pelting the surface.
“He’s got us cold, Chief.”
“Only ’cause the Cap’n said it was okay for him to track us for a little
while. An’ we ain’t giving out any more freebies.”
Verino was just one more former MiG base in an area with scores of them.
Exactly whom the Russians had been worried about was up for grabs. From
this place they could have struck at Japan or China, or defended against at-
tacks from either place, depending on who was paranoid and who was pissed
at any particular political moment, the pilot thought. He’d never been any-
where close to here before, and even with the changes in relations between
the two countries hadn’t expected to do much more than maybe make a
friendly visit to European Russia, as the U.S. Air Force did periodically.
Now there was a Sukhoi-27 interceptor a thousand yards to his two o’clock,
with real missiles hanging on the airframe, and probably a whimsical
thought or two in the mind of the driver. My, what a huge target. The two
disparate aircraft had linked up an hour before because there hadn’t been
time to get a Russian-speaking officer on the mission, and they didn’t want
to risk English chatter on the air-control frequency. So the transport fol-
lowed the fighter rather like a sheepdog obediently trailing a terrier.
“Runway in view,” the copilot said tiredly. There was the usual low-alti-
tude buffet, increased as the flaps and gear went down, spoiling the airflow.
For all that the landing was routine, until just before touchdown the pilot
noticed a pair of (‘-17* on the ramp. So he wasn’t the first American aircraft
to visit this place. Maybe the two other crews could tell him where to go for
some crew-rest.
The JAL 747 lifted off with all its seats full, heading west into the prevailing
winds over the Pacific and leaving Canada behind. Captain Sato wasn’t quite
sure how to feel about everything. He was pleased, as always, lo bring so
many of his countrymen back home, but he also felt that in a way they were
running away from America, and he wasn’t so sure he liked that. His son had
gotten word to him of the B-i kills, and if his country could cripple two
American aircraft carriers, destroy two of their supposedly invincible sub-
marines, and then also take out one or two of their vaunted strategic bomb-
ers, well, then, what did they have to fear from these people? It was just a
matter of waiting them out now, he thought. To his right he saw the shape of
another 747, this one in the livery of Northwest/KLM, inbound from Japan,
doubtless full of American businessmen who were running away. It wasn’t
that they had anything to fear. Perhaps it was shame, he thought. The idea
pleased him, and Sato smiled. The rest of the routing was easy. Four thou-
sand six hundred nautical miles, a flight time of nine and a half hours if he’d
read the weather predictions correctly, and his load of three hundred sixty-
six passengers would be home to a reborn country, guarded by his son and
his brother. They’d come back to North America in due course, standing a
little straighter and looking a little prouder, as would befit people represent-
ing his nation, Sato told himself. He regretted that he was no longer part of
the military that would cause that renewed pride of place, but he’d made his
mistake too long ago to correct it now. So he’d do his small part in the great
change in history’s shape, driving his bus as skillfully as he could.
The word got to Yamata early in the morning of the day he’d planned to
return to Saipan to begin his campaign for the island’s governorship. He and
his colleagues had gotten the word out through the government agencies.
Everything that went to Goto and the Foreign Minister now came directly to
them, too. It wasn’t all that hard. The country was changing, and it was time
for the people who exercised the real power to be treated in accordance with
their true worth. In due course it would be clearer to the common people, and
by that time they would recognize who really mattered in their country, as
the bureaucrats were even now acknowledging somewhat belatedly.
Koga, you traitor, the industrialist thought. It wasn’t entirely unexpected.
The former Prime Minister had such foolish ideas about the purity of the
governmental process, and how you had to seek the approval of common
working people, how typical of his outlook that he would feel some foolish
nostalgia for something that had never really existed in the first place. Of
i-nur\f (Mtliiical figures needed guidance and support from people such as
himself. Of course it was normal for Ihcm to display proper, and dignified,
obeisance to their masters. What did they do, really, but work to preserve the
prosperity that others, like Yamata and his peers, had worked so hard to
achieve for their country? If Japan had depended on her government to pro-
vide for the ordinary people, then where would the country have been? But
all people like Koga had were ideals that went nowhere. The common peo-
ple-what did they know? What did they do? They knew and did what their
betters told them, and in doing that, in acknowledging their state in life and
working in their assigned tasks, they had brought a better life to themselves
and their country. Wasn’t that simple enough?
It wasn’t as though it were the classical period, when the country had been
run by a hereditary nobility. That system of rule had sufficed for two mil-
lennia, but was not suited to the industrial age. Noble bloodlines ran thin
with accumulated arrogance. No, his group of peers consisted of men who
had earned their place and their power, first by serving others in lowly posi-
tions, then by industry and intelligence-and luck, he admitted to himself-
risen to exercise power won on merit. It was they who had made Japan into
what she was. They who had led a small island nation from ashes and ruin to
industrial preeminence. They, who had humbled one of the world’s “great”
powers, would soon humble another, and in the process raise then- country to
the top of the world order, achieving everything that the military boneheads
like Tojo had failed to do.
Clearly Koga had no proper function except to get out of the way, or to
acquiesce, as Goto had learned to do. But he did neither. And now he was
plotting to deny his country the historic opportunity to achieve true great-
ness. Why? Because it didn’t fit his foolish aesthetic of right and wrong-or
because it was dangerous, as though true achievement ever came without
some danger.
Well, he could not allow that to happen, Yamata told himself, reaching for
his phone to call Kaneda. Even Goto might shrink from this. Better to handle
this one in-house. He might as well get used to the exercise of personal
power.
At the Northrop plant the aircraft had been nicknamed the armadillo.
Though its airframe was so smooth that nature might have given its shape to
a wandering seabird, the B-aA was not everything it appeared to be. The
slate-gray composites that made up its visible surface were only part of the
stealth technology built into the aircraft. The inside metal structure was an-
gular and segmented like the eye of an insect, the better to reflect radar en-
ergy in a direction away from that of the transmitter it hoped to defeat. The
graceful exterior shell was designed mainly to reduce drag, and thus increase
range and fuel efficiency. And it all worked.
Al Whitcinun Air I’orce Base in Missouri, the 509111 Bomb Group had led
.1 ijiiiet existence for years, going off and doing its training missions with
little fanfare. The bombers originally designed for penetrating Soviet air de-
lenses and tracking down mobile intercontinental missiles for selective de-
si met ion-never a realistic tasking, as its crewmen knew-did have the
.ilnlity to pass invisibly through almost any defense. Or so people had
thought until recently.
“It’s big, and it’s powerful, and it snuffed a B-i,” an officer told the
(iroup operations officer. “We finally figured it out. It’s a phased array. It’s
Itvquency-agile, and it can operate in a fire-control mode. The one that
limped back to Shemya”-it was still there, decorating the island’s single
i unway while technicians worked to repair it enough to return to the Alaskan
mainland-“the missile came in from one direction, but the radar pulses
came from another.”
‘ ‘Cute,” observed Colonel Mike Zacharias. It was instantly clear: the Jap-
anese had taken a Russian idea one technological step further. Whereas the
Soviets had designed fighter aircraft that were effectively controlled from
ground stations, Japan had developed a technique by which the fighters