"Not sure. It's possible. Recommend we come left," the EWO said judiciously. On that advice, he felt the aircraft bank five degrees. The mission wasn't about taking risks. It was about gathering information, as a gambler would observe a table before taking his seat and putting his chips in play.

"I think there's somebody out there," one of the E-767 operators said. "Zero-one-five, southerly course. Hard to hold it."

The rotodome atop the E-767 was like few others in the world, and all of them were Japanese. Three of them were operating on the eastern approaches to their country. Transmitting up to three million watts of electrical energy, it had four times the power of anything the Americans had aloft, but the true sophistication of the system lay not in its power but in its mode of delivery. Essentially a smaller version of the SPY radar carried on the Kongo-class destroyers, the array was composed of thousands of solid-state diodes that could scan both electronically and mechanically, and jump in frequency to suit the needs of the moment. For long-range detection, a relatively low frequency was best. However, though the waves curved around the visible horizon somewhat, it was at the cost of poor resolution. The operator was getting a hit on only every third sweep or so. The system software had not yet learned to distinguish clutter from the purposeful activities of a human mind, at least not in all cases, and not, unfortunately, at this frequency setting…

"Are you sure?" the senior controller asked over the intercom line. He'd just called up the display himself and didn't see anything yet.

"Here." The first man moved his cursor and marked the contact when it reappeared. He wished they could improve that software. "Wait! Look here!" He selected another blip and marked it, too. It disappeared almost at once but came back in fifteen seconds. "See, southerly course-speed five hundred knots."

"Excellent." The senior controller activated his radio microphone and reported to his ground station that Japanese air defenses were being probed for the first time. The only surprise, really, was that it had taken them so long. This is where things get interesting, he thought, wondering what would happen next, now that the games had begun.

"No more of those Es?" the pilot asked.