Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

would remain totally covert even when launching their missiles. That was a

problem even for the B-2, whose stealthing was designed to defeat longwave

search radars and high-frequency airborne tracking- and targeting radars.

Stealth was technology; it was not quite magic. An airborne radar of such

great power and frequency-agility just might get enough of a return off the -2

to make the proposed mission suicidal. Sleek and agile as it was, the B-2 was

n bomber, not a fighter, and a huge target for any modern fighter aircraft.

“So what’s the good news?” Zacharias asked.

‘ ‘We’re going to play some more games with them and try to get a better

I eel for their capabilities.”

‘ ‘My dad used to do that with SAMs. He ended up getting a lengthy stay

in North Vietnam.”

“Well, they’re working on a Plan B, too,” the intelligence officer offered.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Chavez said.

”Aren’t you the one who doesn’t like being a spook?” Clark asked, clos-

ing his laptop after erasing the mission orders. “I thought you wanted back

in to the paramilitary business.”

“Me and my big mouth.” Ding moved his backside on the park bench.

“Excuse me,” a third voice said. Both CIA officers looked up to see a

uniformed police officer, a pistol sitting in its holster on his Sam Browne

belt.

“Hello,” John said with a smile. “A pleasant morning, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” the policeman replied. “Is Tokyo very different from Amer-

ica?”

“It i\ also very different from Moscow this time of year.”

“Moscow?”

Clark reached into his coat and pulled out his passport. “We are Russian

journalists.”

The cop examined the booklet and handed it back. “Much colder in Mos-

cow this time of year?”

‘ ‘Much,” Clark confirmed with a nod. The officer moved off, having han-

dled his curiosity attack for the day.

‘ ‘Not so sure, Ivan Sergeyevich,” Ding observed when he’d gone.”It can

get pretty cold here, too.”

“I suppose you can always get another job.”

“And miss all this fun?” Both men rose and walked toward their parked

car. There was a map in the glove box.

The Russian Air Force personnel at Verino had a natural curiosity of their

own, but the Americans weren’t helping matters. There were now over a

hundred American personnel on their base, barracked in the best accommo-

dations. The three helicopters and two vehicular trailers had been rolled into

hangars originally built for MiG-25 fighters. The transport aircraft were too

large for that, but had been rolled inside as much as their dimensions al-

lowed, with the tails sticking out in the open, but they could as easily have

been mistaken for IL-86s, which occasionally stopped off here. The Russian

ground crewmen established a secure perimeter, which denied contact of

any sort between the two sets of air-force personnel, a disappointment for

the Russians.

The two trailers inside the easternmost hangar were electronically linked

with a thick black coaxial cable. Another cable ran outside to a portable sat-

ellite link that was similarly guarded.

“Okay, let’s rotate it,” a sergeant said. A Russian officer was watching-

protocol demanded that the Americans let someone in; this one was surely

an intelligence officer-as the birdcage image on the computer screen

turned about as though on a phonograph. Next the image moved through a

vertical axis, as if it were flying over the stick image. “That’s got it,” the

sergeant observed, closing the window on the computer screen and punching

UPLOAD to transmit it to the three idle helicopters.

“What did you just do? May I ask?” the Russian inquired.

“Sir, we just taught the computers what to look for.” The answer made

no sense to the Russian, true though it was.

The activity in the second van was easier to understand. High-quality

photos of several tall buildings were scanned and digitalized, their locations

programmed in to a tolerance of only a few meters, then compared with

other photos taken from a very high angle that had to denote satellite cam-

eras. The officer leaned in close to get a better feel for the sharpness of the

misery, somewhat In I he discomfort of the senior American officer-who,

however, was under orders to lake no action that might offend the Russians

in .my way.

‘ It looks like an apartment building, yes?” the Russian asked in genuine

i unosily.

Yes, it does,” the American officer replied, his skin crawling despite the

hospitality they had all experienced here. Orders or not, it was a major fed-

ri ,il felony to show this kind of thing to anyone who lacked the proper clear-

.iiii es, even an American.

“Who lives there?”

“I don’t know.” Why can’t this guy just go away?

My evening the rest of the Americans were up and moving. Incomprehen-

sibly with shaggy hair, not like soldiers at all, they started jogging around the

IH-I imeter of the main runway. A few Russians joined in, and a race of sorts

started, with both groups running in formation. What started off friendly

soon became grim. It was soon clear that the Americans were elite troops

unaccustomed to being bested in anything, against which the Russians had

pride of place and better acclimatization. Spetznaz, the Russians were soon

gasping to one another, and because it was a dull base with a tough-minded

i ommander, they were in good enough shape that after ten kilometers they

managed to hold their own. Afterward, both groups mingled long enough to

u-ali/e that language barriers prevented much in the way of conversation,

though the tension in the visitors was clear enough without words.

“Weird-looking things,” Chavez said.

‘ ‘Just lucky for us that they picked this place.” It was security again, John

i bought, just like the fighters and bombers at Pearl Harbor had all been

bunched together to protect against sabotage or some such nonsense because

of a bad intelligence estimate. Another factor might have been the conve-

nience of maintenance at a single location, but they hadn’t been assigned to

ibis base originally, and so the hangars weren’t large enough. As a result, six

K-767S were sitting right there in the open, two miles away and easily distin-

guished by their odd shape. Better yet, the country was just too crowded for

i lie base to be very isolated. The same factors that placed cities in the flat

spots also placed airfields there, but the cities had grown up first. There were

light-industrial buildings all around, and the mainly rectangular air base had

highways down every side. The next obvious move was to check the trees

lor wind direction. Northwesterly wind. Landing aircraft would come in

from the southeast. Knowing that, they had to find a perch.

I Everything was being used now. Low-orbit electronic-intelligence satellites

were also gathering signals, fixing the patrol locations of the AEW aircraft.

not «* well as I he Kl.INT aircraft could, hut fur more safely. The next step

would In- in enlist submarines in the job, but that could take time, someone

Inul told them Not all that many submarines to go around, and those that

wcic Irlt had .1 job to do. Hardly a revelation. The electronic order of battle

was liimin^ up, and though not everything the ELINT techs discovered was

JI«HH| wws. at least they did have the data from which the operations people

wight lot initiate some sort of plan or other. For the moment, the locations of

the nucltack patterns used by three orbiting £-7675 were firmly plotted.

They seemed to stay fairly stationary from day to day. The minor daily vari-

ations might have had as much to do with local winds as anything else,

which made it necessary to downlink information to their ground-control

center*. Ami that was good news, too.

The medium-price hotel was more than they could ordinarily afford, but for

all that it lay right mulct the approach to runway three-two-left of the nearby

air base. Perhaps the noise was just so normal to the country that people

filtered it out, (‘have/ thought, remembering the incessant street racket from

their hostelry in Tokyo. The back was better, the clerk assured them, but the

best he could offer was a corner room. The really offensive noise was at the

front of the hotel: the runway terminated only half a kilometer from the front

door. It was the takeoffs that really shook things up. Landings were far easier

to sleep through.

“I’m not sure I like this,” Ding observed when he got to the room.

“Who said we were supposed to?” John moved a chair to the window and

took the first watch.

“It’s like murder, John.”

“Yeah, I suppose it is.” The hell of it was, Ding was right, but somebody

else had said it wasn’t and that’s what counted. Sort of.

“No other options?” President Durling asked.

” No, sir, none that I see.” It was a first for Ryan. He’d managed to stop a