Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

“So what’s so hot that you’re interrupting my lunch?”

Jack didn’t make him wait, though his news was important enough to

merit a dramatic reply: “We have our agreement with the Russians and

Ukrainians on the last of the birds.”

“Starting when?” Burling asked, leaning forward over his desk and ig-

noring his salad.

“How does next Monday grab you?” Ryan asked with a grin. “They

went for what Scott said. There’ve been so many of these START proce-

dures that they want just to kill the last ones quietly and announce that

they’re gone, once and for all. Our inspectors are already over there, and

theirs are over here, and they’ll just go and do it.”

“I like it,” Burling replied.

“Exactly forty years, boss,” Ryan said with some passion, “practically

my whole life since they deployed the SS-6 and we deployed Atlas, ugly

damned things with an ugly damned purpose, and helping to make them go

away-well, Mr. President, now I owe you one. It’s going to be your mark,

sir, but I can tell my grandchildren that I was around when it happened.”

That Adler’s proposal to the Russians and Ukrainians had been Ryan’s ini-

tiative might end up as a footnote, but probably not.

“Our grandchildren either won’t care or they’ll ask what the big deal

was,” Arnie van Bamm observed, deadpan.

“True,” Ryan conceded. Trust Arnie to put a neutral spin on things.

“Now tell me the bad news,” Burling ordered.

“Five billion,” Jack said, unsurprised by the hurt expression he got in

return. “It’s worth it, sir. It really is.”

“Tell me why.”

“Mr. President, since I was in grammar school our country has lived with

the threat of nuclear weapons on ballistic launchers aimed at the United

States. Inside of six weeks, the last of them could be gone.”

“They’re already aimed-”

“Yes, sir, we have ours aimed at the Sargasso Sea, and so do they, an

error that you can fix by opening an inspection port and changing a printed-

circuit card in the guidance system. To do that takes ten minutes from the

moment you open the access door into the missile silo and requires a screw-

driver and a flashlight.” Actually, that was true only for the Soviet-Rus-

sian.’ Ryan corrected himself for the thousandth time-missiles. The

remaining American birds took longer to retarget due to their greater sophis-

tication. Such were the vagaries of engineering science.

“All gone, sir, gone forever,” Ryan said. “I’m the hard-nosed hawk here,

remember? We can sell this to the Hill. It’s worth the price and more.”

“You make a good case, as always,” van Bamm announced from his

chair.

“Where will OMB find the money, Arnie?” President Burling asked.

Now it was Ryan’s turn to cringe.

“Befense, where else?”

“Before we get too enthusiastic about that, we’ve gone too far already.”

“What will we save by eliminating our last missiles?” van Bamm asked.

“It’ll cost us money,” Jack replied. “We’re already paying an arm and a

leg to dismantle the missile subs, and the environmentalists-”

“Those wonderful people,” Burling observed.

“-but it’s a one-time expense.”

Eyes turned to the chief of staff. His political judgment was impeccable.

The weathered face weighed the factors and turned to Ryan. “It’s worth the

hassle. There will be a hassle on the Hill, boss,” he told the President,’ ‘but a

year from now you’ll be telling the American people how you put an end to

the sword of-”

“Damocles,” Ryan said.

“Catholic schools.” Arnie chuckled. “The sword that’s hung over Amer-

ica for a generation. The papers’ll like it, and you just know that CNN will

make a big deal about it, one of their hour-long special-report gigs, with lots

of good pictures and inaccurate commentary.”

“Don’t like that, Jack?” Durling asked, smiling broadly now.

“Mr. President, I’m not a politician, okay? Isn’t it sufficient to the mo-

ment that we’re dismantling the last two hundred ICBMs in the world?”

Well, that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Let”s not wax too poetic, Jack. There

are still the Chinese, Brits, and French. But the latter two would fall into

line, wouldn’t they? And the Chinese could be made to see the light through

trade negotiations, and besides, what enemies did they have left to worry

about?

“Only if people see and understand, Jack.” Durling turned to van Damm.

Both of them ignored Jack’s not-quite-spoken additional concerns. “Get the

media office working on this. We do the formal announcement in Moscow,

Jack?”

Ryan nodded.’ ‘That was the deal, sir.” There would be more to it, careful

leaks, unconfirmed at first. Congressional briefings to generate more. Quiet

calls to various TV networks and trusted reporters who would be in exactly

the right places at exactly the right times-difficult because of the ten-hour

difference between Moscow and the last American ICBM fields-to record

for history the end of the nightmare. The actual elimination process was

rather messy, which was why American tree-huggers had such a problem

with it. In the case of the Russian birds, the warheads were removed for

dismantlement, the missiles drained of their liquid fuels and stripped of valu-

able and/or classified electronic components, and then one hundred kilo-

grams of high explosives were used to blast open the top of the silo, which in

due course would be filled with dirt and leveled off. The American proce-

dure was different because all the U.S. missiles used solid fuels. In their

case, the missile bodies were transported to Utah, where they were opened at

both ends; then the rocket motors were ignited and allowed to burn out like

the world’s largest highway flares, creating clouds of toxic exhaust that

might snuff out the lives of some wild birds. In America the silos would also

be blasted open-a United States Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the

national-security implications of the international arms-control treaty super-

seded four environmental-protection statutes, despite many legal briefs and

protests to the contrary. The final blast would be highly dramatic, all the

more so because its force would be about one ten-millionth of what the silo

had once represented. Some numbers, and some concepts, Jack reflected,

were simply too vast to be appreciated-even by people like himself.

The legend of Damocles had to do with a courtier in the circle of King

Dionysius of Sicily, who had waxed eloquent on the good fortune of his

king. To make a point in the cruel and heavy-handed way of “great” men,

Dionysius had invited his courtier, Damocles, to a sumptuous banquet and

sat him in a comfortable place directly under a sword, which in turn was

suspended from the ceiling by a thread. The purpose was to demonstrate that

the King’s own good fortune was as tenuous as the safety of his guest.

It was the same with America. Everything it had was still under the nu-

clear sword, a fact made graphically clear to Ryan in Denver not too long

before, and for that reason his personal mission since returning to govern-

ment service had been to put the end to the tale, once and for all.

“You want to handle the press briefings?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Jack replied, surprised and grateful for Durling’s

stunning generosity.

” ‘Northern Resource Area’?” the Chinese Defense Minister asked. He

added dryly, “Interesting way of putting it.”

“So what do you think?” Zhang Han San asked from his side of the table.

He was fresh from another meeting with Yamata.

‘ ‘In the abstract, it’s strategically possible. I leave the economic estimates

to others,” the Marshal replied, ever the cautious one despite the quantity of

mao-tai he’d consumed this evening.

‘ ‘The Russians have been employing three Japanese survey firms. Amaz-

ing, isn’t it? Eastern Siberia has hardly even been explored. Oh, yes, the gold

deposits at Kolyma, but the interior itself?” A dismissive wave of the hand.

“Such fools, and now they must ask others to do the job for them …” The

Minister’s voice trailed off, and his gaze returned to Zhang Han San. “And

so, what have they found?”

“Our Japanese friends? More oil for starters, they think as big a find as

Prudhoe Bay.” He slid a sheet of paper across the table. “Here are the min-

erals they’ve located in the last nine months.”

“All this?”

“The area is almost as large as all of Western Europe, and all the Soviets

ever cared about was a strip around their damned railroads. The fools.”

Zhang snorted. “All their economic problems, the solution for them lay

right under their feet from the moment they assumed power from the czar. In

essence it’s rather like South Africa, a treasure house, but including oil,

which the South Africans lack. As you see, nearly all of the strategic miner-

als, and in such quantities. …”

“Do the Russians know?”

“Some of it.” Zhang Han San nodded. “Such a secret is too vast to con-

ceal entirely, but only about half-the items on the list marked with stars are