"Kickin' some more ass, sir?" his driver asked as his boss lit up a Cuban cigar.
"Lambs to the slaughter, Perkins." Masterman sipped some water from a plastic bottle. A hundred feet over his head, some Israeli F-16 fighters roared past, showing outrage at what had happened below them. Probably a few of them had run afoul of the administrative SAM "launches." Masterman had been especially careful today siting his Stinger-Avenger vehicles, and sure enough, they'd come in just as he'd expected. Tough.
The local "Star Wars Room" was a virtual twin to the original one at Fort Irwin. A somewhat smaller main display screen, and nicer seats, and you could smoke in this one. He entered the building, snaking the dust off his chocolate-chip cammies and striding like Patton into Bas-togne. The Israelis were waiting.
Intellectually, they had to know how useful the exercise had been to them. Emotionally, it was something else. The Israeli 7th Armored was as proud an outfit as any in the world. Practically alone, it had stopped an entire Syrian tank corps on the Golan Heights back in 1973, and their current CO had been a lieutenant then who'd taken command of a headless company and fought brilliantly.
Not accustomed to failure, he'd just seen the brigade in which he'd practically grown up annihilated, in thirty brutal minutes.
"General," Masterman said, extending his hand to the chastened brigadier. The Israeli hesitated before taking it.
"Not personal, sir, just business," said Lieutenant Colonel Nick Sarto, who commanded the 2nd «Bighorn» Squadron, and who had just played hammer to Master-man's anvil. With the Israeli 7th in the middle.
"Gentlemen, shall we begin?" called the senior observer-controller. As a sop to the Israeli Army, the OC team here was a fifty-fifty mix of experienced American and Israeli officers, and it was hard to determine which group was the more embarrassed.
There was, first, a quick-time replay of the theoretical engagement. The Israeli vehicles in blue marched into the shallow valley to meet GUIDON'S reconnaissance screen, which leapfrogged back rapidly, but not toward the prepared defense positions of the rest of the squadron, instead leading them away at an angle. Thinking it a trap, the Israeli 7th had maneuvered west, so as to loop around and envelop their enemies, only to walk into a solid wall of dug-in tanks, and then to have Bighorn come in from the east much faster than expected—so fast that Doug M ills's 3rd «Dakota» Squadron, the regimental reserve, never had a chance to come into play for the pursuit phase. It was the same old lesson. The Israeli commander had guessed at his enemy's positions instead of sending his reconnaissance screen to find out.
The Israeli brigadier watched the replay, and it seemed that he deflated like a balloon. The Americans didn't laugh. They'd all been there before, though it was far nicer to be on the winning side.
"Your reconnaissance screen wasn't far forward enough, Benny," the senior Israeli OC said diplomatically.
"Arabs don't fight that way!" Benjamin Eitan replied.
"They're supposed to, sir," Masterman pointed out. "This is standard Soviet doctrine, and that's who trained 'em all, remember. Pull 'em into the fire sack and slam the back door. Hell, General, that's exactly what you did with your Centurions back in 73.1 read your book on the engagement," the American added. It defused the mood at once. One of the other things the American officers had to exercise here was diplomacy. General Eitan looked sideways and managed something approaching a smile.
"I did, didn't I?"
"Sure as hell. You clobbered that Syrian regiment in forty minutes, as I recall."
"And you, at 73 Easting?" Eitan responded, grateful for the compliment, even though he knew it was a deliberate effort to calm his temper.
It was no accident that Magruder, Masterman, Sarto, and Mills were here. All four had participated in a vicious combat action in the Persian Gulf War, where three troops of the 2nd «Dragoon» Cav had stumbled into an elite Iraqi brigade force under very adverse weather conditions—too bad for the regimental aircraft to participate, even to warn of the enemy's presence—and wiped it out over a period of a few hours. The Israelis knew it, and therefore couldn't complain that the Americans were book soldiers playing theoretical games.
Nor was the result of this «battle» unusual. Eitan was new, only a month in command, and he would learn, as other Israeli officers had learned, that the American training model was more unforgiving than real combat. It was a hard lesson for the Israelis, so hard that nobody really learned it until he'd visited the Negev Training Area, the NTA, and had his head handed to him. If the Israelis had a weakness, it was pride, Colonel Magruder knew. The OpFor's job here, as in California, was to strip that away. A commander's pride got his soldiers dead.
"Okay," the senior American OC said. "What can we learn from this?"
Don't fuck with the Buffalo Soldiers, all three squadron commanders thought, but didn't say. Marion Diggs had reestablished the regiment's gritty reputation in his command tour before moving on to command Fort Irwin. Though the word was still percolating down through the Israeli Defense Forces, the troopers of the 10th had adopted a confident strut when they went out shopping, and for all the grief they caused the Israeli military on the playing fields of the NTA, they were immensely popular. The 10th ACR, along with two squadrons of F-16 fighters, was America's commitment to Israeli security, all the more so that they trained the Jewish state's ground forces to a level of readiness they hadn't known since the Israeli army had nearly lost its soul in the hills and towns of Lebanon. Eitan would learn, and learn fast. By the end of the training rotation he'd give them trouble. Maybe, the three squadron commanders thought. They weren't in the business of giving freebies.
"I REMEMBER WHEN you told me how delightful democracy was, Mr. President," Golovko said chirpily, as he walked through the door.
"You must have caught me on TV this morning," Ryan managed to reply.
"I remember when such comments would have gotten such people shot." Behind the Russian, Andrea Price heard the comment and wondered how this guy had the chutzpah to twist the President's tail.
"Well, we don't do that here," Jack responded, taking his seat. "That will be all for now, Andrea. Sergey and I are old friends." This was to be a private conversation, not even a secretary present to take notes, though hidden microphones would copy down every word for later transcription. The Russian knew that. The American knew that he knew that, but the symbolism of no other people in the room was a compliment to the visitor, another fact which the American knew the Russian to know as well. Jack wondered how many sets of interlocking wheels he was supposed to keep track of, just for an informal meeting with a foreign representative. When the door closed behind the agent, Golovko spoke on.
"Thank you."
"Hell, we are old friends, aren't we?"
Golovko smiled. "What a superb enemy you were."
"And now…?"
"How is your family adjusting?"
"About as well as I am," Jack admitted, then shifted gears. "You had three hours at the embassy to get caught up." Golovko nodded; as usual, Ryan was well briefed for this meeting, covert though it was. The Russian embassy was only a few blocks-up Sixteenth Street, and he'd walked down to the White House, a simple way to avoid notice in a town where official people traveled in official cars. "I didn't expect things in Iraq to fall so quickly."
"Neither did we. But that's not why you came over, Sergey Nikolay'ch. China?"
"I presume your satellite photos are as clear as ours on the issue. Their military is at an unusually high state of readiness."