Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“General,” Ryan said, “the idea here is to rattle the cage of their political leadership. Best way to do that is to go after them in more places than one, overload ’em.”

“Sir, I agree with that idea, but General Wallace has his point, too. Taking down their radar fence will degrade their ability to use their fighters against us, and they still have a formidable fighter force, even though we’ve handled them pretty rough so far.”

“Mickey, if you handle a girl this way down in Mississippi, it’s called rape,” the Vice President observed. “Their fighter pilots look at their aircraft now and they see caskets, for Christ’s sake. Their confidence has got to be gone, and that’s all a fighter jock has to hold on to. Trust me on this one, will ya?”

“But Gus-”

“But Gus is too worried about his force. Okay, fine, let him send some Charlie-Golfs against their picket fence, but mainly we want those birds armed with Smart Pigs to go after their ground forces. The fighter force can look after itself.”

For the first time, General Mickey Moore regretted Ryan’s choice of Vice President. Robby was thinking like a politician rather than an operational commander-and that came as something of a surprise. He was seemingly less worried about the safety of his forces than of …

… than of what the overall objective was, Moore corrected himself. And that was not a completely bad way to think, was it? Jackson had been a pretty good J-3 not so long before, hadn’t he?

American commanders no longer thought of their men as expendable assets. That was not a bad thing at all, but sometimes you had to put forces in harm’s way, and when you did that, some of them did not come home. And that was what they were paid for, whether you liked it or not. Robby Jackson had been a Navy fighter pilot, and he hadn’t forgotten the warrior ethos, despite his new job and pay grade.

“Sir,” Moore said, “what orders do I give General Wallace?”

Cecil B. goddamned DeMille,” Mancuso observed crossly.

“Ever wanted to part the Red Sea?” General Lahr asked.

“I ain’t God, Mike,” CINCPAC said next.

“Well, it is elegant, and we do have most of the pieces in place,” his J-2 pointed out.

“This is a political operation. What the hell are we, a goddamned focus group?”

“Sir, you going to continue to rant, or are we going to get to work on this?”

Mancuso wished for a lupara to blast a hole in the wall, or Mike Lahr’s chest, but he was a uniformed officer, and he did now have orders from his Commander-in-Chief.

“All right. I just don’t like to have other people design my operations.”

“And you know the guy.”

“Mike, once upon a time, back when I had three stripes and driving a submarine was all I had to worry about, Ryan and I helped steal a whole Russian submarine, yeah-and if you repeat that to anyone, I’ll have one of my Marines shoot your ass. Sink some of their ships, yeah, splash a few of their airplanes, sure, but ‘trailing our coat’ in sight of land? Jesus.”

“It’ll shake them up some.”

“If they don’t sink some of my ships in the attempt.”

Hey, Tony,” the voice on the phone said. It took Bretano a second to recognize it.

“Where are you now, Al?” the Secretary of Defense asked.

“Norfolk. Didn’t you know? I’m on USS Gettysburg upgrading their SAMs. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose it was,” Tony Bretano agreed, thinking back.

“You must have seen this Chinese thing coming a long way off, man.”

“As a matter of fact, we-” The SecDef paused for a second. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if the ChiComms loft an ICBM at us, this Aegis system does give us something to fall back on, if the computer simulations are right. They ought to be. I wrote most of the software,” Gregory went on.

Secretary Bretano didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t really thought about that eventuality. Thinking things through was one of the things he was paid for, after all. “How ready are you?”

“The electronics stuff is okay, but we don’t have any SAMs aboard. They’re stashed at some depot or something, up on the York River, I think they said. When they load them aboard, I can upgrade the software on the seeker heads. The only missiles aboard, the ones I’ve been playing with, they’re blue ones, exercise missiles, not shooters, I just found out. You know, the Navy’s a little weird. The ship’s in a floating dry dock. They’re going to lower us back in the water in a few hours.” He couldn’t see his former boss’s face at the moment. If he could, he would have recognized the oh, shit expression on his Italian face.

“So, you’re confident in your systems?”

“A full-up test would be nice, but if we can loft three or four SAMs at the inbound, yeah, I think it oughta work.”

“Okay, thanks, Al.”

“So, how’s this war going? All I see on TV is how the Air Force is kicking some ass.”

“They are, the TV’s got that right, but the rest-can’t talk about it over the phone. Al, let me get back to you, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

In his office, Bretano switched buttons. “Ask Admiral Seaton to come in to see me.” That didn’t take very long.

“You rang, Mr. Secretary,” the CNO said when he came in.

“Admiral, there’s a former employee of mine from TRW in Norfolk right now. I set him up to look at upgrading the Aegis missile system to engage ballistic targets.”

“I heard a little about that. How’s his project going?” Dave Seaton asked.

“He says he’s ready for a full-up test. But, Admiral, what if the Chinese launch one of their CSS-4s at us?”

“It wouldn’t be good,” Seaton replied.

“Then how about we take our Aegis ships and put them close to the likely targets?”

“Well, sir, the system’s not certified for ballistic targets yet, and we haven’t really run a test, and-”

“Is it better than nothing?” the SecDef asked, cutting him off.

“A little, I suppose.”

“Then let’s make that happen, and make it happen right now.”

Seaton straightened up. “Aye aye, sir.”

“Gettysburg first. Have her load up what missiles she needs, and bring her right here,” Bretano ordered.

“I’ll call SACLANT right now.”

It was the strangest damned thing, Gregory thought. This ship-not an especially big ship, smaller than the one he and Candi had taken a cruise on the previous winter, but still an oceangoing ship -was in an elevator. That’s what a floating dry dock was. They were flooding it now, to make it go down, back into the water to see if the new propeller worked. Sailors who worked on the dry dock were watching from their perches on-whatever the hell you called the walls of the damned thing.

“Weird, ain’t it, sir?”

Gregory smelled the smoke. It had to be Senior Chief Leek. He turned. It was.

“Never seen this sort of thing before.”

“Nobody does real often, ’cept’n those guys over there who operate this thing. Did you take the chance to walk under the ship?”

“Walk under ten thousand tons of metal?” Gregory responded. “I don’t think so.”

“You was a soldier, wasn’t you?”

“Told you, didn’t I? West Point, jump school, ranger school, back when I was young and foolish.”

“Well, Doc, it’s no big deal. Kinda interesting to see how she’s put together, ‘specially the sonar dome up forward. If I wasn’t a radar guy, I probably woulda been a sonar guy, ’cept there’s nothing for them to do anymore.”