The War in 2020

between his lips pretended. Yes, words were one thing…

'Stay here,' Noburu told his aide. 'I can find my office on my own. Sit here in my chair and pay attention to all that goes on around you today. This is war, Akiro.'

Noburu marched through the half-chaos of his operations center, proceeding down the hall past the room where the master computer soldiered in silence. He stopped at the private elevator that had once served a Soviet general. The guard slammed his heels against the wall as he came to attention.

Noburu used the few seconds remaining to him to muster his arguments. But he found them fatally weakened by the events of the early morning hours. Why had the Americans — if they truly were Americans — interfered? He knew in his heart he would never convince old Tsuji to behave humanely. But just as it was his duty as a soldier to follow orders, it was his duty as a human being to make one last effort to break the chain of events.

His office was cool and very clean. Its austerity and silence normally soothed him, but today the empty suite felt like a tomb.

He sat down at his desk and picked up the special phone.

'This is General Noburu Kabata.'

'Hold for General Tsuji,' a voice told him.

He waited dutifully, imagining the magic beams that sliced through the heavens to allow him to speak privately with another man so far away. The technology, in its essence, was generations old. Yet, at times, such things still filled Noburu with a sense of wonder. It still amazed him that metal machines could carry men through the sky.

I'm a bad Japanese, he thought. I don't know how to take things for granted.

'Noburu?' the acid voice startled him.

'General Tsuji.'

'I cannot be certain of the view from your perspective, Noburu. However, from Tokyo, it appears that you are presiding over the greatest defeat suffered by Japanese arms in seventy-five years.'

'It's bad,' Noburu agreed. Ready to take his medicine.

'It's far worse than 'bad,' ' Tsuji said, loading his voice with spite. 'It's a disaster.'

'Yes.'

'I would personally relieve you, Noburu. But I can't. To take you out of there now would be an embarrassment to Japan. A further embarrassment. An admission of failure.'

'I will resign,' Noburu said.

'You will do nothing of the kind. Nor will you do anything… foolish. This is the twenty-first century. And your guts aren't worth staining a carpet. All you can do now is to try to turn things around. Have you got a plan?'

'Not yet,' Noburu said. 'We're still gathering information.'

'You know what I mean, Noburu. You know exactly what I mean. Have you formulated a plan for the commitment of Three-one-three-one?'

Three-one-three-one was Tokyo's code name for Noguchi's command. Everyone else simply referred to them as Scramblers. But Tsuji was a stickler for the details of military procedure.

'No.'

There was silence on the other end. Noburu understood it to be a calculated silence. Tsuji showing his contempt.

'Why?'

'General Tsuji… I continue to believe that the employment of… Three-one-three-one… would be a mistake. We will never be forgiven.'

Tsuji laughed scornfully. 'What? Forgiven? By whom? You must be going mad, Noburu.'

Yes, Noburu thought, perhaps. 'The Scramblers are criminal weapons,' he said. 'We, of all people—'

'Noburu, listen to me. Your personal ruminations are of no interest to me. Or to anyone else. You have one mission, and one only: to win a war. For Japan. And can you honestly tell me, after what we have all seen this morning, that you are in a position to guarantee victory without the employment of Three-one-three-one?'

'No.'

'Then get to work.'

'General Tsuji?'

'What?'

'My intelligence department believes they have broken into the communications network of the attackers.'

'Well. So you haven't been entirely asleep. Have you positively identified the units involved? Do you have any idea of the type of weapons? It's incredible to think that the Russians could have pulled all this off.'

'The intelligence department doesn't think it's Russians.'

Tsuji laughed. 'Who then? Creatures from space, perhaps?'

'Americans.'

'What?'

'Americans,' Noburu repeated.

'That's insane. Who's your senior intelligence officer?'

'I believe it to be true,' Noburu said. And it was not a lie. He did not need any further intelligence confirmation. He knew it to be the Americans. He had always known it. He simply had not been able to admit it to himself. Everything was so plain. It was ordained.

'Noburu, if you actually have evidence… if you're not dreaming this up…'

'It's true,' Noburu said. 'We're still working out the details. But the Americans are involved.'

There was another silence on the Tokyo end. But this time it was not calculated and carefully controlled.

'Then get them,' Tsuji said suddenly. 'Destroy them. Use Three-one-three-one.'

'General Tsuji, we have to think—'

'That's an order, Noburu. Introduce your Americans to the future of warfare.'

'We're going to get them,' Taylor said with forced calm. 'Merry, start running the interception azimuths. Stay with them.'

'Yes, sir.'

'We're going to get those bastards,' Taylor told the ops center staff. His voice was carefully controlled in volume, if not in tone. He had just watched the destruction of the Omsk site on the monitor. The way a civilian might watch a live television report from a riot or revolution — gripped by the images, but helpless to exert the least influence upon the situation. One moment, the wing-in-ground transport had been lying like a drowsing beast in the clear dawn. Then the screen smeared with the powdery swirls that sheathed the hearts of the bomb blasts. Next came the firestorm. There would be no survivors.

'We'll have to start turning,' Merry Meredith said. 'Right now.'

'Flapper?' Taylor called forward through the intercom, 'you listening up there?'

'Roger,' the copilot said.

'Merry's going to plug in the new grids.'

'Roger.'

'Merry,' Taylor said. 'You and the boys guide us into a good ambush position. Cue the escort ships to follow us. I'm going forward to talk to the chief.'

Taylor carefully put his headset back in its holder and squeezed out through the hatch that separated the ops cell from the small central corridor. He paused for a moment in the narrow, sterile passageway, closing his eyes, fighting to master his emotions. It was not as easy as it once had been. He remembered Manny Martinez as a bright, innocent lieutenant in Los Angeles, as a struggling horseman in Mexico. The boy had become a man in the years Taylor had known him, yet, he remained young and laughably earnest in Taylor's recollection. Why on earth hadn't the boy listened? He was normally such a fine, dutiful officer. Why, this time of all times…?

Taylor rubbed at his armpit where the shoulder holster chafed. He knew that the flight of nine Mitsubishi aircraft was not a sufficiently lucrative target to cause a regimental commander to turn back in the middle of a battle. Objectively speaking. The action was unforgivably personal, and militarily unnecessary. He was needed