They Eat Puppies, Don't They? Read online

  Christopher Buckley is the author of fourteen books, including Little Green Men, Boomsday and Thank You For Smoking. He is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine, and was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humour and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. He lives on the Acela train between Washington, DC and New York City.

  Also by Christopher Buckley

  Fiction

  The White House Mess

  Wet Work

  Thank You for Smoking**

  God is my Broker

  No Way to Treat a First Lady

  Florence of Arabia*

  Boomsday*

  Supreme Courtship

  Campion (play)

  Little Green Men*

  Non-fiction

  Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital

  Steaming to Bamboola: The World of a Tramp Freighter

  Wry Martinis

  Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir

  *also published by Corsair

  **available in ebook from Corsair

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the US by Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing,

  Hachette Book Group, New York

  First published in the UK by Corsair,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2012

  Copyright © Christopher Taylor Buckley 2012

  The right of Christopher Taylor Buckley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78033-672-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-78033-673-2 (ebook)

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  For Katy

  PLAYERS

  WASHINGTON

  Walter “Bird” McIntyre, defense lobbyist, would-be novelist

  Myndi, his wife, an equestrienne

  Bewks, his brother, feckless but amiable Civil War “living historian”

  Chick Devlin, CEO, aerospace giant Groepping-Sprunt

  Angel Templeton, directrix, Institute for Continuing Conflict, Washington, D.C., headquarters of interventionist Oreo-Con movement

  Rogers P. Fancock, exhausted, put-upon director, National Security Council, the White House

  Barney Strecker, profane, risk-taking deputy director for operations, CIA

  President, United States of America

  Winnie Chang, chair, U.S.-China Co-Dependency Council

  Lev Melnikov, founder, chairman, and CEO, Internet giant EPIC

  Chris Matthews, taciturn TV-talk-show host

  BEIJING

  Fa Mengyao, mild-mannered, tormented president, People’s Republic of China; general secretary, Chinese Communist Party

  Gang, his loyal longtime aide

  Lo Guowei, scary, sexually aggressive minister of state security, PRC

  Han, constipated, bellicose general; minister of national defense, PRC

  Politburo Standing Committee, CCP, various members, names too complicated to list

  Zhang, retired admiral, People’s Liberation Navy; former minister of state security; mentor to Fa

  Sun-tzu, long-dead but very much alive military theoretician and strategist

  As to the escape of the Dalai Lama from Tibet, if we had been in your place, we would not have let him escape. It would be better if he were in a coffin.

  —Nikita Khrushchev to Mao Zedong, 1959

  Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.

  —Sun-tzu

  Om mani padme hum.

  —Chenrezig

  THEY EAT PUPPIES, DON’T THEY?

  PROLOGUE

  DUMBO

  The senator from the great state of New York had been droning on for over five minutes; droning about drones.

  Bird McIntyre sat in the first row behind his boss, the recipient of the senatorial cataract of words. He scribbled a note on a piece of paper and passed it forward.

  Chick Devlin glanced at the note. He let the senator continue for several more mind-numbing minutes so as not to appear prompted by Bird’s note. Finally, seizing on an ellipsis, he leaned forward into the microphone across the green-baize-covered table and said, “Senator, pardon my French, but isn’t the whole point to scare the shit out of them?”

  The committee collectively stiffened. One senator laughed. Several smiled or suppressed smiles; some pretended not to be amused; some were actually not amused. Not that it mattered: This was a closed hearing, no cameras or media in attendance.

  “If I may, Senator,” continued Devlin, chief executive officer of the aerospace giant Groepping-Sprunt, “the idea that a predator drone should be unobtrusive, some speck in the sky, so as not to alarm the general public . . .” He smiled and shook his head. “Forgive my asking, but who the heck wrote the specs for that paradigm? Look here, we’re talking about a part of the world where one-third of the so-called general public are in their kitchens making IEDs to kill American soldiers. Another third are on the Internet recruiting suicide bombers. And the last third are on cell phones planning the next 9/11. These are the people we don’t want to alarm?” He sat back in his chair, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Or am I missing something here?”

  “Mr. Devlin,” said the senator, straining a bit obviously for the satanic homonym, “we are talking about a predator drone the size of a commercial airliner. Of a jumbo jet. A drone, by the way, that may or may not”—she jabbed an accusatory finger in the direction of the neat, blue-uniformed air force general sitting beside Devlin—“be nuclear-capable. I say ‘may or may not’ because I can’t seem to get a straight answer from the air force.”

  The general leaned into his microphone to protest but was waved away by the senator before he could achieve takeoff.

  “So I’m asking you, Mr. Devlin: What kind of signal does this send to the world? That the United States would launch these huge, unpiloted—”

  “Sentinels.”

  “Sentinels? Sentinels? Come on, Mr. Devlin, these are killing machines. Not even H. G. Wells could have come up with something like this. Read your own specs. No, on second thought, allow me.”

  The senator put on her bifocals and read aloud: “ ‘Hellfire missiles, Beelzebub Gatling gun. Seven thousand rounds per second. Depleted-uranium armor-piercing projectiles. CBUs.’ CBUs—that would be cluster bombs—”

  “Senator,” Devlin cut in, “Groepping-Sprunt did not make the world we live in. Groepping-Sprunt—if I may, ma’am—does not make U.S. foreign policy. That we leave to such distinguished public servants as yourself. What we do make are systems to help America cope with the challenges of the world we inhabit.”

  “Please don’t interrupt me, Mr. Devlin,” the senator shot back, returning to her reading material. “What about this so-called Adaptable Payload Package? ‘Adaptable Payload Package.’ There’s an ambiguous term if ever I heard one.
No wonder it’s got General Wheary there talking out of both sides of his mouth.”

  “Senator, if I might—” General Wheary tried again.

  “No, General. You had your chance. Now I’m asking Mr. Devlin—for the last time—what kind of signal does it send to the world that we would deploy such an awful symbol, such a device—a device by the way you have the gall to designate ‘Dumbo.’ Dumbo!” she snorted. “Dumbo! This, sir, is a creature from hell.”

  “Senator, with respect,” Devlin said, “the platform is designated MQ-9B. Dumbo is merely a . . .”

  Bird McIntyre nodded thoughtfully, as if he were hearing the name Dumbo for the first time. In fact, the name was his suggestion. If the idea is to make a breathtakingly large and lethal killing machine (as the senator would say) sound less lethal, what better name than Disney’s cuddly pachyderm? Bird had considered “Cuddles,” but that seemed a bit much.

  “. . . a nickname,” Devlin continued, “like, say, ‘Dragon Lady’ for the U-2 spy plane or BUFF, ‘Big Ugly Fat Fellow,’ for the B-52 bomber. Military vehicles all have nicknames. But as to your question—what kind of signal does it send? I would say the answer is—a serious signal. A very serious signal. If I for one were a member of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda or some other sworn enemy of freedom and the American Way, and I looked up from the table in my IED lab and saw Dumbo—if you prefer, the MQ-9B—blotting out the sun and preparing to obliterate me and introduce me to Allah, I believe I might just consider taking up another line of work.”

  A murmur went through the committee.

  Bird nodded, well pleased by his ventriloquism. Devlin’s speech was almost word for word from Bird’s briefing book—Tab “R.”

  Groepping-Sprunt was Bird McIntyre’s largest account. And the Dumbo contract was a biggie—$3.4 billion worth of appropriations. Bird had worked furiously on the public-awareness campaign. For the past several weeks, every TV watcher in the Greater Washington, D.C., Area, every newspaper or magazine reader, bus-stop passerby, Internet browser, sports spectator, and subway rider—all their eyeballs and ears had been assailed by messages showing Dumbo—MQ-9B—aloft, soaring through serene blue air high above the piney mountains of the California Sierra Nevada, looking for all the world like a great big friendly flying toy that might have dropped out of Santa’s sleigh. Bird had proposed painting the fuselage in a soothing shade of teal. Beneath the photo were these words:

  DUMBO: CAN AMERICA AFFORD NOT TO DEPLOY HER?

  The problem was money. The appropriations climate on Capitol Hill these days was brutal. The Pentagon was drowning in health-care costs, administration costs, war costs. Cutback time. They were even pensioning off admirals and generals. Not since the end of the Cold War had so many military been given the heave-ho: an aggregate of over three hundred stars so far.

  Meanwhile, defense lobbyists were scrambling. In happier times, getting approval for a Dumbo-type program would have consisted of a couple of meetings, a few pro forma committee hearings, hand-shakes all round, and off to an early lunch. Now? Sisyphus had it easier.

  On top of the “funding factor” (Washington-speak for “appalling cost overruns”), Bird and Groepping-Sprunt were up against a bit of a “perception problem” (Washington-speak for “reality”). Dumbo, MQ-9B, Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse—whatever—was stark evidence that somewhere along the line Uncle Sam had quietly morphed into Global Big Brother. With wings. The proud American eagle now clutched in one talon the traditional martial arrows, in the other a remote control.

  Perhaps, Senator, you’d prefer that we conduct war the old-fashioned way—having our boys blown up by roadside bombs while trying to instill Jeffersonian democracy door-to-door. “Hello? Excuse us, sorry to bust in on you like this, but we’re the United States military, and we’re here to read you the Bill of Rights. You wouldn’t be harboring any terrorists in here, would you? You’re not? Fantastic! Would you care for some sugarless gum?”

  Bird jerked himself out of the reverie. He was exhausted. He told himself sternly, Do not fall asleep in a Senate hearing!

  Uh-oh. The senator from the great state of—damn—Wisconsin, where approximately zero Dumbo components were manufactured, was now preparing to fire his own Hellfire missiles at Chick.

  “What has it come to . . .” he began.

  Bird suppressed a groan. He’d begged—begged—Chick to buy some Wisconsin-made components—anything—for Dumbo. Tell him you’ll install an on-board Wisconsin dairy cow. Or dead cows. Why not? Didn’t they catapult diseased animals over the walls during sieges back in the Middle Ages?

  “. . . that the United States should resort to such”—he was shaking his head—“dreadful weapons as these?”

  Bird thought, What has it come to, Senator? You really want to know? I’ll tell you: This. It has come to—this. Our country is going broke. No, is already broke. And you know what? Everyone out there in this big, wide, nasty world is still trying to kill us. Or maybe word of this hasn’t yet reached Wisconsin? By the way, do you use oil in Wisconsin? You know, the kind we get from all those horrible countries in the Middle East? Or are you getting all your electricity from some other source? Wind? Solar? Methane from flatulent cows?

  Bird had anticipated this and had provided a primed hand grenade for Chick to toss back into the senator’s lap. It was in Tab “S,” highlighted in orange. Unlike some clients, Chick did his homework, bless him.

  “Well, Senator,” Devlin said with just the right air of embarrassment, “frankly, when it comes to protecting our country, I for one would rather spend a dollar than an American life.”

  Bird mentally high-fived. Yesss.

  The committee voted 12–7 against funding the MQ-9B.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER AN EPIC number of drinks with Chick at the Bomb Bay Club, a favorite Washington haunt of defense contractors, Bird managed to crawl into a cab and make it back to his apartment across the river. Instead of collapsing into bed, he drunkenly banged out a highly misspelled, indignant statement on behalf of Groepping-Sprunt, wishing Wisconsin National Guard units serving in Iraq and Afghanistan “good luck over there—because your [sic] sure going to need it.”

  Bird awoke the next morning with a Hiroshima-level hangover and the cold, prickly-sweat fear that he had hit Send before collapsing into the arms of Morpheus.

  He dragged himself to his computer and with pounding heart checked the Sent folder.

  Not there.

  It was in the Drafts folder. Thank you, God.

  He deleted it, swallowed a heroic quantity of ibupropfen—kidney damage was an acceptable risk—and, like a mortally wounded raccoon, crawled back to bed, where he lay with poached tongue and throbbing skull, staring at the ceiling.

  Somewhere above in the empyrean, Dumbo, answer to America’s twenty-first-century security needs, flapped his wings one last time and tumbled, Icarus-like, from the sky.

  CHAPTER 1

  BIRD

  An unearthly sound—clarions, shrieking—summoned Bird from the land of the undead.

  Gummily, his eyes opened.

  The hellish sound continued.

  As his wounded brain clawed its way back to consciousness, it dawned on him that it was his cell phone. The ringtone—opening bars of “Ride of the Valkyries”—announced his wife.

  “Unh.” Valkyrie hooves pounded on his cerebellum.

  “Well, you sound good.”

  Myndi’s voice was an unhappy fusion of Gidget and marine drill sergeant. He looked at his watch. Not yet 7:00 a.m.; she’d have been up since four-thirty, training.

  “Went out with . . . Chick . . . after . . . the . . .” It emerged a croak, the words forming letter by letter, syllable by syllable, Morse tappings from the radio room of a sinking vessel. “. . . vote. We . . . lost.”

  “I saw,” she said in a scoldy tone, as if to suggest that Bird obviously hadn’t put his all into it. She added, “I suppose this is going to have an effect on the stock price?”

  He thought, Ye
s, darling. It will in all likelihood have an effect on the stock price.

  “Walter,” she said—Myndi refused to call him “Bird,” hated the name—“we need to talk.” Surely the unhappiest words in any marriage. We need to talk.

  “We are,” Bird observed.

  “Why don’t you have some coffee, darling. I need you to process.”

  Process. How she loved that word.

  “I’m processing. What?”

  “I’ll call you back in ten minutes. Make it fifteen. That’ll give you time for a nice hot shower.” She hung up, doubtless having activated her stopwatch.

  Walter “Bird” McIntyre blinked his eyelids at the ceiling. It looked down on him with disdain.

  He rose unsteadily and confronted the full, blazing glare of the morning sun through the floor-to-ceiling glass panels. He shrank like a vampire caught out past the dawn.

  Bird called his condo the “Military-Industrial Duplex.” A flippant nickname, to be sure. It was in Rosslyn, Virginia, on the once-Confederate side of the Potomac River. The compensation for the unfashionable zip code was a truly spectacular view of the nation’s capital. This time of year, the sun rose directly behind the great dome of the Capitol Building, casting a long, patriotic shadow across the Mall—America’s front yard. Myndi, seeing the view for the first time, sniffed, “It’s nice, darling, but a bit of a cliché.”

  Coffee. Must. Have.

  At least, he reflected with what little self-congratulation he could muster in his debased state, he hadn’t yet reached the point where he needed a snort of booze to get himself going again in the morning.

  His computer screen was on. He remembered the (thankfully) unsent e-mail with a shudder of relief and mechanically went about the rituals of caffeination, acting as his own combo barista/EMT.

  The Valkyries shrieked anew. Apparently his fifteen minutes had elapsed. For God’s sake . . .