Debt of Honor

circled down into the sea. More streaks erupted in the darkness, lines of yellow-white going mainly right-to-left. That made it clear. 'Oh.'

Saipan Approach, this is JAL Seven-Oh-Two, two hundred miles out. What is happening, over?' There was no reply.

'Return to Narita?' the copilot asked.

'No! No, we will not do that!' Torajiro Sato replied.

It was a tribute to his professionalism that rage didn't quite overcome his training. He'd already dodged two missiles to this point, and Major Shiro Sato did not panic despite the ill-luck that had befallen his wingman. His radar showed more than twenty targets, just out of missile range, and though some others of his squadron mates had fired their AMRAAMs, he wouldn't until he had a better chance. He also showed multiple radars tracking his aircraft, but there was no helping that. He jerked his Eagle around the sky, taking hard turns and heavy gees as he closed on burner. What had begun as unorganized battle was now a wild melee, with individual fighters entirely on their own, like samurai in the darkness. He turned north now, selecting the nearest blip. The IFF systems automatically interrogated them, and the answer was not what he expected. With that Sato triggered off his fire-and-forget missiles then turned back sharply to the south. It wasn't at all what he'd hoped for, not a fair fight, skill against skill in a clear sky. This had been a chaotic encounter in darkness, and he simply didn't know who had won or lost. He had to turn and run now. Courage was one thing, but the Americans had drawn them out so that he scarcely had the fuel remaining for his home field. He'd never know it his missiles had scored. Damn.

He increased power one last tune, going to burner to disengage, angling right to keep clear of the fighters advancing in from the south. Those were the planes from Guam, probably. He wished them luck.

'TURKEY, this is TISKKI I i M> Disengage now. I say again, disengage now!' Sanchez was well behind the action now, wishing that he were in his Hornet instead of the larger Tomcat. Acknowledgments came in, and though he'd lost a few aircraft, and though the battle had not been entirely to his liking, he knew that it had been a success. He headed north to clear the area, checking his fuel state. Then he saw strobe lights at his ten o'clock and turned further to investigate.

'Jesus, Bud, it's an airliner.' his radar-intercept officer said. 'JAL markings.' That was obvious from the stylized red crane on the high tailfin.

'Better warn him off.' Sanchez turned on his own strobes and closed from the portside. 'JAL 747, JAL 747, this is U.S. Navy aircraft to your portside.'

'Who are you?' the voice asked over the guard frequency.

'We are a U.S. Navy aircraft. Be advised there is a battle going on here. I suggest you reverse course and head back home. Over.'

'I don't have the fuel for that.'

'Then you can bingo to Iwo Jima. There's a field there, but watch out for the radio tower southwest of the strip, over.'

'Thank you,' was the terse reply. 'I will continue on my flight plan. Out.'

'Dumbass.' Sanchez didn't put on the air, though his backseater fully agreed. In a real war they would have just shot him down, but this wasn't a real war, or so some people had decided. Sanchez would never know the magnitude of his error.

'Captain, that is very dangerous!'

'Iwo Jima is not lighted. We'll approach from the west and stay clear,' Captain Sato said, unmoved by all that he'd heard. He altered course to the west, and the copilot kept his peace on the matter.

'Active sonar to starboard, bearing zero-one-zero, low-frequency, probably a sub.' And that was not good news.

'Snapshot!' Claggett ordered at once. He'd drilled his crew mercilessly on this scenario, and the boomers did have the best torpedomen in the fleet.

'Setting up on tube four,' the weapons petty officer answered. On command, the torpedo was activated. 'Flooding four. Tube four is flooded. Weapon is hot.'

'Initial course zero-one-zero,' the weapons officer said, checking the plot, which didn't reveal much. 'Cut the wires, set to go active at one thousand!'

'Set!'

'Match and shoot!' Claggett ordered.

'Fire four, four away!' The sailor nearly broke the firing handle.

'Range four thousand meters,' the sonar officer reported. 'Large submerged target, beam aspect. Transient —he's launched!'

'So can we. Fire one, fire two!' Ugaki shouted. 'Left full rudder,' he added the moment the second tube was clear. 'Ahead flank!'

'Torpedo in the water. Two torpedoes in the water, bearing zero-one-zero. Ping-and-listen, the torpedoes are in search mode!' sonar reported.

'Oh, shit. We've been here before,' Shaw noted, recalling an awful experience on USS Maine. The Army officer aboard and his senior sergeant had just come into the attack center to thank the Captain for his part in the helicopter mission. They stopped cold on the portside, looking around and seeing the tension in the compartment.

'Six-inch room, launch decoy, now!'

'Launching now.' There was slight noise a second later, just a jolt of compressed air.

'We have a MOSS set up?' Claggett asked, even though he'd given orders for exactly that.

'Tube two, sir,' the weapons tech replied.

'Warm it up.'

'Done, sir.'

'Okay.' Commander Claggett allowed himself a deep breath and time to think. He didn't have much, but he had some. How smart was that Japanese fish? Tennessee was doing ten knots, not having had rudder or speed orders after submerging, and was at three hundred feet of keel depth. Okay.

'Six-inch room, set up a spread of three canisters to launch on my command. '

'Standing by, sir.'

'Weps, set the MOSS for three hundred feet, circling as tight as you can at this depth. Make it active as soon as it clears the tube.'

'Stand by…set. Tube is flooded.'

'Launch.'

'MOSS away, sir.'

'Six-inch room, launch now!'

Tennessee shuddered again, with three decoys ejected into the sea along with the torpedo-based lure. The approaching torpedo now had a very attractive false target to track.

'Surface the ship! Emergency surface!'

'Emergency surface, aye,' the chief of the boat replied, reaching himself for the air manifold, 'Full rise on the planes!'

'Full rise, aye!' the helmsman repealed, pulling back on his control yoke.

'Conn, sonar, the inbound torpedoes are still in ping-and-listen. Our outbound unit is now on continuous pinging. It has a sniff.'

'Their fish is like an early 48, troops,' Claggett said calmly. His demeanor was a lie, and he knew that, but the crew might not. 'Remember the three rules of a -48. It has to be a valid target, it has to be over eight hundred yards, and it has to have a bearing rate. Helm, all stop.'

'All stop, aye. Sir, engine room answers all stop.'

'Very well, we'll let her coast up now,' the Captain said, out of things to say now. He looked over at the Army people and winked. They looked rather pale. Well, that was one advantage of being black, wasn't it? Claggett thought.

Tennessee look a thirty-degree up-angle, killing a lot of her forward as she rose and tumbling several people to the deck, it came so abruptly Claggett held on to the red-and-white periscope- control wheel to steady himself.