Debt of Honor jr-6

by Tom Clancy

  She was making so little noise that a whale might have come close to a collision, if it were the right time for whales in this part of the Pacific, which it wasn't. Behind her, at the end of a lengthy cable, was her towed-array sonar, and the two-hour north-south cycle allowed it to trail straight out in a line, with about ten minutes or so required for the turns at the end of the cycles to get it straight again for maximum performance.

  Pennsylvania was at six hundred feet, the ideal sonar depth given today's water conditions. It was just sunset up on the roof when the first trace appeared on her sonar screens. It started as a series of dots, yellow on the video screen, trickling down slowly with time, and shifting a little to the south in bearing, but not much. Probably, the lead sonarman thought, the target had been running on battery for the past few hours, else he would have caught the louder signals of the diesels used to charge them, but there the contact was, on the expected 60Hz line. He reported the contact data to the fire-control tracking party.

  Wasn't this something, the sonarman thought. He'd spent his entire career in missile boats, so often tracking contacts which his submarine would maneuver to avoid, even though the boomer fleet prided itself on having the best torpedomen in the fleet. Pennsylvania carried only fifteen weapons aboard—there was a shortage of the newest version of the ADCAP torpedo, and it had been decided not to bother carrying anything less capable under the circumstances. It also had three other torpedolike units, called LEMOSSs, for Long-Endurance Mobile Submarine Simulator. The skipper, another lifelong boomer sailor, had briefed the crew on his intended method of attack, and everyone aboard approved. The mission, in fact, was just about ideal. The Japanese had to move through their line. Then operational pattern was such that for them to pass undetected through the line of battle, as the skipper had taken to calling it, was most unlikely.

  "Now hear this," the Captain said over the 1-MC announcing system. Every speaker had been turned down, so that the announcement came as a whisper that the men strained to hear. "We have a probable submerged contact in our kill zone. I am going to conduct the attack just as we briefed it. Battle stations," he concluded in the voice of a man ordering breakfast at HoJo's.

  There came sounds so faint that only one experienced sonarman could hear them, and that mostly because he was just forward of the attack center. The watch had changed there so that only the most experienced men—and one woman, now—would occupy the weapons consoles. Those people too junior for a place on the sub's varsity assembled throughout the boat in damage-control parties. Voices announced to the attack-center talker that each space was fully manned and ready, and then the ship grew as silent as a graveyard on Halloween.

  "Contact is firming up nicely," the sonarman said over his phones.

  "Bearing is changing westerly, bearing to target now zero-seven-five. Getting a faint blade-rate on the contact, estimate contact speed is ten knots."

  That made it a definite submarine, not that there was much doubt. The diesel sub had her own towed-array sonar and was doing a sprint-and-drift of her own, alternately going at her top speed, then slowing to detect anything that she might miss with the increased flow noise.

  "Tubes one, three, and four are ADCAPs," a weapons technician announced. "Tube two is a LEMOSS."

  "Spin 'em all up," the Captain said. Most COs liked to say warm 'em up, but otherwise this one was by-the-book.

  "Current range estimate is twenty-two thousand yards," the tracking party chief announced.

  The sonarman saw something new on his screen, then adjusted his head-phones.

  "Transient, transient, sounds like hull-popping on Sierra-Ten. Contact is changing depth."

  "Going up, I bet," the Captain said a few feet away. That's about right, the sonarman thought with a nod of his own. "Let's get the MOSS in the water. Set its course at zero-zero-zero. Keep it quiet for the first ten thousand yards, then up to normal radiating levels."

  "Aye, sir." The tech dialed in the proper settings on her programming board, and then the weapons officer checked the instructions and pronounced them correct.

  "Ready on two."

  "Contact Sierra-Ten is now somewhat, sir. Probably above the layer now."

  "Definite direct-path to Sierra-Ten," the ray-path technician said next.

  "Definitely not a CZ contact, sir."

  "Ready on tube two," the weapons tech reported again.

  "Fire two." the CO ordered at once. "Reload another MOSS," he said next.

  Pennsylvania shuddered ever so slightly as the LEMOSS was ejected into the sea. The sonar picked it up at once as it angled left, then reversed course, heading north at a mere ten knots. Based on an old Mark 48 torpedo body, the LEMOSS was essentially a huge tank of the OTTO fuel American "fish" used, plus a small propulsion system and a large sound-transducer that gave out the noise of an engine plant. The noise was the same frequencies as those of a nuclear power plant, but quite a bit louder than those on an Ohio-class. It never seemed to matter to people that the thing was too loud. Attack submarines almost always went for it, even American ones who should have known better. The new model with the new name could move along for over fifteen hours, and it was a shame it had been developed only a few months before the boomers had been fully and finally disarmed.

  Now came the time for patience. The Japanese submarine actually slowed a little more, doubtless doing its own final sonar sweep before they lit off the diesels for their speedy passage west. The sonarman tracked the LEMOSS north. The signal was just about to fade out completely before the sound systems turned on, five miles away. Two miles after that, it jumped over the thermocline layer of cold and warm water and the game began in earnest.

  "Conn, Sonar, Sierra Ten just changed speed, change in the blade-rate, slowing down, sir."

  "He has good sonar," the Captain said, just behind the sonarman. Pennsylvania had risen somewhat, floating her sonar tail over the layer for a better look at the contact while the body of the submarine stayed below. He turned and spoke more loudly. "Weapons?"

  "One, three, and four are ready for launch, solutions on all of them."

  "Set four for a stalking profile, initial course zero-two-zero."

  "Done. Set as ordered, sir. Tube four ready in all respects."

  "Match bearings and shoot," the Captain ordered from the door of the sonar room, adding, "Reload another ADCAP."

  Pennsylvania shuddered again as the newest version of the venerable Mark 48 torpedo entered the sea, turning northeast and controlled by an insulated wire that streamed out from its tailfin.

  This was like an exercise, the sonarman thought, but easier.

  "Additional contacts?" the skipper asked, behind him again.

  "Not a thing, sir." The enlisted man waved at his scopes. Only random noise showed, and an additional scope was running diagnostic checks every ten minutes to show that the systems were all functioning properly. It was quite a payoff: after nearly forty years of missile-boat operations, and close to fifty of nuclear-sub ops, the first American sub kill since World War II would come from a boomer supposedly on her way to the scrapyard.

  Traveling far more rapidly, the ADCAP torpedo popped over the layer somewhat aft of the contact. It immediately started radiating from its own ultrasonic sonar and fed the picture back along the wire to Pennsylvania.

  "Hard contact, range three thousand and close to the surface. Lookin' good," sonar said. The same diagnosis came from the weapons petty officer with her identical readout.

  "Eat shit and die," the male member of the team whispered, watching the two contact lines close on the display. Sierra Ten went instantly to full speed, diving at first below the layer, but his batteries were probably a little low, and he didn't make more than fifteen knots, while the ADCAP was doing over sixty. The one-sided chase lasted a total of three and a half minutes and ended with a bright splotch on the screen and a noise in the headphones that stung his ears. The rest was epilogue, concluding with a ripping screech of steel being crushed by
water pressure.

  "That's a kill, sir. I copy a definite kill." Two minutes later, a distant low-frequency to the north suggested that West Virginia had achieved the same goal.

  "Christopher Cook?" Murray asked.

  "That's right."

  It was a very nice house, the Deputy Assistant Director thought as he pulled out his identification folder. "FBI. We'd like to talk to you about your conversations with Seiji Nagumo. Could you get a coat?"

  The sun had a few more hours to go when the Lancers taxied out. Angered by the loss of one of their number not so long before, the crews deemed themselves to be in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, but nobody had troubled himself to ask their opinion, and their job was written down. Their bomb bays taken up with fuel tanks, one by one the bombers raced down the runway and lifted off, turning and climbing to their assembly altitude of twenty thousand feet for the cruise northeast.

  It was another goddamned demonstration, Dubro thought, and he wondered how the hell somebody like Robby Jackson could have thought it up, but he, too, had orders, and each of his carriers turned into the wind, fifty miles apart to launch forty aircraft each, and though these were all armed, they were not to take action unless provoked.

  46—Detachment

  "We're almost empty," the copilot said in a neutral voice, checking the manifest as part of the preflight ritual.

  "What is the matter with these people?" Captain Sato growled, looking over the flight plan and checking the weather. That was a short task. It would be cool and clear all the way down, with a huge high-pressure area taking charge of the Western Pacific. Except for some high winds in the vicinity of the Home Islands, it would make for a glassy-smooth ride all the way to Saipan, for the thirty-four passengers on the flight. Thirty-four! he raged. In an aircraft built for over three hundred!

  "Captain, we will be leaving those islands soon. You know that." It was clear enough, wasn't it? The people, the average men and women on the street, were no longer so much confused as frightened—or maybe even that wasn't the proper word. He hadn't seen anything like it. They felt-betrayed? The first newspaper editorials had come out to question the course their country had taken, and though the questions asked were mild, the import of them was not. It had all been an illusion. His country had not been prepared for war in a psychological sense any more than a physical one, and the people were suddenly realizing what was actually going on. The whispered reports of the murder—what else could one call it?—of some prominent zaibatsu had left the government in a turmoil. Prime Minister Goto was doing little, not even giving speeches, not even making appearances, lest he have to face questions for which he had no answers. But the faith of his captain, the copilot saw, had not yet been shaken.

  "No, we will not! How can you say that? Those islands are ours."

  "Time will tell," the copilot observed, returning to his work and letting it go at that. He did have his job to do, rechecking fuel and winds and other technical data necessary for the successful flight of a commercial airliner, all the things the passengers never saw, assuming that the flight crew just showed up and turned it on as though it were a taxicab.

  "Enjoy your sleep?"

  "You bet, Captain. I dreamed of a hot day and a hot woman." Richter stood up, and his movements belied his supposed comfort. I really am too old for this shit, the chief warrant officer thought. It was just fate and luck—if you could call it that—that had put him on the mission. No one else had as much time on the Comanche as he and his fellow warrants did, and somebody had decided that they had the brains to do it, without some goddamned colonel around to screw things up. And now he could boogie on out of here. He looked up to see a clear sky. Well, could be better. For getting in and getting out, better to have clouds.

  "Tanks are topped off."

  "Some coffee would be nice," he thought aloud.

  "Here you go, Mr. Richter." It was Vega, the first sergeant. "Nice iced coffee, like they serve in the best Florida hotels."

  "Oh, thanks loads, man." Richter took the metal cup with a chuckle.

  "Anything new on the way out?"

  This was not good, Claggett thought. The Aegis line had broken up, and now he had one of the goddamned things ten miles away. Worse still, there had been a helicopter in the air not long before, according to his ESM mast, which he'd briefly risked despite the presence of the world's best surveillance radar. But three Army helicopters were depending on him to be here, and that was that. Nobody had ever told him that harm's way was a safe place. Not for him. Not for them, either.

  "And our other friend?" he asked his sonar chief. The substantive reply was a shake of the head. The words merely confirmed it.

  "Off the scope again."

  There were thirty knots of surface wind, which was whipping up the waves somewhat and interfering with sonar performance. Even holding the destroyer was becoming difficult now that it was slowed to a patrol speed of no more than fifteen knots. The submarine off to the north was gone again. Maybe really gone, but it was dangerous to bank on that. Claggett checked his watch. He'd have to decide what to do in less than an hour.

  They would be going in blind, but that was an awkward necessity. Ordinarily they'd gather information with snooper aircraft, but the real effort here was in achieving surprise, and they couldn't compromise that. The carrier task force had avoided commercial air lanes, hidden under clouds, and generally worked very hard to make itself scarce for several days. Jackson felt confident that his presence was a secret, but maintaining it meant depending on spotty submarine reports of electronic activity on the islands, and all these did was to confirm that the enemy had several E-2C aircraft operating, plus a monster air-defense radar. It would be an encounter battle aloft. Well, they'd been training for that over the past two weeks.

  "Okay, last check," Oreza heard over the phone. "Kobler is exclusively military aircraft?"

  "That is correct, sir. Since the first couple of days, we haven't seen any commercial birds on that runway." He really wanted to ask what the questions were all about, but knew it was a waste of time. Well, maybe an oblique question: "You want us to stay awake tonight?"

  "Up to you, Master Chief. Now, can I talk to your guests?"

  "John? Phone," Portagee announced, then was struck nearly dumb by the normality of what he'd just said.

  "Clark," Kelly said, taking it. "Yes, sir…Yes, sir. Will do. Anything else? Okay, out." He hit the kill button. "Whose idea was this friggin' umbrella?"

  "Mine," Burroughs said, looking up from the card table. "It works, doesn't it?"

  "Sure as hell," John said, returning to the table and tossing a quarter in the pot. "Call."

  "Three ladies," the engineer announced.

  "Lucky son of a gun, too," Clark said, tossing his in.

  "Lucky hell! These sunzabitches ruined the best fishing trip I ever had."

  "John, you want I should make some coffee for tonight?"

  "He makes the best damned coffee, too." Burroughs collected the pot. He was six dollars ahead.

  "Portagee, it has been a while. Sure, go ahead. It's called black-gang coffee. Pete. Old seaman's tradition," Clark explained, also enjoying the pleasant inactivity.

  "John?" Ding asked.

  "Later, my boy." He picked up the deck and started shuffling adeptly. It would wait.

  "Sure you have enough fuel?" Checa asked. The supplies that had been dropped in included auxiliary tanks and wings, but Richter shook his head.

  "No prob. Only two hours to the refueling point."

  "Where's that?" The signal over the satcomm had said nothing more than PROCEED to PRIMARY, whatever that meant.

  "About two hours away," the warrant officer said. "Security, Captain, security."

  "You realize we've made a little history here."

  "Just so I live to tell somebody about it." Richter zipped up his flight suit, tucked in his scarf, and climbed aboard. "Clear!"

  The Rangers stood by one last time. They knew the ext
inguishers were worthless, but somebody had insisted on packing them along. One by one the choppers lifted off, their green bodies soon disappearing into the darkness. With that, the Rangers started dumping the remaining equipment into holes dug during the day. That required an hour, and all that remained was their walk to Hirose. Checa lifted his cellular phone and dialed the number he'd memorized.

  "Hello?" a voice said in English.

  "See you in the morning, I hope?" The question was in Spanish.

  "I'll be there, Señor."

  "Montoya, lead off," the Captain ordered. They'd keep to the treeline as far as they could. The Rangers clasped weapons so far unused, hoping to keep it that way.

  "I recommend two weapons," Lieutenant Shaw said. "Spread the bearings about ten degrees, converge them in from under the layer, and nail him fore and aft."

  "I like it." Claggett walked over to the plot for a final examination of the tactical situation. "Set it up."

  "So what gives?" one of the Army sergeants asked at the entrance to the attack center. The trouble with these damned submarines was that you couldn't just hang around and watch stuff.

  "Before we can refuel those helos of yours, we have to make that 'can go away," a petty officer explained as lightly as he could.

  "Is it hard?"

  "I guess we'd prefer he was someplace else. It puts us on the surface with—well, somebody's gonna know there's somebody around."

  "Worried?"

  "Nah," the sailor lied. Then both men heard the Captain speak.

  "Mr. Shaw, let's go to battle stations torpedo. Firing-point procedures."

  The Tomcats went off first, one every thirty seconds or so until a full squadron of twelve was aloft. Next went four EA-6B jammers, led by Commander Roberta Peach. Her flight of four broke up into elements of two, one to accompany each of the two probing Tomcat squadrons.

  Captain Bud Sanchez had the lead division of tour, unwilling to entrust the attack of his air group to anyone else. They were five hundred miles out, heading southwest. In many ways the attack was a repeat of another action in the early days of 1991, but with a few nasty additions occasioned by the few airfields available to the enemy and weeks of careful analysis of operational patterns. The Japanese were very regular in their patrols. It was a natural consequence of the orderliness of military life and for that reason a dangerous trap to fall into. He gave one look back at the formation's sparkling wakes and then focused his mind on the mission.