Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“You got it,” Winston confirmed around a bite of his sandwich. One thing about working-class people like Adler, the SecTreas thought, they knew what a proper lunch was. He was so tired of fairyfied French food for lunch. Lunch was supposed to be a piece of meat with bread wrapped around it. French cuisine was just fine, but for dinner, not for lunch.

“How rough?”

“We get what we want. We need them to get accustomed to the idea that they need us a hell of a lot more than we need them.”

“That’s a tall order, George. If they don’t want to listen?”

“Knock louder on the door, or on their heads. Scott, you read the same document this morning I did, right?”

“Yeah,” SecState confirmed.

“The people they’re cheating out of their jobs are American citizens.”

“I know that. But what you have to remember is that we can’t dictate to a sovereign country. The world doesn’t work that way.”

“Okay, fine, but we can tell them that they can’t dictate trade practices to us, either.”

“George, for a long time America has taken a very soft line on these issues.”

“Maybe, but the Trade Reform Act is now law-”

“Yeah, I remember. I also remember how it got us into a shooting war,” Adler reminded his guest.

“We won. I remember that, too. Maybe other people will as well. Scott, we’re running a huge trade deficit with the Chinese. The President says that has to stop. I happen to agree. If we can buy from them, then they damned well have to buy from us, or we buy our chopsticks and teddy bears elsewhere.”

“There are jobs involved,” Adler warned. “They know how to play that card. They cancel contracts and stop buying our finished goods, and then some of our people lose their jobs, too.”

“Or, if we succeed, then we sell more finished goods to them, and our factories have to hire people to make them. Play to win, Scott,” Winston advised.

“I always do, but this isn’t a baseball game with rules and fences. It’s like racing a sailboat in the fog. You can’t always see your adversary, and you can damned near never see the finish line.”

“I can buy you some radar, then. How about I give you one of my people to help out?”

“Who?”

“Mark Gant. He’s my computer whiz. He really knows the issues from a technical, monetary point of view.”

Adler thought about that. State Department had always been weak in that area. Not too many business-savvy people ended up in the Foreign Service, and learning it from books wasn’t the same as living it out in the real world, a fact that too many State Department “professionals” didn’t always appreciate as fully as they should.

“Okay, send him over. Now, just how rough are we supposed to play this?”

“Well, I guess you’ll need to talk that one over with Jack, but from what he told me this morning, we want the playing field leveled out.”

An easy thing to say, Adler thought, but less easy to accomplish. He liked and admired President Ryan, but he wasn’t blind to the fact that SWORDSMAN was not the most patient guy in the world, and in diplomacy, patience was everything-hell, patience was just about the only thing. “Okay,” he said, after a moment’s reflection. “I’ll talk it over with him before I tell my people what to say. This could get nasty. The Chinese play rough.”

“Life’s a bitch, Scott,” Winston advised.

SecState smiled. “Okay, duly noted. Let me see what Jack says. So, how’s the market doing?”

“Still pretty healthy. Price/earnings ratios are still a little outrageous, but profits are generally up, inflation is under control, and the investment community is nice and comfy. The Fed Chairman is keeping a nice, even strain on monetary policy. We’re going to get the changes we want in the tax code. So, things look pretty good. It’s always easier to steer the ship in calm seas, y‘know?”

Adler grimaced. “Yeah, I’ll have to try that sometime.” But he had marching orders to lay on a typhoon. This would get interesting.

So, how’s readiness?" General Diggs asked his assembled officers.

“Could be better,” the colonel commanding 1st Brigade admitted. “We’ve been short lately on funds for training. We have the hardware, and we have the soldiers, and we spend a lot of time in the simulators, but that’s not the same as going out in the dirt with our tracks.” There was general nodding on that point.

“It’s a problem for me, sir,” said Lieutenant Colonel Angelo Giusti, who commanded 1st Squadron, 4th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Known within the Army as the Quarter Horse for the 1st/4th unit designator, it was the division reconnaissance screen, and its commander reported directly to the commanding general of First Tanks instead of through a brigade commander. “I can’t get my people out, and it’s hard to train for reconnaissance in the kazerne. The local farmers get kinda irate when we crunch through their fields, and so we have to pretend we can do recon from hard-surface roads. Well, sir, we can‘t, and that bothers me some.”

There was no denying the fact that driving armored vehicles across a cornfield was tough on the corn, and while the U.S. Army trailed every tactical formation with a Hummer whose passengers came with a big checkbook to pay for the damage, the Germans were a tidy people, and Yankee dollars didn’t always compensate for the suddenly untidy fields. It had been easier when the Red Army had been right on the other side of the fence, threatening death and destruction on West Germany, but Germany was now one sovereign country, and the Russians were now on the far side of Poland, and a lot less threatening than they’d once been. There were a few places where large formations could exercise, but those were as fully booked as the prettiest debutante’s dance card at the cotillion, and so the Quarter Horse spent too much time in simulators, too.

“Okay,” Diggs said. “The good news is that we’re going to profit from the new federal budget. We have lots more funds to train with, and we can start using them in twelve days. Colonel Masterman, do you have some ways for us to spend it?”

“Well, General, I think I might come up with something. Can we pretend that it’s nineteen-eighty-three again?” At the height of the Cold War, Seventh Army had trained to as fine an edge as any army in history, a fact ultimately demonstrated in Iraq rather than in Germany, but with spectacular effect. Nineteen eighty-three had been the year the increased funding had first taken real effect, a fact noted fully by the KGB and GRU intelligence officers, who’d thought until that time that the Red Army might have had a chance to defeat NATO. By 1984, even the most optimistic Russian officers fell off that bandwagon for all time. If they could reestablish that training regimen, the assembled officers all knew they’d have a bunch of happy soldiers, because, though training is hard work, it is what the troops had signed up for. A soldier in the field is most often a happy soldier.

“Colonel Masterman, the answer to your question is, Yes. Back to my original question. How’s readiness?”

“We’re at about eighty-five percent,” 2nd Brigade estimated. “Probably ninety or so for the artillery-”

“Thank you, Colonel, and I agree,” the colonel commanding divisional artillery interjected.

“But we all know how easy life is for the cannon-cockers,” 2nd Brigade added as a barb.

“Aviation?” Diggs asked next.

“Sir, my people are within three weeks of being at a hundred percent. Fortunately, we don’t squash anybody’s corn when we’re up practicing. My only complaint is that it’s too easy for my people to track tanks on the ground if they’re road-bound, and a little more realistic practice wouldn’t hurt, but, sir, I’ll put my aviators up against anyone in this man’s army, especially my Apache drivers.” The “snake” drivers enjoyed a diet of raw meat and human babies. The problems they’d had in Yugoslavia a few years earlier had alarmed a lot of people, and the aviation community had cleaned up its act with alacrity.