The ramp at Nellis Air Force Base was home to the Air Force's largest fighter wing, today augmented further still with two visiting squadrons for the ongoing Red Flag operation. That gave his Comanche over a hundred targets for its 20-millimeter cannon, and he walked his fire among the even rows of aircraft before turning and exiting the area to the south. The casinos of Las Vegas were in sight as he looped around, making room for the other two Comanches, then it was back down to fifty feet over the uneven sand on a northeasterly heading.
'Getting hit again. Some Eagle jockey keeps sweeping us,' the backseater reported.
'Locking up?'
'Sure as hell trying to, and—Jesus—'
An F-I5C screeched overhead close enough that the wake turbulence made the Comanche rock a little. Then a voice came up on guard.
'If this was an Echo, I'd have your ass.'
'I just knew you Air Force guys were like that. See you at the barn.'
'Roger. Out.' In the distance at twelve o'clock, the fighter lit off its afterburners in salute.
'Good news, bad news, Sandy,' the backseater observed.
Stealthy, but not quite stealthy enough. The low-observable technology built into the Comanche was good enough to defeat a missile-targeting radar, but those damned airborne early-warning birds with their big antennas and signal-processor chips kept getting hits, probably off the rotor disc, the pilot thought. They had to do a little more work on that. The good news was that the F-15C, with a superb missile-tracking radar, couldn't get lockup for his AMRAAMs, and a heat-seeker was a waste of time for all involved, even over a cold desert floor. But the F-15E, with its see-in-the-dark gear, could have blown him away with a 20mm cannon. Something to remember. So, the world was not yet perfect, but Comanche was still the baddest helicopter ever made.
CWO-4 Sandy Richter looked up. In the dry, cold desert air he could see the strobe lights of the orbiting E-3A AW ACS. Not all that far away. Thirty thousand feet or so, he estimated. Then he had an interesting thought. That Navy guy looked smart enough, and maybe if he presented his idea in the right way, he'd get a chance to try it out…
'I'm getting tired of this,' President Durling was saying in his office, diagonally across the West Wing from Ryan's. There had been a couple of good years, but they'd come to a screeching halt in the past few months. 'What was it today?'
'Gas tanks,' Marty Caplan replied. 'Deerfield Auto Parts up in Massachusetts just came up with a way to fabricate them into nearly any shape and capacity from standard steel sheets. It's a robotic process, efficient as hell. They refused to license it to the Japanese—'
'Al Trent's district?' the President cut in.
'That's right.'
'Excuse me. Please go on.' Durling reached for some tea. He was having trouble with afternoon coffee now. 'Why won't they license it?'
'It's one of the companies that almost got destroyed by overseas competition. This one held on to the old management team. They smartened up, hired a few bright young design engineers, and pulled their socks up. They've come up with half a dozen important innovations. It just so happens that this is the one that delivers the greatest cost-efficiency. They claim they can make the tanks, box 'em, and ship them to Japan cheaper than the Japanese can make them at home, and that the tanks are also stronger. But we couldn't even make the other side budge on using them in the plants they have over here. It's computer chips all over again,' Caplan concluded.
'How is it they can even ship the things over—'
'The ships, Mr. President.' It was Caplan's turn to interrupt. 'Their car carriers come over here full and mainly return completely empty. Loading the things on wouldn't cost anything at all, and they end up getting delivered right to the company docks. Deerfield even designed a load-unload system that eliminates any possible time penalty.'
'Why didn't you push on it?'
'I'm surprised he didn't push,' Christopher Cook observed.
They were in an upscale private home just off Kalorama Road. An expensive area of the District of Columbia, it housed quite a few members of the diplomatic community, along with the rank-and-file members of the Washington community, lobbyists, lawyers, and all the rest who wanted to be close, but not too close, to where the action was, downtown.
'Deerfield would only license their patent.' Seiji sighed. 'We offered them a very fair price.'
'True,' Cook agreed, pouring himself another glass of white wine. He could have said,
It was Seiji Nagumo's turn to sigh. 'Your people were clever. They hired particularly bright attorney in Japan and got their patent recognized in record time.' He might have added that it offended him that a citizen of his country could be so mercenary, but that would have been unseemly under the circumstances. 'Well, perhaps they will come to see the light of reason.'
'It could be a good point to concede, Seiji. At the very least, sweeten your offer on the licensing agreement.'
'Why, Chris?'
'The President is interested in this one.' Cook paused, seeing that Nugumo didn't get it yet. He was still new at this. He knew the industrial side, but not the politics yet. 'Deerfield is in Al Trent's congressional district. Trent has a lot of clout on the Hill. He's chairman of the Intelligence Committee.'
'And?'
'And Trent is a good guy to keep happy.'
Nagumo considered that for a minute or so, sipping his wine and staring out the window. Had he known that fact earlier in the day, he might have sought permission to give in on the point, but he hadn't and he didn't. To change now would be an admission of error, and Nagumo didn't like to do that any more than anyone else in the world. He decided that he'd suggest an improved offer for licensing rights, instead—not knowing that by failing to accept a personal loss of face, he'd bring closer something that he would have tried anything to avoid.
5—Complexity Theory
Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skillful manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict. For Raizo Yamata the knowledge was usually a comfort. He usually knew what to do when the unexpected took place—but not always.
'It has been a troublesome time, that is true, but not the worst we have experienced,' one of his guests pronounced. 'And we are having our way again, are we not?'
'We've made them back off on computer chips,' another pointed out.
Heads nodded around the low table.
They just didn't see, Yamata told himself. His country's needs coincided exactly with a new opportunity. There was a new world, and despite America's repeated pronouncements of a new order for that new world, only disorder had replaced what had been three generations of—if not stability, then at least predictability. The symmetry of East and West was now so far back in the history of contemporary minds that it seemed like a distant and unpleasant dream. The Russians were still reeling from their misguided experiment, and so were the Americans, though most of their pain was self-inflicted and had come after the event, the fools. Instead of merely maintaining their power, the Americans had cast it aside at the moment of its ascendancy, as they had so often in their history, and in the dimming of two formerly great powers lay the opportunity for a country that deserved to be great.
'These are small things, my friends,' Yamata said, graciously leaning across the table to refill cups. 'Our national weakness is structural and has not changed in real terms in our lifetime.'
'Please explain, Raizo-chan,' one of his friendlier peers suggested.
'So long as we lack direct access to resources, so long as we cannot control that access ourselves, so long as we exist as the shopkeeper of other nations, we are vulnerable.'
'Ah!' Across the table a man waved a dismissive hand. 'I disagree. We are strong in the things that
