Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [355]
"What is it, Chief?"
"Asheville and Charlotte, is it true?"
Commander Clagget nodded again. "That's what they told me."
"We'll even the score, sir."
Roger Durling lifted the sheet of paper. It was handwritten, which was something the President rarely saw. "This is rather thin, Admiral."
"Mr. President, you're not going to authorize a systematic attack on their country, are you?" Jackson asked.
Durling shook his head. "No, that's more than I want. The mission is to get the Marianas back and to prevent them from carrying through on the second part of their plan."
Robby took a deep breath. This was what he'd been preparing for.
"There's a third part, too," Jackson announced.
The two men with him froze.
"What's that, Rob?" Ryan asked after a moment.
"We just figured it out, Jack. The Indian task-force commander, Chandraskatta? He went to Newport a while back. Guess who was in the same class." He paused. "A certain Japanese admiral named Sato."
Ryan closed his eyes. Why hadn't somebody turned this up before? "So, three countries with imperial ambitions…"
"It looks that way to me, Jack. Remember the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Good ideas keep coming back. We need to stop it all," Jackson said forcefully. "I spent twenty-some years training for a war that nobody wanted to fight—with the Russians. I'd rather train to keep the peace. That means stopping these guys right now."
"Will this work?" the President asked.
"No guarantees, sir. Jack tells me there's a diplomatic and political clock on the operation. This isn't Iraq. Whatever international consensus we have is just with the Europeans, and that'll evaporate sooner or later."
"Jack?" Durling asked.
"If we're going to do it, this is probably the way."
"Risky."
"Mr. President, yes, sir, it's risky," Robby Jackson agreed. "If you think diplomacy will work to get the Marianas back, fine. I don't especially want to kill anybody. But if I were in their shoes, I would not give those islands back. They need them for Phase Two, and if that happens, even if the Russians don't go nuke…"
A giant step backwards, Ryan thought. A new alliance of sorts, one that could stretch from the Arctic Circle to Australia. Three countries with nuclear capacity, a huge resource base, massive economies, and the political will to use violence to achieve their ends. The Nineteenth Century all over, played on a far larger field. Economic competition backed by force, the classic formula for unending war.
"Jack?" the President asked again.
Ryan nodded slowly. "I think we have to. You can pick any reason you want. They all come out the same way."
"Approved."
37—Going Deep
"Normalcy" was the word the various commentators consistently used, usually with adjectives like "eerie" and/or "reassuring" to describe the week's routine. People on the political left were gratified that the government was using diplomatic means to address the crisis, while those on the political right were enraged that the White House was low-keying everything. Indeed, it was the absence of leadership, and the absence of real policy statements that showed everyone that Roger Durling was a domestic-policy president who didn't have much of a clue on how to handle international crises. Further criticism found its way to the National Security Advisor, John P. Ryan, who, though he had supposedly good credentials in intelligence, had never really established himself as a player in national-security matters per se, and certainly was not taking a very forceful position now. Others found his circumspection admirable. The downsizing of the American military, pundits observed, made effective counteraction extremely difficult at best, and though lights remained on at the Pentagon throughout the nights, there obviously was no way to deal with the situation in the Marianas. As a result, other observers said in front of any TV camera with a red light, the Administration would do its best to appear to remain