But the individual troopers were just fine. He’d watched them run with Ding’s Team-2, and not one of the Russians fell out of the formation. Part of that had been pride, of course, but most of it had been ability. The shoot-house experience had been less impressive. They weren’t as carefully trained as the boys from Hereford, and not nearly so well equipped. Their supposedly suppressed weapons were sufficiently noisy to make John and Ding both jump … but for all that, the eagerness of these kids was impressive. Every one of the Russians was a senior lieutenant in rank, and each was airborne-qualified. They all were pretty good with light weapons-and the Russian snipers were as good as Homer Johnston and Dieter Weber, much to the surprise of the latter. The Russian sniper rifles looked a little clunky, but they shot pretty well-at least out to eight hundred meters.
“Mr. C, they have a ways to go, but they got spirit. Two weeks, and they’ll be right on line,” Chavez pronounced, looking skeptically at the vodka. They were in a Russian officers’ club, and there was plenty of the stuff about.
“Only two?” John asked.
“In two weeks, they’ll have all their skills down pat, and they’ll master the new weapons.” RAINBOW was transferring five complete team-sets of weapons to the Russian Spetsnaz team: MP-10 submachine guns, Beretta.45 pistols, and most important, the radio gear that allowed the team to communicate even when under fire. The Russians were keeping their own Dragunov long-rifles, which was partly pride, but the things could shoot, and that was sufficient to the mission. “The rest is just experience, John, and we can’t really give ‘em that. All we can really do is set up a good training system for ’em, and the rest they’ll do for themselves.”
“Well, nobody ever said Ivan couldn’t fight.” Clark downed a shot. The working day was over, and everybody else was doing it.
“Shame their country’s in such a mess,” Chavez observed.
“It’s their mess to clean up, Domingo. They’ll do it if we keep out of their way.” Probably, John didn’t add. The hard part for him was thinking of them as something other than the enemy. He’d been here in the Bad Old Days, operating briefly on several occasions in Moscow as an “illegal” field officer, which in retrospect seemed like parading around Fifth Avenue in New York stark naked holding up a sign saying he hated Jews, blacks, and NYPD cops. At the time, it had just seemed like part of the job, John remembered. But now he was older, a grandfather, and evidently a lot more chicken than he’d been back in the ‘70s and ’80s. Jesus, the chances he’d taken back then! More recently, he’d been in KGB-to him it would always be KGB-headquarters at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square as a guest of the Chairman. Sure, Wilbur, and soon he’d hop in the alien spacecraft that landed every month in his backyard and accept their invitation for a luncheon flight to Mars. It felt about that crazy, John thought.
“Ivan Sergeyevich!” a voice called. It was Lieutenant General Yuriy Kirillin, the newly selected chief of Russian special forces-a man defining his own job as he went along, which was not the usual thing in this part of the world.
“Yuriy Andreyevich,” Clark responded. He’d kept his given name and patronymic from his CIA cover as a convenience that, he was sure, the Russians knew all about anyway. So, no harm was done. He lifted a vodka bottle. It was apple vodka, flavored by some apple skins at the bottom of the bottle, and not bad to the taste. In any case, vodka was the fuel for any sort of business meeting in Russia, and since he was in Rome it was time to act Italian.
Kirillin gunned down his first shot as though he’d been waiting all week for it. He refilled and toasted John’s companion: “Domingo Stepanovich,” which was close enough. Chavez reciprocated the gesture. “Your men are excellent, comrades. We will learn much from them.”
Comrades, John thought. Son of a bitch! “Your boys are eager, Yuriy, and hard workers.”
“How long?” Kirillin asked. His eyes didn’t show the vodka one little bit. Perhaps they were immune, Ding thought. He had to go easy on the stuff, lest John have to guide him home.
“Two weeks,” Clark answered. “That’s what Domingo tells me.”
“That fast?” Kirillin asked, not displeased by the estimate.
“They’re good troops, General,” Ding said. “Their basic skills are there. They’re in superb physical condition, and they’re smart. All they need is familiarization with their new weapons, and some more directed training that we’ll set up for them. And after that, they’ll be training the rest of your forces, right?”
“Correct, Major. We will be establishing regional special-operations and counterterror forces throughout the country. The men you train this week will be training others in a few months. The problem with the Chechens came as a surprise to us, and we need to pay serious attention to terrorism as a security threat.”
Clark didn’t envy Kirillin the mission. Russia was a big country containing too many leftover nationalities from the Soviet Union-and for that matter from the time of the czars-many of whom had never particularly liked the idea of being part of Russia. America had had the problem once, but never to the extent that the Russians did, and here it wouldn’t be getting better anytime soon. Economic prosperity was the only sure cure-prosperous people don’t squabble; it’s too rough on the china and the silverware-but prosperity was a way off in the future yet.
“Well, sir,” Chavez went on, “in a year you’ll have a serious and credible force, assuming you have the funding support you’re going to need.”
Kirillin grunted. “That is the question here, and probably in your country as well, yes?”
“Yeah.” Clark had himself a laugh. “It helps if Congress loves you.”
“You have many nationalities on your team,” the Russian general observed.
“Yeah, well, we’re mainly a NATO service, but we’re used to working together. Our best shooter now is Italian.”
“Really? I saw him, but-”
Chavez cut him off. “General, in a previous life, Ettore was James Butler Hickok. Excuse me, Wild Bill Hickok to you. That son of a bitch can sign his name with a handgun.”
Clark refilled the vodka glasses. “Yuriy, he’s won money off all of us at the pistol range. Even me.”
“Is that a fact?” Kirillin mused, with the same look in his eyes that Clark had had a few weeks earlier. John punched him on the arm.
“I know what you’re thinking. Bring money when you have your match with him, Comrade General,” John advised. “You’ll need it to pay off his winnings.”
“This I must see,” the Russian announced.
“Hey, Eddie!” Chavez waved his number-two over.
“Yes, sir?”
“Tell the general here how good Ettore is with a pistol.”
“That fucking Eyetalian!” Sergeant Major Price swore. “He’s even taken twenty pounds off Dave Woods.”
“Dave’s the range-master at Hereford, and he’s pretty good, too,” Ding explained. “Ettore really ought to be in the Olympics or something-maybe Camp Perry, John?”
“I thought of that, maybe enter him in the President’s Cup match next year. .” Clark mused. Then he turned. “Go ahead, Yuriy. Take him on. Maybe you will succeed where all of us failed.”
“All of you, eh?”
“Every bloody one of us,” Eddie Price confirmed. “I wonder why the Italian government gave him to us. If the Mafia want to go after him, I wish the bastards luck.”
“This I must see,” Kirillin persisted, leading his visitors to wonder how smart he was.
“Then you will see it, Tovarisch General,” Clark promised.