"You wish to establish dialogue, Mr. Tsuboi?" said the President for openers.
"That is correct," replied Tsuboi, rudely refusing to address the President by title.
The President decided to shoot from the hip. "Well, you certainly got my attention with that nuclear blast in Wyoming. Was that supposed to constitute a message?"
The impact of the President's words was heightened by his seeming indifference. The consummate politician, the President was a shrewd judge of human character. He quickly detected a perceptible tenseness in Tsuboi's eyes and deduced the Japanese was not dealing from a solid power base.
The international financial wizard and heir apparent to Suma's underworld and industrial empire tried to appear calm and in control, but the President's prior silence on the explosion had produced an unsettling effect. He and Yoshishu could not understand why the chief executive had virtually ignored it.
"We can save many words, Mr. President," said Tsuboi. "You know of our technical advances and superiority in defensive technology, and by now Senator Diaz, Congresswoman Smith, and your intelligence people have provided you with information on our facility on Soseki Island."
"I'm quite aware of your Dragon Center and the Kaiten Project," the President countered, mindful that Tsuboi failed to mention Hideki Suma. "And if you believe I won't order massive retaliation should you insanely detonate any more of your bomb cars, you're sadly mistaken."
"Our original intent was not to kill millions of people," Tsuboi insisted.
"I know what you intended, Mr. Tsuboi. Try it and Armageddon is yours."
"If you wish to go down in history as the greatest monster since Adolf Hitler for a totally irrational act, then there is little more to say."
"You must have wanted to say something, or why else did you contact me?"
Tsuboi paused, then pressed on. "I have certain proposals to throw on the table."
"I'm willing to hear them."
"You will call off your search of the cars. If any more are seized, the signals will be sent to detonate.
And since you once dropped such a weapon on my people, I assure you I will not hesitate to explode the remaining bombs in populated cities.
The President fought hard to suppress his growing anger. "A standoff then. You kill a few million of us, we decimate your entire population."
"No, you won't do that. The people of the great White Christian American nation will not condone such butchery."
"We're not all white or Christian."
"The minorities that undermine your culture will never back your stand."
"They're still Americans."
"Nevertheless, my people are committed and prepared to die for the new empire."
"That's a damned lie," the President shot back. "Until now, you and Suma and the rest of your gangland mob have operated in secret. The Japanese people have no idea you've placed their lives on the line for world economic dominance. They won't risk the devastation of their nation for a cause based on greed by a few criminals. You don't speak for them or your government."
The barest trace of a smile crossed Tsuboi's face, and the President knew he had been sucked in.
"You can avoid this horrible holocaust on both our countries by simply accepting my proposals."
"You mean demands."
"As you wish."
"State your case," said the President, his voice beginning to sound strained. He'd lost his edge and was angry with himself.
"There will be no nationalization or takeover of Japanese owned companies, nor judicial interference with any of our projected corporate or real estate buy-outs."
"That's no big deal. Nationalization has never been in the interests of the United States. No legislation has ever been considered on such an unconstitutional premise in our two hundred years. As to the latter, no Japanese firm that I know of has been barred by law from purchasing a business or land in the United States."
"Japanese citizens will not be required to present visas when entering the United States."
"You'll have to battle Congress on that one."
Tsuboi coldly continued. "No trade barriers or increased tariffs on Japanese products."
"What about your end?"
"Not negotiable," said Tsuboi, obviously prepared for the question. "There are sound reasons why many of your products are not welcome in Japan."
"Go on," ordered the President.
"The State of Hawaii becomes a territory of Japan."
The President had been forewarned of that unreasonable demand. "The good people of the island are already madder than hell over what you've done to their real estate prices. I doubt if they'd be willing to exchange the Stars and Stripes for the rising sun."
"Also the State of California."
"Impossible and outrageous are words that come to mind," the President said cynically. "Why stop now? What else do you want?"
"Since our money keeps your treasury afloat, we expect representation in your government, which includes a seat on your cabinet and our people highly placed in your State, Treasury, and Commerce departments."
"Who makes the selection of your people, you and Yoshishu or the leaders of your government?"
"Mr. Yoshishu and myself."
The President was aghast. It was like inviting organized crime to participate in government at the highest levels. "What you ask, Mr. Tsuboi, is absolutely unthinkable. The American people will never allow themselves to become economic slaves to foreign nationals."
"They'll pay a heavy price if you ignore my terms. On the other hand, if we have a say in the operation of the American government and business community, your whole economy will turn around drastically and provide a higher standard of living for your citizens."
The President's teeth clenched. "With a monopoly, prices and profits on Japanese products would skyrocket."
"You'd also have lower unemployment, and the national debt would diminish," Tsuboi went on as if the President was impotent.
"I don't have it in my power to make promises that Congress won't keep," said the President, his anger stilled, his mind jockeying for an upper hand. He lowered his eyes to appear perplexed. "You know your way around Washington, Mr. Tsuboi. You have an understanding of how our government works."
"I am quite aware of your executive limits. But there is much you can do without congressional approval."
"You must excuse me for a few moments while I digest the enormity of your demands." The President paused to gather his thoughts. He could not lie and pretend to cave in to all of Tsuboi's ridiculous demands. That would indicate an obvious ploy, a stall for time. He had to put up a brusque front and appear agitated. He looked up and stared directly at Tsuboi. "I cannot in good conscience accept what has to be unconditional terms of surrender.
"They are better terms than you offered us in nineteen forty-five."
"Our occupation was far more generous and benevolent than your people had any right to expect," the President said, his nails digging into the armrests of his chair.
"I am not here to discuss historic differences," Tsuboi stated bluntly. "You've heard the terms and know the consequences. Indecision or procrastination on your part will not delay tragedy."
There was no sign of a bluff in Tsuboi's eyes. The President well realized the threat was made more horrible by the cars hidden in heavily populated cities and the suicidal maniacs waiting for the signal to set off the bombs.
"Your extortion demands don't leave much room for negotiation."
"None whatsoever," Tsuboi replied in a tone that defied debate.
"I can't just snap my fingers and produce a miracle of cooperation with the political opposition," said the President, feigning exasperation. "You damned well know I can't dictate to Congress. Senator Diaz and Congresswoman Smith carry heavy weight in both houses, and they're already inflaming their fellow legislators against you."
Tsuboi shrugged indifferently. "I fully realize the wheels of your government grind in a swam
p of emotions, Mr. President. And your elected representatives vote along party lines, irrespective of the national good. But they will be persuaded to accept the inevitable once you inform them that two of the bomb cars are being driven around Washington as we talk."
Not good. The ball was back on the President's side of the court. He made a monumental effort to remain impassive and show strains of anger. "I'll need time."
"You have until three o'clock this afternoon, your time, to appear on national television with your advisers and the leaders of Congress standing behind you in a show of support as you announce the new cooperation agreements between Japan and the United States."
"You're asking too much."
"That is the way it must be," said Tsuboi. "And one more thing, Mr. President. Any indication of an attack on Soseki Island will be answered with the bomb cars. Do I make myself clear?"
"As crystal."
"Then, good morning. I shall look forward to watching you on television this afternoon."
Tsuboi's image swiftly dissolved and vanished.
The President looked up at a clock on one wall. Nine o'clock. Only six hours remained. The same time sequence Jordan projected for Pitt to set off the old atomic bomb and launch the submarine quake and tsunami.
"Oh, God," he whispered to the empty room. "What if it all goes wrong?"
<<69>>
Big Ben moved across the vast seascape at fifteen kilometers an hour, almost lightning speed for an immense vehicle traveling underwater through the abyssal mud. A great cloud of fine silt swirled in its wake, blossoming into the yawning blackness before dissipating and slowly settling back to the bottom.
Pitt studied a viewing screen connected to a laser-sonar unit that probed the seafloor ahead and enhanced it into three dimensions. The submarine desert held few surprises, and except for a detour around a narrow but deep rift, he was able to make good time.
Precisely forty-seven minutes after he detached the parachutes and set Big Ben in motion, the hard outline of the B-29 appeared and grew until it filled the monitor. The coordinates from the Pyramider satellite that were programmed into the DSMV's navigation computer had put him right on the target.
Pitt was close enough now to see wreckage creeping under the far edges of the exterior lights. He slowed Big Ben and circled the bleak and broken aircraft. It looked like a cast-off toy on the bottom of a backyard pond. Pitt stared at it with the rapture experienced by divers the first time they approach a manmade object in the sea. To be the first to see or touch a sunken automobile, a missing plane, or a lost shipwreck is a fearful yet melancholy experience, only shared by those who daringly walk through a haunted house after midnight.
Dennings' Demons had sunk a little over a meter in the silt. One engine was missing and the starboard wing was twisted backward and up like a grotesque arm reaching for the surface. The blades of the remaining three propellers had folded back from the impact with the water like drooping petals on a dying flower.
The three-story-high tail section showed the effects of shell fire. It had broken away and lay several meters behind the main fuselage and slightly off to one side. The tail gunner's section was shattered and riddled, the rusting barrels of the 20-millimeter cannons dipped into the mud.
The aluminum surfaces of the 30-meter-long tubular fuselage were covered with slime and encrustations, but the framed glass windows encircling the bow were still clear. And the little demon painted under the pilot's side window was surprisingly clean and free of scale and growth. Pitt could have sworn the beady little eyes stared back at him and the lips pulled back in a satanic grin.
He knew better than to let his imagination run wild and envision skeletons of the crew still at their stations, skulls with jaws dropped in deathly silence, eye sockets empty and unseeing. Pitt had spent enough time under the sea swimming through sunken vessels to know the soft organic substances of the human body were the first to go, quickly consumed by bottom-dwelling sea creatures. Then the bones, eventually dissolving in the icy cold of saltwater. Strange as it seems, clothing would be the last to disintegrate, especially leather flight jackets and boots. In time, even those would disappear, as well as the entire aircraft.
"I have visual on the target," he announced to Sandecker in the C-5, flying overhead in the night.
"What is the condition?" Sandecker's disembodied voice came back quickly.
"One wing is heavily damaged. The tail is broken off, but the main fuselage is intact."
"The bomb is in the forward bomb bay. You'll have to position Big Ben at an angle where the leading edge of the wing joins the fuselage. Then make your cut across the aircraft's roof."
"Luck was a lady tonight," said Pitt. "The starboard wing is torn back, offering easy access. I can move into perfect position to slice through the bulkheads from the side."
Pitt maneuvered the DSMV until its manipulator arms reached over the forward bomb bay of the aircraft. He inserted his hand into a glovelike actuator that electronically controlled the mechanical arms and selected a multidirectional metal-cutting wheel from one of three tools coupled to the wrist of the left manipulator. Operating the system as if it was an extension of his hand and arm, he laid out and measured the cut on a monitor that projected interior cutaway views of the aircraft's structural components. He could perform the difficult operation by observing it on video from several close-up angles instead of relying on direct sight through the transparent bow. He positioned the wheel against the aluminum skin of the plane and programmed the dimensions and the depth of the cut into the computer. Then he switched on the tool and watched it attack the body of Dennings' Demons as precisely as a surgeon's scalpel.
The fine teeth of the whirling disk sliced through the aged aluminum of the airframe with the ease of a razor blade through a balsa-wood model glider. There were no sparks, no heated glow from friction. The metal was too soft and the water too icy. Support struts and bundled wiring cables were also efficiently severed. When the cut was finally completed fifty minutes later, Pitt extended the opposite manipulator.
The wrist on this one was fitted with a large gripper assembly sprouting pincerlike fingers.
The gripper bit through the aluminum skin and into a structural bulkhead, the pincers closed, and the arm slowly raised up and back, ripping away a great piece of the aircraft's side and roof. Pitt carefully swung the manipulator on a ninety-degree angle and very slowly lowered the torn wreckage into the silt without raising a blinding cloud of silt.
Now he had an opening measuring three by four meters. The Fat Man-type bomb, code-named Mother's Breath, was clearly visible from the side, hanging securely and eerily from a large shackle and adjustable sway braces.
Pitt still had to carve his way through sections of the crawl tunnel that traveled above the bomb bay, connecting the cockpit with the waist-gunner compartment. Part of it had already been partially removed, as were the bomb-bay catwalks, so the immense bomb could be squeezed inside the bowels of the plane. He also had to cut away the guide rails that were installed to insure the bomb's fins didn't snag during the drop.
Again the operation went smoothly. The remaining barriers were soon dropped in a pile on top of the wreckage already sliced away. The next part of the bomb's removal was the trickiest.
Mother's Breath seemed festered with death and destruction. Nine feet in length and five feet in diameter, the dimensions given when it was built, it looked like a big fat ugly egg dyed in rust with boxed fins on one end and a zipper around its middle.
"Okay, I'm going for the bomb," Pitt reported to Sandecker.
"You'll have to use both manipulators to remove and transport it," said Sandecker. "She weighed close to five tons by the old weight measurement."
"I need one arm to cut away the shackle and sway braces."
"The stress is too great for one manipulator. It can't support the bomb without damage."
"I'm aware of that, but I have to wait until after I sever the shackle cable before I can r
eplace the cutting disk with a gripper. Only then do I dare attempt the lift."
"Hold on," Sandecker ordered. "I'll check, and be right back to you."
While he waited, Pitt put the cutting tool in place and clamped the gripper on the lifting eye beneath the shackle.
"Dirk?"
"Come in, Admiral."
"Let the bomb drop."
"Say again."
"Cut through the shackle cables and let the bomb fall free. Mother's Breath is an implosion-type bomb and could survive a hard shock."
All Pitt saw as he stared at the horrific monstrosity dangling only a few meters away was the erupting fireball repeated constantly in documentary films.
"Are you there?" Sandecker inquired, the nervousness detectable in his voice.
"Is that a fact or a rumor?" Pitt came back
"Historical fact."
"If you hear a big underwater boom, you'll know you spoiled my day."
Pitt took a long breath, exhaled, unconsciously closed his eyes, and directed the cutting disk to slash the shackle cables. Half rusted through after nearly fifty years beneath the sea, the strands quickly parted under the onslaught of the disk's teeth, and the great bomb fell onto the closed bomb-bay doors, the only explosion coming from the silt that had seeped in and accumulated.
For an eerie, lonely minute Pitt sat there numb, almost feeling the silence as he waited for the sediment to fade and the bomb to reappear.
"I didn't hear a boom," Sandecker notified him with infuriating calm.
"You will, Admiral," Pitt said, catching up and corralling rational thought, "you will."
<<70>>
Hope was hanging in and rising. Slightly less than two hours to go, and Big Ben was barreling over the seabed with Mother's Breath securely gripped in the pincers of its manipulators. Like the final minutes of a ball game when the outcome and score are still in doubt, the tension inside the C-5 Galaxy and in the White House was becoming heavier as the operation approached its peak.
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