Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

“What does ‘Springer’ denote?”

“It’s a kind of hunting dog.”

“Ah, yes, very good.” The officer looked around. “What sort of radios

do you need for a boat like this. Expensive?”

“I’ll show you.” Oreza led him into the salon.’ ‘Your people make it, sir,

NEC, a standard marine VHP and a backup. Here’s my GPS nav system,

depth finder, fish-finder, radar.” He tapped each instrument. They were in

fact all Japanese-made, high quality, reasonably priced, and reliable as hell.

“You have guns aboard?”

Click. “Guns? What for?”

“Don’t many islanders own guns?”

“Not that I know of.” Oreza shook his head. “Anyway, I’ve never been

attacked by a fish. No, I don’t have any, even at home.”

Clearly the officer was pleased by that news.’ ‘Oreza, what sort of name is

that?” It sounded native to the Ishii.

“Originally, you mean? Way back, my people come from Portugal.”

“Your family here a long time?”

Oreza nodded. “You bet.” Five years was a long time, wasn’t it? A hus-

band and wife constituted a family, didn’t they?

“The radios, VHP you say, short-range?” The man looked around for

other instruments, but clearly there were none.

“Mainly line-of-sight, yes, sir.”

The captain nodded. “Very good. Thank you. Beautiful boat. You take

great pride in it, yes?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Thank you for showing me around. You can go now,” the man said

finally, not quite knowing how discordant the final sentence was. Oreza es-

corted him to the dock and watched him leave, rejoining his tiu-n without

another word.

“What was-”

“Pete, you want to button it for a minute?” The command was di’livvtvd

in his Master Chief’s voice, and had the desired effect. They walked oil to

Oreza’s car, letting the others pull away, marching as soldiers did to a pre-

cise one hundred twenty paces per minute, the sergeant a step to his cap-

tain’s left and half a pace behind, walking exactly in step. By the time the

fisherman got to his car it was clear that yet another Toyota Land Cruiser

was at the entrance to the marina parking lot, not really doing anything but

sitting there, with three men inside, all in uniform.

“Some kind of exercise? War games? What gives?” Burroughs asked

once they were in Oreza’s car.

“Beats the shit out of me, Pete.” He started up and headed out of the

lot, turning right to go south on Beach Road. In a few minutes they passed

by the commercial docks. Portagee took his time, obeying all rules and

limits, and blessing his luck that he had the same model car and color the

soldiers used.

Or almost. The vehicles off-loading from Orchid Ace now were mainly

olive-green. A steady cab-rank of airport buses off-loaded people in uni-

forms of the same color. They appeared to be going to a central point, then

dispersing either to the parked military vehicles or to the ship, perhaps to

off-load their assigned units.

”What are those big boxy things?”

“It’s called MLRS, Multiple-Launch Rocket System.” There were six of

them now, Oreza saw.

“What’s it for?” Burroughs asked.

“Killing people,” Portagee replied tersely. As they drove by the access

road to the docks, a soldier waved them on vigorously. More trucks, deuce-

and-a-halfs. More soldiers, maybe five or six hundred. Oreza continued

south. Every major intersection had a Land Cruiser in place, and no less than

three soldiers, some with pistol belts, occasionally one with a slung rifle. It

took a few minutes to realize that there wasn’t a single police car in evi-

dence. He turned left onto Wallace Highway.

“My hotel?”

“How about dinner at my place tonight?” Oreza headed up the hill, past

the hospital, finally turning left into his development. Though a man of the

sea, he preferred a house in high ground. It also afforded a fine view of the

southern part of the island. His was a home of modest size with lots of win-

dows. His wife, Isabel, was an administrator at the hospital, and the home

was close enough that she could walk to work if the mood suited her. The

mood this evening was not a happy one. As soon as he pulled into the drive-

way, his wife was out the door.

“Manni, what’s going on?” Her ancestry was like his. Short, round, and

dark-complected, now her swarthy skin was pale.

“Let’s go inside, okay? Honey, this is Pete Burroughs. We went fishing

today.” His voice was calm, but his eyes swept around. The landing lights of

four aircraft were visible to the east, lined up a few miles apart, approaching

the island’s two large runways. When the three of them were inside, and the

doors shut, the talking could start.

“The phones are out. I tried to call Rachel and I got a recording. The

overseas lines are down. When I went to the mall-”

“Soldiers?” Portagee asked his wife.

“Lots of ’em, and they’re all-”

“Japs.” Master Chief Quartermaster Manuel Oreza, United States Coast

Guard, retired, completed the thought.

“Hey, that’s not the polite way to-”

“Neither’s an invasion, Mr. Burroughs.”

“What?”

Oreza lifted the kitchen phone and hit the speed-dial button for his daugh-

ter’s house in Massachusetts.

“We’re sorry, but a cable problem has temporarily interrupted Trans-

pacific service. Our people are working on the problem. Thank you for your

patience-”

“My ass!” Oreza told the recording.’ ‘Cable, hell, what about the satellite

dishes?”

“Can’t call out?” Burroughs was slow to catch on, but at least this was

something he knew about.

“No, doesn’t seem that way.”

‘ Try this.” The computer engineer reached into his pocket and pulled out

his cellular phone.

“I have one,” Isabel said. “It doesn’t work either. I mean it’s fine for

local calls, but-”

“What number?”

“Area code 617,” Portagee said, giving the rest of the number.

“Wait, I need the USA prefix.”

“It’s not going to work,” Mrs. Oreza insisted.

“You don’t have satellite phones here yet, eh?” Burroughs smiled. “My

company just got us all these things. I can download on my laptop, send

faxes with it, all that stuff. Here.” He handed the phone over. “It’s ring-

ing.”

The entire system was new, and the first such phone had not yet been sold

in the islands yet, a fact that the Japanese military had troubled itself to learn

in the past week, but the service was global, even if the local marketing peo-

ple hadn’t started selling the things here. The signal from the small device

went to one of thirty-five satellites in a low-orbit constellation to the nearest

ground station. Manila was the closest, beating Tokyo by a mere thirty

miles, though even one mile would have been enough for tin- cm ulive pro-

gramming that ran the system. The Luzon ground station had Ix-cn in opera

tion for only eight weeks, and immediately relayed the call to another

satellite, this one a Hughes bird in geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific,

back down to a ground station in California, and from there via I’iheropiic to

Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Hello?” the voice said, somewhat crossly, since it was 5:00 A.M. in

America’s Eastern Time Zone.

“Rachel?”

“Daddy?”

“Yeah, honey.”

“You okay out there?” his daughter asked urgently

‘ ‘What do you mean?”

“I tried to call Mom, but the recording said you had a big storm and the

lines were down.”

“There wasn’t any storm, Rach,” Oreza said without much thought on

the matter.

“What’s the matter, then?”

Jesus, where do I start? Portagee asked himself. What if nobody . . . was

that possible?

“Uh, Portagee,” Burroughs said.

“What is it?” Oreza asked.

“What’s what, Daddy?” his daughter asked also, of course.

“Wait a minute, honey. What is it, Pete?” He put his hand over the re-

ceiver.

“You mean like, invasion, like war, taking over, all that stuff?”

Portagee nodded. “Yes, sir, that’s what it looks like.”

“Turn the phone off, now!” The urgency in his voice was unmistakable.

Nobody had thought any of this through yet, and both were coming to terms

with it from different directions and at different speeds.

“Honey, I’ll be back, okay? We’re fine. ‘Bye.” Oreza thumbed the

CLEAR button. “What’s the problem, Pete?”

‘ ‘This isn’t some joke, right? You’re not doing a number to mess with my

head, tourist games and all that stuff, are you?”

“Jesus, I need a beer.” Oreza opened the refrigerator and took one out.

That it was a Japanese brand did not for the moment matter. He tossed

one to his guest. “Pete, this ain’t no play-acting, okay? In case you didn’t

notice, we seen at least a battalion of troops, mechanized vehicles, fight-

ers. And that asshole on the dock was real interested in the radio on my

boat.”

“Okay.” Burroughs opened his beer and took a long pull. “Let’s say this

is a no-shitter. You can DF one of those things.”

“Dee-eff? What do you mean?” A pause while he dusted off some long-