Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [313]
Arriving at Pearl Harbor, Dubro would confer with the intelligence and operations staffs of his Pacific Fleet command and they would do their sums, and then they would see that it probably could not be done. How angry and frustrated they would be, the Indian Admiral thought.
But first he would teach them a lesson. Now he was hunting them. For all their speed and cleverness, they were tied to a fixed point, and sooner or later you just ran out of maneuvering room. Now he could force them away, and allow his country to take her first imperial step. A small one, almost inconsequential in the great game, but a worthy opening move nonetheless because the Americans would withdraw, allowing his country to move, as Japan had moved. By the time America had built its strength back up, it would be too late to change things. It was all about space and time, really. Both worked against a country crippled by internal difficulties and therefore robbed of her purpose. How clever of the Japanese to see to that.
"It went better than I expected," Durling said. He'd walked over to Ryan's office for the chat, a first for both of them.
"You really think so?" Jack asked in surprise.
"Remember, I inherited most of the cabinet from Bob." The President sat down. "Their focus is domestic. That's been my problem all along."
"You need a new SecDef and a new Chairman," the National Security Advisor observed coldly.
"I know that, but the timing is bad for it." Durling smiled. "It gives you a slightly wider purview, Jack. But I have a question to ask you first."
"I don't know if we can bring it off." Ryan was doodling on his pad.
"We have to take the missiles out of play first."
"Yes, sir, I know that. We'll find them. At least I expect that we will one way or another. The other wild cards are hostages, and our ability to hit the islands. This war, if that's what it is, has different rules. I'm not sure what those rules are yet." Ryan was still working on the public part of the problem. How would the American people react? How would the Japanese?
"You want some input from your commander in chief?" Durling asked.
That was good enough to generate another smile. "You bet."
"I fought in a war where the other side made the rules," Durling observed. "It didn't work out very well."
"Which leads me to a question," Jack said.
"Ask it."
"How far can we go?"
The President considered. "That's too open-ended."
"The enemy command authority is usually a legitimate target of war, but heretofore those people have been in uniform."
"You mean going after the zaibatsu?"
"Yes, sir. Our best information is that they're the ones giving the orders. But they're civilians, and going directly after them could seem like assassination."
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Jack." The President stood to leave, having said what he'd come in to say.
"Fair enough." A slightly wider purview, Ryan thought. That could mean many things. Mainly it meant that he had the opportunity to run with the ball, but all alone, unprotected. Well, Jack thought, you've done that before.
"What have we done?" Koga asked. "What have we allowed them to do?"
"It's so easy for them," responded a political aide of long standing. He didn't have to say who them was. "We cannot ourselves assert our power, and divided, it's just so easy for them to push us in any direction they want…and over time—" The man shrugged.
"And over time the policy of our country has been decided by twenty or thirty men elected by no one but their own corporate boardrooms. But