Weapons of choice

Kolhammer stood in the bridge of the Clinton, watching the activity down on her flight deck. Hundreds of men and women toiled around the clock to prepare her for war. The feeling recalled the days before the Transition, when they were still preparing to deploy into the Indonesian Archipelago.

He was still getting by on only four or five hours' sleep. There was so much to do. The Multinational Force was battered and much reduced, but it was still the most powerful fleet of ships on the face of the earth at this time. He had the Kandahar and the two ships of her MEU intact. The torpedo strike on the marine flattop had been patched up well enough to put her back to sea. The Kennebunkport and the Providence had come through relatively unscathed. HMS Trident lay at anchor just abaft of them, and the Siranui beyond her. She was now crewed by Japanese and American sailors, the latter mostly coming from the Leyte Gulf. Those Japanese who did not feel they could fight against their forebears, about 80 percent of the crew, would await her return on shore.

He couldn't see the submarine Havoc. She was prowling the approaches to Midway.

The Australian troop carrier Moreton Bay had been patched up and quickly fitted out as a hospital ship. The four hundred members of the Second Cavalry Regiment who had been on their way to Timor in her were now squeezed into the monohulled assault ship HMAS Ipswich with their armour.

And of course, there was the Clinton.

Only one of her catapults had been repaired. She had but four jet fighters in one piece. Nearly three-quarters of her combat power was gone, wiped out at Midway, and her corridors were much less crowded. They'd buried so many of her complement at sea.

But like her murdered namesake, the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States, she was a hard-charging, life-taking bitch who'd crush anyone or anything that got in her way.

He trained his binoculars on the old Enterprise. She was as much a scene of activity as the Clinton. He wasn't sure that he agreed with Nimitz's decision that she accompany them, but he didn't feel he could argue against it. If nothing else it gave them more carrying capacity, and they'd need it. They were looking to bring home nearly twenty thousand prisoners.

"Penny for your thoughts, sir?" asked Commander Judge.

Kolhammer lowered the glasses.

"I just hope we can pull it off, Mike," he said. "We're doing the right thing. I'm sure of that. But there's any number of things that can go wrong."

"That's right," said Judge. "Can and probably will, when the shooting starts. But it's like you said, Admiral. It's the right thing."

Dan Black came awake to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. For one terrible instant he thought Ray Spruance was about to subject him to another mug of his terrible java. Then his head cleared and he remembered he was in bed at the Moana, not in his bunk on the Enterprise. The room was still, but a figure was coming toward him.

"Here, get this into you, Daniel. We've got to get back to Pearl in an hour."

Julia pushed the coffee toward him before opening the curtains. The reporter was already dressed in the jeans and hiking boots she seemed to prefer. He had been hoping for a little roll before heading off, but she was all business.

"I don't understand," he said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Dan, but we're both shipping out today, and my call is a little earlier than yours. I figured you'd want a brew to wake up."

"There are better ways to wake up, darling."

She ruffled his hair affectionately, but without a hint of sexual playfulness.

"There are," she agreed, "but we've got to get to work."

His heart tripped over in his chest.

"You're going to work? You got your job back in New York? I was hoping we'd be able to see more of each other."

Julia was halfway through a big mouthful of coffee, which Dan's slightly panicky outburst forced her to cut short.

"Just be cool," she gulped. "I'm not going to New York yet. They still haven't let us contact our offices, those of us who actually have them. No, I'm going out with the Clinton."

Dan fumbled in the dark to set his cup down on the bedside table. His eyes were adjusting to the dark, and he could see the defiant set to her arms.

"You're going into combat?"

"I have no idea where we're going. They'll tell us just before we need to know. But Kolhammer decided he wants us there. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I guess."

"But-"

Julia made a chopping gesture.

"Let's not do this scene, okay, the one where you tell me it's no place for a woman, I could get hurt, you're only trying to protect me."

"But all those things are true."

"They're not. Not all of them."

"But-"