Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

this? Oso asked himself.

It was a good thing he was in shape, Nomuri thought. Just breathing here

was hard enough. Most Western visitors to Japan stayed in the major cities

and never realized that the country was every bit as mountainous as Colo-

rado. Tochimoto was a small hill settlement that languished in the winter and

expanded in summer as local citizens who grew tired of the crowded same-

ness of the cities moved into the country to explore. The hamlet, at the end of

National Route 140, had essentially pulled in its sidewalks, but Chet was

able to find a place to rent a small four-wheel all-terrain cycle, and had told

the owner that he just needed a few hours to get away. In return for his

money and a set of keys he’d received a stern warning, albeit polite, about

following the trail and being careful, for which he’d graciously thanked the

man and gone on his way, following the River Taki-more a nice brook than

a river-up into the mountains. After the first hour, and about seven miles,

he reckoned, he’d switched off the motor, pulled out his earplugs, and just

listened.

Nothing. He hadn’t seen a track in the mud and gravel path alongside the

cascading stream, nor any sign of occupancy in the handful of rustic summer

homes he’d passed along the way, and now, listening, he heard nothing at all

but for the wind. There was a ford on his map, two more miles up, and sure

enough it was both marked and usable, and allowed him to go east toward

Shiraishi-san. Like most mountains, it had sides sculpted by time and water

into numerous dead-end valleys, and Mount Shiraishi had a particularly nice

valley, as yet unmarred by house or cabin. Perhaps Boy Scouts came here in

summer to camp and commune with the nature the rest of their country had

worked so hard to extinguish. More likely it was just a spot with no minerals

valuable enough to justify a road or rail line. It was also one hundred air

miles from Tokyo, and for all practical purposes might as easily have been in

Antarctica.

Nomuri turned south, and climbed a smooth part of the slope to the crest

ul the southern rid^e. He wanted a further look and listen, and, while he

spoiled a single hall -built dwelling a few miles below, he saw no column of

smoke from a wood lire, nor the rising steam from someone’s hot tub, and he

heard nothing at all that was not of nature. Nomuri spent thirty minutes scan-

ning the area with a pair of compact binoculars, taking his time and making

sun-, then turned to look north and west, finding the same remarkable ab-

sence of human presence. Finally satisfied, he headed back down to the

I’aki, following the path back to the town.

“We never see anyone now,” the rental agent said when Nomuri finally

^ol back, just after sunset. “May I offer you some tea?”

‘ ‘Dozo,” the CIA officer said. He took his tea with a friendly nod. “It’s

wonderful here.”

“You were wise to come this time of year.” The man wanted conversa-

tion more than anything else. “In the summer the trees are full and beautiful,

Init the noise from these things”-he gestured at the ranks of cycles-

“well, it ruins the peace of the mountain. But it supports me well,” the man

allowed.

” I must come back again. Things are so hectic at my office. To come here

and feel the silence.”

“Perhaps you will tell some friends,” the man suggested. Clearly he

needed the money to sustain him in the off-season.

“Yes, I will certainly do that,” Nomuri assured him. A friendly bow sent

him on his way, and the CIA officer started his car for the three-hour drive

back to Tokyo, still wondering why the Agency had given him an assign-

ment calculated to make him feel better about his mission.

“Are you guys really comfortable with this?” Jackson asked the people

from SOCOM.

“Funny time for second thoughts, Robby,” the senior officer observed.

” If they’re dumb enough to let American civilians roam around their coun-

try, well, let’s take advantage of it.”

“The insertion still worries me,” the Air Force representative noted,

looking by turns at the air-navigation charts and the satellite photos. “We

have a good IP-hell, the navigational references are pretty good-but

somebody’s gotta take care of those AW ACS birds for this to work.”

“It’s covered,” the colonel from Air Combat Command assured him.

“We’re going to light up the sky for them, and you do have that gap to use.”

He tapped his pointer on the third chart.

“The helo crews?” Robby asked next.

“They’re working on their sims now. If they’re lucky they’ll get to sleep

on the flight over.”

The miHsion planning simululor was rciil enough to fool Sandy Richter’s

inner curs. The device was halfway between his youngest son’s new Nin-

tendo VR System and a full-up aircraft simulator, the oversi/ed helmet he

wore identical with the one he used in his Comanche, but infinitely more

sophisticated. What had begun with a monocle display on the AH-&4

Apache was now like an I-MAX-theater view of the world that you wore on

your head. It needed to be more sophisticated yet, but it did give him a view

of the computer-generated terrain along with all his flight information, and

his hands were on the stick and throttle of another virtual-helicopter as he

navigated across the water toward approaching bluffs.

“Coming right for the notch,” he told his backseater, who was actually

sitting beside him, because the simulator didn’t require that sort of fidelity.

In this artificial world, they saw what they saw regardless of where they

were, though the backseater sitting next to him had two additional instru-

ments.

What they saw was the product of six hours of supercomputer time. A set

of satellite photographs taken over the last three days had been analyzed,

folded, spindled, and mutilated into a three-dimensional display that looked

like a somewhat grainy video.

“Population center to the left.”

“Roger, I see it.” What he saw was a patch of fluorescent blue which in

reality would have been yellow-orange quartz lighting, and out of deference

to it he increased altitude from the fifty feet he’d followed for the past two

hours. He eased the sidestick over, and the others in the darkened room, who

were observing the flight crew, were struck by the way both bodies tilted to

deal with the g-forces of a turn that existed only in the computer running the

simulation. They might have laughed except that Sandy Richter was not

somebody you laughed at.

From the moment he crossed the virtual coast, he climbed up to a crest and

ran along it. That was Richter’s idea. There were roads and houses in the

river valleys that ended at the Sea of Japan. Better, the pilot thought, to stay

acoustically covert as much as possible and take his chances with the look-

down capability. In a just world he’d be able to deal with that threat on the

inbound leg, but this was not exactly a just world.

“Fighters overhead,” a female voice warned, just as it would on the real

mission.

“Coming down some,” Richter replied to the computer voice, slipping

down below the ridgeline to the right. “If you can find me fifty feet off the

ground, then I lose, honey.”

“I hope this stealth shit really works.” The initial intelligence reports

were very concerned with the radar in the Japanese F-I5S. Somehow it had

taken down one B-i and crippled another, and nobody was quite sure how it

had happened.

“We’re gonna find that one out.” What else could the pilot say? In this

case the computer decided tluil the stealth shit really did work. The last hour

of the virtual flight WHS routine terrain-dodging, but strenuous enough thai

when he landed his Comanche, Richter needed a shower which, he was sure,

would not be available where they were going. Though a pair of skis might

be useful.

“What if the other guys-”

“Then I suppose we learn to like rice.” You couldn’t worry about every-

thing. The lights came on, the helmets came off, and Richter found himself

sitting in a medium-sized room.

“Successful insertion,” the major grading the exercise decided. “You

gents ready for a little trip?”

Richter picked up a glass of ice water from the table in the back of the

room. “You know, I never really thought I’d drive a snake that far.”

“What about the rest of the stuff?” his weapons-operator wanted to

know.

“It’ll be uploaded when you get there.”

“And the way out?” Richter asked. It would have been better had they

briefed him in on that one.

“You have a choice of two. Maybe three. We haven’t decided that one

yet. It’s being looked at,” the SOCOM officer assured them.