scamper away to tell what he knew. I regret it right now.”
“You had a radar lock-up?” Cassidy asked sharply. “As the guy was getting out of Dodge.”
“Perhaps the Athena gear wasn’t working,” Cassidy mused. “Maybe. I dunno.”
“You should have pulled the trigger, Hudek. Dixie didn’t want you to waste gas. Next time, pull the damned trigger.”
Dixie blew Hudek a kiss. Fur Ball grimaced, then wandered away looking for something cold to drink. His first combat, and he had let one get away. Augh!
Alas, all he would find to drink was water. There was, he reflected, one tiny spot of light in this purge of incompetence, stupidity, and lost opportunities — Foy Sauce had refused his offer of a bet on the first Zero. Forking over a grand would have really hurt. At least he got half the credit for the guns kill with Dixie. That was something, though, Lord knows, not much. No doubt the Chink would rag him unmercifully anyway. Double augh!
18
Working in shifts around the clock, the men of Admiral Kolchak took three days to ship a new periscope and radar antenna. They also took on a full load of torpedoes and diesel fuel, provisioned the ship with canned vegetables and meat, refilled the freshwater tanks, washed their clothes, and took baths. The cracked batteries took more time. There was no way to replace the missing anechoic tiles on the boat’s hull, so they didn’t try. It was in the shower that the XO, Askold, approached Pavel Saratov, who was standing in the hot water with his eyes closed, letting it massage his back and head. “Captain, we’ve found four missiles for the sail.”
“Are you sure they are the right ones?”
“Twenty years old if they are a day, but I’ve already loaded one. It fits.”
“Very good, Askold.”
“Sir, where does General Esenin want us to go?”
“Back to Tokyo Bay,” Saratov said after a bit. No doubt Askold picked the shower for his questions because with all this water noise a microphone couldn’t overhear their conversation. “The men are very unhappy.”
“Umm.” Saratov opened his eyes and reached for the soap. “They’ll be ready for us this time.”
“He has written orders, signed by President Kalugin. We don’t have any choice.”
Askold concentrated on scrubbing. “Look at the provisions,” Saratov said. “Food, torpedoes, diesel fuel — they must have flown this stuff in here over the Pole. Somebody somewhere gave these people a hell of a priority.”
“It’s crazy. A dieselstelectric boat? A few torpedoes? We can win the war for Russia?”
“Russia’s only operational submarine in the Pacific is Admiral Kolchak. Our other three were sunk attacking the Japs off Vladivostok.”
“So what are we going to do in Tokyo Bay?”
“Esenin has a mission. He just hasn’t bothered to tell us serfs what it is.”
“Captain, the men—“
“XO, the officers and michmen and enlisted men of Admiral are going to obey orders. They are going to do as they are told. They swore an oath to obey, and by all that’s holy, they will.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Esenin will shoot anyone who fails to obey orders. If he doesn’t, I will. You’d better tell them.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“This is bigger than all of us, Askold. We have no choice. None at all.”
“I understand, Captain.”
That was the way he put the fear in Askold, who refused to look at him. When the executive officer left the locker room, still buttoning his shirt, Saratov sat heavily on the bench. He found himself fingering the scar on his forehead, He should have died in Tokyo Bay. Askold gave his life, and Saratov almost wished he hadn’t.
“He intends to nuke Japan,” Yanos Ilin told Marshal Stolypin. The old man stared at him stonily, which unnerved Ilin a little. One could never tell what the old bastard was thinking, or if he was. Talking to him was like talking to a portrait. “He isn’t that stupid,” Stolypin said finally. “He is that stupid. Believe me. He thinks if he nukes Tokyo, Japan will collapse and he will be the new czar of Russia. His position will be unassailable.”
Stolypin shook his head from side to side like an old bear. “We can win without nukes. We are bleeding them with hit-and-run raids. The Americans are in position to fight the Zeros toe-to-toe. This winter, we will unleash an army of half a million men against them. We can win, on the battlefield.”
“Kalugin will not wait. lie wants to save Russia now.”
“When I saved those weapons, I was thinking of possible conflicts with former Soviet states. Ahh … The Japanese have earned their doom.”
“No doubt,” Janos Ilin said crisply, “but while the Japanese government is collapsing, the military might retaliate with their own nuclear weapons. They have warheads for their satellite-launch missiles, developed in secret. They might launch them at Russia.”
Stolypin goggled. “Those are the first words I have ever heard about Japanese nuclear weapons. How good is your information?”
“Absolutely reliable. In fact, Kalugin knows the Japanese have nuclear warheads mounted on missiles. He sent them an ultimatum, which they rejected. Prime Minister Abe told him that if he uses nuclear weapons on the Japanese, they will retaliate.”
“I know of no ultimatum.”
“Obviously, Kalugin doesn’t believe Prime Minister Abe. And he’s willing to bet Russia that Abe is lying.”
“This changes everything,” Stolypin mumbled, and leaned back in his chair. The old soldier looked out the window, then played with the letter opener on his desk. That and a pen were the only items visible. Stolypin’s bureaucratic tidiness bothered Ilin. It was his experience that neatniks were neurotic. “All these years,” Stolypin muttered, “the balance of nuclear terror kept anyone from pulling the trigger. Until now … How do I know you are telling me the truth?”
“I would make this up? For what reason?”
“You come to me with a tale. The president is a madman bent on pulling the nuclear trigger. Perhaps he sent you here to see if I was loyal.”
“Spoken like a true peasant. Your paranoia becomes you, Marshal.”
“If you want to sneer at me, Ilin, do it somewhere else,” the marshal said, his face as calm as a clear summer sky. “I don’t have time for it.”
“I have only the whispered words of men I trust.”
“Whispered words of men I don’t know will not move me, Ilin. I want proof. Bring me proof or don’t come back.”
Janos Ilin rose from his seat and left the room.
The four F-22’s topped the cloud layer in a spread formation. None of the F-22’s were transmitting with their radar. Today Aaron Hudek was Cassidy’s wingman, flying five miles out to the leader’s left. Dixie Elitch led the second section; she was five miles away to the right, and Clay Lacy was five miles beyond her. Their heading was slightly north of east. The late afternoon sun shone over their left shoulders. The clouds below were thickening and the gaps looked ragged and gloomy. To the north, east, and south Cassidy could see massive thunderstorms, which were growing out of the turbulent clouds below. The ECM was silent. Cassidy still didn’t completely trust all this high-tech gadgetry, so he pushed the ECM self-test button. The lights on the ECM panel flashed in a test pattern and the audio beeped and honked. The concert and light show lasted sixty seconds, by which time Cassidy heartily wished he hadn’t played with the darn thing. He had tested it on the ground an hour ago. The autopilot flew the plane nicely. Sitting in the generous cockpit, Cassidy thought the fighter rode like a 747 crossing the Pacific. Not a hint of turbulence. Solid, tight, smooth as silk. Where was the stew with the drinks?
Idly, Cassidy mused about the strange twists of fortune that had brought him here, to a foreign war where the only person on earth who might be considered one of his family was flying a fighter on the other side. Life is bizarre at times, he decided. Totally unpredictable. Dixie was a little too far away, but Cassidy didn’t want to break radio silence to tell her to tighten up. Two hundred miles to Zeya. The F-22’s would be there in fifteen minutes.
