yes,” Painter agreed.
“And making it capable for this mission is just a question of software?”
“Essentially yes. Certainly it involves software in the missile’s seekerhead, maybe also for the SPY and SPG radars as well. That’s not exactly my field, sir.”
“Software isn’t all that difficult to write, and it isn’t that expensive either. Hell, I had a world-class guy at TRW who’s an expert on this stuff, used to work in SDIO downstairs. Alan Gregory, retired from the Army as a half-colonel, Ph.D. from Stony Brook, I think. Why not have him come in to check it out?”
It amazed Painter that Bretano, who’d run one major corporation and had almost been headhunted away to head Lockheed-Martin before President Ryan had intercepted him, had so little appreciation for procedure.
“Mr. Secretary, to do that, we have to—”
“My ass,” THUNDER interrupted. “I have discretionary authority over small amounts of money, don’t I?”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary,” Painter confirmed.
“And I’ve sold all my stock in TRW, remember?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So, I am not in violation of any of those fucking ethics laws, am I?”
“No, sir,” Painter had to agree.
“Good, so call TRW in Sunnyvale, get Alan Gregory, I think he’s a junior vice president now, and tell him we need him to fly here right away and look into this, to see how easy it would be to upgrade Aegis to providing a limited ballistic-missile-defense capability.”
“Sir, it won’t make some of the other contractors happy.” Including, Painter did not add, TRW.
“I’m not here to make them happy, Admiral. Somebody told me I was here to defend the country efficiently.”
“Yes, sir.” It was hard not to like the guy, even if he did have the bureaucratic sensibilities of a pissed-off rhinoceros.
“So let’s find out if Aegis has the technical capabilities to do this particular job.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“What time do I have to drive up to the Hill?” the SecDef asked next.
“About thirty minutes, sir.”
Bretano grumbled. Half his working time seemed to be spent explaining things to Congress, talking to people who’d already made up their minds and who only asked questions to look good on C-SPAN. For Tony Bretano, an engineer’s engineer, it seemed like a hellishly unproductive way to spend his time. But they called it public service, didn’t they? In a slightly different context, it was called slavery, but Ryan was even more trapped than he was, leaving THUNDER with little room to complain. And besides, he’d volunteered, too.
They were eager enough, these Spetsnaz junior officers, and Clark remembered that what makes elite troops is often the simple act of telling them that they are elite—then waiting for them to live up to their own self-image. There was a little more to it, of course. The Spetsnaz were special in terms of their mission. Essentially they’d been copies of the British Special Air Service. As so often happened in military life, what one country invented, other countries tended to copy, and so the Soviet Army had selected troops for unusually good fitness tests and a high degree of political reliability—Clark never learned exactly how one tested for that characteristic—and then assigned them a different training regimen, turning them into commandos. The initial concept had failed for a reason predictable to anyone but the political leadership of the Soviet Union: The great majority of Soviet soldiers were drafted, served two years, then went back home. The average member of the British SAS wasn’t even considered for membership until he’d served four years and had corporal’s stripes, for the simple reason that it takes more than two years to learn to be a competent soldier in ordinary duties, much less the sort that required thinking under fire—yet another problem for the Soviets, who didn’t encourage independent thought for any of those in uniform, much less conscripted non-officers. To compensate for this, some clever weapons had been thought up. The spring-loaded knife was one with which Chavez had played earlier in the day. At the push of a button, it shot off the blade of a serious combat knife with a fair degree of accuracy over a range of five or six meters. But the Soviet engineer who’d come up with this idea must have been a movie watcher, because only in the movies do men fall silently and instantly dead from a knife in the chest. Most people find this experience painful, and most people respond to pain by making noise. As an instructor at The Farm, Clark had always warned, “Never cut a man’s throat with a knife. They