Текст книги "Dragon"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

“The old kingpin of the Japanese underworld, Korori Yoshishu, and his financial crony, Ichiro Tsuboi,” explained Jordan, interrupting. “They’re criminal partners in Suma’s industrial empire.”

“Then we must assume,” Simmons repeated, “that Hideki Suma is expendable.”

“It comes down to that,” said Kern, speaking for the first time.

“Which means Yoshishu and Tsuboi can step in and activate the detonation systems,” the President theorized.

Brogan’s expression of optimism was slowly collapsing. “With Suma in our hands, there’s no predicting how they’ll react.”

“Perhaps I should reorder the nuclear strike,” said the President halfheartedly.

Jordan shook his head negatively. “Not just yet, Mr. President. There’s another way we can buy time to reassess the situation.”

“What’s on your mind, Ray?”

“We let the Japanese tune in to Commander Harper’s signals reporting that the plane carrying Diaz, Smith, and Suma crashed into the sea with the loss of all on board.”

Brogan looked doubtful. “You really think Yoshishu and Tsuboi would buy that?”

“Probably not,” said Jordan with a canny look, “but I’ll bet they’ll think about it until we can put the Kaiten Project out of business for good.”

60

TRUE TO HIS WORD, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had General Mackay’s personal Air Force C-20 passenger jet sitting beside the runway that stretched across Wake Island as Pitt dropped the tilt-turbine on a marked pad in front of the small terminal building.

Mel Penner had flown up from Palau and was waiting, cupping his ears against the scream of the turbines as the wheels touched the concrete. The area was surrounded and cordoned off by nearly twenty air police. Penner moved toward the aircraft and stood expectantly at the doorway. It swung open and Weatherhill was the first out.

Penner stepped forward and they shook hands. “Glad to see you’re still in the land of the living.”

“That makes two of us,” said Weatherhill with a huge smile. He glanced around at the Air Force security ring. “We didn’t expect a welcoming committee.”

“You’re the hottest topic of discussion at the White House. Is it true you made it out with Suma?”

Weatherhill nodded. “And Diaz and Smith.”

“You made quite a haul.”

Stacy stepped down and was also surprised to see Penner and the guards. “Somehow I get the feeling we’re not going to refuel and continue to Hawaii,” she said, hugging Penner.

“Sorry, no. There’s an Air Force jet waiting to fly Suma and the legislators to Washington. They’ll be accompanied and guarded by a military intelligence team. The rest of us have been ordered to remain here on Wake for a meeting with a group of high-level hotshots sent by Jordan and the President.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t have sent you more data,” explained Weatherhill, “but we thought it best if we stayed off the airwaves and made out a report in person.”

“Jordan agrees. You made the right decision.”

Weatherhill handed Penner a file folder filled with neatly typed sheets. “A full report.”

Penner stared at the report with a blank look. “How?”

Weatherhill gestured back inside the aircraft. “Suma had it, fully equipped to conduct business. We wrote it up during the flight on a word processor.”

Mancuso popped his head out the door. “Hi, Mel. Did you bring the party hats and champagne?

“Good to see you, Frank. When can I meet your passengers?”

“Sending them out now. You’ll have to wait a minute for our guests from Japan to disembark until I free them.”

“You had them under restraint?”

“They got a little testy at times.”

Loren and Diaz stepped squinting into the bright sun and were introduced to Penner, who related the flight procedure. Then Suma and Toshie were ushered out by Mancuso, his hands tightly gripping each by an arm.

Penner made a slight bow. “Welcome to United States territory, Mr. Suma, but I don’t think you’re going to enjoy your stay.”

Suma gave Penner the offhand glance he reserved for underlings and acted as if the intelligence operative was invisible.

Toshie looked at Penner with uncontrolled hatred. “You will treat Mr. Suma with proper respect. He demands he be freed immediately and returned to Japan.”

“Oh, he will,” Penner said mockingly. “After he’s enjoyed an all-expense paid vacation in our nation’s capital, courtesy of the American taxpayer.”

“You are violating international law,” Suma said nastily. “And if you do not release us, vengeance shall be swift and many of your countrymen will die.”

Penner turned to Weatherhill. “Can he back up the threat?”

Weatherhill looked at Suma. “Sorry, you can forget about the Dragon Center. Its juice has been cut off.”

“You were successful?” asked Penner. “Ray Jordan and Don Kern are clawing the walls, waiting to hear.”

“A temporary fix. We only had enough explosive to blow out a fiber-optic bundle. They should be back in business in several days.”

Dr. Josh Nogami exited the plane and was greeted by Penner. “A real pleasure to meet you, Doc. We’re grateful for your efforts in getting information out to us. Your help was invaluable.”

Nogami shrugged modestly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have saved Jim Hanamura.”

“You might have given yourself away and been murdered too.”

“Mr. Pitt did his best to prevent that.” Nogami glanced around, but saw no familiar faces. “It looks as though I’m an agent without an assignment.”

“When our Deputy Director of Operations, Don Kern, learned you were on board, he requested that you be temporarily assigned to us. Your superior agreed. If you don’t mind working with a bunch of colonials for a few days, your knowledge of the Dragon Center’s layout would be very helpful.”

Nogami nodded. “The weather here beats rainy London any day.”

Before Penner could reply, Giordino leaped from the tilt-turbine and ran toward a squad of air police that were herding Suma and Toshie to the waiting C-20. He rushed over to the officer in charge and asked him to hold up the procession for a moment.

Giordino was only half a centimeter taller than Toshie. He looked straight into her eyes. “Dear heart, wait for me.”

She stared at him in angered surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Courtship, amorous pursuit, nestling, endearment, proposal. As soon as I can catch up to you, I’m going to make you the happiest woman alive.”

“You’re mad!”

“Only one of my many charms,” said Giordino engagingly. “You’ll discover lots of others in the years to come.”

Amazingly, Toshie wavered. For a strange reason she couldn’t comprehend, she began to find Giordino’s very un-Japanese approach appealing. She had to struggle to suppress any friendliness she felt toward him.

Giordino recognized her uncertainty and grasped her slender shoulders in his beefy hands, kissed her briefly on the lips, and smiled. “I’ll catch up to you as soon as I can.”

She was still staring at him wordlessly over her shoulder as Penner took her by the elbow and brusquely led her away.

Pitt escorted Loren to the C-20 jet after Suma, Toshie, and Diaz were seated aboard. They walked in silence, feeling the warmth from the sun and the humidity stroke their skin.

Loren stopped several meters from the aircraft and stared into Pitt’s eyes. “It seems one of us is always coming and going.”

He nodded. “We lead busy, separate lives. Our schedules never mesh.”

“Maybe someday…” Her voice died softly.

“Someday,” he said in understanding.

“You’re not going back?” she asked hesitantly.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Al and I have been ordered to remain behind.”

“They can’t send you back to that island. Not now.”

“I’m a marine engineer, remember? I’m the last man they’d ask to assault the Dragon Center with six-shooters blazing.”

“I’ll talk to the President and request you and Al be sent home.”

“Don’t put yourself out,” he said easily. “We’ll probably be on the next flight east.”

She stood on her toes and kissed him gently on the mouth. “Thank you for everything.”

Pitt smiled. “Anything to please a pretty lady.”

Tears began forming in her eyes. Loren had a feeling of dread in her stomach. Somehow she knew he wouldn’t be following her anytime soon. Suddenly she turned and hurried up the boarding stairs into the aircraft.

Pitt stood there looking after her. Then he waved as her face appeared in a window, but when Loren looked for him again as the plane taxied to the runway he was gone.

61

TSUBOI COULD NOT believe it. After leaving Yoshishu and rushing from Tokyo to Edo City and then to the Dragon Center to take personal command, he stood in the control room tense with growing rage.

“What do you mean you cannot detonate any of the bomb cars?” he demanded.

Takeda Kurojima, the Dragon Center’s chief director, was stricken. He looked around helplessly at his small army of engineers and scientists for moral support, but they all stared at the floor as if hoping to be swallowed by it.

“Only Mr. Suma knows the codes,” Kurojima answered with a patronizing hands-out shrug. “He personally programmed the code system for the prime and detonate signals.”

“How long will it take you to reprogram the codes?”

Kurojima stared at his staff again. They began muttering rapidly between themselves. Then, seemingly agreeing on something, one stepped forward and murmured so softly Tsuboi didn’t hear.

“What… what was it you said?”

Kurojima finally stared into Tsuboi’s eyes. “Three days, it will take three days minimum to erase Mr. Suma’s command codes and reprogram the systems.”

“That long?”

“It is not a quick and simple procedure.”

“What is the status of the robotic drivers?”

“The robot program is accessible,” replied Kurojima. “Mr. Suma did not insert the codes to set in motion their drive and destination systems.”

“Two days, forty-eight hours. That’s all you have to make the Kaiten Project fully operational.” Tsuboi tightened his mouth and clenched his jaws. He began to pace the control room of the Dragon Center. He cursed the serpentine mastermind who had outfoxed them all. Suma had trusted no one, not even his oldest and closest friend, Yoshishu.

A phone buzzed and one of the technicians picked it up. He went rigid and held out the receiver to Tsuboi. “Mr. Yoshishu in Tokyo for you.”

“Yes, Korori, Ichiro here.”

“Our intelligence people have intercepted a report from the American ship. They claim Hideki’s plane was shot down. Did our pilots actually see Hideki’s aircraft go into the sea?”

“Only one returned. I was informed the surviving pilot reported that he was too busy evading return fire from the ship to witness his missile strike the target.”

“It could be a bluff by the Americans.”

“We won’t know if that’s the case until one of our observer satellites can be programmed to pass over the ship.”

“And if it shows the plane is on board?”

Yoshishu hesitated. “Then we know we are too late. Hideki is lost to us.”

“And under tight security by American intelligence forces,” Tsuboi finished.

“We’re faced with a very grave situation. In the hands of American intelligence, Hideki can become an acute embarrassment to Japan.”

“Under drugged interrogation he will most certainly divulge the locations of the bomb cars.”

“Then we must act quickly to preserve the Kaiten Project.”

“There is another problem,” said Tsuboi grimly. “Only Hideki knew the operational codes to activate the prime and detonate signals.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Yoshishu said slowly, “We always knew he had a cunning mind.”

“Only too well,” agreed Tsuboi.

“Then I leave it to you to discover new directions.”

“I won’t fail your trust.”

Tsuboi set down the receiver and gazed out the observation window. A silence came over the control room as everyone waited on his word. There had to be another solution for delaying any retribution by the United States and other Western nations. Tsuboi was a smart man, and it only took him a few seconds to come up with alternate plans.

“How complicated is it to set off one of the bombs manually?” he asked the assembled engineers and scientists in the control room.

Kurojima’s eyebrows raised up questioningly. “To detonate without a coded signal?”

“Yes, yes.”

The technical brain who headed the Kaiten Project from start to finish bowed his head and answered. “There are two methods by which a mass of fissionable material can be made subcritical and forced to explode. One is to surround the mass by a ring of high explosives whose detonation will in turn set off the fissionable material. The other is to shoot together two masses by a cannon-type device.”

“How do we explode a bomb car?” Tsuboi demanded impatiently.

“Velocity,” Kurojima answered briefly. “The impact from a high-velocity bullet through the compressor shell and into the mass should do it.”

Tsuboi glared inquiringly. “Are you saying the bombs can be set off by nothing more than a shot from a rifle?”

Kurojima bowed his head. “At close range, yes.”

The effect on Tsuboi was just within the limits of credibility. “Then why don’t you simply program a robot to fire a high powered rifle into the air-conditioner shell?”

“There is the problem of time again.” replied Kurojima. “The robots that are programmed to drive the cars to their detonation sites are not constructed or programmed for anything else.”

“One of the roboguards, could it be modified?”

“The reverse. Security robots are designed for mobility and weapons fire. They are not designed to drive a car.”

“How long to make one that can do the job?”

“Weeks, no less than a month. You must realize we have to create a very complicated piece of machinery. We do not have one in production that can drive a car, climb out on articulated legs, open a hood, and shoot a gun. A robot with these built-in movements would have to be built from the ground up, and that takes time.”

Tsuboi stared at him. “We must detonate one within the next five hours to make the Americans think the system is operational.”

Kurojima’s confidence had returned. He was in control and his fear of Tsuboi had faded. He gave the financier a long steady look. “Well then, you’ll just have to find a human to do the job.”

It was about five in the evening, and the sky to the east was turning dark blue as the C-20 winged over the Pacific toward California. They were only two hours out of a refueling stop at Hickam Field in Hawaii. Loren looked down, straining her eyes to pick out the tiny shape and white wake of a ship, but she could see only the flat expanse of the sea and a few whitecaps.

She swiveled the executive chair she was sitting in and faced Suma. He sat arrogantly composed, sipping a glass of soda water. The shock of the hijacking and the distress at knowing Yoshishu had ordered his death had long since melted and he was now relaxed, supremely confident that he would regain the upper hand once he reached Washington.

He stared at her and smiled thinly. “So you intend to promote legislation to close all your markets to Japanese goods.”

“In light of what I’ve seen and experienced in the past few days,” said Loren, “do you blame me?”

“We Japanese have planned far into the future for just such a possibility. Our economy will survive because we have already invested heavily in the European and Asian markets. Soon we will no longer need the United States consumer. The closing of your market is merely another unfair tactic of you Americans.”

Loren laughed. “What do you know about fair trade practices?” Then she got down to serious business. “No foreigners can come into Japan to sell their products without being hassled to death by your trade barriers, stonewalled by your graft-ridden distribution system, and undermined by your home competition. All the while insisting that no outsider understands your culture.”

“Your behavior, Congresswoman Smith, is obviously motivated by racist anti-Japanese sentiments. We feel no guilt over expanding our international market shares. We started with nothing after the war. And what we have built, you want to take away.”

“Take what away? Your self-proclaimed right to rule the economic world?” Loren could just detect a hint of growing frustration in Suma’s eyes. “Instead of picking you up from the ashes and helping you build an enormously successful economy, perhaps we should have treated you the way you treated Manchuria, Korea, and China during your years of occupation.”

“Many of the postwar economic successes of those countries were due to Japanese guidance.”

Loren shook her head in wonderment at his refusal to acknowledge historical facts. “At least the Germans have demonstrated regret for the atrocities of the Nazis, but you people act as though your butchery of millions of people throughout Asia and the Pacific never happened.”

“We have freed our minds of those years,” said Suma. “The negative events were unfortunate, but we were at war.”

“Yes, but you made the war. No one attacked Japan.”

“It lies in the past. We think only of the future. Time will prove who has the superior culture,” he said with contempt. “Like all the other Western nations since ancient Greece, you will fall by decay from within.”

“Perhaps,” said Loren with a soft smile, “but then eventually, so will you.”

62

PENNER ROSE FROM a chair, turned, and faced the surviving members of the MAIT team who were seated in an office inside one of the commercial aircraft hangars. He tapped ashes from his pipe in a bucket of sand beside a desk and nodded at two men, one sitting, the other standing along the rear wall.

“I’m going to turn the briefing over to Clyde Ingram, the gentleman in the loud Hawaiian shirt. Clyde is blessed with the fancy title of Director of Science and Technical Data Interpretation. He’ll explain his discovery. Then Curtis Meeker, an old friend from my Secret Service days and Deputy Director of Advanced Technical Operations, will explain what’s circulating in his warped mind.”

Ingram walked over to an easel with a blanket thrown over it. He stared from blue eyes through expensive designer glasses attached to cord that dangled around the nape of his neck. His hair was a neatly combed brown, and he lived inside a medium-sized body whose upper works was covered by a black aloha shirt that looked as if it had been worn in a Ferrari driven around Honolulu by Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum.

He threw the blanket off the easel and gestured a casual thumb toward a large photograph of what appeared to be an old aircraft. “What you see here is a World War Two B-Twenty-nine Superfortress resting thirty-six miles from Soseki Island on the seabed, three hundred and twenty meters, or for those of you who have trouble converting to metrics, a little over a thousand feet below the surface.”

“The picture is so clear,” said Stacy. “Was it taken from a submersible?”

“The aircraft was originally picked up by our Pyramider Eleven reconnaissance satellite during an orbit over Soseki Island.”

“You can get a picture that sharp on the bottom of the sea from an orbiting satellite?” she asked in disbelief.

“We can.”

Giordino was sitting in the rear of the room, his feet propped on the chair in front of him. “How does the thing work?”

“I won’t offer you an in-depth description, because it would take hours, but let’s just say it works by using pulsating sound waves that interact with very low frequency radar to create a geophysical image of underwater objects and landscapes.”

Pitt stretched to relieve tense muscles. “What happens after the image is received?”

“The Pyramider feeds the image, little more than a smudge, to a tracking data relay satellite that relays it to White Sands, New Mexico, for computer amplification and enhancement. The image is then passed on to the National Security Agency, where it is analyzed by both humans and computers. In this particular case, our interest was aroused, and we called for an SR-Ninety Casper to obtain a more detailed picture.”

Stacy raised a hand. “Does Casper use the same imagery system as the Pyramider?”

Ingram shrugged in regret. “Sorry, all I can reveal without getting into trouble is that Casper obtains real-time imaging recorded on analog tape. You might say that comparing the Pyramider and Casper systems is like comparing a flashlight beam to a laser. One covers a large spread, while the other pinpoints a small spot.”

Mancuso tilted his head and stared at the blown-up photograph curiously. “So what’s the significance of the old sunken bomber? What possible connection can it have with the Kaiten Project?”

Ingram flicked a glance at Mancuso and then tapped a pencil on the photo. “This aircraft, what’s left of it, is going to destroy Soseki Island and the Dragon Center.”

Nobody believed him, not for an instant. They all stared at him as though he was a con man selling a cure-all elixir to a bunch of rubes at a carnival.

Giordino broke the silence. “A mere trifle to raise the plane and repair it for a bombing run.”

Dr. Nogami forced a smile. “It’d take considerably more than a fifty-year-old bomb to make a dent in the Dragon Center.”

Ingram smiled back at Nogami. “Believe me, the bomb inside this B-Twenty-nine has the punch to do the job.”

“The plot thickens.” Pitt nodded glumly. “I smell a snow job coming on.

Ingram did a neat sidestep. “That part of the briefing will come from my partner in crime, Curtis Meeker.”

Pitt’s sardonic stare went from Ingram to Meeker. “You two and Ray Jordan and Don Kern must all play in the same sandbox.”

“We have occasion to mix it up now and then,” Meeker replied without smiling.

Ingram turned again to the easel, removed the photograph, and propped it on a chair, revealing a close-up photo of a little devil painted on the side of the aircraft’s bow.

“ Dennings’ Demons,” he said, tapping a pencil on the faded letters beneath the little devil. “Commanded by Major Charles Dennings. Please note the little demon is standing on a gold brick marked twenty-four karat. The crew enjoyed referring to themselves as goldbrickers after they were reprimanded for tearing apart a beer hall during training in California.”

“Obviously my kind of guys,” said Giordino.

“Unknown, forgotten, and buried deep in Langley files, until a few days ago when Curtis and I dug out the facts, was the story of a very courageous group of men who set out on a very secret mission to drop an atom bomb on Japan—”

“They what!” Weatherhill was incredulous, but no more so than the others.

Ingram ignored the interruption and went on. “At about the same time as Colonel Tibbets took off in the Enola Gayfrom Tinian Island in the Pacific with the bomb known as ‘Little Boy,’ Major Dennings lifted off Shemya Island far to the north in the Aleutians with his bomb, which was code-named ‘Mother’s Breath.’ What was left of the report on the mission was heavily censored, but we believe Dennings’ flight plan called for him to follow a one-way course, dropping his bomb on the target, probably Osaka or Kyoto, and then continuing to Okinawa to refuel before pushing on to Tinian. As we all know from the history books, Tibbets successfully dropped his bomb on Hiroshima. Dennings, unfortunately, vanished, and the entire event was covered over by presidential order.”

“Hold on a minute,” said Mancuso. “Are you telling us that we built more than three bombs in nineteen forty-five?”

Stacy cleared her throat. “Except for Little Boy, the first Trinity bomb at Los Alamos, and Fat Man, which was dropped on Nagasaki, no other bombs are recorded.”

“We still don’t have the exact count, but it appears there were at least six. Most were of the implosion type like Fat Man.”

Pitt said, “Dennings’ bomb makes four. That still leaves two.”

“A bomb with the code name of Mother’s Pearl was loaded aboard a superfort called Lovin’ Lilon Guam, not too long after the island was liberated from the Japanese. Lovin’ Lilwas in the air flying toward Japan when Bock’s Car, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. After word was received that the drop went off as planned, Lovin’ Liland her crew were recalled back to Guam, where the bomb was dismantled and shipped back to Los Alamos.”

“That leaves one.”

“Ocean Mother was on Midway Island, but was never airborne.”

“Who came up with those awful names?” murmured Stacy.

Ingram shrugged. “We have no idea.”

Pitt looked at Ingram. “Were Dennings and the crews on Guam and Midway part of Colonel Tibbets’ Five-o-ninth Bomber Squadron?”

“Again, we don’t know. Eighty percent of the records have been destroyed. We can only guess that General Groves, the director of the Manhattan bomb project, and his staff came up with a complicated backup plan at the last moment because there was great fear the firing mechanisms on the bombs might not work. There was also the possibility, although unlikely, that the Enola Gayor Bock’s Car might crash on takeoff, detonating their bombs and wiping out the entire Five-o-ninth and leaving no trained personnel or equipment to deliver additional bombs. And on top of all that, there were a host of other dangers staring Groves and Tibbets in the face—the threat of Japanese bombing attacks on Tinian, mechanical failures during flight, forcing the crew to jettison their bombs in the sea, or being shot down by enemy fighters or antiaircraft fire during the mission. Only at the last minute did Groves see the dark clouds gathering around the bomb-delivery operation. In less than a month’s time, Major Dennings and the Demons, along with the crews on Guam and Midway, were given rush training and sent on their way.”

“Why was all this kept from public knowledge after the war?” asked Pitt. “What harm could the story of Dennings’ Demonscause nearly fifty years later?”

“What can I say?” Ingram made a baffled gesture. “After thirty years passed and it came up under the Freedom of Information Act, a pair of political hack appointees decided on their own that the American public, who paid their salaries by the way, was too naive to be entrusted with such an earth-shaking revelation. They reclassified the event as top secret and filed it away in the CIA vaults at Langley.”

“Tibbets got the glory and Dennings got deep-sixed,” Weatherhill said, waxing philosophical.

“So what does Dennings’ Demonshave to do with us?” Pitt put to Ingram.

“Better you should ask Curtis.” Ingram nodded to Meeker and sat down.

Meeker stepped up to a blackboard on a side wall and took a piece of chalk in one hand. He drew a rough sketch of the B-29 and a long, uneven contour line representing the seafloor that stretched across the board’s surface and ended with a sudden rise that was Soseki Island. Thankfully to all in the room, he didn’t squeak the chalk. Finally, after adding in a few geological details on the sea bottom, he turned and flashed a warm smile.

“Clyde has only given you a brief peek at our satellite surveillance and detection systems,” he began. “There are others that have the capability of penetrating through an impressive distance of solid material and measuring a vast array of different energy sources. I won’t bother to get into them—Clyde and I aren’t here to teach a class—but will simply reveal that the explosive device you placed inside the electrical network of the Dragon Center did not do the job.”

“I’ve never laid an explosive that failed to detonate,” Weatherhill growled on the defensive.

“Your charge went off all right,” said Meeker, “but not where you set it. If Dr. Nogami was still in deep cover inside the command complex, he could tell you the explosion occurred a good fifty meters from the electrical junction center.”

“No way,” Stacy protested. “I watched Timothy set the charge behind a bundle of optical fibers in an access passage.”

“It was moved,” Dr. Nogami said thoughtfully.

“How?”

“The inspector robot probably observed a slight drop in the power pulse, searched, and found the charge. He would have removed it and notified his robotic control. The timer must have set off the charge while it was being carried through the corridors to robotic control for investigation.”

“Then the Dragon Center is fully operational,” Mancuso said with grave foreboding.

“And the Kaiten Project can be primed and detonated,” added Stacy, her face displaying lines of disappointment.

Meeker nodded. “We’re afraid that’s the case.”

“Then our operation to knock out the center was a bust,” Weatherhill said disgustedly.

“Not really,” Meeker explained patiently. “You captured Suma, and without him the cars can’t be detonated.”

Stacy looked confused. “What’s to stop his fellow conspirators from setting off the bombs?”

Pitt threw Nogami a bemused look. “I suspect the good doctor has the answer.”

“A small bit of information I picked up after becoming chummy with the computer technicians,” Nogami said with a wide smile. “They allowed me to wander freely in their data center. On one occasion I stood behind a programmer and looked over his shoulder when he punched in data concerning the Kaiten Project. I memorized the entry code, and at my first opportunity I entered the system. It gave the bomb car locations, which you had already obtained, but I became stymied when I attempted to insert a virus in the detonation system. I discovered only Suma had access to the detonation codes.”

“So no one but Hideki Suma can launch the Kaiten Project,” Stacy said in relieved surprise.

“A situation his henchmen are working like hell to correct,” answered Meeker. He glanced around at the MAIT team. “But congratulations are still in order, you pulled off a winner. Your efforts effectively shut down the Dragon Center, causing the Japanese to reprogram their prime and detonate systems, and giving us enough time to put together a plan to destroy it once and for all.”

“Which, if I’m not sidetracking your lecture,” said Pitt quietly, “brings us back to Dennings’ Demons.”

“You’re quite right,” acknowledged Meeker. He hesitated while he sat on a desk. Then he began cutting toward the heart of the briefing. “The President was willing to lay his political life on the line and sanction a nuclear strike against the Dragon Center. But he called it off when word came of your escape. Your operation bought him some time, not much, but enough to accomplish what we’ve planned in the few hours we’ve got left.”