by Tom Clancy
Two were still on the ground, one of them with a scaffolding around the radome. Maybe that was the one undergoing overhaul, Richter thought, approaching cautiously from the west. There were still hills to hide behind, though one of them had a radar on it, a big, powerful air-defense system. His onboard computer plotted a null-area for him, and he flew lower to follow that in. He ended up three miles from the radar site, but below it, and then it was time to do what the Comanche was designed for.
Richter lifted up over the final hilltop, and his Longbow radar swept the area before him. Its computerized memory selected the two E-767s from its library of hostile shapes and lit them up on the weapons display. The touch screen at Richter’s left knee showed them as icons numbered 1 and 2 and identified as what they were. The pilot selected Hellfire from his short list of weapons options, the weapons-bay doors opened, and he fired twice. The Hellfire missiles roared off the rails, heading downhill toward the air base, five miles away.
Target Four was an apartment building, happily the top floor. ZORRO-Three had taken a southerly route into the city, and now its pilot slewed his helicopter sideways, worried about being spotted from the ground but wanting to find a window with a light on. There. Not a light, the pilot thought. More like a TV. Good enough in any case. He used the manual-guidance mode to lock on the spot of blue light.
Kozo Matsuda now wondered how he’d gotten into this mess in the first place, but the answer always came up the same. He’d overextended his business, and then been forced to ally himself with Yamata—but where was his friend now? Saipan? Why? They needed him here. The Cabinet was getting nervous, and though Matsuda had his man in that room to do what he was told to do, he’d learned a few hours earlier that the ministers were thinking on their own now, and that wasn’t good—but neither were recent developments. The Americans had breached his country’s defenses to some extent, a most unwelcome surprise. Didn’t they understand that the war had to be ended, the Marianas secured once and for all, and America forced to accept the changes? It seemed that power was the only thing they understood, but while Matsuda and his colleagues had thought that they had the ability to employ power, the Americans weren’t intimidated the way they were supposed to be.
What if they ... what if they don’t cave in? Yamata-san had assured them all that they had to, but he’d assured them also that he could wreak chaos in their financial system, and somehow the bastards had reversed that more adroitly than one of Mushashi’s swordfights, such as he was now watching on late-night TV. There was no way out now. They had to see it through or they would all face a ruin worse than what his ... faulty judgment had almost inflicted on his conglomerate. Faulty judgment? Matsuda asked himself. Well, yes, but he’d weathered that by allying himself with Yamata, and if his colleague would only return to Tokyo and help them all keep the government in line, then maybe—
The channel on the TV changed. Odd. Matsuda picked up the controller and changed it back. Then it changed again.
Fifteen seconds out, the pilot of ZORRO-Three activated the infrared laser used to guide the antitank missile in for terminal flight. His Comanche was in autohover now, allowing him essentially to hand-fly the weapon. It never occurred to him that the infrared beam of the laser was on the same frequency as the simple device his kids used at home to switch from Nickelodeon to the Disney Channel.
Damn the thing! Matsuda flipped the channel back a third time, and still it reverted back to a news broadcast. He hadn’t seen this movie in years, and what was wrong with the damned TV? It was even one of his own large-screen models. The industrialist got out of bed and walked over to it, aiming the channel-controller right at the receptor on the front of the TV. And it changed again.
“Bakayaro!” he growled, kneeling down in front of it and changing the channel manually, and yet once more it flipped back to the news. The lights were out in his bedroom, and at the last second Matsuda saw a yellow glow on the screen of the TV. A reflection? Of what? He turned to see a yellow semicircle of flame approaching his window, a second or so before the Hellfire missile struck the steel I-beam just next to his bed.
ZORRO-Three noted the explosion on the top floor of the apartment building, turned abruptly left, and tracked in on the next target. This was really something, the pilot thought, better even than his minor part in Task Force NORMANDY, six years before. He’d never really wanted to be a snake-eater, but here he was, doing their work. The next shot was similar to the first. He had to blink his eyes clear, but he was sure that anyone within twenty meters of the missile hit would not have lived to tell the tale.
The first Hellfire took the plane with crewmen around it. Mercifully it hit the E-767 right on the nose, and the explosion may have spared some of them, Richter thought. The second missile, like the first guided exclusively by the computer, blew the tail off the other one. Japan was down to two of the things now, both probably aloft somewhere, and he couldn’t do anything about that. They wouldn’t even come back here, but to make sure of it, Richter turned, selected his cannon, and strafed the air-defense radar site on the way out.
Binichi Murakami was just leaving the building after a lengthy chat with Tanzan Itagake. He would meet with his friends in the Cabinet tomorrow and counsel them to stop this madness before it grew too late. Yes, his country had nuclear missiles, but they had been built in the expectation that their mere existence would be sufficient to prevent their use. Even the thought of revealing their presence on his country’s soil—rock, as it turned out—threatened to destroy the political coalition that Goto had in place, and he understood now that you could order political figures only so far before they realized that they did have power of a sort.
A beggar in the street was the thought that kept coming back. But for that, he might not have been swayed by Yamata’s arguments. But for that, he tried to tell himself. Then the sky turned white over his head. Murakami’s bodyguard was next to him and flung him to the ground next to the car while glass rained on them. The sound of the event had hardly passed before he heard the echoes of another several kilometers away.
“What is this?” he tried to ask, but when he moved, he felt liquid on his face, and it was blood from his employee’s arm, slashed open from glass. The man bit his lip and kept his dignity, but he was badly hurt. Murakami helped him into the car and ordered his driver to head for the nearest hospital. As the man nodded at the order, yet another flash appeared in the sky.
“Two more baby seals,” the Colonel said quietly to himself. He’d gotten within five miles before launching his Slammers from behind them, and only one of the Eagles had even attempted to evade, that one too late, though the pilot punched out and was now floating to the ground. That was enough for now. He turned his Lightning northeast and headed out at Mach 1.5. His flight of four had slashed a hole in the Hokkaido defenses, and behind them the Japanese Air Force would move aircraft to plug the gap, fulfilling his mission for the night. For years the Colonel had told everyone who would listen that combat wasn’t about fairness, and he’d laughed at the cruel euphemism for a stealthy aircraft in combat against a conventional plane. Killing baby seals. But they weren’t seals, and it was the next thing to murder, and the officer raged at the necessity for what he was doing.
The EWO had steered them between two air-defense radars, and within a hundred miles of an orbiting E-2C. There was all manner of radio chatter, terse and excited, from ground stations to fighters, all to their north now. Landfall was over a town named Arai. The B-2A was at forty-three thousand feet, cruising smoothly at just under six hundred knots. Under the first layer of the fabric-based skin, a copper mesh absorbed much of the electronic energy now sweeping over their aircraft. It was part of the stealth design to be found in any high-school physics book. The copper filaments gathered in much of the energy, much like a simple radio antenna, converting it to heat that dissipated in the cold night air. The rest of the signals hit the inner structure, to be deflected elsewhere, or so everyone hoped.
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nbsp; Ryan met the Ambassador and escorted him into the West Wing, further surrounded by five Secret Service agents. The atmosphere was what diplomats called “frank.” There was no overt impoliteness, but the atmosphere was tense and minus the usual pleasantries that marked such meetings. No words were exchanged beyond those required, and by the time they entered the Oval Office Jack was mainly worried about what threat, if any, would be delivered at this most inopportune of moments.
“Mr. Ambassador, won’t you please take a seat,” Durling said.
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
Ryan picked one between the visiting diplomat and Roger Durling. It was an automatic action to protect his president, but unnecessary. Two of the agents had come in and would not leave the room. One stood at the door. The other stood directly behind the Ambassador.
“I understand you have something you wish to tell me,” Durling observed.
The diplomat’s delivery was matter-of-fact. “My government wishes me to inform you that we will soon make public our possession of strategic weapons. We wish to give you fair warning of that.”
“That will be seen as an overt threat to our country, Mr. Ambassador,” Ryan said, performing his task of shielding the President from the necessity of speaking directly.
“It is only a threat if you make it so.”
“You are aware,” Jack noted next, “that we too have nuclear arms which can be delivered to your country.”
“As you have already done,” the Ambassador replied at once. Ryan nodded.
“Yes, in the case of another war begun by your country.”
“We keep telling you, this is only a war if you make it so.”
“Sir, when you attack American territory and kill American servicemen, that is what makes it a war.”
Durling watched the exchange with no more reaction than a tilted head, playing his part as his National Security Advisor played his own. He knew his subordinate well enough now to recognize the tension in him, the way his feet crossed at the bottom of his chair while his hands clasped lightly in his lap, his voice soft and pleasant-sounding despite the nature of the conversation. Bob Fowler had been right all along, more so than either the former President or the current one had realized. Good man in a storm, Roger Durling thought yet again, a saying that dated as far back as men had gone to sea. Headstrong and hot-tempered though he sometimes was, in a crisis Ryan settled down rather like a doctor in an operating room. Something he’d learned from his wife? the President wondered, or perhaps something he’d learned because it had been forced upon him in the past ten or twelve years, in and out of government service. Good brains, good instinct, and a cool head when needed. What a shame the man had avoided politics. That thought almost made Durling smile, but this wasn’t the place for it. No, Ryan would not be good at politics. He was the sort who sought to handle problems directly. Even his subtlety had a sharp point to it, and he lacked the crucial ability to lie effectively, but for all that, a good man for dealing with a crisis.
“We seek a peaceful conclusion to this episode,” the Ambassador was saying now. “We are willing to concede much.”
“We require nothing more than a return to status quo ante,” Ryan replied, taking a chance that made his shoes turn under him. He hated this, hated taking the point, but now he had to float the ideas that he and the President had discussed, and if something went wrong, it would merely be remembered that it was Ryan who misspoke and not Roger Durling. “And the elimination of your nuclear arms under international inspection.”
“You force us to play a very dangerous game.”
“The game is of your making, sir.” Ryan commanded himself to relax. His right hand was over his left wrist now. He could feel his watch, but didn’t dare to look down at it for fear of giving an indication that something time-related was now under way. “You are already in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. You have violated the U.N. Charter, which your government has also signed. You are in violation of several treaty relationships with the United States of America, and you have launched a war of aggression. Do you expect us to accept all of this, and your enslavement of American citizens? Tell me, how will your citizens react when they learn all of this?” The events of the previous night over Northern Japan had not become public yet. They had controlled their media far more thoroughly than Ryan’s own play with the American TV networks, but there was a problem with that sort of thing. The truth always got out. Not a bad thing if the truth worked for you, it could be a terrible thing if it did not.
“You must offer us something!” the Ambassador insisted, visibly losing his diplomatic composure. Behind him, the Secret Service agent’s hands flexed a little.
“What we offer you is the chance to restore the peace honorably.”
“That is nothing!”
“This is more properly a subject for Deputy Secretary Adler and his delegation. You are aware of our position,” Ryan said. “If you choose to go public with your nuclear weapons, we cannot stop you from doing so. But I caution you that it would be a grave psychological escalation which neither your country nor ours needs.”
The Ambassador looked at Durling now, hoping for a reaction of some sort. Iowa and New Hampshire would be happening soon, and this man had to start off well ... was that the reason for the hard line? the diplomat wondered. His orders from Tokyo commanded him to get some maneuvering room for his country, but the Americans weren’t playing, and the culprit for that had to be Ryan.
“Does Dr. Ryan speak for the United States?” His heart skipped a beat when he saw the President shake his head slightly.
“No, Mr. Ambassador. Actually, I speak for the United States.” Durling paused for a cruel instant before adding, “But Dr. Ryan speaks for me in this case. Do you have anything else for us?”
“No, Mr. President.”
“In that case we will not detain you further. We hope that your government will see that the most profitable way out of this situation is what we propose. The other alternatives do not bear inspection. Good day, sir.” Durling didn’t stand, though Ryan did, to walk the man out. He was back in two minutes.
“When?” the President asked.
“Anytime.”
“This had better work.”
The sky was clear below them, though there were some wisps of cirrus clouds at fifty thousand feet. Even so, the Initial Point, called the IP, was too difficult for the unaided human eye to see. Worse, the other aircraft in the flight of three were quite invisible, though they were programmed to be only four and eight miles ahead, respectively. Mike Zacharias thought of his father, all the missions he’d flown into the most sophisticated defenses of his time, and how he’d lost his professional gamble, just once, and miraculously survived a camp supposed to be a final resting place. This was easier, after a fashion, but also harder, since the B-2 could not maneuver at all except to adjust its position slightly for winds.
“Patriot battery around here, off at two o’clock,” the captain on the electronic-warfare board warned. “It just lit off.”
Then Zacharias saw why. There were the first flashes on the ground, a few miles ahead. So the intelligence reports were right, the Colonel thought. The Japanese didn’t have many Patriots, and they wouldn’t put them out here for the fun of it. Just then, looking down, he saw the moving lights of a train just outside the valley they were about to attack.
“Interrogate-one,” the pilot ordered. Now it got dangerous.
The LPI radar under the nose of his bomber aimed itself at the piece of ground the satellite-navigation system told it to, instantly fixing the bomber’s position with respect to a known ground reference. The aircraft then swept into a right turn and two minutes later it repeated the procedure—
“Missile-launch warning! Patriot is flying now—make that two,” the EWO warned.
“That’s -Two,” Zacharias thought. Must have caught him with the doors open. The bomber wasn’t stealthy with its bomb bay open, but that only took a few sec
onds before—
There. He saw the Patriots coming up from behind a hill, far faster than the SA-2s that his father had dodged, not like rockets at all, more like some sort of directed-energy beams, so fast the eye could hardly follow them, so fast he didn’t have much chance to think. But the two missiles, only a few hundred meters apart, didn’t alter their path at all, blazing toward a fixed point in space, and streaking past his bomber’s altitude, exploding like fireworks at about sixty thousand feet. Okay, this stealth stuff really does work against Patriot, as all the tests said it did. The operators on the ground must be going crazy, he thought.
“Starting the first run,” the pilot announced.
There were ten target points—missile silos, the intelligence data said, and it pleased the Colonel to be eliminating the hateful things, even though the price of that was the lives of other men. There were only three of them, and his bomber, like the others, carried only eight weapons. The total number of weapons carried for the mission was only twenty-four, with two designated for each silo, and Zacharias’s last four for the last target. Two bombs each. Every bomb had a 95 percent probability of hitting within four meters of the aim point, pretty good numbers really, except that this sort of mission had precisely no margin for error. Even the paper probability was less than half a percent chance of a double miss, but that number times ten targets meant a five percent chance that one missile would survive, and that could not be tolerated.