Weapons of choice

Kolhammer chewed his lip as he thought it over.

"What sort of damage are looking at?"

The link to Halabi suddenly cleared.

"A lot of burned buildings and broken heads in town. No deaths that we know of, although one of our guys did get shot. He'll pull through. Funny thing is, the local commanders aren't all that worked up. I get the impression they have to put up with a lot of this stuff."

Kolhammer didn't doubt it. He'd been worried that a confrontation between his sailors and the locals would only be a matter of time. But if Nimitz wasn't raising hell about it, he'd be content to let the matter lie, for the moment. There was no ignoring the killings of two of his officers, however.

"Okay, Captain," he said. "Tread softly on the brawl. If it doesn't bother them, we shouldn't let it bother us. But I'll want a full report for my own benefit, to see if any of our guys are at fault. As for the local cops, lean on the fuckers. If you have to, send a SEAL team through their garbage cans. Maybe they'll dig something up we can use to heavy them. We're not taking any shit over this. Not with two of our own in the morgue."

Halabi nodded once. "Got it."

Kolhammer was aware that the two men behind him had heard everything he'd just said, but he couldn't have cared less what they thought of his tactics.

"Pass on my thanks to Admiral Nimitz for his help," he said. "And contact the other fleet commanders-ours, I mean. I want to convene an O Group tomorrow. Zero eight hundred hours your time. We'll be back in Pearl by then. Keep me updated on the Nuku by compressed data burst in the meantime. I'll handle the fallout at this end."

Halabi said she'd get on it, and they signed off. Kolhammer stood and faced the others.

"I'm sorry about your men, Admiral," said Eisenhower.

"It was a man and a woman," said Kolhammer. "Captain Anderson off the Leyte Gulf, the ship that materialized inside your cruiser. And Miyazaki, the senior Japanese officer. We'd put Anderson and some of her people onto the Siranui."

King took that news without visibly reacting.

"Uh-huh," he said. "Now, what about these fucking Japs in New Guinea? Are we gonna have these bastards all over us with one of those rocket swarms that wiped out Spruance?"

"No," said Kolhammer. "It's a complication, a real one. But that ship's not going anywhere. It'll be taken care of in a few hours. They'll salvage some useful gear off her, but whether they have the capacity to exploit it quickly enough is another matter."

"Well, you better fucking hope they don't," said King.

Kolhammer ignored the challenge.

Something was puzzling him, though. He couldn't understand why it had taken so long for the news of Anderson's death to reach him. King and Eisenhower probably didn't think of a day's delay as being significant, but coming from a world of instantaneous communication, he did. He accepted the fact that without satellite cover, his own encrypted links were tenuous at best. But surely Pearl could have sent a cable?

"What's on your mind, Admiral?" asked Eisenhower.

"I just wonder, Admiral King, why I didn't get the news about the murders of my people from you?"

King seemed nonplussed by the question. "Well, I only just heard it myself."

As far as Kolhammer could tell, he didn't seem to be lying. "You heard nothing from Pearl at all, before now?"

King pressed his lips together, and his eyes crinkled slightly. "Admiral, I'd remind you that you were the one who insisted that no information be sent via radio or cable. Not when it has anything to do with you or your arrival. We've been communicating about your task force by written memo, delivered by safe hand courier. It's been a hell of an inconvenience, if you want to know. Your goddamn notification is probably making its way here the same way everything else concerning you people does. Very… fucking… slowly."

His point made, King stalked out of the room without further comment.

A long message from Nimitz, detailing the murders and the follow-up, did arrive at the hotel the next day. It had taken nearly two days to travel from Hawaii.

All things considered, Flight Lieutenant Caro Llewelen was happy to be in the cockpit of her F-22 with a full weapons load, no SAMs to speak of, and an agreeable dumbass cracker like "Stiffy" McClintock as her wingman.

The Raptors screamed along the coastline at Mach 2. For the moment their heading was slaved to an AWAC flight, but a touch of the stick would bring the craft back under pilot command. For now, both fliers were content to hitch a ride, while a navigational program downloaded from the Clinton's Combat Intelligence did the thinking for them.

A voice in Llewelen's ear, almost as though it was inside her head, said, "We have you ten minutes out. No threats. You have the stick."

"Acknowledged," she replied. "Stiffy. You're upstairs."