Designated Targets

Keeping a much tighter leash on his emotions, this time he was able to see that about half the missiles had gone off course, but not always to ill effect. One that had been heading for the wreck of the Arizona, possibly drawn by its magnetic signature, suddenly veered away and dived on a cruiser, one he didn’t recognize. Hidaka couldn’t tell what sort of damage was done, but unless Danton had somehow defused the warheads, it still would be considerable.

On other screens, airfields and army barracks were certainly hit. But he counted five windows in which nothing—absolutely nothing—of value seemed to have been targeted. One rocket appeared to land on the beach in front of a hotel. He could only hope that a large number of officers were staying there.

His stomach had knotted itself so tightly, he wanted to be sick. But he would not give in to the convulsions that were trying to force his breakfast back up. He took a deep breath, ignoring the sickly sweet, rancid smell of death. This was going to take a while to work out. But he was supposed to signal Yamamoto the instant they had launched. The grand admiral would already be wondering what had happened.

“Play it again,” he said. “Slowly.”

OAHU, HAWAII

Good luck and bad habits saved Detective Lou “Buster” Cherry. While he’d been on suspension, he’d taken to calling in at a couple of Big Itchy’s bars for a liquid lunch—on the house, of course. He often stayed on for dinner, making selections from the same menu. Even after the Bureau had pulled a few strings to get him back his badge and gun, it was a routine he’d been unable—or unwilling—to break.

So noon found him at one of Itchy’s new joints, a place called Irish Mike’s, where they had those tasty fucking Buffalo wings he loved so much. Apart from beer and whiskey, there was probably nothing else in his bloodstream now. Except nicotine. And he seemed to recall having a doughnut for breakfast sometime last week.

He’d parked himself in the corner of the bar, where he could watch his subjects, some four-eyed Myron and his greasy girl. He wasn’t supposed to pick them up until later, to learn whether they slept together. But after a couple of days on their trail, he’d come to know their routine. Chances were they’d end up at Mike’s for lunch, which gave him every reason to be at Mike’s, too—perhaps even to get there a little early, to set up a comfy surveillance position and to work on his bent elbow. Mike, who was Maori rather than Irish, and whose name was Tui rather than Mike—well, he didn’t like customers who wouldn’t bend elbow with the best of them.

And Buster Cherry was fine with that.

He licked the spice from his fingers and took a long, cold pull on his beer. A Bud. Not his favorite, but times were tough all over. He stared at the table next to his targets, watching some flyboy and his squeeze, a nurse from over at Pearl. That way he could keep his eyes on Myron and the broad without being so obvious about it. Besides, the nurse had bazongas out to Wednesday, and half the mutts in the joint were staring at them, so it was a good cover.

You could tell Myron’s piece of ass was twenty-first, dressed as she was, although he didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes on that score. The feebs had given him some paper on her, and told him to get more. She was a reporter, name of Natoli, and a looker, too, if your tastes ran to foreign ass.

He could tell that Myron—actually, some gimp called Wally Curtis—was boring her silly, which wasn’t surprising. The kid was boring him, too, and he couldn’t even hear them over the jukebox playing some shit piece of nigger music from the future. The seventies, it sounded like. He was getting better at picking the era. This particular tar boy thought Buster was a “sexy thing” and he really believed in “Milko,” whatever the hell that meant. He’d take Glenn Miller or Bing Crosby any day—no matter what they were saying about Bing.

Detective Cherry had just come to the conclusion that he’d grievously miscalculated the amount of beer he’d need to see off the rest of his Buffalo wings when Natoli started screaming at everyone to get down. Nearly twenty years on the job, he didn’t need to hear it twice. That broad moved like she knew a thing or two. He was halfway to the floor, frantically scanning the room for a shooter, reaching for his own piece, when he saw that both she and her boyfriend were under the table, thumbs jammed in their ears, mouths wide open like they were fixing to swap spit or something.

It took a second, but he suddenly caught on.

Must be a bomb.

He got his own ears covered and was emptying his lungs when a cataclysmic roar shook the floor, the bar, the whole of fucking Diamond Head. It was so violent and lasted so long that Cherry thought it might just shake them off the side of the island and down into the sea.