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“Assessment?” This came from Tony Bretano.
“Sir, you can call it anything,” the colonel replied. “New country integrating their military, there’s going to be a lot of getting-to-know-you stuff. We’re surprised by the integrated corps formations. It’s going to pose administrative difficulties, but it might be a good move from the political-psychological side. This way, they’re acting like they really are one country.”
“Nothing threatening at all?” the SecDef asked.
“Nothing overtly threatening, not at this time.”
“How quick could that corps move to the Saudi border?” Jackson asked, to make sure his boss got the real picture.
“Once they’re fully fueled and trained up? Call it forty-eight to seventy-two hours. We could do it in less than half the time, but we’re trained better.”
“Force composition?”
“Total for the three corps, we’re talking six heavy divisions, just over fifteen hundred main battle tanks, over twenty-five hundred infantry fighting vehicles, upwards of six hundred tubes–still haven’t got a handle on their red team, Admiral. That’s artillery, Mr. Secretary,” the colonel explained. “Logistically they’re on the old Soviet model.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Their loggies are organic to the divisions. We do that also, but we maintain separate formations to keep our maneuver forces running.”
“Reservists for the most part,” Jackson told the Secretary. “The Soviet model allows for a more integrated maneuver force, but only for the short term. They can’t sustain operations as long as we can, in terms of time or distance.”
“The admiral is correct, sir,” the briefing officer went on. “In 1990, when the Iraqis jumped into Kuwait, they went about as far as their logistical tail allowed. They had to stop to replenish.”
“That’s part of it. Tell him the other part,” Jackson ordered.
“After a pause of from twelve to twenty-four hours,
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they were ready to move again. The reason they didn’t was political.”
“I always wondered about that. Could they have taken the Saudi oil fields?”
“Easy,” the colonel said. “He must have thought a lot about that in later months,” the officer added without sympathy.
“So, we have a threat here?” Bretano was asking simple questions and listening to the answers. Jackson liked that. He knew what he didn’t know, and wasn’t embarrassed about learning things.
“Yes, sir. These three corps represent a potential striking force about equal in power to what Hussein used. There would be other units involved, but they’re just occupying forces. That’s the fist right here,” the colonel said, tapping the map with his pointer.
“But it’s still in their pocket. How long to change that?”
“A few months at minimum to do it right, Mr. Secretary. It depends most of all on their overall political intentions. All of these units are individually trained up to snuff by local standards. Integrating their corps staffs and organizations is the real task ahead for them.”
“Explain,” Bretano ordered.
“Sir, I guess you could call it a management team. Everybody has to get to know everybody else so that they can communicate properly, start thinking the same way.”
“Maybe it’s easier to think of it as a football team, sir.” Robby took it further. “You don’t just take eleven guys and put them in a huddle together and expect them to perform properly. You have to have everybody reading out of the same playbook, and everybody has to know what everybody else is able to do.”
SecDef nodded. “So it’s not the hardware we’re worried about. It’s the people.”
“That’s right, sir,” the colonel said. “I can teach you to drive a tank in a few minutes, but it’ll be a while before I want you driving around in my brigade.”
“That’s why you people must love having a new Secretary come in every few years,” Bretano observed with a wry smile.
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“Mostly they learn pretty fast.” “So, what do we tell the President?”
THE CHINESE AND Taiwanese navies were keeping their respective distances, as though an invisible line were drawn north-south down the Formosa Strait. The latter kept pacing the former, interposing itself between its island home, but informal rules were established and so far none was being violated.
This was good for the CO of USS Pasadena, whose sonar and tracking parties were trying to keep tabs on both sides, all the while hoping that a shooting war wouldn’t start with them in the middle. Getting killed by mistake seemed such a tawdry end.
“Torpedo in the water, bearing two-seven-four!” was the next call from the sonar compartment. Heads turned and ears perked up at once.
“Stay cool,” the captain ordered quietly. “Sonar, Conn, I need more than that!” That statement was not quiet.
“Same bearing as contact Sierra Four-Two, a Luda II-class ‘can, sir, probably launched from there.”
“Four-Two is bearing two-seven-four, range thirty thousand yards,” a petty officer in the tracking party interjected at once.
“Sounds like one of their new homers, sir, six blades, turning at high speed, bearing is changing north to south, definite side aspect on the fish.”
“Very well,” the captain said, allowing himself to stay as calm as he pretended to be.
“Could be targeted on Sierra-Fifteen, sir.” That contact was an old Ming-class submarine, a Chinese copy of the old Russian Romeo-class, a clunker whose design dated from the 1950s which had snorted less than an hour before to recharge batteries. “He’s at two-six-one, range about the same.” That came from the officer in charge of the tracking party. The senior chief at his left nodded agreement.
The captain closed his eyes and allowed himself a breath. He’d heard the stories about the Good Old Days of the Cold War, when people like Bart Mancuso had
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gone Up North into the Barents Sea and, occasionally, found themselves right in the middle of a live-fire ShootEx of the Soviet navy–perhaps mistaken for practice targets, even. A fine opportunity to figure out how good Soviet weapons really were, they joked now, sitting in their offices. Now he knew what they’d really felt at the time. Fortunately, his private head was a mere twenty feet away, if it came to that. . .
“Transient, transient, mechanical transient bearing two-six-one, sounds like a noisemaker, probably released by contact Sierra-Fifteen. The torpedo bearing is now two-six-seven, estimated speed four-four knots, bearing continues to change north to south,” sonar reported next. “Hold it–another torpedo in the water bearing two-five-five!”
“No contact on that bearing, could be a helo launch,” the senior chief said.
He’d have to discuss one of those sea stories with Man-cuso when he got back to Pearl, the captain thought.
“Same acoustical signature, sir, another homing fish, drifting north, could also be targeted on Sierra-Fifteen.”
“Bracketed the poor bastard.” This came from the XO.
“It’s dark topside, isn’t it?” the captain thought suddenly. Sometimes it was easy to lose track.
“Sure is, sir.” From the XO again.
“Have we seen them do night helo ops this week?”
“No, sir. Intel says they don’t like to fly off their ‘cans at night.”
“That just changed, didn’t it? Let’s see. Raise the ESM mast.”
“Raise the ESM, aye.” A sailor pulled the proper handle and the reed-thin electronics-sensor antenna hissed up on hydraulic power. Pasadena was running at periscope depth, her long sonar “tail” streamed out behind her as the submarine stayed roughly on what they hoped was the borderline between the two enemy fleets. It was the safest place to be until such time as real shooting started.
“Looking for–”
“Got it, sir, a Ku-band emitter at bearing two-five-four, aircraft type, frequency and pulse-repetition rate like
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that new French one. Wow, lots of radars turning, sir, take a while to classify them.”
“French Dauphin helos on some of their frigates, sir,” the XO observed.
“Doing night ops,” the captain emphasized. That was unexpected. Helicopters were expensive, and landing on tin cans at night was always dicey. The Chinese navy was training up to do something.
THINGS COULD BE slippery in Washington. The nation’s capital invariably panics at the report of a single snowflake despite the realization that a blizzard might do little more than fill the potholes in the street, if only people would plow the snow that way. But there was more to it than that. As soldiers once followed flags onto a battlefield, so senior Washington officials follow leaders or ideologies, but near the top it got slippery. A lower- or middle-level bureaucrat might just sit at his post and ignore his sitting department Secretary’s identity, but the higher one went, the closer one came to something akin to decision or policy making. In such positions, one actually had to do things, or tell others to do things, from time to time, other than what someone else had already written down. One regularly went in and out of top-floor offices and became identified with whoever might be there, ultimately all the way to the President’s office in the West Wing, and though access to the top meant power of a sort, and prestige, and an autographed photo on the office wall to tell your visitors how important you were, if something happened to the other person in the photo, then the photo and its sig-. nature might become a liability rather than an asset. The ultimate risk lay in changing from an insider, always welcome, to an outsider, if not quite always shunned, then forced to earn one’s way back inside, a prospect not attractive to those who had spent so much time getting there in the first place.