hands, dithered, refused to use force against the Serbs. Genocide! Mass murder! Adolf Hitler’s final solution one more time. We condoned it by refusing to lead the effort to stop it, by refusing to pay the price.”
“Bosnia might become another Vietnam, the liberals said.”
Hood took a deep breath, sighed deeply. “When you refuse to lift a hand to stop evil, you become a part of it. That’s as true today as it was two thousand years ago. You watch, Jack. Tonight these people will argue about the dangers — the cost — of standing up to Japan. They will argue that Russia is a corrupt, misruled den of thieves with no one to blame but themselves for the fix they are in. The newspapers lately have been full of it. They will argue that we can’t afford to get involved in someone else’s fight. They will argue that this mess isn’t our problem, that the United States is not the world’s policeman. They will refuse to confront evil. Just watch.”
“People don’t believe in evil anymore,” Innes reflected. “It’s obsolete.”
“Oh no,” the president said with conviction. “Evil is alive and well in our time. The problem is that too many people have made their peace with it.”
The first real resistance to the Japanese occupation of Vladivostok came from squad- and platoon-sized groups of young troops led by junior officers. Without orders or coordination, they blocked streets and started shooting. These pockets of resistance were easily surrounded and wiped out. Still, Japanese troops attempting to link up and form a front across the peninsula were delayed. They called for tanks and armored cars to help mop up points of resistance. All of this cost time. Two hours after dawn, several thousand Russian infantry were actively engaged. The belch of machine guns and the pop of grenades was widespread in the northern parts of the city. Smoke from burning buildings and cars wafted over the city and the bay. There was no resistance on Russian Island and in the area of the city around Golden Horn Bay because there were no Russian troops there. The police, outnumbered and grossly outgunned, surrendered without a shot. The unarmed civilian population had no choice; they merely watched and tried to stay out of the way. By 7:00 A.m., a squadron of Zero fighters was on the ground at Vladivostok airport, being refueled and rearmed with missiles and munition helicoptered in from a supply ship anchored a half mile out. A dozen helicopter gunships came ashore from another ship, and soon they were attacking Russian positions in the northern areas of the city. Rain continued to mist down.
The sky was a clean, washed-out blue, with patches of long, thin, streaky clouds down below. On the horizon, the distant Rocky Mountains were blue and purple. Against this background, Bob Cassidy was looking hard for airplanes. There were two smart-skinned F-22’s out there, he knew, and they were joining on him. The damn things are like chameleons, he told himself, marveling that he couldn’t sec planes less than a mile away. “Two, do you see me?”
“Got you, Hoppy Leader. I’m at your three o’clock, level. I’m heading three zero five degrees.”
“Lead’s three one zero degrees, looking.”
He was looking in vain. The sky appeared empty. “Three’s at your nine o’clock, Hoppy. Level, joining heading three one five.”
Cassidy glanced left, caught something out of the corner of his eye. When he tried to focus on it, it wasn’t there. He glanced at his tactical display in the center of his instrument panel. Yep, a wingman on each side, closing the distance, joining up. He saw the man up-sun at about three hundred yards. He first appeared as a dark place in the sky, then gradually took the shape of an aircraft. He didn’t see the down-sun man until he was about two hundred yards away. He was there, then he wasn’t, and then he was, almost shimmering.
“This chameleon gear is flat terrific,” he told his wingmen over the scrambled radio channel. The three fighters entered the break at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada, and landed in order, one, two, three. The chameleon gear was oft of course. They taxied to the ramp and shut down. The hot, dry summer wind was like a caress on Cassidy’s damp head when he removed his helmet. He waited until the ground crew got the ladder in place, then unstrapped and climbed slowly down. He took a deep breath, removed his flight glove from his right hand. With his bare skin, he touched the skin of the airplane. It felt cool, smooth, hard. An officer in blues came walking over. He saluted. “Colonel, we had a call for you from Washington, a Colonel Eatherly. Japan has attacked Vladivostok. They want you back in Washington immediately. They are sending a plane to pick you up. And he wants you to call as soon as possible.”
“Thanks.”
So it was really true. The shooting has started. Bob Cassidy walked slowly around the F-22, inspecting it with unseeing eyes while he thought of the Japanese officers he knew and the Americans in Japan. He found himself standing in front of the wing root, staring at the little door that hid the mouth of the 20-mm Gatling gun. He turned and walked quickly toward the maintenance shops. They would have a telephone he could use.
The late-evening meeting at the White House went about as the president expected. The evening had been long, filled with depressing news. The Japanese were overrunning the Russian Far East. National Security Council staffers used maps and computer presentations to brief the group. When they finished, the mood was gloomy. The consensus of the group was voiced by the Speaker of the House: “America must stay neutral: this is not our fight. We must do what we can as a neutral to stop the bloodshed.”
The president didn’t say anything. Jack Innes argued the president’s position in an impassioned plea. “This is our fight. Every American will be affected by today’s events.
Every American has a stake in world peace. Every minute we delay merely increases the cost of the final reckoning. This is our moment. We must seize the initiative now, while we are able.”
Alas, his audience refused to listen. On the way out of the meeting, the Senate leadership paused for a quiet conversation with the president. “Mr. President, we hear that you are putting very severe pressure on the United Nations to censure right-brace apart, to pass some binding security resolutions.”
“We are talking with other nations at the UN, certainly,” the president said suavely. The Senate majority leader spoke carefully. “In my opinion, sir, it would be a major foreign policy mistake to maneuver the UN into the position of advocating the use of armed forces against Japan. My sense of the mood of the Senate is that my colleagues will not support such a policy. You might find yourself dangling from a very thin limb, sir, with no visible means of support. That would be embarrassing, to say the least.”
“Most embarrassing,” the president agreed. There was no smile on his face when he said it.
8
“Any gas, Jack?”
Bob Cassidy had driven from Washington, D.C. He poured himself a cup of coffee and was standing at the cash register in a gas stationst convenience store on the outskirts of Baltimore. He could hear the distinctive sounds of a ballpark announcer coming from a radio, apparently one behind the counter. “Are you Aaron Hudek?”
The man behind the counter looked him over before he nodded affirmatively. The announcer at the ballpark was getting excited. Hu-dek reached down and turned up the volume slightly. A home run. Hudek was in his late twenties. His jeans were faded and his blue service shirt had a patch over the breast pocket that bore the name Bud. He was about six feet tall, maybe 180 pounds, with a well-developed upper body. An old blue Air Force belt held up his jeans. “Your mom said you were working here.”
“Why don’t you pay your bill and let the man behind you pay his?”
“Pump three, and coffee.” Cassidy forked over money. “My name’s Cassidy. I need to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“A job.”
“I got one.” Hudek looked at the man behind Cassidy, who held up a quart of oil. After Hudek pounded the register keys and finished counting the change, Cassidy added, “It’s a flying job.”
Hudek’s eyes flicked over Cassidy again. “I get off in about ten minutes, when the girl working the next shift comes in. We can talk then.”
“Okay.”
It was closer to twenty minutes, but a tree beside the pavement threw some shade on a concrete bench. Cassidy was there when Hudek came walking over. He didn’t sit. “How’d you get my name?”
“From the Air Force files.”
“So you’re government?”
“Colonel Bob Cassidy, at least for a few more days.”
