The Ten Thousand (28 page)

Lewis chuckled. “I can see by your expression you’re wondering what in the hell I’m talking about.

Well, to tell you the truth, Jan, I’m not sure, at least not right now. You see, both you and Amanda are willing to accept people and things for what they are. Both of you, each in your own way, work with what you have, trying to keep things together and in harmony. Me, I guess I’m no better than every other guy who set out with what he thought were the ideals and principles that were the only true way to everlasting peace and happiness for the whole world, ready to cram them down the throat of everyone that disagreed with him.” Lewis paused as he set his cup down and poured himself more coffee. “Well, Jan, it’s hard for a man like me to suddenly realize that he doesn’t have all the solutions, all the answers. I feel… I feel like Superman must have felt like the first time he was exposed to kryptonite.”

For the first time since leaving the Chancellor’s office, Jan spoke. “I take it, Ed, that the Germans are not ready to negotiate?”

His tone and demeanor betrayed the incredulousness he felt. “Negotiate? That, Jan, is the wrong word. I think the Germans call it _Diktat. _ No, Jan, there doesn’t seem to be a man in this city, from Ruff all the way down the line to Interior Minister Fellner, the one who was supposed to be reasonable, interested in negotiating. Instead, all of them, to a man, have a list of grievances and conditions that they insist must be worked out before serious discussions between our two governments can start.”

Caught up now in Lewis’s discourse, Jan asked what exactly those conditions were.

Raising an eyebrow as he took a sip of coffee, Lewis slowly replaced the cup onto the saucer and stared at it for a moment before answering. “Oh, though there are a whole bunch of little bones of contention that vary in importance depending on who you talk to, everything comes down to two really big items that all the Germans seem to agree on.”

“And they are?”

Lewis, his eyes betraying no emotion, looked at Jan as he spoke. “First, all U.S. military forces must, and I emphasize the word they used, must withdraw from German territory by this July.”

“But we can’t simply up and leave in less than six months. They can’t be serious. Are they?”

“Quite, Jan. They have been watching the American political landscape and they realize that few Americans would object to our pulling our troops home as part of an effort to reduce our annual military budget. After all, we have been after the Europeans for years to assume a more active role in their own defense. Here on a silver platter they give us the very thing that many of our fellow countrymen have been demanding.”

He was, Jan realized, right. Chancellor Ruff knew that the Wilson administration would have a hard time justifying the continued retention of American forces in a Europe free from the specter of worldwide Soviet domination. “And the other demand, Ed?”

With a sigh, Lewis looked down at the floor, then back into Jan’s eyes. “There, I’m afraid, they have us again. You see, Chancellor Ruff believes that Germany, in order to maintain its position in the European community as one of the leading states, must be able to stand side by side with the other states as an equal in fact as well as in word.”

“How can we, the United States, help them achieve that? Most of the European community already acknowledge Germany’s role in the new Europe.”

“Jan, Ruff wants more than a verbal acknowledgment. He wants the horsepower to back it up. He believes that Germany, in order to be taken seriously, must be allowed to join the most exclusive club that all nations who want a say in shaping this world must belong to. In short, Jan, Germany, or I should say Chancellor Ruff, wants nothing less than for the United States of America to accept her as a nuclear power, free to retain the weapons she already has and develop her own as she sees fit.”

Though she knew that she should have seen it coming, Lewis’s articulation of that demand startled Jan.

Dark, sinister images flashed through her mind as she stood there in silence trying to grasp the significance of what Lewis had said. Finally able to speak, she looked up at him. “But we can’t do that. I mean, we can’t agree to any of that.”

Lewis slowly set the cup and saucer he was holding down on the tray, then thrust his hands into his pants pockets. “I know, Jan, I know.”

Both Jan and Lewis were standing there looking down at the floor in silence when a member of the embassy staff knocked and entered the room. She paused, however, when she saw both Jan and Lewis standing motionless around the small table in the center of the room. “Oh, excuse me. I am sorry for interrupting.”

Shaken out of his grim thoughts, Lewis looked up at the staffer. “Oh, no, you weren’t interrupting.

What can I do for you?”

“The ambassador was wondering when you would be returning to Washington. You had mentioned last night that you wanted to depart this afternoon after one more round of discussions with Chancellor Ruff. Is that still correct?”

Lewis thought about that for a moment before answering. “No, there has been a change. Please ask the ambassador if he would be so kind as to make the necessary arrangements for me to go to Prague to meet with the commander of the Tenth Corps.”

While the embassy staffer acknowledged Lewis’s request, Jan looked up at Lewis with a quizzical look on her face, but said nothing until the staffer was gone. “What are we going to Prague for?”

Lewis shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know right now. But we have a few hours to figure that out.

Now if you would excuse me, Jan, I need to call the President, pay the ambassador my respects, and pack.”

After crossing over to the north bank of the Uh River, Nancy Kozak ordered her driver to move off the road. Taking up a position from which she could see the northern approach of the bridge she had just crossed, Kozak settled down to wait for the last of her company to cross the river before they continued their withdrawal into Slovakia. She, like the rest of her company, would be glad to see Slovakia again, where they would be able to rest and relax. Their mission as the flank guard for the 1st Brigade’s southern flank had been, except for the initial six hours, tedious on one hand while at the same time, due to their exposed position on the brigade’s flank, nerve-racking. Once the Ukrainian armored brigade’s effort to force a crossing against Kozak’s company had been rebuffed and the Air Force had worked it over during the day, the remnants had been content to slip away to the southeast and establish blocking positions north of Uzlovaya. They still, however, were a threat that could not be ignored.

Nor could Kozak and her tiny command ignore their unusual position as accidental liberators. Without realizing it, Kozak’s company, as well as the rest of the brigade, had found itself smack in the middle of the Ruthenian struggle for independence from the Ukraine. Never having heard of Ruthenia, Nancy Kozak, through broken translations provided by the farmer whose home the engineer platoon had occupied, learned that Ruthenians, who held that they were ethnically different from the Ukrainians, made up the bulk of the population around Uzhgorod, the historical capital of Ruthenia. Unhappy with the Ukrainian government’s decision to prevent closer ties with their ethnic brethren in Slovakian Ruthenia, the Ukrainian Ruthenians had been agitating for independence. The sudden appearance of American forces fighting the Ukrainians naturally was viewed as an answer to their prayers. That neither Kozak nor any of her soldiers knew of the problem didn’t seem to matter to the happy Ruthenians. As the farmer explained, frontline soldiers, regardless of which flag they serve under, are seldom told the real reasons behind their orders. Unprepared for this sudden attention and civil-military problem, Kozak had no idea what to do. After trying to explain that they were not there on behalf of the Ruthenians, she gave up, letting the farmer and all his relatives, and other fanners and villagers from the area who came to visit their

“liberators,” believe what they wanted. Besides, the Ruthenians, despite their obvious difficulties in making ends meet, were always ready to give Kozak’s soldiers fresh bread, sweets, and warm home-cooked meals. Though she felt bad knowing that they were accepting the gifts from the Ruthenians under false pretenses, Kozak saw no way of stopping it. So she let it go and tended to the military matters for which she was trained.

Not that there was after the seventh of January a great deal to do professionally. After being repulsed in their predawn assault, the Ukrainian armored brigade, stalled on the south bank of the river, was worked over by the aging but venerable A-10 Warthogs. Coming in low and slow, the A-10s nailed anything that even looked like it was of military value. When the Ruthenian farmer later told Kozak that a number of refugee columns flowing out of Chop had been shot up by accident, Kozak questioned the air liaison officer who had joined her company about it. He shrugged off the concern by flatly stating that there was always the possibility of collateral damage when operating in densely populated areas. When asked by Kozak exactly what he meant by collateral damage, the Air Force captain looked at her as if he didn’t believe she had to ask, and then answered in his casual, matter-of-fact manner, “Oh, it’s damage to civilian structures or personnel, usually civilians that are in the vicinity of the target but aren’t part of the strike’s objective.” Seeing an expression of disapproval creep across her face, the Air Force captain continued. “You know, when an A-10 comes rolling in at treetop level at over four hundred miles an hour, the pilot doesn’t have a whole lot of time to separate the wheat from the chaff. When enemy tanks and refugees are sharing the road, collateral damage is unavoidable.” Though she didn’t know exactly how to feel about this, Kozak was glad to find out that the Ukrainians had given up their efforts to stay in close proximity and had pulled back from the river in an effort to escape the pounding from the air. There was a price that needed to be paid by someone, she realized, for everything.

With the immediate threat removed and casualties from the first day’s fight tended to, Kozak turned to reorganizing and resting her company, while at the same time maintaining her command at a high state of vigilance. For the infantry and engineer platoons, this was no problem. Though the infantry platoons, as is traditional, suffered the majority of the casualties, their morale was high and they remained motivated and ready. This, however, was not the case with the tank platoon. Though it did play a pivotal role in the final defeat of the Ukrainian assault river crossing, the poor performance of their platoon leader, and the loss of one of their own to friendly fire, left a pall hanging over the entire unit.

Kozak did little to dispel this. Had it been a training exercise, she would have been able to shrug off Lieutenant Ellerbee’s errors, just as she had done with other new lieutenants. But Kozak had lost her objectivity. Her own brush with death during the fight along the Latorica River, coupled with the accidental death of Ellerbee’s gunner to friendly fire, a death that she viewed as both tragic and avoidable, had destroyed her ability to view Ellerbee in the detached and professional manner that she knew she should. As hard as she tried to reason with herself, Kozak continued to discover that she was, after all, very human. Though her mind told her that such errors and transgressions were unavoidable in the heat of battle, she found that she could not forgive Ellerbee for the very real professional shortfalls that had almost cost her and her crew their lives, and what she perceived as a poor attitude.

Having determined that she would never be able to fully accept Ellerbee as a responsible combat leader, Kozak did little to hide the contempt in which she held him. It showed in the manner in which she ignored him and the disdain in her voice when she spoke of him. When Kozak called for a meeting of all platoon leaders the night after the battle, she made it a point that she wanted Ellerbee’s platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Rourk, to accompany him to the meeting. When, after the meeting, Rourk asked to see Kozak alone, pointing out that it was foolish for both him and Ellerbee to come to her meetings, Kozak didn’t bat an eye. She simply looked straight at Rourk and told him, “Yes, you have a point. In the future leave him behind.”

Kozak’s efforts to remove Ellerbee or his platoon were frustrated by the brigade commander. His order that Ellerbee and his platoon stay where they were until he had an opportunity to personally review the situation pleased neither Kozak nor Ellerbee. When she went to Lieutenant Colonel Rick Zacharzuk, her battalion commander, to request that he request that the brigade commander reconsider his decision, Zacharzuk, nicknamed Ricky Z, refused to bring the matter up to Dixon. “Things are getting a little hairy right now, especially with this German thing,” he told Kozak. “Though I agree with you, I’m afraid the brigade commander has one hell of a lot on his mind. Until we’re out of Ukrainian territory and the situation in Germany is clarified, I have no intention of bothering him with this.” Then, noticing that Kozak’s shoulders physically slumped when he told her that, Ricky Z tried to soften the blow. “Look, Nancy. In another day we’ll be back in an assembly area in Slovakia. Once we’re there, I don’t care if you surround Ellerbee and his tanks with barbed wire and post guards on them. I imagine we’ll sit there while the powers that be sort out all the hard feelings between Berlin and Washington and all the little nukes are back in hand. Until then, you’ll have to make the best of a bad situation.”

As if her dark thoughts had conjured them up out of the river, Kozak heard Ellerbee’s tanks rumble across the bridge and begin to close on the spot where her Bradley sat. Though she knew she was being petty and unprofessional, Kozak couldn’t hide the feeling of disdain she felt every time she thought about Ellerbee. The mere image of the tanks passing her position, great black hulks against the dark overcast sky, caused Kozak’s blood pressure to rise. Counting them in order to make sure that they were all clear of the bridge before she gave Lieutenant Matto permission to blow the bridge, only Ricky Z’s promise to get Colonel Dixon to resolve the Ellerbee issue as soon as things settled down allowed Kozak to carry on in what she considered to be an intolerable situation.