The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [357]
"And they train better because they have more money to spend."
"There you have it. They don't have tank commanders painting rocks around the motor pool, as we do," Bondarenko noted sourly. He'd just begun to change that, but just-begun was a long way from mission accomplished. "Get the call-up letters out, and remember, we must keep this quiet. Go. I have to talk to Moscow."
"Yes, Comrade General." The G-3 made his departure.
"Well, ain't that something?" Major General Diggs commented after watching the TV show.
"Makes you wonder what NATO is for," Colonel Masterman agreed.
"Duke, I grew up expecting to see T-72 tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap like cockroaches on a Bronx apartment floor. Hell, now they're our friends?" He had to shake his head in disbelief. "I've met a few of their senior people, like that Bondarenko guy running the Far East Theater. He's pretty smart, serious professional. Visited me at Fort
Irwin. Caught on real fast, really hit it off with Al Hamm and the Blackhorse. Our kind of soldier."
"Well, sir, I guess he really is now, eh?"
That's when the phone rang. Diggs lifted it. "General Diggs. Okay, put him through … Morning, sir … Just fine, thanks, and—yes? What's that? … This is serious, I presume … Yes, sir. Yes, sir, we're ready as hell. Very well, sir. Bye." He set the phone back down. "Duke, good thing you're sitting down."
"What gives?"
"That was SACEUR. We got alert orders to be ready to entrain and move east."
"East where?" the divisional operations officer asked, surprised. An unscheduled exercise in Eastern Germany, maybe?
"Maybe as far as Russia, the eastern part. Siberia, maybe," Diggs added in a voice that didn't entirely believe what it said.
"What the hell?"
"NCA is concerned about a possible dust-up between the Russians and the Chinese. If it happens, we may have to go east to support Ivan."
"What the hell?" Masterman observed yet again.
"He's sending his J-2 down to brief us in on what he's got from Washington. Ought to be here in half an hour."
"Who else? Is this a NATO tasking?"
"He didn't say. Guess we'll have to wait and see. For the moment just you and the staff, the ADC, and the brigade sixes are in on the brief."
"Yes, sir," Masterman said, there being little else he could say.
The Air Force sends a number of aircraft when the President travels. Among these were C-5B Galaxies. Known to the Navy as "the aluminum cloud" for its huge bulk, the transport is capable of carrying whole tanks in its cavernous interior. In this case, however, they carried VC-60 helicopters, larger than a tank in dimensions, but far lighter in weight.
The VH-60 is a version of the Sikorsky Blackhawk troop-carrier, somewhat cleaned up and appointed for VIP passengers. The pilot was Colonel Dan Malloy, a Marine with over five thousand hours of stick time in rotary-wing aircraft, whose radio call sign was "Bear." Cathy
Ryan knew him well. He usually flew her to Johns Hopkins in the morning in a twin to this aircraft. There was a co-pilot, a lieutenant who looked impossibly young to be a professional aviator, and a crew chief, a Marine staff sergeant E-6 who saw to it that everyone was properly strapped in, something that Cathy did better than Jack, who was not used to the different restraints in this aircraft.
Aside from that the Blackhawk flew superbly, not at all like the earthquake-while-sitting-on-a-chandelier sensation usually associated with such contrivances. The flight took almost an hour, with the President listening in on the headset/ear protectors. Overhead, all aerial traffic was closed down, even commercial flights in and out of every commercial airport to which they came close. The Polish government was concerned with his safety.
"There it is," Malloy said over the intercom. "Eleven o'clock."
The aircraft banked left to give everyone a good look out the polycarbonate windows.