Debt of Honor jr-6

by Tom Clancy

  Here he was, Clark told himself, a foreign spy, covered with an identity from yet a third country, doing things in contravention of the Geneva protocols of civilized war—that was an arcane concept in and of itself. He'd help kill fifty people not twelve hours before, and yet he was driving a rental car back into the enemy capital, and his only immediate worry was to remember to drive on the left side of the road and avoid collision with all the commuters who thought anything more than a ten-foot gap with the car ahead meant that you weren't keeping up with the flow.

  All that changed three blocks from their hotel, when Ding spotted a car parked the wrong way with the passenger-side visor turned down. It was a sign that Kimura needed an urgent meet. The emergency nature of the signal came as something of a reassurance that it wasn't all some perverted dream. There was danger in their lives again. At least something was real.

  Flight operations had commenced just after dawn. Four complete squadrons of F-14 Tomcats and four more of F/A-18 Hornets were now aboard, along with four E-3C Hawkeyes. The normal support aircraft were for the moment based on Midway, and the one-carrier task force would for the moment use Pacific Islands as auxiliary support facilities for the cruise west. The first order of business was to practice midair refueling from Air Force tankers that would follow the fleet west as well. As soon as they had passed Midway, a standing combat air patrol of four aircraft was established, though without the usual Hawkeye support. The E-2C made a lot of electronic noise, and the main task of the depleted battle force was to remain stealthy, though in the case of Johnnie Reb, that entailed making something invisible that was the size of the side of an island.

  Sanchez was down in air-operations. His task was to take what appeared to be a very even battle and make it one-sided. The idea of a fair fight was as foreign to him as to any other person in uniform. One only had to look around to see why. He knew the people in this working space. He did not know the airmen on the islands, and that was all he cared about. They might be human beings. They might have wives and kids and houses and cars and every other ordinary thing the men in Navy khaki had, but that didn't matter to the CAG. Sanchez would not order or condone such movie fantasies as wasting ammunition on men in parachutes—people in that condition were too hard to target in any case—but he had to kill their airplanes, and in an age of missiles that most often meant that the driver would probably not get the opportunity to eject. Fortunately, it was hard enough in the modern age to see your target as anything more than a dot that had to be circled by the head-up display of the fire-control system. It made things a lot easier, and if a parachute emerged from the wreckage, well, he didn't mind making a SAR call for a fellow aviator, once the man was incapable of harming one of his own.

  "Koga has disappeared," Kimura told them, his voice urgent and his face pale.

  "Arrested?" Clark asked.

  "I don't know. Do we have anyone inside your organization?"

  John turned very grim. "Do you know what we do to traitors?" Everyone knew. "My country depends on this man, too. We will get to work on it. Now, go."

  Chavez watched him walk away before speaking. "A leak?"

  "Possibly. Also possible that the guys running the show don't want any extraneous opposition leaders screwing things up for the moment." Now I'm a political analyst, John told himself. Well, he was also a fully accredited reporter from the Interfax News Agency. "What do you say we visit our embassy, Yevgeniy?"

  Scherenko was on his way out to a meet of his own when the two people showed up at his office door. Wasn't this an unusual occurrence, he thought for a brief moment, two CIA officers entering the Russian Embassy for a business meeting with the RVS. Then he wondered what would make them do it.

  "What's the matter?" he asked, and John Clark handled the answer: "Koga's vanished."

  Major Scherenko sat down, waving his visitors to seats in his office. They didn't need to be told to close the door. "Is it something that might have happened all on its own," Clark asked, "or did somebody leak it?"

  "I don't think PSID would have done it. Even on orders from Goto. It's too political without real evidence. The political situation here is—how well do you know it?"

  "Brief us in," Clark said.

  "The government is very confused. Goto has control, but he is not sharing information with many people. His coalition is still thin. Koga is very respected, too much so to be publicly arrested." I think, Scherenko didn't add. What might have been said with confidence two weeks earlier was a lot more speculative now.

  It actually made sense to the Americans. Clark thought for a second before speaking. "You'd better shake the tree, Boris Il'ych. We both need that man."

  "Did you compromise him?" the Russian asked.

  "No, not at all. We told him to act as he normally would—and besides, he thinks we're Russians. I had no instructions other than to check him out, and trying to direct a guy like that is too risky. He's just as liable to turn superpatriot on us and tell us to shove it. People like that, you just let them do the right thing all by themselves." Scherenko reflected again that the file in Moscow Center on this man was correct. Clark had all the right instincts for field-intelligence work. He nodded and waited for Clark to go on. "If you have PSID under your control, we need to find out immediately if they have the man."

  "And it they do?"

  Clark shrugged. "Then you have to decide it you can get him out. That part of the operation is yours. I can't make that call for you. But if it's somebody else who bagged him, then maybe we can do something."

  "I need to talk to Moscow."

  "We figured that. Just remember, Koga's our best chance for a political solution to this mess. Next, get the word to Washington."

  "It will be done," Scherenko promised. "I need to ask a question—the two aircraft that crashed last night?"

  Clark and Chavez were already on the way out the door. It was the younger man who spoke without turning. "A terrible accident, wasn't it?"

  "You're insane," Mogataru Koga said.

  "I am a patriot," Raizo Yamata replied. "I will make our country truly independent. I will make Japan great again." Their eyes met from opposite ends of the table in Yamata's penthouse apartment. The executive's security people were outside the door. These words were for two men alone.

  "You have cast away our most important ally and trading partner. You are bringing economic ruin to us. You've killed people. You've suborned our country's government and our military."

  Yamata nodded as though acknowledging a property acquisition. "Hai, I have done all these things, and it was not difficult. Tell me, Koga, how hard is it to get a politician to do anything?"

  "And your friends, Matsuda and the rest?"

  "Everyone needs guidance from time to time." Almost everyone, Yamata didn't say. "At the end of this, we will have a fully integrated economy, two firm and powerful allies, and in time we will again have our trade because the rest of the world needs us." Didn't this politician see that? Didn't he understand?

  "Do you understand America as poorly as that? Our current difficulties began because a single family was burned alive. They are not the same as us. They think differently. Their religion is different. They have the most violent culture in the world, yet they worship justice. They venerate making money, but their roots are found in ideals. Can't you grasp that? They will not tolerate what you have done!" Koga paused. "And your plan for Russia—do you really think that—"

  "With China helping us?" Yamata smiled. "The two of us can handle Russia."

  "And China will remain our ally?" Koga asked. "We killed twenty million Chinese in the Second World War, and their political leadership has not forgotten."

  "They need us, and they know they need us. And together "Yamata-san," Koga said quietly, politely, because it was his nature, "you do not understand politics as well as you understand business. It will be your downfall."

  Yamata replied in kind. "And treason will be yours. I know you have contacts with the
Americans."

  "Not so. I have not spoken with an American citizen in weeks." An indignant reply would not have carried the power of the matter-of-fact tone.

  "Well, in any case, you will be my guest here for the time being," Raizo told him. "We will see how ignorant of political matters I am. In two years I will be Prime Minister, Koga-san. In two years we will be a superpower."

  Yamata stood. His apartment covered the entire top floor of the forty-story building, and the Olympian view pleased him. The industrialist stood and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, surveying the city which would soon be his capital. What a pity that Koga didn't understand how things really worked. But for the moment he had to fly back to Saipan, to begin his political ascendancy. He turned back.

  "You will see. You are my guest for the moment. Behave yourself and you will be treated well. Attempt to escape, and your body will be found in pieces on some railroad tracks along with a note apologizing for your political failures."

  "You will not have that satisfaction," the former Prime Minister replied coldly.

  40—Foxes and Hounds

  Scherenko had planned to do the meet himself, but urgent business had prevented him from doing so. It turned out to be just as well. The message, delivered via computer disk, was from his top agent-in-place, the Deputy Director of the PSID. Whatever the man's personal habits, he was a canny political observer, if somewhat verbose in his reports and evaluations. The Japanese military, he said, was not the least displeased by their immediate prospects. Frustrated by years of having been labeled as a "self-defense force" and relegated in the public's mind to getting in the way of Godzilla and other unlikely monsters (usually to their misfortune), they deemed themselves custodians of a proud warrior tradition, and now, finally, with political leadership worthy of their mettle, their command leadership relished the chance to show what they could do. Mainly products of American training and professional education, the senior officers had made their estimate of the situation and announced to everyone who would listen that they could and would win this limited contest—and, the PSID director went on, they thought the chances of conquering Siberia were excellent.

  This evaluation and the report from the two CIA officers were relayed to Moscow at once. So there was dissension in the Japanese government, and at least one of its professional departments had a slight grasp on reality. It was gratifying to the Russian, but he also remembered how a German intelligence chief named Canaris had done much the same thing in 1939 and had completely failed to accomplish anything. It was an historical model that he intended to break. The trick with wars was to prevent them from growing large. Scherenko didn't hold with the theory that diplomacy could keep them from starting, but he did believe that good intelligence and decisive action could stop them from going too far if you had the political will to take the proper action. It worried him, however, that it was Americans who had to show this will.

  "It's called Operation ZORRO, Mr. President," Robby Jackson said, flipping the cover off the first chart. The Secretaries of State and Defense were there in the Situation Room, along with Ryan and Arnie van Damm. The two cabinet secretaries were ill at ease right now, but then so was the Deputy J-3. Ryan nodded for him to go on.

  "The mission is to dislocate the command leadership of the other side by precisely targeting those individuals who—"

  "You mean murder them?" Brett Hanson asked. He looked over at SecDef, who didn't react at all.

  "Mr. Secretary, we don't want to engage their civilian population. That means we cannot attack their economy. We can't drop bridges in their cities. Their military is too decentralized in location to—"

  "We can't do this," Hanson interrupted again.

  "Mr. Secretary," Ryan said coolly, "can we at least hear what the plan is before we decide what we should and should not do?"

  Hanson nodded gruffly, and Jackson continued his brief. "The pieces," he concluded, "are largely in place now. We've eliminated two of their air-surveillance assets—"

  "When did that happen? How did we do it?"

  "It happened last night, " Ryan answered. "How we did it is not your concern, sir."

  "Who ordered it?" This question came from President Durling.

  "I did, sir. It was well covered, and the operation went off without a hitch." Durling replied with his eyes that Ryan was pushing his limits again.

  "How many people did that kill?" the Secretary of State demanded.

  "About fifty, and that's two hundred or so less than the number of our people whom they killed, Mr. Secretary."

  "Look, we can talk them out of the islands if we just take the time," SecState said, and now the argument was bilateral, with all the others watching.

  "That's not what Adler says."

  "Chris Cook thinks so, and he's got a guy inside their delegation."

  Durling watched impassively, again letting his staff people—that's how he thought of them—handle the debate. For him there were other questions. Politics would again raise its ugly head. If he failed to respond to the crisis effectively, then he was out. Someone else would be President then, and that someone else would be faced in the following year at the latest with a wider crisis. Even worse, if the Russian intelligence estimate were correct and if Japan and China made their move on Siberia in the coming autumn, then another, larger crisis would strike during an American election cycle, seriously impeding his country's ability to deal with it, making everything a political debate, with an economy still trying to recover from a hundred-billion-dollar trade shortfall.

  "If we fail to act now, Mr. Secretary, there's no telling how far this thing might go," Ryan was saying now.

  "We can work this out diplomatically," Hanson insisted.

  "And if not?" Durling asked.

  "Then in due course we can consider a measured military response."

  SecState's confidence was not reflected in SecDef's expression.

  "You have something to add?" the President asked him.

  "It will be some time—years—before we can assemble the forces necessary to—"

  "We don't have years," Ryan snapped.

  "No, I don't think that we do," Durling observed. "Admiral, will it work?"

  "I think it can, sir. We need a few breaks to come our way, but we got the biggest one last night."

  "We don't have the necessary forces to assure success," SecDef said.

  "The Task Force commander just sent in his estimate and—"

  "I've seen it," Jackson said, not quite able to conceal his uneasiness at the truth of the report." But I know the CAG, Captain Bud Sanchez. Known him for years, and he says he can do it, and I believe him. Mr. President, don't be overly affected by the numbers. It isn't about numbers. It's about fighting a war, and we have more experience in that than they do. It's about psychology, and playing to our strengths rather than theirs. War isn't what it used to be. Used to be you needed huge forces to destroy the enemy's capacity to fight and his ability to coordinate and command his forces. Okay, fifty years ago you needed a lot to do that, but the targets you want to hit are actually very small, and if you can hit those small targets, you accomplish the same thing now as you used to need a million men to do before."

  "It's cold-blooded murder," Hanson snarled. "That's what it is."

  Jackson turned from his place at the lectern. "Yes, sir, that's exactly what war is, but this way we're not killing some poor nineteen-year-old son of a bitch who joined up because he liked the uniform. We're going to kill the bastard who sent him out to die and doesn't even know his name. With all due respect, sir, I have killed people, and I know exactly what it feels like. Just once, just one time, I'd like a crack at the people who give the orders instead of the poor dumb bastards who're stuck with carrying them out."

  Durling almost smiled at that, remembering all the fantasies, and even a TV commercial once, about how different it might be if the president and prime ministers and other senior officials who ordered men off to the field
of battle instead met and slugged it out personally.

  "You're still going to have to kill a lot of kids," the President said. Admiral Jackson drew back from his angry demeanor before answering.

  "I know that, sir, but with luck, a lot less."

  "When do you have to know?"

  "The pieces are largely in place now. We can initiate the operation in less than five hours. After that, we're daylight limited. Twenty-four-hour intervals after that."

  "Thank you, Admiral Jackson. Could you all excuse me for a few minutes?" The men filed out until Durling had another thought. "Jack? Could you stay a minute?" Ryan turned and sat back down.

  "It had to be done, sir. One way or another, if we're going to take those nukes out—"

  "I know." The President looked down at his desk. All the briefing papers and maps and charts were spread out. All the order-of-battle documents. At least he'd been spared the casualty estimates, probably at Ryan's direction. After a second they heard the door close.