by Tom Clancy
“Computer industry, several things really. I have a masters in EE. My real specialty area is communications, how computers talk to each other. I’ve done a little government work. My company does plenty, but mostly on another side of the house.” Burroughs looked around the kitchen. Mrs. Oreza had prepared a light dinner, a good one, it appeared, though it was growing cold.
“You were worried about having people track in on your phone.”
“Maybe just being paranoid, but my company makes the chips for scanners that the Army uses for just that purpose.”
Oreza sat down and started shoveling some of the stir-fry onto his plate. “I don’t think anything’s paranoid anymore, man.”
“I hear ya, Skipper.” Burroughs decided to do the same, and looked at the food with approval. “Y’all trying to lose weight?”
Oreza grunted. “We both need to, Izzy and me. She’s been taking classes in low-fat stuff.”
Burroughs looked around. Though the home had a dining room, like most retired couples (that’s how he thought of them, even though they clearly were not), they ate at a small table in their kitchen. The sink and counter were neatly laid out, and the engineer saw the steel mixing and serving bowls. The stainless steel gleamed. Isabel Oreza, too, ran a tight ship, and it was plain enough who was the skipper at home.
“Do I go to work tomorrow?” she asked, her mind drifting, trying to come to terms with the change in local affairs.
“I don’t know, honey,” her husband replied, his own thoughts stopped cold by the question. What would he do? Go fishing again as though nothing at all had happened?
“Wait a minute,” Pete said, still looking at the mixing bowls. He stood, took the two steps needed to reach the kitchen counter, and lifted the largest bowl. It was sixteen inches in diameter and a good five or six inches deep. The bottom was flat, perhaps a three-inch circle, but the rest of it was spherical, almost parabolic in shape. He pulled his sat-phone out of his shirt pocket. He’d never measured the antenna, but now, extending it, he saw it was less than four inches in length. Burroughs looked over at Oreza. “You have a drill?”
“Yeah, why?”
“DF, hell. I got it!”
“You lost me, Pete.”
“We drill a hole in the bottom, put the antenna through it. The bowl’s made out of steel. It reflects radio waves just like a microwave antenna. Everything goes up. Hell, it might even make the transmitter more efficient.”
“You mean like, E.T. phone home?”
“Close enough, Cap’n. What if nobody’s phoned home on this one?” Burroughs was still trying to think it through, coming to terms slowly with a very frightening situation. “Invasion” meant “war.” War, in this case, was between America and Japan, and however bizarre that possibility was, it was also the only explanation for the things he’d seen that day. If it was a war, then he was an enemy alien. So were his hosts. But he’d seen Oreza do some very fancy footwork at the marina.
“Let me get my drill. How big a hole you need?” Burroughs handed over the sat-phone. He’d been tempted to toss it through the air, but stopped himself on the realization that it was perhaps his most valuable possession. Oreza checked the diameter of the little button at the end of the slim metal whip and went for his tool kit.
“Hello?”
“Rachel? It’s Dad.”
“You sure you’re okay? Can I call you guys now?”
“Honey, we’re fine, but there’s a problem here.” How the hell to explain this? he wondered. Rachel Oreza Chandler was a prosecuting attorney in Boston, actually looking forward to leaving government service and becoming a criminal lawyer in private practice, where the job satisfaction was rarer, but the pay and hours were far better. Approaching thirty, she was now at the stage where she worried about her parents in much the same way they’d once worried about her. There was no sense in worrying Rachel now, he decided. “Could you get a phone number for me?”
“Sure, what number?”
“Coast Guard Headquarters. It’s in D.C., at Buzzard’s Point. I want the watch center. I’ll wait,” he told her.
The attorney put one line on hold and dialed D.C. information. In a minute she relayed the number, hearing her father repeat it word for word back to her. “That’s right. You sure things are okay? You sound a little tense.”
“Mom and I are just fine, honest, baby.” She hated it when he called her that, but it was probably too late to change him. Poppa would just never be PC.
“Okay, you say so. I hear that storm was really bad. You have electricity back yet?” she asked, forgetting that there hadn’t been a storm at all.
“Not yet, honey, but soon, probably,” he lied. “Later, baby.”
“Coast Guard Watch Center, Chief Petty Officer Obrecki, this is a nonsecure line,” the man said, just as rapidly as possible to prevent the person on the other end from understanding a single word.
“Are you telling me that that fuzzy-cheeked infant who sailed on Panache with me made chief?” It was good enough to startle the man at the other end, and the reply was comprehensible.
“This is Chief Obrecki. Who’s this?”
“Master Chief Oreza,” was the answer.
“Well, how the hell are you, Portagee? 1 heard you retired.” The chief of the watch leaned back in his chair. Now that he was a chief himself, he could refer to the man at the other end by his nickname.
“I’m on Saipan. Okay, kid, listen up: put your watch officer on right now.”
“What’s the matter, Master Chief?”
“No time, okay? Let’s do it.”
“Fair enough.” Obrecki put the call on hold. “Commander, could you pick up on one, ma’am?”
“NMCC, this is Rear Admiral Jackson,” Robby said, tired and in a very foul mood. Only reluctantly did he lift the phone, on the recommendation of a youngish Air Force major.
“Admiral, this is Lieutenant Commander Powers, Coast Guard, over at Buzzard’s Point. I have a call on the line from Saipan. The caller is a retired Command Master Chief. One of ours.”
Damn it, I have a broke carrier division out there, his mind raged. “That’s nice, Commander. You want to clue me in fast? It’s busy here.”
“Sir, he reports a whole lot of Japanese troops on the island of Saipan.”
Jackson’s eyes came up off the dispatches on his desk. “What?”
“I can patch him over now, sir.”
“Okay,” Robby said guardedly.
“Who’s this?” another voice asked, old and gruff. He sounded like a chief, Robby thought.
“I’m Rear Admiral Jackson, in the National Military Command Center.” He didn’t have to order a tape on the line. They were all taped.
“Sir, this is Master Chief Quartermaster Manuel Oreza, U.S. Coast Guard, retired, serial number three-two-eight-six-one-four-zero-three-zero. I retired five years ago and moved to Saipan. I operate a fishing boat here. Sir, there are a lot—and I mean a whole goddamned pisspot full—of Japanese troops, uniformed and carrying arms, on this-here rock, right now, sir.”
Jackson adjusted his hand on the phone, gesturing for another officer to pick up. “Master Chief, I hope you understand that I find that a little bit hard to believe, okay?”
“Shit, sir, you oughta see it from my side. I am looking out my window right now. I can see down on the airport and Kobler Field. I count a total of six jumbo-jet aircraft, four at the airport and two at Kobler. I observed a pair of F-15 Eagle fighters with meatball markings circling over the island a few hours ago. Question, sir, is there any sort of joint exercise under way at this time?” the voice asked. It was stone sober, Jackson thought. It sure as hell sounded like a command master chief.
The Air Force major listening fifteen feet away was scribbling notes, though an invitation to Jurassic Park would have seemed somewhat more realistic.
“We just concluded a joint exercise, but Saipan didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Sir, then this ain’t n
o fuckin’ exercise. There are three car-carrier-type merchant ships tied alongside the dock up the coast from me. One of ’em’s named Orchid Ace. I have personally observed military-type vehicles, I think MLRS—Mike Lima Romeo Sierra—six of those sitting in the parking lot at the commercial dock area. Admiral, you check with the Coast Guard and pull my package. I did thirty years in CG blue. I ain’t dickin’ around, sir. Check for yourself, the phone lines to the rock are out. The story is supposedly that we had a big windstorm, took lines down and stuff. Ain’t been no windstorm, Admiral. 1 was out fishing all day, okay? Check with your weather pukes to confirm that one, too. There are Japanese troops on this island, wearing fatigue uniforms and under arms.”
“You got a count, Master Chief?”
The best confirmation of this insane tale, Robby thought, was the embarrassed tone of the answer to that question. “No, sir, sorry, I didn’t think to count the airplanes. I’d guess three to six arrivals per hour, over the last six hours at least, probably more, but that’s just a guess, sir. Wait... Kobler, one of the birds is moving, like to take off. It’s a 747, but I can’t make out the markings.”
“Wait. If the phones are out, how are you talking to me?” Oreza explained, giving Jackson a conventional number to call back on. “Okay, Master Chief. I’m going to do some checking here. I’ll be back to you in less than an hour. Fair enough?”
“Yes, sir, I figure we done our part.” The line went dead.
“Major!” Jackson shouted without looking up. When he did that, he saw the man was there.
“Sir, I know he sounded normal and all, but—”
“But call Andersen Air Force Base right now.”
“Roger.” The young pilot went back to his desk and flipped open his Autovon directory. Thirty seconds later he looked up and shook his head, a curious look on his face.
“Is someone telling me,” Jackson asked the ceiling, “that a U.S. Air Force base dropped off the net today and nobody noticed?”
“Admiral, CINCPAC on your STU, sir, it’s coded as CRITIC traffic.” CRITIC was a classification of priority even higher than FLASH, and not a prefix often used, even by a Theater Commander in Chief. What the hell, Jackson thought. Why not ask?
“Admiral Seaton, this is Robby Jackson. Are we at war, sir?”
His part in the exercise seemed easy enough, Zhang Han San thought. Just one flight to one place, to talk first with one person, then another, and it had gone even more easily than he’d expected.
Well, he shouldn’t have been surprised, he thought, returning to the airport in the back of the embassy car. Korea would be cut off, certainly for a period of months, and perhaps indefinitely. To do anything else would have carried with it great dangers for a country whose military had been downsized and whose next-door neighbor was the nation with the world’s largest standing army, and an historical enemy at that. Han hadn’t even been forced to bring up that unseemly thought. He’d simply delivered an observation. There seemed to be difficulties between America and Japan. Those difficulties did not pertain directly to the Republic of Korea. Nor would it appear that the Republic had any immediate ability to ameliorate those differences, except perhaps as an honest broker of influence when diplomatic negotiations were undertaken, at which time the good offices of the Republic of Korea would be most welcome indeed by all sides in the dispute, certainly by Japan.
He’d taken no particular pleasure at the discomfort his mild words had given to his hosts. There was much to admire in the Koreans, a fact lost on Japan in their blind racism, Zhang thought. With luck, he might firm up the trading relationship between the PRC and the ROK, and they, too, would profit from the ultimate objective—and why not? The ROKs had no reason to love the Russians, and even less to love the Japanese. They simply had to get over their regrettable friendship with America and become part of a new reality. It was sufficient to the moment that they had indeed seen things his way, and that America’s one remaining ally in this part of the world was off the playing field, their president and foreign minister having seen the light of reason. And with luck, the war, such as it was, might already be over for all intents and purposes.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” The voice came from the living room, where Mrs. Oreza had left the TV on. “In ten minutes there will be a special announcement. Please stay tuned.”
“Manni?”
“I heard it, honey.”
“You have a blank tape for your VCR?” Burroughs asked.
23
Catching Up
Robby Jackson’s day had started off badly enough. He’d had bad ones before, including a day as a lieutenant commander at Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, Maryland, in which a jet trainer had decided without any prompting at all to send him and his ejection seat flying through the canopy, breaking his leg in the process and taking him off flight status for months. He’d seen friends die in crashes of one sort or another, and even more often had participated in searches for men whom he’d rarely found alive, more often locating a slick of jet fuel and perhaps a little debris. As a squadron commander and later as a CAG, he’d been the one who’d written the letters to parents and wives, telling them that their man, and most recently, their little girl, had died in the service of their country, each time asking himself what he might have done differently to prevent the necessity of the exercise. The life of a naval aviator was filled with such days.
But this was worse, and the only consolation was that he was deputy J-3, responsible to develop operations and plans for his country’s military. Had he been part of J-2, the intelligence boys, his sense of failure would have been complete indeed.
“That’s it, sir, Yakota, Misawa, and Kadena are all off the net. Nobody’s picking up.”
“How many people?” Jackson asked.
“Total, about two thousand, mainly mechanics, radar controllers, loggies, that sort of thing. Maybe an airplane or two in transit, but not many of those. I have people checking now,” the Major replied. “How about the Navy?”
“We have people at Andersen on Guam, co-located with your base. The port, too, maybe a thousand people total. It’s a lot smaller than it used to be.” Jackson lifted his secure phone and punched in the numbers for CINCPAC. “Admiral Seaton? This is Jackson again. Anything else?”
“We can’t raise anybody west of Midway, Rob. It’s starting to look real.”
“How does this thing work?” Oreza asked.
“I hate to say this, but I’m not sure. I didn’t bother reading the manual,” Burroughs admitted. The sat-phone was sitting on the coffee table, its antenna extended through the drill hole in the bottom of the mixing bowl, which was in turn sitting atop two piles of books. “I’m not sure if it broadcasts its position to the satellites periodically or not.” For which reason they felt it necessary to maintain the comical arrangement.
“You turn mine off by putting the antenna back down,” Isabel Oreza observed, causing two male heads to turn. “Or you can just take the batteries out, right?”
“Damn.” Burroughs managed to say it first, but not by much. He lifted the bowl off, put the little antenna back in its hole, then flipped off the battery cover and withdrew the two AAs. The phone was now completely off. “Ma’am, if you want to get into the master’s program at Sanford, use me as a reference, okay?”
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Heads turned in the living room to see a smiling man in green fatigues. His English was letter-perfect. “I am General Tokikichi Arima of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces. Please allow me to explain what has happened today.
“First of all, let me assure you that there is no cause for alarm. There was an unfortunate shooting at the police substation adjacent to your parliament building, but the two police officers who were hurt in the exchange are both doing well in your local hospital. If you have heard rumors of violence or death, those rumors are not true,” the General assured the twenty-nine thousand citizens of Saipan.
“You probably want to know what has
happened,” he went on. “Early today, forces under my command began arriving on Saipan and Guam. As you know from your history, and indeed as some of the older citizens on this island well remember, until 1944 the Mariana Islands were possessions of Japan. It may surprise some of you to know that since the court decision several years ago allowing Japanese citizens to purchase real estate in the islands, the majority of the land on Saipan and Guam is owned by my countrymen. You also know of our love and affection for these islands and the people who live here. We have invested billions of dollars here and created a renaissance in the local economy after years of shameful neglect by the American government. Therefore, we’re not really strangers at all, are we?
“You probably also know that there have been great difficulties between Japan and America. Those difficulties have forced my country to rethink our defense priorities. We have, therefore, decided to reestablish our ownership of the Mariana Islands as a purely defensive measure to safeguard our own shores against possible American action. In other words, it is necessary for us to maintain defense forces here and therefore to bring the Marianas back into our country.
“Now.” General Arima smiled. “What does this mean to you, the citizens of Saipan?
“Really, it means nothing at all. All businesses will remain open. We, too, believe in free enterprise. You will continue to manage your own affairs through your own elected officials, with the additional benefit that you will have status as Japan’s forty-eighth prefecture, with full parliamentary representation in the Diet. That is something you have not had as an American commonwealth—which is just another word for colony, isn’t it? You will have dual citizenship rights. We will respect your culture and your language. Your freedom to travel will not be impeded. Your freedoms of speech, press, religion, and assembly will be the same as those enjoyed by all Japanese citizens, and totally identical with the civil rights you now enjoy. In short, nothing is going to change in your daily life at all.” Another charming smile.