Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

they had. Now all he had to do was follow them, and l)ulm> muliln t ihscil

them except to the east. And that meant diverting his cnlirr llrrl i ilu- c.isi.

away from Sri Lanka, opening the way for his navy’s amphibious lomi.iiion

to load its cargo of soldiers and armored vehicles. The only allmialivc was

for the Americans to confront his fleet and offer battle.

But they wouldn’t do that-would they? No. The only sensible thing ten

America to do was to recall Dubro and his two carriers to Pearl Harbor, ihoiv

to await the political decision on whether or not to confront Japan. They had

divided their fleet, violating the dictum of Alfred Thayer Mahan, which

Chandraskatta had learned at the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Is-

land, along with his classmate, Yusuo Sato, not so many years before, and he

remembered the theoretical discussions they’d had on walks along the sea-

wall, watching the yachts and wondering how small navies could defeat big

ones.

Arriving at Pearl Harbor, Dubro would confer with the intelligence and

operations staffs of his Pacific Fleet command and they would do their sums,

and then they would see that it probably could not be done. How angry and

frustrated they would be, the Indian Admiral thought.

But first he would teach them a lesson. Now he was hunting them. For all

their speed and cleverness, they were tied to a fixed point, and sooner or later

you just ran out of maneuvering room. Now he could force them away, and

allow his country to take her first imperial step. A small one, almost inconse-

quential in the great game, but a worthy opening move nonetheless because

the Americans would withdraw, allowing his country to move, as Japan had

moved. By the time America had built its strength back up, it would be too

late to change things. It was all about space and time, really. Both worked

against a country crippled by internal difficulties and therefore robbed of her

purpose. How clever of the Japanese to see to that.

“It went better than I expected,” Durling said. He’d walked over to Ryan’s

office for the chat, a first for both of them.

“You really think so?” Jack asked in surprise.

“Remember, I inherited most of the cabinet from Bob.” The President sat

down. “Their focus is domestic. That’s been my problem all along.”

“You need a new SecDef and a new Chairman,” the National Security

Advisor observed coldly.

“I know that, but the timing is bad for it.” Durling smiled. “It gives you a

slightly wider purview, Jack. But I have a question to ask you first.”

“I don’t know if we can bring it off.” Ryan was doodling on his pad.

‘ ‘We have to take the missiles out of play first.”

“Yes, sir, I know that. We’ll find them. At least I expect that we will one

way or another. The other wild cards are hostages, and our ability to hit the

islands. This war, if that’s what it is, has different rules. I’m not sure what

those rules are yet.” Ryan was still working on the public part of the prob-

lem. How would the American people react? How would the Japanese?

“You want some input from your commander in chief?” Durling asked.

That was good enough to generate another smile. “You bet.”

“I fought in a war where the other side made the rules,” Durling ob-

served. ‘ ‘It didn’t work out very well.”

“Which leads me to a question,” Jack said.

“Ask it.”

“How far can we go?”

The President considered. “That’s too open-ended.”

‘ ‘The enemy command authority is usually a legitimate target of war, but

heretofore those people have been in uniform.”

“You mean going after the zaibatsu?”

“Yes, sir. Our best information is that they’re the ones giving the orders.

But they’re civilians, and going directly after them could seem like assassi-

nation.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Jack.” The President stood to

leave, having said what he’d come in to say.

“Fair enough.” A slightly wider purview, Ryan thought. That could mean

many things. Mainly it meant that he had the opportunity to run with the ball,

but all alone, unprotected. Well, Jack thought, you’ve done that before.

“What have we done?” Koga asked. “What have we allowed them to do?”

“It’s so easy for them,” responded a political aide of long standing.

He didn’t have to say who them was. “We cannot ourselves assert our

power, and divided, it’s just so easy for them to push us in any direction

they want… and over time-” The man shrugged.

‘ ‘And over time the policy of our country has been decided by twenty or

thirty men elected by no one but their own corporate boardrooms. But this

far?” Koga asked. “But this far?”

“We are where we are. Would you prefer that we deny it?” the man

asked.

“And who protects the people now?” the former-that word was bitter

indeed-Prime Minister asked, leading with his chin and knowing it.

“Goto, of course.”

“We cannot permit that. You know what he follows.” Koga’s counselor

nodded, and would have smiled but for the gravity of the moment. “Tell

me,” Mogataru Koga asked. “What is honor? What does it dictate now?”

“Our duty, Prime Minister, is to the people,” replied a man whose friend-

ship with the politician went back to Tokyo University. Then he remem-

bered a quote from a Westerner-Cicero, he thought. “The good of the

people is the highest law.”

And thai said it all, Koga thought. He wondered if treason always began

that way. It was something he’d sleep on, except that he knew that he

wouldn’t sleep at all that night. This morning, Koga thought with a grunt,

checking his watch.

“We’re sure that it has to be standard-gauge track?”

“You can resection the photos we have yourself,” Betsy Fleming told

him. They were back in the Pentagon headquarters of the National Recon-

naissance Office. “The transporter-car our people saw is standard gauge.”

“Disinformation, maybe?” the NRO analyst asked.

“The diameter of the 88-19 is two-point-eight-two meters,” Chris Scott

replied, handing over a fax from Russia. ‘ ‘Throw in another two hundred

seventy centimeters for the transport container. I ran the numbers myself.

The narrow-gauge track over there would be marginal for an object of that

width. Possible, but marginal.”

“You have to figure,” Betsy went on, “that they’re not going to take too

many chances. Besides, the Russians also considered a rail-transport mode

for the Mod-4 version, and designed the bird for that, and the Russian rail

gauge-”

“Yeah, I forgot that. It is larger than our standard, isn’t it?” The analyst

nodded. “Okay, that does make the job easier.” He turned back to his com-

puter and executed a tasking order that he’d drafted a few hours earlier. For

every pass over Japan, the narrow-focus high-resolution cameras would

track down along precise coordinates. Interestingly, AMTRAK had the best

current information on Japanese railroads, and even now one of their execu-

tives was being briefed in on the security rules pertaining to overhead imag-

ery. It was a pretty simple briefing, really. Tell anyone what you see, and

figure on a lengthy vacation at Marion, Illinois.

The computer-generated order went to Sunnyvale, California, from there

to a military communications satellite, and thence to the two orbiting KH-i i

satellites, one of which would overfly Japan in fifty minutes, the other ten

minutes after that. All three people wondered how good the Japanese were at

camouflaging. The hell of it was, they might never find out. All they could

do, really, was wait. They would look at the imagery in real-time as it came

in, but unless there were overt signs pointing to what they sought, the real

work would be done over hours and days. If they were lucky.

Kurushio was on the surface, never something to make a submarine com-

mander happy. They wouldn’t be here long. Fuel was coming aboard

through two large-diameter hoses, and other stores, mainly food, were low-

ered by crane to crewmen waiting on the deck. His navy didn’t have a proper

submarine tender, Commander Ugaki knew. Mainly they used tank-landing

ships for the purpose, but those were fulfilling other purposes now, and he-

was stuck with a merchantman whose crew was enthusiastic but unfamiliar

with the tasks they were now attempting.

His was the last boat into Agana Harbor because he’d been the one far-

thest away from the Marianas when the occupation had begun. He’d fired

only one torpedo, and was gratified to see how well the Type 89 had worked.

That was good. The merchantmen didn’t have the equipment to reload him

properly, but, the captain told himself, he had fifteen more, and four Har-

poon missiles, and if the Americans offered him that many targets, so much

the better.

Those crewmen not on duty loading stores on the afterdeck were crowded