Debt of Honor

a match for the inbound Americans. He'd put four up today, two from Viraat and two from Vikrant, to intercept the four, probably four, American Hornets, and the pilots would wave and nod in a show of good humor, but it would be a bilateral lie.

'We could light off our SAM systems, show them that we tire of this game,' Captain Mehta suggested quietly. The Admiral shook his head.

'No. They know little about our SAM systems, and we will volunteer them nothing.' The Indians' precise radar frequencies, pulse width, and repetition rates were not open information, and the American intelligence services had probably never troubled itself to find them out. That meant that the Americans might not be able to jam or spoof his systems—probably they could, but they wouldn't be certain of it, and it was the lack of certainty that would worry them. It wasn't much of a card, but it was the best in Chandraskatta's current hand. The Admiral sipped at his tea, making a show of his imperturbable nature.'No, we will take notice of their approach, meet them in a friendly manner, and let them go on their way.'

Mehta nodded and went off without a word to express his building rage. It was to be expected. He was the fleet-operations officer, and his was the task of divining a plan to defeat the American fleet, should that necessity present itself. That such a task was virtually impossible did not relieve Mehta of the duty to carry it out, and it was hardly surprising that the man was showing the strain of his position. Chandraskatta set his cup down, watching the Harriers leap off the ski-jump deck and into the air.

'How are the pilots bearing up?' the Admiral asked his air officer.

'They grow frustrated, but performance thus far is excellent.' The answer was delivered with pride, as well it might be. His pilots were superb. The Admiral ate with them often, drawing courage from the proud faces in the ready rooms. They were fine young men, the equal, man for man, of any fighter pilots in all the world. More to the point, they were eager to show it. But the entire Indian Navy had only forty-three Harrier FRS 51 fighters. He had but thirty at sea on both Viraat and Vikrant, and that did not equal the numbers or capability aboard a single American carrier. All because they had entered the race first, won it, and then declared the games closed, Chandraskatta told himself, listening to the chatter of his airmen over an open-voice channel. It simply wasn't fair.

'So, what are you telling me?' Jack asked.

'It was a scam,' Robby answered. 'Those birds were maintenance-intensive. Guess what? The maintenance hasn't been done in the past couple of years. Andy Malcolm called in on his satellite brick this evening. There was water at the bottom of the hole he looked at today.'

'And?'

'I keep forgetting you're a city boy.' Robby grinned sheepishly, or rather like the wolf under a fleece coat. 'You make a hole in the ground, sooner or later it fills with water, okay? If you have something valuable in the hole, you better keep it pumped out. Water in the bottom of the silo means that they weren't always doing that. It means water vapor, humidity in the hole. And corrosion.'

The light bulb went off. 'You telling me the birds—'

'Probably wouldn't fly even if they wanted them to. Corrosion is like that. Probably dead birds, because fixing them once they're broke is a very iffy proposition. Anyway'—Jackson tossed the thin file folder at Ryan's desk —'that's the J-3 assessment.'

'What about J-2?' Jack asked, referring to the intelligence directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

'They never believed it, but I expect they will now if we open enough holes and see the same thing. Me?' Admiral Jackson shrugged. 'I figure if Ivan let us see it in number one, we'll find pretty much the same thing everywhere else. They just don't give a good fuck anymore.'

Intelligence information comes from many sources, and an 'operator' like Jackson was often the best source of all. Unlike intelligence officers whose job it was to evaluate the capabilities of the other side, almost always in a theoretical sense, Jackson was a man whose interest in weapons was making them work, and he'd learned from hard experience that using them was far more demanding than looking at them.

'Remember when we thought they were ten feet tall?'

'I never did, but a little bastard with a gun can still ruin your whole day,' Robby reminded his friend. 'So how much money have they hustled out of us?'

'Five big ones.'

'Good deal, our federal tax money at work. We just paid the Russkies five thousand million dollars to 'deactivate' missiles that couldn't leave the silos unless they set the nukes off first. Fabulous call, Dr. Ryan.'

'They need the money, Rob.'

'So do I, man. Hey, boy, I'm scratching the bottom to get enough JP to keep our planes in the air.' It was not often understood that every ship in the fleet and every battalion of tanks in the Army had to live on a budget. Though the commanding officers didn't keep a checkbook per se, each drew on a fixed supply of consumable stores—fuel, weapons, spare parts, even food in the case of warships—that had to last a whole year. It was by no means unknown for a man-of-war to sit several weeks alongside her pier at the end of the fiscal year because there was nothing left to make her run. Such an event meant that somewhere a job was not getting done, a crew was not being trained. The Pentagon was fairly unique as a federal agency, in that it was expected to live on a fixed, often diminishing budget.

'How much thinner do you expect us to be spread?'

'I tell him, Rob, okay? The Chairman—'

'Just between you and me, the Chairman thinks operations are something that surgeons do in hospitals. And if you quote me on that, no more golf lessons.'

'What is it worth to have the Russians out of the game?' Jack asked, wondering if Robby would calm down a little.

'Not as much as we've lost in cuts. In case you haven't noticed, my Navy is still stretched from hell to breakfast, and we're doing business with forty percent less ships. The ocean didn't get any smaller, okay? The Army's better off, I grant that, but the Air Force isn't, and the Marines are still sucking hind tit, and they're still our primary response team for the next time the boys and girls at Foggy Bottom fuck up.'

'Preaching to the choir, Rob.'

'More to it than just that, Jack. We're stretching the people, too. The fewer the ships, the longer they have to stay out. The longer they stay out, the worse the maintenance bills. It's like the bad old days in the late seventies. We're starting to lose people. Hard to make a man stay away from his wife and kids that long. In flying, we call it the coffin corner. When you lose experienced people, your training bills go up. You lose combat effectiveness no matter which way you go,' Robby went on, talking like an admiral now.

'Look, Rob, I gave the same speech a while back on the other side of the building. I'm doing my best for you,' Jack replied, talking like a senior government official. At that point both old friends shared a look.

'We're both old farts.'

'It's a long time since we were on the faculty of Canoe U,' Ryan allowed. His voice went on almost in a whisper. 'Me teaching history, and you prostrating yourself to God every night to heal your leg.'

'I should've done more of that. Arthritis in the knee,' Robby said. 'I have a flight physical in nine months. Guess what?'

'Down-check?'

'The big one.' Jackson nodded matter-of-factly. Ryan knew what it really meant. To a man who'd flown fighter planes off carriers for over twenty years, it was the hard realization that age had come. He couldn't play with the boys anymore. You could explain away gray in the hair by citing adverse genes, but a down-check would mean taking off the flight suit, hanging up the helmet, and admitting that he was no longer good enough to do the one thing he'd yearned for since the age of ten, and at which he'd excelled for nearly all of his adult life. The bitterest part would be the memories of the things he'd said as a lieutenant, j.g., about the older pilots of his youth, the hidden smirks, the knowing looks shared with his fellow youngsters, none of whom had ever expected it would come to them.

'Rob, a lot of good guys never get the chance to screen for command of a squadron. They take the twenty- year out at commander's rank and end up flying the night shift for Federal Express.'

'And make good money at it, too.'

'Have you picked out the casket yet?' That broke the mood. Jackson looked up and grinned.

'Shit. If I can't dance, I can still watch. I'm telling you, pal, you want us to run all these pretty operations we