of American Westerns from the 19505, highly simplified melodramas of
good and evil, except that the heroic figure, always laconic, always invinci-
ble, always mysterious, used a sword instead of a six-gun. And this fool
Kaneda was devoted to such stories, he’d learned over the past day and a
half.
Koga stood and started moving back to the bookcase, and (hat was all he
had to do for the man’s head to turn and look. Watchdog, Koga thought with-
out looking back as he selected another book to read. And a formidable one,
especially with four others about, two sleeping now, one in the kitchen, and
one outside the door. He hadn’t a chance of escaping, the politician knew.
I’erhaps a fool, but the sort that a careful man feared.
Who was Kaneda, really? he wondered. A former Yakuza, probably. He
didn’t show any of the grotesque tattoos that people in that subculture af-
lected, deliberately making themselves different in a culture that demanded
conformity-but at the same time demonstrating conformity in a society of
outcasts. On the other hand, he just sat there wearing a business suit whose
only concession to comfort was the unbuttoned jacket. Even the ronin’s pos-
lure was rigid as he sat there erect, Koga saw, himself sitting back down with
a book but looking over it at his captor. He knew he couldn’t fight the man
and win-Koga had never troubled himself to learn any of the martial arts
that his country had helped develop, and the man was physically formidable.
And he was not alone.
He was a watchdog. Seemingly impassive, seemingly at rest, he was in
tact more like a coiled spring, ready to leap and strike, and civilized only so
long as those around him acted in such a way as not to arouse him, and so
obvious about it that you just knew that it was madness to offend him. It
shamed the politician that he was so easily cowed, but cowed he was, be-
cause he was a bright and thoughtful man, unwilling to squander his one
chance, if he had that much, in a foolish gesture.
Many of the industrialists had men like this one. Some of them even car-
ried handguns, which was almost unthinkable in Japan, but the right person
could make the right sort of approach to the right official, and a very special
permit could be issued, and that possibility didn’t so much frighten Koga as
revolt him. The sword of a ronin was bad enough, and in this context would
merely have been theatrical, but a gun for Koga was pure evil, something
that didn’t belong in his culture, a coward’s weapon. That was what he was
dealing with, really. Kaneda was undoubtedly a coward, unable to master his
own life, able even to break the law only on orders from others, but with
those orders he could do anything. What a dreadful commentary on his
country. People like this were used by their masters to strong-arm unions
and business competitors. People like Kaneda had assaulted demonstrators,
sometimes even in the open, and gotten away with it because the police had
looked the other way or managed not to be present, even though reporters
and photographers had come to find the scene of the day’s interest People
like this and their masters held his country back from true demm nu y, and
the realization was all the more bitter for Koga because he’d known it lor
years, dedicated his life to changing it, and failed; and so here he was in
Yamata’s penthouse apartment, under guard, probably to be released some-
day as the political irrelevance he already was or would soon become, then
l<> Wiiii h his country tall tolally under the control of a new kind of master
or an old one, he told himself. And not a thing he could do about it, which
was why he sat with a book in his hands while Kaneda sat in front of a TV
watching some actor perform in a drama whose beginning, middle, and end
were all foretold a thousand times, pretending that it was both real and new,
when it was neither.
Battles like this one had been fought only in simulation, or perhaps in the
Roman arenas of a different age. At both ends were the AEW aircraft,
£-7675 on the Japanese side and £-365 on the American, so far apart that
neither really “saw” the other even on the numerous radar screens that both
carried, though both monitored the signals of the other on different instru-
ments. In between were the gladiators, because for the third time the Ameri-
cans were testing the air defenses of Japan, and, again, failing.
The American AW ACS aircraft were six hundred miles off Hokkaido,
with the F-22A fighters a hundred miles in front of them, ‘ ‘trolling,” as the
flight leader put it, and the Japanese F-I5S were coming out as well, entering
the radar coverage of the American surveillance aircraft but not leaving the
coverage of their own.
On command, the American fighters split into two elements of two air-
craft each. The lead element darted due south, using their ability to super-
cruise at over nine hundred miles per hour, closing obliquely with the
Japanese picket line.
‘ They’re fast,” a Japanese controller observed. It was hard to hold the con-
tact. The American aircraft was somewhat stealthy, but the size and power
of the Kami aircraft’s antenna defeated the low-observable technology
again, and the controller started vectoring his Eagles south to cover the
probe. Just to make sure that the Americans knew they were being tracked,
he selected the appropriate blips with his electronic pointer and ordered the
radar to steer its beams on them every few seconds and hold them there.
They had to know that they were being followed through every move, that
their supposedly radar-defeating technology was not good enough for some-
thing new and radical. Just to make it a little more interesting, he switched
the frequency of his transmitter to fire-control mode. They were much too
far away actually to guide a missile at this range, but even so, it would be one
more proof to them that they could be lit up brightly enough for a kill, and
that would teach them a lesson of its own. The signal faded a bit at first,
almost dropping off entirely, but then the software picked them out of the
clutter and firmed up the blip as he jacked up the power down the two
azimuths to the American fighters, as fighters they had to be. The B-i,
though fast, was not so agile. Yes, this was the best card the Americans had
to play, and it was not good enough, and maybe if they (runted ihal, diplo
macy would change things once and for all, and the NoMh I’milu (Xrun
would again be at peace.
“See how their Eagles move to cover,” the senior American controller oh
served at his supervisory screen.
“Like they’re tied to the 75 with a string,” his companion noted. I Ic was a
lighter pilot just arrived from Langley Air Force Base, headquarters of Air
Combat Command, where his job was to develop fighter tactics.
Another plotting board showed that three of the £-7675 were up. Two
were on advanced picket duty while the third was orbiting in close, just off
the coast of Honshu. That was not unexpected. It was, in fact, the predictable
thing to do because it was also the smart thing to do, and all three surveil-
lance aircraft had their instruments dialed up to what had to be maximum
power, as they had to do to detect stealthy aircraft.
“Now we know why they hit both the Lancers,” the man from Virginia
observed. “They can jump to high freqs and illuminate for the Eagles. Our
guys never thought they were being shot at. Cute,” he thought.
“Would be nice to have some of those radars,” the senior controller
agreed.
“But we know how to beat it now.” The officer from Langley thought he
saw it. The controller wasn’t so sure.
“We’ll know that in another few hours.”
Sandy Richter was even lower than the C-I7 had dared to go. He was also
slower, at a mere one hundred fifty knots, and already tired from the curious
mixture of tension and boredom on the overwater flight. The previous night
he and the other two aircraft in his flight had staged to Petrovka West, yet
another mothballed MiG base near Vladivostok. There they’d gotten what
would surely be their last decent sleep for the next few days, and lifted off at
2200 hours to begin their part in Operation ZORRO. Each aircraft now had
wing sponsons attached, and on each were two extra fuel tanks, and while
they were needed for the range of this flight, they were decidedly unsiealihy
even though the tanks themselves had been made out of radar-transparent