Tom Clancy - Debt of Honor

The medium-price hotel was more than they could ordinarily afford, but for all that it lay right under the approach to runway three-two-left of the nearby air base. Perhaps the noise was just so normal to the country that people filtered it out, Chavez thought, remembering the incessant street racket from their hostelry in Tokyo. The back was better, the clerk assured them, but the best he could offer was a corner room. The really offensive noise was at the front of the hotel: the runway terminated only half a kilometer from the front door. It was the takeoffs that really shook things up. Landings were far easier to sleep through.

"I'm not sure I like this," Ding observed when he got to the room.

"Who said we were supposed to?" John moved a chair to the window and took the first watch.

"It's like murder, John."

"Yeah, I suppose it is." The hell of it was, Ding was right, but somebody else had said it wasn't and that's what counted. Sort of.

"No other options?" President Durling asked.

"No, sir, none that I see." It was a first for Ryan. He'd managed to stop a war, alter a fashion. He'd terminated a "black" operation that would probably have caused great political harm to his country. Now he was about to initiate one— well, not exactly , he told himself. Somebody else had started this war, but just though it might be, he didn't exactly relish what he was about to do. "They're not going to back off."

"We never saw it coming," Durling said quietly, knowing that it was too late for such thoughts.

"And maybe that's my fault," Ryan replied, feeling that it was his duty to take the blame. After all, national security was his bailiwick. People would die because of what he'd done wrong, and die from whatever things he might do right. For all the power exercised from this room, there really were no choices, were there?

"Will it all work?"

"Sir, that is something we'll just have to see."

It turned out to be easier than expected. Three of the ungainly twin-engine aircraft taxied in a line to the end of the runway, where each took its turn to face into the northwest winds, stopping, advancing its engines to full power, backing off to see if the engines would flame out, and when they didn't, going again to full power, but this time slipping the brakes and accelerating into its takeoff roll. Clark checked his watch and unfolded a road map of Honshu.

All that was required was a phone call. The Boeing Company's Commercial Airplane Group issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive, called an EAD, concerning the auto-landing system on its 767 commercial aircraft. A fault of unknown origin had affected the final approach of a TWA airliner on final into St. Louis, and until determination of the nature of the fault, operators were strongly advised to deactivate that feature of the flight-control systems until further notice. The directive went out by electronic mail, telex, and registered mail to all operators of the 767.

It came as no particular surprise that the Japanese consulates in Honolulu, San Francisco, New York, and Seattle were closed. FBI agents showed up at all of them simultaneously and explained that they had to be vacated forthwith. After perfunctory protests, which received polite but impassive attention, the diplomatic personnel locked up their buildings and walked off under guard—mainly to protect them against ragtag protesters, in every case watched by local police—into buses that would conduct them to the nearest airport for a flight to Vancouver, B.C. In the case of Honolulu, the bus went close enough to the Pearl Harbor naval base that officials got a last look at the two carriers in their graving docks, and photos were shot from the bus to record the fact. It never occurred to the consulate official who shot the pictures that the FBI personnel at the front of the bus did not interfere with his action. After all, the American media were advertising everything, as they'd been expected to do. The operation, they saw, was handled professionally in every detail. Their bags were X-rayed for weapons and explosives—there was none of that nonsense, of course—but not opened, since these were diplomatic personnel with treaty-guaranteed immunity. America had chartered an airliner for them, a United 737, which lifted off and, again, managed to fly directly over the naval base, allowing the official to shoot another five photos through the double windows from an altitude of five thousand feet. He congratulated himself on his foresight in keeping his camera handy. Then he slept through most of the five-hour flight to Vancouver.

"One and four are good as new. Skipper," the ChEng assured Johnnie Reb's CO. "We'll give you thirty, maybe thirty-two knots, whenever you ask."

Two and three, the inboard shafts, were closed off, the hull openings into the skegs welded shut, and with them the top fifteen or so knots of John Stennis's real top speed, but the removal of the propellers also cut down on drag, allowing a quite respectable max speed that would have to do. The most ticklish procedure had been resetting the number-four drivetrain, which had to be more finely balanced than the wheel of a racing car, lest it destroy itself at max revolutions. The testing had been accomplished the same way, by turning the screw and checking every bearing along the lengthy shaft. Now it was done, and the dry dock could be flooded tonight.

The commanding officer walked tiredly up the concrete steps to the top of the immense man-made canyon, and from there the brow. It was quite a climb all the way to his at-sea cabin aft of the bridge, from which he made a telephone call.

It was just about time. Clark looked southeast out the back window of their room. The cold air was clear and dry, with a few light clouds in the distance, still white in the direct sunlight while the ground was beginning to darken with twilight.

"Ready?" he asked.

"You say so, man." Ding's large metal camera case was open on the floor. The contents had cleared customs weeks before, and appeared unremarkable, typical of what a news photographer might take with him, if a somewhat lighter load than most carried. The foam-filled interior included cutout spaces for three camera bodies and a variety of lenses, plus other cavities for photographic lights that also appeared entirely ordinary but were not. The only weapons with them did not appear to be weapons at all, a fact that had also worked well for them in East Africa. Chavez lifted one of them, checking the power meter on the battery pack and deciding not to plug it into the wall. He flipped the switch to standby and heard the thin electronic whistle of the charging capacitors.

"There it is," John said quietly when he saw the incoming lights, not relishing the job any more than his partner. But you weren't supposed to, were you?

The inbound E-767 had turned on its inboard recognition lights while descending through ten thousand feet, and now lowered its landing gear. The outboard landing lights came on next. Five miles out and two thousand feet over the industrial area surrounding the air base, the pilot saw the runway lights and told himself not to relax after the long, boring patrol flight.

"Flaps twenty-five," he said.

"Flaps twenty-five," the copilot acknowledged, reaching for the control lever that deployed the landing flaps off the rear of the wing surfaces and the slats at the front, which gave the wing needed extra lift and control at the diminishing speed.

"Kami-Three on final, runway in sight," the pilot said, this time over the radio to the approach-control officer who had guided him unnecessarily to this point. The tower responded properly and the pilot tightened his grip slightly on the controls, more thinking the slight control movements than actually moving, adjusting to the low-altitude winds and scanning for possible unnoticed aircraft in the restricted airspace. Most aircraft accidents, he knew, occurred on landing, and that was why the flight crew had to be especially alert at this time.