"Our missile troops practice once or twice a year, firing at target drones that plod along in a straight line up where everyone can see them. The NATO fighters fly between the trees. If the antiaircraft missiles on either side worked as well as their makers said, every airplane in the world would have been shot down twice over by now. But the worst thing of all are their antitank missiles-you know, just like ours, and these missiles work all too well." The younger man gestured with his hands. "Three men in a wheeled vehicle. One driver, one loader, one gunner. They hide behind a tree at a turn in the road and wait. Our column comes into view and they fire from a range of-say two kilometers. They're trained to go for the command tank-the one with the radio antenna up. As often as not the first warning we have is when the first weapon hits. They fire one more and kill another tank, then race away before we can call down artillery fire. Five minutes later, from another spot, it happens again.
"It's eating us up," the young man said, echoing the words of his commander.
"You say we are losing?"
"No. I say that we are not winning," Ivan said. "But for us that is the same thing." He continued with the message from his commander and saw his father settle into the leather seat of the car.
"I knew it. I warned them, Vanya. The fools!" Ivan gestured with his head to the driver. His father smiled and made a dismissive gesture. Vitaly had served Sergetov for years. His daughter was now a doctor because of the Minister's patronage, his son safe in the university while most of the young men in the country were under arms. "Oil expenditures are twenty-five percent above predictions. That is, twenty-five percent above my ministerial predictions. They are forty percent above the Defense Ministry's predictions. It never occurred to anyone that NATO aircraft would be able to find our hidden petroleum storage facilities. My people are reevaluating national reserves even now. I am to receive the interim report this afternoon if it's ready on time. Look around, Vanya. See for yourself."
There were hardly any vehicles in view, not even trucks. Never a lively city, now Moscow was grim even to Russian eyes. People hurried along half-empty streets, not looking around, not looking up. So many men were gone, Ivan realized. So many of them would never return. As usual his father read his thoughts.
"How bad are casualties?"
"Dreadful. Far over estimates. I do not have exact numbers-my posting is intelligence, not administration-but losses are very bad."
"This is all a mistake, Vanya," the Minister said quietly. But the Party is always right. How many years did you believe that?
"Nothing can be done about that now, father. We also need information on NATO's supplies. The data that gets to us at the front is over-processed, shall we say. We need better data to make our own estimates."
At the front, Mikhail thought. His anger at those words could not entirely suppress the pride he felt at what his son had become. He'd worried often that he'd turn into another young "nobleman" of a Party family. Alekseyev was not the sort to promote lightly, and from his own sources he'd learned that Ivan had accompanied the General to the battle line many times. The boy had become a man. Pity it had taken a war to make that happen.
"I'll see what I can do."
The Svyatana Anna Trough was their last bit of deep water. The freight train of fast-attack submarines slowed almost to a halt as it approached the edge of the icepack. They expected to find two friendly submarines here, but "friendly" was not a word that went well with combat operations. All the American submarines were at battle stations. McCafferty checked the time and the location. So far everything had gone according to plan. Amazing, he thought.
He didn't like being the lead boat. If there were a Russian patrolling the edge of the pack... he'd get first shot, McCafferty knew. Wondering if the "he" would be a speaker of English or Russian.
"Conn, sonar, I got faint machinery noises bearing one-nine-one."
"Bearing change?"
"Just picked it up, sir. Bearing is not changing at the moment."
McCafferty reached past the duty electrician's mate and switched on the gertrude, a sonar telephone as archaic as it was effective. The only noise was the hissing and groaning of the icepack. Behind him the exec got the firecontrol tracking party working on a torpedo solution for the new target.
A garbled group of syllables came over the speaker.
McCafferty took the gertrude phone off the receiver and depressed the Transmit trigger.
"Zulu X-ray." There came a pause of several seconds, then a scratchy reply.
"Hotel Bravo," replied HMS Sceptre. McCafferty let out a long breath that went unnoticed by the rest of the attack center crew, all of whom were doing exactly the same thing.
"All ahead one-third," the captain said. Ten minutes later they were within easy range of the gertrude. Chicago halted to communicate.
