Jack Ryan 8 - Debt of Honor (80 page)

Through it all, President Durling sat quietly in his place, scanning faces, most especially his Secretary of Defense, and behind him, against the wall, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the man SecDef had picked to assist him in the dismantlement of the American military. Both men were looking down, and it was clear that both men were unworthy of the moment. It was also clear that their country could not afford to be.

“How can we do it, Jack?” Roger Durling asked.

“Mr. President, I don't know yet. Before we try, we have to decide if we are going to or not, and that, sir, is your call.”

Durling weighed Ryan's words, and weighed the desirability of polling his cabinet for their opinions, but the faces told him something he didn't like. He remembered his time in
Vietnam
when he'd told his troopers that, yes, it all mattered, even though he knew that it was a lie. He'd never forgotten the looks on their faces, and though it was not widely known, every month or so now, in the dark of night, he'd walk down to the Vietnam Memorial, where he knew the exact location of every name of every man who had died under his command, and he visited those names one by one, to tell them that, yes, it really had mattered somehow, that in the great scheme of events their deaths had contributed to something, and that the world had changed for the better, too late for them, but not too late for their fellow citizens. President Durling thought of one other thing: nobody had ever taken land away from
America
. Perhaps it all came down to that.

“Brett, you will commence negotiations immediately. Make it clear that the current situation in the Western Pacific is in no way acceptable to the
United States
government. We will settle for nothing less than a complete restoration of the
Mariana Islands
to their antebellum condition. Nothing less,” Durling repeated.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I want plans and options for the removal of Japanese forces from those islands should negotiations fail,” J
UMPER
told the Secretary of Defense. The latter nodded but his face told the tale. SecDef didn't think it could be done.

Admiral Chandraskatta thought it had taken long enough, but he was patient, and he knew that he could afford to be. What will happen now? he wondered.

It could have gone more quickly. He'd been a little slow in his methods and plans, trying to learn the thought patterns of his adversary, Rear Admiral Michael Dubro. He was a clever foe, skilled at maneuvering, and because he was clever, he'd been quick to think that his own foe was stupid. It had been obvious for a week that the American formation lay to the southwest, and by moving south, he'd cajoled Dubro into moving north, then east. Had his assessment been wrong, then the American fleet would still have had to go to the same spot, east of Dondra Head, forcing the fleet oilers to cut the corner. Sooner or later they would pass under the eyes of his air patrols, and, finally, they had. Now all he had to do was follow them, and Dubro couldn't divert them except to the east. And that meant diverting his entire fleet to the east, away from
Sri Lanka
, opening the way for his navy's amphibious division to load its cargo of soldiers and armored vehicles. The only alternative was for the Americans to confront his fleet and offer battle.

But they wouldn't do that—would they? No. The only sensible thing for
America
to do was to recall Dubro and his two carriers to
Pearl Harbor
, there to await the political decision on whether or not to confront
Japan
. They had divided their fleet, violating the dictum of Alfred Thayer Mahan, which Chandraskatta had learned at the
Naval
War
College
at
Newport
,
Rhode Island
, along with his classmate, Yusuo Sato, not so many years before, and he remembered the theoretical discussions they'd had on walks along the seawall, watching the yachts and wondering how small navies could defeat big ones.

Arriving at
Pearl Harbor
, Dubro would confer with the intelligence and operations staffs of his Pacific Fleet command and they would do their sums, and then they would see that it probably could not be done. How angry and frustrated they would be, the Indian Admiral thought.

But first he would teach them a lesson. Now he was hunting them. For all their speed and cleverness, they were tied to a fixed point, and sooner or later you just ran out of maneuvering room. Now he could force them away, and allow his country to take her first imperial step. A small one, almost inconsequential in the great game, but a worthy opening move nonetheless because the Americans would withdraw, allowing his country to move, as
Japan
had moved. By the time
America
had built its strength back up, it would be too late to change things. It was all about space and time, really. Both worked against a country crippled by internal difficulties and therefore robbed of her purpose. How clever of the Japanese to see to that.

“It went better than I expected,” Durling said. He'd walked over to Ryan's office for the chat, a first for both of them.

“You really think so?” Jack asked in surprise.

“Remember, I inherited most of the cabinet from Bob.” The President sat down. “Their focus is domestic. That's been my problem all along.”

“You need a new SecDef and a new Chairman,” the National Security Advisor observed coldly.

“I know that, but the timing is bad for it.” Durling smiled. “It gives you a slightly wider purview, Jack. But I have a question to ask you first.”

“I don't know if we can bring it off.” Ryan was doodling on his pad.

“We have to take the missiles out of play first.”

“Yes, sir, I know that. We'll find them. At least I expect that we will one way or another. The other wild cards are hostages, and our ability to hit the islands. This war, if that's what it is, has different rules. I'm not sure what those rules are yet.” Ryan was still working on the public part of the problem. How would the American people react? How would the Japanese?

“You want some input from your commander in chief?” Durling asked.

That was good enough to generate another smile. “You bet.”

“I fought in a war where the other side made the rules,” Durling observed. “It didn't work out very well.”

“Which leads me to a question,” Jack said.

“Ask it.”

“How far can we go?”

The President considered. “That's too open-ended.”

“The enemy command authority is usually a legitimate target of war, but heretofore those people have been in uniform.”

“You mean going after the zaibatsu?”

“Yes, sir. Our best information is that they're the ones giving the orders. But they're civilians, and going directly after them could seem like assassination.”

“We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Jack.” The President stood to leave, having said what he'd come in to say.

“Fair enough.” A slightly wider purview, Ryan thought. That could mean many things. Mainly it meant that he had the opportunity to run with the ball, but all alone, unprotected. Well, Jack thought, you've done that before.

“What have we done?” Koga asked. “What have we allowed them to do?”

“It's so easy for them,” responded a political aide of long standing. He didn't have to say who them was. “We cannot ourselves assert our power, and divided, it's just so easy for them to push us in any direction they want…and over time—” The man shrugged.

“And over time the policy of our country has been decided by twenty or thirty men elected by no one but their own corporate boardrooms. But this far?” Koga asked. “But this far?”

“We are where we are. Would you prefer that we deny it?” the man asked.

“And who protects the people now?” the former—that word was bitter indeed—Prime Minister asked, leading with his chin and knowing it.

“Goto, of course.”

“We cannot permit that. You know what he follows.” Koga's counselor nodded, and would have smiled but for the gravity of the moment. “Tell me,” Mogataru Koga asked. “What is honor? What does it dictate now?”

“Our duty, Prime Minister, is to the people,” replied a man whose friendship with the politician went back to
Tokyo
University
. Then he remembered a quote from a Westerner—
Cicero
, he thought. “The good of the people is the highest law.”

And that said it all, Koga thought. He wondered if treason always began that way. It was something he'd sleep on, except that he knew that he wouldn't sleep at all that night. This morning, Koga thought with a grunt, checking his watch.

“We're sure that it has to be standard-gauge track?”

“You can resection the photos we have yourself,” Betsy Fleming told him. They were back in the Pentagon headquarters of the National Reconnaissance Office. “The transporter-car our people saw is standard gauge.”

“Disinformation, maybe?” the NRO analyst asked.

“The diameter of the SS-19 is two-point-eight-two meters,” Chris Scott replied, handing over a fax from
Russia
. “Throw in another two hundred seventy centimeters for the transport container. I ran the numbers myself. The narrow-gauge track over there would be marginal for an object of that width. Possible, but marginal.”

“You have to figure,” Betsy went on, “that they're not going to take too many chances. Besides, the Russians also considered a rail-transport mode for the Mod-4 version, and designed the bird for that, and the Russian rail gauge—”

“Yeah, I forgot that. It is larger than our standard, isn't it?” The analyst nodded. “Okay, that does make the job easier.” He turned back to his computer and executed a tasking order that he'd drafted a few hours earlier. For every pass over
Japan
, the narrow-focus high-resolution cameras would track down along precise coordinates. Interestingly, AMTRAK had the best current information on Japanese railroads, and even now one of their executives was being briefed in on the security rules pertaining to overhead imagery. It was a pretty simple briefing, really. Tell anyone what you see, and figure on a lengthy vacation at
Marion
,
Illinois
.

The computer-generated order went to
Sunnyvale
,
California
, from there to a military communications satellite, and thence to the two orbiting KH-11 satellites, one of which would overfly
Japan
in fifty minutes, the other ten minutes after that. All three people wondered how good the Japanese were at camouflaging. The hell of it was, they might never find out. All they could do, really, was wait. They would look at the imagery in real-time as it came in, but unless there were overt signs pointing to what they sought, the real work would be done over hours and days. If they were lucky.

Kurushio
was on the surface, never something to make a submarine commander happy. They wouldn't be here long. Fuel was coming aboard through two large-diameter hoses, and other stores, mainly food, were lowered by crane to crewmen waiting on the deck. His navy didn't have a proper submarine tender, Commander Ugaki knew. Mainly they used tank-landing ships for the purpose, but those were fulfilling other purposes now, and he was stuck with a merchantman whose crew was enthusiastic but unfamiliar with the tasks they were now attempting.

His was the last boat into
Agana
Harbor
because he'd been the one farthest away from the
Marianas
when the occupation had begun. He'd fired only one torpedo, and was gratified to see how well the Type 89 had worked. That was good. The merchantmen didn't have the equipment to reload him properly, but, the captain told himself, he had fifteen more, and four Harpoon missiles, and if the Americans offered him that many targets, so much the better.

Those crewmen not on duty loading stores on the afterdeck were crowded forward, getting some sun as submariners often did—as indeed their captain was doing, bare-chested atop the sail, drinking tea and smiling for everyone to see. His next mission was to patrol the area west of the Bonins, to intercept any American ship—more likely a submarine—that attempted to close the
Home
Islands
. It promised to be typical submarine duty, Ugaki thought: dull but demanding. He'd have to talk to his crew about how important it was.

“So where's the patrol line?” Jones asked, pushing the envelope again.

“Along 165-East for the moment,” Admiral Mancuso said, pointing at the chart. “We're thin, Jonesy. Before I commit them to battle, I want them to get used to the idea. I want the
COs
to drill their people up. You're never ready enough, Ron. Never.”

“True,” the civilian conceded. He'd come over with SOSUS printouts to demonstrate that all known submarine contacts were off the screen. Two hydrophone arrays that were operated from the
island
of
Guam
were no longer available. Though connected by undersea cable to the rest of the network, they'd evidently been turned off by the monitoring facility on
Guam
, and nobody at
Pearl
had yet been able to trick them back on. The good news was that a backup array off
Samar
in the
Philippines
was still operating, but it could not detect the Japanese SSKs shown by satellite to be replenishing off
Agana
. They'd even gotten a good count. Probably, Mancuso thought. The Japanese still painted the hull numbers on the sails, and the satellite cameras could read them. Unless the Japanese, like the Russians and then the Americans, had learned to spoof reconnaissance efforts by playing with the numbers—or simply erased them entirely.

“It would be nice to have a few more fast-attacks, wouldn't it?” Jones observed after a minute's contemplation of the chart.

“Sure would. Maybe if we can get some direction from
Washington
…” His voice trailed off, and Mancuso thought a little more. The location of every sub under his command was marked with a black silhouette, even the ones in overhaul status. Those were marked in white, showing availability dates, which was not much help at the moment. But there were five such silhouettes at
Bremerton
, weren't there?

The Special Report card appeared on all the major TV networks. In every case the hushed voice of an anchorperson told people that their network shows would be interrupted by a speech from the President about the economic crisis with which his administration had been dealing since the weekend. Then came the Presidential Seal. Those who had been following the events were surprised to see the President smiling.