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By Root 1396 0

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.

CHAPTER 40—Fashion Statements

"So, George?" Ryan asked.

"So, it's started. Turns out there are a ton of similar contracts coming due for the next season or something, plus Christmas toy contracts," SecTreas told his President. "And it's not just us. Italy, France, England, everybody's bugging out on them. The Chinese have made huge inroads into that industry, and they pissed off a lot of people in the process. Well, the chicken hasn't so much come home to roost as it's flown the coop, and that leaves our friends in Beijing holding the bag. It's a big bag, Jack. We're talking billions here."

"How badly will that hurt them?" SecState asked.

"Scott, I grant you it seems a little odd that the fate of a nation could ride on Victoria's Secret brassieres, but money is money. They need it, and all of a sudden there's a big hole in their current account. How big? Billions. It's going to make a hell of a bellyache for them."

"Any actual harm?" Ryan asked.

"Not my department, Jack," Winston answered. "That's Scott."

"Okay." Ryan turned his head to look at his other cabinet member.

"Before I can answer that, I need to know what net effect this will have on the Chinese economy."

Winston shrugged. "Theoretically, they could ride this out with minimal difficulties, but that depends on how they make up the shortfall. Their national industrial base is an incredibly muddled hodgepodge of private- and state-owned industries. The private ones are the efficient ones, of course, and the worst of the state-owned industries belong to their army. I've seen analyses of PLA operations that look like something out of MAD magazine, just impossible to credit on first reading. Soldiers don't generally know much about making things—they're better at breaking them—and tossing Marxism into the mix doesn't exactly help the situation. So, those 'enterprises' piss away vast quantities of cash. If they shut those down, or just cut them back, they could kiss this little shortfall off and move on—but they won't."

"That's right," Adler agreed. "The Chinese People's Liberation Army has a lot of political clout over there. The party controls it, but the tail wags the dog to a considerable extent. There's quite a bit of political and economic unrest over there. They need the army to keep things under control, and the PLA takes a big cut off the top of the national treasure because of that."

"The Soviets weren't like that," POTUS objected.

"Different country, different