“Ask yourself, like that puppy, if you'd intercepted a B-36, what would you have done with it?”
“Shot it down of course!” The officer looked around triumphantly. Yamamoto was pleased to see that the expressions of the rest ranged from doubtful to dubious with a couple of downright scepticals.
“And then the Americans would have bombed us like they bombed Germany. You know Germany don't you? That black, smoking, radioactive hole in the middle of Europe. You want our Japan to end up like that? The Americans sent us a message today. They overflew our country, with their nuclear-armed bombers and did nothing. They told us that if we do nothing to stop them, they would do nothing to us.”
“But we did everything in our power to stop them. We threw our best and our latest at them and they ignored it.”
“And in doing so. you told them everything there was to know about what our latest and best equipment could do to threaten them. Now they know exactly what our defenses can do. It is better that we do nothing and let them think we cannot stop them than try and prove to them we cannot. After all, what did we lose today? Other than a little pride?”
The officers looked around, each hoping somebody else would answer. Eventually, one took the plunge. “But now they know exactly what forces we have along the border,”
“And that matters because? We do not plan to attack Russia do we?” The officers shook their heads, The Japanese Army was redeploying away from that border. Far away. “Now the Russians know we do not have any intention of attacking them. They will not attack us, they have their plates filled with recovering western Russia after the occupation. The only reason they would have attacked us was fear that we would attack them and their desire to pre-empt any such attack. Now that fear has gone, we can expect peace on the border and that allows us to carry on with our plans elsewhere. And we have the Americans and their Open Skies to thank for that.”
Reconnaissance and Intelligence Center, Khabarovsk “My God, look at these pictures!”
Colonel Yvegeni Valerin looked at the film under his stereoscopic viewers. There was no doubt about it, the incredible pictures were too accurate, too detailed. The Japanese Army had gone from the frontier, just leaving a thin screen of border troops. The film went deep into China, and the story was the same. The Japanese Army had gone, all that was left was an occupation force, enough to keep the population in order and control minor incidents. Nowhere near enough to launch an attack. Valerin felt a great weight lift from his mind. Khabarovsk and the rest of the Siberian industrial heartland was safe. Of course that left just one small question unanswered.
If the Japanese Army wasn't here, where was it?
Chapter Two Poised
Chulachomklao Military Academy, Bangkok, Thailand “They're building a bridge.”
The truck had been sitting for almost a quarter of an hour before Officer-Cadet Sirisoon had looked out. The old bridge was being taken down and replaced by a new concrete one. Part of the program of rebuilding the country that was seeing the old structures removed and new ones put in their place. Concrete bridges instead of wood, blacktop roads instead of dirt. Roads and railways instead of canals but she didn't think so much of that one. Canals were part of her country, it was hard to imagine what it would be like without them.
The new bridge was half-built, one span was in place, linking an abutment on the side with a pier in the middle of the river. Now the workmen were building the other abutment and, when it was finished, the big mobile crane on the eight- by eight truck would swing the second span into place. That would be a long time yet, the little Army column, two jeeps and a truck, would have to use the temporary bridge.
She dropped the canvas back into place. In the back of the truck were eight cadets, the four women and four men. The women were bored, the men unhappy and resentful. This was an exercise, at a guess, one that would probably need the strength of eight men. Whichever sadistic instructor was in charge had put all the women cadets onto the same team. In the men's eyes, that put the entire team at a grave disadvantage in the muscle power department. In the highly competitive environment of Chulachomkiao, that was cause enough for resentment.
The truck jerked and started to roll forward. Obviously, the temporary bridge was available for use again. The cadets heard the creaking of timber under the wheels, then the slurping noise as the wheels spun in the mud the other side. Then they were heading down the road, the truck bouncing on the now-unimproved surface. Through the back of the canvas cover, Sirisoon saw a small village pass, a few houses, a temple, a small store, then they were off down a track through the countryside again. Twenty minutes after they'd crossed the river, they stopped and Sergeant Major Manop banged the tailgate of the truck with his stick. “Out, everybody out.”
They were in a patch of rough ground with a few trees and some scrub bushes. Best to keep away from those, that's where slithery friends would be sheltering from the sun. On one side of the trail was a large, a very large, block of concrete. Far too heavy to be shifted by a team even of eight men. Manop looked at the cadets and grinned. “Very well, we have a small task for you. Your instructor here had a keen desire to see this block of concrete on the other side of the trail. And since you are all so fond of him I volunteered you to move it. It’s a bit heavy but its only about forty meters. We'll leave you a jeep with a radio, call in when you've finished.” His grin grew positively evil as he climbed into the other jeep and followed the truck away.
Sirisoon watched them disappear then looked at the block. At a guess, it weighed well over a tonne, possibly two. There were various objects lying around. The test was obvious; use the objects to move the block. She look inventory; some logs, big, old, very hard. Seasoned until they were like iron. A jeep. Hmm, left unobtrusively in the back of the jeep was a length of towing chain and a set of tools. Quite a few spades.
OK, she thought, the answer is easy. Dig the ground out from under the block, sliding the logs under as rollers. Start at the front so the block is always supported. Then, once the ground was dug away and the block was on the logs, use the jeep to tow it over. As each log passed out behind the block, take it and put it back in front. With all the digging, fetching and carrying, it would be a very long, very hard. very dirty job. Dangerous too, if the logs moved while somebody was digging under the block, it could crush them. For all that, easy.
There had to be a catch.
She looked again. The ground sloped away and the slope was downhill to where the block had to go. THAT was the catch. Once the block was on the logs, the slope would mean it could roll. The jeep wasn't there to tow it, it was a brake, to stop the block rolling too fast. Idly she wondered how many teams had failed to spot that and written their jeep off when the block went out of control and plowed into it. Another thing, if it was used to hold the block from the start, that would make everything much safer.
She looked again at the cement monstrosity taunting them. One ring set in the concrete side, pointing away from where the block had to go. That was a hint for those with the wits to see it. Then she looked on top. Four more rings. Obviously, something like that had to be there, the Army had to have an easy way to move the block around. Suddenly Sirisoon's face broke out into a grin whose evil matched that of Sergeant Major Manop.