Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

the American market. The single most popular car for young adults with

families, it came “loaded” with options and was manufactured on both

sides of the Pacific to meet a global demand.

This plant, set thirty miles outside Lexington, Kentucky, was state-of-the-

art in all respects. The employees earned union wages without having had to

join the UAW, and on both attempts to create a union shop, supervised by

the National Labor Relations Board, the powerful organization had failed to

get even as much as 40 percent of the vote and gone away grumbling at the

unaccustomed stupidity of the workers.

As with any such operation, there was an element of unreality to it. Auto

parts entered the building at one end, and finished automobiles exited at the

other. Some of the parts were even American made, though not as many as

the U.S. government would have wished. Indeed, the factory manager would

have preferred more domestic content as well, especially in the winter, when

adverse weather on the Pacific could interfere with the delivery of parts-

even a one-day delay in arrival time of a single ship could bring some inven-

tories dangerously low, since the plant ran on minimal overhead-and the

demand for his Crestas was greater than his ability to manufacture them. The

parts arrived mostly by train-loaded containers from ports on both American

coasts, were separated by type, and stored in stockrooms adjacent to the por-

tion of the assembly line at which they would be joined with the automo-

biles. Much of the work was done by robots, but there was no substitute for

the skilled hands of a worker with eyes and a brain, and in truth the auto-

mated functions were mainly things that people didn’t enjoy anyway. The

very efficiency of the plant made for the affordable cost of the Cresta, and

(he busy schedule, with plenty of overtime, made lor workers who, with this

region’s first taste of really well-paying manufacturing jobs, applied them-

selves as diligently as their Japanese counterparts, and, their Japanese super-

visors admitted quietly both to themselves and in internal company

memoranda, rather more creatively. Fully a dozen major innovations sug-

gested by workers on this line, just in this year, had been adopted at once in

similar factories six thousand miles away. The supervisory personnel them-

selves greatly enjoyed living in Middle America. The price of their homes

and the expanse of land that came with them both came as startling revela-

tions, and after the initial discomfort of being in an alien land, they all began

the process of succumbing to local hospitality, joining the local lawyers on

the golf links, stopping off at McDonald’s for a burger, watching their chil-

dren play T-Ball with the local kids, often amazed at their welcome after

what they’d expected. (The local TV cable system had even added NHK to

its service, for the two hundred families who wanted the flavor of something

from home.) In the process they also generated a tidy profit for their parent

corporation, which, unfortunately, was now trapped into barely breaking

even on the Crestas produced in Japan due to the unexpectedly high produc-

tivity of the Kentucky plant and the continuing decline of the dollar against

the yen. For that reason, additional land was being bought this very week to

increase the capacity of the plant by 60 percent. A third shift, while a possi-

bility, would have reduced line maintenance, with a consequent adverse ef-

fect on quality control, which was a risk the company was unwilling to run,

considering the renewed competition from Detroit.

Early in the line, two workers attached the gasoline tanks to the frames.

One, off the line, removed the tank from its shipping carton and set it on a

moving track that carried it to the second worker, whose job was to manhan-

dle the light but bulky artifact into place. Plastic hangers held the tank

briefly until the worker made the attachment permanent, and the plastic

hangers were then removed before the chassis moved on to the next station.

The cardboard was soggy, the woman in the storage room noted. She held

her hand to her nose and smelled sea salt. The container that had held this

shipment of gas tanks had been improperly closed, and a stormy sea had

invaded it. A good thing, she thought, that the tanks were all weather-sealed

and galvanized. Perhaps fifteen or twenty of the tanks had been exposed to

seawater. She considered mentioning it to the supervisor, but on looking

around she couldn’t see him. She had the authority on her own to stop the

line-traditionally a very rare power for an auto-assembly worker-until the

question of the gas tanks was cleared up. Every worker in the plant had that

theoretical power, but she was new here, and really needed her supervisor to

make the call. Looking around more, she almost stopped the line by her inac-

tion, which caused an abrupt whistle from the line worker. Well, it couldn’t

be that big a deal, could it? She slid the tank on the track, and, opening the

next box. forgot about it. She would never know that she was part of a chain

ol events that would soon kill one family and wound two others.

Two minutes later the tank was attached to a Cresta chassis, and the not-

ycl-a-tar moved on down the seemingly endless line toward an open door

that could not even be seen from this station. In due course the rest of the

automobile would be assembled on the steel frame, finally rolling out of the

plant as a candy-apple-red car already ordered by a family in Greeneville,

Tennessee. The color had been chosen in honor of the wife, Candace Den-

Ion, who had just given her husband, Pierce, his first son after two twin

daughters three years earlier. It would be the first new car the young couple

had ever owned, and was his way of showing her how pleased he was with

her love. They really couldn’t afford it, but it was about love, not money, and

he knew that somehow he’d find a way to make it work. The following day

the car was driven onto a semitrailer transporter for the short drive to the

dealer in Knoxville. A telex from the assembly plant told the salesman that it

wu.s on the way, and he wasted no time calling Mr. Denton to let him know

Ihe good news.

They’d need a day for dealer prep, but the car would be delivered, a week

laic due to the demand for the Cresta, fully inspected, with temporary tags

mid insurance. And a full tank of gas, sealing a fate already decided by a

multiplicity of factors.

Catalyst

It didn’t help to do it at night. Even the glare of lights-dozens of them-

didn’t replicate what the sun gave for free. Artificial light made for odd

shadows that always seemed to be in the wrong places, and if that weren’t

bad enough, the men moving around made shadows of their own, pulling the

eyes away from then- important work.

Each of the SS-I9/H-H “boosters” was encapsulated. The construction

plans for the capsule-called a cocoon here-had accompanied the plans for

the missiles themselves, more or less as an afterthought; after all, the Japa-

nese corporation had paid for all the plans, and they were in the same

drawer, and so they went along. That was fortunate, the supervising engineer

thought, because it had not seemed to have occurred to anyone to ask for

them.

The 88-19 had been designed as an intercontinental ballistic missile, a

weapon of war, and since it had been designed by Russians, it had also been

engineered for rough handling by poorly trained conscript soldiers. In this,

the engineer admitted, the Russians had showed true genius worthy of emu-

lation. His own countrymen had a tendency to overengineer everything,

which often made for a delicacy that had no place in such brutish applica-

tions as this. Forced to construct a weapon that could survive adverse human

and environmental factors, the Russians had built a transport/loading con-

tainer for their “birds” that protected them against everything. In this way

the assembly workers could fit all the plugs and fittings at the factory, insert

the missile body into its capsule, and ship it off to the field, where all the

soldiers had to do was elevate it and then lower it into the silo. Once there, a

better-trained crew of three men would attach the external power and

telemetry plugs. Though not as simple as loading a cartridge into a rifle, it

was by far the most efficient way of installing an ICBM that anyone had ever

developed-efficient enough, indeed, that the Americans had copied it for

their MX “Peacekeeper” missiles, all of which were now destroyed. The

cocoon allowed the missile to be handled without fear, because all the stress

points had hard contact with the inside of the structure. It was rather like the