Red Storm Rising Part 14

"Good. We will have plenty of work for them to do in a few days."

"You know, this is my first trip aboard s.h.i.+p."

"Really? Fear not, Comrade General. It is much safer, and much more comfortable, than flying in an aircraft-and then jumping out of it!" The captain laughed. "He is a big s.h.i.+p and he rides very well even with so light a load."

"Light load?" the General asked. "This is more than half of my division's equipment you have aboard."

"We can carry well over thirty-five thousand metric tons of cargo. Your equipment is bulky, but not that heavy." This was a new thought for the General, who usually had to calculate in terms of moving equipment by air.

Below, over a thousand men of the 234th Guards Air a.s.sault Regiment were milling about under the control of their officers and NCOs. Except for brief periods at night, they'd be stuck down there until the Fucik cleared the English Channel. They tolerated it surprisingly well. Even when crammed with barges and equipment, the cavernous cargo s.p.a.ces were far larger than the military transport aircraft they were accustomed to. The s.h.i.+p's crew was rigging planks from one barge top to another so that there would be more room for them to use for sleeping, and to get the soldiers off the oily works.p.a.ces that the crew needed to patrol. Soon, the regimental officers were to be briefed on s.h.i.+pboard systems, with special attention to the firefighting systems. A strict no-smoking rule was being enforced, but the professional seamen took no chances. The crewmen were surprised at the humble demeanor of the swaggering paratroopers. Even elite troops, they learned, could be cowed by exposure to a new environment. It was a pleasant observation for the merchant seamen.

Three tugs pulled on lines hanging from the s.h.i.+p's side, drawing her slowly away from her dock. Two others joined as soon as she was clear, pus.h.i.+ng the bow around to face out to sea from the Leningrad terminal. The General watched the s.h.i.+p's captain control the procedure, as he raced from one bridge wing to another with a junior officer in tow, often giving rudder orders as he pa.s.sed. Captain Kherov was nearly sixty, and more than two-thirds of his life had been spent at sea.

"Rudder amids.h.i.+ps!" he called. "Ahead slow."

The helmsman accomplished both commands in under a second, the General saw. Not bad, he thought, remembering the surly comments he'd heard from time to time about merchant seamen. The captain rejoined him.

"Ah, that's the hardest part behind us."

"But you had help for that," the General observed.

"Some help! d.a.m.ned tugboats are run by drunks. They damage s.h.i.+ps all the time here." The captain walked over to the chart. Good: a deep straight channel all the way to the Baltic. He could relax a bit. The captain walked over to his bridge chair and settled in. "Tea!"

A steward appeared at once with a tray of cups.

"There is no liquor aboard?" Andreyev was surprised.

"Not unless your men brought it, Comrade General. I do not tolerate alcohol on my s.h.i.+p."

"That is true enough." The first officer joined them. "All secure aft. The special sea detail is set. Lookouts posted. The deck inspection is under way."

"Deck inspection?"

"We normally check at the turn of every watch for open hatches, Comrade General," the first officer explained. "With your men aboard, we will check every hour."

"You do not trust my men?" The General was mildly offended.

"Would you trust one of us aboard one of your airplanes?" the captain replied.

"You are right, of course. Please excuse me." Andreyev knew a professional when he saw one. "Can you spare a few men to teach my junior officers and sergeants what they need to know?"

The first officer pulled a set of papers from his pocket. "The cla.s.ses begin in three hours. In two weeks, your men will be proper seamen."

"We are particularly worried about damage control," the captain said.

"That concerns you?"

"Of course. We stand into danger, Comrade General. I would also like to see what your men can do for s.h.i.+p defense."

The General hadn't thought of that. The operation had been thrown together too quickly for his liking, without the chance to train his men in their s.h.i.+pboard duties. Security considerations. Well, no operation was ever fully planned, was it? "I'll have my antiair commander meet with you as soon as you are ready." He paused. "What sort of damage can this s.h.i.+p absorb and still survive?"

"He is not a wars.h.i.+p, Comrade General." Kherov smiled cryptically. "However, you will note that nearly all of our cargo is on steel barges. Those barges have double steel walls, with a meter of s.p.a.ce between them, which may even be better than the compartmentalization on a wars.h.i.+p. With luck, we will not have to learn. Fire is what concerns me most. The majority of s.h.i.+ps lost in battle die from fire. If we can set up an effective firefighting drill, we may well be able to survive at least one, perhaps as many as three missile hits."

The General nodded thoughtfully. "My men will be available to you whenever you wish."

"As soon as we clear the Channel." The captain got up and checked the chart again. "Sorry that we cannot offer you a pleasure cruise. Perhaps the return trip."

The General lifted his tea. "I will toast that, Comrades. My men are at your disposal until the time comes. Success!"

"Yes. Success!" Captain Kherov lifted his cup also, almost wis.h.i.+ng for a gla.s.s of vodka to toast their enterprise properly. He was ready. Not since his youth in Navy minesweepers had he had the chance to serve the State directly, and he was determined to see this mission through.

KOBLENZ, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.

"Good evening, Major." In a guarded wing of the military hospital, the chief of CIA's Bonn Station sat down with his British and French counterparts and a pair of translators. "Shall we talk about Lammersdorf?" Unbeknownst to the Germans, the British had a file on Major Chernyavin's activities in Afghanistan, including a poor but recognizable photograph of the man remembered by the Mudjahaddin as the Devil of the Kandahar. General Jean-Pierre de Ville of the French DGSE handled the questioning, since he spoke the best Russian. By this time Chernyavin was a broken man. His only attempt at resistance was killed by listening to a tape of his drug-induced confession. A dead man to his own countrymen, the major repeated what these men already knew but had to hear for themselves. Three hours later, Flash-priority dispatches went to three Western capitals, and representatives of the three security services prepared briefing papers for their counterparts in the other NATO countries.

14.

Gas

WANDLITZ, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.

SCENARIO 6.

Spring-summer weather patterns (moderate humidity and temperatures; rain probability 35% per day); westerly and southwesterly winds of 10 to 30 km/hr at ground level, indexed for alt.i.tude; use of highly persistent agents against communications nexi, POMCUS sites, airfields, supply, and nuclear weapon storage facilities (normal computed delivery error rate, see Appendix F of Annex 1). The chief of the Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic read on to the bottom of the abstract, despite the acid churning in his stomach: As with Scenarios 1, 3, 4, and 5, any warning of over 15 minutes will ensure virtually complete MOPP-4 protection of alerted combat and support personnel. The problem of civilian casualties remains, since over a hundred targets of the categories cited above are near major population centers. Biodegradation of persistent agents such as GD (the expected Soviet agent of choice; for an a.n.a.lysis of Soviet literature on this topic, see Appendix C of Annex 2) will be slowed by generally mild temperatures and weather-reduced sunlight photochemical action. This will allow the agents in aerosol form to drift on wind currents. Given minimum source concentrations of 2 milligrams per cubic meter, predicted vertical temperature gradients, and cloudwidth inputs, we see that the downwind toxic vapor hazard to large areas of the FRG and DDR will be approximately 0.3 (plus or minus 50% in our calculations, allowing for expected impurities and chemical breakdown in the chemical munitions) as great as that at the targets themselves.

Since open Soviet literature calls for source (that is, target) concentrations well beyond median lethal dose (LCT-50), we see that the entire German civilian population is at the gravest risk. Expected allied retaliation to such chemical strikes would be largely psychological in nature-the use of Soviet munitions alone will effectively contaminate most of Greater Germany; it is expected that no part of Germany east of the Rhein can be considered safe to unprotected personnel, beginning 12 hours after the first munitions are expended. Similar effects may be expected in parts of Czechoslovakia, and even western Poland, depending on wind direction and speed. Such contamination must be expected, moreover, to continue at least 1.5 times the mean persistence level of the agents used.

This is the last (and statistically most likely) of the scenarios outlined by the contract specifications.

SECTION VIII: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

As the reader will appreciate, although given tactical warning of only a few minutes, alerted military formations can confidently be expected to suffer few casualties (albeit with 30-50% degradation of combat effectiveness; this degradation likely, however, to equate to both sides), expected casualties to civilians will actually be greater than those antic.i.p.ated from a Level-2 exchange of tactical nuclear weapons (200 warheads @<100kt yield;="" see="" appendix="" a="" of="" annex="" 1)="" at="" a="" mix="" of="" military="" and="" civilian/industrial="" targets.="" thus,="" despite="" the="" fact="" that="" chemical="" munitions="" are="" not="" of="" themselves="" directly="" damaging="" to="" fixed="" industrial="" a.s.sets,="" serious="" near-="" and="" long-term="" economic="" effects="" must="" be="" expected.="" even="" the="" use="" of="" nonpersistent="" agents="" at="" the="" feba="" (forward="" edge="" of="" the="" battle="" area)="" cannot="" but="" have="" major="" impact="" on="" the="" civilian="" population="" due="" to="" the="" heavily="" urbanized="" character="" of="" the="" german="" countryside="" and="" the="" patent="" inability="" of="" any="" government="" to="" provide="" adequate="" protection="" for="" its="" civilian="">

In terms of immediate effects, the 10,000,000+ civilian fatality floor figure in Scenario 2 represents a public health problem worse by an order of magnitude than that following the Bangladesh Cyclone disaster of 1970, and is likely to include synergistic effects well beyond the scope of this study. (Contract specifications specifically excluded investigation into bio-ecological effects from a major chemical exchange. While the difficulty a.s.sociated with an in-depth examination of this subject is impossible at this writing to estimate, the reader is cautioned that such far-reaching effects are less easily dealt with than studied. It might be necessary, for example, to import tons of insect larvae before the simplest food crops can again flourish in Western Europe.) For the moment the ability even of organized armies to dispose of millions of civilian bodies in advanced stages of decomposition is not something to be taken for granted. And the civilians needed for the reestablishment of industrial production (under what are almost certainly optimistic estimates) will have been at the least decimated in the literal, cla.s.sical sense.

An a.n.a.lysis of the Effects of Chemical

Warfare in the European Theater Utilizing

Atmospheric Release Advisory Capability (ARAC) Prediction

Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratories

LLNL 88-2504 * CR 8305/89/178.

SIGMA 2.

Specified External Distribution Only

>>SECRET<>

Johannes Bitner did not throw the report into his trash basket-he felt like was.h.i.+ng his hands. Yet another similarity between East and West, he thought coldly. Their government reports are written by computers to be read by calculators. Just like ours. Just like ours.

"Herr Generaloberst." The Chief of the Communist Party of the DDR looked up at his Commander-in-Chief. He and another officer had come early in the morning-and in civilian clothes-to visit him at his plush private residence in Wandlitz, the enclave of the Party elite outside Berlin. They had delivered the doc.u.ment obtained only two days earlier through a highly placed DDR agent in West Germany's Ministry of Defense. "Just how accurate is this doc.u.ment?"

"Comrade Secretary, we cannot check their computer models, of course, but their formulae, their estimates for the persistence of Soviet chemical weapons, their predicted weather patterns-that is, all of the data which supposedly underlies this study-has been examined by members of my intelligence staff and rechecked by some chosen faculty members at the University of Leipzig. There is no reason to believe that it is anything but genuine."

"In fact," said Colonel Mellethin, director of Foreign Operations a.n.a.lysis-he was a spare, austere man with eyes that clearly had not known sleep for some days-"the Americans understate the total quant.i.ties of munitions employed, because they consistently overstate the accuracy of Russian delivery systems." The other two men in the room noted at once that Russian had been subst.i.tuted for Soviet.

"There is something else you wish to say, Mellethin?" Bitner asked sharply.

"Comrade Secretary, from the Russian point of view, what is the objective of this war?"

"The neutralization of NATO, and access to greater economic a.s.sets. Say what you have to say, Comrade Colonel," Bitner ordered.

"Comrade, success for the Warsaw Pact would leave a united Germany. I point out that a united Germany, even a united socialist Germany, would be viewed as a strategic threat by the Soviet Union-after all, we are better socialists than they, nicht wahr?" Mellethin took a deep breath before going on. Was he risking his life? Did it matter? The family name had once been von Mellethin, and unwavering loyalty to the State was not something that Communism had taught his line of professional soldiers. "Comrade Party Secretary, Soviet success in this operation will leave Germany, socialist and capitalist, as barren as the surface of the moon, a minimum of ten to thirty percent of our people dead, our land poisoned, even without Western chemical retaliation. Comrade, we learned today that the Americans have begun airlifting 'Bigeye' chemical aircraft bombs into their base at Ramstein. If our 'allies' use their chemical weapons, and then NATO retaliates in kind, it is entirely possible that our country-that German culture itself-will completely cease to exist. Such an objective is not militarily defensible, but I suggest, Comrade, that this could be an additional, political objective of the Russian plan."

Bitner's expression didn't change a whit, and his visitors couldn't see the chill that was enveloping their national leader. The meeting he'd had the previous week in Warsaw had been unsettling enough, but now the reason behind the greasy rea.s.surances offered him by the Soviet leaders.h.i.+p seemed all too clear.

"There is no way to protect our civilian population?" Bitner asked.

"Comrade." The General sighed. "These persistent agents need not be breathed. They also work through the skin. If one touches a contaminated surface, one is poisoned. Even if we order our people to remain in their homes with windows and door closed, houses and apartment blocks are not airtight. And people still must eat. Factory workers in certain essential industries still must work. Medical personnel, police, and internal security personnel-some of our most valuable citizens will be the most gravely exposed. These aerosols will travel invisibly across our country, virtually undetectable. They will leave a toxic film on lawns, trees, fences, walls, trucks-nearly anything. The rain will wash much off, but tests made years ago show that some of these poisons-those on the undersides of fences, for example-will persist for weeks, even months. We would need thousands of decontamination teams even to begin the task of making our country safe enough for our citizens to walk to their markets. Colonel Mellethin is correct: if the Russians use their gas weapons, and then the Americans reply in kind, we would be fortunate if half our citizens were alive six months from today. It is actually easier to protect our citizens from nuclear weapons than against ga.s.ses, and nuclear effects are shorter-lived."

"Du lieber Gott."

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.