Net Force - Tom Clancy [85]
Oh. Its what you do. I thought I ought to, you know, kind of check it out. You know. He stared at the floor.
Howard held the grin back, kept his face serious. The boy was thirteen. Puberty. It had been a while but, yes, he knew.
He said, Okay, lets talk about goals and strategy for a second. Your goal is to take the territory without destroying it, am I correct?
Oh, yeah.
So you have to move carefully. The enemys forces are bigger than yours, so hes stronger, but-is he smarter? You know you cant just charge in and engage in a stand-up fight if you are outgunned. Youll get slaughtered. So before you move, you have to assess the situation. You look for your enemys weak points. In guerrilla warfare, you find a weak place, you hit it, then run. You do it fast, then hide, so not only cant he find you, he might not even know who you are.
Tyrone leaned against the fridge. Yeah, I can see that.
Also, according to Chairman Mao, to win a guerrilla war, you have to get the locals on your side.
How do you do that?
You offer them something they cant get from the enemy, something more valuable than what he is giving them. Allow them to compare you to him, and when they do, show them his shortcomings. You reveal how you are better for them. You cant match his guns, but maybe he cant match your brains.
So you show them why brains are more important than brawn. You teach the locals stuff he cant. How to get more fish in their nets, grow better crops or how to use their computers, for instance.
The boy nodded again.
You have a goal, you move toward it most of the time, but not always. Sometimes you have to take an oblique angle, move away a little so you can come at it from another direction. Sometimes you have take a step forward, strike, then retreat a few steps, so you dont get hit with return fire. Patience is the key in this kind of war. You have to pick your targets carefully, make every shot count. Wear the enemy away slowly.
Once you get the locals on your side, then it doesnt matter how strong your enemy is, because the locals will start to help you, to hide you from enemy forces. Sometimes theyll overthrow your enemy on their own, and you wont have to do anything. In the end, thats the best way.
Yeah.
There was a moment of silence. Then Tyrone said, Thanks, Pop. Im going back to bed now.
Sleep well, son.
After the boy was gone, Howard grinned at his milk. It had been a long time since hed been that young. And the problems then had seemed just as big as any he had faced since. It was all relative. He needed to remember that. And that being here to tell his son what he needed to hear was as important as winning any battle in some foreign country halfway around the world. In the end, being a father was more important than being a colonel.
He tasted the milk. Warm. He walked to the sink, poured the milk into it, rinsed the glass and set it to dry on the rack. Maybe he could go back to sleep, too. Might as well give it a shot.
27
Sunday, October 3rd, 6:40 cum. Washington, D.C.
Alex Michaels stood by the sliding glass door and watched the dog wander around in the backyard. Hed been asleep when Scout came and hopped up onto the bed. It was a pretty good hop for a dog his size. Once up, he hadnt barked or anything, just sat there staring patiently until Michaels got up and went to let him out.
Michaels had some part of the alarm system lit all of the time now; a tech from the unit had come out and fine-tuned it, connected it to the voxax program of his house computer. All he had to do was say the word Assassin! loud enough for the house mikes to pick up, and the alarms would start screaming. Hed shut the systems sliding-door link off to let the dog out, but he had his taser in his robe pocket. He hadnt played with the taser much since it had been issued to him, but he was going to be spending a little more time at the indoor range practicing. He was going to work especially hard on getting it out of a pocket or belt clip in a hurry.
There was a car parked at his curb with a pair