“What warning will we have?” The question, surprisingly, came from
Cook. The answer, surprisingly, came from the other NIO, who felt the need,
now, to show something of what he knew.
“The Cobra Dane radar on Shemya still works. So do the DSPS satellites.
We’ll get launch warning and impact prediction if it comes to that. Dr. Ryan,
have we done anything-”
“The Air Force has air-launched cruise missiles in the stockpile. They
would be carried in by B-i bombers. We also have the option of rearming
Tomahawk cruise missiles with W-8o warheads as well for launch by sub-
marines or surface ships. The Russians know that we may exercise that op-
tion, and they will not object so long as we keep it quiet.”
“That’s an escalation,” Cook warned. “We want to be careful about
that.”
“What about their 88-195?” the second NIO inquired delicately.
“They think they need them. It will not be easy to talk them out of ’em.”
Cook looked around the table. “We have nuked their country, remember.
It’s a very sensitive subject, and we’re dealing with jvople motivated by
paranoia. I recommend caution on that issue.”
“Noted,” Ryan said as he stood. “You know what I want, people, (iel lo
work.” It felt a little good to be able to give an order like that, but less so to
have to do it, and less still in anticipation of the answers he would receive lor
his questions. But you had to start somewhere.
“Another hard day?” Nomuri asked.
“I thought with Yamata gone it would get easier,” Kazuo said. He shook
his head, leaning back against the fine wood rim of the tub. ‘ T was wrong.”
The others nodded curt agreement at their friend’s observation, and they
all missed Taoka’s sexual stories now. They needed the distraction, but only
Nomuri knew why they had ended.
“So what is going on? Now Goto says that we need America. Last week
they were our enemies, and now we are friendly again? This is very confus-
ing for a simple person like me,” Chet said, rubbing his closed eyes, and
wondering what the bait would draw. Developing his rapport with these men
had not been easy because they and he were so different, and it was to be
expected that he would envy them, and they him. He was an entrepreneur,
they thought, who ran his own business, and they the senior salarymen of
major corporations. They had security. He had independence. They were ex-
pected to be overworked. He marched to his own drum. They had more
money. He had less stress. And now they had knowledge, and he did not.
“We have confronted America,” one of their number said.
“So I gather. Isn’t that highly dangerous?”
“In the short term, yes,” Taoka said, letting the blisteringly hot water
soothe his stress-knotted muscles. “Though I think we have already won.”
“But won what, my friend? I feel I have started watching a mystery in the
middle of the show, and all I know is that there’s a pretty, mysterious girl on
the train to Osaka.” He referred to a dramatic convention in Japan, myster-
ies based on how efficiently the nation’s trains ran.
“Well, as my boss tells it,” another senior aide decided to explain, “it
means true independence for our country.”
“Aren’t we independent already?” Nomuri asked in open puzzlement.
“There are hardly any American soldiers here to annoy us anymore.”
“And those under guard now,” Taoka observed. “You don’t understand.
Independence means more than politics. It means economic independence,
too. It means not going to others for what we need to survive.”
“It means the Northern Resource Area, Kazuo,” another of their number
said, going too far, and knowing it from the way two pairs of eyes opened in
warning.
‘ ‘I wish it would mean shorter days and getting home on time for a change
instead of sleeping in a damned coffin-tube two or three nights a week,” one
of the more alert ones said to alter the course of the conversation.
Taoka grunted. “Yes, how can one get a girl in there?” The guffaws that
followed that one were forced, Nomuri thought.
‘ ‘You salarymen and your secrets! Ha!” the CIA officer snapped.’ ‘I hope
you do better with your women.” He paused. “Will all this affect my busi-
ness?” A good idea, he thought, to ask a question like that.
“For the better, I should think,” Kazuo said. There was general agree-
ment on that point.
“We must all be patient. There will be hard times before the good ones
truly come.”
“But they will come,” another suggested confidently. “The really hard
partis behind us.”
Not if I can help it, Nomuri didn’t tell them. But what the hell did ‘ ‘North-
ern Resource Area” mean? It was so like the intelligence business that he
knew he’d heard something important, quite without knowing what the hell
it was all about. Then he had to cover himself with a lengthy discourse on his
new relationship with the hostess, to be sure, again, that they would remem-
ber this, and not his questions.
It was a shame to have to arrive in the darkness, but that was mere fortune.
Half of the fleet had diverted for Guam, which had a far better natural har-
bor, because all the people in these islands had to see the Japanese Navy-
Admiral Sato was weary of the “Self-Defense Force” title. His was a navy
now, composed of fighting ships and fighting men that had tasted battle,
after a fashion, and if historians would later comment that their battle had
not been a real one or a fair one, well, what military textbook did not cite the
value of surprise in offensive operations? None that he knew of, the Admiral
told himself, seeing the loom of Mount Takpochao through his binoculars.
There was already a powerful radar there, up and operating, his electronics
technicians had told him an hour earlier. Yet another important factor in de-
fending what was again his country’s native soil.
He was alone on the starboard bridge wing in the pre-dawn gloom. Such
an odd term, he thought. Gloom? Not at all. There was a wonderful peace to
this, especially when you were alone to keep it to yourself, and your mind
started editing the distractions out. Above his head was the faint buzz of
electronic gear, like a hive of slumbering bees, and that noise was soon
blanked out. There was also the distant hum of the ship’s systems, mostly the
engines, and air-conditioning blowers, he knew, shrugging it off. There were
no human noises to trouble him. The captain ofMutsu enforced good bridge
discipline. The sailors didn’t speak unless they had reason to, concentrating
on their duties as they were supposed to do. One by one, Admiral Sato elimi-
nated the extraneous noises. That left only the sound of the sea, the wonder-
ful swish of steel hull parting the waves. He looked down to see u. the lan
shaped foam whose white was both brilliant and faint at the sunn- limr, and
aft the wide swath was a pleasant fluorescent green from the distniham e of
phytoplankton, tiny creatures that came to the surface at night for reasons
Sato had never troubled himself to understand. Perhaps to enjoy the moon
and stars, he told himself with a smile in the darkness. Ahead was the island
of Saipan, just a space on the horizon blacker than the darkness itself; it
seemed so because it occulted the stars on the western horizon, and a sea-
man’s mind knew that where there were no stars on a clear night, then there
had to be land. The lookouts at their stations atop the forward superstructure
had seen it long before him, but that didn’t lessen the pleasure of his own
discovery, and as with sailors of every generation there was something spe-
cial to a landfall, because every voyage ended with discovery of some sort.
And so had this one.
More sounds. First the jerky whirs of electrical motors turning radar sys-
tems, then something else. He knew he was late noticing it, off to starboard,
a deep rumble, like something tearing, growing rapidly in intensity until he
knew it could only be the roar of an approaching aircraft. He lowered his
binoculars and looked off to the right, seeing nothing until his eyes caught
movement close aboard, and two dart shapes streaked overhead. Mutsu
trembled in their wake, giving Admiral Sato a chill followed by a flush of
anger. He pulled open the door to the wheelhouse.
“What the hell was that?”
“Two F-3S conducting an attack drill,” the officer of the deck replied.
“They’ve been tracking them in CIC for several minutes. We had them il-
luminated with our missile trackers.”
“Will someone tell those ‘wild eagles’ that flying directly over a ship in
the dark risks damage to us, and foolish death to them!”