Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [397]
"Come on, let's get some food in you."
"Real food or MRHs?" the chief warrant officer asked.
"You can't have everything, Mr. Richter," Checa told him.
The aviator remembered when Army C-Rations had also included cigarettes. No longer, what with the new healthy Army, and there wasn't much sense in asking a Ranger for a smoke. Damned athletes.
The Rapiers turned away an hour later, convinced, the Japanese air-defense people were sure, that they could not penetrate the Kami-Eagle line that guarded the northeast approaches to the home islands. Even the best American aircraft and best systems could not defeat what they had to face, and that was good. On their screens they watched the contacts fade off, and soon the emissions from the E-3B's faded as well, heading back to Shemya to report their failure to their masters.
The Americans were realists. Courageous warriors, to be sure—the officers in the E-767's would not make the mistake as their forebears had of thinking that Americans lacked the ardor for real combat operations. That error had been a costly one. But war was a technical exercise, and they had allowed their strength to fall below a line from which recovery was not technically possible. And that was too bad for them.
The Rapiers had to tank on the way back, and didn't use their supercruise ability, because wasting fuel was not purposeful. The weather was again crummy at Shemya, and the fighters rode down under positive ground-control to their safe landings, then taxied off to their hangars, which were more crowded now with the arrival of four F-15E Strike Eagles from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. They also regarded the mission as a success.
42—Lightning Strikes
"Are you mad?" Scherenko asked.
"Think about it," Clark said, again back in the Russian Embassy. "We want a political solution to this, don't we? Then Koga's our best chance. You told us the government didn't put him in the bag. Who does that leave? He's probably right there." You could even see the building out Scherenko's window, as luck would have it.
"Is it possible?" the Russian asked, worried that the Americans would ask for assistance that he was quite unsuited to provide.
"There's a risk, but it's unlikely he has an army up there. He wouldn't be keeping the guy there unless he wanted to be covert about it. Figure five or six people, max."
"And two of you!" Scherenko insisted.
"Like the man said," Ding offered with a very showy smile, "no big deal."
So the old KGB file was true. Clark was not a real intelligence officer, but a paramilitary type, and the same was true of his arrogant young partner who mostly just sat there, looking out the window.
"I can offer you nothing by way of assistance."
"How about weapons?" Clark asked. "You going to tell me you don't have anything here we can use'? What kind of rezidentura is this?" Clark knew that the Russian would have to temporize. Too bad that these people weren't trained to take much initiative.
"I need permission before I can do any of that."
Clark nodded, congratulating himself on making a good guess. He opened his laptop computer. "So do we. You get yours. I'll get mine."
Jones stubbed out ms cigarette in the Navy-style aluminum ashtray. The pack had been stuck away in a desk drawer, perhaps in anticipation of just such an occasion as this. When a war started, the peacetime rules went out the window. Old habits, especially bad ones, were easy to fall back into—but then that's what war was, too, wasn't it? He could also see that Admiral Mancuso was wavering on the edge of bumming one, and so he made sure the butt was all the way out.
"What do