The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [120]
"I can do that already. Their army and what passes for a navy are talking in the open about how they take us on, how to counter carriers and stuff like that. Its mostly pipe dreams and self-delusion, but my question is, why the hell are they putting this in the open? Maybe to impress the unwashed of the world—reporters and the other idiots who dont know shit about war at sea—and maybe to impress their own people with how smart and how tough they are. Maybe to put more heat on the ROC government on Taiwan, but if they want to invade, they have something to do first, like building a real navy with real amphibious capability. But that would take ten years, and wed probably notice all the big gray canoes in the water. Theyve got some submarines, and the Russians, of all people, are selling them hardware—just forked over a Sovremenny-class DDG, complete with Sunburn missiles, supposedly. Exactly what they want to do with them, I have no idea. Its not the way Id build up a navy, but they didnt ask me for advice. What freaks me is, the Russians sold them the hardware, and theyre selling some other stuff, too. Crazy," the Vice President concluded.
"Tell me why," POTUS commanded.
"Because once upon a time a guy named Genghis Khan rode all the way to the Baltic Sea—like, all the way across Russia. The Russkies have a good sense of history, Jack. They aint forgot that. If Im a Russian, what enemies do I have to worry about? NATO? The Poles? Romania? I dont think so. But off to my southeast is a great big country with a shitload of people, a nice large collection of weapons, and a long history of killing Russians. But I was just an operations guy, and sometimes I get a little paranoid about what my counterparts in other countries might be thinking." Robby didnt have to add that the Russians had invented paranoia once upon a time.
"This is madness!" Bondarenko swore. "There are many ways to prove Lenin was right, but this is not the one I would choose!" Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov had once said that the time would come when the capitalist countries would bid among themselves to sell to the Soviet Union the rope with which the Soviet Union would later hang them. He hadnt anticipated the death of the country hed founded, and certainly not that the next Russia might be the one doing what he had predicted.
Golovko could not disagree with his guest. Hed made a similar argument, though with fewer decibels, in the office of President Grushavoy. "Our country needs the hard currency, Gennady Iosifovich."
"Indeed. And perhaps someday we will also need the oil fields and the gold mines of Siberia. What will we do when the Chinks take those away from us?" Bondarenko demanded.
"The Foreign Ministry discounts that possibility" Sergey Nikolaych replied.
"Fine. Will those foreign-service pansies take up arms if they are proven wrong, or will they wring their hands and say it isnt their fault? I am spread too thin for this. I cannot stop a Chinese attack, and so now we sell them the T-99 tank design … "
"It will take them five years to bring about series production, and by that time we will have the T-10 in production at Chelyabinsk, will we not?"
That the Peoples Liberation Army had four thousand of the Russian-designed T-80/90 tanks was not discussed. That had happened years earlier. But the Chinese had not used the Russian-designed 115-mm gun, opting instead for the 105-mm rifled gun sold to them by Israel Defense Industries, known to America as the M-68. They came complete with three million rounds of ammunition made to American specifications, down to the depleted uranium projectiles, probably made with uranium depleted by the same reactors that made plutonium for their nuclear devices. What was it about politicians? Bondarenko wondered. You could talk and talk and talk to them, but they never listened! It had to be a Russian phenomenon, the general thought, rather than a political one. Stalin had executed the intelligence officer whod predicted—correctly, as it turned out—the German