Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

sonar room, adding, “Reload another ADCAP.”

Pennsylvania shuddered again as the newest version of the venerable

Mark 48 torpedo entered the sea, turning northeast and controlled by an in-

sulated wire that streamed out from its tailfin.

This was like an exercise, the sonarman thought, but easier.

“Additional contacts?” the skipper asked, behind him again.

“Not a thing, sir.” The enlisted man waved at his scopes. Only random

noise showed, and an additional scope was running diagnostic checks every

ten minutes to show that the systems were all functioning properly. It was

quite a payoff: alter nearly forty years of missile-boat operations, and close-

to fifty of nuclear-sub ops, the first American sub kill since World War II

would come from a boomer supposedly on her way to the scrapyard.

Traveling far more rapidly, the ADCAP torpedo popped over the layer

somewhat aft of the contact. It immediately started radiating from its own

ultrasonic sonar and fed the picture back along the wire to Pennsylvania.

“Hard contact, range three thousand and close to the surface. Lookin’

good,” sonar said. The same diagnosis came from the weapons petty officer

with her identical readout.

‘ ‘Eat shit and die,” the male member of the team whispered, watching the

two contact lines close on the display. Sierra Ten went instantly to full

speed, diving at first below the layer, but his batteries were probably a little

low, and he didn’t make more than fifteen knots, while the ADCAP was

doing over sixty. The one-sided chase lasted a total of three and a half min-

utes and ended with a bright splotch on the screen and a noise in the head-

phones that stung his ears. The rest was epilogue, concluding with a ripping

screech of steel being crushed by water pressure.

“That’s a kill, sir. I copy a definite kill.” Two minutes later, a distant

low-frequency to the north suggested that West Virginia had achieved the

same goal.

“Christopher Cook?” Murray asked.

“That’s right.”

It was a very nice house, the Deputy Assistant Director thought as he

pulled out his identification folder. “FBI. We’d like to talk to you about

your conversations with Seiji Nagumo. Could you get a coat?”

The sun had a few more hours to go when the Lancers taxied out. Angered

by the loss of one of their number not so long before, the crews deemed

themselves to be in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, but nobody had

troubled himself to ask their opinion, and their job was written down. Their

bomb bays taken up with fuel tanks, one by one the bombers raced down the

runway and lifted off, turning and climbing to their assembly altitude of

twenty thousand feet for the cruise northeast.

It was another goddamned demonstration, Dubro thought, and he wondered

how the hell somebody like Robby Jackson could have thought it up, but he,

too, had orders, and each of his carriers turned into the wind, fifty miles apart

to launch forty aircraft each, and though these were all armed, they were not

to take action unless provoked.

46

Detachment

“We’re almost empty,” the copilot said in a neutral voice, checking the

manifest as part of the preflight ritual.

“What is the matter with these people?” Captain Sato growled, looking

over the flight plan and checking the weather. That was a short task. It would

be cool and clear all the way down, with a huge high-pressure area taking

charge of the Western Pacific. Except for some high winds in the vicinity of

the Home Islands, it would make for a glassy-smooth ride all the way to

Saipan, for the thirty-four passengers on the flight. Thirty-four! he raged. In

an aircraft built for over three hundred!

“Captain, we will be leaving those islands soon. You know that.” It was

clear enough, wusn’i it? The people, the average men and women on the

street, were no longer so much confused as frightened-or maybe even that

wasn’t the proper word. He hadn’t seen anything like it. They felt-be-

trayed? The first newspaper editorials had come out to question the course

their country had taken, and though the questions asked were mild, the im-

port of them was not. It had all been an illusion. His country had not been

prepared for war in a psychological sense any more than a physical one, and

the people were suddenly reali/.ing what was actually going on. The whis-

pered reports of the murder-what else could one call it?-of some promi-

nent zaibatsu had left the government in a turmoil. Prime Minister Goto was

doing little, not even giving speeches, not even making appearances, lest he

have to face questions for which he had no answers. But the faith of his

captain, the copilot saw, had not yet been shaken.

“No, we will not! How can you say mat? Those islands are ours.”

“Time will tell,” the copilot observed, returning to his work and letting it

go at thai. He did have his job to do, rechecking fuel and winds and other

technical data necessary for the successful flight of a commercial airliner, all

the things the passengers never saw, assuming that the flight crew just

showed up and turned it on as though it were a taxicab.

”Enjoy your sleep?”

“You bet, Captain. I dreamed of a hot day and a hot woman.” Richter

stood up, and his movements belied his supposed comfort. / really am too

old for this shit, the chief warrant officer thought. It was just fate and luck-

if you could call it that-that had put him on the mission. No one else had as

much time on the Comanche as he and his fellow warrants did, and some-

body had decided that they had the brains to do it, without some goddamned

colonel around to screw things up. And now he could boogie on out of here.

He looked up to see a clear sky. Well, could be better. For getting in and

getting out, better to have clouds.

“Tanks are topped off.”

“Some coffee would be nice,” he thought aloud.

“Here you go, Mr. Richter.” It was Vega, the first sergeant. “Nice iced

coffee, like they serve in the best Florida hotels.”

“Oh, thanks loads, man.” Richter took the metal cup with a chuckle.

“Anything new on the way out?”

This was not good, Claggett thought. The Aegis line had broken up, and now

he had one of the goddamned things ten miles away. Worse still, there had

been a helicopter in the air not long before, according to his ESM mast,

which he’d briefly risked despite the presence of the world’s best surveil-

lance radar. But three Army helicopters were depending on him to be here,

and that was that. Nobody had ever told him that harm’s way was a safe

place. Not for him. Not for them, either.

“And our other friend?” he asked his sonar chief. The substantive reply

was a shake of the head. The words merely confirmed it.

“Off the scope again.”

There were thirty knots of surface wind, which was whipping up the

waves somewhat and interfering with sonar performance. Even holding the

destroyer was becoming difficult now that it was slowed to a patrol speed of

no more than fifteen knots. The submarine off to the north was gone again.

Maybe really gone, but it was dangerous to bank on that. Claggett checked

his watch. He’d have to decide what to do in less than an hour.

They would be going in blind, but that was an awkward necessity. Ordinar-

ily they’d gather information with snooper aircraft, but the real effort here

WHS in achieve surprise, aiul they couldn’t compromise that. The carrier task

force hail avoided commercial air lanes, hidden under clouds, and generally

worked very hard to make itself scarce for several days. Jackson felt confi-

dent that his presence was a secret, but maintaining it meant depending on

spotty submarine reports of electronic activity on the islands, and all these

did was to confirm that the enemy had several E-2C aircraft operating, plus a

monster air-defense radar. It would be an encounter battle aloft. Well, they’d

been training for that over the past two weeks.

“Okay, last check,” Oreza heard over the phone. “Kobler is exclusively

military aircraft?”

“That is correct, sir. Since the first couple of days, we haven’t seen any

commercial birds on that runway.” He really wanted to ask what the ques-

tions were all about, but knew it was a waste of time. Well, maybe an

oblique question: “You want us to stay awake tonight?”

“Up to you, Master Chief. Now, can I talk to your guests?”

‘ ‘John? Phone,” Portagee announced, then was struck nearly dumb by the

normality of what he’d just said.

“Clark,” Kelly said, taking it. “Yes, sir … Yes, sir. Will do. Anything

else? Okay, out.” He hit the kill button. “Whose idea was this friggin’ um-

brella?”

“Mine,” Burroughs said, looking up from the card table. “It works,