'I think I'm no expert, but since you ask, I don't know.'
'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 the 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 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.
'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.
POTUS nodded. 'Yeah, it'll make the Israelis nervous, and the Saudis have always worried about having too strong a military, for domestic reasons.'
'You could tell them the story about the three little pigs. It might not fly with their culture, but the big bad wolf just moved in next door to them, and they'd better start paying attention before he starts a-huffin' and a- puffin'.'
'I hear you, Robby. I'll have Adler and Vasco think that one over.' Ryan checked his watch. Another fifteen- hour day. One more drink would have been nice, but as it was, he'd be lucky to get six hours of sleep, and he didn't want to wake up with a larger headache than necessary. He set his drink down and waved for the other two to follow, down the ramp and out the door.
'SWORDSMAN heading to the residence,' Andrea spoke into her radio mike. A minute later, they were in the elevator and going up.
'Try not to let the booze show,' Jack remarked to his principal agent.
'What are we going to do with you?' she asked the ceiling, as the doors opened.
Jack walked out first, leaving the other two behind as he took his jacket off. He hated wearing a jacket all the time.
'Well, now you know,' Robby said to the Secret Service agent. She turned to look in his eyes.
'Yeah.' Actually she'd known for quite a while, but she kept learning more and more about SWORDSMAN.
'Take good care of him, Price. When he escapes from this place, I want my friend back.'
THE VAGARIES OF winds made the Lufthansa flight first to arrive at the international terminal in Frankfurt, Germany. For the travelers it was like an inverted funnel. The jetway was the narrow part, and on entering the concourse they all spread out, checking the video monitors for their gates. The layovers ranged from one to three hours, and their luggage would be automatically transferred from one aircraft to another—for all the complaints about airport luggage-handlers, 99.9 percent is a passing grade in most human endeavors; and the Germans were notoriously efficient. Customs control points didn't worry them, because none of them were spending any more time in Europe than was necessary. They studiously avoided eye contact, even when three of them entered a coffee shop, and all three, on reflection, decided on decaf. Two walked into the men's rooms for the usual reason, and then looked into the mirrors to check their faces. They'd all shaved just before leaving, but one of them, especially heavily-bearded, saw that his jaw was already shadowed. Perhaps he should shave? Not a good idea, he thought, smiling at the mirror. Then he lifted his carry-on bag and walked off to the first-class lounge to wait for the flight to Dallas-Fort Worth.
'LONG DAY?' JACK asked, after everyone had gone home, and just the usual squad of guards patrolled outside.
'Yeah. Grand rounds tomorrow with Bernie. Some procedures the next day, though.' Cathy changed into her nightgown, as tired as her husband was.
'Anything new?'
'Not in my shop. Had lunch with Pierre Alexandre. He's a new associate professor working under Ralph Forster, ex-Army, pretty smart.'
'Infectious diseases?' Jack vaguely remembered meeting the guy at some function or other. 'AIDS and stuff?'
'Yeah.'
'Nasty,' Ryan observed, getting into bed.
