Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

tricity for more than thirty years.

The first bomb hit seventy meters below the spillway. A heavy weapon

with a thick case of hardened steel, it burrowed fifteen meters into the struc-

ture before exploding, first ripping a miniature cavern in the concrete, the

shock of the event rippling through the immense wall as the second weapon

struck, about five meters over the first.

A watchman was there, awakened from a nap by the noise from downval-

ley, but he’d missed the light show and was wondering what it had been

when he saw the first muted Hash that seemed to come from inside his dam.

He heard the second weapon hit. then the delay of a second or so before the

shock almost lifted him off his feet.

“Jesus, did we gel them all’.'” Kyan asked. Contrary to popular belief, and

contrary now to his own fervent wishes, the National Reconnaissance Office

had never extended real-time capability to the White House. He had to de-

pend on someone else, watching a television in a room at the Pentagon.

“Not sure, sir. They were all close hits-well, I mean, some were, but

some of the bombs appeared too premature-”

“What does that mean?”

“They seem to have exploded in midair-three of them, that is, all from

the last bomber. We’re trying to isolate in on the individual silos now

and-”

“Are there any left intact, damn it’.'” Ryan demanded. Had the gamble

failed?

“One. muyhc two. we’re not sure. Stand by, okay?” the analyst asked

rather plaintively. “We have another bird overhead in a few minutes.”

The dam might have survived two, but the third hit, twenty meters from the

spillway, opened a gap-really, it dislodged a chunk of concrete triangular

in shape. The section jerked forward, then stopped, held in place by the im-

mense friction of the man-made rock, and for a second the watchman won-

dered if the dam might hold. The fourth hit struck in the center of that section

and fragmented it. By the time the dust cleared, it had been replaced with fog

and vapor as the water started pouring through the thirty-meter gap carved in

the dam’s face. That gap grew before the watchman’s eyes, and only then

did it occur to him to race for his shack and lift a phone to warn the people

downstream. By that time, a river reborn after three decades of enforced

sleep was racing down a valley it had carved over hundreds of millennia.

“Well?” the man in Tokyo demanded.

“One missile seems to be fully intact. That’s number nine. Number two-

well, there may be some minor damage. I have my people checking them all

now. What are my orders?”

“Prepare for a possible launch and stand by.”

‘ ‘Hai.” The line clicked off.

Now what do I do? the watch officer wondered. He was new at this, new

at the entire idea of managing nuclear weapons, a job he’d never wanted, but

nobody had ever asked him about that. His remembered protocol of orders

came quickly to him, and he lifted a phone-just an ordinary black instru-

ment; there hadn’t been time for the theatrics the Americans had affected-

for the Prime Minister.

“Yes, what is this?”

“Goto-san, this is the Ministry. There has been an attack on our mis-

siles!”

“What? When?” the Prime Minister demanded. “How bad?”

“One, possibly two missiles are operational. The rest may be destroyed.

We’re checking them all now.” The senior watch officer could hear the rage

at the other end of the line.

“How quickly can you get them ready for launch?”

“Several minutes. I have already given the order to bring them to launch

status.” The officer flipped an order book open to determine the procedures

to actually launch the things. He’d been briefed in on it, of course, but now,

in the heat of the moment, he felt the need to have it in writing before him as

the others in the watch center turned and looked at him in an eerie silence.

“I’m calling my cabinet now!” And the line went dead.

The officer looked around. There was anger in the room, hut even more,

iheie was tear. It had happened again, a systematic attack, and now they

knew the import of the earlier American actions. Somehow they had learned

the location of the camouflaged missiles, and then they had used timed at-

tacks on the Japanese air-defense system to cover what they really wanted to

do. So what would they themselves be ordered to do now? Launch a nuclear

attack? That was madness. The General thought so, and he could see that the

cooler heads in his command center felt the same way.

It was a miracle of sorts. Missile Number Nine’s silo was nearly intact.

One bomb had exploded a mere six meters away, but the rock around

the-no, the officer saw, the bomb hadn’t exploded at all. There was a

hole in the rocky floor of the valley, but in the light of his flashlight he

could see right there, amid the broken rock, the afterpart of something-a

fin, perhaps. A dud, he realized, a smart bomb with a faulty fuse. Wasn’t

that amusing? He raced off next to see Number Two. Running down the

valley, he heard some sort of alarm horn and wondered what that was all

about. It was a frightening trip, and he marveled at the fact that the Ameri-

cans hadn’t attempted to attack the control bunker. Of the ten missiles in

the collection, eight were certainly destroyed. He choked with the fumes

of the remaining propellants, but most of that had fireballed into the sky

already, leaving behind only noxious gas that the night winds were sweep-

ing away. On reflection he donned a gas mask that covered his face, and,

fatally, his ears.

Silo two had taken a single bomb hit-near miss, he corrected himself.

This bomb had missed the center target by perhaps twelve meters, and

though it had thrown tons of rock about and cracked the concrete liner, all

they had to do was sweep off the debris from the access hatch, then go down

to see if the missile was intact.

Damn the Americans /