"Five hundred feet," the pilot said over intercom. "Let's get it done."
"Winds look good," the copilot announced, checking the computer that controlled drops. "One minute."
The green light by the passenger door turned on. The loadmaster had a safety belt attached to his waist, standing by the door, blocking the way of the Rangers. He gave them a sideways look.
"You guys be careful down there, y'hear?"
"Sorry about the mess," Captain Checa said. The loadmaster grinned.
"I've cleaned up worse." Besides, he had a private to do that. He gave the area a final check. The Rangers were safely in their places, and nobody was in the way of the cargo's roller-path. The first drop would be done from the front office. "All clear aft," he said over his intercom circuit. The loadmaster stepped away from the door, allowing Checa to take his place, one hand on either side, and his left foot just over the edge.
"Ten seconds," the copilot said forward.
"Roger, ten seconds." The pilot reached for the release switch, flipping off the safety cover and resting his thumb on the toggle.
"Five."
"Five."
"Three--two--one--now!"
"Cargo away." The pilot had already flipped it at the proper moment.
Aft, the Rangers saw the pallets slide out through the cavernous door. The aircraft took a major dip at the tail, then snapped back level. A second after that, the green light at the door started blinking.
"Go go go!" the loadmaster screamed over the noise.
Captain Diego Checa, U.S. Army Rangers, became the first American to invade the Japanese mainland when he took his step out the door and fell into the darkness. A second later the static line yanked his chute open, and the black nylon umbrella came to full blossom a bare three hundred feet from the ground. The stiff and often hurtful opening shock came as a considerable relief. Jumping at five hundred feet made the use of a backup chute a useless extravagance. He first looked up and to his right to see that the others were all out, their chutes opening as his had just done. The next order of business was to look down and around. There was the clearing, and he was sure he'd hit it, though he pulled on one riser to spill air from his parachute in the hope of hitting the middle of it and increasing the safety margin that was as much theoretical as real for a night drop. Last of all he released his pack, which fell fifteen feet to the end of a safety line. Its sixty pounds of gear would hit the ground first, lessening his landing shock so long as he didn't land right on the damned thing and break something in the process. Aside from that he barely had time to think before the barely visible valley raced up to greet him. Feet together, knees bent, back straight, roll when you hit, the sudden lung-emptying shock of striking the ground, and then he was on his face, trying to decide if all his bones were intact or not. Seconds later he heard the muted thuds and oofs of the rest of the detail as they also made it to earth. Checa allowed himself a full three seconds to decide that he was more or less in one piece before standing, unclipping his back, and racing to collapse his chute. That task done, he came back, donned his low-light goggles, and assembled his people.
"Everybody okay?"
"Good drop, sir." Vega showed up first with two others in tow. The rest were heading in, all carrying their black chutes.
"Let's get to work, Rangers."
The Globemaster continued almost due south, going "feet-wet" just west of Nomazu, and again hugging the water, kept a mountainous peninsula between itself and the distant E-767s for as long as possible, then turned southwest to distance itself further still from them until, two hundred miles off the coast of Japan, it was safe to climb back to a safe cruising altitude into commercial airline routing G223. The only remaining question was whether the KC-10 tanker that was supposed to meet them would show up and allow them to complete their flight to Kwajalein. Only then could they break radio silence.
The Rangers were able to do it first. The communications sergeant broke out a satellite transmitter, oriented it toward the proper azimuth, and transmitted a five-letter group, waiting for an acknowledgment.
"They're down okay," an Army major told Jackson at his desk in the National Military Command Center.
The real trick is going to be getting them out, the Admiral thought. But one thing at a time. He lifted his phone to call the White House.
"Jack, the Rangers are in."
"Good one, Rob. I need you over here," Ryan told him.
"What for? It's busy here and--"
"Now, Robby." The line clicked off.
The next order of business was to get the cargo moved. It had landed within two hundred meters of the nominal location, and the plan had allowed for quite a bit more than that. One by one, pairs of Rangers struggled with empty fuel bladders, carrying them uphill to the treeline that bordered what seemed to be a highlands meadow. With that done, a hose was strung, and twenty thousand pounds of JP-5 pumped from one large rubber bladder into six other, smaller ones arranged in pairs at preselected spots. That operation took an hour, while four of their number patrolled the immediate area for signs of human presence, but finding nothing but the tracks of a four-wheel cycle, which they'd been told to expect. When the pumping operation was finished, the original fuel bladder was folded and dumped into a hole, then carefully covered up with sod. Next, the solid cargo had to be manhandled into place and covered with camouflage netting. That required another two hours, straining the Rangers to the limit of their conditioning with the combination of heavy work and building stress. Soon the sun would be up, and the area could not look as though there were people here. First Sergeant Vega supervised the cover-up operation. When all was done, the Rangers still outside the treeline walked in single file toward it, with the last man in line working on the grass to reduce the signs of their passage. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do. By dawn, at the end of what had been for them a twenty-hour day as unpleasant as anyone could have contrived to make, they were in place, unwelcome guests on the soil of a foreign land, mainly shivering in the cold, unable to light a fire for warmth, eating cold MRE rations.
"Jack, I got work to do over there, damn it," Robby said on his way through the door.
"Not anymore. The President and I talked it over last night."
"What do you mean?"
"Get packed. You're taking over the Stennis battle group." Ryan wanted to grin at his friend, but couldn't quite bring himself to that. Not when he was sending his friend into danger. The news stopped Jackson in his tracks.
"You sure?"
"It's decided. The President has signed off on it. CINCPAC knows. Admiral Seaton--"
Robby nodded. "Yeah, I've worked for him before."
"You have two hours. There's a Gulfstream waiting for you at Andrews. We need somebody," the National Security Advisor explained, "who knows the political limits on the mission. Take it right to the edge, Rob, but no further. We have to smart our way through this."
"I understand."
Ryan stood and walked to his friend. "I'm not sure I like doing this ..."
"It's my job, Jack."
Tennessee arrived at her station off the Japanese coast and finally slowed to her normal patrol speed of five knots. Commander Claggett took a required moment to get a position fix on a rocky outcropping known to sailors as Lot's Wife, then dived his boat below the layer to a depth of six hundred feet. The sonar showed nothing at the moment, odd for the normally busy shipping lanes, but after four and a half days of dangerously high-speed running, it came as a considerable relief to everyone aboard. The Army personnel had adapted well enough and joined sailors for their jogs in the missile room. For the moment, the mission orders were little different from those the boomer had been designed to do: remain undetected, with the additional assignment of gathering whatever information on enemy movements that came her way. It wasn't exactly exciting, but only Claggett knew at the moment how important it was.
The satellite link told Sandy Richter and his colleagues that the miss
ion was a probable "go." It meant more simulator time for all of them while ground crews prepped their Comanches for business. Unfortunately, that meant affixing decidedly unstealthy wing fittings to the side of each aircraft, along with long-range ferry tanks, but he'd known that from the beginning, and nobody had bothered asking how much he liked the idea. There were three scenarios on the sim now, and one by one the flight crews went through them, their bodies gyrating, quite unaware of what they were doing in the real world while their minds and bodies played in the virtual one.
"How the hell do we do that?" Chavez demanded.
Russians would not have questioned the orders in quite that way, Scherenko thought. "I only relay orders from your own agency," he told them. "I also know that Koga's disappearance was not caused by any official agency."
"Yamata, you suppose?" Clark asked. That piece of information narrowed the possibilities somewhat. It also made the impossible merely dangerous.
"A good guess. You know where he lives, yes?"
"We've seen it from a distance," Chavez confirmed.
"Ah, yes--your photos." The Major would have loved to know what those had been about, but it would have been foolish to ask the question, and it was not certain that these two Americans knew the answer in any case. "If you have other assets in-country, I suggest you make use of them. We are making use of ours as well. Koga is probably the political solution to this crisis."
"If there is one," Ding noted.
"Good to fly with you again, Captain Sato," Yamata said pleasantly. The invitation to the flight deck pleased him. The pilot, he saw, was a patriot, a man of both pride and skill who really understood what was happening. What a pity he'd chosen such a lowly path for his life.
Sato took off his headset and relaxed in his command seat. "This is a pleasant change from the Canadian flights."
"How does that go?"
"I've spoken with a few executives on the way home. They say the Americans are more confused than anything else."
"Yes." Yamata smiled. "They confuse easily."
"Can we hope for a diplomatic settlement to this business, Yamata-san?"
"I think so. They lack the ability to attack us effectively."
"My father commanded a destroyer in the war. My brother--"
"Yes, I know him well, Captain." That remark, he saw, lit up the pilot's eyes with pride.
"And my son is a fighter pilot. He flies the Eagle."
"Well, they have done well so far. They recently killed two American bombers, you know. The Americans tested our air defenses," the industrialist said. "It was they who failed."
41
CTF-77
"You're back!" the rental agent said with some pleasure.
Nomuri smiled and nodded. "Yes. I had a particularly good day at the office yesterday. I do not need to tell you how stressful such a 'good' day can be, do I?"
The man grunted agreement. "In the summer my best days are those when I get no sleep. Please excuse how I appear," he added. He'd been working on some of his machines all morning, which for him had begun just after five. The same was true of Nomuri, but for a different reason.
"I understand. I own my own business, too, and who works harder than a man who works for himself, eh?"
"Do you suppose the zaibatsu understand that?"
"Not the ones I've met. Even so, you are fortunate to live in so peaceful an area."
"Not always peaceful. The Air Force must have been playing games last night. A jet flew close by and very low. It woke me up, and I never really got back to sleep afterward." He wiped his hands and poured two cups of tea, offering one to his guest.
"Dozo," Nomuri said graciously. "They are playing very dangerous games now," he went on, wondering what response he'd get.
"It's madness, but who cares what I think? Not the government, surely. All they listen to are the 'great' ones." The equipment owner sipped at his tea and looked around his shop.
"Yes, I am concerned, too. I hope Goto can find a way out of this before things spin completely out of control." Nomuri looked outside. The weather was turning gray and threatening. He heard a decidedly angry grunt.
"Goto? Just one more like all the rest. Others lead him by the nose--or some other part if the rumors about him are correct."
Nomuri chuckled. "Yes, I have heard the stories, too. Still, a man of some vigor, eh?" He paused. "So can I rent another of your cycles today?"
"Take number six." The man pointed. "I just finished servicing it. Pay attention to the weather," he warned. "Snow tonight."
Nomuri held up his backpack. "I want to take some pictures of cloudy mountains for my collection. The peace here is wonderful, and fine for thinking."
"Only in the winter," the dealer said, returning to his work.
Nomuri knew the way now, and followed the Taki uphill over a trail crusty from cold and frost. He would have felt a little better about it if the damned four-wheeled cycle had a better muffler. At least the heavy air would help attenuate the sound, or so he hoped, as he headed up the same path he'd taken a few days earlier. In due course he was looking down at the high meadow, seeing nothing out of the ordinary and wondering if--wondering a lot of things. What if the soldiers had run into an ambush? In that case, Nomuri told himself, I'm toast. But there was no turning back. He settled back into the seat and steered his way down the hill-side, stopping as he was supposed to in the middle of the clearing and taking the hood down off his red parka. On closer examination, he saw that some sod had been disturbed, and he saw what might have been a trail of sorts into the woodline. That was when a single figure appeared, waving him up. The CIA officer restarted the cycle and headed that way.
The two soldiers who confronted him didn't point weapons. They didn't have to. Their faces were painted and their camouflage uniforms told him everything he needed to know.
"I'm Nomuri," he said. "The password is Foxtrot."
"Captain Checa," the officer replied, extending his hand. "We've worked with the Agency before. Are you the guy who picked this spot?"
"No, but I checked it out a couple days ago."
"Nice place to build a cabin," Checa thought. "We even saw a few deer, little ones. I hope it isn't hunting season." The remark caught Nomuri short. He hadn't considered that possibility, and didn't know anything about hunting in Japan. "So what do you have for me?"
"These." Nomuri took off his backpack and pulled out the cellular phones.
"Are you kiddin' me?"
"The Japanese military has good stuff for monitoring military communications. Hell, they invented a lot of the technology our people use. But these"--Nomuri grinned--"everybody has 'em, and they're digitally encrypted, and they cover the whole country. Even here. There's a repeater tower down on that mountain. Anyway, it's safer than using your regular comms. The bill's paid to the end of the month," he added.
"Be nice to call home and tell my wife that everything's going fine," Checa thought aloud.
"I'd be careful about that. Here are the numbers you can call." Nomuri handed over a sheet. "That's one's mine. That one's a guy named Clark. That one's another officer named Chavez--"
"Ding's over here?" First Sergeant Vega asked.
"You know 'em?"
"We did a job in Africa last fall," Checa replied. "We get a lot of 'special' work. You sure you can tell us their names, man?"
"They have covers. You're probably better off speaking in Spanish. Not as many people here speak that language. I don't need to tell you to keep your transmissions short," Nomuri added. He didn't. Checa nodded and asked the most important question.
"And getting out?"
Nomuri turned to point, but the terrain feature in question was covered in clouds. "There's a pass there. Head for it, then downhill to a town called Hirose. I pick you up there, put you on a train to Nagoya, and you fly off to either Taiwan or Korea."
"Just like that." The comment wasn't posed as a question, but the dubious nature of the response was clear anyway.
"There are a couple of hundred thousand foreign businesspeople here. You're eleven guys from Spain trying to sell wine, remember?"
"I could use some sangria right now, too." Checa was relieved to see that his CIA contact had been briefed in on the same mission. It didn't always work out that way. "Now what?"
"You wait for the rest of the mission force to arrive. If something goes wrong, you call me and head out. If I drop out of the net, you call the others. If everything goes to hell, you find another way out. You should have passports, clothes, and--"
"We do."
"Good." Nomuri took his camera out of his backpack and started shooting photos of the cloud-shrouded mountains.
"This is CNN, live from Pearl Harbor," the reporter ended, and a commercial cut in. The intelligence analyst rewound the tape to examine it again. It was both amazing and entirely ordinary that he'd be able to get such vital information so easily. The American media really ran the country, he'd learned over the years, and perhaps more was the pity. The way they'd played up the unfortunate incident in Tennessee had inflamed the entire country into precipitous action, then driven his country into the same, and the only good news was what he saw on the TV screen: two fleet carriers still in their dry docks, with two more still in the Indian Ocean, according to the latest reports from that part of the world, and Pacific Fleet's other two in Long Beach, also dry-docked and unable to enter service--and that, really, was that, so far as the Marianas were concerned. He had to formalize his intelligence estimate with a few pages of analytical prose, but what it came down to was that America could sting his country, but her ability to project real power was now a thing of the past. The realization of that meant that there was little likelihood of a serious contest for the immediate future.
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