which operated on microchips and software to safeguard their lives. And yet the body of Three's pilot had been found with his hand on the throttle controls. It made little sense, but the evidence pointed that way. A software conflict, perhaps, somewhere in system—a foolish and enraging reason for the loss of two priceless aircraft, even though it was not without precedent in the age of computer-controlled flight. For the moment, the reality of the situation was that they could only maintain a two-aircraft constant patrol, albeit with a third always ready to lift off at an instant's notice.
Overflying ELINT satellites noted the continued patrol of three E-767's for the moment, and nervous technicians at Air Force Intelligence and the National Security Agency wondered if the Japanese Air Force would try to defy the rules of aircraft operation. They checked their clocks and realized that another six hours would tell the tale, while satellite passes continued to record and plot the electronic emissions.
Jackson now concerned himself with other satellite information. There were forty-eight fighters believed based on Saipan, and another sixty-four at Guam's former Andersen Air Force Base, whose two wide runways and huge underground fuel-storage tanks had accommodated the arriving aircraft very comfortably indeed. The two islands were about one hundred twenty miles apart. He also had to consider the dispersal facilities that SAC had constructed in the islands during the Cold War. The closed Northwest Guam airfield had two parallel runways, both usable, and there was Agana International in the middle of the island. There was also a commercial airfield on Rota, another abandoned base on Tinian, and Kobler on Saipan in addition to the operating airport. Strangely, the Japanese had ignored all of the secondary facilities except for Kobler Field. In fact, satellite information showed that Tinian was not occupied at all—at least the overhead photos showed no heavy military vehicles. There had to be some light forces there, he reasoned, probably supported by helicopter from Saipan—the islands were separated by only a narrow channel.
One hundred twelve fighters was Admiral Jackson's main consideration. There would be support from E-2 AEW aircraft, plus the usual helicopters that armies took wherever they went. F-15's and F-3's, supported further by SAMs and triple-A. It was a big job for one carrier, even with Bud Sanchez's idea for making the carrier more formidable. The key to it, however, wasn't fighting the enemy's arms. It was to attack his mind, a constant fact of war that people alternately perceived and forgot over the centuries. He hoped he was getting it right. Even then, something else came first.
The police never came back, somewhat to Clark's surprise. Perhaps they'd found the photos useful, but more probably not. In any case, they didn't hang around to find out. Back in their rental car, they took a last look at the charred spot beyond the end of the runway just as the first of three AEW aircraft landed at the base, quite normally to everyone's relief. An hour earlier, he'd noted, two rather than the regular three E-767's had taken off, indicating, he hoped, that their grisly mission had borne fruit of a sort. That fact had already been confirmed by satellite, giving the green light for yet another mission about which neither CIA officer knew anything.
The hard part still was believing it all. The English-language paper they'd bought in the hotel lobby at breakfast had news on its front page not terribly different than they'd read on their first day in Japan. There were two stories from the Marianas and two items from Washington, but the rest of the front page was mainly economic news, along with an editorial about how the restoration of normal relations with America was to be desired, even at the price of reasonable concessions at the negotiations table. Perhaps the reality of the situation was just too bizarre for people to accept, though a large part of it was the close control of the news. There was still no word, for example, of the nuclear missiles squirreled away somewhere. Somebody was being either very clever or very foolish—or possibly both, depending on how things turned out. John and Ding both came back to the proposition that none of this made the least bit of sense, but that observation would be of little consolation for the families of the people killed on both sides. Even in the madly passionate war over the Falkland Islands, there had been inflammatory rhetoric to excite the masses, but in this case it was as though Clausewitz had been rewritten to say that war was an extension of economics rather than politics, and business, while cutthroat in its way, was still a more civilized form of activity than that engaged in on the political stage. But the truth of the madness was before him. The roads were crowded with people doing their daily routine, albeit with a few stares at the wreckage on the air base, and in the face of a world that seemed to be turning upside down, the ordinary citizen clung to what reality he knew, relegating the part he didn't understand to others, who in turn wondered why nobody else noticed.
All that changed three blocks from their hotel, when Ding spotted a car parked the wrong way with the passenger-side visor turned down. It was a sign that Kimura needed an urgent meet. The emergency nature of the signal came as something of a reassurance that it wasn't all some perverted dream. There was danger in their lives again. At least something was real.
Flight operations had commenced just after dawn. Four complete squadrons of F-14 Tomcats and four more of F/A-18 Hornets were now aboard, along with four E-3C Hawkeyes. The normal support aircraft were for the moment based on Midway, and the one-carrier task force would for the moment use Pacific Islands as auxiliary support facilities for the cruise west. The first order of business was to practice midair refueling from Air Force tankers that would follow the fleet west as well. As soon as they had passed Midway, a standing combat air patrol of four aircraft was established, though without the usual Hawkeye support. The E-2C made a lot of electronic noise, and the main task of the depleted battle force was to remain stealthy, though in the case of
Sanchez was down in air-operations. His task was to take what appeared to be a very even battle and make it one-sided. The idea of a fair fight was as foreign to him as to any other person in uniform. One only had to look around to see why. He knew the people in this working space. He did not know the airmen on the islands, and that was all he cared about. They might be human beings. They might have wives and kids and houses and cars and every other ordinary thing the men in Navy khaki had, but that didn't matter to the CAG. Sanchez would not order or condone such movie fantasies as wasting ammunition on men in parachutes—people in that condition were too hard to target in any case—but he had to kill their airplanes, and in an age of missiles that most often meant that the driver would probably not get the opportunity to eject. Fortunately, it was hard enough in the modern age to see your target as anything more than a dot that had to be circled by the head-up display of the fire-control system. It made things a lot easier, and if a parachute emerged from the wreckage, well, he didn't mind making a SAR call for a fellow aviator, once the man was incapable of harming one of his own.
'Koga has disappeared,' Kimura told them, his voice urgent and his face pale.
'Arrested?' Clark asked.
'I don't know. Do we have anyone inside your organization?'
John turned very grim. 'Do you know what we do to traitors?' Everyone knew. 'My country depends on this man, too. We will get to work on it. Now, go.'
Chavez watched him walk away before speaking. 'A leak?'
'Possibly. Also possible that the guys running the show don't want any extraneous opposition leaders screwing things up for the moment.'
Scherenko was on his way out to a meet of his own when the two people showed up at his office door.
'What's the matter?' he asked, and John Clark handled the answer: 'Koga's vanished.'
Major Scherenko sat down, waving his visitors to seats in his office. They didn't need to be told to close the door. 'Is it something that might have happened all on its own,' Clark asked, 'or did somebody leak it?'
'I don't think PSID would have done it. Even on orders from Goto. It's too political without real evidence. The political situation here is—how well do you know it?'
