Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [455]
"We still can't invade." Sanchez paused. "It's a losing game any way you cut it, but the last time we had to come this way…" He looked at his commander.
"There is that. Bud, get a Tom ready for a flight with me in the back."
"Aye aye, sir." Sanchez made his way off.
"You thinking what I am?" Stennis's captain asked with a raised eyebrow.
"What do we got to lose, Phil?"
"A pretty good admiral, Rob," he replied quietly.
"Where do you keep your radios in this barge?" Jackson asked with a wink.
"Where have you been?" Goto asked in surprise.
"In hiding, after your patron kidnapped me." Koga walked in without so much as an announcement, took a seal without being bidden, and generally displayed the total lack of manners that proclaimed his renewed power. "What do you have to say for yourself.'" the former Prime Minister demanded of his successor.
"You cannot talk to me that way." But even these words were weak.
"How marvelous. You lead our nation to ruin, but you insist on deference from someone whom your master almost killed. With your knowledge?"
Koga asked lightly.
"Certainly not—and who murdered the—"
"Who murdered the criminals? Not I," Koga assured him. "There is a more important question: what are you going to do?"
"Why, I haven't decided that yet." This attempt at a strong statement fell short on several counts.
"You haven't spoken to Yamata yet, you mean."
"I decide things for myself!"
"Excellent. Do so now."
"You cannot order me about."
"And why not? I will soon be back in that seat. You have a choice. Either you will resign your position this morning or this afternoon I will speak in the Diet and request a vote of no-confidence. It is a vote you will not survive. In either case you are finished." Koga stood and started to leave. "I suggest you do so honorably."
People were lined up in the terminal, standing in line at the counters to get tickets home, Captain Sato saw, as he walked past with a military escort. He was only a young lieutenant, a paratrooper still apparently eager to fight, which was more than could be said for the others in the building. The waiting jeep raced away, heading for the military airfield. The natives were out now, unlike before, carrying signs urging the "Japs" to leave.
Some of them ought to be shot for their insolence, Sato thought, still coming to terms with his grief. Ten minutes later, he entered one of Kobler's hangars. Fighters were circling overhead, probably afraid to stray offshore, he thought.
"In here, please," the Lieutenant said.
He walked into the building with consummate dignity, his uniform cap tucked inside his left arm, his back erect, hardly looking at anything, his eyes fixed on the distant wall of the building until the lieutenant stopped and pulled the rubber sheet off the body.
"Yes, that is my son." He tried not to look, and blessedly the face was not grossly disfigured, possibly protected by the flight helmet while the rest of the body had burned as he sat trapped in his wrecked fighter. But when he closed his eyes he could see his only child writhing in the cockpit, less than an hour after his brother had drowned. Could destiny be so cruel as this? And how was it that those who had served his country had to die, while a mere transporter of civilians was allowed to pass through the American fighters with contempt?
"The squadron command believes that he shot down an American fighter before turning back," the Lieutenant offered. He'd just made that up, but he had to say something, didn't he?
"'Thank you, Lieutenant. I have to return to my aircraft now." No more words were passed on the way hack to the airport. The army officer left the man with his grief and his dignity.
Sato was on his flight deck twenty