The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [135]
Diggs adjourned the meeting, waving for Colonel Masterman to stay behind.
"Well, Duke?"
"Ive been nosing around. What Ive seen is pretty good, sir. Giusti is especially good, and hes always bitching about training time. I like that."
"So do I," Diggs agreed at once. "What else?"
"Like the man said, artillery is in very good shape, and your maneuver brigades are doing okay, considering the lack of field time. They might not like using the sims all that much, but they are making good use of them. Theyre about twenty percent off where we were in the Tenth Cay down in the Negev playing with the Israelis, and that isnt bad at all. Sir, you give me three or four months in the field, and theyll be ready to take on the world."
"Well, Duke, Ill write you the check next week. Got your plans ready?"
"Day after tomorrow. Im taking some helicopter rides to scout out the ground we can use and what we cant. Theres a German brigade says theyre eager to play aggressor for us."
"They any good?"
"They claim to be. I guess well just have to see. I recommend we send Second Brigade out first. Theyre a little sharper than the other two. Colonel Lisle is our kind of colonel."
"His package looks pretty good. Hell get his star next go-round."
"About right," Masterman agreed. And what about my star? he couldnt ask. He figured himself a pretty good bet, but you never really knew. Oh, well, at least he was working for a fellow cavalryman.
"Okay, show me your plans for Second Brigades next adventure in the farmland.., tomorrow?"
"The broad strokes, yes, sir." Masterman bobbed his head and walked off toward his office.
"How rough?" Cliff Rutledge asked.
"Well," Adler replied, "I just got off the phone with the President, and he says he wants what he wants and its our job to get it for him."
"Thats a mistake, Scott," the Assistant Secretary of State warned.
"Mistake or not, we work for the President."
"I suppose so, but Beijings been pretty good about not tearing us a new asshole over Taiwan. This might not be the right time for us to press on them so hard."
"Even as we speak, American jobs are being lost because of their trade policy," Adler pointed out. "When does enough become too much?"
"I guess Ryan decides that, eh?"
"Thats what the Constitution says."
"And you want me to meet with them, then?"
SecState nodded. "Correct. Four days from now. Put your position paper together and run it past me before we deliver it, but I want them to know were not kidding. The trade deficit has to come down, and it has to come down soon. They cant make that much money off us and spend it somewhere else."
"But they cant buy military hardware from us," Rutledge observed.
"What do they need all that hardware for?" Scott Adler asked rhetorically. "What external enemies do they have?"
"Theyll say that their national security is their affair."
"And we reply that our economic security is our affair, and theyre not helping." That meant observing to the PRC that it looked as though they were preparing to fight a war—but against whom, and was that a good thing for the world? Rutledge would ask with studied sangfroid.
Rutledge stood. "Okay, I can present our case. Im not fully comfortable with it, but, well, I suppose I dont have to be, do I?"
"Also correct." Adler didnt really like Rutledge all that much. His background and advancement had been more political than properly earned. Hed been very tight with former Vice President Kealty, for example, but after that incident had settled out, Cliff had dusted off his coattails with admirable speed. He would probably not get another promotion. Hed gone as far as one could go without really serious political ties—say a teaching position at the Kennedy School at Harvard, where one taught and became a talking head on the PBS evening news hour and waited to