Debt of Honor

'Okay.' Burroughs opened the door with a look up and down the street.

'Who are you, anyway? I thought this was the house of—'

'You're dead!' Oreza was standing in the hall, wearing just khaki shorts, his chest a mass of hair as thick as the remaining jungle on the island. The hair looked especially dark now, with the rest of the man's skin turning rapidly to the color of milk. 'You're fuckin' dead!'

'Hi, Portagee,' Klerk/Clark/Kelly said with a smile. 'Long time.'

He couldn't make himself move. 'I saw you die. I went to the goddamned memorial service. I was there!'

'Hey, I know you,' Chavez said. 'You were on the boat our chopper landed on. What the hell is this? You Agency?'

It was almost too much for Oreza. He didn't remember the little one at all, but the big one, the old one, his age, about, was-couldn't be-was. It wasn't possible. Was it?

'John?' he asked after a few seconds of further incredulity.

It was too much for the man who used to be known as John Kelly. He set his bag down and came over to embrace the man, surprised by the tears in his eyes. 'Yeah, Portagee—it's me. How you doin', man?'

'But how—'

'At the memorial service, did they use the line about 'sure and certain hope that the sea will give up its dead'?' He paused, then he had to grin. 'Well, it did.'

Oreza closed his eyes, thinking back over twenty years. 'Those two admirals, right?'

'You got it.'

'So—what the hell have you been—'

'CIA, man. They decided they needed somebody who could, well—'

'I remember that part.' He really hadn't changed all that much. Older, but the same hair, and the same eyes, warm and open to him as they had always been, Portagee thought, but underneath always the hint of something else, like an animal in a cage, but an animal who knew how to pick the lock whenever he wanted.

'I hear you've been doing okay for a retired coastie.'

'Command Master Chief.' The man shook his head. The past could wait. 'What's going on?'

'Well, we've been out of the loop for a few hours. Anything new that you know?'

'The President was on. They cut him off, but—'

'Did they really have nukes?' Burroughs asked.

' 'Did'?' Ding asked. 'We got 'em?'

'That what he said. Who the hell are you, by the way?' Oreza wanted to know.

'Domingo Chavez.' The young man extended his hand. 'I see you and Mr. C know each other.'

'I go by 'Clark' now,' John explained. It was odd how good it felt to talk with a man who knew his real name.

'Does he know?'

John shook his head. 'Not many people know. Most of them are dead. Admiral Maxwell and Admiral Greer both. Too bad, they saved my ass.'

Oreza turned to his other new guest. 'Tough luck, kid. It's some fuckin' sea story. You still drink beer, John?'

'Especially if it's free,' Chavez confirmed.

'Don't you see? It's finished now!'

'Who else did they get?' Yamata asked.

'Matsuda, Itagake—they got every patron of every minister, all except you and me,' Murakami said, not adding that they had nearly gotten him.

'Raizo, it is time to put an end to this. Call Goto and tell him to negotiate a peace.'

'I will not!' Yamata snarled back.

'Don't you see? Our missiles are destroyed and—'

'And we can make new ones. We have the ability to make more warheads, and we have more missiles at Yoshinobu.'

'If we attempt that, you know what the Americans will do, you fool!'

'They wouldn't dare.'

'You told us that they could not repair the damage you did to their financial systems. You told us that our air defenses were invincible. You told us that they could never strike back at us effectively.' Murakami paused for a breath. 'You told us all these things—and you were wrong. Now I am the last one to whom you may speak, and I am not listening. You tell Goto to make peace!'

'They'll never take these islands back. Never! They do not have the ability.'

'Say what you please, Raizo-chan. For my part it is over.'

'Find a good place to hide then!' Yamata would have slammed the phone down, but a portable didn't offer that option. 'Murderers,' he muttered. It had taken most of the morning to assemble the necessary information. Somehow the Americans had struck at his own council of zaibatsu. How? Nobody knew. Somehow they'd penetrated the defenses that every consultant had told him were invincible, even to the point of destroying the intercontinental missiles. 'How?' he asked.

'It would seem that we underestimated the quality of their remaining air forces,' General Arima replied with a shrug. 'It is not the end. We still have options.'

'Oh?' Not everyone was giving up, then?

'They will not wish to invade these islands. Their ability to perform a proper invasion is severely compromised by their lack of amphibious-assault ships, and even if they managed to put people on the island—to fight amidst so many of their own citizens? No.' Arima shook his head. 'They will not risk it. They will seek a negotiated peace. There is still a chance—if not for complete success, then for a negotiated peace that leaves our forces largely intact.'

Yamata accepted that for what it was, looking out the windows at the island that he wanted to be his. The elections, he thought, could still be won. It was the political will of the Americans that needed attacking, and he still had the ability to do that.

It didn't take long to turn the 747 around, but the surprise to Captain Sato was that the aircraft was half full for the flight back to Narita. Thirty minutes after lift-off, a stewardess reported to him by phone that of the eleven people she'd asked, all but two had said that they had pressing business that required their presence at home. What pressing business might that be? he wondered, with his country's international trade for the most part reduced to ships traveling between Japan and China.

'This is not turning out well,' his copilot observed an hour out. 'Look down there.'

It was easy to spot ships from thirty thousand feet, and of late they'd taken to carrying binoculars to identify surface ships. Sato lifted his pair and spotted the distinctive shapes of Aegis destroyers still heading north. On a whim he reached down to flip his radio to a different guard frequency.

'JAL 747 calling Mutsu, over.'

'Who is this?' a voice instantly replied. 'Clear this frequency at once!'

'This is Captain Torajiro Sato. Call your fleet commander!' he ordered with his own command voice. It took a minute.

'Brother, you shouldn't be doing this,' Yusuo chided. Radio silence was as much a formality as a real military necessity. He knew that the Americans had reconnaissance satellites, and besides, his group's SPY radars were all up and radiating. If American snooper aircraft were about, they'd know where his squadron was. It was something he would have considered with confidence a week before, but not now.

'I merely wanted to express our confidence in you and your men. Use us for a practice target,' he added.

In Mutsu's CIC, the missile techs were already doing exactly that, but it wouldn't do to say so, the Admiral knew. 'Good to hear your voice again. Now you must excuse me. I have work to do here.'

'Understood, Yusuo. Out.' Sato took his finger off the radio switch.

'See,' he said over the intercom. 'They're doing their job and we have to do ours.'

The copilot wasn't so sure, but Sato was the captain of the 747, and he kept his pence, concentrating on