Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

Hellfire missiles roared off the rails, heading downhill toward the air base,

five miles away.

Target Four was an apartment building, happily the top floor. ZoRRO-Three

had taken a southerly roule into the city, and now its pilot slewed his heli-

copter sideways, worried about being spotted from the ground but wanting

to find a window with a light on. There. Not a light, the pilot thought. More

like a TV. Good enough in any case. He used the manual-guidance mode to

lock on the spot of blue light.

Kozo Matsuda now wondered how he’d gotten into this mess in the first

place, but the answer always came up the same. He’d overextended his busi-

ness, and Ihen been forced to ally himself with Yamata-but where was his

friend now? Saipan? Why? They needed him here. The Cabinet was getting

nervous, and though Matsuda had his man in that room to do what he was

told to do, he’d learned a few hours earlier that the ministers were thinking

on their own now, and that wasn’t good-but neither were recent develop-

ments. The Americans had breached his country’s defenses to some extent, a

most unwelcome surprise. Didn’t they understand that the war had to be

ended, the Marianas secured once and for all, and America forced to accept

the changes? It seemed that power was the only thing they understood, but

while Matsuda and his colleagues had thought that they had the ability to

employ power, the Americans weren’t intimidated the way they were sup-

posed to be.

What if they .. . what if they don’t cave in? Yamata-san had assured them

all that they had to, but he’d assured them also that he could wreak chaos in

I heir financial system, and somehow the bastards had reversed that more

adroitly than one of Mushashi’s swordfights, such as he was now watching

on late-night TV. There was no way out now. They had to see it through or

they would all face a ruin worse than what his … faulty judgment had al-

most inflicted on his conglomerate. Faulty judgment? Matsuda asked him-

self. Well, yes, but he’d weathered that by allying himself with Yamata, and

if his colleague would only return to Tokyo and help them all keep the gov-

ernment in line, then maybe-

The channel on the TV changed. Odd. Matsuda picked up the controller

and changed it back. Then it changed again.

Fifteen seconds out, the pilot of ZoRRO-Three activated the infrared laser

used to guide the antitank missile in for terminal flight. His Comanche was

in autohover now, allowing him essentially to hand-fly the weapon. It never

occurred to him that the infrared beam of the laser was on the same fre-

quency as the simple device his kids used at home to switch from Nick-

elodeon to the Disney Channel.

Damn the thing! Matsuda flipped the channel back a third time, and still it

reverted back to a news broadcast. He hadn’t seen this movie in years, and

what was wrong with the damned TV? It was even one of his own large-

screen models. The industrialist got out of bed and walked over to it, aiming

the channel-controller right at the receptor on the front of the TV. And it

changed again.

“Bakayaro!” he growled, kneeling down in front of it and changing the

channel manually, and yet once more it flipped back to the news. The lights

were out in his bedroom, and at the last second Matsuda saw a yellow glow

on the screen of the TV. A reflection? Of what? He turned to see a yellow

•4rinii iiilc ol flame approaching his window, a second or so before the Hell-

luc missile struck the steel I-beam just next to his bed.

/oRKo-Thrce noted the explosion on the top floor of the apartment building,

turned abruptly left, and tracked in on the next target. This was really some-

thing, the pilot thought, better even than his minor part in Task Force NOR-

MANDY, six years before. He’d never really wanted to be a snake-eater, but

here he was, doing their work. The next shot was similar to the first. He had

to blink his eyes clear, but he was sure that anyone within twenty meters of

the missile hit would not have lived to tell the tale.

The first Hellfire took the plane with crewmen around it. Mercifully it hit the

£-767 right on the nose, and the explosion may have spared some of them,

Richter thought. The second missile, like the first guided exclusively by the

computer, blew the tail off the other one. Japan was down to two of the

things now, both probably aloft somewhere, and he couldn’t do anything

about that. They wouldn’t even come back here, but to make sure of it, Rich-

ter turned, selected his cannon, and strafed the air-defense radar site on the

way out.

Binichi Murnkami was just leaving the building after a lengthy chat with

Tan/.an Itagake. He would meet with his friends in the Cabinet tomorrow

and counsel them to stop this madness before it grew too late. Yes, his coun-

try had nuclear missiles, but they had been built in the expectation that their

mere existence would be sufficient to prevent their use. Even the thought of

revealing their presence on his country’s soil-rock, as it turned out-

threatened to destroy the political coalition that Goto had in place, and he

understood now (hat you could order political figures only so far before they

realized that they did have power of a sort.

A beggar in the xlwt was the thought that kept coming back. But for that,

he might not have been swayed by Yamata’s arguments. But for that, he

tried to tell himself. Then the sky turned white over his head. Murakami’s

bodyguard was next to him and flung him to the ground next to the car while

glass rained on them. The sound of the event had hardly passed before he

heard the echoes of another several kilometers away.

“What is this?” he tried to ask, but when he moved, he felt liquid on his

face, and it was blood from his employee’s arm, slashed open from glass.

The man bit his lip and kept his dignity, but he was badly hurt. Murakami

helped him into the car and ordered his driver to head for the nearest hospi-

tal. As the man nodded at the order, yet another flash appeared in the sky.

“Two more baby seals,” the Colonel said quietly to himself. He’d gotten

within five miles before launching his Slammers from behind them, and

only one of the Eagles had even attempted to evade, that one too late,

though the pilot punched out and was now floating to the ground. That

was enough for now. He turned his Lightning northeast and headed out at

Mach 1.5. His flight of four had slashed a hole in the Hokkaido defenses,

and behind them the Japanese Air Force would move aircraft to plug the

gap, fulfilling his mission for the night. For years the Colonel had told ev-

eryone who would listen that combat wasn’t about fairness, and he’d

laughed at the cruel euphemism for a stealthy aircraft in combat against a

conventional plane. Killing baby seals. But they weren’t seals, and it was

the next thing to murder, and the officer raged at the necessity for what he

was doing.

The EWO had steered them between two air-defense radars, and within a

hundred miles of an orbiting E-2C. There was all manner of radio chatter,

terse and excited, from ground stations to fighters, all to their north now.

Landfall was over a town named Arai. The B-2 A was at forty-three thousand

feet, cruising smoothly at just under six hundred knots. Under the first layer

of the fabric-based skin, a copper mesh absorbed much of the electronic en-

ergy now sweeping over their aircraft. It was part of the stealth design to be

found in any high-school physics book. The copper filaments gathered in

much of the energy, much like a simple radio antenna, converting it to heat

that dissipated in the cold night air. The rest of the signals hit the inner struc-

ture, to be deflected elsewhere, or so everyone hoped.

Ryan met the Ambassador and escorted him into the West Wing, further

surrounded by five Secret Service agents. The atmosphere was what diplo-

mats called “frank.” There was no overt impoliteness, but the atmosphere

was tense and minus me usual pleasantries that marked such meetings. No

words were exchangeil beyond those required, and by the time they entered

the Oval Office Jack was mainly worried about what threat, if any, would be

delivered at this most inopportune of moments.

“Mr. Ambassador, won’t you please take a seat,” Durling said.

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

Ryan picked one between the visiting diplomat and Roger Durling. It was

an automatic action to protect his president, but unnecessary. Two of the