Edwards turned to look north. Walking about that far would lower the angle to the satellite as well as climbing... why didn't I think of that? Because like any good Air Force Academy graduate, you thought in terms of up-and-down instead of sideways. The lieutenant shook his head angrily, noting the sergeant's sly grin before he lifted the radio pack and heading down the canyon's rocky floor.
"You're very late, Beagle," Doghouse said at once. "Repeat your status."
"Doghouse, things are just terrible. We had a run-in with a Russian patrol." Edwards explained for another two minutes.
"Beagle, are you out of your Goddamned mind? Your orders are to avoid, repeat avoid, contact with the enemy. How do you know that somebody doesn't know you're there? Over!"
"They're all dead. We rolled their vehicle over a cliff and set fire to it. We made it look like an accident, just like on TV. It's all over, Doghouse. No sense worrying about it now. We are now ten klicks from where it happened. I'm resting my men for the rest of the day. We will continue our march north tonight. This may take longer than you expect. The terrain is rugged as hell, but we'll do our best. Nothing more to report. We can't see much from where we are."
"Very well. Your orders are unchanged, and please don't play white knight again-acknowledge."
"Roger that. Out." Edwards smiled to himself as he repacked the radio. When he got back to the others, he saw that Vigdis was stirring in her sleep. He lay down beside her, careful to stay a few feet away.
"Bloody cowboy-John Wayne rescuing the settlers from the bloody red Indians!"
"We weren't there," said the man with the eye patch. He fingered it briefly. "It is a mistake to judge a man from a thousand miles away. He was there, he saw what was happening. The next thing is, what does this tell us about Ivan's troops?"
"The Sovs do not exactly have an exemplary record for dealing with civilians," the first man pointed out.
"The Soviet airborne troops are known for their stern discipline," the second replied. Formerly a major in the SAS, and invalided out, he was now a senior man with the Special Operations Executive, the SOE- "Conduct like this is not indicative of well-disciplined troops. That may be important later on. For the moment, as I told you earlier, this lad is turning out very nicely indeed." He said it without a trace of smugness.
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
The flight in was bad enough. They'd come in aboard a light bomber, racing in at low level to a military airport east of Berlin, no more than four staff members to an aircraft. All had arrived safely, but Alekseyev wondered how much of it was skill and how much luck. This airfield had clearly been visited by NATO aircraft recently and the General already had his doubts about what his colleagues in the Air Force had told him about their ability to control the sky even in daylight. From Berlin a helicopter took his party to CINC-West's forward command post outside Stendal. Alekseyev was the first senior officer to arrive at the underground bunker complex, and he did not like what he found. The staff officers present were too concerned with what the NATO forces were doing and not concerned enough with what the Red Army was supposed to be doing to them. The initiative had not been lost, but his first impression was that the danger was real. Alekseyev located the command operations officer and started assembling information on how the campaign was going. His commander arrived half an hour later, and immediately took Alekseyev into his office.
"Well, Pasha?"
"I have to see the front at once. We have three attacks under way. I need to see how they are going. The German counterattack at Hamburg was repulsed, again, but this time we lack the forces to exploit it. The northern area is currently in stalemate. Our deepest penetration to date is just over one hundred kilometers. The timetable has gone completely to hell, losses are far higher than expected-on both sides, but worse for us. We have gravely underestimated the lethality of NATO antitank weapons. Our artillery has been unable to suppress them enough for our forces to achieve a major breakthrough. NATO air power is hurting us badly, especially at night. Reinforcements are not getting forward as well as we expected. We still have the initiative in most areas, but unless we achieve a breakthrough, that may not last more than another few days. We must find a weakness in NATO lines and launch a major coordinated attack soon."
"The NATO situation?"
