Debt of Honor

military-type vehicles, I think MLRS-Mike Lima Romeo Sierra-six of those sitting in the parking lot at the commercial dock area. Admiral, you check with the Coast Guard and pull my package. I did thirty years in CG blue. I ain't dickin' around, sir. Check for yourself, the phone lines to the rock are out. The story is supposedly that we had a big windstorm, took lines down and stuff. Ain't been no windstorm, Admiral. I was out fishing all day, okay? Check with your weather pukes to confirm that one, too. There are Japanese troops on this island, wearing fatigue uniforms and under arms.'

'You got a count, Master Chief?'

The best confirmation of this insane tale, Robby thought, was the embarrassed tone of the answer to that question. 'No, sir, sorry, I didn't think to count the airplanes. I'd guess three to six arrivals per hour, over the last six hours at least, probably more, but that's just a guess, sir. Wait…Kobler, one of the birds is moving, like to take off. It's a 747, but I can't make out the markings.'

'Wait. If the phones are out, how are you talking to me?' Oreza explained, giving Jackson a conventional number to call back on. 'Okay, Master Chief. I'm going to do some checking here. I'll be back to you in less than an hour. Fair enough?'

'Yes, sir, I figure we done our part.' The line went dead.

'Major!' Jackson shouted without looking up. When he did that, he saw the man was there.

'Sir, I know he sounded normal and all, but—'

'But call Andersen Air Force Base right now.'

'Roger.' The young pilot went back to his desk and flipped open his Autovon directory. Thirty seconds later he looked up and shook his head, a curious look on his face.

'Is someone telling me,' Jackson asked the ceiling, 'that a U.S. Air Force base dropped off the net today and nobody noticed?'

'Admiral, CINCPAC on your STU, sir, it's coded as CRITIC traffic.'

CRITIC was a classification of priority even higher than FLASH, and not a prefix often used, even by a Theater Commander in Chief. What the hell, Jackson thought. Why not ask?

'Admiral Seaton, this is Robby Jackson. Are we at war, sir?'

His part in the exercise seemed easy enough, Zhang Han San thought. Just one flight to one place, to talk first with one person, then another, and it had gone even more easily than he'd expected. Well, he shouldn't have been surprised, he thought, returning to the airport in the back of the embassy car. Korea would be cut off, certainly for a period of months, and perhaps indefinitely. To do anything else would have carried with it great dangers for a country whose military had been downsized and whose next-door neighbor was the nation with the world's largest standing army, and an historical enemy at that. Han hadn't even been forced to bring up that unseemly thought. He'd simply delivered an observation. There seemed to be difficulties between America and Japan. Those difficulties did not pertain directly to the Republic of Korea. Nor would it appear that the Republic had any immediate ability to ameliorate those differences, except perhaps as an honest broker of influence when diplomatic negotiations were undertaken, at which time the good offices of the Republic of Korea would be most welcome indeed by all sides in the dispute, certainly by Japan.

He'd taken no particular pleasure at the discomfort his mild words had given to his hosts. There was much to admire in the Koreans, a fact lost on Japan in their blind racism, Zhang thought. With luck, he might firm up the trading relationship between the PRC and the ROK, and they, too, would profit from the ultimate objective—and why not? The ROKs had no reason to love the Russians, and even less to love the Japanese. They simply had to get over their regrettable friendship with America and become part of a new reality. It was sufficient to the moment that they had indeed seen things his way, and that America's one remaining ally in this part of the world was off the playing field, their president and foreign minister having seen the light of reason. And with luck, the war, such as it was, might already be over for all intents and purposes.

'Ladies and gentlemen.' The voice came from the living room, where Mrs. Oreza had left the TV on. 'In ten minutes there will be a special announcement. Please stay tuned.'

'Manni?'

'I heard it, honey.'

'You have a blank tape for your VCR?' Burroughs asked.

23—Catching Up

Robby Jackson's day had started off badly enough. He'd had bad ones before, including a day as a lieutenant commander at Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, Maryland, in which a jet trainer had decided without any prompting at all to send him and his ejection seat flying through the canopy, breaking his leg in the process and taking him off flight status for months.

He'd seen friends die in crashes of one sort or another, and even more often had participated in searches for men whom he'd rarely found alive, more often locating a slick of jet fuel and perhaps a little debris. As a squadron commander and later as a CAG, he'd been the one who'd written the letters to parents and wives, telling them that their man, and most recently, their little girl, had died in the service of their country, each time asking himself what he might have done differently to prevent the necessity of the exercise. The life of a naval aviator was filled with such days.

But this was worse, and the only consolation was that he was deputy J-3, responsible to develop operations and plans for his country's military. Had he been part of J-2, the intelligence boys, his sense of failure would have been complete indeed.

'That's it, sir, Yakota, Misawa, and Kadena are all off the net. Nobody's picking up.'

'How many people?' Jackson asked.

'Total, about two thousand, mainly mechanics, radar controllers, loggies, that sort of thing. Maybe an airplane or two in transit, but not many of those. I have people checking now,' the Major replied. 'How about the Navy?'

'We have people at Andersen on Guam, co-located with your base. The port, too, maybe a thousand people total. It's a lot smaller than it used to be.' Jackson lifted his secure phone and punched in the numbers for CINC- PAC.

'Admiral Seaton? This is Jackson again. Anything else?'

'We can't raise anybody west of Midway, Rob. It's starting to look real.'

'How does this thing work?' Oreza asked.

'I hate to say this, but I'm not sure. I didn't bother reading the manual,' Burroughs admitted. The sat-phone was sitting on the coffee table, its antenna extended through the drill hole in the bottom of the mixing bowl, which was in turn sitting atop two piles of books. 'I'm not sure if it broadcasts its position to the satellites periodically or not.' For which reason they felt it necessary to maintain the comical arrangement.

'You turn mine off by putting the antenna back down,' Isabel Oreza observed, causing two male heads to turn. 'Or you can just take the batteries out, right?'

'Damn.' Burroughs managed to say it first, but not by much. He lifted the bowl off, put the little antenna back in its hole, then flipped off the battery cover and withdrew the two AAs. The phone was now completely off. 'Ma'am, if you want to get into the master's program at Sanford, use me as a reference, okay?'

'Ladies and gentlemen.' Heads turned in the living room to see a smiling man in green fatigues. His English was letter-perfect. 'I am General Tokikichi Arima of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces. Please allow me to explain what has happened today.

'First of all, let me assure you that there is no cause for alarm. There was an unfortunate shooting at the police substation adjacent to your parliament building, but the two police officers who were hurt in the exchange are both doing well in your local hospital. If you have heard rumors of violence or death, those rumors are not true,' the General assured the twenty-nine thousand citizens of Saipan.

'You probably want to know what has happened,' he went on. 'Early today, forces under my command began arriving on Saipan and Guam. As you know from your history, and indeed as some of the older citizens on this island well remember, until 1944 the Mariana Islands were possessions of Japan. It may surprise some of you to know that since the court decision several years ago allowing Japanese citizens to purchase real estate in the islands, the