Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [326]
There was one change, however. When they thought they had a weak return from a moving object at long range, they started directing their fighters in that direction. The Eagles never got within a hundred miles. The return signals always seemed to lade out when the E-767 switched frequency from longwave acquisition to shortwave tracking, and that didn't bode well for the Ku-band needed for actual targeting. It did show them that the Americans were still probing, and that perhaps they knew they were being tracked. And, everyone thought, if nothing else it was good training for the fighters. If this were truly a war, all the participants told themselves, then it was becoming more and more real.
"I don't buy it," the Colonel said.
"Sir, it looks to me like they were tracking you. They were sweeping you at double the rate that I can explain by the rotation of their dome. Their radar is completely electronic. They can steer their beams, and they were steering their beams." The sergeant's voice was reasonable and respectful, even though the officer who'd led the first probe was showing a little too much pride and not quite enough willingness to listen. He'd heard a little of what he was just told, but now he just shrugged it off.
"Okay, maybe they did get a few hits. We were broadside—aspect to them. Next time we'll deploy the patrol line farther out and do a direct penetration. That cuts our RCS by quite a bit. We have to tickle their line to see how they react."
Better you than me, pal, the sergeant thought. He looked out the window. Elmendorf Air Force Base was in Alaska and subject to dreadful winter weather—the worst enemy of any man-made machine. As a result the B-1's were all in hangars, which hid them from the satellite that Japan might or might not have operating. Still, nobody was sure about that.
"Colonel, I'm just a sergeant who diddles with O-scopes, but I'd be careful about that. I don't know enough about this radar to tell you for sure how good it is. My gut tells me it's pretty damned good."
"We'll be careful," the Colonel promised. "Tomorrow night we'll have a better set of tapes for you."
"Roger that, sir." Better you than me, pal, he thought again.
USS Pasadena had joined the north end of the patrol line west of Midway. It was possible for the submarines to report in with their satellite radios without revealing their positions except to PacFlt SubOps.
"Not much of a line," Jones observed, looking at the chart. He'd just come over to confer on what SOSUS had on Japanese naval movements, which was at the moment not much. The best news available was that SOSUS, even with Jones's improved tracking software, wasn't getting anything on the line of Olympia, Helena, Honolulu, Chicago, and now Pasadena. "We used to have more boats than that just to cover the Gap."
"That's all the SSNs we have available, Ron," Chambers replied. "And, yeah, it ain't much. But if they forward-deploy their diesel boats, they'd better be real careful." Washington had given them that much by way of orders.
An eastward move of Japanese warships would not tolerated, and the elimination of one of their submarines would be approved, probably. It was just that the boat holding the contact had to call it in first for political approval. Mancuso and Chambers hadn't told Jones that. There was little sense in dealing with his temper again.
"We have a bunch of SSNs in storage—"
"Seventeen on the West Coast, to be exact," Chambers said. "Minimum six months to reactivate them, not countin' getting the crews spun up."
Mancuso looked up. "Wait a minute. What about my 726's?"
Jones turned. "I thought they were deactivated."
SubPac shook his head. "The environmental people wouldn't let me. They all have caretaker crews aboard."
"All five of them," Chambers said quietly. "Nevada, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. That's worth calling Washington about, sir."
"Oh, yeah," Jones agreed. The 726-class, more commonly known by the name of the lead ship, Ohio, which was now high-quality razor blades, was far slower than