they ask his opinion.’
‘Is he going to move up now Kramer’s gone? Maybe into
Coomer’s slot?’
Simon made a face. ‘He should. He’s an Armor fanatic to the
core, like the rest of them. But nobody really knows what
the hell is going to happen. Kramer dying couldn’t have come at
a worse time for them.’
‘The world is changing,’ I said.
‘And what a world it was,’ Simon said. ‘Kramer’s world,
basically, beginning to end. He graduated the Point in ‘fifty-two,
and places like this one were all buttoned up by ‘fifty-three, and
they’ve been the centre of the universe for almost forty years.
These places are so dug in, you wouldn’t believe it. You know
who has done the most in this country?’
‘Who?’
‘Not Armored. Not the infantry. This theatre is all about the
Army Corps of Engineers. Sherman tanks way back weighed
thirty-eight tons and were nine feet wide. Now we’re all the way
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up to the M1A1 Abrams, which weighs seventy tons and is
eleven feet wide. Every step of the way for forty years the Corps
of Engineers has had work to do. They’ve widened roads,
hundreds of miles of them, all over West Germany. They’ve
strengthened bridges. Hell, they’ve built roads and bridges.
Dozens of them. You want a stream of seventy-ton tanks rolling
east to battle, you better make damn sure the roads and bridges
can take it.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘Billions of dollars,’ Simon said. ‘And of course, they knew
which roads and bridges to look at. They knew where we were
starting, and they knew where we were going. They talked
to the war garners, they looked at the maps, and they got
busy with the concrete and the rebar. Then they built way
stations everywhere we needed them. Permanent hardened fuel
stores, ammunition dumps, repair shops, hundreds of them, all
along strictly predetermined routes. So we’re embedded here,
literally. We’re dug in, literally. The Cold War battlefields are
literally set in stone, Reacher.’
‘People are going to say we invested and we won.’
Simon nodded. ‘And they’d be correct. But what comes next?’
‘More investment,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Like in the navy, when the big battleships
were superseded by aircraft carriers. The end of one era, the
beginning of the next. The Abrams tanks are like battleships.
They’re magnificent, but they’re out of date. About the only way
we can use them is down custom-built roads in directions we’ve
already planned to go.’
‘They’re mobile,’ Summer said. ‘Like any tank.’
‘Not very mobile,’ Simon said. ‘Where is the next fight going
to be?’
I shrugged. I wished Joe was there. He was good at all the
geopolitical stuff.
‘The Middle East?’ I said. ‘Iran or Iraq, maybe. They’ve both
gotten their breath back, they’ll be looking for the next thing to
do.’
‘Or the Balkans,’ Swan said. ‘When the Soviets finally
collapse, there’s a forty-five-year-old pressure cooker waiting for
the lid to come off.’
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‘OK,’ Simon said. ‘Look at the Balkans, for instance.
Yugoslavia, maybe. That’ll be the first place anything happens,
for sure. Right now they’re just waiting for the starting gun.
What do we do?’
‘Send in the airborne,’ Swan said.
‘OK,’ Simon said again. ‘We send in the 82nd and the 101st.
Lightly armed, we might get three battalions there inside a
week. But what do we do after we get there? We’re speed
bumps, that’s all, nothing more. We have to wait for the heavy
units. And that’s the first problem. An Abrams tank weighs
seventy tons. Can’t airlift it. Got to put it on a train, and then put
it on a ship. And that’s the good news. Because you don’t
just ship the tank. For every ton of tank, you have to ship four
tons of fuel and other equipment. These suckers get a half
mile to the gallon. And you need spare engines, ammunition,
huge maintenance crews. The logistics tail is a mile long. Like
moving an iron mountain. To ship enough tank brigades to
make a worthwhile difference, you’re looking at a six-month
build-up, minimum, and that’s working right around the clock.’
‘During which time the airborne troops are deep in the shit,’ I