Debt of Honor jr-6

by Tom Clancy

  They were trying to be clever, and almost succeeding, but "almost" didn't really count in this game. Satellite photos had revealed the presence of the three inbound surface groups. Sanchez would lead the Alpha Strike against the big one, eight ships, all tin cans. Two separated pairs of Tomcats would deal with the P-3S they had out; for the first time they'd hunt actively with their search radars instead of being under EMCOM. It would be a single rapier thrust—no, more the descending blow of a big and heavy club.

  Intermittent sweeps of an E-2C Hawkeye radar aircraft determined that the Japanese had not deployed fighters to Marcus, which would have been clever if difficult for them, and in any case they would not have been able to surge enough of them to matter, not against two full carrier air wings. Marcus just wasn't a big enough island, as Saipan or Guam was. That was his last abstract thought for a while. On Bud's command via a low-power radio circuit, the formation began to disperse according to its carefully structured plan.

  "Hai." Sato lifted the growler phone on Mutsu's bridge.

  "We just detected low-power radio voice traffic. Two signals, bearing one-five-seven, and one-nine-five, respectively."

  "It's about time," Sato told his group-operations officer. I thought they'd never get around to their attack. In a real-war situation he would do one thing. In this particular case, he'd do another. There was little point in letting the Americans know the sensitivity of his ELINT gear. "Continue as before."

  "Very well. We still have the two airborne radars. They appear to be flying racetrack patterns, no change."

  "Thank you." Sato replaced the phone and reached for his tea. His best technicians were working the electronic-intelligence listening gear, and they had tapes collecting the information taken down by every sensor for later study. That was really the important part of this phase of the exercise, to learn all they could about how the U.S. Navy made its deliberate attacks.

  "Action stations?" Mutsu's captain asked quietly.

  "No need," the Admiral replied, staring thoughtfully at the horizon, as he supposed a fighting sailor did.

  Aboard Snoopy One, an EA-6B Prowler, the flight crew monitored all radar and radio frequencies. They found and identified six commercial-type search radars, none of them close to the known location of the Japanese formation. They weren't making it much of a contest, everyone thought. Normally these games were a lot more fun.

  The captain of the port at Tanapag harbor looked out from his office to see a large car-carrier working her way around the southern tip of Managaha Island. That was a surprise. He ruffled through the papers on his desk to see where the telex was to warn him of her arrival. Oh, yes, there. It must have come in during the night. MV Orchid Ace out of Yokohama. Cargo of Toyota Land Cruisers diverted for sale to the local Japanese landowners. Probably a ship that had been scheduled for transit to America. So now the cars would come here and clog the local roads some more. He grumped and lifted his binoculars to give her a look and saw to his surprise another lump on the horizon, large and boxy. Another car carrier? That was odd.

  Snoopy One held position and altitude, just under the visual horizon from the "enemy" formation, about one hundred miles away. The electronic warriors in the two backseats had their hands ready on the power switches for the onboard jammers, but the Japanese didn't have any of their radars up, and there was nothing to jam. The pilot allowed herself a look to the south-east and saw a few flashes, yellow glints off the gold-impregnated canopies of the inbound Alpha Strike, which was now angling down to the deck to stay out of radar coverage as long as possible before popping up to loose their first "salvo" of administrative missiles.

  "Tango, tango, tango," Commander Steve Kennedy said into the gertrude, giving the code word for a theoretical or "administrative" torpedo launch. He'd held contact with the Harushio-class for nine hours, taking the time to get acquainted with the contact, and to get his crew used to something more demanding than getting heartbeats on a pregnant humpback. Finally bored with the game, it was time to light up the underwater telephone and, he was sure, scare the bejeebers out of Sierra-One after giving him ample time to counter-detect. He didn't want anyone to say later that he hadn't given the other guy a fair break. Not that this sort of thing was supposed to be fair, but Japan and America were friends, despite the news stuff they'd heard on the radio for the past few weeks.

  "Took his time," Commander Ugaki said. They'd tracked the American 688 for almost forty minutes. So they were good, but not that good, it had been so hard for them to detect Kurushio that they'd made their attack as soon as they had a track, and, Ugaki thought, he'd let them have their first shot. So. The CO looked at his own fire-control director and the four red solution lights.

  He lifted his own gertrude phone to reply in a voice full of good-natured surprise: "Where did you come from?"

  Those crewmen who were in earshot—every man aboard spoke good English—were surprised at the captain's announcement. Ugaki saw the looks.

  He would brief them in later.

  "Didn't even 'tango' back. I guess he wasn't at GQ." Kennedy keyed the phone again. "As per exercise instructions, we will now pull off and turn on our augmenter." On his command, USS Asheville turned right and increased speed to twenty knots. She'd pull away to twenty thousand yards to restart the exercise, giving the "enemy" a better chance at useful training.

  "Conn, sonar."

  "Conn, aye."

  "New contact, designate Sierra-Five, bearing two-eight-zero, twin-screw diesel surface ship, type unknown. Blade rate indicates about eighteen knots," SM/1c Junior Laval announced.

  "No classification?"

  "Sounds a little, well, little, Cap'n, not the big boomin' sounds of a large merchantman."

  "Very well, we'll run a track. Keep me posted."

  "Sonar, aye."

  It was just too easy, Sanchez thought. The Enterprise group was probably having a tougher time with their Kongo-class DDGs up north. He was not pressing it, but holding his extended flight of four at three hundred feet above the calm surface, at a speed of just four hundred knots. Each of the four fighter-attack aircraft of Slugger Flight carried four exercise Harpoon missiles, as did the four trailing in Mauler. He checked his heads-up display for location. Data loaded into his computer only an hour before gave him a probable location for the formation, and his GPS navigation system had brought him right to the programmed place. It was time to check to see how accurate their operational intelligence was.

  "Mauler, this is lead, popping up—now!" Sanchez pulled back easily on the stick. "Going active—now!" With the second command he flipped on his search radar. There they were, big as hell on the display. Sanchez selected the lead ship in the formation and spun up the seeker heads in the otherwise inert missiles hanging from his wings. He got four ready lights. "This is Slugger-Lead. Launch launch launch! Rippling four vampires."

  "Two, launching four."

  "Three, launch four."

  "Four, launching three, one abort on the rail." About par for the course, Sanchez thought, framing a remark for his wing maintenance officer. In a real attack the aircraft would have angled back down to the surface after firing their missiles so as not to expose themselves. For the purposes of the exercise they descended to two hundred feet and kept heading in to simulate their own missiles. Onboard recorders would take down the radar and tracking data from the Japanese ships in order to evaluate their performance, which so far was not impressive.

  Faced with the irksome necessity of allowing women to fly in real combat squadrons off real carriers, the initial compromise had been to put them in electronic-warfare aircraft, hence the Navy's first female squadron commander was Commander Roberta Peach of VAQ-137, "The Rooks." The most senior female carrier aviator, she deemed it her greatest good fortune that another naval aviator, female, already had the call sign "Peaches," which allowed her to settle on "Robber," a name she insisted on in the air.

  "Getting signals now, Robber," the lead EWO in the back of her
Prowler reported. "Lots of sets lighting off."

  "Shut 'em back down," she ordered curtly.

  "Sure are a lot of 'em…targeting a Harm on an SPG-51. Tracking and ready."

  "Launching now," Robber said. Shooting was her prerogative as aircraft commander. As long as the SPG-51 missile-illumination radar was up and radiating, the Harm antiradar missile was virtually guaranteed to hit.

  Sanchez could see the ships now, gray shapes on the visual horizon. An unpleasant screech in his headphones told him that he was being illuminated with both search and fire-control radar, never a happy bit of news even in an exercise, all the more so that the "enemy" in this case had American-designed SM-2 Standard surface-to-air missiles with whose performance he was quite familiar. It looked like a Hatakaze-class. Two SPG-51C missile radars. Only one single-rail launcher. She could guide only two at a time.

  His aircraft represented two missiles. The Hornet was a larger target than the Harpoon was, and was not going as low or as fast as the missile did. On the other hand, he had a protective jammer aboard, which evened the equation somewhat. Bud eased his stick to the left. It was against safely rules to fly directly over a ship under circumstances like this, and a few seconds later he passed three hundred yards ahead of the destroyer's bow. At least one of his missiles would have hit, he judged, and that one was only a five-thousand-ton tin can. One Harpoon warhead would ruin her whole day, making his follow-up attack with cluster munitions even more deadly.

  "Slugger, this is lead. Form up on me."

  "Two—"

  "Three—"

  "Four," his flight acknowledged.

  Another day in the life of a naval aviator, the CAG thought. Now he could look forward to landing, going into CIC, and spending the rest of the next twenty-four hours going over the scores. It just wasn't very exciting anymore. He'd splashed real airplanes, and anything else wasn't the same. But flying was still flying.

  The roar of aircraft overhead was usually exhilarating. Sato watched the last of the gray American fighters climb away, and lifted his binoculars to see their direction. Then he rose and headed below to the CIC.

  "Well?" he asked.

  "Departure course is as we thought." Fleet-Ops tapped the satellite photo that showed both American battle groups, still heading west, into the prevailing winds, to conduct flight operations. The photo was only two hours old. The radar plot showed the American aircraft heading to the expected point.

  "Excellent. My respects to the captain, make course one-five-five, maximum possible speed." In less than a minute, Mutsu shuddered with increased engine power and started riding harder through the gentle Pacific swells for her rendezvous with the American battle force. Timing was important.

  On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, a young trader's clerk made a posting error on Merck stock at exactly 11:43:02 Eastern Standard Time. It actually went onto the system and appeared on the board at 23 1/6, well off the current value. Thirty seconds later he typed it in again, inputting the same amount. This time he got yelled at. He explained that the damned keyboard was sticky, and unplugged it, switching it for a new one. It happened often enough. People spilled coffee and other things in this untidy place. The correction was inputted at once, and the world returned to normal. In the same minute something similar happened with General Motors stock, and someone made the same excuse. It was safe. The people at her particular kiosk didn't interact all that much with the people who did Merck. Neither had any idea what they were doing, just that they were being paid $50,000 to make an error that would have no effect on the system at all. Had they not done it—they did not know—another pair of individuals had been paid the same amount of money to do the same thing ten minutes later. In the Stratus mainframe computers at the Depository Trust Company—more properly in the software that resided in them—the entries were noted, and the Easter Egg started to hatch.

  The cameras and lights were all set up in St. Vladimir Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace, the traditional room for finalizing treaties and a place that Jack had visited at another time and under very different circumstances. In two separate rooms, the President of the United States and the President of the Russian Republic were having their makeup put on, something that was probably more irksome to the Russian, Ryan was sure. Looking good for the cameras was not a traditional requirement for local political figures. Most of the guests were already seated, but the senior members of both official parties could be more relaxed. Final preparations were just about complete. The crystal glasses were on their trays, and the corks on the champagne bottles were unwrapped, awaiting only the word to be popped off.

  "That reminds me. You never did send me any of that Georgian champagne," Jack told Sergey.

  "Well, today it can be done, and I can get you a good price."

  "You know, before, I would have had to turn it in because of ethics laws."

  "Yes, I know that every American official is a potential crook," Golovko noted, checking around to see that everything was done properly.

  "You should be a lawyer." Jack saw the lead Secret Service agent come through the door, and headed to his seat. "Some place, isn't it, honey?" he asked his wife.

  "The czars knew how to live," she whispered back as the TV lights all came on. In America, all the networks interrupted their regular programming. The timing was a little awkward, with the eleven-hour differential between Moscow and the American West Coast. Then there was Russia, which had at least ten time zones of its own, a result of both sheer size and, in the case of Siberia, proximity to the Arctic Circle. But this was something everyone would want to see.

  The two presidents came out, to the applause of the three hundred people present. Roger Durling and Eduard Grushavoy met at the mahogany table and shook hands warmly as only two former enemies could Durling, the former soldier and paratrooper with Vietnam experience; Grushavoy, also a former soldier, a combat engineer who had been among the first to enter Afghanistan. Trained to hate one another in their youth, now they would put a final end to it all. On this day, they would set aside all the domestic problems that both lived with on every day of the week. For today, the world would change by their hands.

  Grushavoy, the host, gestured Durling to his chair, then moved to the microphone.

  "Mister President," he said through an interpreter whom he didn't really need, "it is my pleasure to welcome you to Moscow for the first time…"

  Ryan didn't listen to the speech. It was predictable in every phrase. His eyes fixed on a black plastic box that sat on the table exactly between the chairs of the two chiefs of state. It had two red buttons and a cable that led down to the floor. A pair of TV monitors sat against the near wall, and in the rear of the room, large projection TVs were available for everyone to watch. They showed similar sites.

  "Hell of a way to run a railroad," an Army major noted, twenty miles from Minot, North Dakota. He'd just screwed in the last wire. "Okay, circuits are live. Wires are hot." Only one safety switch prevented the explosives from going, and he had his hand on it. He'd already done a personal check of everything, and there was a full company of military police patrolling the area because Friends of the Earth was threatening to protest the event by putting people where the explosives were, and as desirable as it might be just to blow the bastards up, the officer would have to disable the firing circuit if that happened. Why the hell, he wondered, would anybody protest this? He'd already wasted an hour trying to explain that to his Soviet counterpart.

  "So like the steppes here," the man said, shivering in the wind. They both watched a small TV for their cue.

  "It's a shame we don't have the politicians around here to give us some hot air." He took his hand off the safety switch. Why couldn't they just get on with it?

  The Russian officer knew his American English well enough to laugh at the remark, feeling inside his oversized parka for a surprise he had in waiting for the American.

  "Mr. President, the hospitality we have experienced in this great
city is proof positive that there should be, can be, and will be a friendship between our two peoples—just as strong as our old feelings were, but far more productive. Today, we put an end to war," Durling concluded to warm applause, returning to shake Grushavoy's hand again. Both men sat down. Oddly, now they had to take their orders from an American TV director who held a headset to his face and talked very quickly.

  "Now," men said in two languages, "if the audience will turn to the TVs…"

  "When I was a lieutenant in the pioneers," the Russian President whispered, "I loved blowing things up."

  Durling grinned, leaning his head in close. Some things were not for microphones. "You know the job I always wanted as a boy—do you have it over here?"

  "What is that, Roger?"

  "The guy who runs the crane with the big iron ball for knocking buildings down. It has to be the best job in the whole world."

  "Especially if you can put your parliamentary opposition in the building first!" It was a point of view that both shared.

  "Time," Durling saw from the director.

  Both men put their thumbs on their buttons.

  "On three, Ed?" Durling asked.

  "Yes, Roger!"

  "One," Durling said.

  "Two," Grushavoy continued.

  "Three!" both said, pressing them down.

  The two buttons closed a simple electrical circuit that led to a satellite transmitter outside. It took roughly a third of a second for the signal to go up to the satellite and come back down, then another third for the result to retrace the same path, and for a long moment a lot of people thought that something had gone wrong. But it hadn't.