by Tom Clancy
"Nice job," Durling said. "Why don't you go home for some sleep?"
"And what is this?" the customs officer asked.
"My photographic equipment," Chekov replied. He opened the case without an order to do so. It was warm in the terminal, the noon tropical sun beating through the wall of windows and overpowering the air conditioning for the moment. Their newest orders had been easily implemented. The Japanese wanted journalists in the islands, both to check up on the election campaign and to safeguard against American attack by their mere presence in the islands.
The customs officer looked at the cameras, gratified to see that it was all Japanese. "And this?"
"My lighting equipment is Russian," Ding explained in slow English. "We make very fine lights. Perhaps one day we will sell them in your country," he added with a smile.
"Yes, perhaps so," the official said, closing the case and marking it with chalk. "Where will you be staying?"
"We weren't able to make hotel arrangements," "Klerk" replied. "We'll check the local hotels."
Good luck, the official didn't say. This idea had come off half-baked, and every hotel room on Saipan, he was sure, was already filled. Well, that wasn't his problem.
"Can we rent a car?"
"Yes, over that way." The man pointed. The older Russian looked nervous, he thought.
"You're late."
"Well, sorry about that," Oreza replied tersely. "There's nothing new happening at all. Well, maybe the fighters are a little more active, but not much, and they've been pretty busy anyw—"
"You're going to get some company soon," the National Military Command Center told him.
"Who?"
"Two reporters. They have some questions for you," was the answer because of the renewed concern for Oreza's secure status.
"When?"
"Anytime, probably today. Everything okay with you, Chief?"
Master Chief, you turkey, Portagee didn't say. "Just great. We saw part of the President's speech, and we're a little worried because that missile site is so close to us and—"
"You'll have enough warning. Does your house have a basement?" the voice asked,
"No, it doesn't."
"Well, that's okay. We'll let you know, okay?"
"Fine, sir. Out."
Does your house have a basement? No. Well, that's okay. If it's okay, why did you ask, goddamn it? Oreza deactivated the phone after taking it out of the mixing bowl and walked to the window. Two Eagles were taking off. Such a mechanical thing to watch. Something was happening. He didn't know what. Perhaps their pilots didn't either, but you couldn't tell what they were thinking from looking at their aircraft.
Shiro Sato reefed his F-15J into a right turn to clear the civilian air traffic. If the Americans attacked, they would do it as the attacks on the Home Islands had come, off island bases, supported by tankers, from a long way off. Wake was a possibility, and so were a few other islands. He'd face aircraft not unlike his own. They would have airborne radar support, and so would he. It would be a fair fight unless the bastards brought down their stealth aircraft. Damn the things. Damn their ability to defeat the Kamis! But the Americans had only a few of them, and if they flew in daylight, he'd take his chances.
At least there would be no real surprises. There was a huge air-defense radar on Saipan's highest point, and with the squadrons based on Guam, this would be a real fight, he told himself, climbing up to patrol altitude.
"So what's the big deal?" Chavez asked, playing with the map.
"You wouldn't believe it if I told you."
"Well, take the next left, I think, by Lizama's Mobil." Chavez looked up from the map. There were soldiers everywhere, and they were digging in, something they ought to have done sooner, he thought. "Is that a Patriot battery?"
"Sure looks like one to me." How the hell am I going to handle this? Clark asked himself, finding the last turn and heading into the cul-de-sac.
The house number was the one he'd memorized. He pulled into the driveway and got out, heading for the front door.
Oreza had been in the bathroom, finishing a needed shower while Burroughs handled the running count on the aircraft in and out of Kobler when the doorbell rang.
"Who are you?"
"Didn't they tell you?" Clark asked, looking around. Who the hell was this guy?
"Reporters, right?"
"Yeah, that's it."
"Okay." Burroughs opened the door with a look up and down the street.
"Who are you, anyway? I thought this was the house of—"
"You're dead!" Oreza was standing in the hall, wearing just khaki shorts, his chest a mass of hair as thick as the remaining jungle on the island. The hair looked especially dark now, with the rest of the man's skin turning rapidly to the color of milk. "You're fuckin' dead!"
"Hi, Portagee," Klerk/Clark/Kelly said with a smile. "Long time."
He couldn't make himself move. "I saw you die. I went to the goddamned memorial service. I was there!"
"Hey, I know you," Chavez said. "You were on the boat our chopper landed on. What the hell is this? You Agency?"
It was almost too much for Oreza. He didn't remember the little one at all, but the big one, the old one, his age, about, was-couldn't be-was. It wasn't possible. Was it?
"John?" he asked after a few seconds of further incredulity.
It was too much for the man who used to be known as John Kelly. He set his bag down and came over to embrace the man, surprised by the tears in his eyes. "Yeah, Portagee—it's me. How you doin', man?"
"But how—"
"At the memorial service, did they use the line about 'sure and certain hope that the sea will give up its dead'?" He paused, then he had to grin. "Well, it did."
Oreza closed his eyes, thinking back over twenty years. "Those two admirals, right?"
"You got it."
"So—what the hell have you been—"
"CIA, man. They decided they needed somebody who could, well—"
"I remember that part." He really hadn't changed all that much. Older, but the same hair, and the same eyes, warm and open to him as they had always been, Portagee thought, but underneath always the hint of something else, like an animal in a cage, but an animal who knew how to pick the lock whenever he wanted.
"I hear you've been doing okay for a retired coastie."
"Command Master Chief." The man shook his head. The past could wait. "What's going on?"
"Well, we've been out of the loop for a few hours. Anything new that you know?"
"The President was on. They cut him off, but—"
"Did they really have nukes?" Burroughs asked.
" 'Did'?" Ding asked. "We got 'em?"
"That what he said. Who the hell are you, by the way?" Oreza wanted to know.
"Domingo Chavez." The young man extended his hand. "I see you and Mr. C know each other."
"I go by 'Clark' now," John explained. It was odd how good it felt to talk with a man who knew his real name.
"Does he know?"
John shook his head. "Not many people know. Most of them are dead. Admiral Maxwell and Admiral Greer both. Too bad, they saved my ass."
Oreza turned to his other new guest. "Tough luck, kid. It's some fuckin' sea story. You still drink beer, John?"
"Especially if it's free," Chavez confirmed.
"Don't you see? It's finished now!"
"Who else did they get?" Yamata asked.
"Matsuda, Itagake—they got every patron of every minister, all except you and me," Murakami said, not adding that they had nearly gotten him.
"Raizo, it is time to put an end to this. Call Goto and tell him to negotiate a peace."
"I will not!" Yamata snarled back.
"Don't you see? Our missiles are destroyed and—"
"And we can make new ones. We have the ability to make more warheads, and we have more missiles at Yoshinobu."
"If we attempt that, you know what the Americans will do, you fool!"
"Th
ey wouldn't dare."
"You told us that they could not repair the damage you did to their financial systems. You told us that our air defenses were invincible. You told us that they could never strike back at us effectively." Murakami paused for a breath. "You told us all these things—and you were wrong. Now I am the last one to whom you may speak, and I am not listening. You tell Goto to make peace!"
"They'll never take these islands back. Never! They do not have the ability."
"Say what you please, Raizo-chan. For my part it is over."
"Find a good place to hide then!" Yamata would have slammed the phone down, but a portable didn't offer that option. "Murderers," he muttered. It had taken most of the morning to assemble the necessary information. Somehow the Americans had struck at his own council of zaibatsu. How? Nobody knew. Somehow they'd penetrated the defenses that every consultant had told him were invincible, even to the point of destroying the intercontinental missiles. "How?" he asked.
"It would seem that we underestimated the quality of their remaining air forces," General Arima replied with a shrug. "It is not the end. We still have options."
"Oh?" Not everyone was giving up, then?
"They will not wish to invade these islands. Their ability to perform a proper invasion is severely compromised by their lack of amphibious-assault ships, and even if they managed to put people on the island—to fight amidst so many of their own citizens? No." Arima shook his head. "They will not risk it. They will seek a negotiated peace. There is still a chance—if not for complete success, then for a negotiated peace that leaves our forces largely intact."
Yamata accepted that for what it was, looking out the windows at the island that he wanted to be his. The elections, he thought, could still be won. It was the political will of the Americans that needed attacking, and he still had the ability to do that.
It didn't take long to turn the 747 around, but the surprise to Captain Sato was that the aircraft was half full for the flight back to Narita. Thirty minutes after lift-off, a stewardess reported to him by phone that of the eleven people she'd asked, all but two had said that they had pressing business that required their presence at home. What pressing business might that be? he wondered, with his country's international trade for the most part reduced to ships traveling between Japan and China.
"This is not turning out well," his copilot observed an hour out. "Look down there."
It was easy to spot ships from thirty thousand feet, and of late they'd taken to carrying binoculars to identify surface ships. Sato lifted his pair and spotted the distinctive shapes of Aegis destroyers still heading north. On a whim he reached down to flip his radio to a different guard frequency.
"JAL 747 calling Mutsu, over."
"Who is this?" a voice instantly replied. "Clear this frequency at once!"
"This is Captain Torajiro Sato. Call your fleet commander!" he ordered with his own command voice. It took a minute.
"Brother, you shouldn't be doing this," Yusuo chided. Radio silence was as much a formality as a real military necessity. He knew that the Americans had reconnaissance satellites, and besides, his group's SPY radars were all up and radiating. If American snooper aircraft were about, they'd know where his squadron was. It was something he would have considered with confidence a week before, but not now.
"I merely wanted to express our confidence in you and your men. Use us for a practice target," he added.
In Mutsu's CIC, the missile techs were already doing exactly that, but it wouldn't do to say so, the Admiral knew. "Good to hear your voice again. Now you must excuse me. I have work to do here."
"Understood, Yusuo. Out." Sato took his finger off the radio switch.
"See," he said over the intercom. "They're doing their job and we have to do ours."
The copilot wasn't so sure, but Sato was the captain of the 747, and he kept his pence, concentrating on navigational tasks. Like most Japanese he'd been raised to think of war as something to be avoided as assiduously as plague. The overnight development of a conflict with America, well, it had felt good for a day or so to teach the arrogant gaijin a lesson, but that was fantasy talking, and this was increasingly real. Then the double-barreled notification that his country had fielded nuclear arms—that was madness enough—only immediately to be followed by the American claim that the weapons had been destroyed. This was an American aircraft, after all, a Boeing 747-400PIP, five years old but state-of-the-art in every respect, reliable and steady. There was little America had to learn about the building of aircraft, and if this one was as good as he knew it to be, then how much more formidable still were their military aircraft? The aircraft his country's Air Force flew were copies of American designs—except for the AEW 767's he'd heard so much about, first about how invincible they were, and more recently about how there were only a few left. This madness had to stop. Didn't everyone see that? Some must, he thought, else why was his airliner half full of people who didn't want to be on Saipan despite their earlier enthusiasm?
But his captain did not see that at all, did he? the copilot asked himself. Torajiro Sato was sitting there, fixed as stone in the left seat, as though all were normal when plainly it was not.
All he had to do was look down in the afternoon sunlight to see those destroyers—doing what? They were guarding their country's coast against the possibility of attack. Was that normal?
"Conn, Sonar."
"Conn, aye." Clagget had the conn for the afternoon watch. He wanted the crew to see him at work, and more than that, wanted to keep the feel for conning his boat.
"Possible multiple contacts to the south," the sonar chief reported.
"Bearing one-seven-one. Look like surface ships at high speed, sir, getting pounding and a very high blade rate."
That was about right, the CO thought, heading for the sonar room again. He was about to order a track to be plotted, but when he turned to do so, he saw two quartermasters already setting it up, and the ray-path analyzer printing its first cut on the range. His crew was fully drilled in now, and things just happened automatically, but better. They were thinking as well as acting.
"Best guess, they're a ways off, but look at all this," the chief said. It was clearly a real contact. Data was appearing on four different frequency lines.
Then the chief held up his phones. "Sounds like a whole bunch of screws turning—a lot of racing and cavitation, has to be multiple ships, traveling in column."
"And our other friend?" Claggett asked.
"The sub? He's gone quiet again, probably just tooling along on batteries at five or less." That contact was a good twenty miles off, just beyond the usual detection range.
"Sir, initial range cut on the new contacts is a hundred-plus-thousand yards, CZ contact," another tech reported.
"Bearing is constant. Not a wiggle. They heading straight for us or close to it. They pounding hard. What are surface conditions like, sir?"
"Waves eight to ten feet, Chief." A hundred thousand yards plus. More than fifty nautical miles, Claggett thought. Those ships were driving hard. Right to him, but he wasn't supposed to shoot. Damn. He took the required three steps back into control. "Right ten-degrees rudder, come to new course two-seven-zero. Tennessee came about to a westerly heading, the better to give her sonar operators a range for the approaching destroyers. His last piece of operational intelligence had predicted this, and the timing of the information was as accurate as it was unwelcome.
In a more dramatic setting, in front of cameras, the atmosphere might have been different, but although the setting was dramatic in a distant sense, right now it was merely cold and miserable. Though these men were the most elite of troops, it was far easier to rouse yourself for combat against a person than against unremitting environmental discomfort. The Rangers, in their mainly white camouflage overclothing, moved about as little as possible, and the lack of physical activity merely made them more vulnerable to the cold and to boredom, the soldier's deadliest enemy. And yet that was
good, Captain Checa thought. For a single squad of soldiers four thousand miles from the nearest U.S. Army base—and that base was Fort Wainwright in Alaska—it was a hell of a lot safer to be bored than to be excited by the stimulus of a combat action without any hope of support. Or something like that. Checa faced the problem common to officers: subject to the same discomfort and misery as his men, he was not allowed to bitch. There was no other officer to bitch to in any case, and to do so in front of the men was bad for morale, even though the men probably would have understood.
"Be nice to get back to Fort Stewart, sir," First Sergeant Vega observed.
"Spread on that sunblock and catch some rays on the beach."
"And miss all this beautiful snow and sleet, Oso?" At least the sky was clear now.
"Roge-o, Captain. But I got my fill o' this shit when I was a kid in Chicago." He paused, looking and listening around again. The noise-discipline of the other Rangers was excellent, and you had to look very closely indeed to see where the lookouts were standing.
"Ready for the walk out tonight?"
"Just so's our friend is waiting on the far side of that hill."
"I'm sure he will he," Checa lied.
"Yes, sir. I am, too." If one could do it, why not two? Vega thought. "Did all this stuff work?"
The killers in their midst were sleeping in their bags, in holes lined with pine branches and covered with more branches for additional warmth. In addition to guarding the pilots, the Rangers had to keep them healthy, like watching over infants, an odd mission for elite troops, but troops of that sort generally drew the oddest.
"So they say." Checa looked at his watch. "We shake them loose in another two hours."
Vega nodded, hoping that his legs weren't too stiff for the trek south.
The patrol pattern had been set in the mission briefing. The four boomers had thirty-mile sectors, and each sector was divided into three ten-mile segments. Each boat could patrol in the center slot, leaving the north and south slots empty for everything but weapons. The patrol patterns were left to the judgment of individual skippers, but they worked out the same way. Pennsylvania was on a northerly course, trolling along at a mere five knots, just as she'd done for her now-ended deterrence patrols carrying Trident missiles.