for light humor. “How fast to make the call-up happen?”
“The letters are already addressed and stamped. They should all be delivered in three days.”
“Mail them at once. See to it yourself, Andrey,” Bondarenko ordered.
“By your command, Comrade General.” Then he paused. “What do you make of this NATO business?”
“If it brings us help, then I am for it. I’d love to have American aircraft at my command. I remember what they did to Iraq. There are a lot of bridges I’d like to see dropped into the rivers they span.”
“And their land forces?”
“Do not underestimate them. I’ve seen how they train, and I’ve driven some of their equipment. It’s excellent, and their men know how to make use of it. One company of American tanks, competently led and supported, can hold off a whole regiment. Remember what they did to the army of the United Islamic Republic. Two active-duty regiments and a brigade of territorials crushed two heavy corps as if it were a sand-table exercise. That’s why I want to upgrade our training. Our men are as good as theirs, Andrey Petrovich, but their training is the best I have ever seen. Couple that to their equipment, and there you have their advantage.”
“And their commanders?”
“Good, but no better than ours. Shit, they copy our doctrine time and again. I’ve challenged them on this face-to-face, and they freely admit that they admire our operational thinking. But they make better use of our doctrine than we do—because they train their men better.”
“And they train better because they have more money to spend.”
“There you have it. They don’t have tank commanders painting rocks around the motor pool, as we do,” Bondarenko noted sourly. He’d just begun to change that, but just-begun was a long way from mission-accomplished. “Get the call-up letters out, and remember, we must keep this quiet. Go. I have to talk to Moscow.”
“Yes, Comrade General.” The G-3 made his departure.
Well, ain’t that something?” Major General Diggs commented after watching the TV show.
“Makes you wonder what NATO is for,” Colonel Masterman agreed.
“Duke, I grew up expecting to see T-72 tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap like cockroaches on a Bronx apartment floor. Hell, now they’re our friends?” He had to shake his head in disbelief. “I’ve met a few of their senior people, like that Bondarenko guy running the Far East Theater. He’s pretty smart, serious professional. Visited me at Fort Irwin. Caught on real fast, really hit it off with Al Hamm and the Blackhorse. Our kind of soldier.”
“Well, sir, I guess he really is now, eh?”
That’s when the phone rang. Diggs lifted it. “General Diggs. Okay, put him through.... Morning, sir.... Just fine, thanks, and—yes? What’s that? ... This is serious, I presume.... Yes, sir. Yes, sir, we’re ready as hell. Very well, sir. Bye.” He set the phone back down. “Duke, good thing you’re sitting down.”
“What gives?”
“That was SACEUR. We got alert orders to be ready to entrain and move east.”
“East where?” the divisional operations officer asked, surprised. An unscheduled exercise in Eastern Germany, maybe?
“Maybe as far as Russia, the eastern part. Siberia, maybe,” Diggs added in a voice that didn’t entirely believe what it said.
“What the hell?”
“NCA is concerned about a possible dust-up between the Russians and the Chinese. If it happens, we may have to go east to support Ivan.”
“What the hell?” Masterman observed yet again.
“He’s sending his J-2 down to brief us in on what he’s got from Washington. Ought to be here in half an hour.”
“Who else? Is this a NATO tasking?”
“He didn’t say. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. For the moment just you and the staff, the ADC, and the brigade sixes are in on the brief.”
“Yes, sir,” Masterman said, there being little else he could say.
The Air Force sends a number of aircraft when the President travels. Among these were C-5B Galaxies. Known to the Navy as “the aluminum cloud” for its huge bulk, the transport is capable of carrying whole tanks in its cavernous interior. In this case, however, they carried VC- 60 helicopters, larger than a tank in dimensions, but far lighter in weight.
The VH-60 is a version of the Sikorsky Blackhawk troop-carrier, somewhat cleaned up and appointed for VIP passengers. The pilot was Colonel Dan Malloy, a Marine with over five thousand hours of stick time in rotary-ring aircraft, whose radio call-sign was “Bear.” Cathy Ryan knew him well. He usually flew her to Johns Hopkins in the morning in a twin to this aircraft. There