Tom Clancy - Debt of Honor

"If we fail to act now, Mr. Secretary, there's no telling how far this thing might go," Ryan was saying now.

"We can work this out diplomatically," Hanson insisted.

"And if not?" Durling asked.

"Then in due course we can consider a measured military response."

SecState's confidence was not reflected in SecDef's expression.

"You have something to add?" the President asked him.

"It will be some time—years—before we can assemble the forces necessary to—"

"We don't have years," Ryan snapped.

"No, I don't think that we do," Durling observed. "Admiral, will it work?"

"I think it can, sir. We need a few breaks to come our way, but we got the biggest one last night."

"We don't have the necessary forces to assure success," SecDef said.

"The Task Force commander just sent in his estimate and—"

"I've seen it," Jackson said, not quite able to conceal his uneasiness at the truth of the report." But I know the CAG, Captain Bud Sanchez. Known him for years, and he says he can do it, and I believe him. Mr. President, don't be overly affected by the numbers. It isn't about numbers. It's about fighting a war, and we have more experience in that than they do. It's about psychology, and playing to our strengths rather than theirs. War isn't what it used to be. Used to be you needed huge forces to destroy the enemy's capacity to fight and his ability to coordinate and command his forces. Okay, fifty years ago you needed a lot to do that, but the targets you want to hit are actually very small, and if you can hit those small targets, you accomplish the same thing now as you used to need a million men to do before."

"It's cold-blooded murder," Hanson snarled. "That's what it is."

Jackson turned from his place at the lectern. "Yes, sir, that's exactly what war is, but this way we're not killing some poor nineteen-year-old son of a bitch who joined up because he liked the uniform. We're going to kill the bastard who sent him out to die and doesn't even know his name. With all due respect, sir, I have killed people, and I know exactly what it feels like. Just once, just one time, I'd like a crack at the people who give the orders instead of the poor dumb bastards who're stuck with carrying them out."

Durling almost smiled at that, remembering all the fantasies, and even a TV commercial once, about how different it might be if the president and prime ministers and other senior officials who ordered men off to the field of battle instead met and slugged it out personally.

"You're still going to have to kill a lot of kids," the President said. Admiral Jackson drew back from his angry demeanor before answering.

"I know that, sir, but with luck, a lot less."

"When do you have to know?"

"The pieces are largely in place now. We can initiate the operation in less than five hours. After that, we're daylight limited. Twenty-four-hour intervals after that."

"Thank you, Admiral Jackson. Could you all excuse me for a few minutes?" The men filed out until Durling had another thought. "Jack? Could you stay a minute?" Ryan turned and sat back down.

"It had to be done, sir. One way or another, if we're going to take those nukes out—"

"I know." The President looked down at his desk. All the briefing papers and maps and charts were spread out. All the order-of-battle documents. At least he'd been spared the casualty estimates, probably at Ryan's direction. After a second they heard the door close.

Ryan spoke first. "Sir, there's one other thing. Former Prime Minister Koga has been arrested—excuse me, we only know that he's kinda disappeared."

"What does that mean? Why didn't you bring that up before?"

"The arrest happened less than twenty-four hours after I told Scott Adler that Koga had been contacted. I didn't even tell him whom he'd been in contact with. Now, that could be a coincidence. Goto and his master just might not want him making political noise while they carry out their operation. It could also mean that there's a leak somewhere."

"Who on our side knows?"

"Ed and Mary Pat at CIA. Me. You. Scott Adler and whomever Scott told."

"But we don't know for sure that there's a leak."

"No, sir, we don't. But it is extremely likely."

"Set it aside for now. What if we don't do anything?"

"Sir, we have to. If we don't, then sometime in the future you can expect a war between Russia on one hand and Japan and China on the other, with us doing God knows what. CIA is still trying to do its estimate, but I don't see how the war can fail to go nuclear. ZORRO may not be the prettiest thing we've ever tried to do, but it's the best chance we have. The diplomatic issues are not important," Ryan went on. "We're playing for much higher stakes now. But if we can kill off the guys who initiated this mess, then we can cause Goto's government to fall. And then we can get things back under some sort of control."

The odd part, Durling realized, was the trade-off concerning which side was pitching which sort of moderation. Hanson and SecDef took the classical diplomatic line—they wanted to take the time to be sure there was no other option to resolve the crisis through peaceful means, but if diplomacy failed, then the door was opened for a much wider and bloodier conflict. Ryan and Jackson wanted to apply violence at once in the hope of avoiding a wider war later. The hell of it was, either side could he right or wrong, and the only way to know for sure was to read the history books twenty years from now.

"If the plan doesn't work…"

"Then we've killed some of our people for nothing," Jack said honestly. "You will pay a fairly high price yourself, sir."

What about the fleet commander—I mean the guy commanding the carrier group. What about him?"

"If he chokes, the whole thing comes apart."

"Replace him," the President said. "The mission is approved." There was one other item to be discussed. Ryan walked the President through that one, too, before leaving the room and making his phone calls.

The perfect Air Force mission, people in blue uniforms liked to say, was run by a mere captain. This one was commanded locally by a special-operations colonel, but at least he was a man who'd been recently passed over for general's rank, a fact that endeared him to his subordinates, who knew why he'd failed to screen for flag rank. People in spec-ops just didn't fit in with the button-down ideal of senior leadership. They were too…eccentric for that.

The final mission brief evolved from data sent by real-time link from Fort Meade, Maryland, to Verino, and the Americans still cringed at the knowledge that Russians were learning all sorts of things about America's ability to gather and analyze electronic data via satellite and other means—after all, the capability had been developed for use against them. The exact positions of two operating E-767's were precisely plotted. Visual satellite data had counted fighter aircraft—at least those not in protective shelters—and the orbiting KH-12's last pass had counted airborne aircraft and their positions.

The colonel commanding the detachment went over the penetration course that he had personally worked out with the flight crew, and while there were worries, the two young captains who would fly the C-17A transport chewed their gum and nodded final approval. One of them even joked about how it was time a "trash-hauler" got a little respect.

The Russians had their part to play, too. From Vuzhno-Sakalinsk South on the Kamchatka Peninsula, eight MiG-31 interceptors lifted off for an air-defense exercise, accompanied by an IL-86 Mainstay airborne-early-warning aircraft. Four Sukhoi fighters took off ten minutes later from Sokol to act as aggressors. The Sukhois with long-range fuel tanks headed southeast, remaining well outside Japanese airspace. The controllers in both Japanese E-767's recognized it for what it was: a fairly typical and stylized Russian training exercise. Nevertheless, it did involve warplanes, and merited their close attention, all the more so that it was astride the most logical approach route for American aircraft like the B-1s that had so recently "tickled" their own defenses. It had the effect of drawing the E-767's both north and east somewhat, and with them their fighter escorts. The reserve AWACS aircraft was almost ordered aloft, hut the ground-based air-defense commander decided sensibly merely to increase his alert state a bit.