by Tom Clancy
It’s like a five-year-old in a gun store,” Secretary Winston observed. ”These people have no business making economic decisions for a city government, much less a major country. I mean, hell, as stupid as the Japanese were a few years ago, at least they know to listen to the coaches.”
“And?”
“And when they run into the brick wall, their eyes’ll still be closed. That can smart some, Jack. They’re going to get bit on the ass, and they don’t see it coming.” Winston could mix metaphors with the best of ’em, Ryan saw.
“When?” SWORDSMAN asked.
“Depends on how many companies do what Butterfly did. We’ll know more in a few days. The fashion business will be the lead indicator, of all things.”
“Really?”
“Surprised me, too, but this is the time for them to commit to the next season, and there’s a ton of money in that business going on over there, man. Toss in all the toys for next Christmas. There’s seventeen billion-plus just in that, Mark Gant tells me.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, I didn’t know Santa’s reindeer had slanted eyes either, Jack. At least not to that extent.”
“What about Taiwan?” Ryan wondered.
“You’re not kidding. They’re jumping into the growing gap with both feet. Figure they pick up a quarter, maybe a third, of what the PRC is going to lose. Singapore’s going to be next. And the Thais. This little bump in the road will go a long way to restore the damage done to their economy a few years back. In fact, the PRC’s troubles might rebuild the whole South Asian economy. It could be a swing of fifty billion dollars out of China, and it has to go somewhere. We’re starting to take bids, Jack. It won’t be a bad deal for our consumers, and I’ll bet those countries learn from Beijing’s example, and kick their doors open a notch or so. So, our workers will profit from it, too-somewhat, anyway.”
“Downside?”
“Boeing’s squealing some. They wanted that triple-seven order, but you wait an’ see. Somebody’s going to take up that slack, too. One other thing.”
“Yeah?” Ryan asked.
“It’s not just American companies bailing out on them. Two big Italian places, and Siemens in Germany, they’ve announced termination of some business with their Chinese partners,” TRADER said.
“Will it turn into a general movement …?”
“Too soon to say, but if I were these guys”-Winston shook the fax from CIA-“I’d be thinking about fence-mending real soon.”
“They won’t do it, George.”
“Then they’re going to learn a nasty lesson.”
CHAPTER 39 The Other Question
No action with our friend?” Reilly asked.
“Well, he continues his sexual adventures,” Provalov answered.
“Talk to any of the girls yet?”
“Earlier today, two of them. He pays them well, in euros or d-marks, and doesn’t request any, uh, ‘exotic’ services from them.”
“Nice to know he’s normal in his tastes,” the FBI agent observed, with a grunt.
“We have numerous photos of him now. We’ve put an electronic tracker on his cars, and we’ve also planted a bug on his computer keyboard. That’ll allow us to determine his encryption password, next time he makes use of it.”
“But he hasn’t done anything incriminating yet,” Reilly said. He didn’t even make it a question.
“Not under our observation,” Oleg confirmed.
“Damn, so, he was really trying to whack Sergey Golovko. Hard to believe, man.”
“That is so, but we cannot deny it. And on Chinese orders.”
“That’s like an act of war, buddy. It’s a big fucking deal.” Reilly took a sip of his vodka.
“So it is, Mishka. Rather more complex than any case I’ve handled this year.” It was, Provalov thought, an artful understatement. He’d gladly go back to a normal homicide, a husband killing his wife for fucking a neighbor, or the other way around. Such things, nasty as they were, were far less nasty than this one was.
“How’s he pick the girls up, Oleg?” Reilly asked.
“He doesn’t call for them on the phone. He seems to go to a good restaurant with a good bar and wait until a likely prospect appears at his elbow.”
“Hmm, plant a girl on him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean get yourself a pretty girl who does this sort of thing for a living, brief her on what she ought to say, and set her in front of him like a nice fly on your fishhook. If he picks her up, maybe she can get him to talk.”
“Have you ever done such a thing?”
“We got a wiseguy that way in Jersey City three years ago. Liked to brag in front of women how tough he was, and the guys he whacked, that sort of thing. He’s in Rahway State Prison now on a murder rap. Oleg, a lot more people have talked their way into prison than you’ll ever catch on your own. Trust me. That’s how it is for us, even.”
“I wonder if the Sparrow School has any graduates working …?” Provalov mused.
It wasn’t fair to do it at night, but nobody had ever said war was marked by fairness in its execution. Colonel Boyle was in his command post monitoring the operation of 1st Armored’s Aviation Brigade. It was mainly his Apaches, though some Kiowa Warriors were up, too, as scouts for the heavy shooters. The target was a German heavy battalion, simulating a night’s laagering after a day on the offense. In fact, they were pretending to be Russians-it was a NATO scenario that went back thirty years to the introduction of the first Huey Cobras, back in the 1970s, when the value of a helicopter gunship had first been noticed in Vietnam. And a revelation it had been. Armed for the first time in 1972 with TOW missiles, they’d proven to the tanks of the North Vietnamese just how fearsome a foe a missile-armed chopper could be, and that had been before night-vision systems had come fully on line. Now the Apache turned combat operations into sport shooting, and the Germans were still trying to figure a counter for it. Even their own night-vision gear didn’t compensate for the huge advantage held by the airborne hunters. One idea that had almost worked was to lay a thermal-insulating blanket over the tanks so as to deny the helicopters the heat signature by which they hunted their motionless prey, but the problem there was the tank’s main gun tube, which had proved impractical to conceal, and the blankets had never really worked properly, any more than a twin-bed coverlet could be stretched over a king-size bed. And so, now, the Apaches’ laser-illumination systems were “painting” the Leos for enough seconds to guarantee hits from the Hellfire missiles, and while the German tanks tried to shoot back, they couldn’t seem to make it work. And now the yellow “I’m dead” lights were blinking, and yet another tank battalion had fallen victim to yet another administrative attack.
“They should have tried putting SAM teams outside their perimeter,” Colonel Boyle observed, watching the computer screen. Instead, the German colonel had tried IR lures, which the Apache gunners had learned to distinguish from the real thing. Under the rules of the scenario, proper tank decoys had not been allowed. They were a little harder to discriminate-the American-made ones almost exactly replicated the visual signature of an M1 tank, and had an internal heat source for fooling infrared gear at night-and fired off a Hoffman pyrotechnic charge to simulate a return shot when they took a hit. But they were made so well for their mission that they could not be mistaken for anything other than what they were, either a real M1 main battle tank, and hence friendly, or a decoy, and thus not really useful in a training exercise, all in all a case of battlefield technology being too good for a training exercise.
“Pegasus Lead to Archangel, over,” the digital radio called. With the new radios, it was no longer a static-marred crackle.
“Archangel to Pegasus,” Colonel Boyle answered.
“Sir, we are Winchester and just about out of targets. No friendly casualties. Pegasus is RTB, over.”
“Roger, Pegasus. Looks good from here. Out.”
And with that, the Apache battalion of attack choppers
and their Kiowa bird-dogs turned back for their airfield for the mission debrief and post-game beers.
Boyle looked over at General Diggs. “Sir, I don’t know how to do it much better than that.”
“Our hosts are going to be pissed.”
“The Bundeswehr isn’t what it used to be. Their political leadership thinks peace has broken out all the way, and their troopers know it. They could have put some of their own choppers up to run interference, but my boys are pretty good at air-to-air-we train for it, and my pilots really like the idea of making ace on their own-but their chopper drivers aren’t getting all the gas they need for operational training. Their best chopper drivers are down in the Balkans doing traffic observation.”
Diggs nodded thoughtfully. The problems of the Bundeswehr were not, strictly speaking, his problems. “Colonel, that was well done. Please convey my pleasure to your people. What’s next for you?”
“General, we have a maintenance stand-down tomorrow, and two days later we’re going to run a major search-and-rescue exercise with my Blackhawks. You’re welcome to come over and watch.”
“I just might, Colonel Boyle. You done good. Be seeing you.”
“Yes, sir.” The colonel saluted, and General Diggs walked out to his HMMWV, with Colonel Masterman in attendance.
“Well, Duke?”
“Like I told you, sir, Boyle’s been feeding his boys and girls a steady diet of nails and human babies.”
“Well, his next fitness report’s going to get him a star, I think.”
“His Apache commander’s not bad either.”
“That’s a fact,” the divisional G-3 agreed. “Pegasus” was his call sign, and he’d kicked some serious ass this night.
“What’s next?”
“Sir, in three days we have a big SimNet exercise against the Big Red One at Fort Riley. Our boys are pretty hot for it.”
“Divisional readiness?” Diggs asked.
“We’re pushing ninety-five percent, General. Not much slack left to take up. I mean, sir, to go any farther, we gotta take the troops out to Fort Irwin or maybe the Negev Training Area. Are we as good as the Tenth Cav or the Eleventh? No, we don’t get to play in the field as much as they do.” And, he didn’t have to add, no division in any army in the world got the money to train that hard. “But given the limitations we have to live with, there’s not a whole lot more we can do. I figure we play hard on SimNet to keep the kids interested, but we’re just about as far as we can go, sir.”
“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 helicopter, Sergeant Gogol.”
“And I will bring you a gilded wolf,” the hunter promised his guest.
“We will find an honored place for it at my headquarters,” Bondarenko promised in turn. “Thank you for your tea. I must depart and see to my command, but I will have you to headquarters for dinner, Sergeant Gogol.” Handshakes were exchanged, and the general took his leave.
“I would not want him on the other side of a battlefield,” Colonel Aliyev observed, as they got into their helicopter.
“Do we have a sniper school in the command?”
“Yes, General, but it’s mainly inactive.”
Gennady turned. “Start it up again, Andrushka! We’ll get Gogol to come and teach the children how it’s done. He’s a priceless asset. Men like that are the soul of a fighting army. It’s our job to command our soldiers, to tell them where to go and what to do, but those are the men who do the fighting and the killing, and it’s our job to make sure they’re properly trained and supplied. And when they’re too old, we use them to teach the new boys, to give them heroes they can touch and talk to. How the hell did we ever forget that, Andrey?” The general shook his head as the helicopter lifted off.
Gregory was back in his hotel room, with three hundred pages of technical information to digest as he sipped his Diet Coke and finished off his french fries. Something was wrong with the whole equation, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The Navy had tested its Standard-2-ER missile against all manner of threats, mainly on computer, but also against live
targets at Kwajalein Atoll. It had done pretty well, but there’d never been a full-up live test against a for-real ICBM reentry vehicle. There weren’t enough of them to go around. Mainly they used old Minuteman-II ICBMs, long since retired from service and fired out of test silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but those were mostly gone. Russia and America had retired all of their ballistic weapons, chiefly as a reaction to the nuclear terrorist explosion at Denver and the even more horrific aftermath that had barely been averted. The negotiations to draw the numbers down to zero-the last ones had been eliminated in public just before the Japanese had launched their sneak attack on the Pacific Fleet-had gone so rapidly that a lot of the minor ancillary points had scarcely been considered, and only later had it been decided to take the “spare” launchers whose disposition had somehow been overlooked and retain them for ABM testing (every month a Russian officer checked the American ones at Vandenberg, and an American officer counted the Russian ones outside Plesetsk). The ABM tests were also monitored, but that entire area of effort was now largely theoretical. Both America and Russia retained a goodly number of nuclear warheads, and these could easily be affixed to cruise missiles, which, again, both sides had in relative abundance and no country could stop. It might take five hours instead of thirty-four minutes, but the targets would be just as dead.
Anti-missile work had been relegated to theater missiles, such as the ubiquitous Scuds, which the Russians doubtless regretted ever having built, much less sold to jerkwater countries that couldn’t even field a single decent mechanized division, but who loved to parade those upgraded V-2-class ballistic stovepipes because they looked impressive as hell to the people on the sidewalks. But the new upgrades on Patriot and its Russian counterpart SAM largely negated that threat, and the Navy’s Aegis system had been tested against them, with pretty good success. Like Patriot, though, Standard was really a point-defense weapon with damned little cross-range ability to cover an area instead of maybe twenty square miles of important sea-estate.