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"Track them," Noburu told Takahara. "Identify who they are, what weapons they're using. We need targetable data."

"Yes, sir."

Only yesterday, he had been flying triumphantly above the African bush. Surprising the Americans. Vanquishing them. Today they had surprised him. But it wasn't finished yet. Noburu knew only too well what was going to happen. It had been written by more powerful hands than his.

The dream warrior had known this too. In his contest with the dream Americans, with their dead and terrible faces.

"Sir " Akiro addressed him. Noburu could see that the young man had been badly jarred by all this. Unaccustomed to the taste of defeat. Even temporary defeat.

"Yes?"

"Sir. Tokyo. On the satellite link. General Tsuji wishes to speak with you."

Noburu had known that the call would come. It was inevitable. And he knew what the caller would command him to do.

"I will take the call in my private office," Noburu said.

"Sir" Akiro and Takahara responded in near unison.

"Oh, and Takahara. Contact Noguchi. His readiness test is canceled. Instead, he is to hold his unit at the highest state of combat alert." Noburu hated to speak the words. But it was no less than his duty. And he would always do his duty. "But he is to take no further action until he hears from me personally."

Takahara acknowledged the instruction and turned to its execution. But Akiro seemed to shrink ever so slightly. As Noburu's aide, the younger man was privileged to know the highly classified capabilities of Noguchi's aircraft awaiting a mission at the airfield in Bukhara on the far side of Central Asia. The uncertainty around Akiro's mouth made it clear that he was not nearly as hardened as the uncompromising words that passed so easily between his lips pretended. Yes, words were one thing…

"Stay here," Noburu told his aide. "I can find my office on my own. Sit here in my chair and pay attention to all that goes on around you today. This is war, Akiro."

Noburu marched through the half-chaos of his operations center, proceeding down the hall past the room where the master computer soldiered in silence. He stopped at the private elevator that had once served a Soviet general. The guard slammed his heels against the wall as he came to attention.

Noburu used the few seconds remaining to him to muster his arguments. But he found them fatally weakened by the events of the early morning hours. Why had the Americans — if they truly were Americans — interfered? He knew in his heart he would never convince old Tsuji to behave humanely. But just as it was his duty as a soldier to follow orders, it was his duty as a human being to make one last effort to break the chain of events.

His office was cool and very clean. Its austerity and silence normally soothed him, but today the empty suite felt like a tomb.

He sat down at his desk and picked up the special phone.

"This is General Noburu Kabata."

"Hold for General Tsuji," a voice told him.

He waited dutifully, imagining the magic beams that sliced through the heavens to allow him to speak privately with another man so far away. The technology, in its essence, was generations old. Yet, at times, such things still filled Noburu with a sense of wonder. It still amazed him that metal machines could carry men through the sky.

I'm a bad Japanese, he thought. I don't know how to take things for granted.

"Noburu?" the acid voice startled him.

"General Tsuji."

"I cannot be certain of the view from your perspective, Noburu. However, from Tokyo, it appears that you are presiding over the greatest defeat suffered by Japanese arms in seventy-five years."

"It's bad," Noburu agreed. Ready to take his medicine.

"It's far worse than 'bad,' " Tsuji said, loading his voice with spite. "It's a disaster."

"Yes."

"I would personally relieve you, Noburu. But I can't. To take you out of there now would be an embarrassment to Japan. A further embarrassment. An admission of failure."

"I will resign," Noburu said.

"You will do nothing of the kind. Nor will you do anything… foolish. This is the twenty-first century. And your guts aren't worth staining a carpet. All you can do now is to try to turn things around. Have you got a plan?"

"Not yet," Noburu said. "We're still gathering information."

"You know what I mean, Noburu. You know exactly what I mean. Have you formulated a plan for the commitment of Three-one-three-one?"

Three-one-three-one was Tokyo's code name for Noguchi's command. Everyone else simply referred to them as Scramblers. But Tsuji was a stickler for the details of military procedure.

"No."

There was silence on the other end. Noburu understood it to be a calculated silence. Tsuji showing his contempt.

"Why?"

"General Tsuji… I continue to believe that the employment of… Three-one-three-one… would be a mistake. We will never be forgiven."

Tsuji laughed scornfully. "What? Forgiven? By whom? You must be going mad, Noburu."

Yes, Noburu thought, perhaps. "The Scramblers are criminal weapons," he said. "We, of all people—"

"Noburu, listen to me. Your personal ruminations are of no interest to me. Or to anyone else. You have one mission, and one only: to win a war. For Japan. And can you honestly tell me, after what we have all seen this morning, that you are in a position to guarantee victory without the employment of Three-one-three-one?"

"No."

"Then get to work."

"General Tsuji?"

"What?"

"My intelligence department believes they have broken into the communications network of the attackers."

"Well. So you haven't been entirely asleep. Have you positively identified the units involved? Do you have any idea of the type of weapons? It's incredible to think that the Russians could have pulled all this off."

"The intelligence department doesn't think it's Russians."

Tsuji laughed. "Who then? Creatures from space, perhaps?"

"Americans."

"What?"

"Americans," Noburu repeated.

"That's insane. Who's your senior intelligence officer?"

"I believe it to be true," Noburu said. And it was not a lie. He did not need any further intelligence confirmation. He knew it to be the Americans. He had always known it. He simply had not been able to admit it to himself. Everything was so plain. It was ordained.

"Noburu, if you actually have evidence… if you're not dreaming this up…"

"It's true," Noburu said. "We're still working out the details. But the Americans are involved."

There was another silence on the Tokyo end. But this time it was not calculated and carefully controlled.

"Then get them," Tsuji said suddenly. "Destroy them. Use Three-one-three-one."

"General Tsuji, we have to think—"

"That's an order, Noburu. Introduce your Americans to the future of warfare."

"We're going to get them," Taylor said with forced calm. "Merry, start running the interception azimuths. Stay with them."

"Yes, sir."

"We're going to get those bastards," Taylor told the ops center staff. His voice was carefully controlled in volume, if not in tone. He had just watched the destruction of the Omsk site on the monitor. The way a civilian might watch a live television report from a riot or revolution — gripped by the images, but helpless to exert the least influence upon the situation. One moment, the wing-in-ground transport had been lying like a drowsing beast in the clear dawn. Then the screen smeared with the powdery swirls that sheathed the hearts of the bomb blasts. Next came the firestorm. There would be no survivors.

"We'll have to start turning," Merry Meredith said. "Right now."

"Flapper?" Taylor called forward through the intercom, "you listening up there?"