Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (73 page)

It was especially pleasing to watch from thirty-seven thousand feet the first muted glow on the horizon, which seemed much like a garnish for a bouquet of still-visible stars. The glow brightened and expanded, from purple to deep red, to pink, to orange, and then the first sliver of the face of the sun, not yet visible on the black sea below, and it was as though the sunrise were for him alone, Yamata thought, long before the lower people got to enjoy and savor it. The aircraft turned slightly to the right, beginning its descent. The downward path through the early-morning air was perfectly timed, seeming to hold the sun in place all the way down, just the yellow-white sliver, preserving the magical moment for several minutes. The sheer glory moved Yamata nearly to tears. He still remembered the faces of his parents, their modest home on Saipan. His father had been a minor and not terribly prosperous merchant, mainly selling trinkets and notions to the soldiers who garrisoned the island. His father had always been very polite to them, Raizo remembered, smiling, bowing, accepting their rough jokes about his polio-shriveled leg. The boy who had watched thought it normal to be deferential to men carrying arms, wearing his nation’s uniform. He’d learned different since, of course. They were merely servants. Whether they carried on the samurai tradition or not—the very word
samurai
was a derivation of the verb “to serve,” he reminded himself, clearly implying a master, no?—it was they who looked after and protected their betters, and it was their betters who hired them and paid them and told them what to do. It was necessary to treat them with greater respect than they really deserved, but the odd thing was that the higher they went in rank, the better they understood what their place really was.

“We will touch down in five minutes,” a colonel told him.

“Dozo.”
A nod rather than a bow, because he was sitting down, but even so the nod was a measured one, precisely of the sort to acknowledge the service of an underling, showing him both politeness and superiority in the same pleasant gesture. In time, if this colonel was a good one and gained general’s rank, then the nod would change, and if he proceeded further, then someday, if he were lucky, Yamata-san might call his given name in friendship, single him out for a smile and a joke, invite him for a drink, and in his advancement to high command, learn who the master really was. The Colonel probably looked forward to achieving that goal. Yamata buckled his seat belt and smoothed his hair.

Captain Sato was exhausted. He’d just spent far too much time in the air, not merely breaking but shredding the crew-rest rules of his airline, but he, too, could not turn away from his duty. He looked off to the left and saw in the morning sky the blinking strokes of two fighters, probably F-15s, one of them, perhaps, flown by his son, circling to protect the soil of what was once again their country.
Gently,
he told himself. There were soldiers of his country under his care, and they deserved the best. One hand on the throttles, the other on the wheel, he guided the Boeing airliner down an invisible line in the air toward a point his eyes had already selected. On his command to the copilot, the huge flaps went down all the way. Sato eased back on the yoke, bringing up the nose and flaring the aircraft, letting it settle, floating it in until only the screech of rubber told them that they were on the ground.

“You are a poet,” the copilot said, once more impressed by the man’s skill.

Sato allowed himself a smile as he engaged reverse-thrust. “You taxi in.” Then he keyed the cabin intercom.

“Welcome to Japan,” he told the passengers.

Yamata didn’t shout only because the remark surprised him so. He didn’t wait for the aircraft to stop before he unbuckled. The door to the flight deck was right there, and he had to say something.

“Captain?”

“Yes, Yamata-san?”

“You understand, don’t you?”

His nod was that of a proud professional, and in that moment one very much akin to the zaibatsu.
“Hai.”
His reward was a bow of the finest sincerity, and it warmed the pilot’s heart to see Yamata-san’s respect.

The businessman was not in a hurry, not now. The bureaucrats and administrative soldiers worked their way off the aircraft into waiting buses that would take them to the Hotel Nikko Saipan, a large modern establishment located in the center of the island’s west coast, which would be the temporary administrative headquarters for the occupa—for the new government, Yamata corrected himself. It took five minutes for all of them to deplane, after which he made his own way off to another Toyota Land Cruiser whose driver, this time, was one of his employees who knew what to do without being told, and knew that this was moment for Yamata to savor in silence.

He scarcely noticed the activity. Though he’d caused it to happen, it was less important than its anticipation had been. Oh, perhaps a brief smile at the sight of the military vehicles, but the fatigue was real now, and his eyes drooped despite an iron will that commanded them to be bright and wide. The driver had planned the route with care, and managed to avoid the major tieups. Soon they passed the Marianas Country Club again, and though the sun was up, there were no golfers in evidence. There was no military presence either except for two satellite uplink trucks on the edge of the parking lot, newly painted green after having been appropriated from NHK. No, we mustn’t harm the golf course, now without a doubt the most expensive single piece of real estate on the island.

It was right about here, Yamata thought, remembering the shape of the hills. His father’s rude little store had been close to the north airfield, and he could remember the A6M Type-Zero fighters, the strutting aviators, and the often overbearing soldiers. Over there had been the sugarcane processing plant of Nanyo Kohatsu Kaisha, and he could remember stealing small bits of the cane and chewing on them. And how fair the breezy mornings had been. Soon they were on his land. Yamata shook off the cobwebs by force of will and stepped out of the car, walking north now.

It was the way his father and mother and brother and sister must have come, and he imagined he could see his father, hobbling on his crippled leg, struggling for the dignity that his childhood disease had always denied him. Had he served the soldiers in those last days, bringing them what useful things he had? Had the soldiers in those last days set aside their crude insults at his physical condition and thanked him with the sincerity of men for whom death was now something seen and felt in its approach? Yamata chose to believe both. And they would have come down this draw, their retreat toward death protected by the last rear-guard action of soldiers in their last moment of perfection.

It was called Banzai Cliff by the locals, Suicide Cliff by the less racist. Yamata would have to have his public-relations people work on changing the name to something more respectful. July 9, 1944, the day organized resistance ended. The day the Americans had declared the island of Saipan “secure.”

There were actually two cliffs, curved and facing inward as though a theater; the taller of them was two hundred forty meters above the surface of the beckoning sea. There were marble columns to mark the spot, built years earlier by Japanese students, shaped to represent children kneeling in prayer. It would have been here that they’d approached the edge, holding hands. He could remember his father’s strong hands. Would his brother and sister have been afraid? Probably more disoriented than fearful, he thought, after twenty-one days of noise and horror and incomprehension. Mother would have looked at father. A warm, short, round woman whose jolly musical laugh rang again in her son’s ears. The soldiers had occasionally been gruff with his father, but never with her. And never with the children. And the last service the soldiers had rendered had been to keep the Americans away from them at that final moment, when they’d stepped off the cliff. Holding hands, Yamata chose to believe, each holding a child in a final loving embrace, proudly refusing to accept captivity at the hands of barbarians, and orphaning their other son. Yamata could close his eyes and see it all, and for the first time the memory and the imagined sight made his body shudder with emotion. He’d never allowed himself anything more than rage before, all the times he’d come here over the years, but now he could truly let the emotions out and weep with pride, for he had repaid his debt of honor to those who had given him birth, and his debt of honor to those who had done them to death. In full.

The driver watched, not knowing but understanding, for he knew the history of this place, and he too was moved to tears as a shaking man of sixty-odd years clapped his hands to call the attention of sleeping relatives. From a hundred meters away, he saw the man’s shoulders rack with sobs, and after a time, Yamata lay down on his side, in his business suit, and went to sleep. Perhaps he would dream of them. Perhaps the spirits of whoever it was, the driver thought, would visit him in his sleep and say what things he needed to hear. But the real surprise, the driver thought, was that the old bastard had a soul at all. Perhaps he’d misjudged his boss.

“Damn if they ain’t organized,” Oreza said to himself, looking through his binoculars, the cheap ones he kept in the house.

The living-room window afforded a view of the airports, and the kitchen gave one of the harbor.
Orchid Ace
was long gone, and another car ferry had taken her berth,
Century Highway No. 5,
her name was, and this one was unloading jeep-type vehicles and trucks. Portagee was fairly strung-out, having forced himself to stay up all night. He’d now done twenty-seven hours without sleep, some of them spent working hard on the ocean west of the island. He was too old for that sort of thing, the master chief knew. Burroughs, younger and smarter, had curled up on the living-room rug and was snoring away.

Oreza wished for a cigarette for the first time in years. They were good for staying alert. You just needed them at a time like this. They were what a warrior used—at least that’s what the World War II movies proclaimed. But this wasn’t World War II, and he wasn’t a warrior. For all he’d done in his over thirty years in the United States Coast Guard, he’d never fired a shot in anger, even on his one Vietnam tour. Someone else had always been on the gun. He didn’t know
how
to fight.

“Up all night?” Isabel asked, dressed for her job. It was Monday on this side of the International Dateline, and a workday. She looked down and saw that the pad of note paper usually kept next to the phone was covered with scribbles and numbers. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know, Izz.”

“Want some breakfast?”

“It can’t hurt,” Pete Burroughs said, stretching as he came into the kitchen. “I think I conked out around three.” A moment’s consideration. “I feel like ... hell,” he said, in deference to the lady in the room.

“Well, I have to be at my desk in an hour or so,” Mrs. Oreza observed, pulling open the refrigerator. Breakfast in this house consisted of a selection of cold cereals and skim milk, Burroughs saw, along with toast made of the bread baked from straw. Toss in a little fruit, he thought, and he could have been back in San Jose. The coffee he could already smell. He found a cup and poured some.

“Somebody really knows how to do this right.”

“It’s Manni,” Isabel said.

Oreza smiled for the first time in hours. “I learned it from my first chief. The right blend, the right proportions, and a pinch of salt.”

Probably in the dark of the moon and after sacrificing a goat,
Burroughs thought. If so, however, the goat had died for a noble cause. He took a long sip and came over to check Oreza’s tally sheet.

“That many?”

“Could be conservative. It’s two flying hours from here to Japan. That’s four on the round-trip. Let’s be generous and say ninety minutes on the ground at each end. Seven-hour cycle. Three and a half trips per airplane per day. Each flight about three hundred, maybe three-fifty soldiers per hop. That means every plane brings in a thousand men. Fifteen airplanes operating over one day, that means a whole division of troops. You suppose the Japs have more than fifteen 747s?” Portagee asked. “Like I said, conservative. Now it’s just a matter of bringing their mobile equipment in.”

“How many ships for that?”

Another frown. “Not sure. During the Persian Gulf War—I was over there then doing port-security work ... damn. Depends on what ships you use and how you pack them. I’ll be conservative again. Twenty large merchant hulls just to ferry in the gear. Trucks, jeeps, all kinds of stuff you’d never think of. It’s like moving a cityful of people. They need to resupply fuel. This rock doesn’t grow enough food; that has to come in by ship, too, and the population of this place just doubled. The water supply might be stretched.” Oreza looked down and made a notation on that. “Anyway, they came to stay. That’s for damned sure,” he said, heading for the table and his Special K, wishing for three eggs up, bacon, white-bread toast with butter, hash-browns, and all the cholesterol that went with it. Damn turning fifty!

“What about me?” the engineer asked. “I seen you pass for a local. I sure as hell can’t.”

“Pete, you’re my charter, and I’m the captain, okay? I am responsible for your safety. That’s the law of the sea, sir.”

“We’re not at sea anymore,” Burroughs pointed out.

Oreza was annoyed by the truth of the observation. “My daughter’s the lawyer. I try to keep things simple. Eat your breakfast. I need some sleep, and you have to take over the forenoon watch.”

“What about me?” Mrs. Oreza asked.

“If you don’t show up for work—”

“—somebody will wonder why.”

“It’ll be nice to know if they told the truth about the cops who got shot,” her husband went on. “I’ve been up all night, Izz. I haven’t heard a single shot. Every crossroads seems to be manned, but they’re not doing anything to anybody.” He paused. “I don’t like it either, honey. One way or another we have to deal with it.”