Debt of Honor

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