"Yeah, you just compared the People's Republic of China to n.a.z.i Germany and the Ku Klux Klan."

"Arnie, why is it that the media feel such great solicitude for communist countries?"

"They don't, and-"

"The h.e.l.l they don't! I just compared the PRC to n.a.z.i Germany and they d.a.m.ned near wet their pants. Well, guess what? Mao murdered more people than Hitler did. That's public knowledge-I remember when CIA released the study that doc.u.mented it-but they ignore it. Is some Chinese citizen killed by Mao less dead than some poor Polish b.a.s.t.a.r.d killed by Hitler?"

"Jack, they have their sensibilities," van Damm told his President.

"Yeah? Well, just once in a while, I wish they'd display something I can recognize as a principle." With that, Ryan strode back to his office, practically trailing smoke from his ears.

"Temper, Jack, temper," Arnie said to no one in particular. The President still had to learn the first principle of political life, the ability to treat a son of a b.i.t.c.h like your best friend, because the needs of your nation depended on it. The world would be a better place if it were as simple as Ryan wished, the Chief of Staff thought. But it wasn't, and it showed no prospect of becoming so.

A few blocks away at Foggy Bottom, Scott Adler had finished cringing and was making notes on how to mend the fences that his President had just kicked over. He'd have to sit down with Jack and go over a few things, like the principles he held so dear.

What did you think of that, Gerry?"

"Hosiah, I think we have a real President here. What does your son think of him?"

"Gerry, they've been friends for twenty years, back to when they both taught at the Naval Academy. I've met the man. He's a Catholic, but I think we can overlook that."

"We have to." Patterson almost laughed. "So was one of the guys who got shot yesterday, remember?"

"Italian, too, probably drank a lot of wine."

"Well, Skip was known to have the occasional drink," Patterson told his black colleague.

"I didn't know," Reverend Jackson replied, disturbed at the thought.

"Hosiah, it is an imperfect world we live in."

"Just so he wasn't a dancer." That was almost a joke, but not quite.

"Skip? No, I've never known him to dance," Reverend Patterson a.s.sured his friend. "By the way, I have an idea."

"What's that, Gerry?"

"How about this Sunday you preach at my church, and I preach at yours? I'm sure we're both going to speak on the life and martyrdom of a Chinese man."

"And what pa.s.sage will you base your sermon on?" Hosiah asked, surprised and interested by the suggestion.

"Acts," Patterson replied at once.

Reverend Jackson considered that. It wasn't hard to guess the exact pa.s.sage. Gerry was a fine biblical scholar. "I admire your choice, sir."

"Thank you, Pastor Jackson. What do you think of my other suggestion?"

Reverend Jackson hesitated only a few seconds. "Reverend Patterson, I would be honored to preach at your church, and I gladly extend to you the invitation to preach at my own."

Forty years earlier, when Gerry Patterson had been playing baseball in the church-sponsored Little League, Hosiah Jackson had been a young Baptist preacher, and the mere idea of preaching in Patterson's church could have incited a lynching. But, by the Good Lord, they were men of G.o.d, and they were mourning the death-the martyrdom-of another man of G.o.d of yet another color. Before G.o.d, all men were equal, and that was the whole point of the Faith they shared. Both men were thinking quickly of how they might have to alter their styles, because though both were Baptists, and though both preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Baptist congregations, their communities were a little bit different and required slightly different approaches. But it was an accommodation both men could easily make.

"Thank you, Hosiah. You know, sometimes we have to acknowledge that our faith is bigger than we are."

For his part, Reverend Jackson was impressed. He never doubted the sincerity of his white colleague, and they'd chatted often on matters of religion and scripture. Hosiah would even admit, quietly, to himself, that Patterson was his superior as a scholar of the Holy Word, due to his somewhat lengthier formal education, but of the two, Hosiah Jackson was marginally the better speaker, and so their relative talents played well off each other.

"How about we get together for lunch to work out the details?" Jackson asked.

"Today? I'm free."

"Sure. Where?"

"The country club? You're not a golfer, are you?" Patterson asked hopefully. He felt like a round, and his afternoon was free today for a change.

"Never touched a golf club in my life, Gerry." Hosiah had a good laugh at that. "Robert is, learned at Annapolis and been playing ever since. Says he kicks the President's backside every time they go out." He'd never been to the Willow Glen Country Club either, and wondered if the club had any black members. Probably not. Mississippi hadn't changed quite that much yet, though Tiger Woods had played at a PGA tournament there, and so that color line had been breached, at least.

"Well, he'd probably whip me, too. Next time he comes down, maybe we can play a round." Patterson's membership at Willow Glen was complimentary, another advantage to being pastor of a well-to-do congregation.

And the truth of the matter was that, white or not, Gerry Patterson was not the least bit bigoted, Reverend Jackson knew. He preached the Gospel with a pure heart. Hosiah was old enough to remember when that had not been so, but that, too, had changed once and for all. Praise G.o.d.

For Admiral Mancuso, the issues were the same, and a little different. An early riser, he'd caught CNN the same as everyone else. So had Brigadier General Mike Lahr.

"Okay, Mike, what the h.e.l.l is this all about?" CINCPAC asked when his J-2 arrived for his morning intel brief.

"Admiral, it looks like a monumental cl.u.s.ter-f.u.c.k. Those clergy stuck their noses in a tight crack and paid the price for it. More to the point, NCA is seriously p.i.s.sed." NCA was the code-acronym for National Command Authority, President Jack Ryan.

"What do I need to know about this?"

"Well, things are likely to heat up between America and China, for starters. The trade delegation we have in Beijing is probably going to catch some heat. If they catch too much, well . . ." His voice trailed off.

"Give me worst case," CINCPAC ordered.

"Worst case, the PRC gets its collective back up, and we recall the trade delegation and the amba.s.sador, and things get real chilly for a while."

"Then what?"

"Then-that's more of a political question, but it wouldn't hurt for us to take it a little seriously, sir," Lahr told his boss, who took just about everything seriously.

Mancuso looked at his wall map of the Pacific. Enterprise was back at sea doing exercises between Marcus Island and the Marianas. John Stennis was alongside in Pearl Harbor. Harry Truman was en route to Pearl Harbor after taking the long way around Cape Horn-modern aircraft carriers are far too beamy for the Panama Ca.n.a.l. Lincoln was finishing up a bobtail refit in San Diego and about to go back to sea. Kitty Hawk and Independence, his two old, oil-fired carriers, were both in the Indian Ocean. At that, he was lucky. First and Seventh Fleets had six carriers fully operational for the first time in years. So, if he needed to project power, he had the a.s.sets to give people something to think about. He also had a lot of Air Force aircraft at his disposal. The 3rd Marine Division and the Army's 25th Light based right there in Hawaii wouldn't play in this picture. The Navy might b.u.mp heads with the ChiComms, and the Air Force, but he lacked the amphibious a.s.sets to invade China, and besides, he wasn't insane enough to think that was a rational course of action under any circ.u.mstances.

"What do we have in Taiwan right now?"

"Mobile Bay, Milius, Chandler, and Fletcher are showing the flag. Frigates Curtis and Reid are doing operations with the ROC navy. The submarines La Jolla, Helena, and Tennessee are trolling in the Formosa Strait or along the Chinese coast looking at their fleet units."

Mancuso nodded. He usually kept some high-end SAM ships close to Taiwan. Milius was a Burke-cla.s.s destroyer, and Mobile Bay was a cruiser, both of them with the Aegis system aboard to make the ROC feel a little better about the putative missile threat to their island. Mancuso didn't think the Chinese were foolish enough to launch an attack against a city with some U.S. Navy ships tied alongside, and the Aegis ships had a fair chance of stopping anything that flew their way. But you never knew, and if this Beijing incident blew up any more . . . He lifted the phone for SURFPAC, the three-star who administratively owned Pacific Fleet's surface ships.

"Yeah," answered Vice Admiral Ed Goldsmith.

"Ed, Bart. What material shape are those ships we have in Taipei harbor in?"

"You're calling about the thing on CNN, right?"

"Correct," CINCPAC confirmed.

"Pretty good. No material deficiencies I know about. They're doing the usual port-visit routine, letting people aboard and all. Crews are spending a lot of time on the beach."

Mancuso didn't have to ask what they were doing on the beach. He'd been a young sailor once, though never on Taiwan.

"Might not hurt for them to keep their ears perked up some."

"Noted," SURFPAC acknowledged. Mancuso didn't have to say more. The ships would now stand alternating Condition-Three on their combat systems. The SPY radars would be turned on aboard one of the Aegis ships at all times. One nice thing about Aegis ships was that they could go from half-asleep to fully operational in about sixty seconds; it was just a matter of turning some keys. They'd have to be a little careful. The SPY radar put out enough power to fry electronic components for miles around, but it was just a matter of how you steered the electronic beams, and that was computer-controlled. "Okay, sir, I'll get the word out right now."

"Thanks, Ed. I'll get you fully briefed in later today."

"Aye, aye," SURFPAC replied. He'd put a call to his squadron commanders immediately.

"What else?" Mancuso wondered.

"We haven't heard anything directly from Washington, Admiral," BG Lahr told his boss.

"Nice thing about being a CINC, Mike. You're allowed to think on your own a little."

What a f.u.c.king mess," General-Colonel Bondarenko observed to his drink. He wasn't talking about the news of the day, but about his command, even though the officers' club in Chabarsovil was comfortable. Russian general officers have always liked their comforts, and the building dated back to the czars. It had been built during the Russo-j.a.panese war at the beginning of the previous century and expanded several times. You could see the border between pre-revolution and post-revolution workmanship. Evidently, German POWs hadn't been trained this far east-they'd built most of the dachas for the party elite of the old days. But the vodka was fine, and the fellowship wasn't too bad, either.

"Things could be better, Comrade General," Bondarenko's operations officer agreed. "But there is much that can be done the right way, and little bad to undo."

That was a gentle way of saying that the Far East Military District was less of a military command than it was a theoretical exercise. Of the five motor-rifle divisions nominally under his command, only one, the 265th, was at eighty-percent strength. The rest were at best regimentalsize formations, or mere cadres. He also had theoretical command of a tank division-about a regiment and a half-plus thirteen reserve divisions that existed not so much on paper as in some staff officer's dreams. The one thing he did have was huge equipment stores, but a lot of that equipment dated back to the 1960s, or even earlier. The best troops in his area of command responsibility were not actually his to command. These were the Border Guards, battalion-sized formations once part of the KGB, now a semi-independent armed service under the command of the Russian president.

There was also a defense line of sorts, which dated back to the 1930s and showed it. For this line, numerous tanks-some of them actually German in origin-were buried as bunkers. In fact, more than anything else the line was reminiscent of the French Maginot Line, also a thing of the 1930s. It had been built to protect the Soviet Union against an attack by the j.a.panese, and then upgraded halfheartedly over the years to protect against the People's Republic of China-a defense never forgotten, but never fully remembered either. Bondarenko had toured parts of it the previous day. As far back as the czars, the engineering officers of the Russian Army had never been fools. Some of the bunkers were sited with shrewd, even brilliant appreciation for the land, but the problem with bunkers was explained by a recent American aphorism: If you can see it, you can hit it, and if you can hit it, you can kill it. The line had been conceived and built when artillery fire had been a chancy thing, and an aircraft bomb was fortunate to hit the right county. Now you could use a fifteen-centimeter gun as accurately as a sniper rifle, and an aircraft could select which windowpane to put the bomb through on a specific building.

"Andrey Petrovich, I am pleased to hear your optimism. What is your first recommendation?"

"It will be simple to improve the camouflage on the border bunkers. That's been badly neglected over the years," Colonel Aliyev told his commander-in-chief. "That will reduce their vulnerability considerably."

"Allowing them to survive a serious attack for . . . sixty minutes, Andrushka?"

"Maybe even ninety, Comrade General. It's better than five minutes, is it not?" He paused for a sip of vodka. Both had been drinking for half an hour. "For the 265th, we must begin a serious training program at once. Honestly, the division commander did not impress me greatly, but I suppose we must give him a chance."

Bondarenko: "He's been out here so long, maybe he likes the idea of Chinese food."

"General, I was out here as a lieutenant," Aliyev said. "I remember the political officers telling us that the Chinese had increased the length of the bayonets on their AK-47s to get through the extra fat layer we'd grown after discarding true Marxism-Leninism and eating too much."

"Really?" Bondarenko asked.

"That is the truth, Gennady Iosifovich."

"So, what do we know of the PLA?"

"There are a lot of them, and they've been training seriously for about four years now, much harder than we've been doing."

"They can afford to," Bondarenko observed sourly. The other thing he'd learned on arriving was how thin the cupboard was for funds and training equipment. But it wasn't totally bleak. He had stores of consumable supplies that had been stocked and piled for three generations. There was a virtual mountain of sh.e.l.ls for the 100-mm guns on his many-and long-since obsolete-T-54/55 tanks, for example, and a sea of diesel fuel hidden away in underground tanks too numerous to count. The one thing he had in the Far East Military District was infrastructure, built up by the Soviet Union over generations of inst.i.tutional paranoia. But that wasn't the same as an army to command.

"What about aviation?"

"Mainly grounded," Aliyev answered glumly. "Parts problems. We used up so much in Chechnya that there isn't enough to go around, and the Western District still has first call."

"Oh? Our political leadership expects the Poles to invade us?"

"That's the direction Germany is in," the G-3 pointed out.

"I've been fighting that out with the High Command for three years," Bondarenko growled, thinking of his time as chief of operations for the entire Russian army. "People would rather listen to themselves than to others with the voice of reason." He looked up at Aliyev. "And if the Chinese come?"

The theater operations officer shrugged. "Then we have a problem."

Bondarenko remembered the maps. It wasn't all that far to the new gold strike . . . and the ever-industrious army engineers were building the d.a.m.ned roads to it . . .

"Tomorrow, Andrey Petrovich. Tomorrow we start drawing up a training regimen for the whole command," CINC-FAR EAST told his own G-3.

CHAPTER 27.

Transportation Diggs didn't entirely like what he saw, but it wasn't all that unexpected. A battalion of Colonel Lisle's 2nd Brigade was out there, maneuvering through the exercise area-clumsily, Diggs thought. He had to amend his thoughts, of course. This wasn't the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and Lisle's 2nd Brigade wasn't the 11th ACR, whose troopers were out there training practically every day, and as a result knew soldiering about as well as a surgeon knew cutting. No, 1st Armored Division had turned into a garrison force since the demise of the Soviet Union, and all that wasted time in what was left of Yugoslavia, trying to be "peacekeepers," hadn't sharpened their war-fighting skills. That was a term Diggs hated. Peacekeepers be d.a.m.ned, the general thought, they were supposed to be soldiers, not policemen in battle dress uniform. The opposing force here was a German brigade, and by the looks of it, a pretty good one, with their Leopard-II tanks. Well, the Germans had soldiering in their genetic code somewhere, but they weren't any better trained than Americans, and training was the difference between some ignorant d.a.m.ned civilian and a soldier. Training meant knowing where to look and what to do when you saw something there. Training meant knowing what the tank to your left was going to do without having to look. Training meant knowing how to fix your tank or Bradley when something broke. Training eventually meant pride, because with training came confidence, the sure knowledge that you were the baddest motherf.u.c.ker in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and you didn't have to fear no evil at all.

Colonel Boyle was flying the UH-60A in which Diggs was riding. Diggs was in the jump seat immediately aft and between the pilots' seats. They were cruising about five hundred feet over the ground.

"Oops, that platoon down there just walked into something," Boyle reported, pointing. Sure enough the lead tank's blinking yellow light started flashing the I'm dead signal.

"Let's see how the platoon sergeant recovers," General Diggs said.

They watched, and sure enough, the sergeant pulled the remaining three tanks back while the crew bailed out of the platoon leader's M1A2 main battle tank. As a practical matter, both it and its crew would probably have survived whatever administrative "hit" it had taken from the Germans. n.o.body had yet come up with a weapon to punch reliably through the Chobham armor, but someone might someday, and so the tank crews were not encouraged to think themselves immortal and their tanks invulnerable.

"Okay, that sergeant knows his job," Diggs observed, as the helicopter moved to another venue. The general saw that Colonel Masterman was making notes aplenty on his pad. "What do you think, Duke?"

"I think they're at about seventy-five percent efficiency, sir," the G-3 operations officer replied. "Maybe a little better. We need to put everybody on the SIMNET, to shake 'em all up a little." That was one of the Army's better investments. SIMNET, the simulator network, comprised a warehouse full of M1 and Bradley simulators, linked by supercomputer and satellite with two additional such warehouses, so that highly complex and realistic battles could be fought out electronically. It had been hugely expensive, and while it could never fully simulate training in the field, it was nevertheless a training aid without parallel.

"General, all that time in Yugoslavia didn't help Lisle's boys," Boyle said from the chopper's right seat.

"I know that," Diggs agreed. "I'm not going to kill anybody's career just yet," he promised.

Boyle's head turned to grin. "Good, sir. I'll spread that word around."

"What do you think of the Germans?"

"I know their boss, General Major Siegfried Model. He's d.a.m.ned smart. Plays a h.e.l.l of a game of cards. Be warned, General."