Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [454]
"We have no such intentions," the Prime Minister insisted, taken very aback by the directness of this message after the earlier one she'd ignored.
"Then we are agreed," Ambassador Williams said pleasantly. "I will communicate that to my government at once."
It took nearly forever, in this case just over half an hour, before the first, then the second torpedo stopped circling, then stopped pinging. Neither found the MOSS a large-enough target to engage, but neither found anything else, either.
"Strength on that P-3 radar?" Claggett asked.
"Approaching detection values, sir."
"Take her down, Mr. Shaw. Let's get below the layer and tool on out of here."
"Aye, Cap'n." Shaw gave the necessary orders. Two minutes later, USS Tennessee was underwater, and five minutes after that at six hundred feet, turning southeast at a speed often knots. Soon thereafter they heard splashes aft, probably sonobuoys, but it took a long time for a P-3 to generate enough data to launch an attack, and Tennessee wasn't going to linger about.
47—Brooms
"Not with a bang but a whimper?" the President asked.
"That's the idea," Ryan said, selling the phone down. Satellite imagery showed that whatever the losses had been in the air battle, the Japanese had lost another fourteen aircraft due to cluster munitions on their airfields. Their principal search radars were gone, and they'd shot off a lot of SAMs. The next obvious step was to isolate the islands entirely from air and sea traffic, and that could be done before the end of the week. The press release was already being prepared if the necessity presented itself.
"We've won," the National Security Advisor said. "It's just a matter of convincing the other side."
"You've done well, Jack," Durling said.
"Sir, if I'd managed to get the job done properly, it never would have started in the first place," Ryan replied after a second's pause. He remembered getting things started along those lines…about a week too late to matter. Damn.
"Well, we seem to have done that with India, according to what Dave Williams just cabled in." The President paused. "And what about this?"
"First we worry about concluding hostilities."
"And then?"
"We offer them an honorable way out." Upon elaboration. Jack was pleased to see that the Boss agreed with him.
There would be one more thing, Durling didn't say, but he needed just a little more thinking about it. For the moment it was enough that America looked to be winning this war, and with it he'd won re-election for saving the economy and safeguarding the rights of American citizens. It had been quite na interesting month, the President thought, looking at the other man in the room and wondering what might have come to pass without him. After Ryan left, he placed a telephone call to the Hill.
One other advantage of airborne-radar aircraft was that they made counting coup a lot easier. They could not always show which missile killed which aircraft, but they did show them dropping off the screen.
"Port Royal reports recovery complete," a talker said.
"Thank you," Jackson said. He hoped the Army aviators weren't too disappointed to have landed on a cruiser instead of Johnnie Reb, but he needed his deck space.
"I count twenty-seven kills," Sanchez said. Three of his own fighters had fallen, with only one of the pilots rescued. The casualties were lighter than expected, though that fact didn't make the letter-writing any easier for the CAG.
"Well, it's not exactly like the Turkey Shoot, but it wasn't bad. Tack on fourteen more from the Tomahawks. That's about half their fighter strength—most of their F-I5's—and they only have the one Hummer left. They're on the short end from now on." The battle-force commander went over the other data. A destroyer gone and the rest of their Aegis ships in the wrong