Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [257]
"Does this give us a larger picture?" Durling asked.
"Possibly, but we don't have enough to go with."
"And?"
"A decision of this type always goes up to your level," Ryan told him.
"Why do I have to—"
"Sir, it reveals both the identity of intelligence officers and methods of operation. I suppose technically it doesn't have to be your decision, but it is something you should know about."
"You recommend approval." Durling didn't have to ask.
"Yes, sir."
"We can trust the Russians?"
"I didn't say trust, Mr. President. What we have here is a confluence of needs and abilities, with a little potential blackmail on the side."
"Run with it," the President said without much in the way of consideration. Perhaps it was a measure of his trust in Ryan, thus returning the burden of responsibility back to his visitor. Durling paused for a few seconds before posing his next question. "What are they up to, Jack?"
"The Japanese? On the face of it, this makes no objective sense at all. What I keep coming back to is, why kill the submarines? Why kill people? It just doesn't seem necessary to have crossed that threshold."
"Why do this to their most important trading partner?" Durling added, making the most obvious observation. "We haven't had a chance to think it through, have we?"
Ryan shook his head. "Things have certainly piled up on us. We don't even know the things we don't know yet."
The President cocked his head to the side. "What?"
Jack smiled a little. "That's something my wife likes to say about medicine. You have to know the things you don't know. You have to figure out what the questions are before you can start looking for answers."
"How do we do that?"
"Mary Pat has people out asking questions. We go over all the data we have. We try to infer things from what we know, look for connections. You can tell a lot from what the other guy is trying to do and how he's going about it. My biggest one now, why did they kill the two subs?" Ryan looked past the President, out the window to the Washington Monument, that fixed, firm obelisk of white marble. "They did it in a way that they think will allow us a way out. We can claim it was a collision or something—"
"Do they really expect that we'll just accept the deaths and—"
"They offered us the chance. Maybe they don't expect it, but it's a possibility." Ryan was quiet for perhaps thirty seconds. "No. No, they couldn't misread us that badly."
"Keep thinking out loud," Durling commanded.
"We've cut our fleet too far back—"
"I don't need to hear that now," was the answer, an edge on it.
Ryan nodded and held a hand up. "Too late to worry why or how, I know that. But the important thing is, they know it, too. Everybody knows what we have and don't have, and with the right kind of knowledge and training, you can infer what we can do. Then you structure your operations on a formulation of what you can do, and what he can do about it."
"Makes sense. Okay, go on."
"With the demise of the Russian threat, the submarine force is essentially out of business. That's because a submarine is only good for two things, really. Tactically, submarines are good for killing other subs. But strategically, submarines are limited. They cannot control the sea in the same way as surface ships do. They can't project power. They can't ferry troops or goods from one place to another, and that's what sea control really means." Jack snapped his fingers. "But they can deny the sea to others, and Japan is an island-nation. So they're afraid of sea-denial." Or, Jack added in his own mind, maybe they just did what they could do. They crippled the carriers because they could not easily do more. Or could they? Damn, it was still too complicated.
"So we could strangle them with submarines?" Durling asked.
"Maybe. We did it once before. We're down to just a few, though, and that makes their countersub task a lot easier. But their ultimate trump against such a move on our