his mouth to reply. The low-light lens on Woody’s camera recorded the faint green images of the soldier and of Kate’s microphone to the soldier’s mouth.
‘Wery bad! I am… uh, not so much like it! When I,’ he raised his empty hands in the air like he was holding his rifle — his finger bent like it was around a trigger — ‘shootit my, uhm, gun, I…!’ He raised his imaginary Kalashnikov to aim into the air.
‘You try to miss on purpose?’ Kate asked.
‘Yeah, yeah! I shootit the air!’
‘Ask him which side he’s on,’ Woody whispered — his eye pressed to the camera.
Kate was annoyed with him feeding her questions, but asked anyway. The soldier cocked his head and looked confused. Kate tried to rephrase the question so he would understand the words she used. ‘You are fighting for one side — one part of the army — and the men whose base you attacked were fighting for another! Which side are you on? Who do you support?’
Still the man looked confused. One of his buddies who was huddled close by in the ditch began discussing the question in Russian. ‘Why are you fighting?’ Kate tried again.
‘Ah!’ the soldier said — comprehending her question at last. ‘Because zey tell us to.’
‘Do you think it’s a trick?’ President Marshall asked as he leaned toward the speakerphone on the conference table.
After the momentary delay, the ambassador replied over the secure link from Moscow. ‘We can never know with any certainty, Mr President. On its face, the General’s offer appears entirely responsible. The Russians obviously have no interest in seeing the disorder spread to control of their nuclear arsenal. International supervision over the weapons is an eminently reasonable suggestion.’
‘May I get something straight, here?’ General Dekker interrupted. All eyes turned to him. ‘Are we talking about deploying U.S. troops? To Russia?’
The ambassador answered. ‘To the eastern provinces only. To Siberia. The General assured me that the Defense Ministry has absolute control over the nuclear forces in European Russia.’
Dekker sat with his forearms resting heavily on the polished wood table. ‘And just what are they supposed to do if the fighting spreads out that way?’
‘Their mission would be limited,’ the White House Chief of Staff chimed in. Marshall noted the heads of the Joint Chiefs turn to look at the civilian. The political animal who was the object of their loathing, however, was focused on his boss. ‘This is a low-risk, high-return plan.’
‘What returns are those, might I ask?’ came from Dekker.
The two men then locked eyes. ‘Preservation of our national security, of course.’ Everyone there knew, however, that there were also political returns. That Marshall had been beaten up by Bristol for failing to counter Russian terrorism.
The President drew a deep breath, and with it the attention of his national security team. ‘Would NATO go in there with us?’ he asked — turning to the Secretary of Defense.
‘Great Britain, Germany and France are all clearly behind the plan, which should bring in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. Bonn is only a day or two away from agreeing with Paris on a deployment into Ukraine, which they see as a strategic buffer between Russia and the West. They would view a Siberian deployment as a logical extension of their policy to the east. And it would allow them to secure Siberian gas supplies all the way back to the wellhead.’
‘It’s a mistake,’ Marshall heard — the words spoken softly. He turned to see Secretary of State Jensen sitting slumped in his chair with his arms folded over his chest.
‘You care to elaborate?’ Marshall asked testily.
Without looking up, Jensen said, ‘We’re being sucked into a power vacuum. The collapse of the Soviet Union left an enormous geostrategic void over the entire Eurasian landmass. It’s been pulling us eastward ever since the Bosnian deployment and the expansion of NATO into Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Now, it’s drawing NATO troops into Ukraine and Siberia.’
Marshall huffed, then rubbed his eyes. ‘That’s a fine subject for a Foreign Affairs Quarterly article.’ He slammed his hand down, startling several at the table. ‘But God-dammit this is the real world, and we’ve got real issues to deal with!’ He turned to Dekker. ‘I’d like you to draw up some contingency plans. Figure out how many men it would take to secure those missile sites and nuclear weapons depots. Keep it simple. Use a minimalist approach. As long as we have the Russians’ full cooperation, I wouldn’t think we’d be talking about too large an undertaking.’ Marshall stifled a yawn — wanting to get to the end of it. ‘What about the Japanese?’
The Secretary of Defense nodded at Jensen, who remained silent. ‘We’ve worked out some arrangements — roughly the same payment terms as the Gulf War.’
‘I’m not talking about payment,’ Marshall said. ‘I want them in there with us.’
Jensen looked up. The Secretary of Defense licked his lips. ‘On the ground?’ he asked — clearly uncomfortable with the suggestion. ‘That might be highly unpopular in Japan.’
‘We could offer them the Kuriles back,’ Marshall said. No one else spoke. ‘That should win over the nationalist vote.’ Marshall liked the idea, but everyone else squirmed. ‘They’d have to amend their Constitution to allow foreign deployment,’ the Secretary of Defense remarked.
‘It’s about damn time they did!’ Marshall snapped.
General Dekker spoke up even though it was clear Marshall wanted to leave. ‘Sir, if I might suggest, Japan is most useful for support. The POL — petroleum, oil, lubricant — either comes from Japan, or from a long way away. And if the Army can’t stage massively in Japan, its alternatives are Forts Richardson and Lewis in Alaska and Washington. That’s a helluva long way away for a divisional supply train, sir. And we’d need more than logistical support, too, sir. If it should ever come to it, we’d need them for medical support and for strategic air projection.’