High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “Give us five minutes, Lieutenant, and then get your ass out of there.”

  “To where?”

  “We’re heading off shore. We’ll get choppers back for you. Call them in when you’ve secured an L-Z.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain, we’ll do our best.”

  “I have sounds of breakup,” SSGN Strelka’s chief sonarman, Lieutenant Mikhail Abrashkin said. “Hull compressions now. Machinery breaking loose.”

  Captain First Rank Vadim Lestov listened on a spare headset. He agreed. It was the Sovremennyy going down. She’d probably been attacked by the Japanese Air Self Defense Forces based on Hokkaido. Maybe Misawa. Their sonar sweeps over the past couple of hours showed no MSDF warships in the near vicinity. But had the Sovremennyy managed to let her missiles fly against Wakkanai before she was destroyed?

  Lestov took off the headset and walked back to the control room. “Come to periscope depth, I want to take a look,” he told his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Viktor Savin.

  “Aye, Captain. Officer of the Boat, make your depth one-eight meters.”

  “Aye, one-eight meters,” the starpom repeated. Lestov called his ELINT officer, Lieutenant Vladimir Bychkov. “We’re coming to periscope depth. Put up your snoop-heads. I want to know what’s up there. Look sharp.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Lestov hung up. “Prepare for emergency dive on my orders,” he told his XO. The Strelka was a Sierra-class attack submarine equipped with nuclear weapons. Just her presence in these waters was tantamount to a declaration of war. However, sinking a destroyer was one thing, while killing a cruise-missile submarine was something completely different. The radar station at Wakkanai would be destroyed. He would make sure of it.

  “Is it your opinion that the attack on Wakkanai was diversionary in nature?” Prime Minister Enchi asked his Director General of Defense.

  “It’s certainly worth considering,” Hironaka said.

  “The radar station was heavily damaged and there will probably be some loss of lives. The first reports are sketchy.” He’d taken the call from Misawa a minute ago.

  “In retaliation for our attack in the Tatar Strait.”

  “But it keeps our attention to the north,” Hironaka argued. “Combined with the riots and the movement of the Seventh Fleet offshore, it gives one pause for thought, Mr. Prime Minister. We are vulnerable.”

  “Has there been any word about Kamiya and Kobayashi?” Enchi asked Nobunaga.

  “Nothing yet,” the MITI chief said. “They’re probably in hiding.”

  “Traitors.”

  Nobunaga started to reply, but Hironaka motioned him off.

  “We should give thought to blocking the Seventh Fleet.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Forty-First Destroyer Division will be in place at Point Miura slightly ahead of the Seventh’s lead escort ships. We could hold them in Tokyo Bay.”

  This was developing into a nightmare from which Enchi wished he could awaken. “To what end?”

  “To allow us time to regain control of the tactical situation,” Hironaka said. “We could declare an emergency aboard one or more of our ships, and ask for help. It would not be refused.”

  “Have you spoken with Admiral Ryland?” Enchi asked.

  Hironaka shook his head. “He is unavailable to our repeated queries.”

  “Try again,” Enchi ordered.

  “We must defend ourselves, Mr. Prime Minister.”

  “Yes, we will defend ourselves, Hironaka-san. But we will initiate no action. Do you object to that?”

  “No,” Hironaka said.

  “Try again to reach Admiral Ryland.”

  “Larry Cross is dead,” Secor said, putting down the phone. “That was Bethesda. They lost him aboard the chopper enroute from Andrews. Massive injuries to his head and to the left side of his torso. His heart was badly damaged.”

  President Lindsay was stunned. Cross had been his Rock of Gibraltar. No matter the situation, he kept his head. His counsel was always calm.

  “What about Sally and the others?”

  “Sally is dead. There’ll be some survivors. Not as many as the rescue teams first thought, but there’ll be some.” Secor looked away momentarily. “The bastards killed them.” His voice was filled with emotion. “Jim, it’s murder, no matter how you slice it.”

  Part of Mueller’s tradecraft was instinct and an almost preternatural attention to detail. Those inborn skills had kept him alive in situations where other men of his profession would have been killed. He parked the Probe two blocks from Reid’s house on R Street, locked his bag in the trunk, and went the rest of the way on foot. Reid was the weak link, and Mueller had a hunch that the FBI had come to the same conclusion. He stopped at the window of a gift shop on the corner and watched the street for a full minute. Something was familiar. It nagged at the back of his head, a detail he’d seen before.

  Volta Place. Tallerico’s house not far from here. When he and Zerkel had come out of the house they’d walked past a GMC conversion van with smoked-glass windows. The plates were SMP—something. The same van was parked across the street a half-block from Reid’s house.

  Associated Press Tokyo Bureau Chief Sam Norita held the telephone in the crook of his neck as he furiously made notes on his computer. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Heidinori Inoguchi, who was a top aide to the director general of defense, was practically making a declaration of war.

  “We will defend ourselves. You have to see that in order to understand what is happening,” the aide said.

  “Besides the riots at this moment, the defense forces are engaged in two battles, as you say—one with the Russian navy north of Hokkaido. What about the other?”

  “Forget the riots. They don’t mean a thing. In hours they will be over. What’s really happening is that the U.S. Seventh Fleet is making for sea and there’s a strong possibility that we will have to stop them at the mouth of Tokyo Bay.”

  Norita looked up and frantically motioned for the overnight editor, Ben Brown, to listen in on the call. “What do you mean?”

  “The second battle is in the south, near Okinawa, between one of our maritime defense ships and a U.S. destroyer and two frigates.”

  Brown picked up the phone.

  “Are you saying shots have been fired between our forces?” Norita asked. He’d been born in Honolulu and was a U.S. citizen. But he’d been raised by his grandparents and spoke perfect Japanese. Inoguchi, who was a good source, always spoke to him in Japanese and treated him as if he were Japanese.

  “Yes. But it is very confusing here because of the American attitude over the air crashes. We are being blamed, but it is not Morning Star. It is not us.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is Morning Star?”

  “I’ve already said too much. If you can reach Sokichi Kamiya in Kobe he will tell you more. But if there is war between Nippon and the United States we will fight for our home waters. Let no one make that mistake.”

  Inoguchi broke the connection, and Norita brought up an A-wire direct circuit to AP headquarters in New York City.

  “Sokichi Kamiya is the big dog at Mintori Assurance. See if you can get to him and find out what the hell Morning Star is supposed to mean,” he told Brown.

  His circuit came up.

  A0023 FLASH

  TOKYO—JAPANESE MILITARY FORCES BATTLE

  U.S. NAVY.

  EOM 1720 GMT

  Normally such an important story would not be filed unless two independent sources had offered corroboration. But Inoguchi had never given him false information before, and this was too stunning to sit on.

  He started his follow-up to the flash.

  A0024 BULLETIN DRAFT

  TOKYO (AP)—A reliable source in the Japanese government early Monday morning said that a ship of the Maritime Self Defense Force was engaged in a sea battle with a U.S. Navy destroyer and two U.S. Navy frigates somewhere ne
ar the island of Okinawa south of the Japanese home islands.

  The Japanese police were all dead, their bodies hacked to pieces and trampled by a mob that was completely out of control. The American Marines had pulled back through the main gates and blocked the road with the two APCs and Major Ross’s HumVee. They had fired their weapons, and at first Hatoyama and the others in front had fallen back, thinking they were under attack. But when they realized that no one was being hit, that the Marines were firing into the air, they surged forward. The noise they made was something special. It was raw and powerful. Animalistic. Like a dinosaur on the rampage. Nothing could stand up to them, Hatoyama thought.

  “Kamiya-san, pardon this intrusion, but there is another telephone call for you,” his secretary said at the open shoji screen.

  Kamiya was watching CNN at his secret home in the hills overlooking Kobe and the harbor. “I will take it here,” he said.

  “Pardon me, but it is not Kobayashi-san, Nobunaga-san, or Hironaka-san.”

  Kamiya looked up in surprise. Those were supposedly the only three men of any importance in Japan who knew he was here.

  “It is an American journalist with the Associated Press in Tokyo who wishes to speak to you. About Morning Star.”

  A callused hand closed around his heart. Chi and jin, but above all, yu—courage. He who shows no sign of joy or anger is the true stoic. He has true self-control. Kamiya composed himself.

  “Tell this man that I am not here.”

  “Hai, Kamiya-san,” his secretary said.

  “Then telephone Kobayashi and the others that Morning Star should go ahead as planned. When that is finished, call my helicopter crew. I wish to go to Yamagata-san’s home, where I will await the outcome.”

  “Hai, ” his secretary said, withdrawing, and leaving Kamiya to his thoughts.

  “Fall back,” Green ordered. “Jones, call in the choppers. We’ll give them the coordinates as soon as we have them.”

  “If we leave the APCs here, it might slow them down long enough for us to make the parking lot in front of base HQ,” Wentz suggested.

  Green didn’t think they would make it either way, but her idea was as good as anything he was coming up with. He gave the order, and they headed away from the gates as fast as they could run, encumbered by combat gear.

  “Choppers are eight minutes out, L-T,” the radio operator reported.

  “Tell them to pick us up in front of HQ. And pour on the fucking gas.”

  The Marines had left the keys in the ignitions of the APCs and the HumVee. It was a mistake. Hatoyama and a couple of the others quickly moved the vehicles out of the way. A cry went up from the crowd as it poured through the gates and caught sight of the fleeing Americans.

  “They have called for helicopters to rescue them,” Ashia told Hatoyama on the run. He carried a walkie-talkie. “But it will take them eight minutes to get here.”

  “Where will they land?”

  “Base headquarters.”

  “Kill them!” Hatoyama shouted into the bullhorn. His amplified voice boomed and rebounded off the buildings. “Kill!”

  The mob spread across the road, some of the people racing down side streets when they realized where the Marines were headed. The noise seemed to double and re-double every few seconds. All sanity was gone. A blood lust was on them. They had a common enemy, and a fifty-two-year-old frustration that had come down to this place now. Their collective anger had coalesced on the soldiers running from them. They were like warriors on the battlefield, adrenalin transforming them into samurai on a righteous quest.

  The Marines would not fire back until it was too late for them. They were too disciplined. They’d proven that when they’d abandoned the main gate and called for the evacuation. Americans had become soft. Too soft.

  Three minutes after they’d stormed the gates, the first volleys of gunfire erupted from the mob, and at least two Marines went down in sight of the base headquarters parking lot. Almost immediately thousands of rounds poured into the platoon as the first helicopters, their searchlights sweeping the ground ahead of them, appeared in the distance.

  They’d won, Hatoyama thought triumphantly. Nothing would stop them now.

  Franson pulled the car across the road a hundred yards from Kennedy’s dark gray Range Rover. The overcast had deepened, yet the wind had picked up, blowing snow in ragged plumes from the woods. “In fifteen minutes this place is going to be crawling with federal agents. Are you going to tell us what’s going on?”

  “Kennedy and his wife have been kidnapped by a man named Arimoto Yamagata,” McGarvey said. “He’s probably going to try to use them as hostages so he can get out of here.”

  “Wait a minute,” McLaren interrupted. “Are you saying now that you think it was the Japanese who attacked us?”

  “They might have planned something, but I think someone else got involved. Maybe by accident, I don’t know. Yamagata should have some of the answers.”

  “Are you talking about Bruno Mueller?”

  “I think Mueller killed Phil Carrara and another guy from the CIA because they were getting too close. They’ve been targeting Guerin and a company called InterTech, which I think is a link back to the Japanese.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Franson demanded.

  “A lot of people have already been killed. I’m trying to stop it from escalating.”

  “Okay, so we wait here until we get some backup, and then we go in and take them,” McLaren suggested.

  “If he takes a hit he won’t do us any good,” McGarvey argued. “He’s probably got help, and they’ll fight back if they’re cornered.”

  “You thinking about taking them one on one?”

  “I’d have a better chance alone.”

  “I’ll go with you,” McLaren said.

  “Bullshit!” Franson started to turn, but Joyce grabbed his arm.

  “Sorry, Mr. Franson, but you and I will wait here for the others.”

  “Sonofabitch!”

  McGarvey withdrew the pistol from Franson’s neck, eased the hammer down, and climbed out of the car. He started down the road. McLaren caught up with him as he screwed the silencer on the end of the Walther’s barrel, then pulled the ejector slide back, jacking a round into the empty firing chamber.

  The FBI agent laughed. “Don’t tell Franson you wouldn’t have shot him. He’d probably kill you with his bare hands.”

  FBI Special Agents Kris Wentworth and Brian Strong had been on surveillance duty since six in the morning, and they were bored.

  “How about some music?” Strong suggested.

  “I don’t care,” Wentworth said, lighting a cigarette. They’d not listened to the radio all morning.

  Reid had been re-scheduled to fly on Air Force Two, and they would have had the rest of the day off. Sundays were slow unless they were on special assignment like now. But the dumb sonofabitch had driven his car off the Suitland Parkway five miles short of Andrews. By the time the tow truck had come to pull him out of the ditch he was too late to catch the flight. They’d monitored his two cellular calls from the car: one to the AAA and the other to the White House. But it hadn’t seemed right to Wentworth. He’d bet anything that Reid had deliberately missed the flight.

  “Hang on,” Strong said from the rear observation position.

  Wentworth looked up from the viewfinder of the powerful telephoto camera lens as a yellow Corvette came down the street, turned up the driveway, and parked next to Reid’s house. A young, good-looking woman got out of the car and went to the door.

  “Who is she?” Strong asked.

  “I don’t know. Run a trace on the plates.” Wentworth studied her through the lens. She rang the bell, and a few moments later Reid came to the door and let her in. It was odd the way she’d clutched her purse, as if she was afraid she’d drop it, as if she were carrying something important.

  “Dominique Kilbourne, Watergate Apartments,” Strong read from the computer screen.
“No warrants.”

  Kilbourne, Wentworth thought. The name was vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t dredge it up. “See if we have anything on her.”

  “Shall we call it in?”

  “Not yet. Maybe she’s just a call girl, and the old boy is getting it on.”

  “Here it comes again,” Strong said.

  A white Toyota van had passed Reid’s house a minute ago. It came back from the opposite direction and parked at the corner.

  The angle was wrong for Wentworth to get a clear camera shot—the van was fifty yards away on the other side of the street. “I can’t make the plates.”

  “Stand by,” Strong said excitedly. He flipped a couple of switches on a bank of sensitive receivers. “That was really fast. VHF band, but high-speed burst. Encrypted, I think.”

  “From the Toyota?”

  “Yeah, they just sent a message to somebody. It’s not one of ours.”

  “Amundson.”

  “Sir, this is North American Intercept. We’ve got that back trace. It’s Bank of Tokyo. No doubt about it now. Started out as an international funds transfer to InterTech Corporation’s Alameda mainframe. But the funny thing is there wasn’t any transfer of funds. The signal is being automatically up-linked to the company’s geosync satellite, which is relaying a two-thousand-cycle tone modulated onto its microwave carrier.”

  “Is InterTech processing the signal?”

  “No way to tell for sure. But there’s no appreciable delay, so I’d say it’s automatic. Could be InterTech doesn’t know what’s going on.”

  “Is it still running?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Amundson sent the FLASH-designated message to the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, and FAA, then picked up the telephone and called the White House Situation Room direct.