by Tom Clancy
"It went better than I expected," Durling said. He'd walked over to Ryan's office for the chat, a first for both of them.
"You really think so?" Jack asked in surprise.
"Remember, I inherited most of the cabinet from Bob." The President sat down. "Their focus is domestic. That's been my problem all along."
"You need a new SecDef and a new Chairman," the National Security Advisor observed coldly.
"I know that, but the timing is bad for it." Durling smiled. "It gives you a slightly wider purview, Jack. But I have a question to ask you first."
"I don't know if we can bring it off." Ryan was doodling on his pad.
"We have to take the missiles out of play first."
"Yes, sir, I know that. We'll find them. At least I expect that we will one way or another. The other wild cards are hostages, and our ability to hit the islands. This war, if that's what it is, has different rules. I'm not sure what those rules are yet." Ryan was still working on the public part of the problem. How would the American people react? How would the Japanese?
"You want some input from your commander in chief?" Durling asked.
That was good enough to generate another smile. "You bet."
"I fought in a war where the other side made the rules," Durling observed. "It didn't work out very well."
"Which leads me to a question," Jack said.
"Ask it."
"How far can we go?"
The President considered. "That's too open-ended."
"The enemy command authority is usually a legitimate target of war, but heretofore those people have been in uniform."
"You mean going after the zaibatsu?"
"Yes, sir. Our best information is that they're the ones giving the orders. But they're civilians, and going directly after them could seem like assassination."
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Jack." The President stood to leave, having said what he'd come in to say.
"Fair enough." A slightly wider purview, Ryan thought. That could mean many things. Mainly it meant that he had the opportunity to run with the ball, but all alone, unprotected. Well, Jack thought, you've done that before.
"What have we done?" Koga asked. "What have we allowed them to do?"
"It's so easy for them," responded a political aide of long standing. He didn't have to say who them was. "We cannot ourselves assert our power, and divided, it's just so easy for them to push us in any direction they want…and over time—" The man shrugged.
"And over time the policy of our country has been decided by twenty or thirty men elected by no one but their own corporate boardrooms. But this far?" Koga asked. "But this far?"
"We are where we are. Would you prefer that we deny it?" the man asked.
"And who protects the people now?" the former—that word was bitter indeed—Prime Minister asked, leading with his chin and knowing it.
"Goto, of course."
"We cannot permit that. You know what he follows." Koga's counselor nodded, and would have smiled but for the gravity of the moment. "Tell me," Mogataru Koga asked. "What is honor? What does it dictate now?"
"Our duty, Prime Minister, is to the people," replied a man whose friendship with the politician went back to Tokyo University. Then he remembered a quote from a Westerner—Cicero, he thought. "The good of the people is the highest law."
And that said it all, Koga thought. He wondered if treason always began that way. It was something he'd sleep on, except that he knew that he wouldn't sleep at all that night. This morning, Koga thought with a grunt, checking his watch.
"We're sure that it has to be standard-gauge track?"
"You can resection the photos we have yourself," Betsy Fleming told him. They were back in the Pentagon headquarters of the National Reconnaissance Office. "The transporter-car our people saw is standard gauge."
"Disinformation, maybe?" the NRO analyst asked.
"The diameter of the SS-19 is two-point-eight-two meters," Chris Scott replied, handing over a fax from Russia. "Throw in another two hundred seventy centimeters for the transport container. I ran the numbers myself. The narrow-gauge track over there would be marginal for an object of that width. Possible, but marginal."
"You have to figure," Betsy went on, "that they're not going to take too many chances. Besides, the Russians also considered a rail-transport mode for the Mod-4 version, and designed the bird for that, and the Russian rail gauge—"
"Yeah, I forgot that. It is larger than our standard, isn't it?" The analyst nodded. "Okay, that does make the job easier." He turned back to his computer and executed a tasking order that he'd drafted a few hours earlier. For every pass over Japan, the narrow-focus high-resolution cameras would track down along precise coordinates. Interestingly, AMTRAK had the best current information on Japanese railroads, and even now one of their executives was being briefed in on the security rules pertaining to overhead imagery. It was a pretty simple briefing, really. Tell anyone what you see, and figure on a lengthy vacation at Marion, Illinois.
The computer-generated order went to Sunnyvale, California, from there to a military communications satellite, and thence to the two orbiting KH-11 satellites, one of which would overfly Japan in fifty minutes, the other ten minutes after that. All three people wondered how good the Japanese were at camouflaging. The hell of it was, they might never find out. All they could do, really, was wait. They would look at the imagery in real-time as it came in, but unless there were overt signs pointing to what they sought, the real work would be done over hours and days. If they were lucky.
Kurushio was on the surface, never something to make a submarine commander happy. They wouldn't be here long. Fuel was coming aboard through two large-diameter hoses, and other stores, mainly food, were lowered by crane to crewmen waiting on the deck. His navy didn't have a proper submarine tender, Commander Ugaki knew. Mainly they used tank-landing ships for the purpose, but those were fulfilling other purposes now, and he was stuck with a merchantman whose crew was enthusiastic but unfamiliar with the tasks they were now attempting.
His was the last boat into Agana Harbor because he'd been the one farthest away from the Marianas when the occupation had begun. He'd fired only one torpedo, and was gratified to see how well the Type 89 had worked. That was good. The merchantmen didn't have the equipment to reload him properly, but, the captain told himself, he had fifteen more, and four Harpoon missiles, and if the Americans offered him that many targets, so much the better.
Those crewmen not on duty loading stores on the afterdeck were crowded forward, getting some sun as submariners often did—as indeed their captain was doing, bare-chested atop the sail, drinking tea and smiling for everyone to see. His next mission was to patrol the area west of the Bonins, to intercept any American ship—more likely a submarine—that attempted to close the Home Islands. It promised to be typical submarine duty, Ugaki thought: dull but demanding. He'd have to talk to his crew about how important it was.
"So where's the patrol line?" Jones asked, pushing the envelope again. "Along 165-East for the moment," Admiral Mancuso said, pointing at the chart. "We're thin, Jonesy. Before I commit them to battle, I want them to get used to the idea. I want the COs to drill their people up. You're never ready enough, Ron. Never."
"True," the civilian conceded. He'd come over with SOSUS printouts to demonstrate that all known submarine contacts were off the screen. Two hydrophone arrays that were operated from the island of Guam were no longer available. Though connected by undersea cable to the rest of the network, they'd evidently been turned off by the monitoring facility on Guam, and nobody at Pearl had yet been able to trick them back on. The good news was that a backup array off Samar in the Philippines was still operating, but it could not detect the Japanese SSKs shown by satellite to be replenishing off Agana. They'd even gotten a good count. Probably, Mancuso thought. The Japanese still painted the hull numbers on the sails, and the satellite cameras could read them. Unless the Japanese, like the Russia
ns and then the Americans, had learned to spoof reconnaissance efforts by playing with the numbers—or simply erased them entirely.
"It would be nice to have a few more fast-attacks, wouldn't it?" Jones observed after a minute's contemplation of the chart.
"Sure would. Maybe if we can get some direction from Washington…"
His voice trailed off, and Mancuso thought a little more. The location of every sub under his command was marked with a black silhouette, even the ones in overhaul status. Those were marked in white, showing availability dates, which was not much help at the moment. But there were five such silhouettes at Bremerton, weren't there?
The Special Report card appeared on all the major TV networks. In every case the hushed voice of an anchorperson told people that their network shows would be interrupted by a speech from the President about the economic crisis with which his administration had been dealing since the weekend. Then came the Presidential Seal. Those who had been following the events were surprised to see the President smiling.
"Good evening.
"My fellow Americans, last week we saw a major event take place in the American financial system.
"I want to begin my report to you by saying that the American economy is strong. Now"—he smiled—"that may seem a strange pronouncement given all that you've heard in the media and elsewhere. But let me tell you why that is so. I'll start off with a question:
"What has changed? American workers are still making cars in Detroit and elsewhere. American workers are still making steel. Kansas farmers have their winter wheat in and are preparing for a new planting season. They're still making computers in the Silicon Valley. They're still making tires in Akron. Boeing is still making airplanes. They're still pumping oil out of the ground in Texas and Alaska. They're still mining coal in West Virginia. All the things you were doing a week ago, you are still doing. So what has changed?
"What changed was this: some electrons traveled along some copper wires, telephone lines like this one"—the President held up a phone cord and tossed it aside on his desk—"and that's all," he went on in the voice of a good, smart neighbor come to the house to offer some kindly advice. "Not one person has lost his life. Not a single business has lost a building. The wealth of our nation is unchanged. Nothing has gone away.
"And yet, my fellow Americans, we have begun to panic—over what?
"In the past four days we have determined that a deliberate attempt was made to tamper with the U.S. financial markets. The United States Department of Justice, with the assistance of some good Americans within those markets, is now building a criminal case against the people responsible for that. I cannot go further at the moment because even your President does not have the right to tamper with the right of any person to a fair and impartial trial. But we do know what happened and we do know that what happened is entirely artificial.
"Now, what are we going to do about it?" Roger Durling asked. "The financial markets have been closed all week. They will reopen at noon on Friday and…"
33—Reversal Points
"It can't possibly work," Kozo Matsuda said over the translation. "Raizo's plan was perfect—better than perfect," he went on, talking as much to himself as the telephone receiver. Before the crash he'd worked in conjunction with a banker associate to use the opportunity to cash in on the T-Bill transactions, which had gone a long way to recapitalizing his troubled conglomerate. It had also made his cash account yen-heavy in the face of international obligations. But that was not a problem, was it? Not with the renewed strength of the yen and corresponding weakness of the American dollar. It might even make sense, he thought, to purchase American interests through intermediaries—a good strategic move once the American equities market resumed its free fall.
"When do the European markets open?" Somehow in the excitement of the moment he couldn't remember.
"London is nine hours behind us. Germany and Holland are eight. Four this afternoon," the man on the other end of the phone said. "Our people have their instructions." And those were clear: to use the renewed power of their national currency to buy as many European equities as possible so that when the financial panic ended, two or three years from now, Japan would be so enmeshed in that multinational economy as to be a totally integral part of it; so vital to their survival that separation would run the renewed danger of financial collapse. And they wouldn't risk that, not after recovery from the worst economic crisis in three generations, and certainly not after Japan had played so important and selfless a part in restoring prosperity to three hundred million Europeans. It was troubling that the Americans suspected a hand in what had taken place, but Yamata-san had assured them all that no records could possibly exist—wasn't that the masterstroke of the entire event, the elimination of records and their replacement with chaos? Businesses could not operate without precise financial records of their transactions, and denied those, they simply stopped. Rebuilding them would require weeks or months, Matsuda was sure, during which time the paralysis would allow Japan—more precisely, his fellow zaibatsu—to cash in, in addition to the brilliant strategic moves Yamata had executed through their government agencies. The integrated nature of the plan was the reason why all his fellows had signed on to it.
"It really doesn't matter, Kozo. We took Europe down, too, and the only liquidity left in the world is ours."
"Good one, Boss," Ryan said, leaning on the doorframe.
"A long way to go," Durling said, leaving his chair and heading out of the Oval Office before saying anything more. The President and National Security Advisor headed into the White House proper, past the technicians who alone had been allowed in. It wasn't time to face reporters yet.
"It's amazing how philosophical it is," Jack said as they took the elevator to the residential floor.
"Metaphysics, eh? You did go to a Jesuit school, didn't you?"
"Three, actually. What is reality?" Jack asked rhetorically. "Reality to them is electrons and computer screens, and if there's one thing I learned on the Street, it's that they don't know investments worth a damn. Except Yamata, I suppose."
"Well, he did all right, didn't he?" Durling asked.
"He should have left the records alone. If he'd left us in free-fall…"
Ryan shrugged. "It might just have kept going. It just never occurred to him that we might not play by his rules." And that, Jack told himself, would be the key to everything. The President's speech had been a fine mix of things said and unsaid, and the targeting of the speech had been precise. It had been, in fact, the first PsyOp of a war.
"The press can't stay dumb forever."
"I know." Ryan even knew where the leak would start, and the only reason it hadn't happened already was the FBI. "But we need to keep them dumb just a little longer."
It started cautiously, not really as part of any operational plan at all, but more as a precursor to one. Four B-1B Lancer bombers lifted off from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, followed by two KC-10 tankers. The combination of latitude and time of year guaranteed darkness. Their bomb bays were fitted with fuel tanks instead of weapons. Each aircraft had a crew of four, pilot and copilot, plus two systems operators.
The Lancer was a sleek aircraft, a bomber equipped with a fighter's stick instead of a more conventional control yoke, and pilots who had flown both said that the B-1B felt and flew like a slightly heavy F-4 Phantom, its greater weight and larger size giving the bomber greater stability and, for now, a smoother ride. For the moment the staggered formation of six flew international route R-220, maintaining the lateral spacing expected of commercial air traffic.
A thousand miles and two hours out, passing Shemya and leaving ground-control radar coverage, the six aircraft turned north briefly. The tankers held steady while the bombers one by one eased underneath to take on fuel, a procedure that lasted about twelve minutes in each case. Finished, the bombers continued southwest while the tankers turned to land at Shemya, where they would refill their own tanks.
&n
bsp; The four bombers descended to twenty-five thousand feet, which took them below the regular stream of commercial air traffic and allowed more freedom of maneuver. They continued close to R-220, the westernmost of the commercial flight tracks, skimming down past the Kamchatka Peninsula.
Systems were flipped on in the back. Though designed as a penetrating bomber, the B-1B fulfilled many roles, one of which was electronic intelligence. The body of any military aircraft is studded with small structures that look for all the world like the fins on fish. These objects are invariably antennas of one sort or another, and the graceful fairing has no more sinister purpose than to reduce drag. The Lancer had many of them, designed to gather in radar and other electronic signals and pass them along to internal equipment, which analyzed the data. Some of the work was done in real-time by the flight crew. The idea was for the bomber to monitor hostile radar, the better to allow its crew to avoid detection and deliver its bombs.
At the NOGAL reporting point, about three hundred miles outside the Japanese Air Defense Identification Zone, the bombers split into a patrol line, with roughly fifty miles separating the aircraft, and descended to ten thousand feet. Crewmen rubbed their hands together, pulled their seat belts a little tighter, and started concentrating. Cockpit chatter lessened to that required by the mission, and tape recorders were flipped on. Satellite monitoring told them that the Japanese Air Force had airborne-early-warning aircraft, E-767's, operating almost continuously, and those were the defensive assets that the bomber crews feared most. Flying high, the E-767's could see far. Mobile, they could move to deal with threats with a high degree of efficiency. Worst of all, they invariably operated in conjunction with fighters, and fighters had eyes in them, and behind the eyes were brains, and weapons with brains in them were the most frightening of all.
