Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [314]
"We are where we are. Would you prefer that we deny it?" the man asked.
"And who protects the people now?" the former—that word was bitter indeed—Prime Minister asked, leading with his chin and knowing it.
"Goto, of course."
"We cannot permit that. You know what he follows." Koga's counselor nodded, and would have smiled but for the gravity of the moment. "Tell me," Mogataru Koga asked. "What is honor? What does it dictate now?"
"Our duty, Prime Minister, is to the people," replied a man whose friendship with the politician went back to Tokyo University. Then he remembered a quote from a Westerner—Cicero, he thought. "The good of the people is the highest law."
And that said it all, Koga thought. He wondered if treason always began that way. It was something he'd sleep on, except that he knew that he wouldn't sleep at all that night. This morning, Koga thought with a grunt, checking his watch.
"We're sure that it has to be standard-gauge track?"
"You can resection the photos we have yourself," Betsy Fleming told him. They were back in the Pentagon headquarters of the National Reconnaissance Office. "The transporter-car our people saw is standard gauge."
"Disinformation, maybe?" the NRO analyst asked.
"The diameter of the SS-19 is two-point-eight-two meters," Chris Scott replied, handing over a fax from Russia. "Throw in another two hundred seventy centimeters for the transport container. I ran the numbers myself. The narrow-gauge track over there would be marginal for an object of that width. Possible, but marginal."
"You have to figure," Betsy went on, "that they're not going to take too many chances. Besides, the Russians also considered a rail-transport mode for the Mod-4 version, and designed the bird for that, and the Russian rail gauge—"
"Yeah, I forgot that. It is larger than our standard, isn't it?" The analyst nodded. "Okay, that does make the job easier." He turned back to his computer and executed a tasking order that he'd drafted a few hours earlier. For every pass over Japan, the narrow-focus high-resolution cameras would track down along precise coordinates. Interestingly, AMTRAK had the best current information on Japanese railroads, and even now one of their executives was being briefed in on the security rules pertaining to overhead imagery. It was a pretty simple briefing, really. Tell anyone what you see, and figure on a lengthy vacation at Marion, Illinois.
The computer-generated order went to Sunnyvale, California, from there to a military communications satellite, and thence to the two orbiting KH-11 satellites, one of which would overfly Japan in fifty minutes, the other ten minutes after that. All three people wondered how good the Japanese were at camouflaging. The hell of it was, they might never find out. All they could do, really, was wait. They would look at the imagery in real-time as it came in, but unless there were overt signs pointing to what they sought, the real work would be done over hours and days. If they were lucky.
Kurushio was on the surface, never something to make a submarine commander happy. They wouldn't be here long. Fuel was coming aboard through two large-diameter hoses, and other stores, mainly food, were lowered by crane to crewmen waiting on the deck. His navy didn't have a proper submarine tender, Commander Ugaki knew. Mainly they used tank-landing ships for the purpose, but those were fulfilling other purposes now, and he was stuck with a merchantman whose crew was enthusiastic but unfamiliar with the tasks they were now attempting.
His was the last boat into Agana Harbor because he'd been the one farthest away from the Marianas when the occupation had begun. He'd fired only one torpedo, and was gratified to see how well the Type 89 had worked. That was good. The merchantmen didn't have the equipment to reload him properly, but, the captain told himself, he had fifteen more, and four Harpoon missiles, and if the Americans offered him that many targets, so much the better.
Those crewmen not on duty loading stores