Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

sense in asking a Ranger for a smoke. Damned athletes.

The Rapiers turned away an hour later, convinced, the Japanese air-defense

people were sure, that they could not penetrate the Kami-Eagle line that

guarded the northeast approaches to the home islands. Even the best Ameri-

can aircraft and best systems could not defeat what they had to face, and that

was good. On their screens they watched the contacts fade off, and soon the

emissions from the £-365 faded as well, heading back to Shemya to report

iheir failure to their masters.

The Americans were realists. Courageous warriors, to be sure-the offi-

cers in the £-7675 would not make the mistake as their forebears had of

tliinking that Americans lacked the ardor for real combat operations. That

error had been a costly one. But war was a technical exercise, and they had

allowed their strength to fall below a line from which recovery was not tech-

nically possible. And that was too bad for them.

The Rapiers had to tank on the way back, and didn’t use their supercruise

ability, because wasting fuel was not purposeful. The weather was again

crummy at Shemya, and the fighters rode down under positive ground-con-

trol to their safe landings, then taxied off to their hangars, which were more

crowded now with the arrival of four F-I5E Strike Eagles from Mountain

I lome Air Force Base in Idaho. They also regarded the mission as a success.

42

lightning Strikes

“Are you mad?” Scherenko asked.

“Think about it,” Clark said, again back in the Russian Embassy. “We

want a political solution to this, don’t we? Then Koga’s our best chance.

You told us the government didn’t put him in the bag. Who does that leave?

He’s probably right there.” You could even see the building out Sche-

renko’s window, as luck would have it.

“Is it possible?” the Russian asked, worried that the Americans would

ask for assistance thai he was quite unsuited to provide.

“There’s a risk, but it’s unlikely he has an army up there. He wouldn’t be

keeping the guy there unless he wanted to be covert about it. Figure five or

six people, max.”

“And two of you!” Scherenko insisted.

“Like the man said,” Ding offered with a very showy smile, “no big

deal.”

So the old KGB file was true. Clark was not a real intelligence officer, but

a paramilitary type, and the same was true of his arrogant young partner who

mostly just sat there, looking out the window.

“I can offer you nothing by way of assistance.”

“How about weapons?” Clark asked. “You going to tell me you don’t

have anything here we can use’? What kind of rezidentura is this?” Clark

knew that the Russian would have to temporize. Too bad that these people

weren’t trained to take much initiative.

‘ ‘I need permission before I can do any of that.”

Clark nodded, congratulating himself on making a good guess. He opened

his laptop computer. “So do we. You get yours. I’ll get mine.”

Junes stubbed out ms cigarette in the Navy-style aluminum ashtray. The

luck had be£n s’uck away in a desk drawer, perhaps in anticipation of just

such an occi»s’on as this. When a war started, the peacetime rules went out

tin- window. Old habits, especially bad ones, were easy to fall back into-

but then that’8 what war was, too, wasn’t it? He could also see that Admiral

Mancuso was wavering on the edge of bumming one, and so he made sure

the butt was all the waY out-

“What do Y°u have> Ron?”

” You tak£ the tinie to work this gear and you get results. Boomer and me

have been fff^aHang the data all week. We started on the surface ships.”

I ones walked to me waU chart. “We’ve been plotting the position of the

‘cans-”

“All the way from-” Captain Chambers interrupted, only to be cut off.

“Yes sir, aU the waY from mid-Pac. I’ve been playing broadband and

narrow-band* an^ checking weather, and I’ve plotted them.” Jones pointed

at the silhouettes pinned to the map.

‘ That’s fife’ Ron, but we have satellite overheads for that,” ComSubPac

pointed out.

“So am I fight?” the civilian asked.

“Pretty cl°se>” Mancuso admitted. Then he pointed to the other shapes

pinned to the wall.

“Yeah that s right, Bart. Once I figured how to track the ‘cans, then we

started working on me submarines. And guess what? I can still bag the fuck-

ers when they snort. Here’s your picket line. We get them about a third of the

time by my reckoning, and the bearings are fairly constant.”

The wall chart showed six firm contacts. Those silhouettes were within

circles between twenty and thirty miles in diameter. Two more were overlaid

with question marks.

“That still leaves a few unaccounted for,” Chambers noted.

Jones nodded. “True. But I got six for sure, maybe eight. We can’t get

good cuts off the Japanese coast. Just too far. I’m plotting merchantmen

shuttling ba^k and forth to the islands, but that’s all,” he admitted. “I’m

also tracking a big two-screw contact heading west toward the Marshalls,

and I kinda noticed that there’s an empty dry dock across the way this

morning.”

“That’s s^cret” Mancuso pointed out with a quiet smile.

“Well if I were you guys, I’d tell Stennis to watch out for this line of

SSKs, gentl^men- You might want to let the subs head into the briarpatch

first, to clean thing8 out, like.”

“We can do that, but I’m worried about the others,” Chambers admitted.

“Conn, sonar.”

“Conn, ayi1.” Lieutenant Ken Shaw had the midwatch.

“I’ossihle sonar contact hearing /,ero-six-/.ero . . . probably a submerged

lontiu I very faint, sir,” the sonar chief reported.

I he ill ill was automatic after all the practice they’d undergone on the trips

Irom Itiemerloii and Pearl. The fire-control-tracking party immediately

Miirln! u plot A lech on the ray-path analyzer took data directly from the

M»nm instruments and from that tried to determine the probable range to the

target The computer required only a second.

“Thai’s a direct-path signal, sir. Range is under twenty thousand yards.”

Dutch Claggett hadn’t really been asleep. In the way of captains, he’d

been lying in his bunk, eyes closed, even dreaming something meaningless

and confusing about a day fishing on the beach with the fish behind him on

the sand and creeping closer to his back, when the call had gone out from

sonar. Somehow he’d come completely awake, and was now in the attack

center, standing barefoot in his underwear. He checked the room to deter-

mine depth, course, and speed, then headed into sonar to get his own look at

the instruments.

“Talk to me, Chief.”

“Right here on the sixty-hertz line.” The chief tapped the screen with his

grease pencil. It came and went and came and went, but kept coming back,

just a series of dots trickling down the screen, all on the same frequency line.

The bearing was changing slowly right to left.

“They’ve been at sea for more than three weeks …” Claggett thought

aloud.

“Long time for a diesel boat,” the chief agreed. “Maybe heading back in

for refueling?”

Claggett leaned in closer, as though proximity to the screen would make a

difference. “Could be. Or maybe he’s just changing position. Makes sense

that they’d have a patrol line offshore. Keep me posted.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Well?” Claggett asked the tracking party.

“First cut on range is fourteen thousand yards, base course is westerly,

speed about six knots.”

The contact was easily within range of his ADCAP torpedoes, Claggett

saw. But the mission didn’t allow him to do anything about it. Wasn’t that

just great?

‘ ‘Let’s get two weapons warmed up,” the Captain said.’ ‘When we have a

good track on our friend, we evade to the south. If he closes on us, we try to

keep out of his way, and we can shoot only if there’s no choice.” He didn’t

even have to look around to know what his crewmen thought of that. He {_

could hear the change in how they breathed.

What do you think?” Mary Pat Holey asked.

“Interesting,” Jitck said after a moment’s contemplation of the fax from

I .ingley.

“It’s a long-bull opportunity.” This was the voice of Ed Foley. “But it’s

one hell of a gamble.”

“They’re not even sure he’s there,” Ryan said, rereading the signal. It

IMMV all the marks of something from John Clark. Honest. Decisive. Positive.

I he man knew how to think on his feet, and though often a guy at the bottom

ol the food chain, he tended to see the big picture very clearly from down

there. “I have to go upstairs with this one, guys.”

“Don’t trip on the way,” MP advised with a smile he could almost hear.

She was still a cowgirl on field operations. “I recommend a Go-Mission on

ihis one.”

“And you, Ed?” Jack asked.