"Yes, sir."

Gennady Iosifovich!" General Diggs called on entering the map room.

"Marion Ivanovich!" The Russian came over to take his hand, followed by a hug. He even kissed his guest, in the Russian fashion, and Diggs flinched from this, in the American fashion. "In!"

And Diggs waited for ten seconds: "Out!" Both men shared the laugh of an insider's joke.

"The turtle bordello is still there?"

"It was the last time I looked, Gennady." Then Diggs had to explain to the others. "Out at Fort Irwin-we collected all the desert tortoises and put them in a safe place so the tanks wouldn't squish 'em and p.i.s.s off the tree-huggers. I suppose they're still in there making little turtles, but the d.a.m.ned things screw so slow they must fall asleep doing it."

"I have told that story many times, Marion." Then the Russian turned serious. "I am glad to see you. I will be more glad to see your division."

"How bad is it?"

"It is not good. Come." They walked over to the big wall map. "These are their positions as of thirty minutes ago."

"How are you keeping track of them?"

"We now have your Dark Star invisible drones, and I have a smart young captain on the ground watching them as well."

"That far . . ." Diggs said. Colonel Masterman was right beside him now. "Duke?" Then he looked at his Russian host. "This is Colonel Masterman, my G-3. His last job was as a squadron commander in the Tenth Cav."

"Buffalo Soldier, yes?"

"Yes, sir," Masterman confirmed with a nod, but his eyes didn't leave the map. "Ambitious b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, aren't they?"

"Their first objective will be here," Colonel Aliyev said, using a pointer. "This is the Gogol Gold Strike."

"Well, h.e.l.l, if you're gonna steal something, might as well be a gold mine, right?" Duke asked rhetorically. "What do you have to stop them with?"

"Two-Six-Five Motor Rifle is here." Aliyev pointed.

"Full strength?"

"Not quite, but we've been training them up. We have four more motor-rifle divisions en route. The first arrives at Chita tomorrow noon." Aliyev's voice was a little too optimistic for the situation. He didn't want to show weakness to Americans.

"That's still a long way to move," Masterman observed. He looked over at his boss.

"What are you planning, Gennady?"

"I want to take the four Russian divisions north to link up with the 265th, and stop them about here. Then, perhaps, we will use your forces to cross east through here and cut them off."

Now it wasn't the Chinese who were being ambitious, both Diggs and Masterman thought. Moving First Infantry Division (Mechanized) from Fort Riley, Kansas, to Fort Carson, Colorado, would have been about the same distance, but it would have been on flat ground and against no opposition. Here that task would involve a lot of hills and serious resistance. Those factors did make a difference, the American officers thought.

"No serious contact yet?"

Bondarenko shook his head. "No, I'm keeping my mechanized forces well away from them. The Chinese are advancing against no opposition."

"You want 'em to fall asleep, get sloppy?" Masterman asked.

"Da, better that they should get overconfident."

The American colonel nodded. That made good sense, and as always, war was as much a psychological game as a physical one. "If we jump off the trains at Chita, it's still a long-approach march to where you want us, General."

"What about fuel?" Colonel Douglas asked.

"That is the one thing we have plenty of," answered Colonel Aliyev. "The blue spots on the map, fuel storage-it is the same as your Number Two Diesel."

"How much?" Douglas asked.

"At each fuel depot, one billion two hundred fifty million liters."

"s.h.i.t!" Douglas observed. "That much?"

Aliyev explained, "The fuel depots were established to support a large mobile force in a border conflict. They were built in the time of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. Huge concrete-and-steel storage tanks, all underground, well hidden."

"They must be," Mitch Turner observed. "I've never been briefed on them."

"So, we evaded even your satellite photos, yes?" That pleased the Russian. "Each depot is manned by a force of twenty engineers, with ample electric pumps."

"I like the locations," Masterman said. "What's this unit here?"

"That is BOYAR, a reserve mechanized force. The men have just been called up. Their weapons are from a hidden equipment-storage bunker. It's a short division, old equipment-T-55s and such-but serviceable. We're keeping that force hidden," Aliyev said.

The American G-3 arched his eyebrows. Maybe they were outmanned, but they weren't dumb. That BOYAR force was in a particularly interesting place . . . if Ivan could make proper use of it. Their overall operational concept looked good-theoretically. A lot of soldiers could come up with good ideas. The problem was executing them. Did the Russians have the ability to do that? Russia's military theorists were as good as any the world had ever seen-good enough that the United States Army regularly stole their ideas. The problem was that the U.S. Army could apply those theories to a real battlefield, and the Russians could not.

"How are your people handling this?" Masterman asked.

"Our soldiers, you mean?" Aliyev asked. "The Russian soldier knows how to fight," he a.s.sured his American counterpart.

"Hey, Colonel, I am not questioning their guts," Duke a.s.sured his host. "How's their spirit, for one thing?"

Bondarenko handled that one: "Yesterday I had to face one of my young officers, Komanov, from the border defenses. He was furious that we were unable to give him the support he needed to defeat the Chinese. And I was ashamed," the general admitted to his guests. "My men have the spirit. Their training is lacking-I just got here a few months ago, and my changes have barely begun to take effect. But, you will see, the Russian soldier has always risen to the occasion, and he will today-if we here are worthy of him."

Masterman didn't share a look with his boss. Diggs had spoken well of this Russian general, and Diggs was both a good operational soldier and a good judge of men. But the Russian had just admitted that his men weren't trained up as well as they ought to be. The good news was that on the battlefield, men learned the soldier's trade rapidly. The bad news was that the battlefield was the most brutal Darwinian environment on the face of the planet. Some men would learn, but others would die in the process, and the Russians didn't have all that many they could afford to lose. This wasn't 1941, and they weren't fighting with half their population base this time around.

"You're going to want us to move out fast when the trains drop us off at Chita?" Tony Welch asked. He was the divisional chief of staff.

"Yes," Aliyev confirmed.

"Okay, well, then I need to get down there and look over the facilities. What about fuel for our choppers?"

"Our air force bases have fuel storage similar to the diesel depots," Aliyev told him. "Your word is infrastructure, yes? That is the one thing we have much of. When will they arrive?"

"The Air Force is still working that out. They're going to fly our aviation brigade in. Apaches first. d.i.c.k Boyle's chomping at the bit."

"We will be very pleased to see your attack helicopters. We have all too few of our own, and our air force is also slow delivering them."

"Duke," Diggs said, "get on the horn to the Air Force. We need some choppers right the h.e.l.l now, just so we can get around and see what we need to see."

"Roger," Masterman replied.

"Let me get a satellite radio set up," Lieutenant Colonel Garvey said, heading for the door.

Ingrid Bergman was heading south now. General Wallace wanted a better idea for the Chinese logistical tail, and now he was getting it. The People's Republic of China was in many ways like America had been at the turn of the previous century. Things moved mainly by rail. There were no major highways as Americans understood them, but a lot of railroads. Those were efficient for moving large quant.i.ties of anything over medium-to-long distances, but they were also inflexible, and hard to repair-especially the bridges-and most of all the tunnels, and so that was what he and his targeting people were looking at. The problem was that they had few bombs to drop. None of his attack a.s.sets-mainly F-15E Strike Eagles at the moment-had flown over with bombs on their wings, and he had barely enough air-to-mud munitions for an eight-ship strike mission. It was like going to a dance and finding no girls there. The music was fine, and so was the fruit punch, but there really wasn't anything to do. Perversely, his -15E crews didn't mind. They got to play fighter plane, and all such people prefer shooting other airplanes down to dropping bombs on mud soldiers. It just came with the territory. The one thing he had going now was that his scarf-and-goggles troops were playing h.e.l.l with the PRC air force, with over seventy confirmed kills already for not a single air-to-air loss. The advantage of having E-3B AWACS aircraft was so decisive that the enemy might as well have been flying World War I Fokkers, and the Russians were learning rapidly how to make use of E-3B support. Their fighters were good aerodynamic platforms, just lacking in legs. The Russians had never built a fighter with fuel capacity for more than about one hour's flight time. Nor had they ever learned how to do midair refueling, as the Americans had. And so the Russian MiG and Sukhoi fighters could go up, take their instructions from the AWACS, and partic.i.p.ate in one engagement, but then they had to return to base for gas. Half of the kills his Eagle drivers had collected so far were of Chinese fighters that had broken off their fights to RTB for gas as well. It wasn't fair, but Wallace, like all Air Force fighter types, could hardly have cared less about being fair in combat.

But Wallace was fighting a defensive war to this point. He was successfully defending Russian airs.p.a.ce. He was not taking out Chinese targets, not even attacking the Chinese troops on the ground in Siberia. So, though his fighters were having a fine, successful war, they just weren't accomplishing anything important. To that end, he lifted his satellite link to America.

"We ain't got no bombs, General," he told Mickey Moore.

"Well, your fellow Air Scouts are maxed out on taskings, and Mary Diggs is screaming to get some trash haulers to get him his chopper brigade moved to where he needs it."

"Sir, this is real simple. If you want us to kill some Chinese targets, we have to have bombs. I hope I'm not going too fast for you," Wallace added.

"Go easy, Gus," Moore warned.

"Well, sir, maybe it just looks a little different in Washington, but where I'm sitting right now, I have missions, but not the tools to carry those missions out. So, you D.C. people can either send me the tools or rescind the missions. Your call, sir."

"We're working on it," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs a.s.sured him.

Do I have any orders?" Mancuso asked the Secretary of Defense.

"Not at this time," Bretano sold CINCPAC.

"Sir, may I ask why? The TV says we're in a shooting war with China. Am I supposed to play or not?"

"We are considering the political ramifications," THUNDER explained.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"You heard me."

"Mr. Secretary, all I know about politics is voting every couple of years, but I have a lot of gray ships under my command, and they're technically known as warships, and my country is at war." The frustration in Mancuso's voice was plain.

"Admiral, when the President decides what to do, you will find out. Until then, ready your command for action. It's going to happen. I'm just not sure when."

"Aye, aye, sir." Mancuso hung up and looked at his subordinates. "Political ramifications," he said. "I didn't think Ryan was like that."

"Sir," Mike Lahr soothed. "Forget 'political' and think 'psychological,' okay? Maybe Secretary Bretano just used the wrong word. Maybe the idea is to hit them when it'll do the most good-because we're messing with their heads, sir, remember?"

"You think so?"

"Remember who the Vice President is? He's one of us, Admiral. And President Ryan isn't a p.u.s.s.y, is he?"

"Well . . . no, not that I recall," CINCPAC said, remembering the first time he'd met the guy, and the shoot-out he'd had aboard Red October. No, Jack Ryan wasn't a p.u.s.s.y. "So, what do you suppose he's thinking?"

"The Chinese have a land war going on-air and land, anyway. Nothing's happening at sea. They may not expect anything to happen at sea. But they are surging some ships out, just to establish a defense line for the mainland. If we get orders to hit those ships, the purpose will be to make a psychological impact. So, let's plan along those lines, shall we? Meanwhile, we keep getting more a.s.sets in place:"

"Right." Mancuso nodded and turned to face the wall. Pacific Fleet was nearly all west of the dateline now, and the Chinese had probably no clue where his ships were, but he knew about them. USS Tucson was camped out on 406, the single PRC ballistic-missile submarine. It was known to the west as a "Xia" cla.s.s SSBN, and his intelligence people disagreed on the sub's actual name, but "406" was the number painted on its sail, and that was how he thought of it. None of that mattered to Mancuso. The first shoot order he planned to issue would go to Tucson-to put that missilearmed sub at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. He remembered that the PRC had nuclear-tipped missiles, and those in his area of responsibility would disappear as soon as he had authorization to deal with them. USS Tucson was armed with Mark 48 ADCAP fish, and they'd do the job on that target, a.s.suming that he was right and President Ryan wasn't a p.u.s.s.y after all.

And so, Marshal Luo?" Zhang Han San asked.

"Things go well," he replied at once. "We crossed the Amur River with trivial losses, captured the Russian positions in a few hours, and are now driving north."

"Enemy opposition?"

"Light. Very light, in fact. We're starting to wonder if the Russians have any forces deployed in sector at all. Our intelligence suggests the presence of two mechanized divisions, but if they're there, they haven't advanced to establish contact with us. Our forces are racing forward, making better than thirty kilometers per day. I expect to see the gold mine in seven days."

"Is anything going badly?" Qian asked.

"Only in the air. The Americans have deployed fighters to Siberia, and as we all know, the Americans are very clever with their machines, especially the ones that fly. They have inflicted some losses on our fighter aircraft," the Defense Minister admitted.

"How large are the losses?"

"Total, over one hundred. We've gotten twenty-five or so of theirs in return, but the Americans are masters of aerial combat. Fortunately, their aircraft can do little to hinder the advance of our tanks, and, as you have doubtless noted, they have not attacked into our territory at all."

"Why is that, Marshal?" Fang asked.

"We are not certain," Luo answered, turning to the MSS chief. "Tan?"

"Our sources are not certain, either. The most likely explanation is that the Americans have made a political decision not to attack us directly, but merely to defend their Russian 'ally' in a pro forma way. I suppose there is also the consideration that they do not wish to take losses from our air defenses, but the main reason for their restraint is undoubtedly political."

Heads nodded around the table. It was indeed the most likely explanation for the American lack of action, and all of these men understood political considerations.

"Does this mean that they are measuring their action against us in such a way as to cause us minimal injury?" Tong Jie asked. It was so much the better for him, of course, since the Interior Ministry would have to deal with the internal dislocations that systematic attacks might cause.

"Remember what I said before," Zhang pointed out. "They will do business with us once we've secured our new territory. So, they already antic.i.p.ate this. It seems plain that they will support their Russian friends, but only so much. What else are the Americans but mercenaries? This President Ryan, what was he?"

"He was a CIA spy, and by all accounts an effective one," Tan Deshi reminded them.

"No," Zhang disagreed. "He was a trader in stocks before he joined CIA, and then he was a stock trader again after he left-and whom does he bring into his cabinet? Winston, another hugely rich capitalist, a trader in stocks and securities, a typical American rich man. I tell you, money is the key to understanding these people. They do business. They have no political ideology, except to fatten their purses. To do that, you try not to make blood enemies, and now, here, with us, they do not try to anger us too greatly. I tell you, I understand these people."

"Perhaps," Qian said. "But what if there are objective circ.u.mstances which prevent more aggressive action?"

"Then why is their navy not taking action? Their navy is most formidable, but it does nothing, correct, Luo?"

"Not to this point, but we are wary of them," the marshal warned. He was a soldier, not a sailor, even though the PLAN did come under his command. "We have patrol aircraft looking for them, but so far we have not spotted anything. We know they are not in harbor, but that is all."

"They do nothing with their navy. They do nothing with their land forces. They sting us slightly with their air forces, but what is that? The buzzing of insects." Zhang dismissed the issue.

"How many have underestimated America, and this Ryan fellow, and done so to their misfortune?" Qian demanded. "Comrades, I tell you, this is a dangerous situation we are in. Perhaps we can succeed, all well and good if that comes to pa.s.s, but overconfidence can be any man's undoing."

"And overestimating one's enemy ensures that you will never do anything," Zhang Han San countered. "Did we get to where we are, did our country get to where we are, by timidity? The Long March was not made by cowards." He looked around the table, and no one summoned the character to argue with him.

"So, things go well in Russia?" Xu asked the Defense Minister.

"Better than the plan," Luo a.s.sured them all.