Debt of Honor

hours.'

'And the rest of the Ohios?'

'Just off Ulithi Atoll, heading north a little slower now. The SSN force will lead the carrier in. The Ohios are tasked to get inside early.' Which all made sense, Jones thought. The boomers were too slow to operate effectively with a carrier task force, which he'd also been tracking on SOSUS, but they were ideal for getting inside a patrol line of SSKs…so long as the skippers were smart about it. There was always that consideration.

'The Jap 'cans will be about on top ol' Tennessee right about—'

'I know.'

'What else do you have for me?' ComSubPac asked briskly.

Jones led him over to the wall chart. There were now seven SSK-silhouettes circled on the display, with only one '?'-marked. That one, they saw, was in the passage between the northernmost of the Marianas, called Moug, and the Bonins, the most famous of which was Iwo Jima.

'We've been trying to concentrate on this passage,' Jones said. 'I've gotten a few twitches, but nothing firm enough to plot. If I were them, though, I'd cover that area.'

'So would I,' Chambers confirmed. One likely move for the Americans would be to put a submarine patrol line astride the Luzon Strait, to attempt to interdict oil traffic to the Japanese mainland. That was a political decision, however. Pacific Fleet did not yet have authorization to attack Japanese merchantmen, and intelligence reported that at the moment most of the tanker traffic in and out was composed of flag-of-convenience shipping, attacks on which had all sorts of political ramifications. We couldn't risk offending Liberia, Mancuso told himself with a grimace. Could we?

'Why the speed-run for the 'cans back home?' Jones asked. It was not something that appeared very sensible.

'We hammered their air defenses last night.'

'Okay, so they'll scoot west of the Bonins…that means I'll lose them soon. Anyway, their speed of advance is thirty-two, and their course is still a little fuzzy, but homeward bound, sure as hell.' Jones paused. 'We're starting to play with their heads, eh?'

Mancuso allowed himself a smile for once. 'Always.'

44—…from one who knows the score…

'Does it have to be this way?' Durling asked.

'We've run the simulation twenty times,' Ryan said, flipping through the data yet again. 'It's a matter of certainty. Sir, we have to take them all the way out.

The President looked at the satellite overheads again. 'We're still not one hundred percent sure, are we?'

Jack shook his head. 'Nothing is ever that sure, no. Our data looks pretty good—the overheads, I mean. The Russians have developed data, too, and they have as much reason to want to be right as we do. There are ten birds here. They're dug in deep, and the site seems to have been selected deliberately for relative immunity from attack. Those are all positive indicators. This is not a deception operation. The next question is making sure that we can hit them all. And we have to do it quickly.'

'Why?'

'Because they're moving ships back toward the coast that are marginally capable of detecting the aircraft.'

'No other way?'

'No, Mr. President. If this is going to work, it has to be tonight.' And the night, Ryan saw, checking his watch, had already started on the far side of the world.

'We protest in the strongest terms the American attack on our country,' the Ambassador began. 'We have refrained at all times from doing such things, and we expected a similar courtesy from the United States.'

'Mr. Ambassador, I am not consulted on military operations. Have American forces struck your mainland?' Adler asked by way of reply.

'You know quite well what they have done, and you must also know that it is a precursor move to a full attack. It is important that you understand,' the diplomat went on, 'that such an attack could result in the gravest possible consequences.' He let that phrase hang in the air like a cloud of lethal gas. Adler took a moment before responding.

'I would remind you first of all that we did not begin this conflict. I would further remind you that your country made a deliberate attack to cripple our economy—'

'As you have done!' the Ambassador shot back, showing real anger that might have been a cover for something else.

'Excuse me, sir, but I believe it is my turn to speak.' Adler waited patiently for the Ambassador to calm down; it was plain that neither one had gotten a full night's sleep. 'I would further remind you that your country has killed American servicemen, and if you expected us to refrain from corresponding moves, then you were possibly mistaken in that expectation.'

'We have never attacked vital American interests.'

'The freedom and security of American citizens is ultimately my country's only vital interest, sir.'

The acrimonious change in atmosphere could hardly have been more obvious, as was the reason for it. America was making a move of some sort, and the move would clearly not be a subtle one. The people on both sides of the table, again on the top floor of the State Department, might well have been carved from stone. No one wanted to concede anything, not even a blink, at the formal sessions. Heads might have turned fractionally when the leaders of the respective delegations took their turns to speak, but no more than that. The absence of facial expressions would have done professional gamblers proud—but that was precisely the game being played, even without cards or dice. The discussions never got as far before the first recess as a return to the possession of the Marianas.

'Christ, Scott,' Cook said, walking through the doors to the terrace.

From the circles under his eyes, the chief negotiator, he saw, had been up most of the night, probably at the White House. The primary season would be driving this mess now. The media were harping on the crippled ships at Pearl Harbor, and TV coverage was also coming from Saipan and Guam now, people speaking with obscured faces and disguised voices—on one hand about how they wanted to be American citizens, and on the other how much they feared being on those islands if a real counterattack developed.

The ambivalence was exactly the sort of thing to confuse the public, and opinion polls were divided, though with a majority expressing outrage at what had been done, and a slightly smaller majority expressing the wish for a diplomatic solution. If possible. A plurality of 46 percent, the Washington Post/ABC poll had stated this morning, didn't see much hope of that. The wild card, however, was the Japanese possession of nuclear arms, which had been announced by neither country, in both cases for fear of panicking the respective populations. Everyone in these sessions had really hoped for a peaceful settlement, but much of that hope had just evaporated, and in a period of a mere two hours.

'It's being politically driven now,' Adler explained, looking away to let out his own tension with a long breath. 'It had to happen, Chris.'

'What about their nukes?'

The Deputy Secretary of State shrugged uneasily. 'We don't think they're that crazy.'

'We don't think they are? What genius came up with that assessment?' Cook demanded.

'Ryan, who else?' Adler paused. 'He's running this. He thinks the next smart move is to blockade—well, declare a maritime exclusion zone, like the Brits did down at the Falklands. Cut off their oil,' Adler explained.

'Nineteen forty-one all over again? I thought that bonehead was a historian! That's what started a world war, in case anybody forgot!'

'The threat of it—well, if Koga has the guts to speak out, we think their government'll come apart. So,' Scott went on, 'find out what the other side—I mean, what sort of strength the opposition really has.'