by Tom Clancy
Family members had descended on Washington, most of them flown in by the Air Force from California. Equally shocked, they nevertheless, in the presence of children, had to summon from within themselves the strength to make things somewhat easier for the young. And it gave them something to do. The Secret Service agents assigned to JUNIPER and JUNIOR were probably the most traumatized of all. Trained to be ferociously protective of any “principal,” the agents who looked after the Durling kids—more than half were women—carried the additional burden of the normal solicitude any human held for any child, and none of them would have hesitated a microsecond to give his or her life to protect the youngsters- in the knowledge that the rest of the Detail would have weapons out and blazing. The men and women of this sub-detail had played with the kids, had bought them Christmas and birthday presents, had helped with homework. Now they were saying good-bye, to the kids, to the parents, and to colleagues. Ryan saw the looks on their faces, and made a mental note to ask Andrea if the Service would assign a psychologist to them.
“No, it didn’t hurt.” Jack was sitting down so that the kids could look level into his eyes. “It didn’t hurt at all.”
“Okay,” Mark Durling said. The kids were immaculately dressed. One of the family members had thought it important that they be properly turned out to meet their father’s successor. Jack heard a gasp of breath, and his peripheral vision caught the face of an agent—this one a man—who was on the edge of losing it. Price grabbed his arm and moved him toward the door, before the kids could take note of it.
“Do we stay here?”
“Yes,” Jack assured him. It was a lie, but not the sort to hurt anyone. “And if you need anything, anything at all, you can come and see me, okay?”
The boy nodded, doing his best to be brave, and it was time to leave him to his family. Ryan squeezed his hand, treating him like the man he ought not to have become for years, for whom the duties of manhood were arriving all too soon. The boy needed to cry, and Ryan thought he needed to do that alone, for now.
Jack walked out the door into the oversized hall of the bedroom level. The agent who’d left, a tall, rugged-looking black man, was sobbing ten feet away. Ryan went over to him.
“You okay?”
“Fuck—sorry—I mean—shit!” the agent shook his head, ashamed at the display of emotion. His father had been lost in an Army training accident at Fort Rucker, Price knew, when he was twelve years old, and Special Agent Tony Wills, who’d played tight end at Grambling before joining the Service, was unusually good with kids. At times like this, strengths often became weaknesses.
“Don’t apologize for being human. I lost my mom and dad, too. Same time,” Ryan went on, his voice dreamy and uneven with fatigue. “Midway Airport, 737 landed short in snow. But I was all grown up when it happened.”
“I know, sir.” The agent wiped his eyes and stood erect with a shudder. “I’ll be okay.”
Ryan patted him on the shoulder and headed for the elevator. To Andrea Price: “Get me the hell out of here.”
The Suburban headed north, turning left onto Massachusetts Avenue, which led to the Naval Observatory and the oversized Victorian-gingerbread barn which the country provided for the sitting Vice President. Again, it was guarded by Marines, who let the convoy through. Jack walked into the house. Cathy was waiting at the entry. She only needed one look.
“Tough one?”
All Ryan could do was nod. He held her tight, knowing that his tears would start soon. His eyes caught the knot of agents around the periphery of the entry hall of the house, and it occurred to him that he’d have to get used to them, standing like impassive statues, present in the most private of moments.
I hate this job.
BUT BRIGADIER GENERAL Marion Diggs loved his. Not everyone had stood down. As the Marine Barracks in Washington had gone to a high level of activity, then to be augmented from the sprawling base at Quantico, Virginia, so other organizations remained busy or became busier, for they were people who were not really allowed to sleep anyway—at least not all of them at once. One of these organizations was at Fort Irwin, California. Located in the high Mojave Desert, the base really did sprawl, over an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. The landscape was bleak enough that ecologists had to struggle to find an ecology there among the scrawny creosote bushes, and over drinks even the most dedicated of that profession would confess to finding the surface of the moon far more interesting. Not that they hadn’t made his life miserable, Diggs thought, fingering his binoculars. There was a species of desert tortoise, which was distinguished from a turtle somehow or other (the general didn’t have a clue), and which soldiers had to protect. To take care of that, his soldiers had collected all the tortoises they could find and then relocated them to an enclosure large enough that the reptiles probably didn’t notice the fence at all. It was known locally as the world’s largest turtle bordello. With that out of the way, whatever other wildlife existed at Fort Irwin seemed quite able to look after itself. The occasional coyote appeared and disappeared, and that was that. Besides, coyotes were not endangered.
The visitors were. Fort Irwin was home to the Army’s National Training Center. The permanent residents of that establishment were the OpFor, “the opposing force.” Originally two battalions, one of armor and the other of mechanized infantry, the OpFor had once styled itself the “32nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment,” a Soviet designation, because at its opening in the 1980s, the NTC had been designed to teach the U.S. Army how to fight, survive, and prevail in a battle against the Red Army on the plains of Europe. The soldiers of the “32nd” dressed in Russian-style uniforms, drove Soviet-like equipment (the real Russian vehicles had proved too difficult to maintain, and American gear had been modified to Soviet shapes), employed Russian tactics, and took pride in kicking the hell out of the units that came to play on their turf. It wasn’t strictly fair. The OpFor lived here and trained here, and hosted regular units up to fourteen times per year, whereas the visiting team might be lucky to come here once in four years. But nobody had ever said war was fair.
Times had changed with the demise of the Soviet Union, but the mission of the NTC had not. The OpFor had recently been enlarged to three battalions—now called “squadrons,” because the unit had assumed the identity of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the Blackhorse Cav—and simulated brigade or larger enemy formations. The only real concession to the new political world was that they didn’t call themselves Russians anymore. Now they were “Krasnovians,” a word, however, derived from krasny, Russian for “red.”
General-Lieutenant Gennady Tosefovich Bondarenko knew most of this—the turtle bordello was something on which he’d not been briefed; his initial tour of the base had taken care of that, however—and was as excited as he had ever been.
“You started in Signal Corps?” Diggs asked. The base commander was terse of speech and efficient of movement, dressed in desert-camouflage fatigues called “chocolate chip” from their pattern. He, too, had been fully briefed, though, like his visitor, he had to pretend that he hadn’t been.
“Correct.” Bondarenko nodded. “But I kept getting into trouble. First Afghanistan, then when the Mudje raided into Soviet Union. They attacked a defense-research facility in Tadzhik when I was visitor there. Brave fighters, but unevenly led. We managed to hold them off,” the Russian reported in a studied monotone. Diggs could see the decorations that had resulted; he had commanded a cavalry squadron leading Barry McCaffrey’s 24th Mechanized Infantry Division in a wild ride on the American left during Desert Storm, then gone on to command the 10th “Buffalo” ACR, still based in the Negev Desert, as part of America’s commitment to Israeli security. Both men were forty-nine. Both had smelled the smoke. Both were on the way up.
“You have country like this at home?” Diggs asked.
“We have every sort of terrain you can imagine. It makes training a challenge, especially today. There,” he said. “It’s started.”
&n
bsp; The first group of tanks was rolling now, down a broad, U-shaped pass called the Valley of Death. The sun was setting behind the brown-colored mountains, and darkness came rapidly here. Scuttling around also were the HMMWVs of the observer-controllers, the gods of the NTC, who watched everything and graded what they saw as coldly as Death himself. The NTC was the world’s most exciting school. The two generals could have observed the battle back at base headquarters in a place called the Star Wars Room. Every vehicle was wired, transmitting its location, direction of movement, and when the time came, where it was shooting and whether it scored a hit or not. From that data, the computers at Star Wars sent out signals, telling people when they had died, though rarely why. That fact they learned later from the observer-controllers. The generals didn’t want to watch computer screens, however Bondarenko’s staff officers were doing that, but the place for their general was here. Every battlefield had a smell, and generals had to have the nose for it.
“Your instrumentation is like something from a science novel.”
Diggs shrugged. “Not much changed from fifteen years ago. We have more TV cameras on the hilltops now, though.” America would be selling much of that technology to the Russians. That was a little hard for Diggs to accept. He’d been too young for Vietnam. His was the first generation of flag officers to have avoided that entanglement. But Diggs had grown up with one reality in his life: fighting the Russians in Germany. A cavalry officer for his entire career, he’d trained to be in one of the forward-deployed regiments—really, augmented brigades—to make first contact. Diggs could remember a few times when it had seemed pretty damned likely that he’d find his death in the Fulda Gap, facing somebody like the man standing next to him, with whom he’d killed a six-pack the night before over stories of how turtles reproduced.
“In,” Bondarenko said with a sly grin. Somehow the Americans thought Russians were humorless. He had to correct that misimpression before he left.
Diggs counted ten before his deadpan reply: “Out.”
Ten more seconds: “In.” Then both started laughing. When first introduced to the favorite base joke, it had taken half a minute for Bondarenko to get it. But the resulting laughter had ended up causing abdominal pain. He recovered control and pointed. “This is the way war should be.”
“It gets pretty tense. Wait and see.”
“You use our tactics!” That was plain from the way the reconnaissance screen deployed across the valley.
Diggs turned. “Why not? They worked for me in Iraq.”
The scenario for this night—the first engagement for the training rotation—was a tough one: Red Force in the attack, advance-to-contact, and eliminate the Blue Force reconnaissance screen. The Blue Force in this case was a brigade of the 5th Mechanized Division conducting hasty defense. The overall idea was that this was a very fluid tactical situation. The 11th ACR was simulating a division attack on a newly arrived force one third its theoretical size. It was, really, the best way to welcome people to the desert. Let them eat dirt.
“Let’s get moving.” Diggs hopped back into his HMMWV, and the driver moved off to a piece of high ground called the Iron Triangle. A short radio message from his senior OC made the American general growl. “God damn it!”
“Problem?”
General Diggs held up a map. “That hill is the most important piece of real estate in the valley, but they didn’t see it. Well, they’re going to pay for that little misjudgment. Happens every time.” Already, the OpFor had people racing for the unoccupied summit.
“To push that far that fast, is it prudent for Blue?”
“General, it sure as hell ain’t prudent not to, as you will see.”
“WHY HASN’T HE spoken more, appeared in public more?”
The intelligence chief could have said many things. President Ryan was undoubtedly busy. So many things to do. The government of his country was in shambles, and before he could speak, he had to organize it. He had a state funeral to plan. He had to speak to numerous foreign governments, to give them the usual assurances. He had to secure things, not the least of which was his own personal safety. The American Cabinet, the President’s principal advisers, was gone and had to be reconstituted ... but that was not what he wanted to hear.
“We have been researching this Ryan,” was the answer given. Mainly from newspaper stories—a lot of them—faxed from his government’s UN mission. “He has made few public speeches before this day, and then only to present the thoughts of his masters. He was an intelligence officer—actually an ‘inside’ man, an analyst. Evidently a good one, but an inside person.”
“So, why did Durling elevate him so?”
“That was in the American papers yesterday. Their government requires a vice-presidential presence. Durling also wanted someone to firm up his international-affairs team, and in this Ryan had some experience. He performed well, remember, in their conflict with Japan.”
“An assistant then, not a leader.”
“Correct. He has never aspired to high office. Our information is that he agreed to the second post as a caretaker, for less than a year.”
“I am not surprised.” Daryaei looked at the notes: assistant to Vice Admiral James Greer, the DDI/CIA; briefly the acting DDI; then Deputy Director of Central Intelligence; then National Security Advisor to President Durling; finally he’d accepted the temporary post of Vice President. His impressions of this Ryan person had been correct from the very beginning: a helper. Probably a skilled one, as he himself had skilled assistants, none of whom, however, could assume his own duties. He was not dealing with an equal. Good. “What else?”
“As an intelligence specialist, he will be unusually well informed of foreign affairs. In fact, his knowledge of such things may be the best America has had in recent years, but at the cost of near-ignorance of domestic issues,” the briefing officer went on. This tidbit had come from the New York Times.
“Ah.” And with that bit of information, the planning started. At this point it was merely a mental exercise, but that would soon change.
“SO, HOW ARE things in your army?” Diggs asked. The two generals stood alone atop the principal terrain feature, watching the battle play out below them with low-light viewing gear. As predicted, the 32nd—Bondarenko had to think of them that way—had overwhelmed the Blue Force reconnaissance screen, maneuvered to the left, and was now rolling up the “enemy” brigade. With the lack of real casualties, it was a lovely thing to watch as the blinking yellow “dead” lights lit up one by one. Then he had to answer the question.
“Dreadful. We face the task of rebuilding everything from the ground up.”
Diggs turned. “Well, sir, that’s where I came in at.” At least you don’t have to deal with drugs, the American thought. He could remember being a new second lieutenant, and afraid to enter barracks without sidearms. If the Russians had made their move in the early 1970s... “You really want to use our model?”
“Perhaps.” The only thing the Americans got wrong—and right—was that the Red Force allowed tactical initiative for its sub-unit commanders, something the Soviet Army would never have done. But, combined with doctrine developed by the Voroshilov Academy, the results were plain to see. That was something to remember, and Bondarenko had broken rules in his own tactical encounters, which was one reason why he was a living three-star instead of a dead colonel. He was also the newly appointed chief of operations for the Russian Army. “The problem is money, of course.”
“I’ve heard that song before, General.” Diggs allowed himself a rueful chuckle.
Bondarenko had a plan for that. He wanted to cut the size of his army by fifty percent, and the money saved would go directly into training the remaining half. The results of such a plan he could see before him. Traditionally, the Soviet Army had depended on mass, but the Americans had proven both here and in Iraq that training was master of the battlefield. As good as their equipment was—he’d get his matériel briefing tomorrow—he envied Diggs hi
s personnel more than anything. Proof of that arrived the moment he formed the thought.
“General?” The new arrival saluted. “Blackhorse! We stripped their knickers right off.”
“This is Colonel Al Hamm. He’s CO of the 11th. His second tour here. He used to be OpFor operations officer. Don’t play cards with him,” Diggs warned.
“The general is too kind. Welcome to the desert, General Bondarenko.” Hamm extended a large hand.
“Your attack was well executed, Colonel.” The Russian examined him.
“Thank you, sir. I have some great kids working for me. Blue Force was overly tentative. We caught them between two chairs,” Hamm explained. He looked like a Russian, Bondarenko thought, tall and meaty with a pale, florid complexion surrounding twinkling blue eyes. For this occasion, Hamm was dressed in his old “Russian”-style uniform, complete with a red star on the tanker’s beret, and his pistol belt outside the over-long blouse. It didn’t quite make the Russian feel at home, but he appreciated the respect the Americans showed him.
“Diggs, you were right. Blue should have done everything to get here first. But you made them start too far back to make that option seem attractive.”
“That’s the problem with battlefields,” Hamm answered for his boss. “Too much of the time they choose you instead of the other way around. That’s lesson number one for the boys of the 5th Mech. If you let anybody else define the terms of the battle, well, it isn’t much fun.”
5
ARRANGEMENTS
IT TURNED OUT THAT both Sato and his co-pilot had donated blood for purposes of helping casualties in the abortive war with America, and the blessedly small numbers of wounded had never called that blood into use. Located by computer search by the Japanese Red Cross, samples had been obtained by the police and dispatched by messenger to Washington, via Vancouver—Japanese commercial aircraft were, understandably, still not permitted to fly into the United States, even Alaska—and an Air Force VC-20 from there to Washington. The courier was a senior police officer, with the aluminum case handcuffed to his left wrist. A trio of FBI agents met him at Andrews and drove him to the Hoover building at Tenth and Pennsylvania. The FBI’s DNA lab took the samples and went to work to compare them with blood and other tissue specimens from the bodies. They already had matches for the blood types, and the results of the tests seemed a foregone conclusion, which would, nonetheless, be treated as though they were the only tenuous clue in a baffling case. Dan Murray, the acting Director, wasn’t exactly a slave to “the book” in criminal investigations, but for the purposes of this case, the book was Holy Writ. Backing him up were Tony Caruso, back from his vacation and working around the clock to head up the Bureau’s side of the investigation, Pat O’Day in his capacity as roving inspector, and a cast of hundreds, if not quite thousands yet. Murray met the Japanese representative in the Director’s conference room. He, too, found it hard to move into Bill Shaw’s office right away.