Chapter 39
The Other Question
No action with our friend?” Reilly asked.
“Well, he continues his sexual adventures,” Provalov answered.
“Talk to any of the girls yet?”
“Earlier today, two of them. He pays them well, in euros or d-marks, and doesn’t request any, uh, ‘exotic’ services from them.”
“Nice to know he’s normal in his tastes,” the FBI agent observed, with a grunt.
“We have numerous photos of him now. We’ve put an electronic tracker on his cars, and we’ve also planted a bug on his computer keyboard. That’ll allow us to determine his encryption password, next time he makes use of it.”
“But he hasn’t done anything incriminating yet,” Reilly said. He didn’t even make it a question.
“Not under our observation,” Oleg confirmed.
“Damn, so, he was really trying to whack Sergey Golovko. Hard to believe, man.”
“That is so, but we cannot deny it. And on Chinese orders.”
“That’s like an act of war, buddy. It’s a big f*cking deal.” Reilly took a sip of his vodka.
“So it is, Mishka. Rather more complex than any case I’ve handled this year.” It was, Provalov thought, an artful understatement. He’d gladly go back to a normal homicide, a husband killing his wife for f*cking a neighbor, or the other way around. Such things, nasty as they were, were far less nasty than this one was.
“How’s he pick the girls up, Oleg?” Reilly asked.
“He doesn’t call for them on the phone. He seems to go to a good restaurant with a good bar and wait until a likely prospect appears at his elbow.”
“Hmm, plant a girl on him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean get yourself a pretty girl who does this sort of thing for a living, brief her on what she ought to say, and set her in front of him like a nice fly on your fishhook. If he picks her up, maybe she can get him to talk.”
“Have you ever done such a thing?”
“We got a wiseguy that way in Jersey City three years ago. Liked to brag in front of women how tough he was, and the guys he whacked, that sort of thing. He’s in Rahway State Prison now on a murder rap. Oleg, a lot more people have talked their way into prison than you’ll ever catch on your own. Trust me. That’s how it is for us, even.”
“I wonder if the Sparrow School has any graduates working ... ?” Provalov mused.
It wasn’t fair to do it at night, but nobody had ever said war was marked by fairness in its execution. Colonel Boyle was in his command post monitoring the operation of 1st Armored’s Aviation Brigade. It was mainly his Apaches, though some Kiowa Warriors were up, too, as scouts for the heavy shooters. The target was a German heavy battalion, simulating a night’s laagering after a day on the offense. In fact, they were pretending to be Russians—it was a NATO scenario that went back thirty years to the introduction of the first Huey Cobras, back in the 1970s, when the value of a helicopter gunship had first been noticed in Vietnam. And a revelation it had been. Armed for the first time in 1972 with TOW missiles, they’d proven to the tanks of the North Vietnamese just how fearsome a foe a missile-armed chopper could be, and that had been before night-vision systems had come fully on line. Now the Apache turned combat operations into sport shooting, and the Germans were still trying to figure a counter for it. Even their own night-vision gear didn’t compensate for the huge advantage held by the airborne hunters. One idea that had almost worked was to lay a thermal-insulating blanket over the tanks so as to deny the helicopters the heat signature by which they hunted their motionless prey, but the problem there was the tank’s main gun tube, which had proved impractical to conceal, and the blankets had never really worked properly, any more than a twin-bed coverlet could be stretched over a king-size bed. And so, now, the Apaches’ laser-illumination systems were “painting” the Leos for enough seconds to guarantee hits from the Hellfire missiles, and while the German tanks tried to shoot back, they couldn’t seem to make it work. And now the yellow “I’m dead” lights were blinking, and yet another tank battalion had fallen victim to yet another administrative attack.
“They should have tried putting SAM teams outside their perimeter,” Colonel Boyle observed, watching the computer screen. Instead, the German colonel had tried IR lures, which the Apache gunners had learned to distinguish from the real thing. Under the rules of the scenario, proper tank decoys had not been allowed. They were a little harder to discriminate—the American-made ones almost exactly replicated the visual signature of an M1 tank, and had an internal heat source for fooling infrared gear at night—and fired off a Hoffman pyrotechnic charge to simulate a return shot when they took a hit. But they were made so well for their mission that they could not be mistaken for anything other than what they were, either a real M1 main battle tank, and hence friendly, or a decoy, and thus not really useful in a training exercise, all in all a case of battlefield technology being too good for a training exercise.
“Pegasus Lead to Archangel, over,” the digital radio called. With the new radios, it was no longer a static-marred crackle.
“Archangel to Pegasus,” Colonel Boyle answered.
“Sir, we are Winchester and just about out of targets. No friendly casualties. Pegasus is RTB, over.”
“Roger, Pegasus. Looks good from here. Out.”
And with that, the Apache battalion of attack choppers and their Kiowa bird-dogs turned back for their airfield for the mission debrief and post-game beers.
Boyle looked over at General Diggs. “Sir, I don’t know how to do it much better than that.”
“Our hosts are going to be pissed.”
“The Bundeswehr isn’t what it used to be. Their political leadership thinks peace has broken out all the way, and their troopers know it. They could have put some of their own choppers up to run interference, but my boys are pretty good at air-to-air—we train for it, and my pilots really like the idea of making ace on their own—but their chopper drivers aren’t getting all the gas they need for operational training. Their best chopper drivers are down in the Balkans doing traffic observation.”
Diggs nodded thoughtfully. The problems of the Bundeswehr were not, strictly speaking, his problems. “Colonel, that was well done. Please convey my pleasure to your people. What’s next for you?”
“General, we have a maintenance stand-down tomorrow, and two days later we’re going to run a major search-and-rescue exercise with my Blackhawks. You’re welcome to come over and watch.”
“I just might, Colonel Boyle. You done good. Be seeing you.”
“Yes, sir.” The colonel saluted, and General Diggs walked out to his HMMWV, with Colonel Masterman in attendance.
“Well, Duke?”
“Like I told you, sir, Boyle’s been feeding his boys and girls a steady diet of nails and human babies.”
“Well, his next fitness report’s going to get him a star, I think.”
“His Apache commander’s not bad either.”
“That’s a fact,” the divisional G-3 agreed. “Pegasus” was his call sign, and he’d kicked some serious ass this night.
“What’s next?”
“Sir, in three days we have a big SimNet exercise against the Big Red One at Fort Riley. Our boys are pretty hot for it.”
“Divisional readiness?” Diggs asked.
“We’re pushing ninety-five percent, General. Not much slack left to take up. I mean, sir, to go any farther, we gotta take the troops out to Fort Irwin or maybe the Negev Training Area. Are we as good as the Tenth Cav or the Eleventh? No, we don’t get to play in the field as much as they do.” And, he didn’t have to add, no division in any army in the world got the money to train that hard. “But given the limitations we have to live with, there’s not a whole lot more we can do. I figure we play hard on SimNet to keep the kids interested, but we’re just about as far as we can go, sir.”
“I think you’re right, Duke. You know, sometimes I kinda wish the Cold War could come back—for training purposes, anyway. The Germans won’t let us play the way we used to back then, and that’s what we need to take the next step.”
“Unless somebody springs for the tickets to fly a brigade out to California.” Masterman nodded.
“That ain’t gonna happen, Duke,” Diggs told his operations officer. And more was the pity. First Tanks’ troops were almost ready to give the Blackhorse a run for their money. Close enough, Diggs thought, that he’d pay to watch. “How’s a beer grab you, Colonel?”
“If the General is buying, I will gladly assist him in spending his money,” Duke Masterman said graciously, as their sergeant driver pulled up to the kazerne’s O-Club.
Good morning, Comrade General,” Gogol said, pulling himself to attention.
Bondarenko had felt guilt at coming to see this old soldier so early in the morning, but he’d heard the day before that the ancient warrior was not one to waste daylight. And so he wasn’t, the general saw.
“You kill wolves,” Gennady Iosifovich observed, seeing the gleaming pelts hanging on the wall of this rough cabin.
“And bear, but when you gild the pelts, they grow too heavy,” the old man agreed, fetching tea for his guests.
“These are amazing,” Colonel Aliyev said, touching one of the remaining wolf pelts. Most had been carried off.
“It’s an amusement for an old hunter,” Gogol said, lighting a cigarette.
General Bondarenko looked at his rifles, the new Austrian-made one, and the old Russian M1891 Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle.
“How many with this one?” Bondarenko asked.
“Wolves, bears?”
“Germans,” the general clarified, with coldness in his voice.
“I stopped counting at thirty, Comrade General. That was before Kiev. There were many more after that. I see we share a decoration,” Gogol observed, pointing to his visitor’s gold star, for Hero of the Soviet Union, which he’d won in Afghanistan. Gogol had two, one from Ukraine and the other in Germany.
“You have the look of a soldier, Pavel Petrovich, and a good one.” Bondarenko sipped his tea, served properly, a clear glass in a metal—was it silver?—holder.
“I served in my time. First at Stalingrad, then on the long walk to Berlin.”
I bet you did walk all the way, too, the general thought. He’d met his share of Great Patriotic War veterans, now mostly dead. This wizened old bastard had stared death in the face and spat at it, trained to do so, probably, by his life in these woods. He’d grown up with bears and wolves as enemies—as nasty as the German fascists had been, at least they didn’t eat you—and so had been accustomed to wagering his life on his eye and his nerve. There was no real substitute for that, the kind of training you couldn’t institute for an army. A gifted few learned how the hard way, and of those the lucky ones survived the war. Pavel Petrovich hadn’t had an easy time. Soldiers might admire their own snipers, might value them for their skills, but you could never say “comrade” to a man who hunted men as though they were animals—because on the other side of the line might be another such man who wanted to hunt you. Of all the enemies, that was the one you loathed and feared the most, because it became personal to see another man through a telescopic sight, to see his face, and take his life as a deliberate act against one man, even gazing at his face when the bullet struck. Gogol had been one of those, Gennady thought, a hunter of individual men. And he’d probably never lost a minute’s sleep over it. Some men were just born to it, and Pavel Petrovich Gogol was one of them. With a few hundred thousand such men, a general could conquer the entire world, but they were too rare for that...
... and maybe that was a good thing, Bondarenko mused.
“Might you come to my headquarters some night? I would like to feed you dinner and listen to your stories.”
“How far is it?”
“I will send you my personal helicopter, Sergeant Gogol.”
“And I will bring you a gilded wolf,” the hunter promised his guest.
“We will find an honored place for it at my headquarters,” Bondarenko promised in turn. “Thank you for your tea. I must depart and see to my command, but I will have you to headquarters for dinner, Sergeant Gogol.” Handshakes were exchanged, and the general took his leave.
“I would not want him on the other side of a battlefield,” Colonel Aliyev observed, as they got into their helicopter.
“Do we have a sniper school in the command?”
“Yes, General, but it’s mainly inactive.”
Gennady turned. “Start it up again, Andrushka! We’ll get Gogol to come and teach the children how it’s done. He’s a priceless asset. Men like that are the soul of a fighting army. It’s our job to command our soldiers, to tell them where to go and what to do, but those are the men who do the fighting and the killing, and it’s our job to make sure they’re properly trained and supplied. And when they’re too old, we use them to teach the new boys, to give them heroes they can touch and talk to. How the hell did we ever forget that, Andrey?” The general shook his head as the helicopter lifted off.
Gregory was back in his hotel room, with three hundred pages of technical information to digest as he sipped his Diet Coke and finished off his french fries. Something was wrong with the whole equation, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The Navy had tested its Standard-2-ER missile against all manner of threats, mainly on computer, but also against live targets at Kwajalein Atoll. It had done pretty well, but there’d never been a full-up live test against a for-real ICBM reentry vehicle. There weren’t enough of them to go around. Mainly they used old Minuteman-II ICBMs, long since retired from service and fired out of test silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but those were mostly gone. Russia and America had retired all of their ballistic weapons, chiefly as a reaction to the nuclear terrorist explosion at Denver and the even more horrific aftermath that had barely been averted. The negotiations to draw the numbers down to zero—the last ones had been eliminated in public just before the Japanese had launched their sneak attack on the Pacific Fleet—had gone so rapidly that a lot of the minor ancillary points had scarcely been considered, and only later had it been decided to take the “spare” launchers whose disposition had somehow been overlooked and retain them for ABM testing (every month a Russian officer checked the American ones at Vandenberg, and an American officer counted the Russian ones outside Plesetsk). The ABM tests were also monitored, but that entire area of effort was now largely theoretical. Both America and Russia retained a goodly number of nuclear warheads, and these could easily be affixed to cruise missiles, which, again, both sides had in relative abundance and no country could stop. It might take five hours instead of thirty-four minutes, but the targets would be just as dead.
Anti-missile work had been relegated to theater missiles, such as the ubiquitous Scuds, which the Russians doubtless regretted ever having built, much less sold to jerkwater countries that couldn’t even field a single decent mechanized division, but who loved to parade those upgraded V- 2-class ballistic stovepipes because they looked impressive as hell to the people on the sidewalks. But the new upgrades on Patriot and its Russian counterpart SAM largely negated that threat, and the Navy’s Aegis system had been tested against them, with pretty good success. Like Patriot, though, Standard was really a point-defense weapon with damned little cross-range ability to cover an area instead of maybe twenty square miles of important sea-estate.
All in all, it was a pity that they’d never solved the power-throughput problem with his free-electron lasers. Those could have defended whole coastlines, if only ... and if only his aunt had balls, Gregory thought, she’d be his uncle. There was talk of building a chemical laser aboard a converted 747 that could sure as hell clobber a ballistic launch during boost phase, but to do that, the 747 had to be fairly close to the launch point, and so that was just one more version of theater defense, and of little strategic use.
The Aegis system had real possibilities. The SPY radar system was first-rate, and though the computer that managed the information was the flower of 1975 technology—a current Apple Macintosh had it beat by a good three orders of magnitude in all categories of performance—intercepting a ballistic warhead wasn’t a question of computing speed so much as kinetic energy—getting the kill vehicle to the right place at the right time. Even that wasn’t so great a feat of engineering. The real work had been done as far back as 1959, with the Nike Zeus, which had turned into Spartan and shown great promise before being shitcanned by the 1972 treaty with the Soviet Union, which was, belatedly, just as dead as the Safeguard system, which had been aborted at half-built. Well, the fact of the matter was that MIRV technology had negated that entire defense concept. No, you had to kill the ICBM in boost phase to kill all the MIRVs at once, and do it over the enemy’s territory so that if he had a primitive arming system he’d only fry his own turf. The method for doing that was the Brilliant Pebbles system developed at Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory, and though it had never been given a full-up test, the technology was actually pretty straightforward. Being hit by a matchstick traveling at fifteen thousand miles per hour would ruin your entire day. But that would never happen. The drive to fund and deploy such a system had died with all the ballistic launchers. In a way, it was a pity, Gregory thought. Such a system would have been a really cool engineering accomplishment—but it had little practical application today. The PRC retained its land-based ballistic launchers, but there were only ten or so of them, and that was a long way from the fifteen hundred the Soviets had once pointed at America. The Chinese had a missile submarine, too, but Gregory figured that CINCPAC could make that go away if he had to. Even if it was just tied alongside the pier, one two-thousand-pound smart bomb could take it out of play, and the Navy had a lot of those.
So, he thought, figure the PRC gets really pissed at Taiwan, and figure the Navy has an Aegis cruiser tied alongside so that its sailors can get drunk and laid in the city, and those folks in Beijing pick that moment to push the button on one of their ICBMs, how can the Navy keep its cruiser from turning into slag, and oh, by the way, keep the city of Taipei alive ... ?
The SM-2-ER had almost enough of the right ingredients to handle such a threat. If the missile was targeted on where the cruiser was, cross-range was not an issue. You just had to put the interceptor on the same line of bearing, because in essence the inbound rack wasn’t moving at all, and you just had to put the SAM in the same place—Spot X—that the RV was going to be, at Time Y. The Aegis computer could figure where and when that was, and you weren’t really hitting a bullet with a bullet. The RV would be about a meter across, and the kill-zone of the SAM’s warhead would be about, what? Three meters across? Five? Maybe even eight or ten?
Call it eight, Al Gregory thought. Was the SM-2 that accurate? In absolute terms, probably yes. It had ample-sized control surfaces, and getting into the line of a jet aircraft—what the SM-2 had been designed to kill—had to take into account the maneuverability of the aircraft (pilots would do their damnedest to avoid the things), and so the eight-meter globe of destruction could probably be made to intercept the inbound RV in terms of pure geometry.
The issue was speed. Gregory popped open another Diet Coke from the room’s minibar and sat back on the bed to consider how troublesome that issue was. The inbound RV, at a hundred thousand feet, would be traveling at about sixteen thousand miles per hour, 23,466 feet per second, eight times the speed of a rifle bullet, 7,150 meters per second. That was pretty damned fast. It was about the same speed as a high-explosive detonation. You could have the RV sitting next to a ton of TNT at the moment the explosive went off, and the explosion couldn’t catch up with the RV. That was FAST.
So, the SAM’s warhead has to go off well before it gets to where the RV is. Figuring out how much was a simple mathematical exercise. That meant that the proximity fuse on the SM-2 was the important variable in the equation, Gregory decided. He didn’t know that he was wrong on this, didn’t see what he was missing, and went on with his calculations. The software fix for the proximity laser fusing system looked less difficult than he’d imagined. Well, wasn’t that good news?
It was another early day for Minister Fang Gan. He’d gotten a phone call at his home the previous night, and decided he had to arrive early for the appointment made then. This was a surprise for his staff, who were just setting up for the day when he breezed in, not looking as cross as he felt for the disturbance of his adamantine routine. It wasn’t their fault, after all, and they had the good sense not to trouble him, and thus generate artificial wrath.
Ming was just printing up her downloads from the Web. She had pieces that she thought would be of interest, especially one from The Wall Street Journal, and another from Financial Times. Both commented on what she thought might be the reason for the minister’s early arrival. His 9:20 appointment was with Ren He-Ping, an industrialist friendly with her boss. Ren arrived early. The slender, elderly man looked unhappy—no, she thought, worried—about something. She lifted her phone to get permission, then stood and walked him into the inner office, racing back outside to fetch morning tea, which she hadn’t had a chance to serve her boss yet.
Ming was back inside in less than five minutes, with the fine porcelain cups on a decorated serving tray. She presented the morning drinks to both men with an elegance that earned her a thank-you from her boss, and then she took her leave. Ren, she saw, wasn’t any happier to be in with her minister.
“What is the problem, Ren?”
“In two weeks, I will have a thousand workers with nothing to do, Fang.”
“Oh? What is the reason for that, my friend?”
“I do much business with an American business. It is called Butterfly. They sell clothing to wealthy American women. My factory outside Shanghai makes the cloth, and my tailoring plant at Yancheng turns the fabric into clothing, which we ship to America and Europe. We’ve been doing business with Butterfly for three years now, very satisfactorily for all concerned.”
“Yes? So, what, then, is the difficulty?”
“Fang, Butterfly just canceled an order worth one hundred forty million American dollars. They did it without any warning. Only last week they told us how happy they were with our products. We’ve invested a fortune into quality control to make sure they would stay with us—but they’ve left us like a dog in the street.”
“Why did this happen, Ren?” Minister Fang asked, fearing he knew the answer.
“Our representative in New York tells us that it’s because of the deaths of the two clergymen. He tells us that Butterfly had no choice, that Americans demonstrated outside his establishment in New York and prevented people from going inside to buy his wares. He says that Butterfly cannot do business with me for fear of having their own business collapse.”
“Do you not have a contract with them? Are they not obligated to honor it?”
Ren nodded. “Technically, yes, but business is a practical thing, Minister. If they cannot sell our goods, then they will not buy them from us. They cannot get the financing to do so from their bankers—bankers loan money in the expectation that it will be paid back, yes? There is an escape clause in the contract. We could dispute it in court, but it would take years, and we would probably not succeed, and it would also offend others in the industry, and thus prevent us from ever doing business in New York again. So, in practical terms there is no remedy.”
“Is this a temporary thing? Surely this difficulty will pass, will it not?”
“Fang, we also do business in Italy, with the House of d‘Alberto, a major trendsetter in European fashion. They also canceled their relationship with us. It seems that the Italian man our police killed comes from a powerful and influential family. Our representative in Italy says that no Chinese firm will be able to do business there for some time. In other words, Minister, that ‘unfortunate incident’ with the churchmen is going to have grave consequences.”
“But these people have to purchase their cloth somewhere,” Fang objected.
“Indeed they do. And they will do so in Thailand, Singapore and Taiwan.”
“Is that possible?”
Ren nodded quickly and sadly. “It is very possible. Sources have told me that they are busily contacting our former business partners to ‘take up the slack,’ as they put it. You see, the Taiwan government has launched an aggressive campaign to distinguish themselves from us, and it would appear that their campaign is, for the moment, highly successful.”
“Well, Ren, surely you can find other customers for your goods,” Fang suggested with confidence.
But the industrialist shook his head. He hadn’t touched his tea and his eyes looked like wounds in a stone head. “Minister, America is the world’s largest such market, and it appears it will soon be closed to us. After that is Italy, and that door, also, has been slammed shut. Paris, London, even the avant-garde marketers in Denmark and Vienna will not even return our phone calls. I’ve had my representatives contact all potential markets, and they all say the same thing: No one wants to do business with China. Only America could save us, but America will not.”
“What will this cost you?”
“As I told you, one hundred forty million dollars just from the Butterfly account alone, and another similar amount from our other American and European businesses.”
Fang didn’t have to think long to calculate the take the PRC’s government got from that.
“Your colleagues?”
“I have spoken with several. The news is the same. The timing could hardly be worse. All of our contracts are coming due at the same time. We are talking billions of dollars, Minister. Billions,” he repeated.
Fang lit a cigarette. “I see,” he said. “What would it take to fix this?”
“Something to make America happy, not just the government, but the citizens, too.”
“Is that truly important?” Fang asked, somewhat tiredly. He’d heard this rubbish so many times from so many voices.
“Fang, in America people can buy their clothing from any number of stores and manufacturers, any number of marketers. The people choose which succeeds and which fails. Women’s clothing in particular is an industry as volatile as vapor. It does not take much to make such a company fail. As a result, those companies will not assume additional and unnecessary risks. To do business with the People’s Republic, now, today, is something they see as an unnecessary risk.”
Fang took a drag and thought about that. It was, actually, something he’d always known, intellectually, but never quite appreciated. America was a different place, and it did have different rules. And since China wanted American money, China had to abide by those rules. That wasn’t politics. That was practicality.
“So, you want me to do what?”
“Please, tell your fellow ministers that this could mean financial ruin for us. Certainly for my industry, and we are a valuable asset for our country. We bring wealth into China. If you want that wealth to spend on other things, then you must pay attention to what we need in order to get you that wealth.” What Ren could not say was that he and his fellow industrialists were the ones who made the Politburo’s economic (and therefore, also political) agenda possible, and that therefore the Politburo needed to listen to them once in a while. But Fang knew what the Politburo would say in reply. A horse may pull the cart, but you do not ask the horse where it wishes to go.
Such was political reality in the People’s Republic of China. Fang knew that Ren had been around the world, that he had a sizable personal fortune which the PRC had graciously allowed him to accumulate, and that, probably more important, he had the intelligence and personal industry to thrive anywhere he chose to live. Fang knew also that Ren could fly to Taiwan and get financing to build a factory there, where he could employ others who looked and spoke Chinese, and he’d make money there and get some political influence in the bargain. Most of all, he knew that Ren knew this. Would he act upon it? Probably not. He was Chinese, a citizen of the mainland. This was his land, and he had no desire to leave it, else he would not be here now, pleading his case to the one minister—well, probably Qian Kun would listen also—whose ear might be receptive to his words. Ren was a patriot, but not a communist. What an odd duality that was ...
Fang stood. This meeting had gone far enough. “I will do this, my friend,” he told his visitor. “And I will let you know what develops.”
“Thank you, Comrade Minister.” Ren bowed and took his leave, not looking better, but pleased that someone had actually listened to him. Listening was not what one expected of Politburo members.
Fang sat back down and lit another cigarette, then reached for his tea. He thought for a minute or so. “Ming!” he called loudly. It took seven seconds by his watch.
“Yes, Minister?”
“What news articles do you have for me?” he asked. His secretary disappeared for another few seconds, then reappeared, holding a few pages.
“Here, Minister, just printed up. This one may be of particular interest.”
“This one” was a cover story from The Wall Street Journal. “Major Shift in China Business?” it proclaimed. The question mark was entirely rhetorical, he saw in the first paragraph. Ren was right. He had to discuss this with the rest of the Politburo.
The second major item in Bondarenko’s morning was observing tank gunnery. His men had the newest variant of the T-80UM main battle tank. It wasn’t quite the newest T- 99 that was just coming into production. This UM did, however, have a decent fire-control system, which was novel enough. The target range was about as simple as one could ask, large white cardboard panels with black tank silhouettes painted on them, and they were set at fixed, known ranges. Many of his gunners had never fired a live round since leaving gunnery school—such was the current level of training in the Russian Army, the general fumed.
Then he fumed some more. He watched one particular tank, firing at a target an even thousand meters away. It should have been mere spitting distance, but as he watched, first one, then two more, of the tracer rounds missed, all falling short, until the fourth shot hit high on the painted turret shape. With that feat accomplished, the tank shifted aim to a second target at twelve hundred meters and missed that one twice, before achieving a pinwheel in the geometric center of the target.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Aliyev said next to him.
“Except that the tank and the crew were all dead ninety seconds ago!” Bondarenko observed, followed by a particularly vile oath. “Ever see what happens when a tank blows up? Nothing left of the crew but sausage! Expensive sausage.”
“It’s their first time in a live-fire exercise,” Aliyev said, hoping to calm his boss down. “We have limited practice ammunition, and it’s not as accurate as warshots.”
“How many live rounds do we have?”
Aliyev smiled. “Millions.” They had, in fact, warehouses full of the things, fabricated back in the 1970s.
“Then issue them,” the general ordered.
“Moscow won’t like it,” the colonel warned. Warshots were, of course, far more expensive.
“I am not here to please them, Andrey Petrovich. I am here to defend them.” And someday he’d meet the fool who’d decided to replace the tank’s loader crewman with a machine. It was slower than a soldier, and removed a crewman who could assist in repairing damage. Didn’t engineers ever consider that tanks were actually supposed to go into battle? No, this tank had been designed by a committee, as all Soviet weapons had been, which explained, perhaps, why so many of them didn’t work—or, just as badly, didn’t protect their users. Like putting the gas tank inside the doors of the BTR armored personnel carrier. Who ever thought that a crewman might want to bail out of a damaged vehicle and perhaps even survive to fight afoot? The tank’s vulnerability had been the very first thing the Afghans had learned about Soviet mobile equipment ... and how many Russian boys had burned to death because of it? Well, Bondarenko thought, I have a new country now, and Russia does have talented engineers, and in a few years perhaps we can start building weapons worthy of the soldiers who carry them.
“Andrey, is there anything in our command which does work?”
“That’s why we’re training, Comrade General.” Bondarenko’s service reputation was of an upbeat officer who looked for solutions rather than problems. His operations officer supposed that Gennady Iosifovich was overwhelmed by the scope of the difficulties, not yet telling himself that however huge a problem was, it had to be composed of numerous small ones which could be addressed one at a time. Gunnery, for example. Today, it was execrable. But in a week it would be much better, especially if they gave the troops real rounds instead of the practice ones. Real “bullets,” as soldiers invariably called them, made you feel like a man instead of a schoolboy with his workbook. There was much to be said for that, and like many of the things his new boss was doing, it made good sense. In two weeks, they’d be watching more tank gunnery, and seeing more hits than misses.