Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

nearly had had kittens when he’d suggested it, but Adler knew Cook. He was

enjoying his part in this diplomatic effort, enjoying it just a little too much,

enjoying the importance he’d acquired. Even now Cook did not know what

he had blurted out, just like that. Not quite definite evidence of wrongdoing,

but enough to persuade Adler that Cook was almost certainly the leak, and

now Cook had probably just leaked something else, though it was something

Ryan had thought up. Adler reminded himself that years ago, when Ryan

had just been part of an outside group brought in to review CIA procedures,

he’d come to high-level attention from his invention of the Canary Trap.

Well, it had been sprung again.

The weather this morning was cold enough that the delegations headed

back inside a little early for the next set of talks. This one might actually go

somewhere, Adler told himself.

Colonel Michael Zacharias handled the mission briefing. It was routine de-

spite the fact that the B-2s had never fired a shot in anger-actually dropped

a shot, but the principle held. The sogth Bomb Group dated back to 1944,

formed under the command of one Colonel Paul Tibbets, U.S. Army Air

Force, fittingly, the Colonel thought, at a base in Utah, his own family home.

The wing commander, a brigadier, would fly the lead aircraft. The wing XO

would fly number two. As deputy commander operations, he would take in

number three. His was the most distasteful part of the job, but it was suffi-

cicntly important that he’d considered the rules on ethics in war and decided

that the mission parameters fell within the confines that lawyers and philoso-

phers had placed upon warriors.

It was bitterly cold at Elmendorf, and vans conveyed the flight crews to

the waiting bombers. That night they would fly with crews of three. The B-2

had been designed for a pilot and copilot only, with provision for a third

crewman to work defensive systems which, the contractor had promised, the

copilot could do, really. But real combat operations always required a safety

margin, and even before the Spirits had left Missouri, the additional three

hundred pounds of gear had been added along with the additional two hun-

dred or so pounds of electronic-warfare officer.

There was so much that was odd about the aircraft. Traditionally U.S. Air

Force birds had tail numbers, but the B-2 didn’t have a tail, and so it was

painted on the door for the nose gear. A penetrating bomber, it flew at high

altitude rather than low-though the contract had been altered in mid-design

to allow for a low-flight profile-like an airliner for good fuel economy.

One of the most expensive aircraft ever built, it combined the wingspan of a

DC-10 with near-total invisibility. Painted slate gray for hiding in the night

sky, it was now the shining hope for ending a war. A bomber, it was hoped

that its mission would go as peacefully as possible. Strapping in, it was

easier for Zacharias to think of it as a bombing mission.

The four GE engines lit off in turn, the ribbon gauges moving to full idle,

already drinking fuel at the same rate as if it were at full power at cruising

altitude, while the copilot and EWO checked out their onboard systems and

found them good. Then, one at a time, the trio of bombers taxied off the

ramp and into the runway.

“They’re making it easy,” Jackson thought aloud, now in the carrier’s

Combat Information Center, below the flight deck. His overall operational

plan had allowed for the possibility, but he hadn’t allowed himself to expect

it. His most dangerous adversary was the four Aegis destroyers the Japanese

had dispatched to guard the Marianas. The Navy had not yet learned to de-

feat the radar-missile combination, and he expected the job to cost him air-

craft and crews, but sure enough, America now had the initiative of sorts.

The other side was moving to meet his possible actions, and that was always

a losing game.

Robby could feel it now. John Stennis was moving at full power, heading

northwest at thirty knots or so. He checked his watch and wondered if the

rest of the operations he’d planned in the Pentagon were going off.

This was a little different. Richter powered up his Comanche as he had the

night before, wondering how often he could get away with this, and remind-

ing himself of the axiom in military operations that the same thing rarely

worked more than once. A pity that the guy who’d thought this idea up had

not known that fact. His last mental lapse was to wonder whether it had been

that Navy fighter jock he’d met at Nellis all those months before. Probably

not, he judged. That guy was too much of a pro.

Again the Rangers stood by with their dinky little extinguishers, and again

they proved unnecessary, and again Richter lifted off without incident,

climbing immediately up the slopes of Shuraishi-san, east for Tokyo, but

this time with two other aircraft behind him.

“He wants to see Durling personally,” Adler said. “He said that at the end

of the morning session.”

“What else?” Ryan asked. Typically, the diplomat had covered his busi-

ness first.

“Cook’s our boy. He told me that his contact has been working with

Koga.”

“Did you-”

“Yes, I told him what you wanted. What about the Ambassador?”

Ryan checked his watch. The timing had to be so close, and he didn’t need

this complication, but neither had he expected the other side to cooperate.

“Give it ninety minutes. I’ll clear it with the Boss.”

The electronic-warfare officer also drew the duty of checking out the weap-

ons systems. Able to carry eighty soo-pound bombs, the bomb bays were

large enough for only eight of the two-thousand-pound penetrators, and 8

times 3 made 24. It was another exercise in arithmetic that made the final

part of the mission necessary, which the carriage of nuclear weapons would

have made entirely unnecessary, but the orders didn’t contemplate that, and

Colonel Zacharias didn’t object. He had a conscience to live with.

“Everything’s green, sir,” the EWO said. Not too surprising, as every

weapon had been checked out personally by a senior weapons officer, a

chief master sergeant, and an engineer from the contractor, individually run

through a dozen simulations, and then handled like fresh fruit all the way

into the bomb bay. They had to be if they wanted to maintain the manufac-

turer’s guaranteed Pk of 95%, though even that wasn’t enough for certainty.

They needed more aircraft for the mission, but there were no more aircraft to

be had, and working three Spirits together was tricky enough.

“Starting to get some fuzz, bearing two-two-five. Looks like an E-2 for

starters,” the EWO reported. Ten minutes later it was clear that every

ground-based radar in the country was lit up to full power. Well, that’s why

they’d built the thing, all three members of the crew thought.

“Okay, give me a course,” Zacharias ordered, checking his own screen.

“One mne-/cro looks good for the moment.” The instruments identified

every radar by lype, and the smartest move was to exploit the oldest of them,

happily enough an American design whose characteristics they knew quite

well.

Forward of the B-2S, the Lightnings were working again, this time alone and

covertly, approaching Hokkaido from the east while the bombers behind

took a more southerly course. The exercise was more mental than physical

now. One of the £-7675 was up, this time well back over land, and probably

with fighters in close attendance while the less capable E-2Cs patrolled just

offshore. They’d be working the fighter pilots hard now, and sure enough,

his threat receiver showed that some Eagles were searchlighting their APG-

70 radars around the sky. Well, time to make them pay for that. His two-

plane element turned slightly right and headed for the two nearest Eagles.

Two were still on the ground, one of them with a scaffolding around the

radome. Maybe that was the one undergoing overhaul, Richter thought, ap-

proaching cautiously from the west. There were still hills to hide behind,

though one of them had a radar on it, a big, powerful air-defense system. His

onboard computer plotted a null-area for him, and he flew lower to follow

that in. He ended up three miles from the radar site, but below it, and then it

was time to do what the Comanche was designed for.

Richter lifted up over the final hilltop, and his Longbow radar swept the

area before him. Its computerized memory selected the two £-7675 from its

library of hostile shapes and lit them up on the weapons display. The touch

screen at Richter’s left knee showed them as icons numbered i and 2 and

identified as what they were. The pilot selected Hellfire from his short list of

weapons options, the weapons-bay doors opened, and he fired twice. The