Debt of Honor

'Ding, I just got used to trusting you,' Clark replied quietly, easing the tension of the moment.

38—The River Rubicon

'So?'

Ryan took his time considering the answer. Adler deserved to know something. There was supposed to be honor in negotiations. You never really told the whole truth, but you weren't supposed to lie either.

'So continue as before,' the National Security Advisor said.

'We're doing something.' It was not a question.

'We're not sitting on our hands, Scott. They're not going to cave in are they?'

Adler shook his head. 'Probably not.'

'Encourage them to rethink their position,' Jack suggested. It wasn't very helpful, but it was something to say.

'Cook thinks there are political forces working over there to moderate matters. His counterpart on the other side is giving him encouraging information.'

'Scott, we have a couple of CIA officers working over there, covered as Russian journalists. They've been in contact with Koga. He's not very happy with developments. We've told him to act normally. There's no sense in harming the guy, but if…best move, have Cook feel the guy out on what the opposition elements in their government really are, and what power they might have. He must not reveal who we're in contact with.'

'Okay, I'll pass that one along. Otherwise keep the same line?' Adler asked.

'Don't give them anything of substance. Can you dance some?'

'I think so.' Adler checked his watch. 'It's at our place today. I have to sit down with Brett before it starts.'

'Keep me posted.'

'Will do,' Adler promised.

It was still before dawn at Groom Lake. A pair of C-5B transports taxied to the end of the runway and lifted off. The load was light, only three helicopters each and other equipment, not much for aircraft designed to carry two tanks. But it would be a long flight for one of them, over five thousand miles, and adverse winds would require two midair refuelings, in turn necessitating a full relief crew for each transport. The additional flight crewmen relegated the passengers to the space aft of the wing box, where the seats were less comfortable.

Richter removed the dividers from the three-seat set and put his earplugs in. As soon as the aircraft lifted off, his hand moved automatically for the pocket of his flight suit where he kept his cigarettes—or had until he'd quit a few months earlier. Damn. How could you go into combat without a smoke? he asked himself, then leaned against a pillow and faded off to sleep. He didn't even feel the buffet of the aircraft as it climbed into the jetstream over the Nevada mountains.

Forward, the flight crew turned north. The sky was dark and would remain so for almost all of the flight. Their most important task would be to stay alert and awake. Automated equipment would handle the navigation, and the hour was such that the red-eye commercial flights were already out of the way and the regular day's business hops had hardly begun. The sky was theirs, such as it was, with broken clouds and bitterly cold air outside the aluminum skin of the aircraft, on their way to the goddamnedest destination the reserve crew had ever considered. The second Galaxy's crew was luckier. It turned southwest, and in less than an hour was over the Pacific Ocean for their shorter flight to Hickam Air Force Base.

USS Tennessee entered Pearl Harbor an hour early and proceeded under her own power to an outlying berth, dispensing with the harbor pilot and depending on a single Navy tugboat to bring her alongside. There were no lights, and the evolution was accomplished by the glow of the other lit-up piers of the harbor. The one surprising thing was the presence of a large fuel truck on the quay. The official car and the admiral standing next to it were to be expected, Commander Claggett thought. The gangway was rigged quickly, and ComSubPac hustled across even before the ensign was rigged on the after part of the sail. He saluted that way anyway.

'Welcome aboard, Admiral,' the CO called from his control station, then headed down the ladder to meet Admiral Mancuso in his own cabin.

'Dutch, I'm glad you managed to get her under way,' Mancuso said with a smile tempered by the situation.

'Glad I finally got to dance with the girl,' Clagget allowed. 'I have all the diesel I need, sir.' he added.

'We have to pump out one of your tanks.' Large as she was. Tennessee had more than one fuel bunker for her auxiliary diesel.

'What for, sir?'

'Some JP-5.' Mancuso opened his briefcase and pulled out the mission orders. The ink was hardly dry on them. 'You're going to start off in the special-ops business.' The automatic tendency was for Claggett to ask Why me? but he restrained himself. Instead he flipped over the cover page of the orders and started checking his programmed position.

'I might get a little business there, sir,' the Captain observed. 'The idea is to stay covert, but the usual rule applies.' The usual rule meant that Claggett would always be free to exercise his command judgment.

'Now hear this,' the 1-MC announcing system told everyone. 'The smoking lamp is out throughout the ship. The smoking lamp is out throughout the ship.'

'You let people smoke aboard?' ComSubPac asked. Quite a few of his skippers did not.

'Command judgment, remember?'

Thirty feet away, Ron Jones was in the sonar room, pulling a computer disk out of his pocket.

'We've had the upgrade,' the chief told him.

'This one's brand-new.' The contractor slipped it into the slot on the backup computer. 'I got a hit on you first night out when you ran over the Oregon SOSUS array. Something loose aft?'

'Toolbox. It's gone now. We ran over two more later,' the chief pointed out.

'How fast?' Jones asked.

'The second one was just under flank, and we curlicued overtop the thing.'

'I got a twitch, nothing more, and that one had the same software I just uploaded for you. You got a quiet boat here, Chief. Walk down?'

'Yeah, the Cap'n tore a few strips off, but there ain't no loose gear aboard now.' He paused. 'Less'n you count the ends on the toilet-paper rolls.'

Jones settled into one of the chairs, and looked around the crowded working space. This was his place. He'd only had a hint of the ship's mission orders—Mancuso had asked his opinion of water conditions and worried if the Japanese might have taken the U.S. Navy's SOSUS station on Honshu intact, and that had been enough, really. She was sure as hell going in harm's way, perhaps the first PacFlt sub to do so. God, and a boomer, too, he thought. Big and slow. One hand reached out and touched the workstation.

'I know who you are, Dr. Jones,' the chief said, reading the man's thoughts. 'I know my job, too, okay?'

'The other guy's bouts, when they snort—'

'The thousand-hertz line. We have the dash-five tail and all the upgrades. Including yours, I guess.' The chief reached for his coffee, and on reflection, poured a mug for his visitor.

'Thank you.'

'Asheville and Charlotte?'

Jones nodded, looking down at his coffee. 'You know Frenchy Laval?'

'He was one of the instructors in my A-School, long time back.'

'Frenchy was my chief on Dallas, working for Admiral Mancuso. His son was aboard Asheville. I knew him. It's personal.'

'Gotcha.' It was all the chief had to say.

'The United States of America does not accept the current situation, Mr. Ambassador. I thought that I'd made that clear,' Adler said two hours into the current session. In fact he'd made it clear at least eight times every day since the negotiations had begun.