"You have two hours. There's a Gulfstream waiting for you at Andrews. We need somebody," the National Security Advisor explained, "who knows the political limits on the mission. Take it right to the edge, Rob, but no further. We have to smart our way through this."

"I understand."

Ryan stood and walked to his friend. "I'm not sure I like doing this…"

"It's my job, Jack."

Tennessee arrived at her station off the Japanese coast and finally slowed to her normal patrol speed of five knots. Commander Claggett took a required moment to get a position fix on a rocky outcropping known to sailors as Lot's Wife, then dived his boat below the layer to a depth of six hundred feet. The sonar showed nothing at the moment, odd for the normally busy shipping lanes, but after four and a half days of dangerously high-speed running, it came as a considerable relief to everyone aboard. The Army personnel had adapted well enough and joined sailors for their jogs in the missile room. For the moment, the mission orders were little different from those the boomer had been designed to do: remain undetected, with the additional assignment of gathering whatever information on enemy movements that came her way. It wasn't exactly exciting, but only Claggett knew at the moment how important it was.

The satellite link told Sandy Richter and his colleagues that the mission was a probable "go." It meant more simulator time for all of them while ground crews prepped their Comanches for business. Unfortunately, that meant affixing decidedly unstealthy wing fittings to the side of each aircraft, along with long-range ferry tanks, but he'd known that from the beginning, and nobody had bothered asking how much he liked the idea. There were three scenarios on the sim now, and one by one the flight crews went through them, their bodies gyrating, quite unaware of what they were doing in the real world while their minds and bodies played in the virtual one.

"How the hell do we do that?" Chavez demanded.

Russians would not have questioned the orders in quite that way, Scherenko thought. "I only relay orders from your own agency," he told them.

"I also know that Koga's disappearance was not caused by any official agency."

"Yamata, you suppose?" Clark asked. That piece of information narrowed the possibilities somewhat. It also made the impossible merely dangerous.

"A good guess. You know where he lives, yes?"

"We've seen it from a distance," Chavez confirmed.

"Ah, yes—your photos." The Major would have loved to know what those had been about, but it would have been foolish to ask the question, and it was not certain that these two Americans knew the answer in any case. "If you have other assets in-country, I suggest you make use of them. We are making use of ours as well. Koga is probably the political solution to this crisis."

"If there is one," Ding noted.