Final impact

“Okay. Got ’em,” announced the intelligence officer. “In the original time line, the Ohka, Baka, or whatever was produced by the First Naval Air Technical Arsenal, located in Yokosuka. Hence the name. They first appeared in combat on March twenty-first, nineteen forty-five, when fifteen Betty Bombers, carrying piloted rocket bombs attacked Task Group Five-Eight-Point-One. Or they tried to anyway. They got chopped by the air screen about a hundred klicks out before the Bettys could release.”

“So they started out as air-launched cruise missiles, with a kamikaze pilot to guide them in?” Willet said.

“Yup.”

“And now?”

“Looks like the Japanese have been working some mods,” she answered. The intelligence officer pulled up half a dozen still shots of the sleek, jet-powered aircraft they had spotted on the deck of the carrier. “The first versions of the Ohka ran off a solid fuel and had a range of about fifty-eight kilometers. Later on they switched to thermojets, and then, at the very end, to a turbojet tagged the Ne-Twenty and made by Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries. They picked up range and speed, and there were plans for carrier-launched versions and even land-based models.”

Willet’s craggy, tattooed boat chief leaned in over the workstation with the two female officers. “If you don’t mind me, Captain, Ms. Lohrey?”

“Go ahead, Roy,” Willet said.

The master chief dialed up the maximum magnification on one of the stills, and they waited while rendering software cleaned up the image. Flemming narrowed his eyes to gun slits and sucked at his teeth. Willet suppressed a smile. All he needed to complete the scene was a big piece of straw between those teeth. He grunted and mumbled to himself, chewed at his lip, and scratched his thinning hair.

“This is no good, skipper. We’ve all been wondering why we haven’t seen any Japanese jet planes, like the German Two Sixty-twos. This is why, I reckon. They poured all the money into these things. Ms. Lohrey will be able to check the archive but as I recall, first time around they didn’t make more than handful of the later-series MXYs. Looks here like they’ve got a hundred or so, just on this one ship. And they’re independent. Don’t need a bomber to launch them. That makes them much trickier for the ’temps to deal with. Originally most of them were destroyed in transit before they launched. With these babies, Yamamoto’s got himself an over-the-horizon strike capability. The Russians are gonna get swarmed by these things. It’ll be like a mini-Taiwan.”

Willet, who had been leaning forward, straightened up and stretched her back muscles. “The Soviets had a pretty good air defense net over that fleet of theirs,” she said. “Nothing too flash, but it does the job, in context.”

Flemming nodded at the screen. “But these things are out of context, Captain. We’ve been watching them shoot down old prop-driven box kites. These Ohkas are cruise missiles, whichever way you want to cut it.”

Willet gave her intel boss a querying glance. “Amanda?”

“I’m with the chief, boss. I think the Sovs are gonna get it in the neck.”

Willet shrugged. “Oh well. Shit happens. I can see that worried look in your eyes, though, Chief. So fret not. I’m one step ahead of you. Amanda, cut this into a data package for Kolhammer and Spruance. Immediate flash traffic via Fleetnet. This is probably what’s waiting for them in the Marianas if that goes ahead. Chief, you said the Japanese originally worked on a land-based variant on this thing.”

“More’n that, Captain. They had blueprints for hiding these things in mountain caves-they were gonna shoot ’em out of the cliffs at the Yanks when they got close enough. Probably woulda done some real mischief.”

“Probably will, you mean.”

“Yeah. I do.”

Willet nodded. All around her the crew in the submarine’s Combat Center maintained their vigil on the fighting. Dozens of screens ran with low-light and infrared coverage of the battlespace. The result was an eerie scene.

On Hokkaido at least half a million men tore at each other across a sixty-five-kilometer front. In the waters offshore, the Soviet invasion fleet seemed unchallenged. Destroyers and light cruisers steamed up near the coastline to lend gunnery support to their comrades who were pushing inland. Overhead at least two dozen Russian fighters maintained a combat air patrol over the ships at all times.

“How long?” Willet asked.

“Not long at all,” Lohrey answered. “Those things are really moving.”

She nodded at a large screen to her right.

The Havoc’s Combat Intelligence had a fix on eighty-two rocket bombs screaming toward the Soviets in a long stream. Apparently there was no forming up into squadrons for the attack. The Ohkas just took off and made for the enemy at top speed.

“Amanda, as Captain Judge would say, git-r-done.”

D-DAY + 39. 11 JUNE 1944. 0351 HOURS.

PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS.