Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

Mehta lifted a phone and spoke. His fleet was off the normal commercial sea

and air routes, and the timing told him what the inbound track would be.

Four American fighters, F-i8E Hornet attack fighters off one of the Ameri-

can carriers to his southeast. Every day they came, morning and afternoon,

and sometimes in the middle of the night to show that they could do that, too,

to let him know that the Americans knew his location, and to remind him

that he didn’t, couldn’t know theirs.

A moment later he heard the start-up noise from two of his Harriers. Good

aircraft, expensive aircraft, but not a match for the inbound Americans. He’d

put four up today, two from Viraat and two from Vikrant, to intercept the

four, probably four, American Hornets, and the pilots would wave and nod

in a show of good humor, but it would be a bilateral lie.

‘ ‘We could light off our SAM systems, show them that we tire of this

game,” Captain Mehta suggested quietly. The Admiral shook his head.

“No. They know little about our SAM systems, and we will volunteer

them nothing.” The Indians’ precise radar frequencies, pulse width, and rep-

etition rates were not open information, and the American intelligence ser-

vices had probably never troubled itself to find them out. That meant that the

Americans might not be able to jam or spoof his systems-probably they

could, but they wouldn’t be certain of it, and it was the lack of certainty that

would worry them. It wasn’t much of a card, but it was the best in Chandra-

skatta’s current hand. The Admiral sipped at his tea, making a show of his

imperturbable nature.’ ‘No, we will take notice of their approach, meet them

in a friendly manner, and let them go on their way.”

Mehta nodded and went off without a word to express his building rage. It

was to be expected. He was the fleet-operations officer, and his was the task

of divining a plan to defeat the American fleet, should that necessity present

itself. That such a task was virtually impossible did not relieve Mehta of the

duty to carry it out, and it was hardly surprising that the man was showing

the strain of his position. Chandraskatta set his cup down, watching the Har-

riers leap off the ski-jump deck and into the air.

“How are the pilots bearing up?” the Admiral asked his air officer.

“They grow frustrated, but performance thus far is excellent.” The an-

swer was delivered with pride, as well it might be. His pilots were superb.

The Admiral ate with them often, drawing courage from the proud faces in

the ready rooms. They were fine young men, the equal, man for man, of any

fighter pilots in all the world. More to the point, they were eager to show it.

But the entire Indian Navy had only forty-three Harrier FRS 51 fighters.

He had but thirty at sea on both Viraat and Vikrant, and that did not equal the

numbers or capability aboard a single American carrier. All because they

had entered the race first, won it, and then declared the games closed,

Chandraskatta told himself, listening to the chatter of his airmen over an

open-voice channel. It simply wasn’t fair.

“So, what are you telling me?” Jack asked.

“It was a scam,” Robby answered. “Those birds were maintenance-in-

tensive. Guess what? The maintenance hasn’t been done in the past couple

of years. Andy Malcolm called in on his satellite brick this evening. There

was water at the bottom of the hole he looked at today.”

“And?”

“I keep forgetting you’re a city boy.” Robby grinned sheepishly, or

rather like the wolf under a fleece coat. “You make a hole in the ground,

sooner or later it fills with water, okay? If you have something valuable in

the hole, you better keep it pumped out. Water in the bottom of the silo

means that they weren’t always doing that. It means water vapor, humidity

in the hole. And corrosion.”

The light bulb went off. “You telling me the birds-”

“Probably wouldn’t fly even if they wanted them to. Corrosion is like

that. Probably dead birds, because fixing them once they’re broke is a very

illy proposition. Anyway”-Jackson tossed the thin file folder at Ryan’s

desk-“that’s the J-3 assessment.”

“What about J-2?” Jack asked, referring to the intelligence directorate of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“They never believed it, but I expect they will now if we open enough

holes and see the same thing. Me?” Admiral Jackson shrugged. “I figure if

Ivan let us see it in number one, we’ll find pretty much the same thing every-

where else. They just don’t give a good fuck anymore.”

Intelligence information comes from many sources, and an “operator”

like Jackson was often the best source of all. Unlike intelligence officers

whose job it was to evaluate the capabilities of the other side, almost always

in a theoretical sense, Jackson was a man whose interest in weapons was

making them work, and he’d learned from hard experience that using them

was far more demanding than looking at them.

”Remember when we thought they were ten feet tall?”

‘ ‘I never did, but a little bastard with a gun can still ruin your whole day,”

Robby reminded his friend. “So how much money have they hustled out of

us?”

“Five big ones.”

“Good deal, our federal tax money at work. We just paid the Russkies

five thousand million dollars to ‘deactivate’ missiles that couldn’t leave the

silos unless they set the nukes off first. Fabulous call, Dr. Ryan.”

“They need the money, Rob.”

“So do I, man. Hey, boy, I’m scratching the bottom to get enough JP to

keep our planes in the air.” It was not often understood that every ship in the

fleet and every battalion of tanks in the Army had to live on a budget.

Though the commanding officers didn’t keep a checkbook per se, each drew

on a fixed supply of consumable stores-fuel, weapons, spare parts, even

food in the case of warships-that had to last a whole year. It was by no

means unknown for a man-of-war to sit several weeks alongside her pier at

the end of the fiscal year because there was nothing left to make her run.

Such an event meant that somewhere a job was not getting done, a crew was

not being trained. The Pentagon was fairly unique as a federal agency, in that

it was expected to live on a fixed, often diminishing budget.

‘ ‘How much thinner do you expect us to be spread?”

“I tell him, Rob, okay? The Chairman-”

‘ ‘Just between you and me, the Chairman thinks operations are something

that surgeons do in hospitals. And if you quote me on that, no more golf

lessons.”

“What is it worth to have the Russians out of the game?” Jack asked,

wondering if Robby would calm down a little.

‘ ‘Not as much as we’ve lost in cuts. In case you haven’t noticed, my Navy

is still stretched from hell to breakfast, and we’re doing business with forty

percent less ships. The ocean didn’t get any smaller, okay? The Army’s bet-

ter off, I grant that, but the Air Force isn’t, and the Marines are still sucking

hind tit, and they’re still our primary response team for the next time the

boys and girls at Foggy Bottom fuck up.”

“Preaching to the choir, Rob.”

“More to it than just that, Jack. We’re stretching the people, too. The

fewer the ships, the longer they have to stay out. The longer they stay out,

the worse the maintenance bills. It’s like the bad old days in the late seven-

ties. We’re starting to lose people. Hard to make a man stay away from his

wife and kids that long. In flying, we call it the coffin corner. When you lose

experienced people, your training bills go up. You lose combat effectiveness

no matter which way you go,” Robby went on, talking like an admiral now.

“Look, Rob, I gave the same speech a while back on the other side of the

building. I’m doing my best for you,” Jack replied, talking like a senior gov-

ernment official. At that point both old friends shared a look.

“We’re both old farts.”

“It’s a long time since we were on the faculty of Canoe U,” Ryan al-

lowed. His voice went on almost in a whisper. “Me teaching history, and

you prostrating yourself to God every night to heal your leg.”

“I should’ve done more of that. Arthritis in the knee,” Robby said. “I

have a flight physical in nine months. Guess what?”

“Down-check?”

“The big one.” Jackson nodded matter-of-factly. Ryan knew what it re-

ally meant. To a man who’d flown fighter planes off carriers for over twenty

years, it was the hard realization that age had come. He couldn’t play with