Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

was supposed to be a nice, quiet, commercial-spying post, learning indus-

trial techniques that his country might easily duplicate, more a business

function than one of pure espionage. The loss of Oleg Lyalin’s THISTLE net-

work had been a professional catastrophe that he had labored lor some lime

In correct without great success. The traitor Lyalin had been a master at in-

sinuating himself inlo business operations while he himself had worked to

elleel a more conventional penetration of the Japanese government organs,

.mil his efforts to duplicate the former’s achievements had barely begun to

Ix-ar fruit when his tasking had changed back to something else entirely, a

mission as surprising to him as the current situation doubtless was to the

Americans who had been so badly stung by their erstwhile allies. Just one

more truism that the Americans had allowed themselves to forget. You

couldn’t trust anyone.

The package just delivered on his desk was at least easy to work with: two

frames of thirty-five-millimeter film, black and white, already developed as

a photographic negative. It was just a matter of peeling off the gray tape and

unfolding it, a task that took some minutes. As sophisticated as his agency

was, the actual work of espionage was often as tedious as assembling a

child’s birthday toys. In this case, he used a pocket knife and a bright light to

remove the film, and nearly cut himself in the process. He placed the two

frames in cardboard holders, which went one at a time into a slide-viewer.

The next task was to transcribe the data onto a paper pad, which was just one

more exercise in tedium. It was worth it, he saw at once. The data would

have to be confirmed through other sources, but the news was good.

‘ ‘There’s your two cars,” the AMTRAK executive said. It had been so obvi-

ous a place to look that a day had been required to realize it. The two over-

si/ed flatcars were at the Yoshinobu launch facility, and beside them were

three transporter-containers for the SS-ig/H-ii booster, just sitting there in

the yard. “This might be another one, sticking out of the building.”

“They have to have more than two, don’t they?” Chris Scott asked.

“I would,” Betsy Fleming replied. “But it could just mean a place to

stash the cars. And it’s the logical place.”

“Here or at the assembly plant,” Scott agreed with a nod.

Mainly they were waiting now for nonvisual data. The only KH-I2 satel-

lite in orbit was approaching Japan and already programmed to look at one

small patch of a valley. The visual information had given them a very useful

cue. Another fifty meters of the rail spur had disappeared from view between

one KH-n pass and another. The photos showed the catenary towers ordi-

narily used for stringing the overhead power lines needed for electrically

powered trains, but the towers did not have wires on them. They had possi-

bly been erected to make the spur look normal to commuters who traveled

the route in the Bullet Trains, just one more exercise in hiding something in

plain sight.

“You know, if they’d just left it alone …” the AMTRAK guy said, look-

ing at the overheads again.

“Yeah.” Hclsy responded, checking I he clock. But they hiidn’t. Some-

rxxly was hanging camouflage nctling on (he towers, just around the first

turn in the valley. The train passengers wouldn’t notice, and, given slightly

better timing, the three of them wouldn’t have either. “If you were doing

this, what would you do next?”

“To hide it from you guys? That’s easy,” the executive said. “I’d park

track-repair cars there. That way it would look ordinary as hell, and they

have the room for it. They should have done it before. Do people make mis-

takes like this all the time?”

“It isn’t the first,” Scott said.

”And now you’re waiting for what?” the man asked.

“You’ll see.”

Launched into orbit eight years earlier by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, the

TRW-built KH-I2 satellite had actually survived far beyond its programmed

life, but as was true of many products made by that company-the Air Force

called it “TR-Wonderful”-it just kept on ticking. The radar-reconnais-

sance satellite was completely out of maneuvering fuel, however, which

meant you had to wait for it to get to a particular place and hope that the

operating altitude was suitable to what you wanted.

It was a large cylindrical craft, over thirty feet in length, with immense

“wings” of solar receptors to power the onboard Ku-band radar. The solar

cells had degraded over the years in the intense radiation environment, al-

lowing only a few minutes of operation per revolution. The ground control-

lers had waited what seemed a long time for this opportunity. The orbital

track was northwest-to-southeast, within six degrees of being directly over-

head, close enough to see straight down into the valley. They already knew a

lot. The geological history of the place was clear. A river now blocked with a

hydroelectric dam had cut the gorge deep. It was more canyon than valley at

this point, and the steep sides had been the deciding factor in putting the

missiles here. The missiles could launch vertically, but incoming warheads

would be blocked from hitting them by the mountains to east and west. It

didn’t make any difference whose warheads they were. The shape and

course of the valley would have had the same effect on Russian RVs as

Americans’. The final bit of genius was that the valley was hard rock. Each

silo had natural armor. For all those reasons, Scott and Fleming had bet

much of their professional reputations on the tasking orders for the KH-I2.

“Right about now, Betsy,” Scott said, checking the wall clock.

“What exactly will you see?”

“If they’re there, we’ll know it. You follow space technology?” Fleming

asked.

“You’re talking lo an original Trekkie.”

“Back in the loHov NASA orbited a mission, and I In- liini iltiiij; iho

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