withdrew when Misha opened his briefcase.
'So, Misha, what does my day look like?' Yazov poured two cups of tea. It was still dark outside the Council of Ministers building. The inside perimeter of the Kremlin walls was lit with harsh blue-white floods, and sentries appeared and disappeared in the splashes of light.
'A full one, Dmitri Timofeyevich,' Misha replied. Yazov wasn't the man that Dmitri Ustinov was, but Filitov had to admit to himself that he did put in a full day's work as a uniformed officer should. Like Filitov, Marshal Yazov was by background a tank officer. Though they had never met during the war, they did know one another by reputation. Misha's was better as a combat officer-purists claimed that he was an old-fashioned cavalryman at heart, though Filitov cordially hated horses-while Dmitri Yazov had won a reputation early on as a brilliant staff officer and organizer-and as a Party man, of course. Before everything else, Yazov was a Party man, else he would never have made the rank of Marshal. 'We have that delegation coming in from the expert mental station in the Tadzhik SSR.'
'Ah, 'Bright Star.' Yes, that report is due today, isn't it?'
'Academicians,' Misha snorted. 'They wouldn't know what a real weapon was if I shoved it up their asses.'
'The time for lances and sabers is past, Mikhail Semyonovich,' Yazov said with a grin. Not the brilliant intellect that Ustinov had been, neither was Yazov a fool like his predecessor, Sergey Sokolov. His lack of engineering expertise was balanced by an uncanny instinct for the merits of new weapons systems, and rare insights into the people of the Soviet Army. 'These inventions show extraordinary promise.'
'Of course. I only wish that we had a real soldier running the project instead of these starry-eyed professors.'
'But General Pokryshkin-'
'He was a fighter pilot. I said a soldier, Comrade Minister. Pilots will support anything that has enough buttons and dials, Besides, Pokryshkin has spent more time in universities of late than in an aircraft. They don't even let him fly himself anymore. Pokryshkin stopped being a soldier ten years ago. Now he is the procurer for the wizards.' And he is building his own little empire down there, but that's an issue we'll save for another day.
'You wish a new job assignment, Misha?' Yazov inquired slyly.
'Not that one!' Filitov laughed, then turned serious. 'What I am trying to say, Dmitri Timofeyevich, is that the progress assessment we get from Bright Star is-how do I say this? — warped by the fact that we don't have a real military man on the scene. Someone who understands the vagaries of combat, someone who knows what a weapon is supposed to be.'
The Defense Minister nodded thoughtfully. 'Yes, I see your point. They think in terms of 'instruments' rather thai 'weapons,' that is true. The complexity of the project concerns me.'
'Just how many moving parts does this new assembly have?'
'I have no idea-thousands, I should think.'
'An instrument does not become a weapon until it can be handled reliably by a private soldier-well, at least a senior lieutenant. Has anyone outside the project ever done a reliability assessment?' Filitov asked.
'No, not that I can recall.'
Filitov picked up his tea. 'There you are, Dmitri Timofeyevich. Don't you think that the Politburo will be interested in that? Until now, they have been willing to fund the experimental project, of course, but'-Filitov took a sip-'they are coming here to request funding to upgrade the site to operational status, and we have no independent assessment of the project.'
'How would you suggest we get that assessment?'
'Obviously I cannot do it. I am too old, and too uneducated, but we have some bright new colonels in the Ministry, especially in the signals section. They are not combat officers, strictly speaking, but they are soldiers, and they are competent to look at these electronic marvels. It is only a suggestion.' Filitov didn't press. He had planted the seed of an idea. Yazov was far easier to manipulate than Ustinov had ever been.
'And what of the problems at the Chelyabinsk tank works?' Yazov asked next.
Ortiz watched the Archer climbing the hill half a mile away. Two men and two camels. They probably wouldn't be mistaken for a guerrilla force the way that twenty or so would have. Not that this had to matter, Ortiz knew, but the Soviets were to the point now that they attacked almost anything that moved. Vaya con Dios.
'I sure could use a beer,' the Captain observed.
Ortiz turned. 'Captain, the thing that allowed me to deal with these people effectively is that I live the way they do. I observe their laws and respect their ways. That means no booze, no pork; that means I don't fool with their women.'
'Shit.' The officer snorted. 'These ignorant savages-' Ortiz cut him off.
'Captain, the next time I hear you say that, or even think it real loud, will be your last day here. These people are working for us. They're bringing us stuff that we can't get any place else. You will, repeat will treat them with the respect they deserve. Is that clear?'
'Yes, sir.' Christ, this guy's turned into a sand nigger himself.
3
IT'S impressive-if you can figure out what they're doing.' Jack yawned. He'd taken the same Air Force transport back to Andrews from Los Alamos, and was behind in his sleep again. For all the times this had happened to him, he'd never quite learned to deal with it. 'That Gregory kid is smart as hell. He took about two seconds to identify the Bach installation, practically word for word with the NPIC assessment.' The difference was that the photointerpreters at the National Photographic Intelligence Center had taken four months and three written report to get it right.
'You think he belongs in the assessment team?'
'Sir, that's like asking if you want to have surgeons in the operating room. Oh, by the way, he wants us to infiltrate somebody into Bach.' Ryan rolled his eyes. Admiral Greer nearly dropped his cup. 'That kid must watch ninja movies.'
'It is nice to know that somebody believes in us.' Jack chuckled, then turned serious. 'Anyway, Gregory wants know if they've made a breakthrough in laser power output-excuse me, I think the new term is 'throughput.' He suspects that most of the new power from the hydroelectric dam will go to Bach.' Greer's eyes narrowed. 'That's an evil thought. Do you think he's right?'
'They've got a lot of good people in lasers, sir. Niko Bosov, remember, won the Nobel Prize, and he's been laser-weapons research ever since, along with Yevgeniy Velikhov, noted peace activist, and the head of the Laser Institute is Dmitri Ustinov's son, for God's sake. Site Bach is almost certainly a sparse array laser. We need to know what kind of lasers, though-could be gas-dynamic, free-electron, chemical. He thinks it'll be the free-electron kind, but that's just a guess. He gave me figures to establish the advantage of putting the laser assembly on this hilltop, where it's above about half of the atmosphere, and we know how much energy it takes to do some of the things they want to do. He said he'd try to do some backwards computations to estimate the total power of the system. The figures will be on the conservative side. Between what Gregory said, and the establishment of the residential facilities at Mozart, we have to assume that this site is intended to go into formal test and evaluation in the near future, maybe operational in two or three years. If so, Ivan may soon have a laser that can snuff one of our satellites right out of business. Probably a soft kill, the Major says-it'll smoke the camera receptors and the photovoltaic cells. But the next step-'
'Yeah. We're in a race, all right.'
'What are the chances that Ritter and the Operations people can find out something inside one of those Bach-site buildings?'
'I suppose we can discuss the possibility,' Greer said diffidently, and changed the subject. 'You look a little ragged.' Ryan got the message: he didn't need to know what Operations had in mind. He could talk like a normal person now. 'All this traveling around has been pretty tiring. If you don't mind, sir, I'd just as soon take the rest of
