Weapons of choice

"Do I understand you correctly, Commander Willet," he asked quietly. "Your submarine can attack multiple targets at sea and on land at the same time, over great distances?"

"It could, if we had satellite coverage. But we don't. Still, even with our reduced capacity, in this antique environment, we could sink every capital ship in the Japanese navy before they even realized their cocks were on the chopping block."

Nimitz frowned at the obscenity, but he let it pass without comment. He let his eyes drift over the bridge crew and their equipment. Each crewmember was stationed at a glowing screen, which they occasionally brushed with their fingertips, sometimes to no discernible effect and sometimes with obvious consequences. Nimitz watched as one young seaman danced his fingers over a screen that pulsed and flowed with different colors and shapes under the caress.

"At least I recognize that," he smiled, indicating the periscope.

"We still use it," said Willet, "but not much. We do most of our business via the bloc."

"And your business will be in Hashirajima," said Nimitz.

"If they're at home. We won't be going right in, so we won't be able to use the torpedoes. But we'll deploy a drone to light up the targets for us, then we'll slam them with hypersonic cruise missiles. They drive themselves into the body of the target vessel and then go supernova. It's quite a sight. Like a tiny sun has materialized inside the hull. Makes a hell of a mess. My weapons chief can brief you fully, if you wish. But all you really need to know is that one missile will kill a battleship or an aircraft carrier, or you get your money back. The Japs, they won't have clue what hit them. If they're real quick thinkers, they might just realize something's wrong, and then they'll be dead."

"And I take it you have this stealth business, too," said Fraser.

"We have a full range of stealth protocols and countermeasures. But most of them are redundant in this environment. The material coating our skin will simply absorb the primitive sonar available in this period. We could be sitting directly under a contemporary sub hunter, having a keg party, and they wouldn't have a clue. It's not fair, but then, you know, tough shit."

Nimitz was beginning to suspect that Bull Halsey would warm to this blunt female.

"You seem very motivated, Commander."

Willet's face didn't soften, but her posture did, just marginally.

"My great-grandfather was captured in Malaya, sir. He died on the Burma railway in 1943. The Japs caught him trying to escape, killed nine of his mates right there in front of him. Then they tied him to a tree and used him for bayonet practice. But right now, he's in Changi. I never knew him, of course. But I loved my granddad, and I remember him crying when he'd talk about his father. I'd like to give him back his old man."

Captain Francois mashed the palms of her hands into the balls of her eyes, trying to rub out the feeling of hot sand. She hadn't slept in twenty-six hours, and it was beginning to affect her judgment. She would need to get some time in the rack very soon. But first she had one more cut to make.

She leaned forward, her lower back aching, and scanned the list again. The screen showed a register of every patient she might-just might, mind you-be able to transfer from the fleet's shipborne hospitals to Pearl's more primitive shore-based facilities. She needed to free up another 150 beds to accommodate the critical cases they would likely pick up in Singapore and Luzon.

She just didn't see how she could do it without killing at least seventy or eighty patients.

"What a fucked-up way to earn a dollar," she grumbled.

Perhaps the burn case off the Astoria? They're used to dealing with burns here. Perhaps he could go ashore.

She reached out to click the mouse and consign the man to dark ages medicine.

"No," she sighed, stopping herself. "He'd die for sure."

She spat a quiet curse at the ceiling of her office and went back to the start of the list.

At her elbow lay another file, one she pored over compulsively when she wasn't working on the patient lists. It was the results of her postmortem examination of Anderson and Miyazaki. It included the DNA profiles of the men who'd raped the Leyte Gulf's captain. She felt sick every time she read it. But she was convinced that if Anderson and Miyazaki were to have justice, it would come from their own people. Not from someone like "Buster" Cherry.

There was something else about the case that she hadn't discussed with anyone. It brought back memories. Not just of the war crimes she'd worked for the UN in Srebrenica and Denpasar, but also of her own rape, at the age of seventeen.

Margie Francois had been a premed college freshman when a bunch of drunken jocks had jumped her as she walked back to her dorm from the library, late at night. She'd never told anyone about it. There were times when she still felt ashamed.