Debt of Honor

37—Going Deep

"Normalcy" was the word the various commentators consistently used, usually with adjectives like "eerie" and/or "reassuring" to describe the week's routine. People on the political left were gratified that the government was using diplomatic means to address the crisis, while those on the political right were enraged that the White House was low-keying everything. Indeed, it was the absence of leadership, and the absence of real policy statements that showed everyone that Roger Durling was a domestic-policy president who didn't have much of a clue on how to handle international crises. Further criticism found its way to the National Security Advisor, John P. Ryan, who, though he had supposedly good credentials in intelligence, had never really established himself as a player in national-security matters per se, and certainly was not taking a very forceful position now. Others found his circumspection admirable. The downsizing of the American military, pundits observed, made effective counteraction extremely difficult at best, and though lights remained on at the Pentagon throughout the nights, there obviously was no way to deal with the situation in the Marianas. As a result, other observers said in front of any TV camera with a red light, the Administration would do its best to appear to remain calm and steady while doing the best it could. Hence the illusion of normalcy to conceal the inherent weakness of the American position.

"You ask us to do nothing?" Golovko asked in exasperation.

"It's our battle to fight. If you move too soon, it alerts China, and it alerts Japan." Besides, Ryan could not add, what can you do? The Russian military was in far worse shape than America's. They could move additional aircraft to Eastern Siberia. Moving ground troops to firm up the light-strength formations of border guards could well trigger a Chinese response.

"Your satellites are telling you the same thing ours are, Sergey. China isn't mobilizing."

"Yet." The single word had a sting to it.

"Correct. Not yet. And if we play our cards right, that won't happen."

Ryan paused. "Any further information on the missiles?"

"We have several sites under surveillance," Golovko reported. "We have confirmed that the rockets at Yoshinobu are being used for civilian purposes. That is probably a cover for military testing, but nothing more than that. My technical people are quite confident."

"Don't you just love how confident they can be," Ryan observed.

"What are you going to do, Jack?" the Chairman of the RVS asked directly.

"Even as we speak, Sergey Nikolay'ch, we are telling them that their occupation of the islands is not acceptable." Jack paused for a breath and reminded himself that like it or not, he had to trust the man. "And if they don't leave on their own, we'll find a way to force them off."

"But how?" the man demanded, looking down at the estimates prepared by military experts in the nearby Defense Ministry.

"Ten, fifteen years ago, did you tell your political masters that we were worthy of your fear?"

"As you did of us," Golovko confirmed.

"We are more fortunate now. They don't fear us. They think they've already won. I cannot say more at the moment. Perhaps by tomorrow," Jack thought. "For now, instructions are on the way for you to relay to our people."

"It will be done," Sergey promised.

"My government will honor the wishes of the people on all of the islands," the Ambassador repeated, then added a new provision. "We also may be willing to discuss the difference in status between Guam and the rest of the Mariana Archipelago. American interest in that island does go back nearly a hundred years," he allowed for the first time.

Adler accepted the statement impassively, as the rules of the proceedings required. "Mr. Ambassador, the people of all those islands are American citizens. They are so by their own choice."

"And they will again have the opportunity to express that choice. Is it the position of your government that self-determination is only allowed one time?" he asked in reply. "That seems quite odd for a country with a tradition of easy immigration and emigration. As I have stated earlier, we will gladly permit dual citizenship for those natives who prefer to keep their American passports. We will compensate them for their property should they decide to leave, and…" The rest of his statement was the same.

As often as he had observed or engaged in it, diplomatic exchange, Adler thought, combined the worst aspects of explaining things to a toddler and talking with a mother-in-law. It was dull. It was tedious. It was exasperating. And it was necessary. A moment earlier, Japan had conceded something. It hadn't been unexpected. Cook had wheedled the information out of Nagumo the previous week, but now it was on the table. That was the good news. The had news was that he was now expected to offer something in return. The rules of diplomatic exchange were based on compromise. You never got all of what you wanted, and you never gave the other guy all of what he wanted. The problem was that diplomacy assumed that neither side would ever be forced to give away anything of vital interest—and that both sides recognized what those vital interests were. But so often they didn't, and then diplomacy was fated to fail, much to the chagrin of those who falsely believed that wars were always the product of inept diplomats. Much more often they were the result of national interests so incompatible that compromise simply was not possible. And so now the Ambassador expected Adler to give just a little ground.

"Speaking for myself, I am gratified that you acknowledge the unconditional rights of the Guamian people to remain American citizens. I am further pleased to note that your country allow the people of the Northern Marianas to determine their own destiny. Do you assure me that your country will abide by the results of the election?"

"I believe we have made that clear," the Ambassador replied, wondering if he'd just won something or not.

"And the elections will be open to—"

"All residents of the islands, of course. My country believes in universal suffrage, as does yours. In fact," he added, "we will make an additional concession. In Japan the vote comes at age twenty, but for the purposes of this election, we will lower the voting age to eighteen. We want no one to protest that the plebiscite is unfair in any way."

You clever bastard, Adler thought. It made such good sense, too. All the soldiers there could now vote, and the move would look just ducky to international observers. The Deputy Secretary of State nodded as though surprised, then made a note on his pad. Across the table, the Ambassador made a mental note that he'd just scored a point of his own. It had taken long enough.

"It's real simple," the National Security Advisor said. "Will you help us?"

The rules of the meeting were not calculated to make anyone happy It had begun with an explanation from a Justice Department lawyer of how the Espionage Act, Title 18 United States Code, Section 79. It applied to all American citizens, and how the freedoms of speech and the press did not extend to violation of that statute.

"You're asking us to help you lie," one of the senior journalists said.

"Exactly right," Ryan responded.

"We have a professional obligation—"

"You're American citizens," Jack reminded them. "So are the people on those islands. My job is not to exercise the rights you're thinking about now. My job is to guarantee those rights to you and everyone else in this country. Either you help us or you don't. If you do, then we can do our job more easily, cheaply, and with less bloodshed. If you don't, then some additional people are probably going to get hurt."

"I doubt that Madison and the rest ever intended the American press to help an enemy in time of war," the lady from Justice said.

"We would never do that," the man from NEC protested. "But to take action in the other direction—"

"Ladies and gentlemen, I do not have time for a discourse on constitutional law. This is quite literally a matter of life and death. Your government is asking for your help. If you do not give that help, you will sooner or later have to explain to the American people why you did not." Jack wondered if anyone had ever threatened them in this way. Turnabout, he supposed, was fair play, though he didn't expect they would see things quite the same way. It was time for the olive branch. "I will take the heat on this. If you help us out, no one will ever hear it from me."

"Don't give me that. It'll get out," CNN protested.

"Then you will have to explain to the American people that you acted as patriotic citizens."

"I didn't mean it that way, Dr. Ryan!"

"I did," Jack said with a smile. "Think about it. How will it hurt you? Besides, how will it get out? Who else is going to report it?"

The journalists were cynical enough—it was almost a professional requirement—to see the humor, but it was Ryan's earlier statement that had scored. They were in a profound professional quandary, and the natural result was to evade it by thinking in other terms. In this case, business. Failure to act in support of their country, however much they might proclaim principle and professional ethics—well, the people who watched their TV were not as impressed with those high-flying standards as they ought to be. And besides, Ryan wasn't asking all that much. Just one thing, and if they were clever about it, maybe nobody really would notice. The news executives would have preferred to leave the room and discuss the request in privacy, but no one offered that opportunity, and none of them had the nerve to ask. So they looked at one another, and all five nodded. You'll pay for this one someday, their eyes told Ryan. It was something he was willing to deal with, he thought.

"Thank you." When they made their way out. Ryan walked toward the Oval Office.

"We got it," he told the President.

"I'm sorry I couldn't back you up on that."

"It's an election year," Jack acknowledged. The Iowa caucuses were two weeks away, then New Hampshire, and though Durling had no opposition in his party, he would on the whole have preferred to be elsewhere. He could also not afford offending the media. But that's why he had a National Security Advisor. Appointed officials were always expendable.

"When this is all over…"

"Back to golfing? I need the practice."

That was another thing he liked about him, Durling told himself. Ryan didn't mind telling a joke once in a while, though the circles under his eyes duplicated his own. It was one more reason to thank Bob Fowler for his contrarian advice, and perhaps a reason to lament Ryan's choice of political affiliation.

"He wants to help," Kimura said.

"The best way for him to do that," Clark replied, "is to act normally. He's an honorable man. Your country needs a voice of moderation." It wasn't exactly the instructions he'd expected, and he found himself hoping that Washington knew what the hell it was doing. The orders were coming through Ryan's office, which was some consolation but not all that much. At least his agent-in-place was relieved.

"Thank you. I do not wish to put his life at risk."

"He's too valuable for that. Perhaps America and Japan can reach a diplomatic solution." Clark didn't believe it, but saying such things always made diplomats happy. "In that case, Goto's government will fall, and perhaps Koga-san will regain his former place."

"But from what I hear, Goto will not back down."

"It is also what I hear, but things can change. In any case, that is our request for Koga. Further contact between us is dangerous," "Klerk" went on. "Thank you for your assistance. If we need you again, we will contact you through normal channels."

In gratitude, Kimura paid the bill before leaving.

"That's all, eh?" Ding asked.

"Somebody thinks it's enough, and we have other things to do."

Back in the saddle again, Chavez thought to himself. But at least they had orders, incomprehensible though they might be. It was ten in the morning, local time, and they split up after hitting the street, and spent the next several hours buying cellular phones, three each of a new digital model, before meeting again. The units were compact and fit into a shirt pocket. Even the packing boxes were small, and neither officer had the least problem concealing them.

Chet Nomuri had already done the same, giving his address as an apartment in Hanamatsu, a preselected cover complete with credit cards and driver's license. Whatever was going on, he had less than thirty days in-country to accomplish it. His next job was to return to the bathhouse one last time before disappearing from the lace of the earth.

"One question," Ryan said quietly. The look in his eyes made Trent and Fellows uneasy.

"Are you going to make us wait for it?" Sam asked.

"You know the limitations we face in the Pacific."

Trent stirred in his seat. "If you mean that we don't have the horses to—"

"It depends on which horses we use," Jack said. Both insiders considered that for a moment.

"Gloves off?" Al Trent asked.

Ryan nodded. "All the way off. Will you hassle us about it?"

"Depends on what you mean by that. Tell us," Fellows ordered. Ryan did.

"You're really willing to stick it out that far?" Trent asked.

"We don't have a choice. I suppose it would be nice to fight it out with cavalry charges on the field of honor and all that stuff, but we don't have the horses, remember? The President needs to know if Congress will back him up. Only you people will know the black part. If you support us, then the rest of the people on the Hill will fall in line."

"If it doesn't work?" Fellows wondered.

"Then there's a hanging party for all hands. Including you," Ryan added.

"We'll keep the committee in line," Trent promised. "You're playing a high-risk game, my friend."

"True enough," Jack agreed, thinking of the lives at risk. He knew that Al Trent was talking about the political side, too, but Ryan had commanded himself to set those thoughts aside. He couldn't say so, of course. Trent would have considered it a weakness. It was remarkable how many things they could disagree on. But the important thing was that Trent's word was good.

"Keep us informed?"

"In accordance with the law," the National Security Advisor replied with a smile. The law required that Congress be notified after "black" operations were carried out.

"What about the Executive Order?" An Order dating back to the Ford administration prohibited the country's intelligence agencies from conducting assassinations.

"We have a Finding," Ryan replied. "It doesn't apply in time of hostilities." A Finding was essentially a Presidential decree that the law meant what the President thought it meant. In short, everything that Ryan had proposed was now, technically speaking, legal, so long as Congress agreed. It was a hell of a way to run a railroad, but democracies were like that.

"Then the i's are dotted," Trent observed.

Fellows concurred with a nod: "And the f's are crossed." Both congressmen watched their host lift a phone and punch a speed-dial button.

"This is Ryan. Get things moving."

The first move was electronic. Over the outraged protests of CINCPAC, three TV crews set up their cameras on the edge of the side-by-side dry docks now containing Enterprise and John Stennis.

"We're not allowed to show you the damage to the ships' sterns, but informed sources tell us that it's even worse than it appears to be," the reporters all said, with only minor changes. When the live reports were done, the cameras were moved and more shots made of the carriers, then still more from the other side of the harbor. They were just backgrounders, like file footage, and showed the ships and the yards without any reporters standing in the way. These tapes were turned over to someone else and digitalized for further use.

"Those are two sick ships," Oreza observed tersely. Each one represented more than the aggregate tonnage of the entire U.S. Coast Guard, and the Navy, clever people that they were, had let both of them take a shot in the ass. The retired master chief felt his blood pressure increase.

"How long to get them well?" Burroughs asked.

"Months. Long time. Six months…puts us into typhoon season," Portagee realized to his further discomfort. It got worse with additional consideration. He didn't exactly relish the idea of being on an island assaulted by Marines, either. Here he was, on high ground, within sight of a surface-to-air missile battery that was sure to draw fire. Maybe selling out for a million bucks wasn't so bad an idea after all. With that sort of money he could buy another boat, another house, and do his fishing out of the Florida Keys.

"You know, you can fly out of here if you want."

"Oh, what's the hurry?"

Election posters were already being printed and posted. The public access channel on the island's cable system updated notices every few hours about the plans for Saipan. If anything, the island was even more relaxed now. Japanese tourists were unusually polite, and for the most part the soldiers were unarmed now. Military vehicles were being used for roadwork. Soldiers were visiting schools for friendly introductions. Two new baseball fields had been created, virtually overnight, and a new league started up.

There was talk that a couple of Japanese major-league teams would commence spring training on Saipan, for which a stadium would have to be constructed, and maybe, it was whispered now, Saipan would have its own team. Which made sense, Oreza supposed. The island was closer to Tokyo than Kansas City was to New York. It wasn't that the residents were happy with the occupation. It was just that they did not see any salvation, and so like most people in such a spot they learned to live with it. The Japanese were going far out of their way to make it as comfortable a process as possible.

For the first week there had been daily protests. But the Japanese commander, General Arima, had come out to meet every such group, TV cameras all around, and invited the leaders into his office for a chat, often televised live. Then came the more sophisticated responses. Government civilians and businessmen held a lengthy press conference, documenting how much money they had invested in the island, showing in graphic form the difference they'd made for the local economy, and promising to do more. It wasn't so much that they had eliminated resentment as shown tolerance of it, promising at every turn to abide by the results of the elections soon to be held. We live here, too, they kept saying. We live here, too.

There had to be hope. Two weeks tomorrow, Oreza thought, and all they heard were reports on goddamned negotiations. Since when had America ever negotiated something like this? Maybe that was it. Maybe it was just his country's obvious sign of weakness that gave him a sense of hopelessness. Nobody was fighting back. Tell us that the government is doing something, he wanted to say to the Admiral at the other end of the satellite phone…

"Well, what the hell." Oreza walked into the living room, put the batteries back in the phone, slid the antenna into the bottom of the mixing bowl, and dialed the number.

"Admiral Jackson," he heard.

"Oreza here."

"Anything new to report?"

"Yeah, Admiral. How the elections are going to go."

"I don't understand, Master Chief."

"I see CNN telling us we got two carriers with their legs cut off and people saying we can't do shit, sir. Jesus, Admiral, even when the Argentineans took the goddamned Falklands the Brits said they were coming back. I ain't hearing that. What the hell are we supposed to think?"

Jackson weighed his reply for a few seconds. "I don't need to tell you the rules on talking about operational stuff. Your job's to give me information, remember?"

"All we keep hearing is how they're going to hold elections, okay? The missile site east of us is camouflaged now—"

"I know that. And the search radar on top of Mount Takpochao is operating, and there's about forty lighter aircraft based at the airport and Kobler. We count sixty more at Andersen on Guam. There are eight 'cans cruising oast of you, and an oiler group approaching them for an unrep. Anything else you want to know?" Even if Oreza was "compromised," a polite term for being under arrest, which Jackson doubted, this was nothing secret. Everyone knew America had reconnaissance satellites. On the other hand, Oreza needed to know that Jackson was up-to-date and, more importantly, interested. He was slightly ashamed of what he had to say next. "Master Chief, I expected better from a guy like you." The reply made him feel better, though.

"That's what I needed to hear, Admiral."

"Anything new happens, you tell us about it."

"Aye aye, sir."

Jackson broke the connection and lifted a recently arrived report on Johnnie Reb.

"Soon, Master Chief," he whispered. Then it was time to meet with the people from MacDill Air Force Base, who were, perversely, all wearing Army green. He didn't know that they would remind him of something he'd seen a few months earlier.

The men all had to be Spanish speakers, and look Spanish. Fortunately that wasn't hard. A documents expert flew from Langley to Fort Stewart, Georgia, complete with all the gear he needed, including ten blank passports, for purposes of simplicity, they'd use their real names. First Sergeant Julio Vega sat down in front of the camera, wearing his best suit.

"Don't smile," the CIA technician told him. "Europeans don't smile for passports."

"Yes, sir." His service nickname was Oso, "Bear," but only his peers called him that now. To the rest of the Rangers in Foxtrot Company, Second Battalion, 175th Ranger Regiment, his only name was "First Sergeant," and they knew him as an experienced NCO who would back up his captain on the mission for which he'd just volunteered.

"You need better clothes, too."

"Who's buyin'?" Vega asked, grinning now, though the picture would show the dour face he usually reserved for soldiers who failed to meet his standards of behavior. That would not be the case here, he thought. Eight men, all jump-qualified (as all Rangers were), all people who'd seen combat action in one place or another—and unusually for members of the 175th, all men who hadn't shaved their heads down to stubbly Mohawks. Vega remembered another group like this one, and his grin stopped. Not all of them had come out of Colombia alive.

Spanish speakers, he thought as he left the room. Spanish was probably the language of the Marianas. Like most senior Army noncommissioned officers, he had gotten his bachelor's degree in night school, having majored in military history—it had just seemed the right thing to do for one of his profession, and besides, the Army had paid for it. If Spanish were the language on those rocks, then it gave him an additional reason to think in positive terms about the mission. The name of the operation, which he'd overheard in a brief conversation with Captain Diego Checa, also seemed auspicious. It was called Operation ZORRO, which had amused the Captain enough to allow him to confide in his first sergeant. The "real" Zorro had been named Don Diego, hadn't he? He had forgotten the bandit's surname, but his senior NCO had not. With a name like Vega, how can I turn down a mission like this? Oso asked himself.

It was a good thing he was in shape, Nomuri thought. Just breathing here was hard enough. Most Western visitors to Japan stayed in the major cities and never realized that the country was every bit as mountainous as Colorado. Tochimoto was a small hill settlement that languished in the winter and expanded in summer as local citizens who grew tired of the crowded sameness of the cities moved into the country to explore. The hamlet, at the end of National Route 140, had essentially pulled in its sidewalks, but Chet was able to find a place to rent a small four-wheel all-terrain cycle, and had told the owner that he just needed a few hours to get away. In return for his money and a set of keys he'd received a stern warning, albeit polite, about following the trail and being careful, for which he'd graciously thanked the man and gone on his way, following the River Taki—more a nice brook than a river—up into the mountains. After the first hour, and about seven miles, he reckoned, he'd switched off the motor, pulled out his earplugs, and just listened.

Nothing. He hadn't seen a track in the mud and gravel path alongside the cascading stream, nor any sign of occupancy in the handful of rustic summer homes he'd passed along the way, and now, listening, he heard nothing at all but for the wind. There was a ford on his map, two more miles up, and sure enough it was both marked and usable, and allowed him to go east toward Shiraishi-san. Like most mountains, it had sides sculpted by time and water into numerous dead-end valleys, and Mount Shiraishi had a particularly nice valley, as yet unmarred by house or cabin. Perhaps Boy Scouts came here in summer to camp and commune with the nature the rest of their country had worked so hard to extinguish. More likely it was just a spot with no minerals valuable enough to justify a road or rail line. It was also one hundred air miles from Tokyo, and for all practical purposes might as easily have been in Antarctica.

Nomuri turned south, and climbed a smooth part of the slope to the crest of the southern ridge. He wanted a further look and listen, and, while he spotted a single hall-built dwelling a few miles below, he saw no column of smoke from a wood fire, nor the rising steam from someone's hot tub, and he heard nothing at all that was not of nature. Nomuri spent thirty minutes scanning the area with a pair of compact binoculars, taking his time and making sure, then turned to look north and west, finding the same remarkable absence of human presence. Finally satisfied, he headed back down to the Taki, following the path back to the town.

"We never see anyone now," the rental agent said when Nomuri finally got back, just after sunset. "May I offer you some tea?"

"Dozo," the CIA officer said. He took his tea with a friendly nod. "It's wonderful here."

"You were wise to come this time of year." The man wanted conversation more than anything else. "In the summer the trees are full and beautiful, but the noise from these things"—he gestured at the ranks of cycles—"well, it ruins the peace of the mountain. But it supports me well," the man allowed.

"I must come back again. Things are so hectic at my office. To come here and feel the silence."

"Perhaps you will tell some friends," the man suggested. Clearly he needed the money to sustain him in the off-season.

"Yes, I will certainly do that," Nomuri assured him. A friendly bow sent him on his way, and the CIA officer started his car for the three-hour drive back to Tokyo, still wondering why the Agency had given him an assignment calculated to make him feel better about his mission.

"Are you guys really comfortable with this?" Jackson asked the people from SOCOM.

"Funny time for second thoughts, Robby," the senior officer observed.

"If they're dumb enough to let American civilians roam around their country, well, let's take advantage of it."

"The insertion still worries me," the Air Force representative noted, looking by turns at the air-navigation charts and the satellite photos. "We have a good IP—hell, the navigational references are pretty good—but somebody's gotta take care of those AWACS birds for this to work."

"It's covered," the colonel from Air Combat Command assured him. "We're going to light up the sky for them, and you do have that gap to use."

He tapped his pointer on the third chart. "The helo crews?" Robby asked next.

"They're working on their sims now. If they're lucky they'll get to sleep on the flight over."

The mission planning simulator was real enough to fool Sandy Richter's inner ears. The device was halfway between his youngest son's new Nintendo VR System and a full-up aircraft simulator, the oversized helmet he wore identical with the one he used in his Comanche, but infinitely more sophisticated. What had begun with a monocle display on the AH-64 Apache was now like an I-MAX-theater view of the world that you wore on your head. It needed to be more sophisticated yet, but it did give him a view of the computer-generated terrain along with all his flight information, and his hands were on the stick and throttle of another virtual-helicopter as he navigated across the water toward approaching bluffs.

"Coming right for the notch," he told his backseater, who was actually sitting beside him, because the simulator didn't require that sort of fidelity. In this artificial world, they saw what they saw regardless of where they were, though the backseater sitting next to him had two additional instruments.

What they saw was the product of six hours of supercomputer time. A set of satellite photographs taken over the last three days had been analyzed, folded, spindled, and mutilated into a three-dimensional display that looked like a somewhat grainy video.

"Population center to the left."

"Roger, I see it." What he saw was a patch of fluorescent blue which in reality would have been yellow-orange quartz lighting, and out of deference to it he increased altitude from the fifty feet he'd followed for the past two hours. He eased the sidestick over, and the others in the darkened room, who were observing the flight crew, were struck by the way both bodies tilted to deal with the g-forces of a turn that existed only in the computer running the simulation. They might have laughed except that Sandy Richter was not somebody you laughed at.

From the moment he crossed the virtual coast, he climbed up to a crest and ran along it. That was Richter's idea. There were roads and houses in the river valleys that ended at the Sea of Japan. Better, the pilot thought, to stay acoustically covert as much as possible and take his chances with the look-down capability. In a just world he'd be able to deal with that threat on the inbound leg, but this was not exactly a just world.

"Fighters overhead," a female voice warned, just as it would on the real mission.

"Coming down some," Richter replied to the computer voice, slipping down below the ridgeline to the right. "If you can find me fifty feet off the ground, then I lose, honey."

"I hope this stealth shit really works." The initial intelligence reports were very concerned with the radar in the Japanese F-15's. Somehow it had taken down one B-1 and crippled another, and nobody was quite sure how it had happened.

"We're gonna find that one out." What else could the pilot say? In this case the computer decided that the stealth shit really did work. The last hour of the virtual flight was routine terrain-dodging, but strenuous enough that when he landed his Comanche, Richter needed a shower which, he was sure, would not be available where they were going. Though a pair of skis might be useful.

"What if the other guys—"

"Then I suppose we learn to like rice." You couldn't worry about everything. The lights came on, the helmets came off, and Richter found himself sitting in a medium-sized room.

"Successful insertion," the major grading the exercise decided. "You gents ready for a little trip?"

Richter picked up a glass of ice water from the table in the back of the room. "You know, I never really thought I'd drive a snake that far."

"What about the rest of the stuff?" his weapons-operator wanted to know.

"It'll be uploaded when you get there."

"And the way out?" Richter asked. It would have been better had they briefed him in on that one.

"You have a choice of two. Maybe three. We haven't decided that one yet. It's being looked at," the SOCOM officer assured them.

The good news was that they all seemed to have penthouse apartments. That was to be expected, Chavez thought. Rich dudes like these bastards would have the whole top floor of whatever building they picked. It made people like that feel big, he supposed, to be able to look down on everyone else, like people in the L.A. high-rises had looked down on the barrios of his youth.

None of them had ever been soldiers, though. You never wanted to skyline yourself that way. Better to be down in the weeds with the mice and the peons. Well, everybody had their limitations, Ding told himself.

It was just a matter, then, of finding a tall spot. That proved easy. Again the pacific nature of the city worked in their favor. They merely picked the proper building, walked in, took the elevator to the top floor, and from there walked to the roof. Chavez set up his camera on a tripod, selected his longest lens, and started shooting. Even doing it all in daylight was no hardship, the instructions had told them, and the weather gods cooperated, giving them a gray, overcast afternoon. He shot ten frames of each building, rewinding and ejecting the film cassettes, which went back into their boxes for labeling.

The entire operation took half an hour.

"You get used to trusting the guy?" Chavez asked after they made the pass.

"Ding, I just got used to trusting you," Clark replied quietly, easing the tension of the moment.