by Tom Clancy
“Okay, JUMPER is up and pretty much put together,” Helen d’Agustino said. “JASMINE”—the code name for Anne Durling—“will be in another cabin. SecState and SecTreas are up and having their coffee. Arnie van Damm is probably in better shape than anybody aboard. Showtime. How about the fighters?”
“They’ll join up in about twenty minutes. We went with the F-15s out of Otis. Better range, they’ll follow us all the way down. I’m really being paranoid on that, ain’t I?”
Daga’s eyes gave off a coldly professional smile. “You know what I’ve always liked about you, Dr. Ryan?”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t have to explain security to you like I do with everybody else. You think just like I do.” It was a lot for a Secret Service agent to say. “The President is waiting, sir.” She led him down the stairs.
Ryan bumped into his wife on the way forward. Pretty as ever, she was not suffering from the previous night despite her husband’s warning, and on seeing Jack she almost made a joke that it was he who’d had the prob—
“What’s the matter?”
“Business, Cathy.”
“Bad?”
Her husband just nodded and went forward, past a Secret Service agent and an armed Air Force security policeman. The two convertible couches had been made up. President Durling was sitting down in suit pants and white shirt. His tie and jacket were not in evidence at this time. A silver pot of coffee was on the low table. Ryan could see out the windows on both sides of the nose cabin. They were flying a thousand feet or so above fleecy cumulus clouds.
“I hear you’ve been up all night, Jack,” Durling said.
“Since before Iceland, whenever that was, Mr. President,” Ryan told him. He hadn’t washed, hadn’t shaved, and his hair probably looked like Cathy’s after a long procedure under a surgical cap. Worse still was the look in his eyes as he prepared to deliver grimmer news than he’d ever spoken.
“You look like hell. What’s the problem?”
“Mr. President, based on information received over the last few hours, I believe that the United States of America is at war with Japan.”
“What you need is a good chief to run this for you,” Jones observed.
“Ron, one more of those, and I’ll toss you in the brig, okay? You’ve thrown enough weight around for one day,” Mancuso replied in a weary voice. “Those people were under my command, remember?”
“Have I been that much of a jerk?”
“Yeah, Jonesy, you have.” Chambers handled that answer. “Maybe Seaton needed to be brought up short once, but you overdid it big-time. And now we need solutions, not smartass bullshit.”
Jones nodded but kept his own counsel. “Very well, sir. What assets do we have?”
“Best estimate, they have eighteen boats deployable. Two are in overhaul status and are probably unavailable for months at least,” Chambers replied, doing the enemy first. “With Charlotte and Asheville out of the game, we have a total of seventeen. Four of those are in yard-overhaul and unavailable. Four more are in bobtail-refits alongside the pier here or in ‘Dago. Another four are in the IO. Maybe we can shake those loose, maybe we can’t. That leaves five. Three of those are with the carriers for the ‘exercise,’ one’s right down below at the pier. The last one’s at sea up in the Gulf of Alaska doing workups. That has a new CO—what, just three weeks since he relieved?”
“Correct.” Mancuso nodded. “He’s just learning the job.”
“Jesus, the cupboard’s that bare?” Jones was now regretting his comment on having a good chief around. The mighty United States Pacific Fleet, as recently as five years ago the most powerful naval force in the history of civilization, was now a frigate navy.
“Five of us, eighteen of them, and they’re all spun-up to speed. They’ve been running ops for the last couple of months.” Chambers looked at the wall chart and frowned. “That’s one big fuckin’ ocean, Jonesy.” It was the way he added the last statement that worried the contractor.
“The four in refits?”
“That order’s out. ‘Expedite readiness for sea.’ And that brings the number to nine, in a couple of weeks, if we’re lucky.”
“Mr. Chambers, sir?”
Chambers turned back. “Yeah, Petty Officer Jones?”
“Remember when we used to head up north, all alone, tracking four or five of the bad guys at once?”
The operations officer nodded soberly, almost nostalgically. His reply was quiet. “Long time ago, Jonesy. We’re dealing with SSKs now, on their home turf and—”
“Did you trade your balls in to get that fourth stripe on your shoulder?” Chambers turned around in an instant rage.
“You listen to me, boy, I—” But Ron Jones just snarled back.
“ ‘I,’ hell, you, used to be a kickass officer! I trusted you to know what to do with the data I gave you, just like I trusted him—” Jones pointed to Admiral Mancuso. “When I sailed with you guys, we were the class of the whole fuckin’ world. And if you did your job right as a CO, and if you‘ve been doing your job right as a type-commander, Bart, then those kids out there still are. Goddamn it! When I tossed my bag down the hatch on Dallas the first time, I trusted you guys to know your damned job. Was I wrong, gentlemen? Remember the motto on Dallas? ‘First in Harm’s Way’! What the hell’s the matter here?” The question hung in the air for several seconds. Chambers was too angry to take it in. SubPac was not.
“We look that bad?” Mancuso asked.
“Sure as hell, sir. Okay, we took it in the ass from these bastards. Time to start thinking about catchup. We’re the varsity, aren’t we? Who’s better suited to it than we are?”
“Jones, you always did have a big mouth,” Chambers said. Then he looked back at the chart. “But I guess maybe it is time to go to work.”
A chief petty officer stuck his head in the door. “Sir, Pasadena just checked in from down the hill. Ready in all respects to get under way, the CO requests orders.”
“How’s he loaded?” Mancuso replied, knowing that if he’d really done his job right over the past few days the question would have been unnecessary.
“Twenty-two ADCAPs, six Harpoons, and twelve T-LAM-Cs. They’re all warshots,” the chief replied. “He’s ready to rock, sir.”
ComSubPac nodded. “Tell him to stand by for mission orders.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Good skipper?” Jones asked.
“He got the Battle-E last year,” Chamber said. “Tim Parry. He was my XO on Key West. He’ll do.”
“So now all he needs is a job.”
Mancuso lifted the secure phone for CINCPAC. “Yeah.”
“Signal from State Department,” the Air Force communications officer said, entering the room. “The Japanese Ambassador requests an urgent meeting with the President.”
“Brett?”
“We see what he has to say,” SecState said. Ryan nodded agreement.
“Any chance at all that this is some kind of mistake?” Durling asked.
“We expect some hard intelligence anytime now from a satellite pass over the Marianas. It’s dark there, but that won’t matter much.” Ryan had finished his briefing, and on completion the data he’d managed to deliver seemed very thin. The baseline truth here was that what had evidently taken place was so wildly beyond the limits of reason that he himself would not be fully satisfied until he saw the overheads himself.
“If it’s real, then what?”
“That will take a little time,” Ryan admitted. “We want to hear what their ambassador has to say.”
“What are they really up to?” Treasury Secretary Fiedler asked.
“Unknown, sir. Just pissing us off, it isn’t worth the trouble. We have nukes. They don’t. It’s all crazy ...” Ryan said quietly. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.” Then he remembered that in 1939, Germany’s biggest trading partner had been... France. History’s most often repeated lesson was that logic was not a constant in the
behavior of nations. The study of history was not always bilateral. And the lessons learned from history depended on the quality of the student. Worth remembering, Jack thought, because the other guy might forget.
“It’s got to be some kind of mistake,” Hanson announced. “A couple of accidents. Maybe our two subs collided under the water and maybe we have some excitable people on Saipan. I mean it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“I agree, the data does not form any clear picture, but the individual pieces—damn it, I know Robby Jackson. I know Bart Mancuso.”
“Who’s that?”
“ComSubPac. He owns all our subs out there. I sailed with him once. Jackson is deputy J-3, and we’ve been friends since we were both teaching at Annapolis.” Lo, these many years ago.
“Okay,” Durling said. “You’ve told us everything you know?”
“Yes, Mr. President. Every word, without any analysis.”
“Meaning you don’t really have any?” The question stung some, but this was not a time for embroidering. Ryan nodded.
“Correct, Mr. President.”
“So for now, we wait. How long to Andrews?”
Fiedler looked out a window. “That’s the Chesapeake Bay below us now. We can’t be too far out.”
“Press at the airport?” he asked Arnie van Damm.
“Just the ones in the back of the plane, sir.”
“Ryan?”
“We firm up our information as fast as we can. The services are all on alert.”
“What are those fighters doing out there?” Fiedler asked. They were now flying abeam Air Force One, in a tight two-ship element about a mile away, their pilots wondering what this was all about. Ryan wondered if the press would take note of it. Well, how long could this affair remain a secret?
“My idea, Buzz,” Ryan said. Might as well take responsibility for it.
“A little dramatic, don’t you think?” SecState inquired.
“We didn’t expect to have our fleet attacked either, sir.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Colonel Evans. We’re now approaching Andrews Air Force Base. We all hope you’ve enjoyed the flight. Please bring your seats back to the upright position and ...” In the back, the junior White House aides ostentatiously refused to fasten their seat belts. The cabin crew did what they were supposed to do, of course.
Ryan felt the main gear thump down on runway Zero-One Right. For the majority of the people aboard, the press, it was the end. For him it was just the beginning. The first sign was the larger than normal complement of security police waiting at the terminal building, and some especially nervous Secret Service agents. In a way it was a relief to the National Security Advisor. Not everyone thought it was some sort of mistake, but it would be so much better, Ryan thought, if he were wrong, just this once. Otherwise they faced the most complex crisis in his country’s history.
24
Running in Place
If there was a worse feeling than this one, Clark didn’t know what it might be. Their mission in Japan was supposed to have been easy: evacuate an American citizen who had gotten herself into a tight spot and ascertain the possibility of reactivating an old and somewhat dusty intelligence network.
Well, that was the idea, the officer told himself, heading to his room. Chavez was parking the car. They’d decided to rent a new one, and again the clerk at the counter had changed his expression on learning that their credit card was printed in both Roman and Cyrillic characters. It was an experience so new as to have no precedent at all. Even at the height (or depths) of the Cold War, Russians had treated American citizens with greater deference than their own countrymen, and whether that had resulted from curiosity or not, the privilege of being American had been an important touchstone for a lonely stranger in a foreign and hostile land. Never had Clark felt so frightened, and it was little consolation that Ding Chavez didn’t have the experience to realize just how unusual and dangerous their position was.
It was therefore something of a relief to feel the piece of tape on the underside doorknob. Maybe Nomuri could give him some useful information. Clark went in the room only long enough to use the bathroom before heading right back out. He saw Chavez in the lobby and made the appropriate gesture: Stay put. Clark noticed with a smile that his junior partner had stopped at a bookstore and purchased a copy of a Russian-language newspaper, which he carried ostentatiously as a kind of defensive measure. Two minutes later, Clark was looking in the window of the camera shop again. There wasn’t much street traffic, but enough that he wasn’t the only one around. As he stood looking at the latest automated wonder from Nikon, he felt someone bump into him.
“Watch where you’re going,” a gruff voice said in English and moved on. Clark took a few seconds before heading in the other direction, turning the corner and heading down an alley. A minute later he found a shadowy place and waited. Nomuri was there quickly.
“This is dangerous, kid.”
“Why do you think I hit you with that signal?” Nomuri’s voice was low and shaky.
It was fieldcraft from a TV series, about as realistic and professional as two kids sneaking a smoke in the boys’ room of their junior high. The odd part was that, important as it was, Nomuri’s message occupied about one minute. The rest of the time was concerned with procedural matters.
“Okay, number one, no contact at all with your normal rat-line. Even if they’re allowed out on the street, you don’t know them. You don’t go near them. Your contact points are gone, kid, you understand?” Clark’s mind was going at light-speed toward nowhere at the moment, but the most immediate priority was survival. You had to be alive in order to accomplish something, and Nomuri, like Chavez and himself, were “illegals,” unlikely to receive any sort of clemency after arrest and totally separated from any support from their parent agency.
Chet Nomuri nodded. “That leaves you, sir.”
“That’s right, and if you lose us, you return to your cover and you don’t do anything. Got that? Nothing at all. You’re a loyal Japanese citizen, and you stay in your hole.”
“But—”
“But nothing, kid. You are under my orders now, and if you violate them, you answer to me!” Clark softened his voice. “Your first priority is always survival. We don’t issue suicide pills and we don’t expect movie-type bullshit. A dead officer is a dumb officer.” Damn, Clark thought, had the mission been different from the very beginning, they would have had a routine established—dead——drops, a whole collection of signals, a selection of cutouts—but there wasn’t time to do that now, and every second they talked here in the shadows there was the chance that some Tokyoite would let his cat out, see a Japanese national talking to a gaijin, and make note of it. The paranoia curve had risen fast, and would only get steeper.
“Okay, you say so, man.”
“And don’t forget it. Stick to your regular routine. Don’t change anything except maybe to back off some. Fit in. Act like everybody else does. A nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Hammers hurt, boy. Now, here’s what I want you to do.” Clark went on for a minute. “Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get lost.” Clark headed down the alley, and entered his hotel through the delivery entrance, thankfully un-watched at this time of night. Thank God, he thought, that Tokyo had so little crime. The American equivalent would be locked, or have an alarm, or be patrolled by an armed guard. Even at war, Tokyo was a safer place than Washington, D.C.
“Why don’t you just buy a bottle instead of going out to drink?” “Chekov” asked, not for the first time, when he came back into the room.
“Maybe I should.” Which reply made the younger officer’s eyes jerk up from his paper and his Russian practice. Clark pointed to the TV, turned it on, and found CNN Headline News, in English.
Now for my next trick. How the hell do I get the word in? he wondered. He didn’t dare use the fax machine to America. Even the Washington Interfax office was far too grave a risk, the o
ne in Moscow didn’t have the encryption gear needed, and he couldn’t go through the Embassy’s CIA connection either. There was one set of rules for operating in a friendly country, and another for a hostile one, and nobody had expected the rules that made the rules to change without warning. That he and other CIA officers should have provided forewarning of the event was just one more thing to anger the experienced spy; the congressional hearings on that one were sure to be entertaining if he lived long enough to enjoy them. The only good news was that he had the name of a probable suspect in the murder of Kimberly Norton. That, at least, gave him something to fantasize about, and his mind had little other useful activity to undertake at the moment. At the half-hour it was clear that even CNN didn’t know what was going on, and if CNN didn’t know, then nobody did. Wasn’t that just great, Clark thought. It was like the legend of Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy who always knew what was happening, and who was always ignored. But Clark didn’t even have a way of getting the word out... did he?
I wonder if ... ? No. He shook his head. That was too crazy.
“All ahead full,” the Commanding Officer of Eisenhower said.
“All ahead full, aye,” the quartermaster on the enunciator pushed the handles forward. A moment later the inner arrow rotated to the same position. “Sir, engine room answers all ahead full.”