Fortunes of War

by Stephen Coonts

  Jiro Kimura pulled the trigger on the stick.

  “You’re dead, Sasai,” Kimura said on the radio, trying to keep the satisfaction out of his voice. “Let’s break it off and go home.”

  Sasai rendezvoused on Kimura, who consulted his GPS display, then set a course for base. They were over the Sea of Japan above a broken layer of low clouds. Kimura checked his fuel, verified his course on the wet compass, then stretched. The silver airplanes, the sun high in the blue vault overhead, the sea below, the clouds and distant haze — if heaven was like this, he was ready.

  If Shizuko could go, too, of course.

  He felt guilty that he was contemplating paradise without Shizuko. Then he felt silly that he was even thinking these thoughts.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t silly. Real combat seemed to be coming, almost like a terrible storm just over the horizon that no one wanted to acknowledge. We make plans, for next week, next month, next year, while refusing to acknowledge that our safe, secure little world is about to disintegrate.

  Jiro looked across the invisible river of air flowing between the planes and saw Sasai in his cockpit. He was looking Jiro’s way. They stared at each other’s helmeted figures for a moment; then Jiro looked away.

  Kimura was the senior officer, and leader, of his flight. Then came Ota, Miura, and Sasai. They would fly together as a unit whenever possible.

  Alas, Sasai was green, inexperienced. He knew how to use the new Zero fighter as an interceptor, utilizing the radar, GPS, computer, and all the rest of it, but he didn’t know how to dogfight, to fight another aircraft when it was out of the interception parameters.

  Neither Ota nor Miura was particularly skilled at the craft, either. The colonels and generals insisted that Zero pilots be well trained in the use of the state-of-the art weapons system, that they know it cold and practice constantly, so all their training had been in using the aircraft’s system to acquire the target, then fire missiles when the target came within range.

  “What will you do,” Kimura asked the three pilots on his team, “if the enemy attacks you as you are taking off?”

  His junior wingmen looked slightly stunned, as if the possibility had never occurred to them. Their superior officers, none of whom were combat veterans, reasoned that the plane’s electronic suite was the heart of the weapons system, the technological edge that made the new Zero the best fighter on earth: the airframe, engine, and wings existed merely to take the system to a point in space where it could be employed against the enemy. The never-voiced assumption almost seemed to be that the enemy would fly along straight and level while the Japanese pilots locked them up with radar, stepped the computer into attack, and watched the missiles ripple off the racks and streak away for the kill.

  The senior officer in the air arm had been quoted as saying, “Dog-fighting is obsolete. We have put a gun in the Zero for strafing, not shooting at other airplanes.” Indeed, the heads-up display — HUD — DID not feature a lead-computing gunsight.

  Jiro Kimura didn’t think air-to-air combat would be quite that easy. Whenever they were not running practice intercepts, he had been dog-fighting with his flight members. They didn’t get to do this often; still, they were learning quickly — even Sasai.

  They should be able to handle the Russians.

  Ah yes, the Russians. This morning at the weekly intelligence briefing, the wing commander had given them the word: Siberia, two weeks from now. “Study the Russian air force and be ready to destroy it.”

  “Two weeks?” someone had murmured, incredulous.

  “No questions. This information is highly classified. The day is almost upon us and we must be ready.”

  Jiro raised his helmet visor and used the back of his glove to swab the perspiration from his eyes. After checking the cockpit altitude, he removed his oxygen mask and used the glove to wipe his face dry. He snapped the mask back into place and lowered his visor.

  “It will be a quick war,” Ota had predicted. “In two days they will have nothing left to fly. The Migs, even the Sukhoi-27’s, will go down like ducks.” Jiro Kimura said nothing. There was nothing to say. Whatever was going to happen would happen. Words would not change it.

  Still, after he had suited up in his flight gear, before he and Sasai went out on the mat to preflight their planes, he had called Bob Cassidy at the American embassy in Tokyo. Just a short chat, an invitation to dinner three weeks from now, and a comment about an alumni letter Jiro had received from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

  He dismissed Russia and Cassidy from his mind so he could concentrate on the task at hand. The clouds ahead over Honshu looked solid, so he and Sasai were going to have to make an instrument approach. Jiro signaled his wingman to make a radio frequency change to air traffic control; then he called the controller.

  Three men were waiting for Bob Cassidy when he came out of the back entrance to the embassy. At least he thought there were three — he arrived at that number several minutes later — but there might have been more. As he walked along the sidewalk, they followed him, keeping well back — one behind, one on the other side of the street, and one in a car creeping along a block behind. The guy in the car was the one he wasn’t sure offor several minutes. This was a first. Cassidy had never before been openly followed. He wondered about the timing. Why now?

  The one behind him on his side of the street was about medium height for a Japanese, wearing glasses and some sort of sport coat. His stride proclaimed his fitness. The one across the street was balding and short. He wore slacks and a dark pullover shirt. Cassidy couldn’t see the driver of the car. If there were three men he knew about, how many were there that he didn’t?

  Undecided as to how he should handle this, he walked the route he always took toward his apartment. When he’d reported to the embassy fifteen months ago, he’d had the choice of sharing an apartment inside the embassy compound or finding his own apartment “on the economy.” He chose the latter. Without children in school or a wife who wanted to socialize with other Americans, it was an easy choice. These men had been waiting for him. They must know where he lived, the route he usually took to get there. They must have followed him in the past and he just hadn’t paid attention. Well, maybe his conversation with Jiro had made him apprehensive, so that was why he was looking now. Actually, he admitted to himself, he felt guilty. Jiro shouldn’t have talked out of school. Oh, he was glad he had, but still … Cassidy felt guilty. A block from home, just before turning a corner, he paused to look at the reflection in a slab of marble siding on a store. The balding man was visible, and, just turning the far corner, the car.

  Bob Cassidy went into his apartment building. He collected his mail at the lobby mailbox, then rode the elevator to his floor and unlocked the door to his apartment. He didn’t turn on the light. He sat in the evening twilight, looking out the window, trying to decide what to do. They must be monitoring the telephones at the base, or at the embassy. Jiro was the only member of the Japanese military who had ever told Cassidy anything classified. Oh, as air attache, he routinely talked to Japanese military men, many of whom were personal friends. A dozen of his contacts even held flag rank. The things these soldiers told him were certainly not secrets. He collected common, everyday “this is how we do it” stuff, the filler that military attaches all over the world gather and send home for their own militaries to analyze. Finding out the things that the Japanese didn’t want the Americans to know was the job of another agency, the CIA. So did the tail mean the Japanese knew that Jiro had talked?

  One of Cassidy’s fears was that his report of the conversation with Jiro had been compromised — that is, passed right back to the Japanese. Alas, the United States had suffered through too many spy scandals in the last twenty years. Bitter, disappointed men seemed all too willing to sell out their colleagues and their country for money. God knows, the Japanese certainly had enough money. He would have to report being tailed to the embassy security officer; perhaps he should do that n
ow, and ask him if anyone else had reported being followed. He picked up the telephone and held it in his hand, but he didn’t dial. This phone was probably tapped, too. If he called embassy security and reported the tail, it would look like he had something to hide. He went to the window and stood looking at the Tokyo skyline, or what little he could see of it from a fifth-floor window. He checked his watch. Two hours. He was supposed to meet Jiro in two hours. Jiro had mentioned Colorado Springs when he called earlier that day. Two days ago, when Cassidy had dinner at the Kimuras’, he and Jiro had agreed that the mention of that city would be the code for a meet at a site they agreed upon then. The code had been Jiro’s idea. Cassidy had a bad taste in his mouth about the whole thing. Neither one of them was a trained spy; they were in over their heads. They were going to compromise themselves.

  Even if they didn’t, Cassidy had this feeling deep down that this episode was going to cost him a close friend. He turned his mind back to the problem at hand. Jiro had called, and a plainclothes tailing team had been waiting when he left the embassy compound. Perhaps they were monitoring all the calls from Kimura’s base and had intercepted this one, then decided to check to see if Kimura was meeting people he had no good reason to meet. Or maybe they were onto Kimura. Maybe they knew he had spilled some secrets to the Americans. Maybe they were trying to rope in Kimura’s U.s. contact. Maybe, maybe, maybe … Cassidy changed into civilian clothes while he mulled the problem over, then went into the kitchen and got a beer from the refrigerator. Hanging on the wall was a photo of himself at the controls of an F-16. The plane was high, over thirty thousand feet, brilliantly lit by the sun, against a sky so blue it was almost black. Cassidy stood sipping beer as he looked at the photo. What he saw in his mind’s eye was not the F-16, but the new Zero. He had actually seen it. Last week. From a hill near the Japanese air base at Niigata. He had hiked up carrying a video camera in a hard case on a strap over his shoulder. He had videotaped the new fighters taking off and landing. Although the base was six miles away, on the climb-out and approach they came within a half mile of where he was standing. He had also gotten some still pictures with a 35-mm camera from just under the glide path. He had driven into a noise-saturated neighborhood beside the base and snapped the photos from the driver’s seat of his car as the planes went overhead. The CIA had sent him a gadget to play with as the new Zero flew over, a device that resembled a portable cassette player and could pass for one on casual examination. It did, however, have a three-foot-long antenna that he had to dangle out the window. Cassidy did all this high-tech spying in plain sight. Only one person had paid any attention to him, a youngster on a tricycle, who sat on the sidewalk four feet away and watched him fiddle with the cassette player and antenna as the jets flew over. He remembered the sense of relief that came over him when he was finished. He had started the car and slipped it into gear while he took one last careful look around to see if anyone was watching.

  It was amazing, when you stopped to think about it. The Japanese designed, manufactured, and tested the ultimate fighter plane, one invisible to radar, put it into squadron service, and the United States knew nothing about it — didn’t even know it existed, until one of the pilots sought out the U.s. air attache at the American embassy and told him. Perhaps, Cassidy thought as he looked out the window to see if the tails were still waiting, the Japanese are too far from war. As it has for Americans, war for them has become an abstraction, an event of the historical past that students read about in school — dates, treaties, forgotten battles with strange names. War is no longer the experience of a whole people, the defining event of an entire generation. Today the only people with combat experience are a few professional soldiers, like Cassidy. As a young man, he had flown in the Gulf War — he even shot down a Mig — and he dropped some bombs in Bosnia. His recollections of those days seemed like something remembered from an old B movie, bits and pieces of a past that was fragmentary, fading, irrelevant. Today war is sold as a video game, Cassidy decided. Shoot at the bad guys and they fall down. If the score is too low, put in another coin and play the game again. You can’t get hurt. You can’t get … dead! All you can lose are a few coins. Cassidy had to make a decision. Kimura had called, had wanted to see him. The tails were out there. If he didn’t go to the meet, Kimura was safe, for the time being anyway, and he would not learn what Kimura wanted the American government to know. On the other hand, if he went, he might be followed, despite his best efforts, and Kimura might wind up in prison, or worse. Hell, Cassidy might wind up in prison, which would really be a unique capstone for his Air Force career. Jiro seemed to have a lot of faith in the U.s. government, Cassidy mused. Cassidy had long ago lost his. Still, Jiro had to do what he thought right. Indeed, he had an obligation to do so. That is what they teach at the Air Force Academy, isn’t it? He finished the beer, tossed the empty can into the trash. He belched. Okay, Jiro. Ready or not, here I come.

  Bob Cassidy was standing near the large incense burner at the Asak-usa Temple when he saw Jiro Kimura buy a bundle of incense sticks.

  He lit them at one of the two nearby braziers, then tossed them into the large burner. Cassidy went over and the two stood in the crowd, waving the holy smoke over their hair and face. “I was followed,” Cassidy said in a low voice, “but I think I lost them.”

  “Me, too. I’ve been riding the subways for an hour. Sorry I’m late.”

  “They’ve tapped the phones at the embassy or your base.”

  “Probably both places,” Jiro said under his breath. “They are very efficient.” He led the way to the water fountain, where he helped himself to a dipper, filled it with water, and sipped it. “God only knows what you’ll catch drinking out of that. You’ll probably shit for a week. Your damn teeth are gonna fall out.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jiro handed the dipper to the person behind him, then moved on. Few Japanese spoke English, so Cassidy’s remarks didn’t disturb anyone. Jiro went into the Buddhist temple and tossed some coins into the offertory. He moved forward to the rail and prayed while Cassidy hung back. At the door, he moved over beside Cassidy. “It’s Siberia. Our wing commander told us this morning in a secret intel briefing. In two weeks, he said.”

  “He has a timetable?”

  “Yes. We were told to be ready to tackle the Russian air force and destroy it.”

  “Did he say why you are going?”

  “Just what I’ve told you. Cryptic as hell, isn’t it?”

  Cassidy walked with Kimura out of the temple. They stood for a moment on the steps watching the people around the incense burner. “Happy, aren’t they?” Cassidy said. Kimura didn’t answer. He went back into the temple, to the fortune drawers on the right side of the altar. “I may not see you before you go,” said Cassidy, who had followed Jiro back into the temple. “You won’t. Ten to one, when we go in tomorrow, they’ll close the base, lock us up. It’s a miracle they didn’t think of that today.”

  “Maybe they wanted to see who you would talk to.”

  “Maybe,” Jiro muttered. He put a hundred-yen coin in the offering slot and picked up a large aluminum tube. He shook it, then turned it upside down and examined the opening. The head of a stick was just visible there. He pulled it out. “Seventy-six,” he said, and put the stick “back into the tube. “I’m trying to tell you, amigo. They may already have burned you.”

  “I wish to Christ we were back in the Springs.”

  The sudden shift of subject threw Bob Cassidy. “Those were good times,” he said, because he could think of nothing else to say. “With Sweet Sabrina,” Jiro said. He opened drawer number seventy-six and took out a sheet of paper. He closed the drawer, moved a couple of steps back, then glanced at the paper. “Yeah,” Cassidy said. He had a lump in his throat. Jiro didn’t seem to notice. He folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. “We’ll meet again someday. In this life or the next.”

  “”This life or the next,”" Cassidy echoed. The words gave him goose bumps — the cadets at the Ac
ademy used to say that to one another on graduation day. He pointed toward Jiro’s pocket, the paper from the drawer. “Was your fortune good?”

  Cassidy snorted. “That stuff is crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “A racket for the monks, to get money from suckers.”

  “I gotta go, Bob.”

  “Hey, man.”

  “Vaya con Dios.”

  “You, too.”

  Jiro Kimura turned and walked out of the temple. He kept going without looking back. Bob Cassidy felt helpless. He was losing Jiro, too. Sabrina, little Robbie, now Jiro … “This life or the next, Jiro.” A tear trickled down his cheek. He wiped it away angrily. He was losing everything.

  The next morning Jiro went straight to the office of his commanding officer and knocked. When he was admitted, he told the colonel that he had been followed the previous night. “I have no idea who that man was, sir, but I wish to make a report so that the incident may be investigated. I have never before been followed- that I know about anyway.”

  The colonel was surprised. He apparently had not been told that Kimura was a suspicious character, Jiro concluded, or else he should be on the stage professionally. It was with a sense of relief that Jiro described the man in the train station.

  “Perhaps this man wasn’t really following you, Captain. Perhaps you are too suspicious.”

  “Sir, that is possible. But I wish you would report the incident so that the proper authorities may investigate. In light of what the wing commander said yesterday …”

  “Yes. Indeed. I will make a report, Captain Kimura. This incident should be investigated. Japan is filled with foreigners who cannot be trusted.”

  On that illogical note, Jiro was dismissed.

  And he was right about the base closure. Just before noon, the colonel called an officers’ meeting and made the announcement that all officers and enlisted were confined to the base until further notice.