"Mr. President," Bouquette stammered, "as you know,
I would never suggest… as regards Lieutenant Colonel Reno, I was only commenting that his family was known to me personally. But I certainly did not mean to suggest… after all, we all realize that this is the United States of America…"
"Thank you, Cliff." If nothing else, Waters thought, even if I have failed in my office, if I lose the election by the greatest majority in history, and even if I go down in the books as the most pathetically inept of presidents, I have had the satisfaction of seeing Clifton Reynard Bouquette nonplussed.
Waters glanced at the clock on the wall.
"Well, gentlemen," he said. "The time has come for me to make my decision. I feel that each of you has made his position abundantly clear. If anyone wishes to offer a last counterview, please do so, but it appears to me that you are unanimously opposed to any further offensive military action, and that you are specifically opposed to the plan recommended by Colonel Taylor."
The required moment of silence dusted the room, then the secretary of state said:
"I think that sums it up, Mr. President."
Waters looked around the room one last time, briefly inspecting each fixed expression. The girl, now, Bouquette's sidekick, she had fire in her eyes. Waters knew the type. The smart unattractive girls who expected the Joan of Arc story to have a happy ending the next time around.
"All right," Waters said. "Connect me with Colonel Taylor."
There was no delay. In a moment, Taylor's face filled the screen. It was evident that he had been waiting, and now Waters could read explicit worry in the haggard features.
Life hasn’t been very kind to that poor bastard, Waters thought.
"Colonel Taylor? Can you hear me all right?"
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Colonel Taylor, we’ve discussed your proposition at length, and I have to tell you that my advisers are uniformly opposed to the action."
Taylor flinched, as if punched hard in the body.
"Yes, Mr. President."
"The consensus is that this raid would have little chance of success, that it would be foolhardy, and that it could well do great harm to our negotiating position and international standing."
"Mr. President—"
"Don’t interrupt me, Colonel. I’m not finished. As I said: all of my advisers are opposed to your plan. It appears that there are only two people involved who are not yet ready to run up the white flag. By coincidence, Colonel, those two people are you and I."
The room stiffened around Waters. But no one said a word.
"Colonel Taylor, I direct you to implement your plan as presented to me. I will take it upon myself to delay any unilateral actions by the Soviets for — how long will you need?"
"Thirty-six hours," Taylor said hastily.
"For forty-eight hours, then. To give us a margin of error. The decision will be on record as mine alone. So be it. You see, Colonel, I can be thickheaded at times, but I believe I’ve finally figured out who the police dogs belong to this time around. And I am not yet ready to quit marching."
Taylor opened his mouth to speak, but Daisy was quicker. She rose from her chair, taking a single step forward.
"You can’t," she cried. "You can't. They don t have a chance. Everybody knows they don’t have a chance.
You’re crazy."
The room went as silent as the interior of a glacier. On the monitor, Taylor wavered slightly, as if trying to gain a better view against the laws of physics. Waters looked at the enraged woman.
"Thank you for your opinion, Miss Fitzgerald," he said quietly. "Please sit down now."
Daisy sat down. Her forehead had broken out with sweat and her blouse hung limply about her. She drew back into her chair as if shrinking, and her eyes stared into a personal distance.
"I will repeat myself to ensure that everything is clear to all parties concerned," Waters said. "Colonel Taylor, you are directed to strike the enemy as foreseen by your plan. The responsibility for this decision rests with the President of the United States alone." Waters looked up at the ruined face in the monitor. For a moment, he imagined that he saw a watery light in the warrior's eyes. But that was clearly an accident of lenses and technological effects.
"Yes, sir," the distant voice responded.
Waters looked for the last time into the face of this man whom he knew he would never understand. They were as different as two men could be, and only a brief spasm of history had brought them together.
"And may God be with you," Waters said.
22
Kozlov came back in from the communications cell. He was smiling broadly, and the brown wreckage of his teeth gave his mouth the appearance of a derelict cave.
"General Ivanov has said that we will help you, he announced to the assembled members of the planning group, clearly very proud that he could make this contribution. "Moscow has approved. Your president has spoken with them. The fuel will be provided."
"Good," Taylor said. He had just been working through the selection of the M-l00s in the most battleworthy condition, and he felt the loss of Martinez badly. Martinez would have known best about the status of the combat systems and how to handle the details of the fuel transfer. "That's fine, Viktor. But how about the refueling site itself?"
"It is all right," Kozlov said. "We still hold a large pocket here" — he pointed to the map spread over the worktable—"to the east of the Volga estuary. It should meet the time-distance planning factors."
The men bent over the map: Taylor and Kozlov, Meredith and Parker, who was functioning as the acting S-3, Tucker Williams — and Ryder, whose presence remained unsettling to Taylor. Meredith defined the area in question with a marker, under Kozlov's direction. Reflected off the map, the Russian's breath punished the American officers.
But it did not matter; Kozlov was so clearly anxious to help, to do his very best, that everyone was glad of his presence. He also appeared to be the only member of the group who had gotten any real sleep in days.
"I hate like hell to make a pit stop on the way in," Taylor said. "But putting down on the way out would be even worse. We've got a good shot at going in undetected But after we've hit them, they'll be looking for us with everything they've got. And our asses seem to stick out.
"The numbers work," Hank Parker said, turning from his computer workstation. "If we top off just to the east of Astrakhan, where Lieutenant Colonel Kozlov indicated, we should have adequate fuel to reach the target conduct the action at the objective, and still make it all the way back to the follow-on assembly area."
"In the vicinity of Saratov," Meredith picked up. "In the old Volga German region."
"Not much margin of error, though," Tucker Williams said.
Taylor shrugged. "This is strictly a low-budget operation."
"This will be very good," Kozlov said, still excited. He initially had seemed to have grave doubts as to whether or not" General Ivanov would be willing or able to help out, and the immediately forthcoming Soviet agreement to help apparently had surprised him more than anyone. "The area where you will take on the fuel is not a developed one, and the enemy has contented himself with the bypassing of our forces in the estuary. There is very much open space here, to the east. It will be very good."
"And General Ivanov is absolutely certain he can provide us with the fuel?" Taylor asked, still slightly skeptical of this very good luck. "At that location? On time?