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By Root 1197 0

It climbed rather like an elevator, and, able to cruise at high altitude, it drank its fuel in cups rather than gallons, or so the wing commander liked to say. The shot-up B-1B was about ready to fly back to Elmendorf. It would do so on three engines, not a major problem as the aircraft would be carrying nothing more than fuel and its crew as a payload. There were other aircraft based at Shemya now. Two E-3B AWACS birds dispatched from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma maintained a partial airborne-alert patrol, though this island had power radars of its own, the largest of which was the powerful Cobra Dane missile-detection system built in the 1970's. There was the theoretical possibility that the Japanese could, using tankers, manage a strike against the island, duplicating in length an Israeli mission against the PLO headquarters in North Africa, and though the possibility was remote, it did have to be considered.

Defending against that were the Air Force's only four F-22A Rapier fighters, the world's first true stealth fighter aircraft, taken from advanced testing at Nellis Air Force Base and dispatched with four senior pilots and their support crews to this base at the edge of the known universe. But the Rapier known to the pilots by the name the manufacturer, Lockheed, had initially preferred, "Lightning-II"—hadn't been designed for defense, and now, with the sun back down after its brief and fitful appearance, it was time for the original purpose. As always the tanker lifted off first, even before the fighter pilots walked from the briefing hut to their aircraft shelters for the start of the night's work.

"If he flew out yesterday, why are there lights on?" Chavez asked, looking up at the penthouse apartment.

"Timer on the lights to scare burglars away?" John wondered lightly.

"This ain't L.A., man."

"Then I suppose there's people there, Yevgeniy Pavlovich." He turned the car onto another street.

Okay, we know that Koga wasn't arrested by the local police. We know that Yamata is running this whole show. We know that his security chief, Kaneda, probably killed Kimberly Norton. We know that Yamata is out of town. And we know that his apartment has lights on…

Clark found a place to park the car. Then he and Chavez went walking, first of all circling the block, looking around for patterns and opportunities in a process called reconnaissance that started at the ground level and seemed more patient than it really was.

"A lot we don't know, man," Chavez breathed.

"I thought you wanted to see somebody's eyes, Domingo," John reminded his partner.

He had singularly lifeless eyes, Koga thought, not like a human at all. They were dark and large, but seemingly dry, and they just looked at him—or perhaps they just pointed in his direction and lingered there, the former Prime Minister wondered. Whatever they were, they gave no clue as to what lay behind them. He'd heard about Kiyoshi Kaneda, and the term most often used to describe him was ronin, a historical reference to samurai warriors who'd lost their master and couldn't find another, which was deemed a great disgrace in the culture of the time. Such men had turned into bandits, or worse, after they'd lost contact with the bushido code that had for a thousand years sustained the elements of the Japanese population entitled to carry and use weapons. Such men, once they found a new master to serve, became fanatics, Koga remembered, so fearful of returning to their former status that they would do nearly anything to avoid that fate.

It was a foolish reverie, he knew, looking at the man's back as he watched TV. The age of the samurai was past, and along with it the feudal lords who had ruled them, but there the man was, watching a samurai drama on NHK, sipping his tea and taking in every scene. He didn't react at all, as though hypnotized by the highly stylized tale, which was really the Japanese version of American Westerns from the 1950's, highly simplified melodramas of good and evil, except that the heroic figure, always laconic, always invincible, always mysterious,