Debt Of Honor (1994)

by Tom - Jack Ryan 06 Clancy

  Ba-Wah!

  "That's why," a chief electrician's mate replied. He didn't quite shiver, but added, "I never have gotten used to that sound."

  "Jesus! What the hell was that?"

  "That's an SQS-53 sonar on a tin can. And if you hear it that loud, it means that they know we're here. The Japs have 'em, too, Sarge."

  "Just ignore it," the sonar chief said, forward at his duty station. He stood behind a new sonarman, looking at the display. Sure enough, the new software upgrade made Prairie /Masker a lot easier to pick up, especially if you knew there was a blue sky overhead and no reason to suspect a rainstorm pelting the surface.

  "He's got us cold, Chief."

  "Only 'cause the Cap'n said it was okay for him to track us for a little while. An' we ain't giving out any more freebies."

  Verino was just one more former MiG base in an area with scores of them. Exactly whom the Russians had been worried about was up for grabs. From this place they could have struck at Japan or China, or defended against attacks from either place, depending on who was paranoid and who was pissed at any particular political moment, the pilot thought. He'd never been anywhere close to here before, and even with the changes in relations between the two countries hadn't expected to do much more than maybe make a friendly visit to European Russia, as the U.S. Air Force did periodically. Now there was a Sukhoi-27 interceptor a thousand yards to his two o'clock, with real missiles hanging on the airframe, and probably a whimsical thought or two in the mind of the driver. My, what a huge target. The two disparate aircraft had linked up an hour before because there hadn't been time to get a Russian-speaking officer on the mission, and they didn't want to risk English chatter on the air-control frequency. So the transport followed the fighter rather like a sheepdog obediently trailing a terrier.

  "Runway in view," the copilot said tiredly. There was the usual low-altitude buffet, increased as the flaps and gear went down, spoiling the airflow. For all that the landing was routine, until just before touchdown the pilot noticed a pair of C-17s on the ramp. So he wasn't the first American aircraft to visit this place. Maybe the two other crews could tell him where to go for some crew-rest.

  The JAL 747 lifted off with all its seats full, heading west into the prevailing winds over the Pacific and leaving Canada behind. Captain Sato wasn't quite sure how to feel about everything. He was pleased, as always, to bring so many of his countrymen back home, but he also felt that in a way they were running away from America, and he wasn't so sure he liked that. His son had gotten word to him of the B-1 kills, and if his country could cripple two American aircraft carriers, destroy two of their supposedly invincible submarines, and then also take out one or two of their vaunted strategic bombers, well, then, what did they have to fear from these people? It was just a matter of waiting them out now, he thought. To his right he saw the shape of another 747, this one in the livery of Northwest/KLM, inbound from Japan, doubtless full of American businessmen who were running away. It wasn't that they had anything to fear. Perhaps it was shame, he thought. The idea pleased him, and Sato smiled. The rest of the routing was easy. Four thousand six hundred nautical miles, a flight time of nine and a half hours if he'd read the weather predictions correctly, and his load of three hundred sixty-six passengers would be home to a reborn country, guarded by his son and his brother. They'd come back to North America in due course, standing a little straighter and looking a little prouder, as would befit people representing his nation, Sato told himself. He regretted that he was no longer part of the military that would cause that renewed pride of place, but he'd made his mistake too long ago to correct it now. So he'd do his small part in the great change in history's shape, driving his bus as skillfully as he could.

  The word got to Yamata early in the morning of the day he'd planned to return to Saipan to begin his campaign for the island's governorship. He and his colleagues had gotten the word out through the government agencies. Everything that went to Goto and the Foreign Minister now came directly to them, too. It wasn't all that hard. The country was changing, and it was time for the people who exercised the real power to be treated in accordance with their true worth. In due course it would be clearer to the common people, and by that time they would recognize who really mattered in their country, as the bureaucrats were even now acknowledging somewhat belatedly.

  Koga, you traitor, the industrialist thought. It wasn't entirely unexpected. The former Prime Minister had such foolish ideas about the purity of the governmental process, and how you had to seek the approval of common working people, how typical of his outlook that he would feel some foolish nostalgia for something that had never really existed in the first place. Of course political figures needed guidance and support from people such as himself. Of course it was normal for them to display proper, and dignified, obeisance to their masters. What did they do, really, but work to preserve the prosperity that others, like Yamata and his peers, had worked so hard to achieve for their country? If Japan had depended on her government to provide for the ordinary people, then where would the country have been? But all people like Koga had were ideals that went nowhere. The common people--what did they know? What did they do? They knew and did what their betters told them, and in doing that, in acknowledging their state in life and working in their assigned tasks, they had brought a better life to themselves and their country. Wasn't that simple enough?

  It wasn't as though it were the classical period, when the country had been run by a hereditary nobility. That system of rule had sufficed for two millennia, but was not suited to the industrial age. Noble bloodlines ran thin with accumulated arrogance. No, his group of peers consisted of men who had earned their place and their power, first by serving others in lowly positions, then by industry and intelligence--and luck, he admitted to himself--risen to exercise power won on merit. It was they who had made Japan into what she was. They who had led a small island nation from ashes and ruin to industrial preeminence. They, who had humbled one of the world's "great" powers, would soon humble another, and in the process raise their country to the top of the world order, achieving everything that the military boneheads like Tojo had failed to do.

  Clearly Koga had no proper function except to get out of the way, or to acquiesce, as Goto had learned to do. But he did neither. And now he was plotting to deny his country the historic opportunity to achieve true greatness. Why? Because it didn't fit his foolish aesthetic of right and wrong--or because it was dangerous, as though true achievement ever came without some danger.

  Well, he could not allow that to happen, Yamata told himself, reaching for his phone to call Kaneda. Even Goto might shrink from this. Better to handle this one in-house. He might as well get used to the exercise of personal power.

  At the Northrop plant the aircraft had been nicknamed the armadillo. Though its airframe was so smooth that nature might have given its shape to a wandering seabird, the B-2A was not everything it appeared to be. The slate-gray composites that made up its visible surface were only part of the stealth technology built into the aircraft. The inside metal structure was angular and segmented like the eye of an insect, the better to reflect radar energy in a direction away from that of the transmitter it hoped to defeat. The graceful exterior shell was designed mainly to reduce drag, and thus increase range and fuel efficiency. And it all worked.

  At Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the 509th Bomb Group had led a quiet existence for years, going off and doing its training missions with little fanfare. The bombers originally designed for penetrating Soviet air defenses and tracking down mobile intercontinental missiles for selective destruction--never a realistic tasking, as its crewmen knew--did have the ability to pass invisibly through almost any defense. Or so people had thought until recently.

  "It's big, and it's powerful, and it snuffed a B-1," an officer told the Group operations officer. "We finally figured it out. It's a phased array. It's frequency-agile, and it can operate in a fire-control mode. The one that limped
back to Shemya"--it was still there, decorating the island's single runway while technicians worked to repair it enough to return to the Alaskan mainland--"the missile came in from one direction, but the radar pulses came from another."

  "Cute," observed Colonel Mike Zacharias. It was instantly clear: the Japanese had taken a Russian idea one technological step further. Whereas the Soviets had designed fighter aircraft that were effectively controlled from ground stations, Japan had developed a technique by which the fighters would remain totally covert even when launching their missiles. That was a problem even for the B-2, whose stealthing was designed to defeat longwave search radars and high-frequency airborne tracking- and targeting radars. Stealth was technology; it was not quite magic. An airborne radar of such great power and frequency-agility just might get enough of a return off the -2 to make the proposed mission suicidal. Sleek and agile as it was, the B-2 was a bomber, not a fighter, and a huge target for any modern fighter aircraft. "So what's the good news?" Zacharias asked.

  "We're going to play some more games with them and try to get a better feel for their capabilities."

  "My dad used to do that with SAMs. He ended up getting a lengthy stay in North Vietnam."

  "Well, they're working on a Plan B, too," the intelligence officer offered.

  "Oh, that's nice," Chavez said.

  "Aren't you the one who doesn't like being a spook?" Clark asked, closing his laptop after erasing the mission orders. "I thought you wanted back in to the paramilitary business."

  "Me and my big mouth." Ding moved his backside on the park bench.

  "Excuse me," a third voice said. Both CIA officers looked up to see a uniformed police officer, a pistol sitting in its holster on his Sam Browne belt.

  "Hello," John said with a smile. "A pleasant morning, isn't it?"

  "Yes, it is," the policeman replied. "Is Tokyo very different from America?"

  "It is also very different from Moscow this time of year."

  "Moscow?"

  Clark reached into his coat and pulled out his passport. "We are Russian journalists."

  The cop examined the booklet and handed it back. "Much colder in Moscow this time of year?"

  "Much," Clark confirmed with a nod. The officer moved off, having handled his curiosity attack for the day.

  "Not so sure, Ivan Sergeyevich," Ding observed when he'd gone. "It can get pretty cold here, too."

  "I suppose you can always get another job."

  "And miss all this fun?" Both men rose and walked toward their parked car. There was a map in the glove box.

  The Russian Air Force personnel at Verino had a natural curiosity of their own, but the Americans weren't helping matters. There were now over a hundred American personnel on their base, barracked in the best accommodations. The three helicopters and two vehicular trailers had been rolled into hangars originally built for MiG-25 fighters. The transport aircraft were too large for that, but had been rolled inside as much as their dimensions allowed, with the tails sticking out in the open, but they could as easily have been mistaken for IL-86s, which occasionally stopped off here. The Russian ground crewmen established a secure perimeter, which denied contact of any sort between the two sets of air-force personnel, a disappointment for the Russians.

  The two trailers inside the easternmost hangar were electronically linked with a thick black coaxial cable. Another cable ran outside to a portable satellite link that was similarly guarded.

  "Okay, let's rotate it," a sergeant said. A Russian officer was watching--protocol demanded that the Americans let someone in; this one was surely an intelligence officer--as the birdcage image on the computer screen turned about as though on a phonograph. Next the image moved through a vertical axis, as if it were flying over the stick image. "That's got it," the sergeant observed, closing the window on the computer screen and punching UPLOAD to transmit it to the three idle helicopters.

  "What did you just do? May I ask?" the Russian inquired.

  "Sir, we just taught the computers what to look for." The answer made no sense to the Russian, true though it was.

  The activity in the second van was easier to understand. High-quality photos of several tall buildings were scanned and digitalized, their locations programmed in to a tolerance of only a few meters, then compared with other photos taken from a very high angle that had to denote satellite cameras. The officer leaned in close to get a better feel for the sharpness of the imagery, somewhat to the discomfort of the senior American officer--who, however, was under orders to take no action that might offend the Russians in any way.

  "It looks like an apartment building, yes?" the Russian asked in genuine curiosity.

  "Yes, it does," the American officer replied, his skin crawling despite the hospitality they had all experienced here. Orders or not, it was a major federal felony to show this kind of thing to anyone who lacked the proper clearances, even an American.

  "Who lives there?"

  "I don't know." Why can't this guy just go away?

  By evening the rest of the Americans were up and moving. Incomprehensibly with shaggy hair, not like soldiers at all, they started jogging around the perimeter of the main runway. A few Russians joined in, and a race of sorts started, with both groups running in formation. What started off friendly soon became grim. It was soon clear that the Americans were elite troops unaccustomed to being bested in anything, against which the Russians had pride of place and better acclimatization. Spetznaz, the Russians were soon gasping to one another, and because it was a dull base with a tough-minded commander, they were in good enough shape that after ten kilometers they managed to hold their own. Afterward, both groups mingled long enough to realize that language barriers prevented much in the way of conversation, though the tension in the visitors was clear enough without words.

  "Weird-looking things," Chavez said.

  "Just lucky for us that they picked this place." It was security again, John thought, just like the fighters and bombers at Pearl Harbor had all been bunched together to protect against sabotage or some such nonsense because of a bad intelligence estimate. Another factor might have been the convenience of maintenance at a single location, but they hadn't been assigned to this base originally, and so the hangars weren't large enough. As a result, six E-767s were sitting right there in the open, two miles away and easily distinguished by their odd shape. Better yet, the country was just too crowded for the base to be very isolated. The same factors that placed cities in the flat spots also placed airfields there, but the cities had grown up first. There were light-industrial buildings all around, and the mainly rectangular air base had highways down every side. The next obvious move was to check the trees for wind direction. Northwesterly wind. Landing aircraft would come in from the southeast. Knowing that, they had to find a perch.

  Everything was being used now. Low-orbit electronic-intelligence satellites were also gathering signals, fixing the patrol locations of the AEW aircraft, not as well as the ELINT aircraft could, but far more safely. The next step would be to enlist submarines in the job, but that could take time, someone had told them. Not all that many submarines to go around, and those that were left had a job to do. Hardly a revelation. The electronic order of battle was firming up, and though not everything the ELINT techs discovered was good news, at least they did have the data from which the operations people might formulate some sort of plan or other. For the moment, the locations of the racetrack patterns used by three orbiting E-767s were firmly plotted. They seemed to stay fairly stationary from day to day. The minor daily variations might have had as much to do with local winds as anything else, which made it necessary to downlink information to their ground-control centers. And that was good news, too.

  The medium-price hotel was more than they could ordinarily afford, but for all that it lay right under the approach to runway three-two-left of the nearby air base. Perhaps the noise was just so normal to the country that people filtered it out, Chavez thought, remembering the incess
ant street racket from their hostelry in Tokyo. The back was better, the clerk assured them, but the best he could offer was a corner room. The really offensive noise was at the front of the hotel: the runway terminated only half a kilometer from the front door. It was the takeoffs that really shook things up. Landings were far easier to sleep through.

  "I'm not sure I like this," Ding observed when he got to the room.

  "Who said we were supposed to?" John moved a chair to the window and took the first watch.

  "It's like murder, John."

  "Yeah, I suppose it is." The hell of it was, Ding was right, but somebody else had said it wasn't and that's what counted. Sort of.

  "No other options?" President Durling asked.

  "No, sir, none that I see." It was a first for Ryan. He'd managed to stop a war, after a fashion. He'd terminated a "black" operation that would probably have caused great political harm to his country. Now he was about to initiate one--well, not exactly, he told himself. Somebody else had started this war, but just though it might be, he didn't exactly relish what he was about to do. "They're not going to back off."

  "We never saw it coming," Durling said quietly, knowing that it was too late for such thoughts.

  "And maybe that's my fault," Ryan replied, feeling that it was his duty to take the blame. After all, national security was his bailiwick. People would die because of what he'd done wrong, and die from whatever things he might do right. For all the power exercised from this room, there really were no choices, were there?

  "Will it all work?"

  "Sir, that is something we'll just have to see."