Taylor was a bachelor. He had apparently been a bit wild as a young lieutenant, before the deployment to Zaire. But the facial scars had brought his amorous adventures to a sharp conclusion.
Kozlov rushed forward through the man's history. There was, of course, the little tart who worked for the Unified Intelligence Agency. A woman who had slept with everyone in Washington except the Soviet embassy staff. But that was a very recent development, and despite the gossip and laughter about the affair back in Washington Kozlov doubted that anything would come of the matter. He could not imagine even the most slatternly of women sharing more than a few clumsy hours of Taylor's life. Even then, they would need to turn out the lights.
But if Taylor's career as a lover had been cut short, he had certainly developed an impressive reputation as a soldier. Increasingly austere personal habits. Nonsmoker, light drinker. Obsessed with physical exercise, though not an outdoorsman by nature. Neither hunted nor fished, although he was reportedly fond of mountain hiking. Quietly intellectual behind his hard public personality. Professionally very well-read for an American. Liked to read classic American novels in private, especially Mark Twain, Melville, Hemingway, and Robert Stone. A penciled note in the biographical file had pointed out that all of Taylor's favorite books were about men who were outsiders. He had gained a master's degree in electronics and information theory — even though his personal interests lay elsewhere. He had survived each new wave of the personnel cutbacks that had so hollowed out the U.S. military. During the plague years, he had commanded first a cavalry troop, then a squadron in Los Angeles, where he had simultaneously enhanced his reputation as a soldier, taught himself Spanish, and completed a critique of the U.S. intervention in Zaire so merciless it nearly resulted in his dismissal. Instead, the ultimate outcome had been an accelerated promotion. American military personnel policies were completely unfathomable.
Taylor had then been instrumental in the U.S. Army's reorganization, when the colors of the old cavalry regiments were resurrected to identify the new, streamlined units replacing the heavier, almost immovable divisions and corps. An expert in the field of heavy forces and emerging military technology, Taylor had nonetheless been sent to command a light task force in Mexico as the United States attempted to halt the multisided war on its southern border. Arriving in the wake of the Tampico massacre, Taylor had exploited the newly imposed press controls to keep reporters out of his area of operations, first in San Miguel de Allende, then, upon his further promotion, in the Guadalajara region. This part of the file had been defaced with question marks where GRU analysts had tried to figure out the paradox of the man's success. He broke rules, always doing the unexpected, and gained a reputation as a savage mountain fighter. His subordinates employed techniques ranging from helicopter descents to old-fashioned cavalry patrols, eradicating rebel groups one after the other, many of whom were little more than bandits, while others were Japanese-funded patriotic forces. Almost invariably, he was very well received by the local population, who should have been supporting the insurgents. None of the Soviet analysts could sort out the dialectical equations.
This killer who read good books, this scarred man who was a perfect robot of a soldier, had returned to the United States to assume command of the newly reformed and reequipped Seventh Cavalry Regiment (Heavy) at Fort Riley, Kansas. The unit was built around a new series of weapons systems the details of which were still unclear to Soviet intelligence, even as the Americans planned their mission on the same maps as Kozlov's comrades-in-arms. Taylor had been in command only nine months, much of which actually had been spent in Washington, testifying before various committees, when the Soviet Union had secretly asked the United States for its assistance in the face of a growing threat of a war for national survival.
And why were these men here after all? Why had the United States responded positively? Kozlov was certain their purpose was not to selflessly assist the people of the Soviet Union. Nor did they particularly covet the mineral wealth of Western Siberia for themselves, since they had largely purged the Japanese presence from Latin America — and the new finds there were adequate to American needs He did not even believe the American motivation was vengeance, either against the eternally recalcitrant and bloody-minded Iranians or even against the Japanese, whose long shadow lay so obviously over the Islamic executors of their imperialist plans. In the end, Kozlov suspected, his country had simply become a proving ground for a new generation of American weapons, nothing more.
His teeth ached so badly he wanted to claw them out of his gums. When would it end? When would any of it end?
To hell with the Americans, he decided. He didn't give a damn why they were here. As long as their weapons worked.
Major Manuel Xavier Martinez stood beside Taylor at the corner of the ravaged buffet table, picking at a few leftovers to take the place of a combat ration breakfast and working through yet another set of interoperability problems. The two men spoke in Spanish for the sake of privacy and, despite his weariness, the supply officer could not help finding the situation bizarrely amusing. He routinely addressed Taylor as "Jefe," but this was only an inside joke. In fact, Taylor's Spanish was more grammatically correct, cleaner, and more exact, than was his own. Martinez's blood was Mexican-American, but his primary language — the tongue of his education and elective affinities — was the English of an erudite and educated man. His Spanish was the barrio dialect of his youth in San Antonio, fine for bullshitting on a street corner, but inadequate for expressing sophisticated logistical concepts. As they spoke Martinez punctuated his Spanish with far more English-language military terminology than his utterly Anglo-Saxon commander found necessary.
"I still see two areas where we can really get screwed, sir," Martinez said. "And I'm only talking about the log business." He glanced across the smoke-fogged room to the portable workstation where Merry Meredith stared wearily at the incoming intelligence information. "I wouldn't want to be in Merry's shoes."
"Merry can handle it," Taylor said.
"Yeah. I know that, Jefe. But it's not just that they're a lying bunch of bastards. It's the way they treat him. That lieutenant colonel with the rotten teeth. Christ, he acts like an Alabama sheriff from back in the nineteen fifties." Martinez shook his head. "And you know it breaks Merry's heart. He's so into that Russian culture shit."
"Merry's been through worse. You're just lucky they think you're a Georgian or an Armenian."
"I still can't get a straight answer out of them," Martinez said. "It's worse than Mexico."
"Mexico was the bush leagues," Taylor said.
"All the more reason why I wish these guys would play it straight."
"They can't," Taylor said, with surprising patience in his voice. The man's calm never ceased to impress Martinez. "They can't tell us the truth about the overall situation because they just don't know it themselves. Listen to them, Manny. They're lost. And they're scared. And they're trying to put the best face on it they can. Their world's coming apart. But they're willing to give us what they've got."
"The problem is finding out what they've got," Martinez said. He took a drink of flat mineral water to wash the last bits of cracker from his throat. "Anyway, the first issue
I've got to look at is fuel. We've got enough of our own to run the mission. But the M-l00s will be nearly empty at the end of it. First squadron is going to be running on fumes, judging by the arrow Lucky Dave just drew for them. That means depending on Soviet fuel. Our own complement won't be full-up for another five, six days, depending on the Soviet rail system."