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“FLYING AT NIGHT is a big deal?” Jack asked.
“Sure is, for them it is,” Robby replied. He liked briefing the President this way, late evening in the Oval Office, with a drink. “They’ve always been more parsimonious with equipment than they are with people. Helicopters– French ones in this case, same model the Coast Guard has a bunch of–cost money, and we haven’t seen much in the way of night operations. The operation they’re running is heavy on ASW. So maybe they’re thinking about dealing with all those Dutch subs the Republic of China bought last year. We’re also seeing a lot of combined operations with their air force.”
“Conclusion?”
“They’re training up for something.” The Pentagon’s Director of Operations closed his briefing book. “Sir, we–”
“Robby,” Ryan said, looking over the new reading glasses Cathy had just gotten him, “if you don’t start calling me ‘Jack’ when we’re alone, I’m going to break you back to ensign by executive order.”
“We’re not alone,” Admiral Jackson objected, nodding toward Agent Price.
“Andrea doesn’t count–oh, shit, I mean–” Ryan blushed.
“He’s right, Admiral, I don’t count,” she said, with a barely contained laugh. “Mr. President, I’ve been waiting weeks for you to say that.”
Jack looked down at the table and shook his head. “This is no way for a man to live. Now my best friend calls me ‘sir,’ and I’m being impolite to a lady.”
“Jack, you are my commander-in-chief,” Robby pointed out, with a relaxed grin at his friend’s discomfort. “And I’m just a poor sailor man.”
First things first, the President thought: “Agent Price?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Pour yourself a drink and sit down.”
“Sir, I’m on duty, and regulations–”
“Then make it a light one, but that’s an order from your President. Do it!”
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She actually hesitated, but then decided that POTUS was trying to make some sort of point. Price poured a large thimbleful of whiskey into the Old Fashioned glass and added a lot of ice and Evian to it. Then she sat next to the J-3. His wife, Sissy, was upstairs in the House with the Ryan family.
“As a practical matter, people, the President needs to relax, and it’s easier for me to do that if I don’t make ladies stand up, and my friend can call me by my name once in a while. Are we agreed on that?”
“Aye aye,” Robby said, still smiling but seeing the logic and desperation of the moment. “Yes, Jack, we are all relaxed now, and we will enjoy it.” He looked over at Price. “You’re here to shoot me if I misbehave, right?”
“Right in the head,” she confirmed.
“I prefer missiles myself. Safer,” he added.
“You did okay with a shotgun one night, or so the Boss has told me. By the way, thanks.”
“Huh?”
“For keeping him alive. We actually like taking care of the Boss, even if he gets too familiar with the hired help.”
Jack freshened his drink while they relaxed on the other sofa. Remarkable, he thought. For the first time, there was a genuinely relaxed atmosphere in the office, to the point that two people could joke about him, right in front of him, as though he were a human being instead of POTUS.
“I like this a lot better.” The President looked up. “Robby, this gal has been around more crap than we have, listened in on all sorts of things. She has a master’s degree, she’s smart, but I’m supposed to treat her like she’s a knuckle-dragger.”
“Well, hell, I’m just a fighter jock with a bad knee.”
“And I still don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be. Andrea?”
“Yes, Mr. President?” Getting her to call him by his name was an impossible goal, Jack knew.
“China, what do you think?”
“I think I’m no expert, but since you ask, I don’t know.”
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“You’re expert enough,” Robby observed with a grunt. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men don’t know much, either. The additional subs are arriving,” he told the President. “Mancuso wants them on the north-south line between the two navies. I’ve concurred on that, and the Secretary’s signed off on it.”
“How’s Bretano doing?”
“He knows what he doesn’t know, Jack. He listens to us on operational stuff, asks good questions, and listens some more. He wants to start getting out into the field next week, poke around and see the kids at work to educate himself. His managerial skills are downright awesome, but he’s swinging a big ax–he’s going to, that is. I’ve seen his draft plan for downsizing thev bureaucracy. Whoa,” Admiral Jackson concluded, with an eye-roll.
“You have problems with that?” Jack asked.
“No way. It’s about fifty years overdue. Ms. Price, I’m an operator,” he explained. “I like greasy flight suits and the smell of jet fuel and pulling g’s. But us guys at the sharp end always have the desk-sitters after us like a bunch of little dogs at our ankles all the time. Bretano loves engineers and people who do things, but along the way he’s learned to hate bureaucrats and cost accountants. My kind of guy.”
“Back to China,” Ryan said.
“Okay, we still have the electronics-intelligence flights working out of Kadena. We’re getting routine training stuff. We do not know what intentions the ChiComs have. CIA isn’t giving us much. Signal intelligence is unremarkable. State says that their government says, ‘What’s the big deal?’ And that’s it. The Taiwanese navy is big enough to handle the threat, if there is one, unless they get coldcocked. That’s not going to happen. They’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, doing their own training ops. A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing I can make out.”
“The Gulf?”
“Well, we’re hearing from our people in Israel that they’re taking a very close look, but I gather they’re not getting much in the way of hard intel. Whatever sources they had were probably with the generals who bugged out
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to Sudan–aides and such, probably. I got a fax in from Sean Magruder–”
“Who’s that?” Ryan asked.
“He’s an Army colonel, boss-man of the 10th Cav in the Negev. I met him last year; he’s a guy we listen to. ‘Most dangerous man in the world,’ is what our good pal Avi ben Jakob says of Daryaei. Magruder thought that was insightful enough to pass it along.”
“And?”
“And we need to keep an eye on it. It’s probably a ways off, but Daryaei has imperial ambitions. The Saudis are playing it wrong. We should have people on the way over now, maybe not many, but some, to show the other side that we’re in the game.”
“I talked to Ali about that. His government wants to cool it.”
“Wrong signal,” Jackson observed.
“Agreed.” POTUS nodded. “We’ll work on that.”
“What’s the state of the Saudi military?” Price asked.
“Not as good as it ought to be. After the Persian Gulf War, it got fashionable to join their National Guard, and they bought equipment like it was a bunch of Mercedes cars from a wholesaler. For a while they had themselves a fine old time playing soldier, but then they found out that you have to maintain the stuff. They hired people to do that for them. Kinda like squires and knights back in the old days. Ain’t the same,” Jackson said. “And now they’re not training. Oh, sure, they run around in their tanks, and they do their gunnery–the M1 is a fun tank to shoot, and they do a lot of that–but they’re not training in units. Knights and squires. Their tradition is guys on horses going after other guys on horses–one-on-one, like in the movies. War ain’t like that. War is a great big team working together. Their culture and history are against that model, and they haven’t had the chance to learn. Bottom line, they’re not as good as they think they are. If the UIR gets its military act together someday and comes south, the Saudis are outgunned and damned sure outmanned.”
“How do we fix that?” Ryan asked.
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“For starters, get some of our people over there, and some of their people over here, out to the National Training Center for a crash course in reality. I’ve talked it over with Mary Diggs at the NTC–”
“Mary?”
“General Marion Diggs. ‘Mary’ goes back to the Point. It’s a uniform thing,” Robby told Price. “I’d like to fly a Saudi heavy battalion over here and have the OpFor pound them into the sand for a few weeks to get the message across. That’s how our people learned. That’s how the Israelis learned. And that’s how the Saudis are going to have to learn, damned sight easier that way than in a shooting war. Diggs is for it, big time. Give us two or three years, maybe less if we set up a proper training establishment in Saudi, and we can snap their army into shape–except for politics,” he added.