by Tom Clancy
“How did this ever come to pass?”
“It has always been inevitable, my friends,” Yamata-san said, a fine edge of sadness in his voice. “Our country is like ... like a city with no surrounding countryside, like a strong arm without a heart to send it blood. We’ve told ourselves for years that this is a normal state of affairs—but it is not, and we must remedy the situation or perish.”
“It is a great gamble we undertake.”
“Hai. ” It was hard for him not to smile.
It was not yet dawn, and they would sail on the tide. The proceedings went on without much fanfare. A few families came down to the docks, mainly to drop the crewmen off at their ships from a last night spent ashore.
The names were traditional, as they were with most navies of the world—at least those who’d been around long enough to have tradition. The new Aegis destroyers, Kongo and her sisters, bore traditional battleship names, mainly ancient appellations for regions of the nation that built them. That was a recent departure. It would have struck Westerners as an odd nomenclature for ships-of-war, but in keeping with their country’s poetic traditions, most names for the combat ships had lyrical meanings, and were largely grouped by class. Destroyers traditionally had names ending in -kaze, denoting a kind of wind; Hatukaze, for example, meant “Morning Breeze.” Submarine names were somewhat more logical. All of those ended in -ushio, meaning “tide.”
They were in the main handsome ships, spotlessly clean so as not to detract from their workmanlike profiles. One by one they lit off their jet-turbine engines and eased their way off the quays and into the channels. The captains and navigators looked at the shipping that was piling up in Tokyo Bay, but whatever they were thinking, for the moment the merchantmen were merely a hazard to navigation, swinging at their anchors as they were. Below, those sailors not on sea-and-anchor detail mainly stowed gear and saw to their duty stations. Radars were lit up to assist in the departure-hardly necessary since visibility conditions this morning were excellent, but good practice for the crewmen in the various Combat Information Centers. At the direction of combat-systems officers, data links were tested to swap tactical information between ships. In engine-control rooms the “snipes”—an ancient term of disparagement for the traditionally filthy enginemen--sat in comfortable swivel chairs and monitored computer readouts while sipping tea.
The flagship was the new destroyer Mutsu. The fishing port of Tateyame was in sight, the last town they would pass before turning sharply to port and heading east.
The submarines were already out there, Rear Admiral Yusuo Sato knew, but the commanders had been briefed in. His was a family with a long tradition of service—better still, a tradition of the sea. His father had commanded a destroyer under Raizo Tanaka, one of the greatest destroyer-men who’d ever lived, and his uncle had been one of Yamamoto’s “wild eagles,” a carrier pilot killed at the Battle of Santa Cruz. The succeeding generation had continued in those footsteps. Yusuo’s brother, Torajiro Sato, had flown F-86 fighters for the Air Self-Defense Force, then quit in disgust at the demeaning status of the air arm, and now flew as a senior captain for Japan Air Lines. The man’s son, Shiro, had followed in his father’s footsteps and was now a very proud young major, flying fighters on a more permanent basis. Not too bad, Admiral Sato thought, for a family that had no samurai roots. Yusuo’s other brother was a banker. Sato was fully briefed on what was to come.
The Admiral stood, opened the watertight door on Mutsu’s bridge and passed out to the starboard wing. The sailors at work there took a second to acknowledge his presence with dutiful nods, then went back to taking shoresights to update the ship’s position. Sato looked aft and noted that the sixteen ships in the column were in a nearly perfect line, separated by a uniform five hundred meters, just becoming visible to the unaided eye in the pink-orange glow of the rising sun toward which they sailed. Surely that was a good omen, the Admiral thought. At the truck of every ship flew the same flag under which his father had served; it had been denied his country’s warships for so many years but was restored now, the proud red-on-white sunburst.
“Secure the sea-and-anchor detail,” the Captain’s voice announced on the speaker system. Already their home port was under the visible horizon, and soon the same would be true of the headlands now on the port quarter.
Sixteen ships, Sato thought. The largest force his country had put to sea as a coherent unit in—fifty years? He had to think about it. Certainly the most powerful, not one vessel more than ten years old, proud, expensive ships with proud, established names. But the one name he’d wanted with him this morning, Kurushio, “Black Tide,” that of his father’s destroyer, which had sunk an American cruiser at the Battle of Tassafaronga, unfortunately belonged to a new submarine, already at sea. The Admiral lowered his binoculars and grunted in mild displeasure. Black Tide. It was a poetically perfect name for a warship, too. A pity it had been wasted on a submarine.
Kurushio and her sisters had left thirty-six hours earlier. The lead ship of a new class, she was running at fifteen knots for her high-speed transit to the exercise area, powered by her large, efficient diesels which now drew air through the snorkel mast. Her crew of ten officers and sixty enlisted men was on a routine watch cycle. An officer of the deck and his junior kept the watch in the sub’s control room. An engineering officer was at his post, along with twenty-four ratings. The entire torpedo department was at work in their midships station, doing electronic tests on the fourteen Type 89-Mod C torpedoes and six Harpoon missiles. Otherwise the watch bill was normal, and no one remarked on the single change. The captain, Commander Tamaki Ugaki, was known as a stickler for readiness, and though he drilled his men hard, his was a happy ship because she was always a smart ship. He was locked in his cabin, and the crew hardly knew he was aboard, the only signs of his presence the thin crack of light under the door and the cigarette smoke that came out the exhaust vent. An intense man, their skipper, the crewmen thought, doubtless working up plans and drills for the upcoming exercise against the American submarines. They’d done well the last time, scoring three first-kills in ten practice encounters. That was as good as anyone might expect. Except for Ugaki, the men joked at their lunch tables. He thought like a true samurai, and didn’t want to know about being second best.
Ryan had established a routine in his first month back of spending one day per week at the Pentagon. He’d explained to journalists that his office wasn’t supposed to be a cell, after all, and it was just a more efficient use of everyone’s time. It hadn’t even resulted in a story, as it might have done a few years earlier. The very title of National Security Advisor, everyone knew, was a thing of the past. Though the reporters deemed Ryan a worthy successor to the corner office in the White House, he was such a colorless guy. He was known to avoid the Washington “scene” as though he feared catching leprosy, he showed up for work every day at the same time, did his job in as few hours as circumstances allowed—to his good fortune, it was rarely more than a ten-hour day—and returned to his family as though he were a normal person or something. His background at CIA was still very sketchy, and though his public acts as a private citizen and a government functionary were well known, that was old news. As a result Ryan was able to drive around in the back of his official car and few took great note of it. Everything with the man was just so routine, and Jack worked hard to keep it that way. Reporters rarely took note of a dog that didn’t bark. Perhaps they just didn’t read enough to know better.
“They’re up to something,” Robby said as soon as Ryan took his seat in the flag briefing room in the National Military Command Center. The map display made that clear.
“Coming south?”
“Two hundred miles’ worth. The fleet commander is V. K. Chandraskatta, graduated Dartmouth Royal Naval College, third in his class, worked his way up. Took the senior course at Newport a few years ago. He was number one in that class,” Admiral Jackson went on. “Very nice political connections. He’s spent
a surprising amount of time away from his fleet lately, commuting back and forth—”
“Where to?” Ryan asked.
“We assume back and forth to New Delhi, but the truth of the matter is that we don’t really know. It’s the old story, Jack.”
Ryan managed not to groan. It was partly an old story, and partly a very new one. No military officer ever thought himself possessed of enough intelligence information, and never fully trusted the quality of what he did have. In this case, the complaint was true enough: CIA still didn’t have any assets on the ground in India. Ryan made a mental note to speak to Brett Hanson about the Ambassador. Again. Psychiatrists called his form of action “passive-aggressive,” meaning that he didn’t resist but didn’t cooperate either. It was a source of constant surprise to Ryan that important grown-ups so often acted like five-year-olds.
“Correlation between his trips ashore and his movements?”
“Nothing obvious,” Robby answered with a shake of the head.
“Sigint, comint?” Jack asked, wondering if the National Security Agency, yet another shadow of its former self, had attempted to listen in on the Indian fleet’s radio traffic.
“We’re getting some stuff via Alice Springs and Diego Garcia, but it’s just routine. Ship-movement orders, mostly, nothing with real operational significance.”
Jack was tempted to grumble that his country’s intelligence services never had what he wanted at the moment, but the real reason for that was simple: the intelligence he did have usually enabled America to prepare, to obviate problems before they became problems. It was the things that got overlooked that developed into crises, and they were overlooked because other things were more important—until the little ones blew up.
“So all we have is what we can infer from their operational patterns.”
“And here it is,” Robby said, walking to the chart.
“Pushing us off ...”
“Making Admiral Dubro commit. It’s pretty clever, really. The ocean is mighty big, but it can get a lot smaller when there’s two fleets moving around it. He hasn’t asked for an ROE update yet but it’s something we need to start thinking about.”
“If they load that brigade onto their amphibs, then what?”
An Army colonel, one of Robby’s staff, answered. “Sir, if I were running this, it’s real easy. They have troops on the ground already, playing games with the Tamils. That secures the beachhead pretty slick, and the landing is just administrative. Getting ashore as a cohesive unit is the hard part of any invasion, but it looks to me like that’s already knocked. Their Third Armored Brigade is a very robust formation. Short version is, the Sri Lankans don’t have anything with a prayer of slowing it down, much less stopping it. Next item on the agenda, you gobble up a few airfields and just fly your infantry forces in. They have a lot of people under arms. Sparing fifty thousand infantrymen for this operation would not be much of a stretch for them.
“I suppose the country could degenerate into a long-term insurgency situation,” the Colonel went on, “but the first few months would go to the Indians almost by default, and with their ability to isolate the island with their navy, well, whatever insurgents have a yen to fight things out wouldn’t have a source of resupply. Smart money, India wins.”
“The hard part’s political,” Ryan mused. “The U.N. will get pretty excited....”
“But projecting power into that area is a bitch,” Robby pointed out. “Sri Lanka doesn’t have any traditional allies, unless you count India. They have no religious or ethnic card to play. No resources for us to get hot and bothered about.”
Ryan continued the thought: “Front-page news for a few days, but if the Indians are smart about it, they make Ceylon their fifty-first state—”
“More likely their twenty-sixth state, sir,” the Colonel suggested, “or an adjunct to Tamil Nadu, for ethnic reasons. It might even help the Indians defuse their own difficulties with the Tamils. I’d guess there have been some contacts.”
“Thank you.” Ryan nodded to the Colonel, who had done his homework. “But the idea is, they integrate the place into their country politically, full civil rights and everything, and all of a sudden it’s no story at all anymore. Slick,” Ryan observed. “But they need a political excuse before they can move. That excuse has to be a resurgence of the Tamil rebels—which of course they are in a position to foment.”
“That’ll be our indicator,” Jackson agreed. “Before that happens, we need to tell Mike Dubro what he’s going to be able to do about it.”
And that would not be an easy call, Ryan thought, looking at the chart. Task Group 77.1 was heading southwest, keeping its distance from the Indian fleet, but though there was an ocean in which to maneuver, not far to Dubro’s west was a long collection of atolls. At the end of it was the American base at Diego Garcia: a matter of some comfort, but not much.
The problem with a bluff was that the other guy might guess it for what it was, and this game was a lot less random than a poker hand. Combat power favored the Americans, but only if they had the will to use it. Geography favored India. America really had no vital interests in the area. The U.S. fleet in the Indian Ocean was basically there to keep an eye on the Persian Gulf, after all, but instability in any region was contagious, and when people got nervous about such things, a destructive synergy took place. The proverbial stitch-in-time was as useful in this arena as any other. That meant making a decision on how far the bluff could be pressed.
“Gets tricky, doesn’t it, Rob?” Jack asked with a smile that showed more amusement than he felt.
“It would be helpful if we knew what they were thinking.”
“Duly noted, Admiral. I will get people cracking on that.”
“And the ROE?”
“The Rules of Engagement remain the same, Robby, until the President says otherwise. If Dubro thinks he’s got an inbound attack, he can deal with it. I suppose he’s got armed aircraft on the deck.”
“On the deck, hell! In the air, Dr. Ryan, sir.”
“I’ll see if I can get him to let out another foot of lead on the leash,” Jack promised.
A phone rang just then. A junior staff officer—Marine newly promoted to major’s rank—grabbed it, and called Ryan over.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“White House Signals, sir,” a watch officer replied. “Prime Minister Koga just submitted his resignation. The Ambassador estimates that Goto will be asked to form the new government.”
“That was fast. Have the State Department’s Japan desk send me what I need. I’ll be back in less than two hours.” Ryan replaced the phone.
“Koga’s gone?” Jackson asked.
“Somebody give you a smart pill this morning, Rob?”
“No, but I can listen in on phone conversations. I hear we’re getting unpopular over there.”
“It has gone a little fast.”
The photos arrived by diplomatic courier. In the old days, the bag would have been opened at the port of entry, but in these kinder and gentler times the long-service government employee got in the official car at Dulles and rode all the way to Foggy Bottom. There the bag was opened in a secure room, and the various articles in the canvas sack were sorted by category and priority and hand-carried to their various destinations. The padded envelope with seven film cassettes was handed over to a CIA employee, who simply walked outside to his car and drove off toward the Fourteenth Street Bridge. Forty minutes later, the cassettes were opened in a photolab designed for microfilm and various other sophisticated systems but readily adapted to items as pedestrian as this.
The technician rather liked “real” film—since it was commercial, it was far easier to work with, and fit standard and user-friendly processing equipment—and had long since stopped looking at the images except to make sure that he’d done his job right. In this case the color saturation told him everything. Fuji film, he thought. Who’d ever said it was better than Kodak? The slide film was cut, and the i
ndividual segments fitted into cardboard holders whose only difference from those any set of parents got to commemorate a toddler’s first meeting with Mickey Mouse was that they bore the legend Top Secret. These were numbered, bundled together, and put into a box. The box was slid into an envelope and set in the lab’s out-bin. Thirty minutes later a secretary came down to collect it.
She walked to the elevator and rode to the fifth floor of the Old Headquarters Building, now almost forty years of age and showing it. The corridors were dingy, and the paint on the drywall panels faded to a neutral, offensive yellow. Here, too, the mighty had fallen, and that was especially true of the Office of Strategic Weapons Research. Once one of CIA’s most important subagencies, OSWR was now scratching for a living.
It was staffed with rocket scientists whose job descriptions were actually genuine. Their job was to look at the specifications of foreign-made missiles and decide what their real capabilities were. That meant a lot of theoretical work, and also trips to various government contractors to compare what they had with what our own people knew. Unfortunately, if you could call it that, ICBMs and SLBMs, the bread-and-butter of OSWR, were almost extinct, and the photos on the walls of every office in the section were almost nostalgic in their lack of significance. Now people educated in various areas of physics were having to learn about chemical and biological agents, the mass-destruction weapons of poorer nations. But not today.
Chris Scott, thirty-four, had started in OSWR when it had really meant something. A graduate of Rensselaer Poly-technic Institute, he’d distinguished himself by deducing the performance of the Soviet SS-24 two weeks before a highly placed agent had spirited out a copy of the manual for the solid-fueled bird, which had earned for him a pat on the head from the then-Director, William Webster. But the -24s were all gone now, and, his morning briefing material had told him, they were down to one SS-19, matched by a single Minuteman-III outside of Minot, North Dakota, both of them awaiting destruction; and he didn’t like studying chemistry. As a result, the slides from Japan were something of a blessing.