Debt of Honor

  “Systems?” he asked over the intercom.

  “Nominal,” the EWO replied tensely. His eyes were on the GPS navigation system, which was taking its signals from four orbiting nuclear clocks and fixing the aircraft’s exact position in three dimensions, along with course and groundspeed and wind-drift figure generated by the bomber’s own systems. The information was crossloaded to the bombs, already programmed to know the exact location of their targets. The first bomber had covered targets 1 through 8. The second bomber had covered 3 through 10. His third bomber would take the second shots at 1, 2, 9, and 10. This would theoretically ensure that since no single aircraft handled both shots at one target, an electronic fault would not guarantee the survival of one of the missiles on the ground.

  “That Patriot battery is still looking. It seems to be at the entrance to the valley.”

  Too bad for them, Zacharias thought.

  “Bomb doors coming open—now!” the copilot said. The resulting news from the third crewman was instant.

  “He’s got us—the SAM site has us now,” the EWO said as the first weapon fell free. “Lock-on, he has lock-on ... launch launch launch!”

  “It takes a while, remember,” Zacharias said, far more coolly than he felt. The second bomb was now out. Then came a new thought—how smart was that battery commander? Had he learned something from his last chance at a bomber? God, the mission could still fail if he-Two seconds later the fourth weapon dropped free, and the bomb doors closed, returning the B-2 Spirit to electronic invisibility.

  “It’s a stealth bomber, it has to be,” the intercept controller said. “Look!”

  The large, inviting contact that had suddenly appeared just over their heads was gone. The big phased-array acquisition radar had announced the target’s presence visually and with a tone, and now the screen was blank, but not completely. Now there were four objects descending, just as there had been eight only a minute before. Bombs. The battery commander had felt and heard the impact up-valley from his launch vehicles. The last time, he’d gone for the bombers, wasting two precious missiles; and the two he’d just fired would also go wild ... but...

  “Reengage now!” the battery commander shouted at his people.

  “They’re not guiding on us,” the EWO said with more hope than conviction. The tracking radar was searchlighting now, then it steadied down, but not on them.

  To make it even less likely, Zacharias turned the aircraft, which was necessary for the second part of the mission anyway. It would take him off track for the programmed path of the missiles and avoid the chance possibility of a skin-skin contact.

  “Talk to me!” the pilot ordered.

  “They’re past us by now—” A thought confirmed by one, then another bright flash of light that lit up the clouds over their heads. Though the three crewmen cringed at the light, there wasn’t a sound or even a buffet from the explosions, they must have been so far behind them.

  Okay, that’s that ... I hope.

  “He’s still—lock-on-signal!” the EWO shouted. “But—”

  “On us?”

  “No, something else—I don’t know—”

  “The bombs. Damn it,” Zacharias swore. “He’s tracking the bombs!”

  There were four of them, the smartest of smart bombs, falling rapidly now, but not so fast as a diving tactical aircraft. Each one knew where it was in space and time and knew where it was supposed to go. Data from the B-2s’ onboard navigation systems had told them where they were—the map coordinates, the altitude, the speed and direction of the aircraft, and against that the computers in the bombs themselves had compared the location of their programmed targets. Now, falling, they were connecting the invisible dots in three-dimensional space, and they were most unlikely to miss. But the bombs were not stealthy, because it hadn’t occurred to anyone to make them so, and they were also large enough to track.

  The Patriot battery still had missiles to shoot, and a site to defend, and though the bomber had disappeared, there were four objects on the screen, and the radar could see them. Automatically, the guidance systems tracked in on them as the battery commander swore at himself for not thinking of this sooner. His operator nodded at the command and turned the key that “enabled” the missile systems to operate autonomously, and the computer didn’t know or care that the inbound targets were not aircraft. They were moving through the air, they were within its hemisphere of responsibility, and the human operators said, kill.

  The first of four missiles exploded out of its boxlike container, converting its solid-rocket fuel into a white streak in the night sky. The guidance system was one that tracked targets via the missile itself, and though complex, it was also difficult to jam and exceedingly accurate. The first homed in on its target, relaying its own signals to the ground and receiving tracking instructions from the battery’s computers. Had the missile a brain, it would have felt satisfaction as it led the falling target, selecting a point in space and time where both would meet ...

  “Kill!” the operator said, and night turned to day as the second SAM tracked in on the next bomb.

  The light on the ground told the tale. Zacharias could see the strobelike flashes reflected off the rocky hillsides, too soon for bomb hits on the ground. So whoever had drawn up the mission parameters hadn’t been paranoid after all.

  “There’s IP Two,” the copilot said, recalling the aircraft commander back to the mission.

  “Good ground-fix,” the EWO said.

  Zacharias could see it clearly this time, the wide flat path of deep blue, different from the broken, darker ground of this hill country, and the pale wall that held it back. There were even lights there for the powerhouse.

  “Doors coming open now.”

  The aircraft jumped upwards a few feet when the six weapons fell free. The flight controls adjusted for that, and the bomber turned right again for an easterly course, while the pilot felt better about what he’d been ordered to do.

  The battery commander slammed his hand down on his instrument panel with a hoot of satisfaction. He’d gotten three of the four, and the last explosion, though it had been a miss, might well have knocked the bomb off-target, though he felt the ground shake with its impact on the ground. He lifted his field phone for the missile command bunker.

  “Are you all right?” he asked urgently.

  “What the hell hit us?” the distant officer demanded. The Patriot commander ignored that foolish question.

  “Your missiles?”

  “Eight of them are gone—but I think I have two left. I have to call Tokyo for instructions.” It was amazing to the officer at the other end, and his immediate thought was to credit the site selection. His silos were drilled into solid rock, which had made a fine armor for his ICBMs after all. What orders would he receive now that the Americans had tried to disarm him and his nation?

  I hope they tell you to launch, the SAM officer didn’t quite have the courage to say aloud.

  The last four bombs from the third B-2 tracked in on the hydroelectric dam at the head of the valley. They were programmed to strike from bottom to top in the reinforced-concrete face of the structure, the timing and placement of the target points no less crucial than those of the weapons that had tracked in on the missile silos. Unseen and unheard by anyone, they came down in a line, barely a hundred feet separating one from another.

  The dam was a hundred thirty meters high and almost exactly that thick at its base, the structure narrowing as it rose to a spillway width of only ten meters. Strong, both to withstand the weight of the reservoir it held back and also to withstand the earthquakes that plague Japan, it had generated electricity for more than thirty years.

  The first bomb hit seventy meters below the spillway. A heavy weapon with a thick case of hardened steel, it burrowed fifteen meters into the structure before exploding, first ripping a miniature cavern in the concrete, the shock of the event rippling through the immense wall as the second weapon struck, about five meters over
the first.

  A watchman was there, awakened from a nap by the noise from downvalley, but he’d missed the light show and was wondering what it had been when he saw the first muted flash that seemed to come from inside his dam. He heard the second weapon hit, then the delay of a second or so before the shock almost lifted him off his feet.

  “Jesus, did we get them all?” Ryan asked. Contrary to popular belief, and contrary now to his own fervent wishes, the National Reconnaissance Office had never extended real-time capability to the White House. He had to depend on someone else, watching a television in a room at the Pentagon.

  “Not sure, sir. They were all close hits—well, I mean, some were, but some of the bombs appeared too premature—”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They seem to have exploded in midair—three of them, that is, all from the last bomber. We’re trying to isolate in on the individual silos now and—”

  “Are there any left intact, damn it?” Ryan demanded. Had the gamble failed?

  “One, maybe two, we’re not sure. Stand by, okay?” the analyst asked rather plaintively. “We have another bird overhead in a few minutes.”

  The dam might have survived two, but the third hit, twenty meters from the spillway, opened a gap—really, it dislodged a chunk of concrete triangular in shape. The section jerked forward, then stopped, held in place by the immense friction of the man-made rock, and for a second the watchman wondered if the dam might hold. The fourth hit struck in the center of that section and fragmented it. By the time the dust cleared, it had been replaced with fog and vapor as the water started pouring through the thirty-meter gap carved in the dam’s face. That gap grew before the watchman’s eyes, and only then did it occur to him to race for his shack and lift a phone to warn the people downstream. By that time, a river reborn after three decades of enforced sleep was racing down a valley it had carved over hundreds of millennia.

  “Well?” the man in Tokyo demanded.

  “One missile seems to be fully intact. That’s number nine. Number two—well, there may be some minor damage. I have my people checking them all now. What are my orders?”

  “Prepare for a possible launch and stand by.”

  “Hai.” The line clicked off.

  Now what do I do? the watch officer wondered. He was new at this, new at the entire idea of managing nuclear weapons, a job he’d never wanted, but nobody had ever asked him about that. His remembered protocol of orders came quickly to him, and he lifted a phone—just an ordinary black instrument; there hadn’t been time for the theatrics the Americans had affected—for the Prime Minister.

  “Yes, what is this?”

  “Goto-san, this is the Ministry. There has been an attack on our missiles!”

  “What? When?” the Prime Minister demanded. “How bad?”

  “One, possibly two missiles are operational. The rest may be destroyed. We’re checking them all now.” The senior watch officer could hear the rage at the other end of the line.

  “How quickly can you get them ready for launch?”

  “Several minutes. I have already given the order to bring them to launch status.” The officer flipped an order book open to determine the procedures to actually launch the things. He’d been briefed in on it, of course, but now, in the heat of the moment, he felt the need to have it in writing before him as the others in the watch center turned and looked at him in an eerie silence.

  “I’m calling my cabinet now!” And the line went dead.

  The officer looked around. There was anger in the room, but even more, there was fear. It had happened again, a systematic attack, and now they knew the import of the earlier American actions. Somehow they had learned the location of the camouflaged missiles, and then they had used timed attacks on the Japanese air-defense system to cover what they really wanted to do. So what would they themselves be ordered to do now? Launch a nuclear attack? That was madness. The General thought so, and he could see that the cooler heads in his command center felt the same way.

  It was a miracle of sorts. Missile Number Nine’s silo was nearly intact. One bomb had exploded a mere six meters away, but the rock around the—no, the officer saw, the bomb hadn’t exploded at all. There was a hole in the rocky floor of the valley, but in the light of his flashlight he could see right there, amid the broken rock, the afterpart of something—a fin, perhaps. A dud, he realized, a smart bomb with a faulty fuse. Wasn’t that amusing? He raced off next to see Number Two. Running down the valley, he heard some sort of alarm horn and wondered what that was all about. It was a frightening trip, and he marveled at the fact that the Americans hadn’t attempted to attack the control bunker. Of the ten missiles in the collection, eight were certainly destroyed. He choked with the fumes of the remaining propellants, but most of that had fireballed into the sky already, leaving behind only noxious gas that the night winds were sweeping away. On reflection he donned a gas mask that covered his face, and, fatally, his ears.

  Silo two had taken a single bomb hit—near miss, he corrected himself. This bomb had missed the center target by perhaps twelve meters, and though it had thrown tons of rock about and cracked the concrete liner, all they had to do was sweep off the debris from the access hatch, then go down to see if the missile was intact.

  Damn the Americans for this! he raged, lifting his portable radio and calling the control bunker. Strangely, there was no reply. Then he noticed that the ground was shaking, but halfway wondered if it might be his own trembling. Commanding himself to be still, he took a deep breath, but the rumbling didn’t stop. An earthquake ... and what was that howling outside his gas mask? Then he saw it, and there wasn’t time to race for the valley walls.

  The Patriot crew heard it also, but ignored it. It was the reload crew who got the only warning. Set in the wye of the railroad tracks, they were rigging a launch canister of four more missiles when the white wall exploded out the entrance to the valley. Their shouts went unheard, though one of their number managed to scramble to safety before the hundred-foot wave engulfed the site.

  Two hundred miles over his head, an orbiting camera overflew the valley from southwest to northeast, all nine of its cameras following the same rush of water.

  45

  Line of Battle

  “There they go,” Jones said. The shuttling pencils on the fan-fold paper showed nearly identical marks, the thin traces on the 1000hz line indicated that Prairie-Masker systems were in use, and similarly faint lower-frequency marks denoted the use of marine diesel engines. There were seven of them, and though the bearings were not showing much change as yet, they soon would. The Japanese submarines were all now at snorting depth, and the time was wrong. They snorted on the hour, usually, typically one hour into a watch cycle, which allowed the officers and men on duty time to get used to the ship after a rest period, and also to do a sonar check before entering their most vulnerable evolution. But it was twenty-five after the hour now, and they’d all started snorting within the same five-minute period, and that meant movement orders. Jones lifted the phone and punched the button for SubPac.

  “Jones here.”

  “What’s happening, Ron?”

  “Whatever bait you just dropped in the water, sir, they just took after it. I have seven tracks,” he reported. “Who’s waiting for them?”

  “Not on the phone, Ron,” Mancuso said. “How are things over there?”

  “Pretty much under control,” Jones replied, looking around at the chiefs. Good men and women already, and his additional training had put them fully on-line.

  “Why don’t you bring your data over here, then? You’ve earned it.”

  “See you in ten,” the contractor said.

  “We got ’em,” Ryan said.

  “How sure are you?” Durling asked.

  “Here, sir.” Jack put three photos on the President’s desk, just couriered over from NRO.

  “This is what it looked like yesterday.” There was nothing to see, really, except for the
Patriot missile battery. The second photo showed more, and though it was a radar photo in black and white, it had been computer-blended with another visual overhead to give a more precise picture of the missile field. “Okay, this is seventy minutes old,” Ryan said, setting the third one down.

  “It’s a lake.” He looked up, surprised even though he’d been briefed.

  “The place is under about a hundred feet of water, will be for another few hours,” Jack explained. “Those missiles are dead—”

  “Along with how many people?” Durling asked.

  “Over a hundred,” the National Security Advisor reported, his enthusiasm for the event instantly gone. “Sir—there wasn’t any way around that.”

  The President nodded. “I know. How sure are we that the missiles ... ?”

  “Pre-flood shots showed seven of the holes definitely hit and destroyed. One more probably wrecked, and two unknowns, but definitely with shock damage of some sort. The weather seals on the holes won’t withstand that much water pressure, and ICBMs are too delicate for that sort of treatment. Toss in debris carried downstream from the flooding. The missiles are as dead as we can make them without a nuclear strike of our own, and we managed to do the mission without it.” Jack paused. “It was all Robby Jackson’s plan. Thanks for letting me reward him for it.”

  “He’s with the carrier now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, it would seem that he’s the man for the job, wouldn’t it?” the President asked rhetorically, clearly relieved at the evening’s news. “And now?”