and uneven with fatigue. 'Midway Airport, 737 landed short in snow. But I was all grown up when it happened.'
'I know, sir.' The agent wiped his eyes and stood erect with a shudder. 'I'll be okay.'
Ryan patted him on the shoulder and headed for the elevator. To Andrea Price: 'Get me the hell out of here.'
The Suburban headed north, turning left onto Massachusetts Avenue, which led to the Naval Observatory and the oversized Victorian-gingerbread barn which the country provided for the sitting Vice President. Again, it was guarded by Marines, who let the convoy through. Jack walked into the house. Cathy was waiting at the entry. She only needed one look.
'Tough one?'
All Ryan could do was nod. He held her tight, knowing that his tears would start soon. His eyes caught the knot of agents around the periphery of the entry hall of the house, and it occurred to him that he'd have to get used to them, standing like impassive statues, present in the most private of moments. I hate this job.
BUT BRIGADIER GENERAL Marion Diggs loved his. Not everyone had stood down. As the Marine Barracks in Washington had gone to a high level of activity, then to be augmented from the sprawling base at Quantico, Virginia, so other organizations remained busy or became busier, for they were people who were not really allowed to sleep anyway—at least not all of them at once. One of these organizations was at Fort Irwin, California. Located in the high Mojave Desert, the base really did sprawl, over an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. The landscape was bleak enough that ecologists had to struggle to find an ecology there among the scrawny creosote bushes, and over drinks even the most dedicated of that profession would confess to finding the surface of the moon far more interesting. Not that they hadn't made his life miserable, Diggs thought, fingering his binoculars. There was a species of desert tortoise, which was distinguished from a turtle somehow or other (the general didn't have a clue), and which soldiers had to protect. To take care of that, his soldiers had collected all the tortoises they could find and then relocated them to an enclosure large enough that the reptiles probably didn't notice the fence at all. It was known locally as the world's largest turtle bordello. With that out of the way, whatever other wildlife existed at Fort Irwin seemed quite able to look after itself. The occasional coyote appeared and disappeared, and that was that. Besides, coyotes were not endangered.
The visitors were. Fort Irwin was home to the Army's National Training Center. The permanent residents of that establishment were the OpFor, 'the opposing force.' Originally two battalions, one of armor and the other of mechanized infantry, the OpFor had once styled itself the '32nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment,' a Soviet designation, because at its opening in the 1980s, the NTC had been designed to teach the U.S. Army how to fight, survive, and prevail in a battle against the Red Army on the plains of Europe. The soldiers of the «32nd» dressed in Russian- style uniforms, drove Soviet-like equipment (the real Russian vehicles had proved too difficult to maintain, and American gear had been modified to Soviet shapes), employed Russian tactics, and took pride in kicking the hell out of the units that came to play on their turf. It wasn't strictly fair. The OpFor lived here and trained here, and hosted regular units up to fourteen times per year, whereas the visiting team might be lucky to come here once in four years. But nobody had ever said war was fair.
Times had changed with the demise of the Soviet Union, but the mission of the NTC had not. The OpFor had recently been enlarged to three battalions—now called 'squadrons,' because the unit had assumed the identity of the llth Armored Cavalry Regiment, the Blackhorse Cav—and simulated brigade or larger enemy formations. The only real concession to the new political world was that they didn't call themselves Russians anymore. Now they were 'Krasnovians,' a word, however, derived from krasny, Russian for 'red.'
General-Lieutenant Gennady Iosefovich Bondarenko knew most of this—the turtle bordello was something on which he'd not been briefed; his initial tour of the base had taken care of that, however—and was as excited as he had ever been.
'You started in Signal Corps?' Diggs asked. The base commander was terse of speech and efficient of movement, dressed in desert-camouflage fatigues called 'chocolate chip' from their pattern. He, too, had been fully briefed, though, like his visitor, he had to pretend that he hadn't been,
'Correct.' Bondarenko nodded. 'But I kept getting into trouble. First Afghanistan, then when the Mudje raided into Soviet Union. They attacked a defense-research facility in Tadzhik when I was visitor there. Brave fighters, but unevenly led. We managed to hold them off,' the Russian reported in a studied monotone. Diggs could see the decorations that had resulted; he had commanded a cavalry squadron leading Barry McCaffrey's 24th Mechanized Infantry Division in a wild ride on the American left during Desert Storm, then gone on to command the 10th «Buffalo» ACR, still based in the Negev Desert, as part of America's commitment to Israeli security. Both men were forty-nine. Both had smelled the smoke. Both were on the way up.
'You have country like this at home?' Diggs asked.
'We have every sort of terrain you can imagine. It makes training a challenge, especially today. There,' he said. 'It's started.'
The first group of tanks was rolling now, down a broad, U-shaped pass called the Valley of Death. The sun was setting behind the brown-colored mountains, and darkness came rapidly here. Scuttling around also were the HMMWVs of the observer-controllers, the gods of the NTC, who watched everything and graded what they saw as coldly as Death himself. The NTC was the world's most exciting school. The two generals could have observed the battle back at base headquarters in a place called the Star Wars Room. Every vehicle was wired, transmitting its location, direction of movement, and when the time came, where it was shooting and whether it scored a hit or not. From that data, the computers at Star Wars sent out signals, telling people when they had died, though rarely why. That fact they learned later from the observer-controllers. The generals didn't want to watch computer screens, however—Bondarenko's staff officers were doing that, but the place for their general was here. Every battlefield had a smell, and generals had to have the nose for it.
'Your instrumentation is like something from a science novel.'
Diggs shrugged. 'Not much changed from fifteen years ago. We have more TV cameras on the hilltops now, though.' America would be selling much of that technology to the Russians. That was a little hard for Diggs to accept. He'd been too young for Vietnam. His was the first generation of flag officers to have avoided that entanglement. But Diggs had grown up with one reality in his life: fighting the Russians in Germany. A cavalry officer for his entire career, he'd trained to be in one of the forward-deployed regiments—really, augmented brigades—to make first contact. Diggs could remember a few times when it had seemed pretty damned likely that he'd find his death in the Fulda Gap, facing somebody like the man standing next to him, with whom he'd killed a six-pack the night before over stories of how turtles reproduced.
'In,' Bondarenko said with a sly grin. Somehow the Americans thought Russians were humorless. He had to correct that misimpression before he left.
Diggs counted ten before his deadpan reply: 'Out.'
Ten more seconds: 'In.' Then both started laughing. When first introduced to the favorite base joke, it had taken half a minute for Bondarenko to get it. But the resulting laughter had ended up causing abdominal pain. He recovered control and pointed. 'This is the way war should be.'
'It gets pretty tense. Wait and see.'
'You use our tactics!' That was plain from the way the reconnaissance screen deployed across the valley.
Diggs turned. 'Why not? They worked for me in Iraq.'
The scenario for this night—the first engagement for the training rotation—was a tough one: Red Force in the attack, advance-to-contact, and eliminate the Blue Force reconnaissance screen. The Blue Force in this case was a brigade of the 5th Mechanized Division conducting hasty defense.
The overall idea was that this was a very fluid tactical situation. The llth ACR was simulating a division attack on a newly arrived force one third its theoretical size. It was, really, the best way to welcome people to the desert. Let them eat dirt.
'Let's get moving.' Diggs hopped back into his HMMWV, and the driver moved off to a piece of high ground called the Iron Triangle. A short radio message from his senior OC made the American general growl. 'God damn it!'
'Problem?'
General Diggs held up a map. 'That hill is the most important piece of real estate in the valley, but they didn't see it. Well, they're going to pay for that little misjudg-ment. Happens every time.' Already, the OpFor had people
