by Tom Clancy
“Who’s waiting for them?”
“Ron, we can’t—”
“Sir, I can’t be much help to you if I don’t know,” Jones observed reasonably. “You think I’m a security risk or something?”
Mancuso thought for a few seconds before answering. “Tennessee’s lying right overtop the Eshunadaoki Sea-mount, supporting a special operation that goes off in the next twenty-four hours.”
“And the rest of the Ohios?”
“Just off Ulithi Atoll, heading north a little slower now. The SSN force will lead the carrier in. The Ohios are tasked to get inside early.” Which all made sense, Jones thought. The boomers were too slow to operate effectively with a carrier task force, which he’d also been tracking on SOSUS, but they were ideal for getting inside a patrol line of SSKs ... so long as the skippers were smart about it. There was always that consideration.
“The Jap ’cans will be about on top of Tennessee right about—”
“T know.”
“What else do you have for me?” ComSubPac asked briskly.
Jones led him over to the wall chart. There were now seven SSK-silhouettes circled on the display, with only one “?”-marked. That one, they saw, was in the passage between the northernmost of the Marianas, called Moug, and the Bonins, the most famous of which was Iwo Jima.
“We’ve been trying to concentrate on this passage,” Jones said. “I’ve gotten a few twitches, but nothing firm enough to plot. If I were them, though, I’d cover that area.”
“So would I,” Chambers confirmed. One likely move for the Americans would be to put a submarine patrol line astride the Luzon Strait, to attempt to interdict oil traffic to the Japanese mainland. That was a political decision, however. Pacific Fleet did not yet have authorization to attack Japanese merchantmen, and intelligence reported that at the moment most of the tanker traffic in and out was composed of flag-of-convenience shipping, attacks on which had all sorts of political ramifications. We couldn’t risk offending Liberia, Mancuso told himself with a grimace. Could we?
“Why the speed-run for the ’cans back home?” Jones asked. It was not something that appeared very sensible.
“We hammered their air defenses last night.”
“Okay, so they’ll scoot west of the Bonins ... that means I’ll lose them soon. Anyway, their speed of advance is thirty-two, and their course is still a little fuzzy, but homeward bound, sure as hell.” Jones paused. “We’re starting to play with their heads, eh?”
Mancuso allowed himself a smile for once. “Always.”
44
from one who knows the score...
“Does it have to be this way?” Durling asked.
“We’ve run the simulation twenty times,” Ryan said, flipping through the data yet again. “It’s a matter of certainty. Sir, we have to take them all the way out.”
The President looked at the satellite overheads again. “We’re still not one hundred percent sure, are we?”
Jack shook his head. “Nothing is ever that sure, no. Our data looks pretty good—the overheads, I mean. The Russians have developed data, too, and they have as much reason to want to be right as we do. There are ten birds here. They’re dug in deep, and the site seems to have been selected deliberately for relative immunity from attack. Those are all positive indicators. This is not a deception operation. The next question is making sure that we can hit them all. And we have to do it quickly.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re moving ships back toward the coast that are marginally capable of detecting the aircraft.”
“No other way?”
“No, Mr. President. If this is going to work, it has to be tonight.” And the night, Ryan saw, checking his watch, had already started on the far side of the world.
“We protest in the strongest terms the American attack on our country,” the Ambassador began. “We have refrained at all times from doing such things, and we expected a similar courtesy from the United States.”
“Mr. Ambassador, I am not consulted on military operations. Have American forces struck your mainland?” Adler asked by way of reply.
“You know quite well what they have done, and you must also know that it is a precursor move to a full attack. It is important that you understand,” the diplomat went on, “that such an attack could result in the gravest possible consequences.” He let that phrase hang in the air like a cloud of lethal gas. Adler took a moment before responding.
“I would remind you first of all that we did not begin this conflict. I would further remind you that your country made a deliberate attack to cripple our economy—”
“As you have done!” the Ambassador shot back, showing real anger that might have been a cover for something else.
“Excuse me, sir, but I believe it is my turn to speak.” Adler waited patiently for the Ambassador to calm down; it was plain that neither one had gotten a full night’s sleep. “I would further remind you that your country has killed American servicemen, and if you expected us to refrain from corresponding moves, then you were possibly mistaken in that expectation.”
“We have never attacked vital American interests.”
“The freedom and security of American citizens is ultimately my country’s only vital interest, sir.”
The acrimonious change in atmosphere could hardly have been more obvious, as was the reason for it. America was making a move of some sort, and the move would clearly not be a subtle one. The people on both sides of the table, again on the top floor of the State Department, might well have been carved from stone. No one wanted to concede anything, not even a blink, at the formal sessions. Heads might have turned fractionally when the leaders of the respective delegations took their turns to speak, but no more than that. The absence of facial expressions would have done professional gamblers proud—but that was precisely the game being played, even without cards or dice. The discussions never got as far before the first recess as a return to the possession of the Marianas.
“Christ, Scott,” Cook said, walking through the doors to the terrace. From the circles under his eyes, the chief negotiator, he saw, had been up most of the night, probably at the White House. The primary season would be driving this mess now. The media were harping on the crippled ships at Pearl Harbor, and TV coverage was also coming from Saipan and Guam now, people speaking with obscured faces and disguised voices—on one hand about how they wanted to be American citizens, and on the other how much they feared being on those islands if a real counterattack developed. The ambivalence was exactly the sort of thing to confuse the public, and opinion polls were divided, though with a majority expressing outrage at what had been done, and a slightly smaller majority expressing the wish for a diplomatic solution. If possible. A plurality of 46 percent, the Washington Post/ABC poll had stated this morning, didn’t see much hope of that. The wild card, however, was the Japanese possession of nuclear arms, which had been announced by neither country, in both cases for fear of panicking the respective populations. Everyone in these sessions had really hoped for a peaceful settlement, but much of that hope had just evaporated, and in a period of a mere two hours.
“It’s being politically driven now,” Adler explained, looking away to let out his own tension with a long breath. “It had to happen, Chris.”
“What about their nukes?”
The Deputy Secretary of State shrugged uneasily. “We don’t think they’re that crazy.”
“We don’t think they are? What genius came up with that assessment?” Cook demanded.
“Ryan, who else?” Adler paused. “He’s running this. He thinks the next smart move is to blockade—well, declare a maritime exclusion zone, like the Brits did down at the Falklands. Cut off their oil,” Adler explained.
“Nineteen forty-one all over again? I thought that bonehead was a historian! That’s what started a world war, in case anybody forgot!”
“The threat of it—well, if Koga has the guts to speak out, we think their governme
nt’ll come apart. So,” Scott went on, “find out what the other side—I mean, what sort of strength the opposition really has.”
“It’s a dangerous game we’re playing, man.”
“Sure enough,” Adler agreed, looking right in the man’s eyes.
Cook turned and walked to the other side of the terrace. Before, it had seemed a normal part of the proceedings to Adler, part of the rubric of serious negotiations, and how stupid that had been, for the real proceedings to be handled over coffee and tea and cookies because the real negotiators didn’t want to risk making statements that ... well, those were the rules, he reminded himself. And the other side had made very skillful use of them. He watched the two men talk. The Japanese Ambassador looked far more uneasy than his principal subordinate. What are you really thinking? Adler would have killed to know that. It was too easy to think of the man as a personal enemy now, which would be a mistake. He was a professional, serving his country as he was paid and sworn to do. Their eyes met briefly, both of them deliberately looking away from Nagumo and Cook, and the professional impassivity broke for a moment, just an instant really, as both men realized that it was war they were talking about, life and death, issues imposed on them by others. It was a strange moment of comradeship as both men wondered how things had broken down so badly and how grossly their professional skills were being misused by others.
“That would be a very foolish move,” Nagumo said pleasantly, forcing a smile.
“If you have a pipeline to Koga, you better start using it.”
“I have, but it’s too soon for that, Christopher. We need something back. Don’t your people understand that?”
“Durling can’t get reelected if he trades away thirty-some-thousand U.S. citizens.” It really was that simple. “If it means killing a few thousand of your people, he’ll do that. And he probably thinks that threatening your economy directly is a cheap way out.”
“That would change if your people knew—”
“And how will your citizens react when they find it out?” Cook knew Japan well enough to understand that the ordinary men and women on the street regarded nuclear arms with revulsion. Interestingly, Americans had come to the same view. Maybe sense was breaking out, the diplomat thought, but not quickly enough, and not in this context.
“They will understand that those weapons are vital to our new interests,” Nagumo answered quickly, surprising the American. “But you are right, it is also vital that they never be used, and we must forestall your efforts to strangle our economy. People will die if that happens.”
“People are dying now, Seiji, from what your boss said earlier.” With that, the two men headed back to their respective leaders.
“Well?” ,4dler asked.
“He says he’s been in contact with Koga.”
That part of it was so obvious that the FBI hadn’t thought of it, and then nearly had had kittens when he’d suggested it, but Adler knew Cook. He was enjoying his part in this diplomatic effort, enjoying it just a little too much, enjoying the importance he’d acquired. Even now Cook did not know what he had blurted out, just like that. Not quite definite evidence of wrongdoing, but enough to persuade Adler that Cook was almost certainly the leak, and now Cook had probably just leaked something else, though it was something Ryan had thought up. Adler reminded himself that years ago, when Ryan had just been part of an outside group brought in to review CIA procedures, he’d come to high-level attention from his invention of the Canary Trap. Well, it had been sprung again.
The weather this morning was cold enough that the delegations headed back inside a little early for the next set of talks. This one might actually go somewhere, Adler told himself.
Colonel Michael Zacharias handled the mission briefing. It was routine despite the fact that the B-2s had never fired a shot in anger—actually dropped a shot, but the principle held. The 509th Bomb Group dated back to 1944, formed under the command of one Colonel Paul Tibbets, U.S. Army Air Force, fittingly, the Colonel thought, at a base in Utah, his own family home. The wing commander, a brigadier, would fly the lead aircraft. The wing XO would fly number two. As deputy commander operations, he would take in number three. His was the most distasteful part of the job, but it was sufficiently important that he’d considered the rules on ethics in war and decided that the mission parameters fell within the confines that lawyers and philosophers had placed upon warriors.
It was bitterly cold at Elmendorf, and vans conveyed the flight crews to the waiting bombers. That night they would fly with crews of three. The B-2 had been designed for a pilot and copilot only, with provision for a third crewman to work defensive systems which, the contractor had promised, the copilot could do, really. But real combat operations always required a safety margin, and even before the Spirits had left Missouri, the additional three hundred pounds of gear had been added along with the additional two hundred or so pounds of electronic-warfare officer.
There was so much that was odd about the aircraft. Traditionally U.S. Air Force birds had tail numbers, but the B-2 didn’t have a tail, and so it was painted on the door for the nose gear. A penetrating bomber, it flew at high altitude rather than low—though the contract had been altered in mid-design to allow for a low-flight profile—like an airliner for good fuel economy. One of the most expensive aircraft ever built, it combined the wingspan of a DC-10 with near-total invisibility. Painted slate gray for hiding in the night sky, it was now the shining hope for ending a war. A bomber, it was hoped that its mission would go as peacefully as possible. Strapping in, it was easier for Zacharias to think of it as a bombing mission.
The four GE engines lit off in turn, the ribbon gauges moving to full idle, already drinking fuel at the same rate as if it were at full power at cruising altitude, while the copilot and EWO checked out their onboard systems and found them good. Then, one at a time, the trio of bombers taxied off the ramp and into the runway.
“They’re making it easy,” Jackson thought aloud, now in the carrier’s Combat Information Center, below the flight deck. His overall operational plan had allowed for the possibility, but he hadn’t allowed himself to expect it. His most dangerous adversary was the four Aegis destroyers the Japanese had dispatched to guard the Marianas. The Navy had not yet learned to defeat the radar-missile combination, and he expected the job to cost him aircraft and crews, but sure enough, America now had the initiative of sorts. The other side was moving to meet his possible actions, and that was always a losing game.
Robby could feel it now. John Stennis was moving at full power, heading northwest at thirty knots or so. He checked his watch and wondered if the rest of the operations he’d planned in the Pentagon were going off.
This was a little different. Richter powered up his Comanche as he had the night before, wondering how often he could get away with this, and reminding himself of the axiom in military operations that the same thing rarely worked more than once. A pity that the guy who’d thought this idea up had not known that fact. His last mental lapse was to wonder whether it had been that Navy fighter jock he’d met at Nellis all those months before. Probably not, he judged. That guy was too much of a pro.
Again the Rangers stood by with their dinky little extinguishers, and again they proved unnecessary, and again Richter lifted off without incident, climbing immediately up the slopes of Shuraishi-san, east for Tokyo, but this time with two other aircraft behind him.
“He wants to see Durling personally,” Adler said. “He said that at the end of the morning session.”
“What else?” Ryan asked. Typically, the diplomat had covered his business first.
“Cook’s our boy. He told me that his contact has been working with Koga.”
“Did you—”
“Yes, I told him what you wanted. What about the Ambassador?”
Ryan checked his watch. The timing had to be so close, and he didn’t need this complication, but neither had he expected the other side to cooperate. “Give it ninety minutes. I’l
l clear it with the Boss.”
The electronic-warfare officer also drew the duty of checking out the weapons systems. Able to carry eighty 500-pound bombs, the bomb bays were large enough for only eight of the two-thousand-pound penetrators, and 8 times 3 made 24. It was another exercise in arithmetic that made the final part of the mission necessary, which the carriage of nuclear weapons would have made entirely unnecessary, but the orders didn’t contemplate that, and Colonel Zacharias didn’t object. He had a conscience to live with.
“Everything’s green, sir,” the EWO said. Not too surprising, as every weapon had been checked out personally by a senior weapons officer, a chief master sergeant, and an engineer from the contractor, individually run through a dozen simulations, and then handled like fresh fruit all the way into the bomb bay. They had to be if they wanted to maintain the manufacturer’s guaranteed Pk of 95%, though even that wasn’t enough for certainty. They needed more aircraft for the mission, but there were no more aircraft to be had, and working three Spirits together was tricky enough.
“Starting to get some fuzz, bearing two-two-five. Looks like an E-2 for starters,” the EWO reported. Ten minutes later it was clear that every ground-based radar in the country was lit up to full power. Well, that’s why they’d built the thing, all three members of the crew thought.
“Okay, give me a course,” Zacharias ordered, checking his own screen.
“One-nine-zero looks good for the moment.” The instruments identified every radar by type, and the smartest move was to exploit the oldest of them, happily enough an American design whose characteristics they knew quite well.
Forward of the B-2s, the Lightnings were working again, this time alone and covertly, approaching Hokkaido from the east while the bombers behind took a more southerly course. The exercise was more mental than physical now. One of the E-767s was up, this time well back over land, and probably with fighters in close attendance while the less capable E-2Cs patrolled just offshore. They’d be working the fighter pilots hard now, and sure enough, his threat receiver showed that some Eagles were searchlighting their APG-70 radars around the sky. Well, time to make them pay for that. His two-plane element turned slightly right and headed for the two nearest Eagles.