Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

tive false target to track.

“Surface the ship! Emergency surface!”

“Emergency surface, aye,” the chief of the boat replied, reaching himself

for the air manifold, ‘Tull rise on the planes!”

“Full rise, aye!” the helmsman repealed, pulling back on his control

yoke.

“Conn, sonar, the inbound torpedoes are still in ping-and-listen. Our out-

bound unit is now on continuous pinging. It has a sniff.”

“Their fish is like an early 48, troops,” Claggett said calmly. His de-

meanor was a lie, and he knew that, but the crew might not. “Remember the

three rules of a -48. It has to be a valid target, it has to be over eight hundred

yards, and it has to have a bearing rate. Helm, all stop.”

“All stop, aye. Sir, engine room answers all stop.”

‘ ‘Very well, we’ll let her coast up now,” the Captain said, out of things to

say now. He looked over at the Army people and winked. They looked rather

pale. Well, that was one advantage of being black, wasn’t it? Claggett

thought.

Tennessee look a thirty-degree tip-angle, killing a lot of her forward

as she rose and tumbling several people to the deck, it came so abruptly

Claggett held on to the red-and-white periscope-control wheel to Hlrmly

himself.

“Depth?”

“Breaking the surface now, sir!” the COB reported. A second later cume

a rush of exterior noise, and then the submarine crashed sickeningly back

down.

‘ ‘Rig for ultraquiet. ‘ ‘

The shaft was stopped now. Tennessee wallowed on the surface while

three hundred feet down and half a mile aft, the MOSS was circling in and

out of the decoy bubbles. He’d done all that he could do. A crewman reached

into his pocket for a smoke, then realized that he’d lost his pack topside.

“Our unit is in acquisition!” sonar reported.

‘ ‘Come right! ‘ ‘ Ugaki said, trying to be calm and succeeding, but the Ameri-

can torpedo had run straight through the decoy field . . . just as his had done,

he remembered. He looked around his control room. The faces were on him,

just as they had been the other time, but this time the other boat had shot first

despite his advantage, and he only needed a look at the plot to see that he’d

never know if his second submarine attack had succeeded or not.

“I’m sorry,” he said to his crew, and a few heads had time to nod at his

final, sincere apology to them.

“Hit!” sonar called next.

“Thank you, Sonar,” Claggett acknowledged.

“The enemy fish are circling below us, sir … they seem to be … yeah,

they’re chasing into the decoy . .. we’re getting some pings, but.. .”

“But the early -48s didn’t track stationary surface targets, Chief,” Clag-

gett said quietly. The two men might have been the only people breathing

aboard. Well, maybe Ken Shaw, who was standing at the weapons panel. It

only made things worse that you couldn’t hear the ultrasonic noise of a tor-

pedo sonar.

“The damned things run forever.”

“Yep.” Claggett nodded. “Raise the ESM,” he added as an afterthought.

The sensor mast went up at once, and people cringed at the noise.

“Uh, Captain, (here’s an airborne radar bearing three-five-one.”

“Strength?”

“Low but increasing. Probably a P-3, sir.”

“Very well.”

It was too much for the Army officer. “We just sit still?”

“That’s right.”

Sain Nought the 747 in largely from memory. There were no runway lights,

I»«H Iw liiiil enough from the moon to see what he was doing, and once again

Inn lopilm maivrled at the man’s skill as the aircraft’s landing lights caught

irllrt lion* limn lights on the ground. The landing was slightly to the right of

ihc icnlciliiH’, hit Salo managed a straight run to the end, this time without

hi* imiiil look over at the junior officer. He was bringing the aircraft right

onlo Ihc Inxiwav when there was a flash in the distance.

Major Siilo’u w«* the lust Hagle back to Kobler, actually having passed two

damaged ain tall on his way in. There was activity on the ground, but the

only nulio ihnllri was incoherent. He had little choice in any case. His

lighter wa* tunning on vapors and memory now, all the fuel gauges showing

almost nothing Also without lights, the aviator chose the proper glide-slope

uiul loin Itnl down in exactly the right spot. He didn’t see the softball-size

siihmiiniliuii linn Ins nosegear hit. The fighter’s nose collapsed, and the

hnylr nhil, ptiiwltrding off the end of the runway. There was just enough

vapor in I he tanks to start a fire, then an explosion to scatter parts over the

Kohlci niMwav A second Ivagle, half a mile behind Sato’s, found another

bomblct HIM! exploded. The twenty remaining fighters angled away, calling

on (heir ruditis lot instructions. Six of them turned for the commercial field.

The rc»l limkrd lui and approached the large twin runways on Tinian, not

knowing thai ihr>, loo, had been sprinkled with cluster munitions from a

series ol Tomahawk missiles. Roughly hall survived the landing without hit-

ting anything

Admiral Chundiaskalla was in Ins control room, watching the radar display.

He’d have to recall Ins hghlrts soon He didn’t like risking his pilots in night

operations, but the Amriuans wne up in strength, doing another of their

shows of force. Ami study they rouhl attack and destroy his fleet if they

wished, but now? With a wai against Japan under way, would America

choose to initiate another combat action? No. His amphibious force was now

at sea, and in two days, at sunset, the tune would come.

The B-is were lower than the (light crews had ever driven them. These were

reservists, mostly airline pilots, assigned by a particularly beneficent Penta-

gon (with the advice of a few senior members of Congress) to a real combat

aircraft for the first time in years. l;or practice bombing missions over land,

they had a standard penetration altitude of no less than two hundred feet,

more usually three hundred, because even Kansas farms had windmills and

people erected radio lowers in the damnedest places-but not at sea. Here

they were down to fifty feet, and smokin’, one pilot observed, nervously

entrusting his aircraft to the terrain-avoidance system. His group of eight

was heading due south, having turned over Dondra Head. The other four

were heading northwest after using a different navigational marker. There

was lots of electronic activity ahead, enough to make him nervous, though

none of it was on him yet, and he allowed himself the sheer exhilaration of

the moment, flying over Mach-i, and doing it so low that his bomber was

trailing a different sort of vapor trail, more like an unlimited-class racing

boat, and maybe cooking some fish along the way .. .

There.

‘ ‘Low-level contacts from the north!”

“What?” The Admiral looked up. “Range?”

‘ ‘Less than twenty kilometers, coming in very fast!”

”Are they missiles?”

“Unknown, Admiral!”

Chandraskatta looked down at his plot. There they were, the opposite

direction from the American carrier aircraft. His fighters were not in a posi-

tion to-

“Inbound aircraft!” a lookout called next.

“Engage?” Captain Mehta asked.

“Shoot first without orders?” Chandraskatta ran for the door, emerging

onto the flight deck just in time to see the white lines in the water even

before the aircraft causing them.

“Coming up now,” the pilot said, aiming himself just at the carrier’s bridge.

He pulled back on the stick, and when it vanished under his nose, checked

his altitude indicator.

“Pull up!” the voice-warning system told him in the usual sexy voice.

“I already did, Marilyn.” It sounded like a Marilyn to the TWA pilot.

Next he checked his speed. Just under nine hundred knots. Wow. The noise

this big mother would make .. .

The sonic boom generated by the huge aircraft was more like a bomb blast,

knocking the Admiral off his feet and shattering glass on the wheelhouse

well over his head and wrecking other topside gear. Another followed sec-

onds later, and then he heard more still as the massive aircraft buzzed over

his fleet. He was slightly disoriented as he stood, and there were glass frag-

ments on the flight deck as he made his way back under cover. Somehow he

knew his place was on the bridge.

“Two imliiis are oui,” he heard *.i polly officer say. “Rajput reports her

SAMs urc ilown.”

“Admiral,” a communications lieulenanl called, hol’ding up a growler

phone,

“Who is ihis’.'” Chaiulraskatla asked.

“This is Mike Dubro. The next time we won’t be playing. I am authorized

to tell you that the U.S. Ambassador is now meeting with your Prime Min-

ister . . .”

“It is in everyone’s best interest that your fleet should terminate its opera-

tions,” the former Governor of Pennsylvania said after the usual introduc-

tory pleasantries.

“You may not order us about, you know.”

‘ ‘That was not an order, Madame Prime Minister. It was an observation. I