Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [435]
"They'll never take these islands back. Never! They do not have the ability."
"Say what you please, Raizo-chan. For my part it is over."
"Find a good place to hide then!" Yamata would have slammed the phone down, but a portable didn't offer that option. "Murderers," he muttered. It had taken most of the morning to assemble the necessary information. Somehow the Americans had struck at his own council of zaibatsu. How? Nobody knew. Somehow they'd penetrated the defenses that every consultant had told him were invincible, even to the point of destroying the intercontinental missiles. "How?" he asked.
"It would seem that we underestimated the quality of their remaining air forces," General Arima replied with a shrug. "It is not the end. We still have options."
"Oh?" Not everyone was giving up, then?
"They will not wish to invade these islands. Their ability to perform a proper invasion is severely compromised by their lack of amphibious-assault ships, and even if they managed to put people on the island—to fight amidst so many of their own citizens? No." Arima shook his head. "They will not risk it. They will seek a negotiated peace. There is still a chance—if not for complete success, then for a negotiated peace that leaves our forces largely intact."
Yamata accepted that for what it was, looking out the windows at the island that he wanted to be his. The elections, he thought, could still be won. It was the political will of the Americans that needed attacking, and he still had the ability to do that.
It didn't take long to turn the 747 around, but the surprise to Captain Sato was that the aircraft was half full for the flight back to Narita. Thirty minutes after lift-off, a stewardess reported to him by phone that of the eleven people she'd asked, all but two had said that they had pressing business that required their presence at home. What pressing business might that be? he wondered, with his country's international trade for the most part reduced to ships traveling between Japan and China.
"This is not turning out well," his copilot observed an hour out. "Look down there."
It was easy to spot ships from thirty thousand feet, and of late they'd taken to carrying binoculars to identify surface ships. Sato lifted his pair and spotted the distinctive shapes of Aegis destroyers still heading north. On a whim he reached down to flip his radio to a different guard frequency.
"JAL 747 calling Mutsu, over."
"Who is this?" a voice instantly replied. "Clear this frequency at once!"
"This is Captain Torajiro Sato. Call your fleet commander!" he ordered with his own command voice. It took a minute.
"Brother, you shouldn't be doing this," Yusuo chided. Radio silence was as much a formality as a real military necessity. He knew that the Americans had reconnaissance satellites, and besides, his group's SPY radars were all up and radiating. If American snooper aircraft were about, they'd know where his squadron was. It was something he would have considered with confidence a week before, but not now.
"I merely wanted to express our confidence in you and your men. Use us for a practice target," he added.
In Mutsu's CIC, the missile techs were already doing exactly that, but it wouldn't do to say so, the Admiral knew. "Good to hear your voice again. Now you must excuse me. I have work to do here."
"Understood, Yusuo. Out." Sato took his finger off the radio switch.
"See," he said over the intercom. "They're doing their job and we have to do ours."
The copilot wasn't so sure, but Sato was the captain of the 747, and he kept his pence, concentrating on navigational tasks. Like most Japanese he'd been raised to think of war as something to be avoided as assiduously as plague. The overnight development of a conflict with America, well, it had felt good for a day or so to teach the arrogant gaijin a lesson, but that was fantasy talking, and this was increasingly real. Then the double-barreled notification that his country had fielded nuclear arms—that was madness enough