"Ian Douglas - The Heritage Trilogy 01 - Semper Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglas Ian)

Corps, not if he had one thin, ragged breath.

Gray gave him a sad smile. “What’s the matter, Monty? Trying to save your job?”
“That’s not funny. I may be commandant of the United States Marine Corps, but every Marine is a
rifleman first. I’d resign in an instant if it would change this. You know that. I’d give my life for the Corps,
CJ. I goddamn would.”

The smile vanished. “Jesus, Monty, I know how you feel, but—”

“Do you?” Warhurst gestured at the four-meter flatscreen dominating the wall behind Gray’s desk. The
display repeated in hand-high letters the document called up by the admiral’s wrist-top. The words
“HR378637: The Unified Military Act” showed at the top of the neatly formatted document in
punch-to-the-stomach bold. “The BBs’ve been whittling away at us for years now, cutting our
appropriations until we’re damn near running on empty. Now it’s…this.”

Warhurst stopped himself. He was breathing hard, and he could feel the rising flush in his face, feel the
blood hammering at his temples. His meds monitor would be kicking in any second now if he kept this
up, but, damn it, the BBs—Pentagon slang for “Beltway Bastards”—never failed to raise his blood
pressure.

And now they were trying to kill the Corps. His Corps!…

“There’s not a damned thing I can do about it,” the admiral said, shaking his head. His gaze flicked to the
left, to the large, 3-D image of a grinning civilian on the wall to his right. “Archy’s backing this thing, and
that means it’ll have the president’s approval.”

“Severin is a political hack. He’s also an Internationalist—”

“May I remind you that Archibald Severin is secretary of defense, which makes him our political hack.
That means you, me, and the rest of the Joint Chiefs answer to him…and after him the NSC and the
president. They pass the word, and we snap to attention, say ‘Yes, sir,’ and politics never rears its ugly
face.”

“Everything in Washington is politics, CJ, and that includes the Pentagon and everyone in it. You know
that as well as I do.”

“Maybe. But the final word comes from a document you may have heard of: the Constitution, remember?
It says we work for the politicians. Not the other way around.”

“I never suggested any different. But this Unified Military Act is political. You know it. I know it. And
there’s a political way to fight back.”

“And what might that be?”

“Public opinion.”

The admiral groaned, shifting in his chair. “Jesus, Monty—”

“It’s worked before. Truman? A century ago?” President Harry S Truman, a former artillery officer in the
Navy, had come that close to shutting down the Marine Corps in the years immediately after World War