Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [219]
"The phones are out. I tried to call Rachel and I got a recording. The overseas lines are down. When I went to the mall—"
"Soldiers?" Portagee asked his wife.
"Lots of 'em, and they're all—"
"Japs." Master Chief Quartermaster Manuel Oreza, United States Coast Guard, retired, completed the thought.
"Hey, that's not the polite way to—"
"Neither's an invasion, Mr. Burroughs."
"What?"
Oreza lifted the kitchen phone and hit the speed-dial button for his daughter's house in Massachusetts.
"We're sorry, but a cable problem has temporarily interrupted Trans-pacific service. Our people are working on the problem. Thank you for your patience—"
"My ass!" Oreza told the recording. "Cable, hell, what about the satellite dishes?"
"Can't call out?" Burroughs was slow to catch on, but at least this was something he knew about.
"No, doesn't seem that way."
"Try this." The computer engineer reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellular phone.
"I have one," Isabel said. "It doesn't work either. I mean it's fine for local calls, but—"
"What number?"
"Area code 617," Portagee said, giving the rest of the number.
"Wait, I need the USA prefix."
"It's not going to work," Mrs. Oreza insisted.
"You don't have satellite phones here yet, eh?" Burroughs smiled. "My company just got us all these things. I can download on my laptop, send faxes with it, all that stuff. Here." He handed the phone over. "It's ringing."
The entire system was new, and the first such phone had not yet been sold in the islands yet, a fact that the Japanese military had troubled itself to learn in the past week, but the service was global, even if the local marketing people hadn't started selling the things here. The signal from the small device went to one of thirty-five satellites in a low-orbit constellation to the nearest ground station. Manila was the closest, beating Tokyo by a mere thirty miles, though even one mile would have been enough for the executive programming that ran the system. The Luzon ground station had been in operation for only eight weeks, and immediately relayed the call to another satellite, this one a Hughes bird in geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific, back down to a ground station in California, and from there via fiberoptic to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"Hello?" the voice said, somewhat crossly, since it was 5:00 A.M. in America's Eastern Time Zone.
"Rachel?"
"Daddy?"
"Yeah, honey."
"You okay out there?" his daughter asked urgently "What do you mean?"
"I tried to call Mom, but the recording said you had a big storm and the lines were down."
"There wasn't any storm, Rach," Oreza said without much thought on the matter.
"What's the matter, then?"
Jesus, where do I start? Portagee asked himself. What if nobody…was that possible?
"Uh, Portagee," Burroughs said.
"What is it?" Oreza asked.
"What's what, Daddy?" his daughter asked also, of course.
"Wait a minute, honey. What is it, Pete?" He put his hand over the receiver.
"You mean like, invasion, like war, taking over, all that stuff?"
Portagee nodded. "Yes, sir, that's what it looks like."
"Turn the phone off, now!" The urgency in his voice was unmistakable. Nobody had thought any of this through yet, and both were coming to terms with it from different directions and at different speeds.
"Honey, I'll be back, okay? We're fine. 'Bye." Oreza thumbed the CLEAR button. "What's the problem, Pete?"
"This isn't some joke, right? You're not doing a number to mess with my head, tourist games and all that stuff, are you?"
"Jesus, I need a beer." Oreza opened the refrigerator and took one out. That it was a Japanese brand did not for the moment matter. He tossed one to his guest. "Pete, this ain't no play-acting, okay? In case you didn't notice, we seen at least a battalion of troops, mechanized vehicles, fighters. And that asshole on the dock was real interested in the radio on my boat."
"Okay." Burroughs opened his beer and took a long pull. "Let's say this is a no-shitter.