Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

from that, and nothing I’ve said has shaken them loose.”

“Okay.” Ryan turned. “Dan, we’ve been in contact with Mogataru

Koga-”

“He’s the ex-Prime Minister, right?” Dan asked, wanting to make sure

he was up to speed on this. Jack nodded.

“Correct. We have two CIA officers in Japan covered as Russians, and

they met with Koga under that cover. But Koga got himself kidnapped by

the guy who we think is running the whole show. He told Koga that he knew

about contacts with Americans.”

“It has to be Cook,” Adler said again. “Nobody else on the delegation

knows, and Chris does my informal contacts with their number-two, Seiji

Nagumo.” The diplomat paused, then let his anger show. “It’s just perfect,

isn’t it?”

“Espionage investigation?” Murray asked. Significantly, he saw, the

President let Ryan handle the answer.

“Fast and quiet, Dan.”

‘ ‘And then?” Adler wanted to know.

“If it’s him, we flip the bastard right over.” Murray nodded at once on

hearing the FBI euphemism.

“What do you mean, Jack?” Durling asked.

“It’s a real opportunity. They think they have a good intel source, and

they’ve shown the willingness to use the information from it. Okay,” Jack

said, “we can use that to our advantage. We give them some juicy informa-

tion and then we stick it right up their ass.”

The most immediate need was to buttress the air defenses for the Home Is-

lands. That realization caused no small amount of thinking at Japanese de-

fense headquarters, and most uncomfortably, it was based on partial

information, not the precise sort of data that had been used to prepare the

overall operational plan that the military high command was trying to stick

with. The best radar warning systems their country owned were seaborne on

the four Kongo-class Aegis destroyers patrolling off the northern Marianas.

They were formidable ships with self-contained air-defense systems. Not

quite as mobile as the 8-7678, they were more powerful, however, and able

to take care of themselves. Before dawn, therefore, an order was Hashed out

for the four-ship squadron to race north to establish a radar-picket line east

of the Home Islands. After all, the U.S. Navy wasn’t doing anything, and if

their country’s defenses came back together, there was yet a good chance for

a diplomatic solution.

On Mutsu, Admiral Sato saw the logic of it when he receipted the signal

and gave orders for his ships to go to their maximum sustained speed. None-

theleis. ho was concerned. He knew that his SPY radar systems could detect

stealthy anvialt, something the Americans had demonstrated in tests against

ihou own, and his ships were sufficiently powerful that American aircraft

would not lightly engage them. What worried him was that for the first time

his country was not acting but reacting to American moves. That, he hoped,

was temporary.

“That’s interesting,” Jones observed at once. The traces were only a few

minutes old, but there were two of them, probably representing more than

two ships in a tight formation, making noise and with a slight northerly bear-

ing change.

“Surface ships, sure as hell,” OT2/C Boomer observed. “This looks like

pounding-” He stopped when Jones circled another trace in red.

“And that’s a blade-rate. Thirty-plus knots, and that means warships in

one big hurry.” Jones walked over to the phone and called ComSubPac.

“Bart? Ron? We have something here. That ‘can squadron that’s been oper-

ating around Pagan.”

“What about it?” Mancuso asked.

‘ ‘They seem to be doing a speed-run north. We have anybody up waiting

for them?” Then Jones remembered several inquiries about the waters

around Honshu. Mancuso wasn’t telling him everything, as was to be ex-

pected for operational matters. The way he evaded the question would be the

real answer, the civilian thought.

”Can you plot me a course?”

Bingo. “Give us a little while, an hour maybe? The data is still a little

fuzzy, Skipper.”

The voice was not overly disappointed at the answer, Jones noted. “Aye,

sir. We’ll keep you posted.”

“Good work, Ron.”

Jones replaced the phone and looked around. “Senior Chief? Let’s start

doing a plot on these traces.” Somewhere north, he thought, somebody was

waiting. He wondered who it might be, and came up with one answer.

Time was working in the opposite direction now. Hiroshi Goto opened his

cabinet meeting at ten in the morning, local time, which was midnight in

Washington, where his negotiators were. It was clear that the Americans

were making a contest of it, though some in the room thought that it could

just be a negotiating ploy, that they had to make some show of force in order

to be taken seriously at the negotiating table. Yes, they had stung the air-

defense people badly, but that was all. America could not and would not

launch systematic attacks against Japan. The risks were too great. Japan had

nuclear-tipped missiles, for one thing. For another, Japan had sophisticated

.nr defenses despite the events of the previous night, and then there was sim-

ple arithmetic. How many bombers did America have? How many could

strike at their country even if there were nothing to stop them? How long

would such a bombing campaign take? Did America have the political will

tor it’? The answers to all of these questions were favorable to their country,

the cabinet members thought, their eyes still fixed on the ultimate goal,

whose shining prize glittered before them, and besides, each man in this

room had a patron of sorts to make sure that they took the proper spin on

things. Except Goto, they knew, whose patron was elsewhere at the moment.

For the moment, the Ambassador in Washington would object strongly to

the American attack on Japan, and note that it was not a helpful act, and that

there would be no further concessions until they were stopped. It would be

further noted that any attack on the Japanese mainland would be considered

an exceedingly grave matter; after all, Japan had not attacked vital American

interests directly . . . yet. That threat, behind the thinnest of veils, would

surely bring some rationality to the situation.

Goto nodded agreement to the suggestions, wishing that his own patron

were about to support him and knowing that Yamata had already bypassed

him and spoken with defense officials directly. He’d have to talk to Raizo

about that.

‘ ‘And if they come back?” he asked.

“We’ll have our defenses at maximum alert tonight, and when the de-

stroyers arrive on station, they will be as formidable as before. Yes, they

have made their show of force, but they have not as yet so much as flown

over our territory.”

“We must do more than that,” Goto said, recalling his instructions. “We

can put more pressure on the Americans by making our ultimate weapons

public.”

“No!” a minister said at once. “That will cause chaos here!”

‘ ‘It will also cause chaos there,” Goto replied, somewhat weakly, the rest

of the cabinet thought. Again, they saw, he was voicing the thoughts and

orders of someone else. They knew who that was.’ ‘It will force them to alter

the tone of their negotiations.”

“It could easily force them to consider a grave attack on us.”

“They have too much to lose,” Goto insisted.

‘ ‘And we do not?” the Minister shot back, wondering just where his loy-

alty to his patron ended and his loyalty to his countrymen began. ‘ ‘What if

they decide to preempt?”

“They cannot. They don’t have the weapons to do it. Our missiles have

been very carefully located.”

“Yes, and our air-defense systems are invincible, too,” another minister

snorted.

“Perhaps the best thing to do is for our ambassador to suggest that we

might reveal that we have the atomic weapons. Perhaps that would be

enough.” a third minister suggested. There were some nods around the

table, and (ioto, despite his instructions, agreed to that.

The hardest part was keeping warm, despite all the cold-weather gear they

had brought along. Richter snuggled himself into the sleeping bag, and al-

lowed himself to be vaguely guilty for the fact that the Rangers had to main-

tain listening outposts around the rump airfield they’d established on this

frigid mountainside. His principal worry was a system failure in one of the

three aircraft. Despite all the redundancies built into them, there were sev-

eral items which, if they broke, could not be fixed. The Rangers knew how to

fuel the birds, and how to load weapons, but that was about it. Richter had

already decided to let them worry about ground security. If so much as a

platoon showed up in this high meadow, they were doomed. The Rangers

could kill every intruder, but one radio call could have a battalion here in

hours, and there was no surviving that. Special-operations, he thought. They

were good so long as they worked, just like everything else you did in uni-