The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [304]
"I think you're right, Duke. You know, sometimes I kinda wish the Cold War could come back—for training purposes, anyway. The Germans won't let us play the way we used to back then, and that's what we need to take the next step."
"Unless somebody springs for the tickets to fly a brigade out to California." Masterman nodded.
"That ain't gonna happen, Duke," Diggs told his operations officer. And more was the pity. First Tanks' troops were almost ready to give the Blackhorse a run for their money. Close enough, Diggs thought, that he'd pay to watch. "How's a beer grab you, Colonel?"
"If the General is buying, I will gladly assist him in spending his money," Duke Masterman said graciously, as their sergeant driver pulled up to the kazerne's O-Club.
"Good morning, Comrade General," Gogol said, pulling himself to attention.
Bondarenko had felt guilt at coming to see this old soldier so early in the morning, but he'd heard the day before that the ancient warrior was not one to waste daylight. And so he wasn't, the general saw.
"You kill wolves," Gennady Iosifovich observed, seeing the gleaming pelts hanging on the wall of this rough cabin.
"And bear, but when you gild the pelts, they grow too heavy," the old man agreed, fetching tea for his guests.
"These are amazing," Colonel Aliyev said, touching one of the remaining wolf pelts. Most had been carried off.
"It's an amusement for an old hunter," Gogol said, lighting a cigarette.
General Bondarenko looked at his rifles, the new Austrian-made one, and the old Russian M1891 Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle.
"How many with this one?" Bondarenko asked.
"Wolves, bears?"
"Germans," the general clarified, with coldness in his voice.
"I stopped counting at thirty, Comrade General. That was before Kiev. There were many more after that. I see we share a decoration," Gogol observed, pointing to his visitor's gold star, for Hero of the Soviet Union, which he'd won in Afghanistan. Gogol had two, one from Ukraine and the other in Germany.
"You have the look of a soldier, Pavel Petrovich, and a good one." Bondarenko sipped his tea, served properly, a clear glass in a metal—was it silver?—holder.
"I served in my time. First at Stalingrad, then on the long walk to Berlin."
I bet you did walk all the way, too, the general thought. He'd met his share of Great Patriotic War veterans, now mostly dead. This wizened old bastard had stared death in the face and spat at it, trained to do so, probably, by his life in these woods. He'd grown up with bears and wolves as enemies—as nasty as the German fascists had been, at least they didn't eat you—and so had been accustomed to wagering his life on his eye and his nerve. There was no real substitute for that, the kind of training you couldn't institute for an army. A gifted few learned how the hard way, and of those the lucky ones survived the war. Pavel Petrovich hadn't had an easy time. Soldiers might admire their own snipers, might value them for their skills, but you could never say "comrade" to a man who hunted men as though they were animals—because on the other side of the line might be another such man who wanted to hunt you. Of all the enemies, that was the one you loathed and feared the most, because it became personal to see another man through a telescopic sight, to see his face, and take his life as a deliberate act against one man, even gazing at his face when the bullet struck. Gogol had been one of those, Gennady thought, a hunter of individual men. And he'd probably never lost a minute's sleep over it. Some men were just born to it, and Pavel Petrovich Gogol was one of them. With a few hundred thousand such men, a general could conquer the entire world, but they were too rare for that …
… and maybe that was a good thing, Bondarenko mused.
"Might you come to my headquarters some night? I would like to feed you dinner and listen to your stories."
"How far is it?"
"I will send you my personal