Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

agents had come in and would not leave the room. One stood at the door. The

other stood directly behind the Ambassador.

“I undei stand you have something you wish lo tell me,” Durling oh-

llir ihploinal’s delivery was matter-of-fact. “My government wishes me

lo minim you that we will soon make public our possession of strategic

wru|M>ns We wish lo give you fair warning of that.”

” Thai will be seen as an overt threat to our country, Mr. Ambassador,”

Rym» Mini, performing his task of shielding the President from the necessity

of speaking directly,

“It is only a threat it you make it so.”

“You arc uwurc,” Jack noted next, “that we too have nuclear arms which

can be delivered lo your country.”

“As you have ulrcmly done,” the Ambassador replied at once. Ryan nod-

ded.

“Yes, in the case of another war begun by your country.”

“We keep telling you, this is only a war if you make it so.”

“Sir, when you attack American territory and kill American servicemen,

that is what makes it a war.”

Durling wad lied the exchange with no more reaction than a tilted head,

playing his pail as his National Security Advisor played his own. He knew

his subordinate well enough now to recognize the tension in him, the way his

feet crossed ai the bottom of his chair while his hands clasped lightly in his

lap, his vouc soli and pleasant-sounding despite the nature of the conversa-

tion. Bob l-owler had been right all along, more so than either the former

President 01 ihe current one had realized. Good man in a storm, Roger Durl-

ing though! yel again, a saying that dated as far back as men had gone to sea.

Headstrong and hot-tempered though he sometimes was, in a crisis Ryan

settled down rather like a doctor in an operating room. Something he’d

learned (torn his wife? the President wondered, or perhaps something he’d

learned bei ause it had been forced upon him in the past ten or twelve years,

in anil out of government service. Good brains, good instinct, and a cool

head when needed. What a shame the man had avoided politics. That

though) almost made Durling smile, but this wasn’t the place for it. No,

Rynn would not be good at politics. He was the sort who sought to handle

problems directly. Even his subtlety had a sharp point to it, and he lacked the

crucial ability to lie effectively, but for all that, a good man for dealing with

a crisis.

“We seek a peaceful conclusion to this episode,” the Ambassador was

saying now. “We are willing to concede much.”

“We require nothing more than a return to status quo ante,” Ryan replied,

taking a chance that made his shoes turn under him. He hated this, hated

taking the point, hut now he had to float the ideas that he and the President

had discussed, and if something went wrong, it would merely be remem-

bered that it was Ryan who misspoke and not Roger Durling. “And the

elimination of your nuclear arms under international inspection.”

“You force us to play a very dangerous game.”

“The game is of your making, sir.” Ryan commanded himself to relax.

His right hand was over his left wrist now. He could feel his watch, but

didn’t dare to look down at it for fear of giving an indication that some-

thing time-related was now under way. “You are already in violation of

the Non-Proliferation Treaty. You have violated the U.N. Charter, which

your government has also signed. You are in violation of several treaty re-

lationships with the United States of America, and you have launched a

war of aggression. Do you expect us to accept all of this, and your en-

slavement of American citizens? Tell me, how will your citizens react

when they learn all of this?” The events of the previous night over North-

ern Japan had not become public yet. They had controlled their media far

more thoroughly than Ryan’s own play with the American TV networks,

but there was a problem with that sort of thing. The truth always got out.

Not a bad thing if the truth worked for you, it could be a terrible thing if it

did not.

“You must offer us something!” the Ambassador insisted, visibly losing

his diplomatic composure. Behind him, the Secret Service agent’s hands

flexed a little.

“What we offer you is the chance to restore the peace honorably.”

“That is nothing!”

“This is more properly a subject for Deputy Secretary Adler and his dele-

gation. You are aware of our position,” Ryan said. “If you choose to go

public with your nuclear weapons, we cannot stop you from doing so. But I

caution you that it would be a grave psychological escalation which neither

your country nor ours needs.”

The Ambassador looked at Durling now, hoping for a reaction of some

sort. Iowa and New Hampshire would be happening soon, and this man had

to start off well. . . was that the reason for the hard line? the diplomat won-

dered. His orders from Tokyo commanded him to get some maneuvering

room for his country, but the Americans weren’t playing, and the culprit for

that had to be Ryan.

“Does Dr. Ryan speak for the United States?” His heart skipped a beat

when he saw the President shake his head slightly.

“No, Mr. Ambassador. Actually, I speak for the United States.” Durling

paused for a cruel instant before adding, “But Dr. Ryan speaks for me in this

case. Do you have anything else for us?”

“No, Mr. President.”

“In that case we will not detain you further. We hope that your govern-

ment will see that the most profitable way out of this situation is what we

propose. The other alternatives do not bear inspection. Good day, sir.” Dur-

ling didn’t stand, though Ryan did, to walk the man out. He was back in two

minutes.

“When?” the President asked.

” Anytime.”

” 11m had better work.”

Ilic iky was clear below them, though there were some wisps of cirrus

clouds at (illy thousand feet. Even so, the Initial Point, called the IP, was too

difficult lor the unaided human eye to see. Worse, the other aircraft in the

(light of three were quite invisible, though they were programmed to be only

lour and eight miles ahead, respectively. Mike Zacharias thought of his fa-

ther, all the missions he’d down into the most sophisticated defenses of his

time, and how he’d lost his professional gamble, just once, and miraculously

survived a camp supposed to be a final resting place. This was easier, after a

fashion, but also harder, since the B-2 could not maneuver at all except to

adjust its position slightly for winds.

1′ Patriot battery around here, off at two o’clock,” the captain on the elec-

tronic-warfare board warned. “It just lit off.” ^

Then /iicharias saw why. There were the first flashes on the ground, a few

miles ahead. So the intelligence reports were right, the colonel thought. The

Japanese didn’t have many Patriots, and they wouldn’t put them out here for

the fun of it. Just then, looking down, he saw the moving lights of a train just

outside the valley they were about to attack.

“Inlerrogate-one,” the pilot ordered. Now it got dangerous.

The LPI radar under the nose of his bomber aimed itself at the piece of

ground the satellite-navigation system told it to, instantly fixing the

bomber’s position with respect to a known ground reference. The aircraft

then swept into a right turn and two minutes later it repeated the procedure-

“Missile-launch warning! Patriot is flying now-make that two,” the

EWO warned.

‘ ‘That’s -Two,” Zacharias thought. Must have caught him with the doors

open. The bomber wasn’t stealthy with its bomb bay open, but that only took

a few seconds before-

There. He saw the Patriots coming up from behind a hill, far faster than

the SA-2s that his father had dodged, not like rockets at all, more like some

sort of directed-energy beams, so fast the eye could hardly follow them, so

fast he didn’t have much chance to think. But the two missiles, only a few

hundred meters apart, didn’t alter their path at all, blazing toward a fixed

point in space, and streaking past his bomber’s altitude, exploding like fire-

works at about sixly thousand feet. Okay, this stealth stuff really does work

against Patriot, as all the tests said it did. The operators on the ground must

be going crazy, he thought.

“Starting the first run,” the pilot announced.

There were ten target points-missile silos, the intelligence data said, and

it pleased the Colonel to be eliminating the hateful things, even though the

price of that was the lives of other men. There were only three of them, and

his bomber, like the others, carried only eight weapons. The total number of