told his visitor. “You might have a lively session this morning.”
Rutledge had seen the note already, of course. “I’m surprised Scott let it go out that way.”
“I gather things at home have gotten a little firm. We’ve seen CNN and all, but maybe it’s even worse than it appears.”
“Look, I don’t condone anything the Chinese did, but all this over a couple of shot clergymen ...”
“One was a diplomat, Cliff,” Hitch reminded him. “If you got your ass shot off, you’d want them to take it seriously in Washington, wouldn’t you?”
The reprimand made Rutledge’s eyes flare a little. “It’s President Ryan who’s driving this. He just doesn’t understand how diplomacy works.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but he is the President, and it’s our job to represent him, remember?”
“Hard to forget it,” Rutledge groused. He’d never be Undersecretary of State while that yahoo sat in the White House, and Undersecretary was the job he’d had his eye on for the last fifteen years. But neither would he get the job if he allowed his private feelings, however justified, to cloud his professional judgment. “We’re going to be called home or sent home,” he estimated.
“Probably,” Hitch agreed. “Be nice to catch some baseball. How do the Sox look this season?”
“Forget it. A rebuilding year. Once again.”
“Sorry about that.” Hitch shook his head and checked his desk for new dispatches, but there were none. Now he had to let Washington know what the Chinese Foreign Minister had said. Scott Adler was probably sitting in his seventh-floor office waiting for the secure direct line to ring.
“Good luck, Cliff.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Rutledge said on his way out the door.
Hitch wondered if he should call home and tell his wife to start packing for home, but no, not yet. First he had to call Foggy Bottom.
So, what’s going to happen?” Ryan asked Adler from his bed. He’d left orders to be called as soon as they got word. Now, listening to Adler’s reply, he was surprised. He’d thought the wording of the note rather wimpy, but evidently diplomatic exchange had even stricter rules than he’d appreciated. ”Okay, now what, Scott?”
“Well, we’ll wait and see what happens with the trade delegation, but even money we call them and Carl Hitch home for consultations.”
“Don’t the Chinese realize they could take a trade hit from all this?”
“They don’t expect that to happen. Maybe if it does, it’ll make them think over the error of their ways.”
“I wouldn’t bet much on that card, Scott.”
“Sooner or later, common sense has to break out. A hit in the wallet usually gets a guy’s attention,” SecState said.
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” POTUS replied. “’Night, Scott.”
“’Night, Jack.”
“So what did they say?” Cathy Ryan asked.
“They told us to stick it up our ass.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Jack replied, flipping the light off.
The Chinese thought they were invincible. It must be nice to believe that. Nice, but dangerous.
The 265th Motor Rifle Division was composed of three regiments of conscripts—Russians who hadn’t chosen to avoid military service, which made them patriotic, or stupid, or apathetic, or sufficiently bored with life that the prospect of two years in uniform, poorly fed and largely unpaid, didn’t seem that much of a sacrifice. Each regiment was composed of about fifteen hundred soldiers, about five hundred fewer than full authorized strength. The good news was that each regiment had an organic tank battalion, and that all of the mechanized equipment was, if not new, then at least recently manufactured, and reasonably well maintained. The division lacked its organic tank regiment, however, the fist which gave a motor-rifle division its offensive capabilities. Also missing was the divisional antitank battalion, with its Rapier antitank cannons. These were anachronistic weapons which Bondarenko nonetheless liked because he’d played with them as an officer cadet nearly forty years before. The new model of the BMP infantry carrier had been modified to carry the AT-6 antitank missle, the one NATO called “Spiral,” actually a Russian version of the NATO Milan, courtesy of some nameless KGB spy of the 1980s. The Russian troops called it the Hammer for its ease of use, despite a relatively small warhead. Every BMP had ten of these, which more than made up for the missing battalion of towed guns.
What worried Bondarenko and Aliyev most was the lack of artillery. Historically the best trained and best drilled part of the Russian army, the artillery was only half present in the Far East’s maneuver forces, battalions taking the place of regiments. The rationale for this was the