Debt of Honor

'Depth?'

'Breaking the surface now, sir!' the COB reported. A second later came a rush of exterior noise, and then the submarine crashed sickeningly back down.

'Rig for ultraquiet. '

The shaft was stopped now. Tennessee wallowed on the surface while three hundred feet down and half a mile aft, the MOSS was circling in and out of the decoy bubbles. He'd done all that he could do. A crewman reached into his pocket for a smoke, then realized that he'd lost his pack topside.

'Our unit is in acquisition!' sonar reported.

'Come right! ' Ugaki said, trying to be calm and succeeding, but the American torpedo had run straight through the decoy field…just as his had done, he remembered. He looked around his control room. The faces were on him, just as they had been the other time, but this time the other boat had shot first despite his advantage, and he only needed a look at the plot to see that he'd never know if his second submarine attack had succeeded or not. 'I'm sorry,' he said to his crew, and a few heads had time to nod at his final, sincere apology to them.

'Hit!' sonar called next.

'Thank you, Sonar,' Claggett acknowledged.

'The enemy fish are circling below us, sir…they seem to be…yeah, they're chasing into the decoy…we're getting some pings, but…'

'But the early -48s didn't track stationary surface targets, Chief,' Claggett said quietly. The two men might have been the only people breathing aboard. Well, maybe Ken Shaw, who was standing at the weapons panel. It only made things worse that you couldn't hear the ultrasonic noise of a torpedo sonar.

'The damned things run forever.'

'Yep.' Claggett nodded. 'Raise the ESM,' he added as an afterthought.

The sensor mast went up at once, and people cringed at the noise.

'Uh, Captain, there's an airborne radar bearing three-five-one.'

'Strength?'

'Low but increasing. Probably a P-3, sir.'

'Very well.'

It was too much for the Army officer. 'We just sit still?'

'That's right.'

Sato brought the 747 in largely from memory. There were no runway lights, but he had enough from the moon to see what he was doing, and once again the copilot marveled at the man's skill as the aircraft's landing lights caught reflections from the lights on the ground. The landing was slightly to the right of the centerline, but Sato managed a straight run to the end, this time without his usual look over at the junior officer. He was bringing the aircraft right onto the taxiway when there was a flash in the distance.

Major Sato was the first Eagle back to Kobler, actually having passed two damaged aircraft on his way in. There was activity on the ground, but the only radio chatter was incoherent. He had little choice in any case. His fighter was running on vapors and memory now, all the fuel gauges showing almost nothing Also without lights, the aviator chose the proper glide-slope and touched down in exactly the right spot. He didn't see the softball-size submunition his nosegear hit. The fighter's nose collapsed, and the Eagle slid, pinwheeling off the end of the runway. There was just enough vapor in the tanks to start a fire, then an explosion to scatter parts over the Kobler runway. A second Eagle, half a mile behind Sato's, found another bomblet and exploded. The twenty remaining fighters angled away, calling on their radios for instructions. Six of them turned for the commercial field. The rest looked for and approached the large twin runways on Tinian, not knowing that they, too, had been sprinkled with cluster munitions from a series of Tomahawk missiles. Roughly half survived the landing without hitting anything

Admiral Chandraskatta was in his control room, watching the radar display. He'd have to recall his fighters soon. He didn't like risking his pilots in night operations, but the Americans were up in strength, doing another of their shows of force. And surely they could attack and destroy his fleet if they wished, but now? With a war against Japan under way, would America choose to initiate another combat action? No. His amphibious force was now at sea, and in two days, at sunset, the time would come.

The B-1's were lower than the flight crews had ever driven them. These were reservists, mostly airline pilots, assigned by a particularly beneficent Pentagon (with the advice of a few senior members of Congress) to a real combat aircraft for the first time in years. For practice bombing missions over land, they had a standard penetration altitude of no less than two hundred feet, more usually three hundred, because even Kansas farms had windmills and people erected radio towers in the damnedest places—but not at sea. Here they were down to fifty feet, and smokin', one pilot observed, nervously entrusting his aircraft to the terrain-avoidance system. His group of eight was heading due south, having turned over Dondra Head. The other four were heading northwest after using a different navigational marker. There was lots of electronic activity ahead, enough to make him nervous, though none of it was on him yet, and he allowed himself the sheer exhilaration of the moment, flying over Mach-1, and doing it so low that his bomber was trailing a different sort of vapor trail, more like an unlimited-class racing boat, and maybe cooking some fish along the way…

There.

'Low-level contacts from the north!'

'What?' The Admiral looked up. 'Range?'

'Less than twenty kilometers, coming in very fast!'

'Are they missiles?'

'Unknown, Admiral!'

Chandraskatta looked down at his plot. There they were, the opposite direction from the American carrier aircraft. His fighters were not in a position to—

'Inbound aircraft!' a lookout called next.

'Engage?' Captain Mehta asked.

'Shoot first without orders?' Chandraskatta ran for the door, emerging onto the flight deck just in time to see the white lines in the water even before the aircraft causing them.

'Coming up now,' the pilot said, aiming himself just at the carrier's bridge. He pulled back on the stick, and when it vanished under his nose, checked his altitude indicator.

'Pull up!' the voice-warning system told him in the usual sexy voice.

'I already did, Marilyn.' It sounded like a Marilyn to the TWA pilot.

Next he checked his speed. Just under nine hundred knots. Wow. The noise this big mother would make…

The sonic boom generated by the huge aircraft was more like a bomb blast, knocking the Admiral off his feet and shattering glass on the wheelhouse well over his head and wrecking other topside gear. Another followed seconds later, and then he heard more still as the massive aircraft buzzed over his fleet. He was slightly disoriented as he stood, and there were glass fragments on the flight deck as he made his way back under cover. Somehow he knew his place was on the bridge.

'Two radars are out,' he heard a petty officer say. 'Rajput reports her SAMs are down.'

'Admiral,' a communications lieutenant called, holding up a growler phone.

'Who is this?' Chandraskatta asked.

'This is Mike Dubro. The next time we won't be playing. I am authorized to tell you that the U.S. Ambassador is now meeting with your Prime Minister…'

'It is in everyone's best interest that your fleet should terminate its operations,' the former Governor of Pennsylvania said after the usual introductory pleasantries.

'You may not order us about, you know.'

'That was not an order, Madame Prime Minister. It was an observation. I am also authorized to tell you that my government has requested an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council to discuss your apparent intentions to invade Sri Lanka. We will offer to the Security Council the service of the U.S. Navy to safeguard the sovereignty of that country. Please forgive me for speaking bluntly, but my country does not intend to see the sovereignty of that country violated by anyone. As I said, it is in everyone's interest to prevent a clash of arms.'