Final impact

Roosevelt could feel high color in his cheeks, and he was certain his blood pressure surged. He’d already had it out with Kolhammer over this one, and it was galling in the extreme to find himself in a position where he was forced to concede the utility of having Ivanov in the USSR.

“Go on, Admiral Spruance,” he said, trying to keep the aggravation out of his tone.

“Well, Admiral Kolhammer is better informed than I, Mr. President, as he’s had time for a full briefing from his Intelligence Division-”

That’d be right, Roosevelt thought.

“-but as he explained it to me, Major Ivanov has confirmed the existence of a Multinational Force ship, the Vanguard, within the USSR, and the existence of a large nuclear facility in eastern Siberia, in which the Soviets constructed the weapon used over Lodz. He has provided the location, some surveillance images, and a good deal of technical data obtained from a number of Russian scientists who worked at the facility.”

“And where are those scientists now?” Roosevelt asked.

“They’re dead, sir,” answered Kolhammer bluntly. “Major Ivanov terminated them.”

A great weariness threatened to steal over the president. What was the French word for existential despair? He felt it more and more often whenever he contemplated a world remade in the image of people like Kolhammer. There were some days when he couldn’t wait to be free of it all.

Aloud, he said, “Well, my decision stands. Captain Willet is to close with the enemy and destroy them.”

D-DAY + 40. 14 JUNE 1944. 2340 HOURS.

USS HILLARY CLINTON, PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS.

Death Cab for Cutie’s “Crooked Teeth” poured from the speakers in Kolhammer’s cabin. The admiral swirled the ice-filled glass of Coke, sipped, and stared at the flexipad on his desk as the Cuties sang about making a horrible call.

There was nothing he could do. Willet had her orders and she would obey them without question, regardless of her own personal misgivings. He looked at his watch. She was probably launching her first salvo right now.

He leaned over and picked up the flexipad. A small icon, an open envelope, marked the e-mail message from Yamamoto.

Another icon designated Ivanov’s file. His eyes flicked over at the door to his room like the tip of a rawhide whip. There was one chance that he might yet influence events. He and Willet had talked their way around it after the audio hookup with Washington, convincing Spruance that the Havoc should only take down those ships that provided a clear and immediate threat to Allied vessels.

It left one possibility open.

He didn’t stop to consider the consequences.

Opening Ivanov’s message, he quickly excised the location of the Siberian Sharashka and copied in a few details about the facility’s purpose.

He checked the SEND and HARD-DELETE boxes at the top of the message. The pad linked to the Clinton’s Nemesis arrays and pulsed outward. Microseconds later a software agent cannibalized that portion of the pad’s lattice memory that held any trace of the e-mail. Then it ate itself as the music played on, assuring him that there had been nothing there all along.

Kolhammer turned off the pad, finished the Coke, and stood up. It was time to get back to the bridge.

D-DAY + 40. 14 JUNE 1944. 2340 HOURS.

HMAS HAVOC, PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS.

The Woomera-class submarine slipped through the warm bath of the Pacific like an assassin’s blade. It never came closer than sixty meters to the surface, but a thin cable trailed from a recessed slot at the rear of its conning tower and ran all the way up to the surface, where it maintained a constant link to a Big Eye drone that was maintaining its position above the center of the Japanese fleet.

“Target lock verified, Captain.”

“Thank you, weapons,” Willet said, never taking her eyes off the screen in which the Japanese ships steamed south. “You may fire.”

The sub’s offensive sysop ran her fingers down a line of icons. A hundred and twenty meters forward of the Combat Center, eight torpedo tube doors slid open and an impossibly complicated waltz began, with the Havoc’s Combat Intelligence tracking its prey via the link to the drone, then passing the position fix data down to the seeker heads in the retrofitted torpedoes.

One after another they launched, leaping from the tubes and accelerating away. They were driven by hydrazine monopropellent rocket engines, and trailed guidance wires back to their mother ship.

Standing behind her chief weapons officer, Willet watched with unspoken misgivings as the flashing blue triangles crawled across the flatscreen toward software-generated representations of their intended victims.