Final impact

Three Penetrators whistled down through the humid topical air. Pop-out fins adjusted the flight path to keep the wobbling ordnance on course. For Torres, who was used to fire-and-forget systems, it was a nerve-racking business trying to fly the jet, hold the laser on target, and maintain enough situational awareness to avoid a midair collision.

A voice crackled in her headset. “We got flak.”

“We’re on it,” another replied.

She heard a few distant booms and tried to ignore them. Suppressing ground fire wasn’t her department. She had to hold the target…

…hold the target…hold the target…

Three blurs flashed across the low-res black-and-white screen she was using to guide the bomb in. Two large puffs of smoke and a single smaller one marked the impact point.

Then, a split second later, the side of the mountain blew out.

The footage from the mission recon bird-an A-4 fitted out with 21C battle-cams, a small lattice memory cache, and an old digital transmitter-arrived on screen in the Clinton’s CIC via relay from the Hawkeye a few minutes later. Kolhammer could hear cheering outside the CIC where the vision was playing on screens throughout the ship. The reaction in the Combat Center was subdued by comparison, more of a buzz than an outbreak of whoopin’ and hollerin’.

It was immediately clear that the bombing run had been a success: the replay showed massive secondary explosions being set off in the wake of the primary blast. Damage analysts on both the Clinton and the Enterprise were already picking the footage apart, but Kolhammer didn’t need to know much more. Half the mountain had blown out. Other scenes ran on multiple screens: strings of high-explosive warheads dropping into what looked like raw jungle, only to detonate, setting off further explosions that bespoke the presence of fuel, ammunition, and more planes-the “half-buried” bunkers Denny had identified.

On two smaller, flatter islands the Clinton’s second and third Skyhawk squadrons hammered away at more facilities. On one atoll, another Force Recon team called in and adjusted the strikes from a hiding point. The third unit had called in that they were under attack from Japanese ground forces, and nothing had been heard from them since.

“Enterprise reports they’re launching now, Admiral.”

“Thank you,” Kolhammer said.

The islands were now in range of the older, prop-driven attack planes like Spruance’s Skyraiders. Where the A-4s had gone in with precision strikes, the Skyraiders were simply tasked with smashing flat anything left standing.

“Extraction flights lifting off the Kandahar, sir.”

Kolhammer grunted in acknowledgment. Maybe Lonesome’s guys could grab up that last ’temp unit. If they couldn’t, nobody else could.

31

D-DAY + 39. 12 JUNE 1944. 2310 HOURS.

HIJMS YAMATO, SEA OF OKHOTSK.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto paused, eyes closed, to breathe in the delicate scent of the tea. There was little to distract him from the brief moment of stolen pleasure. The bridge of his flagship was quiet and orderly as the helmsman held station at the center of the fleet lying off Hokkaido.

The giant battleship scarcely moved on the light southeasterly swell that rolled away to break softly upon the shore of the large island miles off to port. His surviving carriers rode the same gentle motion of the sea around her. A flight of Zeros, rare radar-equipped night fighters, climbed slowly into the west to patrol the starlit skies above the ruins of the Russian armada.

Yamato’s sister ship, Musashi, was silhouetted by a quarter moon that bathed the enormous battle wagon in a soft, silver glow. The rest of the Combined Fleet’s big gun platforms-the Kongo, Nagato, and Yamashiro-were out of his line of sight, but the evidence of their work lay all around. Soviet naval power had been smashed by the warrior spirit of the Thunder Gods.

A score of destroyers churned up the waters, alert to the possibility that even one American or Russian submarine might sneak in among the resting giants on a suicide mission. As Yamamoto admired the sight and raised the thin porcelain cup again to his lips, he could only marvel at the fates that had placed him here.

When the general staff had dispatched him to attack the Americans in their lair at Pearl Harbor, so long ago, he had considered it madness. There was no way to strike at the barbarians’ production centers, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before the weight of America’s industrial base was brought to bear against his country.

Even then he had underestimated his enemy’s ability to recover-and later, to exploit the windfall of the Emergence. Many of his colleagues still blamed the time travelers for all the evils that had befallen them since mid-1942.