Pentagon.

Pentagon.

Allen Drury. Doubleday,$18.95.

Drury's new novel is a big,sprawling work, somewhat like the building it describes. But with its multiple stories only loosely connected by The Building, it never quite achieves coherence or focus. In fact, Pentagon is less a novel than a polemic disguised as fiction for people who don't read nonfiction like the recent crop of defense reform books.

In Drury's story, the Sovietsclandestinely take over a small South Pacific island and kill its inhabitants with a neutron bomb. The Navy airman who discovers this is shot down by a lurking Soviet sub, though not before he notifies the U.S. Pacific fleet. The rest of the tale is devoted to the months of bumbling, subversion, and bureaucratic infighting that follow as the Department of Defense, the joint chiefs, the president, Congress, and the press debate what to do.

Drury draws all the right conclusionsabout what's wrong with the DOD. There is very little forward thinking or strategic planning. The Soviets think aggressively, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff remarks, while we think defensively. Military personnel and high level DOD civil servants serve, on average, only two or three years; by the time they've learned their jobs, it's time to move on. Interservice rivalries, conflicting civilian and military purposes, and ugly little human jealousies make a mockery of sincere efforts to get things done. The explanation for all this offered by one character, Helen Clark, the beautiful and smart assistant secretary of defense for aquisition and logistics, is on target: too much money and too many constituents to satisfy in the Pentagon, in the White House, and in industry.