by Tom Clancy
"And that's a blade-rate. Thirty-plus knots, and that means warships in one big hurry." Jones walked over to the phone and called ComSubPac.
"Bart? Ron? We have something here. That 'can squadron that's been operating around Pagan."
"What about it?" Mancuso asked.
"They seem to be doing a speed-run north. We have anybody up waiting for them?" Then Jones remembered several inquiries about the waters around Honshu. Mancuso wasn't telling him everything, as was to be expected for operational matters. The way he evaded the question would be the real answer, the civilian thought.
"Can you plot me a course?"
Bingo. "Give us a little while, an hour maybe? The data is still a little fuzzy, Skipper."
The voice was not overly disappointed at the answer, Jones noted. "Aye, sir. We'll keep you posted."
"Good work, Ron."
Jones replaced the phone and looked around. "Senior Chief? Let's start doing a plot on these traces." Somewhere north, he thought, somebody was waiting. He wondered who it might be, and came up with one answer.
Time was working in the opposite direction now. Hiroshi Goto opened his cabinet meeting at ten in the morning, local time, which was midnight in Washington, where his negotiators were. It was clear that the Americans were making a contest of it, though some in the room thought that it could just be a negotiating ploy, that they had to make some show of force in order to be taken seriously at the negotiating table. Yes, they had stung the air-defense people badly, but that was all. America could not and would not launch systematic attacks against Japan. The risks were too great. Japan had nuclear-tipped missiles, for one thing. For another, Japan had sophisticated air defenses despite the events of the previous night, and then there was simple arithmetic. How many bombers did America have? How many could strike at their country even if there were nothing to stop them? How long would such a bombing campaign take? Did America have the political will for it? The answers to all of these questions were favorable to their country, the cabinet members thought, their eyes still fixed on the ultimate goal, whose shining prize glittered before them, and besides, each man in this room had a patron of sorts to make sure that they took the proper spin on things. Except Goto, they knew, whose patron was elsewhere at the moment.
For the moment, the Ambassador in Washington would object strongly to the American attack on Japan, and note that it was not a helpful act, and that there would be no further concessions until they were stopped. It would be further noted that any attack on the Japanese mainland would be considered an exceedingly grave matter; after all, Japan had not attacked vital American interests directly…yet. That threat, behind the thinnest of veils, would surely bring some rationality to the situation.
Goto nodded agreement to the suggestions, wishing that his own patron were about to support him and knowing that Yamata had already bypassed him and spoken with defense officials directly. He'd have to talk to Raizo about that.
"And if they come back?" he asked.
"We'll have our defenses at maximum alert tonight, and when the destroyers arrive on station, they will be as formidable as before. Yes, they have made their show of force, but they have not as yet so much as flown over our territory."
"We must do more than that," Goto said, recalling his instructions. "We can put more pressure on the Americans by making our ultimate weapons public."
"No!" a minister said at once. "That will cause chaos here!"
"It will also cause chaos there," Goto replied, somewhat weakly, the rest of the cabinet thought. Again, they saw, he was voicing the thoughts and orders of someone else. They knew who that was. "It will force them to alter the tone of their negotiations."
"It could easily force them to consider a grave attack on us."
"They have too much to lose," Goto insisted.
"And we do not?" the Minister shot back, wondering just where his loyalty to his patron ended and his loyalty to his countrymen began. "What if they decide to preempt?"
"They cannot. They don't have the weapons to do it. Our missiles have been very carefully located."
"Yes, and our air-defense systems are invincible, too," another minister snorted.
"Perhaps the best thing to do is for our ambassador to suggest that we might reveal that we have the atomic weapons. Perhaps that would be enough." a third minister suggested. There were some nods around the table, and Goto, despite his instructions, agreed to that.
The hardest part was keeping warm, despite all the cold-weather gear they had brought along. Richter snuggled himself into the sleeping bag, and allowed himself to be vaguely guilty for the fact that the Rangers had to maintain listening outposts around the rump airfield they'd established on this frigid mountainside. His principal worry was a system failure in one of the three aircraft. Despite all the redundancies built into them, there were several items which, if they broke, could not be fixed. The Rangers knew how to fuel the birds, and how to load weapons, but that was about it. Richter had already decided to let them worry about ground security. If so much as a platoon showed up in this high meadow, they were doomed. The Rangers could kill every intruder, but one radio call could have a battalion here in hours, and there was no surviving that. Special-operations, he thought. They were good so long as they worked, just like everything else you did in uniform, but the current situation had a safety margin so thin that you could see through it. Then there was the issue of getting out, the pilot reminded himself. He might as well have joined the Navy.
"Nice house."
The rules were different in time of war, Murray told himself. Computers made it easier, a fact that the Bureau had been slow to learn. Assembling his team of young agents, the first task had been to run nothing more sophisticated than a credit check, which gave an address. The house was somewhat upscale, but within the reach, barely, of a supergrade federal employee if he'd saved his pennies over the years. That was something Cook had not done, he saw. The man did all his banking at First Virginia, and the FBI had a man able to break into the bank records, far enough to see that, like most people, Christopher Cook had lived largely from one bi-weekly paycheck to the next, saving a mere fourteen thousand dollars along the way, probably for the college education of his kids, and that, Murray knew, was on the dumb side of optimistic, what with the cost of American higher education. More to the point, when he'd settled on the new house, the savings had gone untouched. He had a mortgage, but the amount was less than two hundred thousand dollars, and with the hundred-eighty realized from the sale of his previous home, that left a sizable gap that bank records could not explain. Where had the other money come from? A call to a contact at the IRS, proposing a possible case of tax evasion, had turned up other computerized records, enough to show that there was no additional family income to explain it; a check of antecedents showed that the parents of both the Cooks, all deceased, had not left either husband or wile with a windfall. Their cars, a further check showed, were paid for, and while one of them was four years old, another was a Buick that probably had the original smell still inside, and that also had been purchased with cash. What they had was a man living beyond his means, and while the government had often enough failed to make note of that in espionage cases, it had learned a little of late.
"Well?" Murray asked his people.
"It's not a case yet, but it sure as hell smells like one," the next-senior agent thought. "We need to visit some banks and get a look at more records." For which a court order was required, but they already knew which judge to go to for that. The FBI always knew which judges were tame and which were not.
Similar checks, of course, had been run on Scott Adler, who, they found, was divorced, living alone in a Georgetown flat, paying alimony and child support, driving a nice car, but otherwise very normal. Secretary Hanson was quite wealthy from years of practicing law, and a poor subject for attempted bribery. The extensive background checks run on all the subjects for their government offices and security clearances were reexami
ned and found to be normal, except for Cook's recent auto and home purchases. Somewhere along the line they'd find a canceled check drawn on some bank or other to explain the easy house settlement. That was one nice thing about hanks. They had records on everything, and it was always on some sort of paper, and it always left a trail.
"Okay, we will proceed on the assumption that he's our boy." The Deputy Assistant Director looked around at the bright group of agents who, like him, had neglected to consider the possibility that Barbara binders had been on a prescription medication that had acted with the brandy Ed Kealty had once kept close at all times. Their collective embarrassment was as great as his own. Not an entirely bad thing, Dan thought. You worked hard to restore your credibility after a goof.
Jackson felt the hard thump of the carrier landing, then the snapping deceleration of the arrester wire as he was pressed hard into the back-facing passenger seat of the COD. Another odious experience over, he thought. He much preferred to land on a carrier with his own hands on the controls, uncomfortable with trusting his life to some teenage lieutenant, or so they now all looked to the Admiral. He felt the aircraft turn to the right, heading off to an unoccupied portion of the flight deck, and presently a door opened and he hustled out. A deck crewman saluted, pointing him to an open door in the carrier's island structure. The ship's bell was there, and as soon as he got under cover, a Marine saluted, and a bosun's mate worked the striker on the hell, announcing into the 1-MC system, "Task Force Seventy-Seven, arriving."
"Welcome aboard, sir," Bud Sanchez said with a grin, looking very natty in his flight suit. "Captain's on the bridge, sir."
"Then let's get to work."
"How's the leg, Robby?" the CAG asked halfway up the third ladder.
"Stiff as hell after all the sitting." It had taken time. The briefing at Pearl Harbor, the Air Force flight to Eniwetok, then waiting for the C-2A to show up to bring him to his command. Jackson was beyond jet lag, but for all that, eager now, about noon, he thought, according to where the sun was.
"Is the cover story holding?" Sanchez asked next.
"No telling, Bud. Until we get there." Jackson allowed a Marine to open the door to the wheelhouse. His leg really was stiff, just one more reminder that flight operations were over for him.
"Welcome aboard, sir," the CO said, looking up from a sheaf of dispatches.
The roar of afterburners told Jackson that Johnnie Reb was conducting flight operations, and he looked quickly forward to see a Tomcat leap off the port-forward cat. The carrier was about halfway between the Carolines and Wake. The latter island was somewhat closer to the Marianas, and for that reason was not being used for anything. Wake had a fine airfield, still supported by the Air Force. Eniwetok was just a recovery field, known to be such, and therefore made a more covert base for staging aircraft, if a far less convenient one for maintaining them.
"Okay, what's been happening since I left Pearl?" Jackson asked.
"Some good news." The CO handed over one of the dispatches.
"It's definite as hell." Jones said, leaning over the sonar traces.
"They sure are in a hurry," Mancuso agreed, his eyes plotting speed and distance and not liking what they saw, further confirming what Jones suspected.
"Who's waiting for them?"
"Ron, we can't—"
"Sir, I can't be much help to you if I don't know," Jones observed reasonably. "You think I'm a security risk or something?"
Mancuso thought for a few seconds before answering. "Tennessee's lying right overtop the Eshunadaoki Seamount, supporting a special operation that goes off in the next twenty-four hours."
"And the rest of the Ohios?"
"Just off Ulithi Atoll, heading north a little slower now. The SSN force will lead the carrier in. The Ohios are tasked to get inside early." Which all made sense, Jones thought. The boomers were too slow to operate effectively with a carrier task force, which he'd also been tracking on SOSUS, but they were ideal for getting inside a patrol line of SSKs…so long as the skippers were smart about it. There was always that consideration.
"The Jap 'cans will be about on top ol' Tennessee right about—"
"I know."
"What else do you have for me?" ComSubPac asked briskly.
Jones led him over to the wall chart. There were now seven SSK-silhouettes circled on the display, with only one "?"-marked. That one, they saw, was in the passage between the northernmost of the Marianas, called Moug, and the Bonins, the most famous of which was Iwo Jima.
"We've been trying to concentrate on this passage," Jones said. "I've gotten a few twitches, but nothing firm enough to plot. If I were them, though, I'd cover that area."
"So would I," Chambers confirmed. One likely move for the Americans would be to put a submarine patrol line astride the Luzon Strait, to attempt to interdict oil traffic to the Japanese mainland. That was a political decision, however. Pacific Fleet did not yet have authorization to attack Japanese merchantmen, and intelligence reported that at the moment most of the tanker traffic in and out was composed of flag-of-convenience shipping, attacks on which had all sorts of political ramifications. We couldn't risk offending Liberia, Mancuso told himself with a grimace. Could we?
"Why the speed-run for the 'cans back home?" Jones asked. It was not something that appeared very sensible.
"We hammered their air defenses last night."
"Okay, so they'll scoot west of the Bonins…that means I'll lose them soon. Anyway, their speed of advance is thirty-two, and their course is still a little fuzzy, but homeward bound, sure as hell." Jones paused. "We're starting to play with their heads, eh?"
Mancuso allowed himself a smile for once. "Always."
44—…from one who knows the score…
"Does it have to be this way?" Durling asked.
"We've run the simulation twenty times," Ryan said, flipping through the data yet again. "It's a matter of certainty. Sir, we have to take them all the way out.
The President looked at the satellite overheads again. "We're still not one hundred percent sure, are we?"
Jack shook his head. "Nothing is ever that sure, no. Our data looks pretty good—the overheads, I mean. The Russians have developed data, too, and they have as much reason to want to be right as we do. There are ten birds here. They're dug in deep, and the site seems to have been selected deliberately for relative immunity from attack. Those are all positive indicators. This is not a deception operation. The next question is making sure that we can hit them all. And we have to do it quickly."
"Why?"
"Because they're moving ships back toward the coast that are marginally capable of detecting the aircraft."
"No other way?"
"No, Mr. President. If this is going to work, it has to be tonight." And the night, Ryan saw, checking his watch, had already started on the far side of the world.
"We protest in the strongest terms the American attack on our country," the Ambassador began. "We have refrained at all times from doing such things, and we expected a similar courtesy from the United States."
"Mr. Ambassador, I am not consulted on military operations. Have American forces struck your mainland?" Adler asked by way of reply.
"You know quite well what they have done, and you must also know that it is a precursor move to a full attack. It is important that you understand," the diplomat went on, "that such an attack could result in the gravest possible consequences." He let that phrase hang in the air like a cloud of lethal gas. Adler took a moment before responding.
"I would remind you first of all that we did not begin this conflict. I would further remind you that your country made a deliberate attack to cripple our economy—"
"As you have done!" the Ambassador shot back, showing real anger that might have been a cover for something else.
"Excuse me, sir, but I believe it is my turn to speak." Adler waited patiently for the Ambassador to calm down; it was plain that neither one had gotten a full night's sleep. "I w
ould further remind you that your country has killed American servicemen, and if you expected us to refrain from corresponding moves, then you were possibly mistaken in that expectation."
"We have never attacked vital American interests."
"The freedom and security of American citizens is ultimately my country's only vital interest, sir."
The acrimonious change in atmosphere could hardly have been more obvious, as was the reason for it. America was making a move of some sort, and the move would clearly not be a subtle one. The people on both sides of the table, again on the top floor of the State Department, might well have been carved from stone. No one wanted to concede anything, not even a blink, at the formal sessions. Heads might have turned fractionally when the leaders of the respective delegations took their turns to speak, but no more than that. The absence of facial expressions would have done professional gamblers proud—but that was precisely the game being played, even without cards or dice. The discussions never got as far before the first recess as a return to the possession of the Marianas.
"Christ, Scott," Cook said, walking through the doors to the terrace.
From the circles under his eyes, the chief negotiator, he saw, had been up most of the night, probably at the White House. The primary season would be driving this mess now. The media were harping on the crippled ships at Pearl Harbor, and TV coverage was also coming from Saipan and Guam now, people speaking with obscured faces and disguised voices—on one hand about how they wanted to be American citizens, and on the other how much they feared being on those islands if a real counterattack developed.
The ambivalence was exactly the sort of thing to confuse the public, and opinion polls were divided, though with a majority expressing outrage at what had been done, and a slightly smaller majority expressing the wish for a diplomatic solution. If possible. A plurality of 46 percent, the Washington Post/ABC poll had stated this morning, didn't see much hope of that. The wild card, however, was the Japanese possession of nuclear arms, which had been announced by neither country, in both cases for fear of panicking the respective populations. Everyone in these sessions had really hoped for a peaceful settlement, but much of that hope had just evaporated, and in a period of a mere two hours.
