tactical information between ships. In engine-control rooms the “snipes”-
an ancient term of disparagement for the traditionally filthy enginemen-sat
in comfortable swivel chairs and monitored computer readouts while sip-
ping tea.
The flagship was the new destroyer Mutsu. The fishing port of Tateyame
was in sight, the last town they would pass before turning sharply to port and
heading east.
The submarines were already out there, Rear Admiral Yusuo Sato knew,
but the commanders had been briefed in. His was a family with a long tradi-
tion of service-better still, a tradition of the sea. His father had commanded
a destroyer under Raizo Tanaka, one of the greatest destroyermen who’d
ever lived, and his uncle had been one of Yamamoto’s “wild eagles,” a
carrier pilot killed at the Battle of Santa Cruz. The succeeding generation
had continued in those footsteps. Yusuo’s brother, Torajiro Sato, had flown
F-86 fighters for the Air Self-Defense Force, then quit in disgust at the de-
meaning status of the air arm, and now flew as a senior captain for Japan Air
Lines. The man’s son, Shiro, had followed in his father’s footsteps and was
now a very proud young major, flying fighters on a more permanent basis.
Not too bad, Admiral Sato thought, for a family that had no samurai roots.
Yusuo’s other brother was a banker. Sato was fully briefed on what was to
come.
The Admiral stood, opened the watertight door on Mutsu’s bridge and
passed out to the starboard wing. The sailors at work there took a second to
acknowledge his presence with dutiful nods, then went back to taking shore-
lights to update the ship’s position. Sato looked aft and noted that the sixteen
•hips in the column were in a nearly perfect line, separated by a uniform five
hundred meters, just becoming visible to the unaided eye in the pink-orange
glow of the rising sun toward which they sailed. Surely that was a good
omen, the Admiral thought. At the truck of every ship flew the same flag
under which his father had served; it had been denied his country’s warships
for so many years but was restored now, the proud red-on-white sunburst.
“Secure the sea-and-anchor detail,” the Captain’s voice announced on
the speaker system. Already their home port was under the visible horizon,
and soon the same would be true of the headlands now on the port quarter.
Sixteen ships, Sato thought. The largest force his country had put to sea as
a coherent unit in-fifty years? He had to think about it. Certainly the most
powerful, not one vessel more than ten years old, proud, expensive ships
with proud, established names. But the one name he’d wanted with him this
morning, Kurushio, “Black Tide,” that of his father’s destroyer, which had
sunk an American cruiser at the Battle of Tassafaronga, unfortunately be-
longed to a new submarine, already at sea. The Admiral lowered his binocu-
lars and grunted in mild displeasure. Black Tide. It was a poetically perfect
name for a warship, too. A pity it had been wasted on a submarine.
Kurushio and her sisters had left thirty-six hours earlier. The lead ship of a
new class, she was running at fifteen knots for her high-speed transit to the
exercise area, powered by her large, efficient diesels which now drew air
through the snorkel mast. Her crew of ten officers and sixty enlisted men
was on a routine watch cycle. An officer of the deck and his junior kept the
watch in the sub’s control room. An engineering officer was at his post,
along with twenty-four ratings. The entire torpedo department was at work
in their midships station, doing electronic tests on the fourteen Type 89-Mod
C torpedoes and six Harpoon missiles. Otherwise the watch bill was normal,
and no one remarked on the single change. The captain, Commander Tamaki
Ugaki, was known as a stickler for readiness, and though he drilled his men
hard, his was a happy ship because she was always a smart ship. He was
locked in his cabin, and the crew hardly knew he was aboard, the only signs
of his presence the thin crack of light under the door and the cigarette smoke
that came out the exhaust vent. An intense man, their skipper, the crewmen
thought, doubtless working up plans and drills for the upcoming exercise
against the American submarines. They’d done well the last time, scoring
three first-kills in ten practice encounters. That was as good as anyone might
expect. Except for Ugaki, the men joked at their lunch tables. He thought
like a true samurai, and didn’t want to know about being second best.
Ryan had established a routine in his first month back of spending one day
per week at the Pentagon. He’d explained to journalists that his office wasn’t
supposed to be a cell, after all, and it was just a more efficient use of every-
one’s time. It hadn’t even resulted in a story, as it might have done a few
years earlier. The very title of National Security Advisor, everyone knew,
was a thing of the past. Though the reporters deemed Ryan a worthy succes-
sor to the corner office in the White House, he was such a colorless guy. He
was known to avoid the Washington “scene” as though he feared catching
leprosy, he showed up for work every day at the same time, did his job in as
few hours as circumstances allowed-to his good fortune, it was rarely more
than a ten-hour day-and returned to his family as though he were a normal
person or something. His background at CIA was still very sketchy, and
(hough his public acts as a private citizen and a government functionary
were well known, that was old news. As a result Ryan was able to drive
around in the back of his official car and few took great note of it. Every-
thing with the man was just so routine, and Jack worked hard to keep it that
way. Reporters rarely took note of a dog that didn’t bark. Perhaps they just
didn’t read enough to know better.
“They’re up to something,” Robby said as soon as Ryan took his seat in
(he flag briefing room in the National Military Command Center. The map
display made that clear.
“Coming south?”
“Two hundred miles’ worth. The fleet commander is V. K. Chandras-
katta, graduated Dartmouth Royal Naval College, third in his class, worked
his way up. Took the senior course at Newport a few years ago. He was
number one in that class,” Admiral Jackson went on. “Very nice political
connections. He’s spent a surprising amount of time away from his fleet
lately, commuting back and forth-”
“Where to?” Ryan asked.
“We assume back and forth to New Delhi, but the truth of the matter is
that we don’t really know. It’s the old story, Jack.”
Ryan managed not to groan. It was partly an old story, and partly a very
new one. No military officer ever thought himself possessed of enough intel-
ligence information, and never fully trusted the quality of what he did have.
In this case, the complaint was true enough: CIA still didn’t have any assets
on the ground in India. Ryan made a mental note to speak to Brett Hanson
about the Ambassador. Again. Psychiatrists called his form of action “pas-
sive-aggressive,” meaning that he didn’t resist but didn’t cooperate either. It
was a source of constant surprise to Ryan that important grown-ups so often
acted like five-year-olds.
“Correlation between his trips ashore and his movements?”
“Nothing obvious,” Robby answered with a shake of the head.
“Sigint, comint?” Jack asked, wondering if the National Security
Agency, yet another shadow of its former self, had attempted to listen in on
the Indian fleet’s radio traffic.
“We’re getting some stuff via Alice Springs and Diego Garcia, but it’s
just routine. Ship-movement orders, mostly, nothing with real operational
significance.”
Jack was tempted to grumble that his country’s intelligence services never
had what he wanted at the moment, but the real reason for that was simple:
the intelligence he did have usually enabled America to prepare, to obviate
problems before they became problems. It was the things that got over-
looked that developed into crises, and they were overlooked because other
things were more important-until the little ones blew up.
“So all we have is what we can infer from their operational patterns.”
“And here it is,” Robby said, walking to the chart.
“Pushing us off…”
“Making Admiral Dubro commit. It’s pretty clever, really. The ocean is
mighty big, but it can get a lot smaller when there’s two fleets moving
around it. He hasn’t asked for an ROE update yet but it’s something we need
to start thinking about.”
“If they load that brigade onto their amphibs, then what?”
An Army colonel, one of Robby’s staff, answered. “Sir, if I were running
this, it’s real easy. They have troops on the ground already, playing games