Debt of Honor jr-6

by Tom Clancy

  "In here, please," the Lieutenant said.

  He walked into the building with consummate dignity, his uniform cap tucked inside his left arm, his back erect, hardly looking at anything, his eyes fixed on the distant wall of the building until the lieutenant stopped and pulled the rubber sheet off the body.

  "Yes, that is my son." He tried not to look, and blessedly the face was not grossly disfigured, possibly protected by the flight helmet while the rest of the body had burned as he sat trapped in his wrecked fighter. But when he closed his eyes he could see his only child writhing in the cockpit, less than an hour after his brother had drowned. Could destiny be so cruel as this? And how was it that those who had served his country had to die, while a mere transporter of civilians was allowed to pass through the American fighters with contempt?

  "The squadron command believes that he shot down an American fighter before turning back," the Lieutenant offered. He'd just made that up, but he had to say something, didn't he?

  "'Thank you, Lieutenant. I have to return to my aircraft now." No more words were passed on the way hack to the airport. The army officer left the man with his grief and his dignity.

  Sato was on his flight deck twenty minutes later, the 747 already pre-flighted, and, he was sure, completely filled with people returning home under the promise of safe passage by the Americans. The ground tractor pushed the Boeing away from the jetway. It was driven by a native, and the gesture he flashed to the cockpit on decoupling from their aircraft was not exactly a friendly one. But the final insult came as he waited for clearance to take off. A fighter came in to land, not a blue Eagle, it was a haze-gray aircraft with NAVY painted on the engine nacelles.

  "Nice touch, Bud. Grease job," Jackson said as the canopy came up.

  "We aim to please, sir," Sanchez replied nervously. As he taxied off to the right, the welcoming committee, such as it was, all wore green fatigues and carried rifles. When the aircraft stopped, an aluminum extension ladder was laid alongside the aircraft. Jackson climbed out first, and at the bottom of the ladder a field-grade officer saluted him correctly.

  "That's a Tomcat," Oreza said, handing over the binoculars. "And that officer ain't no Jap."

  "Sure as hell," Clark confirmed, watching the black officer get into a jeep. What effect would this have on his tentative orders? Attractive as it might be to put the arm on Raizo Yamata, even getting close enough to evaluate the possibility—his current instructions—was not a promising undertaking. He had also reported on conditions on Saipan, and that word, he thought, was good. The Japanese troops he'd seen earlier in the day were not the least bit jaunty, though some officers, especially the junior ones, seemed very enthusiastic about their mission, whatever that was right now. It was about what you expected of lieutenants in any army.

  The Governor's house, set on the local Capitol Hill next to the convention center, seemed a pleasant enough structure. Jackson was sweating now. The tropical sun was hot enough, and his nomex flight suit was just too good an insulator. Here a colonel saluted him and led him inside.

  Robby knew General Arima on sight, remembering the intelligence file he'd seen in the Pentagon. They were of about the same height and build, he saw. The General saluted. Jackson, bareheaded and under cover, was not allowed to do so under naval regulations. It seemed the proper response not to, anyway. He nodded his head politely, and left it at that.

  "General, can we speak in private?"

  Arima nodded and led Jackson into what looked like a combination den/office. Robby took a seat, and his host was kind enough to hand over a glass of ice water.

  "Your position is…?"

  "I am Commander Task Force Seventy-Seven. I gather you are the commander of Japanese forces on Saipan." Robby drank the water down. It annoyed him greatly to be sweating, but there was no helping that.

  "Correct."

  "In that case, sir, I am here to request your surrender." He hoped the General knew the semantic difference between "request" and "demand," the customary verb for the occasion.

  "I am not authorized to do that."

  "General, what I'm about to say to you is the position of my government. You may leave the islands in peace. You may take your light weapons with you. Your heavy equipment and aircraft will remain behind for later determination of status. For the moment we require that all Japanese citizens leave the island, pending the restoration of normal relations between our countries."

  "I am not authorized to—"

  "I'll be saying the same thing on Guam in two hours, and the American Ambassador in Tokyo is now requesting a meeting with your government."

  "You do not have the ability to take this one island back, much less all of them."

  "That is true," Jackson conceded. "It is also true that we can easily stop all ships from entering or leaving Japanese ports for the indefinite future. We can similarly cut off this island from air and sea traffic."

  "That is a threat," Arima pointed out.

  "Yes, sir, it is. In due course your country will starve. Its economy will come to a complete hall. That serves no one's purposes." Jackson paused.

  "Up until this point only military people have suffered. They pay us to take chances. If it goes any further, then everyone suffers more, but your country most of all. It will also generate additional bad feelings on both sides, when our actions should be to restore normal relations as rapidly as circumstances allow."

  "I am not authorized to—"

  "General, fifty years ago you could have said that, and it was the custom of your armed forces to fight to the last man. It was also the custom of your armed forces to deal with people in the lands you occupied in a way that even you must find barbaric—I say that because you have behaved honorably in all respects or so all my information tells me. For that I thank you, sir," Jackson went on. speaking evenly and politely. "This is not the nineteen-forties. I wasn't born before the end of that war, and you were a toddler then. That sort of behavior is a thing of the past. There is no place for it in the world today."

  "My troops have behaved properly," Arima confirmed, not knowing what else to say under the circumstances.

  "Human life is a precious commodity, General Arima, far too precious to be wasted unnecessarily. We have limited our combat actions to militarily important targets. We have not as yet inflicted harm on the innocent, as you have not. But if this war continues, that will change, and the consequences will be harder on you than on us. There is no honor in that for either side. In any case, I must now fly to Guam. You know how to reach me by radio."

  Jackson stood.

  "I must await orders from my government."

  "I understand," Robby replied, thankful that Arima meant that he would follow those orders from his government.

  Usually when Al Trent came to the White House it was in the company of Sam Fellows, the ranking minority member of the Select Committee, but not this time, because Sam was in the other party. A member of his party's Senate leadership was there also. The hour made this a political meeting, with most of the White House staffers gone for the day, and a President allowing himself a release from the stress of his office.

  "Mr. President, I gather that things have gone well?"

  Durling nodded cautiously. "Prime Minister Goto is not yet able to meet with the Ambassador. We're not sure why, but Ambassador Whiting says not to worry. The public mood over there is shifting our way rapidly."

  Trent took a drink from the Navy steward who served in the Oval Office. That part of the White House staff must have kept a list of the favored drinks for the important. In Al's case it was vodka and tonic, Finnish Absolut vodka, a habit begun while a student at Tufts University, forty years earlier.

  "Jack said all along that they didn't know what they were getting into."

  "Bright boy, Ryan," the senior Senator agreed. "He's done you quite a few favors, Roger." Trent noted with annoyance that this stalwart member of what he liked to call "the upper house" felt the right to first-na
me the President in private. Typical senator, the House member thought.

  "Bob Fowler gave you some good advice," Trent allowed.

  The President nodded agreement. "True, and you're the one who put the bug in his ear, Al, aren't you?"

  "Guilty." The word was delivered with a laugh.

  "Well, I have an idea I want to float on the both of you," Durling said.

  Captain Checa's squad of Rangers made the last treeline just after noon, local time, concluding a thoroughly murderous trek through snow and mud. There was a single-lane road below. This part of town must have been some sort of summer resort, the Captain thought. The hotel parking lots were almost entirely empty, though one had a minibus in it. The Captain pulled the cellular phone from his pocket and speed-dialed the proper number.

  "Hello?"

  "Señor Nomuri?"

  "Ah, Diego! I've been waiting for hours. How was your nature hike?" the voice asked with a laugh.

  Checa was formulating his answer when the lights on the minibus flashed twice. Ten minutes later all the men were inside, where they found some hot drinks and room to change their clothing. On the drive down the mountain, the CIA officer listened to the radio, and the soldiers could see his demeanor relax as he did so. It would be a while longer before the Rangers did the same.

  Captain Sato performed another perfect landing at Narita International Airport, entirely without thinking about it, not even hearing the congratulatory comment of his copilot as he completed the run-out. Outwardly calm, inside the pilot was a vacuum, performing his customary job robotically. The copilot did not interfere, thinking that the mechanics of handling the aircraft would itself be some solace to his captain, and so he watched Sato taxi the 747 right up to the jetway, stopping again with the usual millimetric precision. In less than a minute the doors were opened and passengers clambered off. Through the windows of the terminal they could see a crowd of people waiting at the gate, mainly the wives and children of people who had flown so recently to Saipan in order to establish themselves as …citizens, able to vote in the newest Home Island. But not now. Now they were coming home, and families welcomed them as those who might have been lost, now safe again where they belonged. The copilot shook his head at the absurdity of it all, not noticing that Sato's face still hadn't changed at all. Ten minutes later the flight crew left the aircraft. A relief crew would take it back to Saipan in a few hours to continue the exodus of special flights.

  Out in the terminal, they saw others waiting at other gates, outwardly nervous from their expressions, though many were devouring afternoon papers just delivered to the airport's many gift shops.

  Goto Falls was the headline: Koga to Form New Government.

  The international gates were rather less full than was the norm. Caucasian businessmen stood about, clearly leaving the country, hut now looking about in curiosity, so many of them with little smiles as they scanned the terminal, looking mainly at the flights inbound from Saipan. Their thoughts could hardly have been more obvious, especially the people waiting to board flights eastward.

  Sato saw it too. He stopped and looked at a paper dispenser but only needed to see the headline to understand. Then he looked at the foreigners at their gates and muttered, "Gaijin…" It was the only unnecessary word he'd uttered in two hours, and he said nothing else on the way to his car. Perhaps some sleep would help him, the copilot thought, heading off to his own

  "Aren't we supposed to go back out and—"

  "And do what, Ding?" Clark asked, pocketing the car keys after a thirty-minute drive around the southern half of the island. "Sometimes you just let things be. I think this is one of those times, son."

  "You think it's over?" Pete Burroughs asked.

  "Well, take a look around."

  Fighters were still orbiting overhead. Cleanup crews had just about cleared the debris from the periphery of Kobler Field, but the fighters had not moved over to the international airport, whose runways were busy with civilian airliners. To the east of the housing tract the Patriot crews were also standing alert, but those not in the control vans were standing together in small knots, talking among themselves instead of doing the usual soldierly make-work. Local citizens were demonstrating now, in some cases loudly, at various sites around the island, and nobody was arresting them. In some cases officer backed by armed soldiers asked, politely, for the demonstrators to stay away from the troops, and the local people prudently heeded the warnings. On their drive. Clark and Chavez had seen half a dozen such incidents, and in all cases it was the same: the soldiers not angered so much as embarrassed by it all. It wasn't the sign of an army ready to fight a battle, John thought, and more importantly, the officers were keeping their men under tight control. Thai meant orders from above to keep things cool.

  "You think it's over?" Oreza asked

  "If we're lucky, Portagee."

  Prime Minister Koga's first official act after forming a cabinet was to summon Ambassador Charles Whiting. A political appointee whose last four weeks in the country had been very tense and frightening indeed, Whiting noted first of all that the guard detail around the embassy was cut by half.

  His official car had a police escort to the Diet Building. There were cameras to record his arrival at the VIP entrance, but they were kept well back, and two brand-new ministers conducted him inside.

  "Thank you for coming so quickly, Mr. Whiting."

  "Mr. Prime Minister, speaking for myself, I am very pleased to answer your invitation." The two men shook hands, and really that was it, both of them knew, though their conversation had to cover numerous issues.

  "You are aware that I had nothing at all to do—"

  Whiting just raised his hand. "Excuse me, sir. Yes, I know that, and I assure you that my government knows that. Please, we do not need to establish your goodwill. This meeting," the Ambassador said generously, "is proof positive of that."

  "And the position of your government?"

  At exactly nine in the morning, Vice President Edward Kealty's car pulled into the underground parking garage of the State Department. Secret Service agents conducted him to the VIP elevator that took him to the seventh floor, where one of Brett Hanson's personal assistants led him to the double doors of the office of the Secretary of State.

  "Hello, Ed," Hanson said, standing and coming to meet the man he'd known in and out of public life for two decades.

  "Hi, Brett." Kealty was not downcast. In the past few weeks he'd come to terms with many things. Later today he would make his public statement, apologizing to Barbara Linders and several other people by name. But before that he had to do what the Constitution required. Kealty reached into his coat pocket and handed over an envelope to the Secretary of State. Hanson took it and read the two brief paragraphs that announced Kealty's resignation from his office. There were no further words. The two old friends shook hands and Kealty made his way back out of the building. He would return to the White House, where his personal staff was already collecting his belongings. By evening the office would be ready for a new occupant.

  "Jack, Chuck Whiting is delivering our terms, and they're pretty much what you suggested last night."

  "You might catch some political heat from that," Ryan observed, inwardly relieved that President Durling was willing to run the risk.

  The man behind the ornate desk shook his head. "I don't think so, but if it happens, I can take it. I want orders to go out for our forces to stand down, defensive action only."

  "Good."

  "It's going to be a long while before things return to normal."

  Jack nodded. "Yes, sir, but we can still manage things in as civilized a way as possible. Their citizens were never behind this. Most of the people responsible for it are already dead. We have to make that clear. Want me to handle it?"

  "Great idea. Let's talk about that tonight. How about you bring your wife in for dinner. Just a private one for a change," the President suggested with smile.

  "I think Cathy would li
ke that."

  Professor Catherine Ryan was just finishing up a procedure. The atmosphere in the operating room was more akin to something in an electronics factory. She didn't even have to wear surgical gloves, and the scrub rules here were nothing like those for conventional surgery. The patient was only mildly sedated while the surgeon hovered over the gunsightlike controls of her laser, searching around for the last bad vessel on the surface of the elderly man's retina. She lined up the crosshairs as carefully as a man taking down a Rocky Mountain sheep from half a mile, and thumbed the control. There was a brief flash of green light and the vein was "welded" shut.

  "Mr. Redding, that's it," she said quietly, touching his hand.

  "Thank you, doctor," the man said somewhat sleepily.

  Cathy Ryan flipped off the power switch on the laser system and got off her stool, stretching as she did so. In the corner of the room, Special Agent Andrea Price, still disguised as a Hopkins faculty member, had watched the entire procedure. The two women went outside to find Professor Bernard Katz, his eyes beaming over his Bismarck mustache.

  "Yeah, Bernie?" Cathy said, making her notes for Mr. Redding's chart.

  "You have room on the mantel, Cath?" That brought her eyes up. Katz handed over a telegram, still the traditional way of delivering such news. "You just bagged a Lasker Award, honey." Katz then delivered a hug that almost made Andrea Price reach for her gun.

  "Oh, Bernie!"

  "You earned it, doctor. Who knows, maybe you'll get a free trip to Sweden, too. Ten years of work It's one hell of a clinical breakthrough, Cathy."

  Other faculty members came up then, applauding and shaking her hand and for Caroline Muller Ryan, MD, F.A.C.S., it was a moment to match the arrival of a baby. Well, she thought, almost…

  Special Agent Price heard her beeper go off and headed to the nearest phone, taking the message down and returning to her principal.

  "Is it really that good?" she finally asked.

  "Well, it's about the top American award in medicine," Katz said while Cathy basked in the glow of respect from her colleagues. "You get a nice little copy of a Greek statue, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, I think, the Goddess Nike. Some money, too. But mainly what you get is the knowledge that you really made a difference. She's a great doc."