border guards. The Mudje attacked us in company strength under cover of night and a snowstorm. It was rather exciting for an hour or so,' Gennady admitted.
Diggs had seen some of the scars—he'd caught his visitor in the shower the previous day. 'How good were they?'
'The Afghans?' Bondarenko grunted. 'You did not wish to be captured by them. They were absolutely fearless, but sometimes that worked against them. You could tell which bands had competent leadership and which did not. That one did. They wiped out the other half of the facility, and on my side' — a shrug—'we were bloody lucky. At the end we were fighting on the ground floor of the building. The enemy commander led his people bravely— but I proved to be a better shot.'
'Hero of the Soviet Union,' Diggs remarked, checking his burgers again. Colonel Hamm was listening, quietly. This was how members of that community measured one another, not so much by what they had done as by how they told the story.
The Russian smiled. 'Marion, I had no choice. There was no place to run away, and I knew what they did to captured Russian officers. So, they give me medal and promotion, and then my country—how you say? Evaporate?' There was more to it, of course. Bondarenko had been in Moscow during the coup, and for the first time in his life faced with making a moral decision, he'd made the right one, attracting the notice of several people who were now highly placed in the government of a new and smaller country.
'How about a country reborn?' Colonel Hamm suggested. 'How about, we can be friends now?'
'Da. You speak well, Colonel. And you command well.'
'Thank you, sir. Mainly I just sit back and let the regiment run itself.' That was a lie that any really good officer understood as a special sort of truth.
'Using Sov—Russian tactical doctrine!' It just seemed so outrageous to the Russian general.
'It works, doesn't it?' Hamm finished his beer.
It would work, Bondarenko promised himself. It would work for his army as it had worked for the American, once he got back and got the political support he needed to rebuild the Russian Army into something it had never been. Even at its fighting peak, driving the Germans back to Berlin, the Red Army had been a heavy, blunt instrument, depending on the shock value of mass more than anything else. He also knew what a role luck had played. His former country had fielded the world's finest tank, the T-34, blessed with a diesel engine designed in France to power dirigibles, a suspension system designed by an American named J. Walter Christie, and a handful of brilliant design innovations from young Russian engineers. That was one of the few instances in the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in which his countrymen had managed to turn out a world-class product—and in this case it had been the right one at the right time— without which his country would surely have died. But the time was past for his country to depend on luck and mass. In the early 1980s the Americans had come up with the right formula: a small, professional army, carefully selected, exquisitely trained, and lavishly equipped. Colonel Hamm's OpFor, this llth Cavalry Regiment, was like nothing he'd ever seen. His pre-travel brief had told him what to expect, but that was different from believing it. You had to see it to believe. In the right terrain, that one regiment could take on a division and destroy it in hours. The Blue Force was hardly incompetent, though its commander had declined the chance to come and eat here in order to work with his sub-unit leaders this day, so badly had they been mauled.
So much to learn here, but the most important lesson of all was how the Americans faced their lessons. Senior officers were humiliated regularly, both in the mock battles and afterward in what they called the AAR, 'after-action review,' during which the observer-controller officers analyzed everything that had taken place, reading their notes off multicolored file cards like hospital pathologists.
'I tell you,' Bondarenko said after a few seconds of reflection, 'in my army, people would start fistfights during—'
'Oh, we came close to that in the beginning,' Diggs assured him. 'When they started this place up, commanders got relieved for losing battles, until everybody took a deep breath and realized that it was supposed to be tough here. Pete Taylor is the guy who really got the NTC running right. The OCs had to learn diplomacy, and the Blue Force people had to learn that they were here to learn, but I'll tell you, Gennady, there isn't another army in the world that inflicts humiliation on its commanders the way we do.'
'That's a fact, sir. I was talking with Scan Connolly the other day—he's CO of the 10th ACR in the Negev Desert,' Hamm explained to the Russian. 'The Israelis still haven't got it all the way figured out. They still bitch about what the OCs tell 'em.'
'We keep installing more cameras over there.' Diggs laughed as he started shoveling burgers onto the plate. 'And sometimes the Israelis don't believe what happened even after we show them the videotapes.'
'Still too much hoo-uh over there,' Hamm agreed. 'Hey, I came here as a squadron commander, and I got my ass handed to me more'n once.'
'Gennady, after the Persian Gulf War, 3rd ACR came here for their regular rotation. Now, you remember, they led Barry McCaffrey's 24th Mech—'
'Kicked ass and took names for two hundred twenty miles in four days,' Hamm confirmed. Bondarenko nodded. He'd studied that campaign in detail.
'Couple months later, they came here and got the shit kicked outa them. That's the point, General. The training here is tougher than combat. There's no unit in the world as smart and fast and tough as Al's Blackhorse Cav—'
'Except your old Buffalo Soldiers, General,' Hamm interjected.
Diggs smiled at the reference to the 10th. He was used to Hamm's interruptions anyway. 'That's a fact, Al. Anyway, if you can just break even against the Op For, you're ready to take on anybody in the world, on the wrong side of three-to-one odds, and kick their ass into the next time zone.'
Bondarenko nodded, smiling. He was learning fast. The small staff that had come with him was still prowling the base, talking with counterpart officers, and learning, learning, learning. Being on the wrong side of three-to-one odds wasn't the tradition of Russian armies, but that might soon change. The threat to his country was China, and if that battle were ever fought, it would be at the far end of a lengthy supply line, against a huge conscript army. The only answer to that threat was to duplicate what the Americans had done. Bondarenko's mission was to change the entire military policy of his country. Well, he told himself, he'd come to the right place to learn how.
BULLSHIT, THE PRESIDENT thought behind an understanding smile. It was hard to like India. They called themselves the world's largest democracy, but that wasn't especially true. They talked about the most high-minded principles, but had, when convenient, muscled neighbors, developed nuclear weapons, and in asking America to depart the Indian Ocean—'It is, after all, called the Indian Ocean,' a former P.M. had told a former American Ambassador—decided that the doctrine of Freedom of the Seas was variably applicable. And for damned sure, they'd been ready to make a move on Sri Lanka. It was just that now, the move having been foiled, they were saying that no such move had ever been planned. But you couldn't look in the eyes of a chief of state and smile, and say, 'Bullshit.'
It just wasn't done.
Jack listened patiently, sipping at another glass of Per-rier fetched for him by a nameless aide. The situation in Sri Lanka was complex, and did, unfortunately, lend itself to misunderstanding, and India regretted that, and there were no hard feelings at all, but wouldn't it be better if both sides stood down. The Indian fleet was withdrawing back to its bases, training complete, and a few ships damaged by the American demonstration, which, the Prime Minister said without so many words, wasn't exactly cricket. Such bullies.
And what does Sri Lanka think of you? Ryan could have asked, but didn't.
'If only you and Ambassador Williams had communicated more clearly on the issue,' Ryan observed sadly.
'Such things happen,' the Prime Minister replied. 'David—frankly, pleasant man though he is, I fear the climate is too hot for one of his age.' Which was as close as she could come to telling Ryan to fire the man. Declaring Ambassador Williams persona non grata was far too drastic a step. Ryan tried not to change his expression, but failed. He needed Scott Adler over here, but the acting SecState was somewhere else at the moment.
'I hope you can appreciate the fact that I am really not in a position to make serious changes in the government at the moment.' Drop dead,
'Please, I wasn't suggesting that. I fully appreciate your situation. My hope was to allay at least one
